“Movie” Mysteries Are Here Explained.
Rumbling bass notes from the unbridled, unleashed piano. Thunderous roars from the big bass drum. Frequent crashes of brassy cymbals. You instinctively clap your hands to your ears and breathlessly await the bursting of the awful tornado that is scurrying over your head.
Then comes a pause in the deafening and ominous roar—the house is so still you can hear the clicking of the projecting machine as the film is reeled off.
Yes; we are in the midst of a fearsome forest, and the heroine is just about to merge from the inky blackness with all her troubles—there she is, now!
What was that? A flash of lightning! The drummer redoubles his sonorous roll, ending with a wild, spine-stiffening thump. Some storm. The heroine’s hair is blown so violently you fear it may be torn out by the very roots.[Pg 62]
She falls to the moss-grown forest floor. Livid flash and another thunderous roll. Then the deluge. The heavens open, and while the fanfare is loudest and the lightning is lividest, our fair lady is soaked to the skin with real water and falls to earth, beaten down by the very force of the torrent from on high.
Great scene, that!
Come with us now and see how the game is played. Ah, the movie studio!
Here’s a patch of nice green grass on the studio floor, and back of it a few shrubs and some sizable trees. Up on a scaffold high enough to be out of the camera’s ken are a dozen men, each armed with a huge watering pot.
The heroine stands on the side lines, waiting for the storm to begin. Storm in broad noon of a sunny day? Sure thing. Just watch.
An excited-looking individual holding a bunch of manuscript stands beside the heroine—yes, you’ve guessed it, he’s the movie director.
She gets behind the trees, and the man at the camera crank starts turning. She pushes her way through the tangled wildwood and stubs her toe, looking unutterable anguish the while.
“Down stage!” yells the excited director.
She staggers on as directed, the camera man cranking nonchalantly with one hand while he takes puffs at a cigarette with the other. The poor girl tries to rise, and wabbles feebly.
“Fall in front of the camera!” bawls the director.
She falls at the proper focal distance.
“Stretch out your arms—look wild!” yells the boss of the works.
“Let her go!” this time to the men with the watering cans.
And poor heroine, struggling and staggering, is drenched to the skin with the downpour, not from the heavens above, but quite as wet.
But, we ask, where is the lightning for this wild outburst of the aforesaid Nature.
“Oh, that’s easy!” laughs the director. “We put that in afterward with the scratch of a pin.”
“But how are you going to make it look like night?”
“Easier still—we’ll tint the film blue. Got to have sunlight to take any kind of pictures, anyway.”
So, when you see this thrill, remember that the lightning is a pin scratch, and the night effect is blue aniline dye and not by the gloom of night. As for Jupiter Pluvius, the men with the cans of water can wet down the place with equal skill.
Have you ever witnessed an exciting scene about a big building—a home or a factory—and then, in the next reel, watched it go up in smoke and flame? Yes? Some expense? Not so very much, for you haven’t seen the real building burn down at all, but only a little model of it after the scene has been acted out in front of the real building.
“The best fire effects are made in the studios, anyway,” the movie expert will tell you.
It was in a studio that the eruption of Mount Etna was manufactured. The promoters had tried taking real moving pictures of the volcano in eruption, but they were not nearly as good as the studio-made variety. These had the verisimilitude of real life, with fleeing thousands, men, women, children, and animals, pouring down its red-hot[Pg 63] sides. The films of the fleeing people were merely super-imposed on the film of the fake volcano, studio made.
You have seen your favorite heroine jump unhesitatingly off a tall cliff? Or swim an ice-choked river? You never knew she could swim. Nor does she. Another movie trick is what you have seen. Movie stars seldom do such things. Professionals, dressed exactly as they are, and made up to resemble them, do this part of the stunt for the real actors. Jumping from a burning building is another movie feat which is only a trick. The real people get only as far as the windows. Dummies do the jumping and the falling.
So! But how do they make inanimate objects move about as if they were endowed with life? How does a catsup bottle jump up from the table and climb down to the floor on the rungs of a chair? Or how can grandpa’s clock walk up the stairs, turning around solemnly the while to look you straight in the eye and give you warning of the flight of the hours?
Perhaps you have seen horses running full tilt at you and never seemed to catch up. So simple! Right in front of the horses is a high-powered automobile, in which the movie camera is set up. The horses follow the car, and the camera man grinds out his film, always keeping a few feet ahead of his charging subjects.
Prehistoric Man Now Seen in Wax.
The three great links in the chain of human ancestry in America, beginning nearly twenty thousand years back, have just been represented for the first time in scientifically reconstructed wax faces at the College of Medicine, University of Nebraska, in Omaha. This is the first reconstruction work of the kind that has been done on prehistoric skulls of America.
Scientists are enthusiastic over the three great types it has brought out on the skulls of modern Indian, the cave-dwelling cannibal of three thousand years ago, and the Nebraska “Loess man,” fragments of whose skull were deposited with the glacial drift when the Missouri River bluffs were made, between ten thousand and twenty thousand years ago.
For eight years the skulls of the low-browed Loess man, found by the archeologist, Robert F. Gilder, of Omaha, have remained in the museums in Omaha, Lincoln, and at Harvard University, while science has hopelessly longed to know what a face this preglacial man must have worn.
Finally German scientists worked out an accurate system of facial measurements compiled into an elaborate table, by the use of which faces can be faithfully reconstructed over skulls. To date little has been done along this line in Europe. In America the first work in building up faces of prehistoric man has just been completed by Miss Myra Warner, clay-model artist, who has made a specialized study of this German system in the art schools of the East.
Miss Warner was handed the three skulls by Doctor Charles W. M. Poynter, professor of anatomy of the University of Nebraska. She was told nothing about the origin of the skulls. She worked faithfully for months, and, with the aid of the table of measurements, built up the three wonderful faces. It was not until she had nearly finished that she discovered one of the three to be a modern Indian type. Yet, without knowing she was working on a modern Indian skull, by applying only her[Pg 64] table of measurements faithfully to the skull as she built the clay upon it, she produced so characteristic an American Indian type that Doctor Poynter declared the accuracy of her work on the other two skulls, equally unknown to her, could by no means be called into question.
The cannibal cave-dweller type is that of which Mr. Gilder found remains in sunken cave homes along the Missouri River. He has uncovered some forty of these caves, and has established the fact that the inhabitants belong to what is known as the “round-headed” branch of the human race. Geologists believe the inhabitants of these caves thrived some three thousand years ago.
But the chief interest in the reconstruction work at the University of Nebraska attaches to the face that has been built over the skull of the Loess man. In all, the fragments of but six skulls belonging to this type are in existence to-day.
This extreme primitive type of man is believed to have stalked over the wastes of North America before the glaciers plowed their great gorges and before they deposited the Kansan drift and the Loess clay to build the bluffs at the Missouri River. This man, low-browed and of little brain capacity, lived contemporaneously with the mammoth or mastodon, which he probably slew for food, if indeed he could wield a stone weapon sharp enough and strong enough to pierce the thick hide.
And yet, now that the faces have been reconstructed, we find no close resemblance to the ape type, as many of the most excitable scientists have expected. “The truth is,” says Doctor Poynter, “if man sprang from the same original stem as the ape, the ape branch sprang off so far back in antiquity that none of the skulls of the missing links could possibly be expected to withstand the weathering to the present day. No one will ever find a skull that will carry man back even anywhere near the ape days, and the remotest skull we can find is already very much a man’s.”
This Loess man then belongs to an age perhaps hundreds of thousands of years later than the time man and ape parted company and began to develop along different lines.
Yet this Loess skull has, by competent geologists and ethnologists been placed next in age to the famous Neanderthal skull found in 1856 in a cave in the valley of Neander near Dusseldorf, Germany. The Neanderthal skull is known the world over as representing the great antiquity and low order of the human race. In brain capacity the Loess skull boasts little, if any, advantage over the Neanderthal.
The prominence of the supraorbital ridges or bony brows is, next to the receding character of the forehead, the most notable feature of this primitive type.
“Neither the projections of the supraorbital ridges, nor the receding forehead, is an Indian characteristic,” says Henry F. Osborn, professor of zoölogy in Columbia University and curator in the American Museum of Natural History. Doctor Osborn was one of the first to go to Omaha and study this remarkable skull when it was found eight years ago.
The age of this skull is established by its association with the layer of clay drift in which it was found. Doctor E. H. Barbour, head professor of geology of the University of Nebraska, went over the ground thoroughly and helped to excavate many of the fragments of the Loess man some ten miles north of Omaha.[Pg 65]
“From the geologist’s standpoint,” says Doctor Barbour, “these bone fragments were not buried. Instead, the bones were doubtless deposited with the Loess, the age of which may be safely reckoned at ten to twenty thousand years or more, and the bones are at least as ancient as this formation.”
Somewhere in its mighty course the glacier picked up these fragments of skulls and a few arm and leg bones and rolled them along with the rest of the drift, to be deposited solidly in the Loess clay when the bluff was built.
Old Paymaster Says Farewell.
Amos Hershey has just retired as postmaster of Gordonville, Pa., ending a period of fifty-five years of service for the United States postal department.
In 1860, before the Civil War, Mr. Hershey, then sixteen years of age, entered the employ of John K. Smoker, in a general merchandise store. At the same time he became one of the clerks in the post office. Five years later Hershey purchased the store business from Smoker and was himself appointed postmaster. He received his commission from William Dennison, postmaster general under President Lincoln.
The efficiency of the post-office department in that day was very crude toward what it has become in later years. When Mr. Hershey first entered the service, there were no railway mail cars. In fact, it was only in 1860 that an arrangement was made with the railroads to run a mail train between New York and Washington, the only advantage of which was the quick transfer of mail matter from one large place to another. The traveling post office, where mails are assorted when going at fifty miles an hour, had not yet come.
It was several years later that a Mr. Davis, of the St. Joseph, Mo., post-office force, broached the thought that considerable valuable time would be saved if the overland mail could be sorted on the cars, and made up for offices at the end of and along the routes. The department allowed him to carry out this idea, which, starting in such a humble way, is now one of the most important branches of the department.
Before the “catcher” on the mail cars and the “crane” at small stations came into use, twenty years later, the process of catching and delivering the pouches was indeed strenuous, both for the mail clerk and the local postmaster. Shortly before train time, Mr. Hershey mounted a platform immediately alongside the track, and, propping his feet securely, would suspend the mail pouch in front of him at arms’ length, the right hand at the top and the left hand at the bottom. When the train neared this human crane, the mail clerk appeared at the door of his car, and, securing himself firmly, would extend his right arm in the form of a crook or an acute angle, and catch the pouch as the train rushed by. The mail clerk had his arm well padded to prevent serious injury; but, notwithstanding, the risk was exceedingly great—in more ways than one. Mr. Hershey states that the mail trains were running at the rate of fifty miles an hour, and it is hard for the uninitiated to comprehend the alertness and strenuosity connected with the delivering and catching of the pouch, aside from the constant danger.
They had a very complex system in making up letter packages in those days. Mr. Hershey had to sort the letters for each office separately, no matter whether there would be only one letter for an individual office. The let[Pg 66]ters for each office had to be placed in a paper jacket of Mr. Hershey’s own making, completely inclosing the letters, and the name of the office address written plainly on the wrapper, with a waybill attached to each package.
In the early sixties the postmasters enjoyed the franking privilege, being allowed to send all their private mail without the use of postage stamps. This privilege was rescinded in 1864.
Mr. Hershey recalls a story of one of the railway mail clerks, who were known in the early days as the “paper jerkers,” and how he increased his salary: “On a side lot near the Forepaugh circus grounds in Philadelphia, there was a faker, whose outfit consisted of the stake-and-ring game. The simple and enticing amusement was played as follows: The stake was placed in the ground at a certain angle, which led the uninitiated to believe that it was easy to throw the five-inch rings over it. The feat was almost impossible. The faker had a crowd around him, and was raking in the dimes—three ‘tries’ for ten cents—when a black-mustached, middle-sized man walked up and said he’d bet a dollar he could put three rings out of five over the stake.
“The faker winked at the crowd, and took the man up. The black-mustached stranger threw five rings rapidly, one after another, and, as three of them went over the stake, the thrower was in eighty cents. Then they bet ten dollars even that nine out of the first ten thrown could not be put over the stake. The whole ten settled safely, and the faker, as he handed over ten dollars in silver, said:
“I’m broke; what’s your business?”
“I’m a paper jerker on a postal car. I don’t do anything but fling papers all day long into the mouths of fifty sacks.”
The village of Gordonville in those early days of Mr. Hershey’s postmastership had two names. The section lying north of the railroad was called Concord, and that section lying south of the railroad was named Gordonville. The railroad station was Concord, but the post office has always gone by the name of Gordonville. The village was named after Daniel Gordon, who was the first citizen and who built the first houses in the town.
Child Labor Bill is Signed.
Governor Brumbaugh, of Harrisburg, Pa., signed the Cox child-labor bill. The new act will become effective on January 1, 1916. Under its provisions, children under fourteen years of age, with the exception of newsboys, will be barred from working at any occupation.
Messengers employed between eight p.m. and six a.m. must be at least twenty-one years old, and children under sixteen will be prohibited from working unless they attend schools at least eight hours a week. Domestic servants and farm laborers are exempt.
Sheds Her Artificial Legs.
Removing both of her artificial legs and pulling herself up to the railings of the Ohio River bridge, Anna Wartenbaker, thirty-five years old, of Parkersburg, W. Va., plunged ninety feet into the river here.
People on both sides of the river saw her plunge, and hastened to her in boats. Her right arm was broken in the fall. The woman was despondent over her crippled condition, and came here with the express purpose of leaping to death from the bridge.[Pg 68][Pg 67]
The Nick Carter Stories
ISSUED EVERY SATURDAY BEAUTIFUL COLORED COVERS
When it comes to detective stories worth while, the Nick Carter Stories contain the only ones that should be considered. They are not overdrawn tales of bloodshed. They rather show the working of one of the finest minds ever conceived by a writer. The name of Nick Carter is familiar all over the world, for the stories of his adventures may be read in twenty languages. No other stories have withstood the severe test of time so well as those contained in the Nick Carter Stories. It proves conclusively that they are the best. We give herewith a list of some of the back numbers in print. You can have your news dealer order them, or they will be sent direct by the publishers to any address upon receipt of the price in money or postage stamps.[Pg 69]
714—The Taxicab Riddle.
717—The Master Rogue’s Alibi.
719—The Dead Letter.
720—The Allerton Millions.
728—The Mummy’s Head.
729—The Statue Clue.
730—The Torn Card.
731—Under Desperation’s Spur.
732—The Connecting Link.
733—The Abduction Syndicate.
736—The Toils of a Siren.
738—A Plot Within a Plot.
739—The Dead Accomplice.
741—The Green Scarab.
746—The Secret Entrance.
747—The Cavern Mystery.
748—The Disappearing Fortune.
749—A Voice from the Past.
752—The Spider’s Web.
753—The Man With a Crutch.
754—The Rajah’s Regalia.
755—Saved from Death.
756—The Man Inside.
757—Out for Vengeance.
758—The Poisons of Exili.
759—The Antique Vial.
760—The House of Slumber.
761—A Double Identity.
762—“The Mocker’s” Stratagem.
763—The Man that Came Back.
764—The Tracks in the Snow.
765—The Babbington Case.
766—The Masters of Millions.
767—The Blue Stain.
768—The Lost Clew.
770—The Turn of a Card.
771—A Message in the Dust.
772—A Royal Flush.
774—The Great Buddha Beryl.
775—The Vanishing Heiress.
776—The Unfinished Letter.
777—A Difficult Trail.
782—A Woman’s Stratagem.
783—The Cliff Castle Affair.
784—A Prisoner of the Tomb.
785—A Resourceful Foe.
789—The Great Hotel Tragedies.
795—Zanoni, the Transfigured.
796—The Lure of Gold.
797—The Man With a Chest.
798—A Shadowed Life.
799—The Secret Agent.
800—A Plot for a Crown.
801—The Red Button.
802—Up Against It.
803—The Gold Certificate.
804—Jack Wise’s Hurry Call.
805—Nick Carter’s Ocean Chase.
807—Nick Carter’s Advertisement.
808—The Kregoff Necklace.
811—Nick Carter and the Nihilists.
812—Nick Carter and the Convict Gang.
813—Nick Carter and the Guilty Governor.
814—The Triangled Coin.
815—Ninety-nine—and One.
816—Coin Number 77.
NEW SERIES
NICK CARTER STORIES
1—The Man from Nowhere.
2—The Face at the Window.
3—A Fight for a Million.
4—Nick Carter’s Land Office.
[Pg 70]5—Nick Carter and the Professor.
6—Nick Carter as a Mill Hand.
7—A Single Clew.
8—The Emerald Snake.
9—The Currie Outfit.
10—Nick Carter and the Kidnapped Heiress.
11—Nick Carter Strikes Oil.
12—Nick Carter’s Hunt for a Treasure.
13—A Mystery of the Highway.
14—The Silent Passenger.
15—Jack Dreen’s Secret.
16—Nick Carter’s Pipe Line Case.
17—Nick Carter and the Gold Thieves.
18—Nick Carter’s Auto Chase.
19—The Corrigan Inheritance.
20—The Keen Eye of Denton.
21—The Spider’s Parlor.
22—Nick Carter’s Quick Guess.
23—Nick Carter and the Murderess.
24—Nick Carter and the Pay Car.
25—The Stolen Antique.
26—The Crook League.
27—An English Cracksman.
28—Nick Carter’s Still Hunt.
29—Nick Carter’s Electric Shock.
30—Nick Carter and the Stolen Duchess.
31—The Purple Spot.
32—The Stolen Groom.
33—The Inverted Cross.
34—Nick Carter and Keno McCall.
35—Nick Carter’s Death Trap.
36—Nick Carter’s Siamese Puzzle.
37—The Man Outside.
38—The Death Chamber.
39—The Wind and the Wire.
40—Nick Carter’s Three Cornered Chase.
41—Dazaar, the Arch-Fiend.
42—The Queen of the Seven.
43—Crossed Wires.
44—A Crimson Clew.
45—The Third Man.
46—The Sign of the Dagger.
47—The Devil Worshipers.
48—The Cross of Daggers.
49—At Risk of Life.
50—The Deeper Game.
51—The Code Message.
52—The Last of the Seven.
53—Ten-Ichi, the Wonderful.
54—The Secret Order of Associated Crooks.
55—The Golden Hair Clew.
56—Back From the Dead.
57—Through Dark Ways.
58—When Aces Were Trumps.
59—The Gambler’s Last Hand.
60—The Murder at Linden Fells.
61—A Game for Millions.
62—Under Cover.
63—The Last Call.
64—Mercedes Danton’s Double.
65—The Millionaire’s Nemesis.
66—A Princess of the Underworld.
67—The Crook’s Blind.
68—The Fatal Hour.
69—Blood Money.
70—A Queen of Her Kind.
71—Isabel Benton’s Trump Card.
72—A Princess of Hades.
73—A Prince of Plotters.
74—The Crook’s Double.
75—For Life and Honor.
76—A Compact With Dazaar.
77—In the Shadow of Dazaar.
78—The Crime of a Money King.
79—Birds of Prey.
80—The Unknown Dead.
[Pg 71]81—The Severed Hand.
82—The Terrible Game of Millions.
83—A Dead Man’s Power.
84—The Secrets of an Old House.
85—The Wolf Within.
86—The Yellow Coupon.
87—In the Toils.
88—The Stolen Radium.
89—A Crime in Paradise.
90—Behind Prison Bars.
91—The Blind Man’s Daughter.
92—On the Brink of Ruin.
93—Letter of Fire.
94—The $100,000 Kiss.
95—Outlaws of the Militia.
96—The Opium-Runners.
97—In Record Time.
98—The Wag-Nuk Clew.
99—The Middle Link.
100—The Crystal Maze.
101—A New Serpent in Eden.
102—The Auburn Sensation.
103—A Dying Chance.
104—The Gargoni Girdle.
105—Twice in Jeopardy.
106—The Ghost Launch.
107—Up in the Air.
108—The Girl Prisoner.
109—The Red Plague.
110—The Arson Trust.
111—The King of the Firebugs.
112—“Lifter’s” of the Lofts.
113—French Jimmie and His Forty Thieves.
114—The Death Plot.
115—The Evil Formula.
116—The Blue Button.
117—The Deadly Parallel.
118—The Vivisectionists.
119—The Stolen Brain.
120—An Uncanny Revenge.
121—The Call of Death.
122—The Suicide.
123—Half a Million Ransom.
124—The Girl Kidnapper.
125—The Pirate Yacht.
126—The Crime of the White Hand.
127—Found in the Jungle.
128—Six Men in a Loop.
129—The Jewels of Wat Chang.
130—The Crime in the Tower.
131—The Fatal Message.
132—Broken Bars.
133—Won by Magic.
134—The Secret of Shangore.
135—Straight to the Goal.
136—The Man They Held Back.
137—The Seal of Gijon.
138—The Traitors of the Tropics.
139—The Pressing Peril.
140—The Melting-Pot.
141—The Duplicate Night.
142—The Edge of a Crime.
143—The Sultan’s Pearls.
144—The Clew of the White Collar.
Dated June 19th, 1915.
145—An Unsolved Mystery.
Dated June 26th, 1915.
146—Paying the Price.
Dated July 3d, 1915.
147—On Death’s Trail.
Dated July 10th, 1915.
148—The Mark of Cain.
[Pg 72]
Price, Five Cents Per Copy. If you want any back numbers of our weeklies and cannot procure them from your news dealer, they can be obtained direct from this office. Postage stamps taken the same as money.
STREET & SMITH, Publishers, 79-89 Seventh Ave., NEW YORK CITY