Miscellany: Leopard

For ten moist, murmurous Indian nights a British captain sat behind a bush with an elephant gun on his knees, waiting for Satan. On the other side of the bush a goat was tethered, for it was known that Satan had an appetite for goats. For seven years the Black God had padded on cat feet over 350 square miles of Western Garhwal; in that time he had killed 125 humans, snatching them in village streets, at the very doors of houses. Sixteen Indian shimkaris, paid by the government, had shot at him and missed; gun traps, arsenic, cyanide and prayer had not hurt him. Twice he was caught—once in a trap, once in a cave. He escaped. The hills were poisoned with strychnine. He lived. It was then that the natives declared that God alone could kill the killer, for though in form he had the look of a great leopard he was not a leopard. He was Satan.*

. . . On the eleventh night the Captain heard the thud of paws, flashed his electric torch on a black and yellow Presence with jewel eyes that leaped out of the forest upon the goat’s back. His rifle roared; he knew that his aim had been true, but when he sprang forward to look he found the goat lying dead in a pool of blood with the marks of incredible claws in his back. There was nothing else, no dead marauder. The captain turned upon his gunbearer a face in which horror whitely flickered. Could it be—

Next day they found a dead leopard 50 yards down a ravine. There was a bullet in his heart. His length was 7 feet 10 inches, and he was very old—so old that his years could not be reckoned. . . .

Cow

In Eastern Guatemala, Dr. Samuel J. Record discovered a tree never before known to science, named it the cow tree. From its bark, when slit, issues a creamy white latex, delicate in taste, nourishing to man and beast.

Viper

In Hazard, Ky., one Lucy Napier, 25, arrived at the railroad station with some things done up in a bundle. She had walked 40 miles from her father’s hill cabin to take the train for Happy, Ky., where she was going to be married. She had never seen a train before, and as the old-fashioned car bumped over the rails toward Viper, Ky., she sat trembling on the edge of her seat. The conductor shoved his red face around the edge of the door. “Vi-p-e-E-R,” he shouted, “V-I-I-per.” Lucy Napier jumped out of the window. Her skull was fractured, her neck broken.

Funny Bundesen

Herman N. Bundesen, M. D., of the Chicago department of health, issued a bulletin last week which contained an interesting fact and an atrocious example of medical wit. The fact concerned conjugality: married men live longer than single men, longer than divorced men. Dr. Bundesen supported this statement with statistics gathered from four groups, arranged according to age. Then, by way of summary, he offered the sample of his** humor:

“It seems that marriage is certainly good for the health when we consider the young fellows of 65 and over. Out of 1,000 of these divorced boys, 116 play harps in heaven; out of 1,000 single fellows of the same age group, 112 enter the angelic host; while out of 1,000 married youngsters of the same age-group, only 80, with ‘storm and strife’ to contend with, knock at St. Peter’s Pearly Gates.”

*Though the Occidental concept of Satan belongs to the postexilic period of Hebrew development and has no exact Indian counterpart, the word is here employed as the nearest translation of Kali (The Black), dread Indian devourer, cruel goddess of destruction and death. **Doubtless Health Officer Bundesen was responsible only indirectly. It is the usual thing for officials to get their publicity sheets written by underpaid newspaper reporters, the majority of whom are constantly on the lookout for “outside work” of any kind to fatten their slender purses.