Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1909-04-04

of trlls. arpeggios and variations, the
old. old story about the outfit cooS-al-
ways a might dead-game hombrey. who :
been jamming around the world all his
life-who is bitten by some mysterious
kind of fly or insect no bigger than the
head of a pin-bitten while he sleeps. You
know. Well. by the time he wakes up the
arm that has been bitten by the mySteri-
Gus insect has swelled to twice its normal
size, and then his body begins to swell.
and presently he's the size of the great
vat of Heidelberg, only bigger.
He begs the outfit surgeon to chop of
his arm. but the surgeon hates TO do Il
or something, and then the afflicted man.
never uttering a whimper though his
agony must be something fierce. hacks
the arm off with jungle AK or some
tool of that sort. But it's too late and
he cashes In. and then all OF the native
bearers and jungle heaters. being In a
state of panic over the mysterious in
sect. desert the outfit and then the hunt
ers have a devils own time packing their
gear by short stages-they can only make
$50 yards a day through the dense jungle
to the Mountains of the Moon. which
only e.3S9 miles away
Yes. and they re ringing in lot of the
old. old serpent stories that used to make
kids shiver sumpin fierce WAY back
yonder when Andy Johnson still was
President.
Several of EN-. for example. have pull
ed that old. old python yarn that was
joke even when Jerome *. jerome va
looked upon as funny man. for Jerome
kidded the yarn numerically i'll one OF
his stories.
The python yarn that I'm here ad-
verting to-youIl recognize it instantly in
a minute when / run over it--originally
was told by some chap who'd lived in
India. 1t was exclusively an East Indian
yarn. But now il has been revamped and
refurbished and fixed up an African
occurrence.
oh. YOU remember that python story
all righI.
Seems that . clippish young fellow I'm
the Indian civil service had a wfe-Eng-
fish girl of courSe-who was deadly afraj i'll
of snakes. There were all sorts of punk
erino snakes i'll the part of India where
they lived particularly pythons, and H..
mere thought OF EN- almost made her
faint
Well. Just 10 cure her-ah-huh, cure
her-of her aversion 10 snakes, WHY.
what does her cut-up OF hus-
servants 10 capture a huge pythorf-must
ha' been a hundred foot long. or nearly
and kill IL. Then, while his wife was OUT
tending to the getting of supper why
the gay young hubby has his servants
place about nineteen feet OF the dead ser
pent. including the head, in the bedroom
OF his wife. and the rest of the fine, dan
dy snake trailing out of the window into
the garden He fixed things this-a-way
You see. for the purpose OF curing his
wife Of her aversion to snakes. After
thus arranging matters the light-hearted
and ingenious young hubby of the wife
afraid OF snakes got on his horse and
rode down the road piece to attend to
Il quarrel among the natives.
He didn't get back till along toward
midnight Noticing that his wife wasni
on the steps to meet, him. as usual. he
hustled feeling kind o funny about mat
ters. 10 her bedroom, and there ne finds
ugh. horrorsi-why. he finds his wife ia
the embrace of stupen1us python, and
there's only a little bit of his wife still
in sight al that. Nope. the python thai
hal been killed by his native servants
hadn't come back to life and staked the
unfortunate young wife TO a benevolent
assimilation. But the female mate of the
slaughtered python. you see. had followed
the trail of her dead mate, and She
found the dead python with q portion Of
him in the yoGng woman's bedroom. and
the young woman was there, too. IN
dead faint from having caught sight or
the dead python. and what more natural
than that the female python should have
concluded TO get hunk and square mat
tiers up by absorbing the doomed young
woman
Great little yarn. that. and IL was
even greater and more chillifying. I can
remember, when used To read II quite
stretch before the Philadelphia GEN.
tennial. Somehow or another. though, il
doesn't have quite such Il marrow -curiling
it to Africa. Still. reckon. maybe my
lings as il used Ia be. IL must be that"