The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-08-06
From the New York Times.


 low I am a bit of coward,
 M must confess, and therefore, as a 4 matter of pride and self-respect, I have made it a rule never to ba1k dan ger nor decline any hazard that came in the line of duty. Perhaps that habit of mine put me in line for most of the crazy stunts as they call em here. One of my first unpleasant experiences which l shared with dozen other men was jumping to death off a precipce. We were whites pursued by tomahawk-carry- ing, scalpng Indians. They chased us thu ough several miles of film-taking and finally to the edge of a horrendous cliff, over which we were supposed to leap rather than stay and be tomahawked by our pursuers.
 At the bottom of the cliff. out of range of the picture machines eye, was a life net held up by 16 supers. Each of us went over the cliff like shot and the problem was for each man to get safely out of the net before the next one tum- bled into it. For Gods sake, hurry up.' I yelled to the man ahead of me, who was evidently taking his time l had to follow quickly, and kerplunwl l came down almost. on top of him. The lifenet gave way under the combined weights, and though the fall was partly broken, l hit with great force on a stony bit of ground. My career as a motion picture actor almost ended then and there.
 My next feat, though not so hazard GUS, looked even more dangerous. l was an absent-minded professor, holding in one hand a book I diligently read and the other hand supporting an umbrella to keep off the suns rays In this prac- tically somnambullstic state I was to walk off precipice. The horror of the picture theatre assemblage would be suc- ceeded by uproarious laughter as the sim pie professor apparently supported by his umbrella acting as a parachute, glid- ed slowly and gracefully to earth-still in tent on his ,book.
 Now, even about this trick l was ner- vous, although 1 shouldn't have been at all. Have you even seen the aerial bal let-grls flying through the air above the stage, pretending to dance, and all that sort of thing? Well, the principle was the same. The trick was worked in doors with an outdoor stage setting l wore a stout belt around my body. and the vision of the camera didn't get it, was cable suspended from the flies. As the fymen lowered the cable the fool scientist dropped into the yawning chssm, appar- ently retarded only by that joke para chute Just the same, I was glad to get to the bottom. Suppose the rope had broken.
 But the razest-perhaps the most dangerous-series of stunts in which fig ured began at the 129th street Elevated station and ended in the Harlem river. This time I was a married man coming to my Harlem flat and displaying to my fond wife two theatre tickets that had been given me. We bastened to dress and depart. On the way out my motion pie ture wife inadvertently dropped the tick cts out of her reticule in the hallway of the flat.
 We boarded the elevated at 129th street Five dollars, judiciously dstrib- uted in tips, ena abred us to stage the ele- vated part of the story. Careless wife. lingering her reticue managed to drop it out of the window. l leaped out of the car window while the train was still in motion. Scornng the stairs, I clambered hand under hand down an elevated pill lar to the street. Mercy on us! l musn't t lose the precious tickets, and surely the tickets are in the bag
 "Once on the street, I see that thlef is making off with wfie's reticule. I take after him. A long chase ensues. Ihe thief scoots up on one of the Harlem river bridges, and perceiving l must over take him, drops the bag in such a manner that it falls on one of the lower girders of the bridge. I climb down on the trestie work, and, holding on for dear life with one hand, fully GO feet above the water, grab the reticue with the other hand and put it in my pocket.
 After this bit of gymnastics l am somewhat winded. but still game. Re turning to solid earth, I have the mis- fortune to encoutne ra negro boy who grabs the retIcuje and rln& Again ths