Evening star., 1898-12-17

| daisy had it appeared as fiction in the col
umns Of a highly spiced newspaper of
Par1s; sprung, h9wevsr. as gospel truth,
with big names th back it up, and with a
| completeness of detail such as is adver-
| tised by the projectors of stage spectacles,
1t certainly was casper even for Chicago.
1t IT was i the ., story Sone page, with pictures>
Side park at gray dawn of the morning
| before publication 1t was a duel of the
most approved limelight pattern-rapers,
| the two gents to the encounter wearing
| soft-bosomed, frilied shirts; seconds stand
| ing by with long and hooded mackintoshes
| surgeons for both parties standing by a
| contiguous clump of trees: one man badly
wounded, other P1nked in the left arm, and,
| finally, the appearance upon the scene of
! the innocent young thing in skirts who Rad
| been the cause of the whole fracas-a
! chorus girl figuring in the second row Of
the 'Slnbad operate extravaganza, which
was then running merrily at the Chicago
| Opera House. Oh that was a hot yarn all
| right. One of the contestants was repre-
sented as young southern gentleman,
the scion OF the topmost family of Missis-
| sippi (name not reVealed), and the party of
the second part to the savage and blood
thirsty encounter was Baron Kalnoky, the
son of the prime minister of Austria The
baron was represented as having met the
chorus girl in London, as having fallen
desperately in love with her on the spot
where he first saw her, of having followed
her to this country, of having been vitup-
Grated anu SCoEiltu Dy ner because she
loved and was going to marry the scion of
the swell house of Mississippi and as hay
ing finally, in a vortex of rage slapped the
countenance of the hot young member from
the sunny southland. Hence the duel. The
pair of duefsts were, of course spirited
away Gin the story after the fight and
the way they eluded the machinery of ius-
tice during the few exciting days after the
publication of the story was certainly a
caution They just seemed to have dropped
Off the earth completely.
Puncturing the Fake.
''Of course, all of the rest of the night
police reporters were compelled to mako
the best answers they could to the Where
were you att? question when they were
hauled up for not having got hold of the
big story of the day. The yarn was cabled
abroad to all OF the metropolitan papers of
Europe, and correspondents were sent fly
ing TO dig up the old Baron Kalnoky, prime
minister of Austria, who was stopping a
little inn in inaccessible part Of ths
Tyrolean mountains, taking a rest from
the cares of state. The name of the son of
the Baron Kalnoky didn't appear in the
Almanac de Gotha, to be sure, but then,
the correspondents were instructed to find
out from the old gentleman whether he
had a morganatic son, or something like
that, whose name was entitled to a show
in the Almanac. The old statesman grim
ned in the teeth Of the correspondents who
found him out in his Tyrolean mountain
fastness. He had never had a son in his
life. he said, and that's all there was to it.
This was cabled to all of the Chicago pa
pers, but the only modification that the
young man who wrote the story would ap-
pend to it was that the military mus
tachioed gent from across the sea, who had
fought on account of the second-row Choir
us girl, had represented himself to be the
son of Aus trias premier. He hung on TO
the story so persiStenty that he made it
stick, and he wasn't dropped down the ele-
vator shaft of the newspaper he had faxed.
He held his End up in weird police stories
for six months after, that, when along
comes the famous prima donna ] mentioned
when [ began to tell YOU about him. He
fascinated the song bird, perhaps by reason
of his oriental, ssething imagination, and
they got married within a month after
their first meeting. He's been her pros
porous manager ever since.
interviewing Col. IDgersoIl.
Then there was that extra ordinary fake
of which the cherub-faeed Col. Bob Inger
soil was the victim. Ingersoll happened to
pass through Chicago on his way to Butte,
Mont, where he had some business in con-
nection with the Davis will case Che having
been enc of the lawyers for the contestants
of that famous wild, and he stopped over
In Chicago to take q days rest before re-
suming his Journey. One of the remarkable
clique of Chicago hotel reporters nailed the
colonel in the corridor of the Auditorium
his way to Butte he wasn't really bound
for st. Paul, whittier all of the sports of
the country We're just then repairing to at
tend a big prize fight that was to take
place within a few days. The colonel not
only rebuked the playful inSinuation, but
he laurched out on a frenetic and fierce
TRADE against the whole business of prize
fighting. He called it baboOnish and brutal
and spent a good ten minutes telling how
strongly he reprobated prize-fighting in all
Its forms. Well, the next morning one of
the prominent Chicago dailies came out
with three-coiUmn interview with Col.
Ingersoll, in which the lawyer and lecturer
was made to talk learnedly under the head
ing. Fights have Witnessed Col. 1nger-
soil, according to the interview, had at
tended about every big prize fight in this
country ard England since the days of
Yankee Sullivan, and he was represented
as having taken a huge delight in relating
all of the various points in these nights that
especially appealed to his knowledge of
boxing. The colonel was on his way to
Butte by the time the story was published,
but he got held of the interview in all of
the papers along his line Of travel. The
letter which he wrote repudiating the in
terview wasn't published in its entirety,
but for all that ii remains to this day in
my mind the standing ideal of all that Is
most forcible. direct and sledge-hammerish
in modern English. 1t is grievous to say
that the young man who wrote this inter-
view wasn't ruthlessly discharged. He was,
instead, told not to be quite so explicit
henceforth and he continued on with the
paper long enough to do a partnership act
on a big final hotel fake in company with
the aforementioned hotel-reporting fakir
who wrote the interview with the signor
about the abandonment Of Rome by Leo.
What Ekafa TahwhO Said.
This is still known in Chicago as the
Japanese interview. These two hotel re-
porters had grown a-weary of Chicago. and
they decided to try their fortunes in New
York. They made arrangements to resign
from their respective newspapers on the
same day, and they wanted to make
Garrison finish of their taking careers. So
they got together and wrote a lengthy In
terview with japanese tourist of distnc-
ton in his own country, who had passed
through Chicago (on the day before pubE-
cationD on his way to Europe, where he
was going to buy a whole lot of battle
ships and things The interview was chief
ly remarkable for the number of fierce
threats the distinguished Jap made against
the United States. He talked of the ease
with which Japan's new navy could steam
over to the west coast of the United States
and lay all the towns there along in ruins,
and, what's more, he said that Japan was
seriously meditating doing Just that thing
not for any particular reason or griev-
ance, the distinguished Jap stated, but just
for luck, or for something like that AL