The San Francisco call., 1898-02-17
o O O o O O O o c
 SOME ONE C
 GUT c THE ROPES. c

Q O O O O O Q Q O V years ago, when I was a mate on one of the vessels of the whaling fieet,' said z. T. Jennings, re- tired seafaring man, at present at the Grand.
 we were lying off Cape Thompson, and the captain had aboard four large bar rels of bad whisky, which he intended to trade for bone on the Siberian side. We had put into Cape Thompson for fresh water. and were to leave in few hours for the other side, when, just as our bad luck would have it, we saw steamer s smoke to the southland, and in few moments we made her out to be the revenue cutter Bear. As our vessel had only sails, there was no way to escape her. and to be caught with whisky aboard meant confiscation of the ship, the breaking up of the cruise and the possible imprisonment of the captain. The old man was in a quandary. He did not wish to lose the whisky, out of which he expected to make big profits; neither did he want to get into trouble. Finally he hit upon the scheme of weighting the barrels and sinking them over the side attached to ropes, by which they could be again hauled up when the search was over.
 ''The cutter arrived. and, after a thorough search, departed on her way north having found nothing contraband on board. Then the old man, chuckling at his own cleverness, went to fish up his bugjuice But it was not there. Some one of the crew who had a grudge to pay off had cut the ropes and allowed the barrels to go to the bottom. The guilty party was never discovered, though the captain offered his share of the first whale to the man who would put him in the way of a five minutes private inter view with the offender"
 Colonel Montgomery one of the best known and most popular of the New York clubmen, Is registered at the Occidental.
 J. s. Noble. superintendent of the Shasta division of the Southern Pacific, is registered at the California from Duns- muir.
 B. H. Upham, wine-grower of Mar tinez, has taken rooms at the Lick, where he will remain during the short time he is in the city.
 President Hugh Craig of the Chamber of Commerce has left on a business trip that will take him to London. He expects to be gone some time.
 Dr. Edward N. Ewer, one of Chicago's s foremost physicians, is at the Palace on visit of pleasure to the city and the southern part of the State.
 Isaac Kein, the manager of a syndicate controlling a number of large department stores in Chicago, Is at the Palace on a pleasure trip to California.
 M. von Baumbach. a wealthy brewer of Milwaukee, is at the Occidental, ac- companied by his two daughters. They are on a sightseeing tour of the West
 N. Gray, agent for the Alaska Com mercial Company at Unalaska, who is at the Occidental leaves tomorrow for his home In the north, after few weeks vacation spent in the city the first one he has had in several years.
 At a meeting of the directors of the Sharon estate yesterday it was decided to place the Grand and Palace under one management. The resignation of Man ager Thorn of the Grand was accepted, and hereafter that house will be. run as an auxiliary to the Palace, under the direction of Colonel Kirkpatrick. Mir. Thorn has not been in the best of health for some time. and will, as soon as he has wound up his affairs, leave for an extended trip through the East, in the hope of finding relief.