Judge — May 28, 1921 — page 5: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“Witn a cry CRUSHED THE race, | Learep over THe GIANT MOTH BETWEEN sty LIBRARY TABLE AND NAKED HAND Wild Animals I Have Met—Half Way By Rex Be Illustrated by F. G. Coover, be HE first thing about a story is the title. I can’t write a story without a title, and the above illustration suggests the following “Wild Animals I Have Met—Half-V I propose to tell a fact story about this illustra- tion. Autobiographies, like special articles, are much easier to write than fiction. There is less strain on the imagination and one can take more liberties with the truth, ow then fora caption to fit the thrilling and lifelike picture Here it is: “With a loud cry of rage, I leaped over the library table and crushed the giant moth between my naked hands.” This I think fits the picture very well. So here we go. Spring had come. The foothills of Westchester were clad in vivid green, the new green union suit of April. My wife and I had left the sooty city behind us and sought surcease from our troubles in the silent reaches of the far North. We were three-quarters of a mile nearest railroad and full twenty miles lay between us and the great city God! The freedom of it! We were engaged in our annual big- game hunt, our pursuit of the lepidoptera, and anticipation of the sport in prospect filled us with mingled exultation and dread. Naturalists among you realize that the the wilderness. EDITOR'S BLURB The fame of Rex Beach rests chiefly upon his stories and nov- els of the great outdoors. is one of his most thrilling tales. If you are fond of red-blooded stories of men and beasts in a primitive environment, you will enjoy this narrative of a deadly encounter between an intrepid hunter and a lusty monster of CH fore the manuscript was written lepidoptera are at once the most wary, the most voracious and the most destructive of all the big game of the Westchester wil- derness, Lepidopters eat wool. They devour velvet. A single specimen of the big-horn variety has been known to consume a whole fur rug at one sitting. Throughout the long, cold winter nights, the lepidopter hibernates, sucking eggs and laying—I mean sucking its paw and laying eggs. But when spring comes. it creeps forth from the dark recesses of its caves, destroying as it goes, leaving wreck and ruin in its wake. It is a hideous, pallid monster, silent as death and utterly merciless. I was still engaged in unpacking our camp gear when I was summoned by a scream from my wife and, dropping every thing, I ran to her side. “Oh, Rudyard,” she cr: ‘we have stumbled into the very heart of the big-game country! This place is alive with lepidoptera. Look!” Before my startled eyes, she held up my dress suit and there, sure enough, were signs of the deadly creatures. The suit was riddled Why is it that lepidopters always cat holes in the front of garments, never around the waistband or in the tonneau? he entire chassis of my soup and fish had This been ruine “Hist!” T cri Arm your- self and we will beat this covert.” ‘'aution! comicbooks.com