EDITORIAL 



51 



modern firearms "see red" when in a good game 

 country. They never take the trouble to hunt 

 down and kill the wounded and paunched ani- 

 mals. I know personally of a case where a city 

 man refused to turn over two shells to a man who 

 had paunched a mountain ram. In this case the 

 animal could have been put out of pain easily, had 

 the man who shot it had any ammunition. When 

 he asked for more he was refused for no reason 

 except that the city man did not fancy returning to 

 camp with an empty gun. Possibly he feared some 

 fierce marmot or little chief hare might attack him. 

 A real mountain man, one of those fellows the 

 urbane people look upon as a bloody man, . will 

 often follow a wounded animal all day and this 

 over the roughest of country, in the worst of 

 weather, until the wounded creature is overtaken 

 and put out of its misery. But the city sportsman 

 and the childlike Indian would not think of fasting 

 all day and perhaps sleeping away from camp 

 without a blanket, out of compassion for a wounded 

 beast. Not because either our city friend or the 

 Indian delight in cruelty, but because both are only 

 children with new toys in their hands. 



Honesty 



Is a somewhat rare quality of late years. To such a 

 degree has rascality flourished that it seems to be 

 only necessary for a man in politics to be strictly 

 and aggressively honest to become a noted and a 

 great man, though he hasn't much chance of be- 

 coming a rich one. There are a number of articles 

 now appearing in various magazines apologizing 

 for the 



ADULTERATION OF FOOD 



The people who write these things seem to be 

 moral idiots, that is, incapable of distinguishing 

 right from wrong; for instance, they argue that 

 because oleomargarine is not deleterious to the 

 health, that it is. all right to palm it off on the 

 unsuspecting public as butter; because glucose is 

 not poisonous, that it is proper to substitute it for 

 sugar; likewise because cocoanut shells are harm- 

 less that they will serve for pepper and spice. 

 These people fail to see that the swindle and dis- 

 honesty of such things is in making any substitu- 

 tion whatever. Butter should be honest butter — 

 nothing else. The other products, to be honest, 

 should be sold under their own names. 



In Recreation we avoid, wherever it is possible, 

 personal " knocking," leaving that for the Colonel 

 Manns to do, for we have noticed that a suggestion 

 of blackmail always accompanies papers and 

 periodicals which make a point of personal attacks, 

 a suggestion which so often in the past has proved 

 to be founded upon an ugly truth, that we look 

 upon such literature with the same disgust as do 

 our readers. So, "with charity for all and with 

 malice toward none," we will discuss our subjects 

 and not our neighbors. 



Any one who cares enough for his Stomach to 



inquire whether his particular brand of tea is 

 colored with Prussian blue, or his canned goods 

 are embalmed or not, can write; to the Department 



of Agriculture for the bulletin on food adulteration, 

 and he will get the truth. 



Instead of fining a manufacturer of fake food 

 when he is caught in the act, the French people 

 have a pleasant habit of confiscating his plant — a 

 process we quite believe in. But a three months' 

 diet on his own specialty would probably stop the 

 production, and at the same time rid the country of 

 a fake and be of great service to the honest people 

 in the business. 



Save Alive All Hoop Snakes 



We have received a very interesting letter from 

 a man in the State of Washington who claims not 

 only to have seen two hoop snakes, but to have 

 killed one himself. Unfortunately, he requested 

 us not to publish his letter and we hold such re- 

 quests sacred. We can say, however, without fear 

 of contradiction, that there are probably many — 

 very many people — who have seen, not only hoop 

 snakes, but have seen the hazel-rod turn in the 

 hand of a diviner and point to the water beneath, 

 though we are of the opinion that the water would 

 have been found just the same, without the mum- 

 mery of the forked hazel twig and its appeal to the 

 aid of Thor. Hoop snakes, hazel-rods, lucky 

 stones, horseshoes, and the old thread of red 

 worsted which, in the far districts of England, the 

 old peasant woman still ties to her cow's tail be- 

 fore sending it out to pasture — all these are heir- 

 looms from the faith of our superstitious ancestors, 

 who lived in a world in which fairies and gnomes, 

 hobgoblins, witches and mermaids, the unicorn 

 and the sea-serpent, played a very real part. 



Under the fierce, cold electric light of this age of 

 scientific investigation, these things which our 

 ancestors believed in so implicitly have no place 

 except in books of folk-lore, or in children's books, 

 where the hoop snake may find a congenial com- 

 panion with Mother Goose's cow, who jumped over 

 the moon. 



Yet we freely acknowledge that we love Mother 

 Goose, Baron Munchausen and all their family 

 and friends, and are in sympathy with the New 

 York Sun when it says : 



It is a cheerful belief that it would be a pity to discard into 

 the lumber room of the things that once held faith. The most 

 appreciative account of the water finder's rod is in Dr. Herbert 

 Mayo's work, "Letters on the Truth Contained in Popular 

 Superstitions" (London, 1851). The work is most cordial in 

 its tone toward these old beliefs of the lowly, and is a mine of 

 curious information, a worthy divagation of a learned student 

 of medicine. 



A very interesting and complete account of old 

 superstitions, more judicious than the former, is 

 Folkard's "Plant-lore, Legends and Lyrics." 



