St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1894-01-21

any trouble with the Indians. 1t is true.
as he admitted. that he was scaIped
thirteen different times. But he went
into the Indian country prepared. He
always wore false scalp, with red ink
IN the lining, and when the indians cnt
it off it would bleed like a real scalp. So
scalDlng never hurt him. and as it
pleased the Indians, he rather encour-
aged the diversion.
One time, when Erastus was standing
under tree near the equator, he saw a
boa constructor in the branches Of the
tree just in the act of leaping upon him.
On the right, but few feet distant, a
large cougar Was just about to spring.
On his left hand. at about the same dis
lance, was an alligator with jaws dis
tended to receive him. But Erastus
told me himself that he was not fright
ened in the slightest degree. Just as
the boa constructor leaped from the
limb. and his head, with eyes of molten
fire, was hurled down upon Erast US.
Erastus lodged the head, leaped up and
caught the tail still resting on The limb,
pulled it over the limb, as you would
pull rope. over pulley, and drew it
down until the head and tail of
the great snake dangled equally
distant from the ground. Then
quicker than flash of lightning, he
tied the tail part of the snake around
the body of the cougar, and the head
part of the snake about the alligator,
and so left them all three dangling in
the air. The cougar just balanced the
alligator, the alligator just balanced the
cougar, and so the snake could neither
go up nor down, but hung there with
those equal weights dangling from each
end OF itself, unable to move one way or
the other. Erastus now quietly laid
himself down and took a long and re-
freshing sleep. When he awoke they
were still dangling in the air; and
when he passed the same place. three
years later, their white and CHASTITY
skeletons were suspended from the
tree aud ratified in the wind. l
know this is true, for he gave
bad ratified out of the skeleton of the
alligator.
When Erastus came home from his
long travels we were all very proud of
him. We used to like to take him
around and show him Off. He had been
all over the world, and had so many ex-
citing stories of thrilling adventure that
we were all proud TO be known as the
acquaintance of such man.
When he told, for instance, how he
was once ten days and ten nights with
out even a plank To support himself,
af1oat in the Indian ocean; and how he
escaped at last by killing a whale with
his jack-knite, making a balloon of his
skin and Initiating it with hot air by
burning the whales oil; and then climb
ing into the balloon and floating off to
Australia when he told such stories as
this, we were all proud to be known as
the acQuaintances of such an expert
enced and entertaining man.
So we always liked TO take Erastus
around, because as acQuaintahceS of his
we ourselves Shone, in lesser degree,
through his reflected glory.
But we found it was dangerous to let
him go off alone much, as he was always
sure to come home very badly mangled
and dislocated. 1t was no unusual
thing for him to come home with his
arms in the wrong place and his feet
mismated. Unless he was watched he
was always falling off the sidewalk and
stumbling into gas trenches. He was
SO absorbed in the contemplation of his
Australian and South American adj
ventures that he was pretty sure TO
walk into every coal hole aud come
home covered from top to toe with
blood and coal dust.
One time, while relating how, when
he was travelling in the Libyan desert,
he was taken up by hurricane and
carried thirty-seven miles in the air,
and only saved himself by making a
parachute of his cane and his palm leaf
fan-while he was telling this tale he
walked into an elevator well, and fortu-
IA tely only broke one leg.
As soon as he was able to hobble out,
and while relating to a listener how he
escaped from mad elephant in India
by adroitly tying the elephants trunk
in bow knot around palm tree, he