The following is told of John F. Stevens, who was appointed by
President Roosevelt to take charge of the Panama Canal:
Sometime in the seventies, and somewhere in Arizona, both the
time and place where the Apaches were very seriously on the
warpath, it became necessary to send a message across a hundred
or two miles of desert. There was offered a reward of five
hundred dollars to the man who would carry it. The peril was
undeniable and nobody seemed to consider the reward worth the
probable cost of it. But presently John Stevens undertook to
deliver the message. He eluded the Apaches and made the journey
successfully on foot, but declined the five hundred dollars. The
thing had been there to do; he preferred to do it for its own
sake. (Text.)--_American Magazine._
(2508)
=Primitive Organisms=--See CHOICE IN PRIMITIVE ORGANISMS.