FOREST AND STREAM. 
S£7 
order serves as well— so people who have money are care- 
less, and don't realize the value of it. 
"They spend money here, they sure do 1" Mrs. Foster 
used to say. One sees a store clerk with a hundred dol- 
lar diamond on his finger, throwing tobacco juice like a 
hoosier from the bottoms. The clerk can afford the stone, 
for he gets from $30 to over $100 a month right there 
in the Tiptonville stores. A boy of fifteen has received 
the $30 — the tobacco does not matter. In fact half a 
dozen or so of the young men in town had their photo- 
graphs taken with large cigars between their teeth. This 
photograph excited some comment because it was "a right 
good picture." 
The main street and the country roads were so hard 
when I saw them, that the cotton wagons — with big boxes 
drawn by mules, usually driven by a dark man who has a 
long leashed, short handled whip — rumbled along as 
though on macadam or on a bridge. They are ideal roads 
for wheelmen and pleasure riding, but in winter, "why, 
you just aint got no idea how deep that mud does get. 
People pays any price to have anything moved, and four 
mules on a light wagon gets stuck some days for hours 
at a time, not able to start it." 
Winter is cold in Tiptonville — at intervals. The sleet 
storm two years ago left a coat of ice on the ground, 
trees, and everything, which lasted for six weeks, but 
mostly it's just mud. An old ex-parson said of last win- 
ter, that he didn't get off the sidewalks from middle 
November till late April, on account of mud. This is 
not so very unusual — any winter will have weeks and 
weeks of mud. And yet some of the moneyed people 
and all the others apparently in town, are reduced to the 
extremity of cutting down their shade trees — so necessary 
in summer heats — simply because they didn't have wood 
piles. When the roads are good no one thinks anything 
but cotton — and curiously enough, there is no regular 
coal dealer in town nor anyone to put a barge on the 
river to bring wood to town from the vast forests which 
line the banks of the Mississippi — and wood bringing 
Si. 50 an uncut, unsplit wagon load of swamp and drift 
pile pickings, and extra for putting the stuff into more 
or less regular lengths for the stoves. 
Perhaps the thing that always strikes a northerner in 
such a cotton town — I have talked to many northerners 
who have come South and like its ways — is the simplicity 
of the life led by most people, rich or poor. They read 
the local paper, and perhaps a paper from the nearest 
city (Memphis, at Tiptonville), .get cotton reports over 
Ihe telephone — and get much of their enjoyment and sor- 
row just so — and perhaps take a long drive in a buggj' 
behind lean, fast horses. One hears, "I'm often surprised 
at the immense amount of satisfaction that can be got out 
of a stick and a good jack knife." There are few signs 
of people being discontented, or given to wandering 
around, though having money enough to go as they please, 
judge (that is his given name) Harris, with thousands 
of acres of cotton land out at rent, large banking inter- 
ests, and a big estate to manage, and a young man, was 
the only one in Tiptonville who seemed entirely able to 
use all his time "doing something," as the expression is 
understood in the North. He takes photographs for recre- 
ation, and some of these are beautiful. Hobbies are rare 
in the valley. 
The village is divided into two parts, one of which 
figures in the local papers as "Coon Town." The negroes 
furnish much of the local gossip, their doings being right 
interesting on occasion. The seven prisoners in the local 
jail are all colored, two being women. Two, a man and 
a woman, are waiting trial for murder — the man of his 
wife with a club, the woman her husband with an ax. 
One is a boot leg whiskey seller, one hit a man with a 
hoe, craps caused some fines, and the other woman was 
up for shooting a revolver for practice on a cane ridge. 
The jail is a ramshackle wooden building with a 
right strong steel and iron cage within. Those fined 
with costs serve their sentences at the rate of forty cents 
a day, and the sheriff gets forty cents a day for caring 
for them. The food consists of seven biscuits, all beans 
he can eat, a piece of meat — hog, beef — molasses once, 
for each man daily. 
Jailer Thorn is obliged to maintain discipline by such 
processes as buckets of water, holding back food and 
water, making a hot fire in the stove, and the like. About 
November i, the jailer was awakened at 3 A. M. by the 
darkies singing and playing a French harp, or mouth 
organ. They wouldn't stop nor give up the harp. The 
jailer said either give up the harp or no water and grub. 
All day long the prisoners were riotous, but about six 
o'clock the jailer said he was going to take a little walk, 
and away he went. Two hours later he returned and 
heard one of those negroes on his knees praying: 
"Oh Lord 1 Give me a little corn bread, and give me a 
little water which doesn't cost anything!" 
"We got hungry, and we told him we'd do anything 
for him if he'd only give us something to eat," one of 
the negroes said. 
"They are right witty," the jailer has to say of his men. 
It seems that they come to be riotous just because they 
want to break the monotony of days and weeks cooped 
in a space fifteen by fifteen feet. A prisoner who comes 
in without money or tobacco is tried by his fellows and 
whipped. Also if he does certain things which make it 
more uncomfortable for the others. Under compulsion 
they are obliged to keep the cell clean at Tiptonville, but 
in other jails this is not done. But personal clean- 
Imess is not enforced — one yellow man had never bathed 
in his life — though cutting off food or water or both in- 
variably fetches prisoners to terms. Three years ago a 
negro was taken from the jail and hanged by a mob, and 
two years ago another was taken from the court house 
by day, when a white jury disagreed. The jury was a 
"scrub jury," mostly strangers in the region, and of 
them one had been accused of the same crime, and an- 
other's son was similarly accused some time before, un- 
known to anyone in Lake county. When the facts re- 
garding these two jurymen became known both left the 
country- — under the impulse of notes delivered at night. 
A man was once killed in the jail by a shot in the 
night through a window as he went to bed. 
Tiptonville has been burned out twice, and the houses 
are nearly all new and well painted — white. It is re- 
markably clean and neat, and shows that there is con- 
siderable money in town by the average standard of 
clothes worn, and preponderance of the white collar con- 
tingent. 
As Tiptonville is a river town, it has had its exper- 
iences with floods. Being on the same ridge that New 
Madrid is, water does not come to the houses, but, along 
the water front, the bank has been continually caving, 
and some of the houses have had to be moved back. A 
two hundred acre farm was once between Tiptonville and 
the river. The farm is gone, and one corner of the old 
warehouse at the very edge of the place is on the caving 
bank. Under the town flow streams of seep-water, 
and this causes a constant small wearing away of the 
water all the year around. The mail comes by stage 24 
miles — by skiff in high water, for then the ridge is an 
island. They have their little shakers, and there are some 
things which lead to such expressions as "If I wasn't 
kept here by this or that I'd get away faster than you 
could talk." One time there was a negro hung at Tip- 
tonville and he said his innocence would be proved by 
the town "sinking into the river." The caving banks, 
the rotten limestone under all, and the "little shakers" 
remind the old timers of various things. "We're living 
here," said Lockey Donaldson, one of the town's "big 
men" "but we don't know." 
The river has brought a sand bar down before the 
town, a levee seems likely to lower permanently the height 
of Reelfoot Lake by stopping the influx of river water in 
high tides, and the earthquakes don't come so often as 
formerly. One caji look at the sky, so to speak, and be- 
lieve it isn't going to rain very hard anyhow — like Noah's 
neighbor, in the story they tell in the Mississippi Valley— 
where some parallel between local conditions and those 
of Noah's time is found. 
To northern eyes, Tiptonville is interesting in every 
way.- If one is a bit circumspect, and exercises some 
of his innate Sherlock Holmes ability, such things as the 
road crossings— beams with cross sticks nailed at stepable 
intervals — will indicate the mud to come if it is dry 
weather, the lean activity of the store keepers, their pros- 
perity, the pretty eyes and taut carriage its romance, and 
the toot of the cotton gins its commerce. As a cotton 
town, perhaps Tiptonville is most remarkable of all. 
Lake county cotton is famous, and so I had a better 
chance to see a cotton town than I realized for some time 
after I reached Tiptonville. The gin brings the stores 
clustering around. Raymond S. Spears. 
Twilight and Camp-Fire Clubs. 
The Twilight Club was founded in 1883, at the time 
of Herbert Spencer's visit to this country, when that 
great philosopher remarked at the dinner given in his 
honor at Delmonico's, that Americans "have had too 
much of the gospel of work, and need to cultivate the 
gospel of relaxation." The club was, therefore, organ- 
ized to cultivate rational recreation, and the require- 
ments for membership were to possess "a clean shirt 
and $1 in pocket." The plan was certainly unique. 
There are no officers, no constitution, by-laws, rules, 
or regulations, but the club's affairs are managed by 
the perpetual secretary, Mr. Chas. F. Wingate, the sani- 
tary engineer and founder of Twilight Park. Mem- 
bers come direct from their offices and sit down to din- 
ner, usually at the St. Denis Hotel. The speaking be- 
gins promptly at 8, a different toastmaster presides on 
each occasion. The speeches are short and in the nature 
of shop talk. The following are some of the topics 
which have been discussed: 
How did you earn your first dollar? 
Should preaching be abolished by law? 
What shall our boys do for a living? 
How do the strikes strike you? 
H ave the Trusts helped or hurt you? 
Why did you come to New York? 
Have you lost faith in Democracy? 
How would you spend a million for the public good? 
Why don't people go to church? 
How are you training your wives and daughters? 
Should criminals be punished or reformed? 
The club found many imitators, including the Sunset 
Club, of Chicago; Six O'clock Club, of Washington, D. 
C.; the Candlelight Club, of Denver, and the Present 
Day Club, of Dayton, Ohio. 
On Thursday, March 10, the club held its 3iSth din- 
ner, and a dozen members of the Camp-fire Club were 
invited to share in the discussion of the topic "Out- 
door Life." 
Among those present were Dr. Wm. T. Hornaday, 
President of the club, and Director of the N. Y. 
Zoological Park; Arthur F. Rice, the secretary; Dan C. 
Beard, the artist; David T. Abercrombie; Dr. C. 
C. Curtis, Professor of Botany at Columbia Uni- 
versity; Capt. E. B. Rogers, Pay Inspector U. 
S. Navy Yard, Brooklyn; Dr. T. K. Tuthill, 
A. A. Anderson the artist and supervisor of the forest 
reserve at Yellowstone Park; E. W. Deming, the Indian 
painter; and T. E. Batten of Forest and Stream. 
Mr. Beard acted as toastmaster, and said that he 
had been brought up in Kentucky, "the dark and bloody 
ground" which was full of traditions of Daniel Boone, 
Simon Kenton, and Simon Girty, the famous hunters 
who preceded the trappers, and he had heard many 
stories in his childhood of their wonderful deeds. It was 
a common remark among the sturdy woodsmen of his 
day, that "the only thing on 'arth they feared was a 
painter and a rattlesnake." Doubtless in the primitive 
days of flint-locks and poor powder, an encounter with a 
full-grown panther was to be dreaded. He had always 
heard that even the grizzly is afraid of the mountain 
hon. He related several stories which he had heard 
from Yellowstone Kelley, about these "varmints." One 
of them carried off a good sized baby in his teeth, but 
could not climb the fence and so dropped the kid. An- 
other one killed a hunter in a hand to hand contest, 
while a third followed a friend of Kelley for a mile and 
a half until the latter concluded that it was safe to 
shoot him. Mr. Beard himself met a woman out West, 
who was attacked by a panther while traveling with a 
dog. She had a rifle, but dared not shoot for fear of 
killing the dog, so she broke the lion's backbone with 
the butt of the gun. 
Mr. Beard gave an amusing account of his experi- 
ence in building a summer home in Pike county. The 
natives there had never seen a, log house, and could 
not understand a builder's plan, so he had to whittle 
out a model with a jack-knife in order to show what 
he wanted. He left plenty of cracks for ventilation, and 
the house was quickly occupied by numerous families 
of flying squirrels. When he returned the second year 
his stovepipe was plugged solid for six feet with cotton 
tufts from the bed covers; the bed itself was full of nuts, 
and when his sisters started to clean house they found 
squirrel nests in his rubber boots, overcoat pockets, and 
even in his corduroy panteloons. When the latter was 
shaken out the squirrels flew in all directions to the 
consternation of the house-ckaners. At another time 
he strewd pepper about in spots, thinking to rid himself 
of these pests, but was kept awake by their sneezing. 
He described his first encounter with a rattlesnake 
after sixteen years' failure to meet one of them. He 
also gave a vivid account of his travels in Yellowstone 
Park, and the delights of open air life in the far West, 
where the men are said to measure nine inches be- 
tween the eyes, and smell like a wolf, but are genial 
and excellent company, men in short "with the bark 
on." He concluded by telling of the new lovers of 
nature who shoot game for food but not for mere love 
of butchery, and who regard the fad for collecting of 
deer heads and horns as but little better than the Indian 
collector of scalps. 
In order to break the ice, Mr. Wingate led the speak- 
ing and told of some of his observations of animal life 
among the Catskills. He related a number of anecdotes 
regarding catamounts or "painters," black bears and 
porcupines in that section and in the Adirondacks. 
He referred especially to the wonderful leaps made by 
the catamounts, measuring as much as forty feet, as 
stated by Dr. Merriam. No wild creature was so feared 
by the Indians and early settler, or did such damage 
to colts, calves and sheep. Their mournful screams 
and stealthy mode of attack created universal terror. 
Bears are still common in the Catskills, and so are 
porcupines, though they do not strip the hemlocks 
bare as in other sections. He referred to the steady 
growth of appreciation of outdoor life, which began 
with Wordsworth and Thoreau, but has been mainly 
fostered in recent years by the writings of John Bur- 
roughs. Our methods of summering have entirely 
changed since 1870, and now camps, cottages, and parks 
are found throughout the length and breadth of the 
land. 
Doctor Hornaday, managing director of the "Zoo" 
at Bronx Park, gave a delightful and breezy account of 
his observations as a naturalist and a traveler in South 
America and in the far West. He described an ex- 
perience with a puma ("el Tigre," as the natives call 
them) in South America when he was hunting sloths. 
The panther was swimming across a river, and when 
they followed him in a leaky canoe, he deliberately tried 
to come on board. The situation was decidedly in- 
teresting, as Mr. Hornaday had no firearm, except a 
rifle loaded with bird shot. This wounded, but only 
enraged the beast, so he took to pounding him on the 
head with an ax, a difficult matter because his head 
sunk in the water each time he struck. They finally 
hauled the creature into the boat only half dead, and 
there despatched him. The speaker said he had always 
regarded the panther as not a dangerous animal. The 
attendants enter their cages at the "Zoo" without hesi- 
tation.. The screams, despite Doctor Merriam, can be 
heard at all hours for the distance of a mile, and sound 
like the cry of a terrified woman, or like a magnified 
cat. Incidentally, he remarked that he had never seen 
anything so startling or so horrifying as the sudden 
attack of a male jaguar on a female which had been 
placed in the same cage. He leaped like a thunder bolt, 
and seizing her head in his powerful jaws, crushed it 
in in a second. 
Referring to the main subject of the evening, he said 
that outdoor life is the only antidote for our present 
automatic existence, when everything is done by ma- 
chine methods. But to enjoy and benefit by such life 
one must have some object. A naturalist, as a matter 
of course, must love fine scenery, but a lifeless landscape 
has few attractions. He gave a graphic account of a 
trip to the Bad Lands and the Great Divide, where 
he rode hard, slept on the ground, climbed and hunted 
and fished continuously, and returned after a month's 
absence and a thousand mile journey, bringing back 
one pair of antlers as his spoils. But they were ample 
return for the time and trouble. The love of nature 
is steadily increasing, and outdoor life is a pleasure, as 
well as a necessity. 
Mr. Arthur Rice, secretary of the Camp-fire Club, 
told of the first and only occasion when he had heard 
a panther scream, while night hunting in the Adiron- 
dacks. It sounded like the wail of a lost soul. His 
guide at once turned back to camp with the remark 
that it was no use going after deer that night, as they 
would all be hiding in terror. Emerson says every man 
contains a bit of savage as big as a woodchuck. We are 
wild men temporarily tamed; the instinct of flight and 
pursuit remains with many animals. The cow fears the 
dog, because her progenitor was afraid of the dog's 
wolfish ancestor. The dog turns around before lying 
down, and buries his bones from inherited habit. So 
sheep gather at night in a clump with their heads 
outside, and the buck rounds up the does and then 
carefully takes shelter in the midst of them. Hunting 
once meant life or death to the savage or the scout. 
The woods are our sane asylums. As soon as the 
first bluebird's notes are heard and the first robin, we 
are lured into the forest.^ Every boy wants to run wild 
at a certain time, and men are but children of a larger 
growth. The pleasures of outdoor life are threefold- 
anticipation, realization, and remembrance. 
Captain Rogers, of the Navy, gave a detailed ac- 
count of outdoor life in Japan, and described a de- 
lightful excursion with a party of pilgrims, dressed 
m Japanese costume, to the famous sacred shrine 
in the mountains of Niko, which are full of legends, 
beautiful buildings, and magnificent views. He gave 
interesting details of native customs and methods 
of trout fishing, and an account of the eclipse of the sun 
which he witnessed. 
