Rare treasures of art, priceless gems and the royal trappings of
ancient times were discovered by archaeologists when they tunneled
their way into the funeral chambers of King Tutankhamen [1358-1350, B.
C.] in the Valley of Kings near Luxor, Egypt. Describing the discovery,
Lord Carnarvon wrote to a Chicago newspaper correspondent:
“At last a passage was cleared. We again reached a sealed door or wall.
We wondered if we should find another staircase, probably blocked,
behind this wall, or whether we should get into a chamber. I asked Mr.
Carter to take out a few stones and have a look in. He pushed his head
partly into the aperture. With the help of a candle, he could dimly
discern what was inside.... ‘These are marvelous objects here,’ he said.
“I myself went to the hole, and I could with difficulty restrain my
excitement. At the first sight, with the inadequate light, all that one
could see was what appeared to be gold bars. On getting a little more
accustomed to the light, it became apparent that there were colossal
gilt couches with extraordinary heads, boxes here and boxes there. We
enlarged the hole and Mr. Carter managed to scramble in--the chamber is
sunk two feet below the bottom passage--and then, as he moved around
with a candle, we knew we had found something unique and unprecedented.”
Among the many treasures which they found in the tomb were royal robes,
embroidered with precious stones, the state throne of King Tutankhamen,
portraits of the king and queen, incrusted with turquoises, lapis
lazuli and other gems, two life-sized golden statues of the king, with
gold scepter and mace, and four gem-studded chariots.
_The_
HOUSE _of_ DEATH
_A Strange Tale_
_By_ F. GEORGIA STROUP
The three women looked about the little kitchen. For some reason, each
seemed to avoid the eyes of the other.
“My land, but it’s hot in here!” Mrs. Prentis moved to the north window
to raise it.
As she propped up the heavy sash with a thin board that lay on the
sill, a gust of hot wind swept through the room from a drought-parched
Kansas cornfield.
Seeking relief in action, her daughter, Selina, hastened to the
opposite window and pushed it up, as a cloud of dust thickened in the
road in front of the house. A small herd of bawling cattle were milling
past the house in the heat and glare of the August sun. Their heads
drooped dejectedly and their tongues lolled from parched mouths.
“My land, Seliny, there goes another bunch of cattle out west. Does
beat all how hard ’tis to get water in this country. Jes’ seems to me
sometimes like I’d die for a sight of mountains an’ green things an’ a
tumblin’ little stream that’d run an’ ripple all summer.”
Motherly Mrs. Collins wiped the perspiration from her large, red face
and fanned herself with her blue sunbonnet.
“Didn’t Mamie Judy come from the mountain country?” she asked.
“Yes; we went to the same school. When she was a girl she had the
blackest eyes and the prettiest red cheeks of any girl you ever did
see. Didn’t look much like she does now! A farmer’s wife soon goes to
pieces. She was such a lively girl, too--so full of fun. An’ now jes’
to think what the poor thing’s come to!”
Again the three women avoided each other’s eyes. Then Selina spoke
nervously:
“Do you ’spose she did it, Ma?”
“There you go with your ’sposin’ again! Better get to work and
straighten up this house. That’s what we come over for, ain’t it?”
Mrs. Collins rose heavily from her chair and unrolled and donned a
carefully-ironed, blue-checked apron.
“Seems kinda funny to have the funeral here, don’t it?”
“Oh, I don’t know. The graveyard’s handy an’ it’s so far to the church.”
“Yes, that’s so; ’tain’t far to the cemetry. Always seemed to me that
Mamie’d found it kinda spooky, always seein’ the graveyard right
through that window there over the stove. Bein’ up on top of that rise,
an’ only half a mile away, would make it seem to me kinda like livin’
in a graveyard.”
“Selina, take this here bucket an’ bring in some water. My land, I
don’t see how Mamie ever got through with all her work an’ took care
of the baby. Her bein’ so old, an’ it her first, made it harder, too.
Never thought her an’ Jed would have any children.”
“Things do need reddin’ up pretty considerable,” spoke Mrs. Collins, as
she picked up some odds and ends of clothing from a corner, where they
had lain long enough to accumulate a coating of acrid dust.
“My jes’ look at the linin’ in this firebox! How d’you ever ’spose
Mamie managed to cook on it?”
“Must have been pretty hard. She didn’t have things fixed as handy as
some of the rest of us, even. You see, they didn’t have much money to
spend on things. Farmin’ in Kansas ain’t been a payin’ business the
last few years. When ’tain’t too wet, it’s too dry, or too hot, or too
cold, or somethin’.”
“Yes, it seems like there’s always somethin’. There--I’ve got that
sweepin’ done. We’ll let Selina scrub, while we fix up the front room.”
The two women opened the door into the “front” room. The blinds were
tightly drawn and the musty odor testified to its lengthy isolation.
* * * * *
“My land! look at that, will you?”
Mrs. Prentis pointed to a cheap colored glass on the center-table,
which held a pitiful little bouquet of one immortelle, six pale spears
of a rank grass and a carefully-cut-out letterhead of a printed spray
of orange blossoms.
“Who’d a thought of tryin’ to make a bouquet out o’ that? I remember,
when we were back in Tennessee, that Mamie was always findin’ the first
deer’s tongues and other kinds of little early flowers. Us big girls
always helped fill her little hands. Seemed like she never could get
all she wanted. An’ then think of livin’ out here where there ain’t
water enough for things that has to have it, let alone flowers. Why,
I remember one summer when we even saved the dishwater to use several
times, and then fed it to the pigs ’cause water was so scarce.”
“Yes; the way farmer’s wives have to worry ’long, ’tain’t much wonder
so many of ’em go crazy. I read in th’ paper that was ’round a bundle
that come from the store that a bigger part of farmers’ wives went
crazy than any other kind of women.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that too. Let’s jes’ step in an’ pick up in the
bedroom, and then sweep both these rooms out together. The wind’s in
th’ right direction.”
“Yes, you come with me. We--we could get done sooner, workin’
together.”
“That must be the pallet an’ this th’ pillow. They say the
baby had been dead for several hours when Jed found it.”
“Yes, an’ Mamie settin’ out there in the barn door, with her head in
her lap. Not cryin’ nor nothin’.”
The two women hesitated, lingered at their task. Something kept them
from moving the things that the coroner had kept in so rigidly exact a
position.
“Yes; there’s somethin’ mighty queer about it. My land, jes’ think, she
might be--HUNG!” in a hoarse whisper.
Both faces blanched at the hitherto unspoken possibility. A
woman--neighbor and friend, and the childhood acquaintance of one of
them--was imprisoned on the charge of killing her baby.
They felt that they ought to have a feeling of horror. It was a
terrible crime, with seemingly only one explanation, but to both there
arose visions of the unexpected satisfying of the craving mother heart
of the work-worn farm drudge; of her seeming happiness and joy at the
little cuddling head in the hollow of her arm and the soft lips on the
breast, as the little form was held tightly to its mother’s bosom.
“I don’t care what the coroner’s jury said, I don’t believe Mamie could
’a’ done it. But still--if she didn’t, who _did_?”
“Yes, an’ then, if she didn’t do it, why don’t she say so? She knows
they might hang her.”
“They say she ain’t said one word since Jed found her out there in the
barn door. My land, but ain’t it hot?”
“Yes, there bein’ no trees ’round here, jes’ seems like the sun bakes
right through the roof. Well, we might as well begin to pick up. The
funeral’s at ten tomorrow. I can come over early; can you?”
“Yes, I’ll be here. I’m goin’ to stay an’ set up tonight. Mr. and Mrs.
Shinkle said they’d come over. Selina can get supper for her pa an’ th’
boys.”
“We’d better change them cloths.”
The women tiptoed into the little lean-to, with that expectant hush
that the presence of death always causes.
On an improvised table, a little form lay covered with a sheet, above
a box of slowly melting ice. The country ministrations of neighborly
service were completed, and the women left the room and returned to
their task of cleaning in the front of the little farmhouse.
“My land, but it’s quiet here! Bein’ so far off the main road, seems
like a person never sees nor hears nobody. It’s enough to drive a
person crazy.”
* * * * *
The older woman had been standing for several minutes, with her mind
preoccupied by struggling thought. At last she spoke:
“See here, Mis’ Prentis, if this pillow’d been standing up like this,
it could’ve fell over on the baby. See?”
Both women bent over the carefully-folded bedclothing, placed upon
the floor for the sake of a slightly cooler strata of air and also to
obviate the possibility of the baby rolling off, while the mother was
busy in some of the many tasks of the unaided farmer’s wife.
Little by little, the bedroom was straightened and the two rooms
swept and dusted. Then Mrs. Prentis paused as she gave a final look
around the rooms, walked to one of the windows on the south and ran a
speculative finger over the glass. It was so heavily coated with dust
as to be practically opaque. Then she stepped to the two windows on the
east side of the room and looked at them. The panes of glass in both
were clean and carefully polished.
“Now why do you suppose that is?” she asked.
Mrs. Collins, who had been following her moves, shook her head.
“I don’t know,” she answered, “Did you notice that the one in the
kitchen, on the south side above the stove, hadn’t been washed, either?
I noticed it when I went over to look at the firebox when you spoke.”
“Yes, that’s so,” said Mrs. Prentis, standing in the kitchen door and
glancing at the south windows of one room and then at the other.
“See here, do you ’spose--that is--I mean both of these windows on the
south side are toward the graveyard--do you ’spose that Mamie left ’em
that way _on purpose_?”
“Well, there’s a good deal to do on a farm, and mebbe she got as far as
the south side washin’ windows some day, and then had to quit for some
reason.”
“Yes, but these ain’t been washed for _months_. Poor little Mamie!
Mebbe she just couldn’t stand to be everlastingly seein’ them
gravestones.”
“I wish, oh _how_ I wish, I’d ’a ’come over here oftener! We don’t live
so far away; but seems like I never get time to get all my work done,
and when I do there’s not time to walk, or I’m too tired, an’ o’ course
the horses are always busy.
“What with fruit cannin’, and hayin’ hands, an’ threshin’, an’ little
chickens, the summer’s gone ’fore you know it, an’ then the winter’s
too cold and snowy, or too wet an’ muddy to get out, an’ the first
thing you know another year’s slipped by.”
Motherly Mrs. Collins nodded her head in sympathy. An older and a
heavier woman, all that Mrs. Prentis had said applied better than
equally well to her.
“No wonder Mamie loved the baby so,” she said, “though she ain’t been
overly strong since it was born. Jes’ think of the years and years she
was here all alone, for Jed used to work out a good deal an’ she done
all the work here. Years an’ years of stillness--an’ then the baby
she’d never give up wantin’ and hopin’ for.”
“Yes, when I think what a woman’s got to go through here on a farm,
I don’t never want Selina should get married. Seems like it’s enough
sometimes to make a mother wish her girl baby could die when it’s
little--”
She gasped. Both women gave a frightened start.
“No; ’course I don’t mean that,” she added hastily. “I jes’ mean you
love ’em so that it don’t seem no ways right for ’em to have to grow up
to what you see in front of ’em.”
“Well, we better quit talkin’ an’ lay out th’ baby’s things. ’Spose we
look in the bureau in the bedroom.”
They moved again to the inner room and pulled out the top drawer of the
old-fashioned marble-topped bureau.
A few shirts, a pile of carefully mended underwear and some socks,
rolled and turned together in two’s, met their gaze.
“That’s Jed’s drawer. Let’s see what’s in the next one.”
The second drawer revealed a freshly-ironed white waist carefully
folded above a meager pile of woman’s underwear. Without a word, Mrs.
Prentis pushed it shut.
The third drawer proved to be the one they wanted. Small piles of
carefully made baby clothing of cheap material, but workmanship of
infinite pains, met their view.
Mrs. Collins wiped the tears from her cheeks with the corner of her
apron.
“See--they’re nearly ever’one made by hand and all white. Most of ’em
jes’ flour sacks, but look how Mamie’s bleached ’em. An’ see this
drawn-work.”
As she spoke, she placed a work-reddened hand beneath a narrow strip of
openwork.
“Yes, you can go home now,” in answer to a question from Selina in the
kitchen.
“My, the pains she’s took on all these little things! Seems ’s if she
must ’a’ been gettin’ ’em ready all these years, an’ now--” Her voice
trailed off into silence.
The little clothing was laid on the bed in readiness for the morrow,
and the women looked about as though hunting something more to do. Used
to the busy hours of farm life, they felt impelled to some task that
would occupy the passing hours.
“Let’s see if there’s anything we ought to do upstairs.”
They climbed the narrow ladderlike stairway to an unfinished half-story
garretlike room above.
* * * * *
“My land, she was house-cleanin’ this hot weather!”
Half of the stuffy little room had been thoroughly overhauled and the
other end begun. A little old horse-hair trunk stood in the middle of
the floor, with portions of its contents scattered about.
“I’ll bet she was goin’ to empty that for the baby’s things. I showed
her mine, jes’ like it, that I fixed up for Selina when she was little.”
“Well, we might as well pick up the things and put ’em back,” said
orderly Mrs. Collins, who suited the word to the action by laboriously
bending with a slight grunt.
Mrs. Prentis pushed her back.
“Here, let me pick ’em up. There ain’t no call for you to go stoopin’
’round in this heat. First thing you know you’ll be havin’ a stroke.”
Some clothing and small articles were collected, and several bundles
of yellowed old letters lay on the floor. From one of the packages the
string had broken, evidently when it had been lifted from the trunk.
One letter lay crumpled near its empty envelope, where it had been
dropped.
With a wondering glance, the two women smoothed it out. The first
paragraph was so yellowed and faded as to be illegible, but part of the
second paragraph had been protected by the folded paper and they could
read:
“_ ... will say that your wife is hopelessly insane. She may live for
years, but will never regain her mentality, as cases like hers are
incurable. We find upon investigation that the women of her family,
for several generations, have become hopelessly insane at her age._
“_In view of the fact that your small daughter is tainted with this
inherited insanity, we strongly advise you to take her to some new
environment and, when she grows older, explain to her why marriage
should be considered impossible for her._
“_As we can see the matter now, it is too bad that her mother was not
warned of the same fact, and in view of all our information it would
seem to have been better if we had not pulled her through that severe
illness. If you--_”
The remainder of the letter was undecipherable. The two neighbors
looked at each other, their eyes wide with horror. At last Mrs. Prentis
gasped hoarsely:
“Do you ’spose that bundle broke open and Mamie read this letter? Her
father died ’fore she was old enough to marry and left her this place
partly paid for, and I remember when her and Jed was married how they
planned to pay the rest of it off jes’ as soon as possible.”
“But,” interrupted Mrs. Collins, “the coroner’s jury said yesterday
that they wasn’t any manner of doubt but that she _wasn’t_ crazy. She
jes’ set there, with her solemn big eyes, and looked straight ahead and
never said a word.
“I wonder how a woman’d feel to know that the baby girl she loved
better’n her own life would have to grow up in this drudgery and then
finally spend the last of her years in a ’sylum?”
“Yes and ’spose Mamie went crazy herself long ’fore the little girl
grew up?”
“I wonder if a woman really loved her baby girl if she wouldn’t
rather--” she stopped once more with a frightened look.
Wheels were heard coming down the lane.
Mrs. Prentis spoke quickly: “Sarah Ann Collins, we’re goin’ right
downstairs and stick this letter in that cook-stove, quick!”
* * * * *
In the little kitchen below, the women were cooking supper when the
county attorney and another man entered.
“Good evening, ladies,” said the attorney. “We decided to come out
again and go carefully over the field to see if we could find any
evidence. You haven’t, by chance, found anything, have you?”
Mrs. Prentis looked covertly at Mrs. Collins, then answered:
“No; we jes’ been cleanin’ up. We ain’t been lookin’ for no evidence.”
“Well, Walters,” said the attorney, “you know juries when it comes to
women. If there never is found a definite reason for her wanting the
baby to die, no jury will ever believe she is guilty.”
“Evil Demon” Drives Man to Orgy of Crime
Spurned by his young niece, Estanislao Puyat, a Filipino, ran amuck in
the streets of Manila, after throwing the girl from an upper window to
the ground and almost killing her. Grabbing his bolo, he rushed down
the street, stabbed an aged woman in the eye, cut off the hands of two
other women, slashed another, stabbed a Chinese merchant and a cart
driver, cut another woman on the forehead, wounded a child and a young
Filipino girl, and then, reaching the Bay, threw himself into the water
in an effort to commit suicide. Capt. H. H. Elarth threw a noose over
his head and dragged him ashore. The Filipinos say that Puyat was “de
malas,” meaning he was possessed of an evil demon.
_A Five-minute Story_
_The_ Gallows
_By_ I. W. D. PETERS
Tomorrow morning, at sunrise, I am to hang for the murder of a man.
At sunrise on the ninth of June, the anniversary of my wedding day. I
am to be hanged by the neck until I am dead.
I am glad this state has not yet adopted the use of electricity in
executions. I prefer to spend my last moments out in the open under the
sky.
The building of the gallows is finished; the workmen are gone, and it
seems that the execution at sunrise is certain to take place; but every
step along the corridor sends my heart into my mouth. Gladys is working
for a reprieve. I am praying she will not succeed.
The Governor is off on a fishing trip, away from railroad and
telegraph. If they do not locate him in the next few hours I shall be
hanged. God grant they fail to find him!
It is Glady’s will against mine. She usually wins, but every passing
minute lessens her chance to have her way in this. It is now ten
minutes to midnight. Dr. Brander, the prison chaplain, has just left
me, gratified, poor fellow, that he has succeeded in reconciling me to
my fate. If he had known that the tall skeleton of wood outside, with
its lank line of rope, was in my mind a refuge, he would have turned
from me in horror.
The next five hours will be the longest of my life. Every step in the
corridor strikes fear to my heart. It is not because I am guilty of the
crime, for which I was sentenced, that I am glad to die. I _am_ guilty,
but that doesn’t mean that I deserve to die.