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SOME MEN AND THEIR WAYS

A HERMIT, A "PAGAN," AND A POET

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JOAQUIN MILLER can well be called the "Poet of the Sierras," as for twenty years he has lived on a spur of these mountains and from his "dooryard" can look

down almost as straight as the stone falls upon the beautiful bay of San Francisco, a thousand feet below, and upon the exquisite nature picture afforded by the vineyards and gardens of the Alameda country. While out a short distance from the city of San Francisco, the poet-naturalist literally exists in another world, for when one climbs the steep, tortuous trail called the mountain road and reaches the "Heights," he has entered a curious highland as craggy as the Alpine Oberland. Here, however, the mountain breezes mingle with the sea air and in the warm sunshine flowers and foliage flourish even in crevices containing but a handful of earth. A glance at the Heights tells the stranger why Joaquin Miller has determined to spend his life here, for its wild beauty is indeed fascinating to any lover of the outdoors.

In this little domain where he is supreme, the poet has his home in what would be called a church. He terms it the chapel, and on either side are little buildings which he calls "deaneries." The chapel is of gothic architecture with tinted glass windows and contains a room which is the actual home of the owner. A couch covered with skins is the bed upon which he sleeps night after night, the walls are adorned with photographs, curious mottoes and strange ornaments and articles which he has gathered here and there in the world, especially in the Orient.

Mr. Miller by the side of an Oregon fir.

But he does not eat in the chapel; he goes to it only to rest and to perform the rites of the strange worship partly Buddhist and partly Indian which he has originated here. At the little farm cottage not far away he is served his food but he spends most of the time at the Heights, walking about or climbing the rocky cliffs, his companion being a young Buddhist servart whom the poet found far away in the East Indies and brought back to America because he took such a liking for the boy.

A quaint picture does this gentle hermit of the West make as you meet him on the trails or at his home. At times his costume may be entirely of furs except the leather top-boots which he invariably wears. He is fond of the soft black hat so popular with the Southerner, while his long, curling hair and white beard give him a dignified and venerable appear

ance.

Mr. Miller is seldom away from his little clearing in the hills except when the desire to cross the sea tempts him, but in recent years he has traveled but little and as he says is quietly and contentedly waiting for the time when he will. pass away and his body be cremated on the funeral pyre which he has built for the purpose and which he shows to his guests. This gruesome object was constructed largely by the hands of the man who wishes his last rites performed upon it. By its side is a pit lined with stones which is to be the final resting place of his ashes, and in his room in the chapel are the sweet gum, wine and oil which are to be placed upon the funeral fire as a sort of incense offering.

And

There are those who call Joaquin Miller a pagan but the rites he observes, though strange to the Christian believer, are poetically beautiful. He has his Rain God, whose symbol is a bear's paw which is hung on the wall of the chapel. When the time of drouth comes and the vegetation is parched for want of water, the poet becomes priest for the time and attended by his Buddhist servant, places incense sticks before the paw, lights them and performs a curious dance with his assistant. the few people in this region actually believe that bear's paw has the power to bring rain and will tell you stories of its miraculous powers, so that the poet-hermit is frequently called upon to perform this ceremony. Near the bear paw in the chapel is the tail of a coyote. This is believed to have the power to check the heavy rains and drive away the fogs that frequently hang over the hills and mountains, and a somewhat similar ceremony is actually performed before it including the lighting of the joss sticks.

But it is a harmless, innocent life that Joaquin Miller leads in this little upper world. Now as in the first days when he came here, he is a true child of nature and a lover of nature, and his neighbors, if they can be called such, all respect him, though he is regarded with awe. Perhaps his most intimate friend in recent years has been Yone Noguchi, Japan's silver-tongued poet, who crossed the ocean purposely to spend a part of his life at the Heights, and here among the crags he composed some of his sweetest verse.

HUGH JENNINGS

WHY HIS TEAM WINS

IN the national game to-day, there is no

name that stands out clearer and brighter than that of the manager of the baseball team representing Detroit in the American league. To him-Hugh Jennings-is due not only the pennant success of the western nine, but to him is likewise due, and to no small extent, the popularization over further diamonds of a spirit new to the realm of professional baseball-the cleaner and healthier spirit of honest amateurism.

The steadily victorious Detroit team affords ample proof of the success of Jennings' methods of handling his men, methods that are all his own. The Detroit nine is on tip-toes all the time, in every game it plays, in every move it makes on the diamond. Its spirit, instilled by "Hughey" is not: "We have got to win." Rather is it: "We want to win." The nine works for Jennings because it loves him. It respects him, it respects his ways. It feels ashamed to lose. He has infused into it an esprit de corps based not on wages but on compelled admiration for its leader.

Before his last return to the ranks of professional baseball, Hugh Jennings acted as coach of the Cornell baseball squad for several years. He was the most successful guide the nine of that university has ever had, and the reason is not far to seek. He acted not merely as a coach, but as “one of the fellows." He took a course in college, he chummed with the men, he became one of their closest friends, and he studied them. Then he got busy, and made ball players out of them. The friend Jennings came first; the coach Jennings afterward. And his teams played doubly hard, not only for the coach and the university, but the coach, the university and the personal friend.

Not many months ago, at a banquet of Cornell alumni in the West, Jennings, in responding to the toast, "Baseball," said: "If one thing can be counted upon more than another in reckoning the winning of the pennant last year by the Detroit team, I believe it was the team's spirit, the fine, healthy and happy spirit of a college nine."

He

Jennings, the manager, has told his men he would rather have them lose a game fairly, than win it by nasty tactics. disapproves of squabbles, and he frowns upon every trace of muckerism. His code on the diamond is summed up in his order: "Hit hard, field fast, and act like gentlemen!"

It is not hard to understand how his men have become instilled with the spirit of fair play and love for their leader. As one example, for instance, there may be recalled the case of one of his pitchers who,

Hugh Jennings, manager Detroit baseball

team.

in the critical eighth inning of a big contest last year, showed decided signs of weakening. With one man out, he had given two bases on balls in succession and had allowed the next batter up a hit. It was but natural that, at such a moment, he should feel, like other pitchers have felt at the same time, that he might soon be taken out of the box. Jennings, master of baseball psychology, felt that his pitcher was feeling just this thing, and sent out word to him through the third baseman that he, "Hughey," had confidence in him

and to go ahead and "show them." The pitcher did. He struck the next two men out. And Jennings' nine not only won the game, but Jennings won the love of a pitcher that would strain a right arm for him many a time in future games.

This is only one of a thousand illustrations that might be cited to show the little ways of the man to win his men and make his men win. John Foster, one of the bestknown writers on baseball in America, and a deep student of the game, says: "When the Detroit team wins, it wins for Jennings and through Jennings. Every move it makes shows the hand of the manager. The clean, manly spirit that he has put into the team is the spirit he believes in with all his heart, and it is the spirit that deserves pennants."

Such is Hugh Jennings and such is his team, a team that has been characterized as the best-spirited aggregation in the roll of professional baseball.

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T is rather odd that a professor at Yale

has been one of the first to examine the resources of South America in person in order to see just what opportunities are there offered for American enterprise. We have known for a long time that England and Germany have quietly been pushing their way into the best trading areas of our southern continent. Americans seem to have been peculiarly lax in this regard. While our corporations have developed to a wonderful point of efficiency in the United States, they have been far outstripped by German and English competitors in the South American field.

Hiram Bingham, professor of Latin American History at Yale, killed several birds with one stone on his trip to South America the first of the year. At New Haven he is engaged in teaching young men just what opportunities South America. has to offer them. He teaches them the general history of the continent and also provides a practical training designed for those who propose to engage in business there. He was well aware that the libraries of America were overflowing with

books upon. South America. He also knew that many of them were defective by lack of suggestions that would enable our young men to engage in South American business with profit.

With an energy characteristic of several of our younger professors-for instance, the late Professor Wyckoff of Princetonhe determined to know what he was talking about. Accordingly on receiving his appointment as delegate of the United States to the Pan-American Scientific Congress held at Santiago, Chili, he embraced his opportunity to travel extensively through the country. In all, he journeyed several thousand miles. He rode mule back about two thousand miles across tracts almost unexplored; went about seven hundred miles on rivers and twentyfive hundred miles on South American railways; in addition, he journeyed in coasting vessels three or four thousand miles more. He informs this magazine that in this trip his chief purpose was to learn the actual resources of the country, the possibilities of development, and especially the opportunities offered to young American business men and to American investors.

He concluded his duties at the Scientific Congress on January 5, 1909. He describes his trip in a recent issue of the Yale Alumni Weekly:

"Immediately after the Congress I went back to Bolivia and began again my overland journey at Oruro, where I had left my saddles and outfit. My route then lay by rail, and steamer across Lake Titicaca, to Cuzco in Peru, the ancient Inca capital. It has only recently been connected with the outside world by rail. With its wonderfully interesting Inca ruins and its flood of historical associations, it should prove an attractive Mecca for travelers. It is now only four weeks from New York. "From Cuzco northward to Huancayo, the present southern terminus of the Oroya Railway, is about five hundred miles by the mule trails. It took us just a month to do it but it could be accomplished in three weeks. We spent a week making a side trip to Choqquequirau, the 'newly discovered' Inca city or fortress. This proved to be the most interesting part of the six months' trip. The location of this well-nigh impregnable fortress, which

the Incas built five hundred years ago to guard the approach to Cuzco by way of the Apurimac River, has long been known. But it is so well defended by nature that only half a dozen bold climbers are known to have visited it since the Incas destroyed the path thither at the time of the Spanish conquest of Peru.

"Last year, however, a company was formed to exploit the treasure of gold which is supposed to have been hidden there by the departing Incas. At considerable cost a frail suspension bridge on telegraph wires was built across the roaring

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flood of the Apurimac River, and a perilous footpath constructed. For fifteen miles the path climbs the 6,000 feet ascent and penetrates the tropical forest until it reaches the hilltop where stand the walls of the ancient buildings.

"They are of a style and construction not usually found in Inca edifices and I know of but two or three buildings in other parts of Peru that are like them. The most important are a story and a half high, built of rough hewn stones, laid in clay, and originally plastered, with a solid central wall reaching to the apex of the gables,

and dividing the house into two apartments of nearly equal size and shape. Access to the upper story appears to have been through a door in the end of each gable.

"After our visit to Choqquequirau we went to the battlefield of Ayacucho, where, on December 9, 1824, the last Spanish army in South America was defeated and the War of Independence virtually concluded. At Huancayo we reached the recently completed railway to Oroya. Thence, over 'the highest railway in the world' (15,500 feet), we went to Lima, and at Callao concluded our overland journey from Buenos Aires.

"Generalization is dangerous-particularly as applied to South America, where each of the eleven republics has its own problems. But this may fairly be said. The present is an era of progress in South America. Railroads are being built and revolutions are at a discount. Furthermore, this progress is due chiefly to the aid of European capital. England and Germany, with scores of local banks, large commercial houses and extensive railway holdings, are a long way ahead of all competitors. We have made a good beginning in certain quarters, but our American capitalists seem to have taken little notice of the many opportunities offered for safe investments on a large scale. I believe that the time is fully ripe for us to make ourselves thoroughly familiar by travel and study, with the conditions that prevail in the different states, and thus pave the way for a large extension of our foreign commerce."

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quest, and his clean-cut face, square-set jaw and wide-open eye made it seem not so difficult a matter after all for him to penetrate Ceylon without a sou, to journey across the difficult Malay Peninsula, and in the guise of a roving laborer to penetrate the interior of Japan.

All these things he has done, and shortly by the time, as a matter of fact, that this appears in print-he will be traveling in company with a well-known artist to Greece, there to drift around the classic ruins which have long appealed to him.

Incidentally, Mr. Franck is picking up a very fine assortment of languages. He speaks the languages of continental Europe with facility, he has acquired several dialects of India and Ceylon, and his pronunciation passes muster among a band of Japanese coolies. Indeed, few professors of modern languages are so well equipped as this young man of thirty years, who spends nine months of the twelve at Springfield, Mass., where he is professor of languages in the Technical High School.

Mr. Franck has lived close to the people all of his life. He worked his way through the high school and through the University of Michigan. Vacations he shipped westward as a laborer in order to earn the tuition necessary for entrance in the fall. He

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