The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1902-04-06

owners ancestral dogmaS, legends and
uneasy spirits.
(which reminds me-" said his COM
panion, that l have intimate acquain-
on record; none of your white
shrouded, hollow-eyed, arm-waving
spectres-but a dog-a great, fierce,
phosphorescent dog, that roams over
the moor o. nights, soaring decent folk
out of half their senses, and striking
terror to the hearts of self-respecting
dogs in the flesh"
THAT sounds interesting. Who
stands sponsor for the beast ?"
"The Baskervilles. My fathers
groom down in Devon is supposed to
be descended from the original owner.
The name of Baskerville was famous
in the days of Drake. There were wild
spirits in those days, you know, and
they seem to have bred wild ghosts"
Awhile the elder man listened as his
companion drew at length from a
wealth of folk lore, accumulated during
a boyhood and early manhood whose
holiday delight had been to tramp the
lonely moor and gossip with confiding
rustics, who thought they saw and
heard things.
Its a real good mystery" said Rob-
inson rehectively as he finished his tale.
Its pity your Sherlock Holmes is
dead"
ais he?" said the doctor.
'You don't mean to say"
"Well, no coroner's jury has said So"
Gould you revive him and let him
tackle this mystery"
II rather fancy the thing happened
before he disappeared from the public
view"
Then he did examine the case?
II imagine there are some records
of it in the tin box that Watson cher
ishes. With your help l daresay we
could get at the details" And then
and there was born the scheme of DR..
Doyle's last fascinating account of the
exploits of his wonderful detective. By
tea-time he had the plot worked out,
and ere many days the author, oc-
casionally accompanied by Mr.. Robin
son. was securing Dartmoor in Devon
shire with all the enthusiasm of boy
following strange clues over wild
tract of land some fifty by thirty miles.
Amid all the virgin solitude of the
huge moor, unchanged and untitled by
hand of man, there is one central
point which most attracts the student
of crime. 1t is the huge prison of
Princetown, an enormous barrack or
criminals, placed in this lonely situa-
ton to make escape more difficult. The
gaunt building looking wistfully at
the high brick walls, and knowing well
that whatever type of villain might be
essential to their narrative, his double
could certainty be found within that
grim enclosure. The yellow CARRIED
gangs who work at retaining the
moor. the hard-faced warders with
their loaded rifles, the dark, melan-
choly houses. and the sad waste
- Lee
impression upon their minds, some re-
Election of which is to be found in the
pages of THE Hound of the Basker-
Viles."
One day the two were wandering to-
gether over the moor when they came
upon a spot where it seemed that only
a thin film covered some frightful
abyss into which the careless warfarer
might easily be precipitated. Only by
stepping from clump to clump of
rushes could they keep up, and at each
move the whole surrounding ground
Quivered and shook like some vast
unwholesome jelly.
1t was not a place to venture on
alone. Doyle paused, and pointing to
a particularly dangerous hole, out of
which the green scummed water was
yelling, said
THAT is where we will put him"
"Who?"
THE villain
And so the denouement of the book
was reached. For several days the two
friends tramped the moor, listening to
weird local stories-tRles of escaping
convicts who had horribly vanished
tales of belated huntsmen who had
been heard of no more. 1t is not a
cheerful place, but it presents vast
possibilities to men whose imaginations
incllne to grimness. At the end of
a brief holiday they returned full of
strange memories. and Doyle proceed
ed to cast into shape the Impressions
and suggestions with which he had
been literally supplied by his syn1pa-
thetic companion.
SO the book was written and when it
was all finished. with the generous ap-
probation of one whose own reputation
is too well established to fear aught,
he wrote a dedication, in which he
thanked the young man for the ghost
stories born of the rocks, and the sea
and the fra grant tobacco, and of what
had seemed a disappointing Sunday
And Mr.. Robinson-with all his pleas
ure in his own literary work, and all
his natural pride in the memory of a
day when he rowed No at Henley,
and played for Cambridge against OK
ford and Edinburgh and Dublin-was
as pleased as a child that the great
novelist had found it in his heart so to
recognize him.
There is now being offered in one of
the book shops in New York two pages
of original manuscript by Maj. John
Andre. The price asked is $780, a
rate of about six dollars a word. Maj
Andre was asked to speak at the OPEN
ing of the John Street Theater in New
York, on Jan. 8. 1779, and the present ex-
listing two pages of his handwriting is
the manuscript of his speech on that
occasion. Some months ago Earl Grey
discovered q private journal of Andres
in England, and it was found neces-
sary at that time to send to this coun-
try for specimens of Andres hand
writing in order to verify the manu-
script.
At a lecture in New York city re-
Gently Henry Irving took up the
Shakespeare Baconian controversy
and gave vent to some very positive
opinions on the matter. Sir Henry does
not believe that any one but an actor
could have written the plays of
Shakespeare, and he maintains that
Lord Bacon could not write respecta-
BILE verse. The former statement is
probably nearer the truth than the
latter. Bacon did write fairly good
verse and for that matter, if the tales
rate actor. though he never graced the
boards. In England the controversy
RACES without a sign of an end. Every
nov and then some one discoveries an
other Baconian cypher and thus the
arsr1It11pnts cOntinila In this country