Los Angeles herald., 1906-12-04

dictated the talk to a typewritist lady
and It was printed every week and cir
cGlated among the faithful
Another hard job I got while In the
employ of the splritualist man was to
report a play. Maybe you think that's
an easy one. Jeffreys Lewis, then quite
a star on the coast, wanted to crib a
copy of a play that was on at the
Grand opera house I'm Frisco-it was q
translation from the French and it was
it's first appearance in this country. It
took me four nights to do the job. The
trst night | just sat the play through
to get familiar with the characters
and the business. The next night I
went through with 1t, took il all down
IN shorthand, second tier box being
hired for me for reporting purposes.
The writing had all to be done on
my knee and surreptitlously, and, of
course, my first copy was very crude
and had many omissions. / took it all
down over again the next two nights,
but Miss Lewis finally got a complete
copy, with all the business and paid
a good price for IL, too. l don't know
whether that job was an ethical one or
or not-I never inquired.
After leaving the employ of the
spiritualist man I signed contract to
go with a travelling chronological lee.
turer from San Francisco to Prince
Edwards island, upon the Atlantic
coast, and return. He examined the
heads and took down his sage obser-
vations and we kept together for six
months, at the end of which time the
hotels began to view us with suspicion,
and 1 left the bump man and hiked
Lack TO the coast again
'They say there's more freaks to the
square inch in California than in any
other state in the Union, and I guess
that's fact. Used to be, at least.
Anyway, a good many Of them seemed
to come in my direction. One of the
queerest chaps that ever sought the
service of my craftsmanship was a
man in Frisco who married a very
wealthy woman and who developed a
mania for writing letters to prominent
people all over the country. He hired
me as secretary, and 1t was long time
before l found out that all his letter
writing business was phony.' His Of
flee was in his home, and every morn
ing we would sit down together, my
rich woman's husband and 1, and
rake letter TO jay GOulu, he
would say, or it would be:
sc. p. Huntington, City: Dear Sir
1 have your esteemed favor of a recent
date in regard to the deposit of anthra-
cite coal in the Contra Costa range,
which / recently brought to your at
tention,' etc, and he would go on in
this vein for pages, stating the min
utest details about a coal mine that
existed nowhere except in my boss
fertile Imagination. He wrote to Mark
Twain and Grover Cleveland and Nc
Kinley almost daily, and I had just
began to felicitate myself on getting In
with man who would sure put me on
the way to great things when bust
up came in this way:
"One day my imported employer I'M
folded to me new scheme, but swore
me to secrecy, because, hL said, his
wife objected to the plan. He said he
had just completed the formation Of
syndicate of newspapers, for which he
had contracted to go to the South Sea
islands on a cruise and to furnish them
q series of weekly syndicate letters
about objects of interest that might
develop in the cruise. We were to pro-
ceed leisurely, stop as long as we
wanted to at any one place. and have
a yacht at our disposal outfitted in
every way for our comfort.
"Ye godsl how / did dream for
month while we were planning things.
And he did hire the yacht and was
having it secretly filled with groceries
and liquors when a couple of rude men,
at his wife's behest came down on him
one day and took him away to pri-
vate asylum, shattering my beautiful
dream and turning me adrift to hunt
new job. oh, 1 had good time with
him, sure.
But he wasn't marker to a woman
that used to write novels
'Oh, got to go? Well, drop in again;
but, say, don't go away thinking it.
was all fun-Ive sweat at the busi-
ness, too, and 1t puts ruts in my
nervous system that'll never smooth
out. Good by