Life — September 17, 1903 — page 4: what you’re looking at

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

“ While there is Life there's Hop XLU SEPT. 17, 1903. 19 West Tarmty-Finst St. vou. New Yous. blished every Taursday. 8300 a year jn ad itrles ta tho Vostal Year extra. single current cop after three 1 fron ‘Of pableatte ats No contribution will be returned unless accompanied by stamped and addressed envelope. The itlustrations in Lie ave cops and are not to be reproduced, Prompt notification should be sent by sub- scribers of any change of address HE President has been criticised unreasona- for sending a squadron to Beirut. He did right. This is how it was bly There came word that . the United States Con- sul, a person named Ma- gelssen, from the enfranchised West, had been shot. Arguing from this that affairs were in an unsettled s the Beirut district, and feeling a friendly interest in prospective sport, the Presi- dent by cable desired the cruisers Brooklyn aud San Francisco to slip over from Genoa and convey the new foot- ball rules and the melody, “A Hot Time,” to the representatives of his good brother, the Grand Turk, in Syria. This he did amicus ludi,and without leaving lis place on the side lines, being impelled solely by the sentiment that if things were doing, they ought to be done decently and in order. It so happened —the news came before breakfast next day—that Ma- gelssen wasn't shot. A wedding party had passed through his street firing guns in a good old cowboy way, but Magelssen thought nothing of it,except that it seemed homelike. Still, it was all right to send the ships, for the Sultan needs the new rales, and can use the tune, and the ships needed the exercise, “LIP E « Besides, get out an old atlas pub- lished when it was still thought expe- dient to include a map of Europe in American atlases, and you will observe —if you can find Beirut—that that port is half as near again to Constantinople as Genoa is. That end of the Medite: ranean is by far the more interesting end just now, and by much the sportier end for anybody's warships to be loafing in. [ror though Magelssen wasn't hit, it is true the Sultan is full of business, and all the war correspond- ents are getting khaki coats with pockets on the outside, and laying in fountain pens. The Macedonians are as much dissatisfied as ever with the Sultan's rale, which consists, as we all know, of tax-gathering varied with massacres. The Macedonian Revolu- tionary Committee spent the mouey they got for returning Miss Ellen Stone, and no questions asked, and other moneys, for modern rifles, and have armed a good many fairly com- petent insurgents, who are killing such Turks as they can. The Bulga- rians, though nominally under Russian control, are heartily sympathetic with their Macedonian relatives and are helping them. The Servians, hard by, heving just killed a king and all his family, and having their hand in, may also break loose any moment, so that southwestern Europe is fuil of murder and sudden death, and some people think that the day of judgment has really come for Sultan Abdul. Maybe so; maybe so; but there's many a slip between the Danube and the Bosphorus, Orr neighbor, Samuel Parks, the eminent purveyor of strikes, was lately convicted of extortion and sent to Sing Sing Prison, but was brought back to town again after a few days’ confinement on a certificate of reason- able doubt. The way this interesting process of law works in New York State is as follows: When a man of due means has had a trial before a jury and a judge presumably compe- tent, and has been convicted, his law- yers set out to fiud a judge who is will- ing to admit that on the whole hedoes not feel cocksure that the convict had a perfectly fair trial. There are about seventy-five Supreme Court justices in the State, and—as we understand it— any one of them can issue a certificate of reasonable doubt in a criminal e when properly approached, That me: seventy-five more chances for the convict, and lots more law after a first convictiou, and probably a new trial. The device is a great protection to an innocent man who has been wrongly convicted, and is just as handy for a guilty man who has been rightly convicted, The great fault of Ameri- cau justice—except in some States like New Jersey—is that it is too dilatory. A great many thoughtful persons believe nowadays that it needs to be overhauled. ‘HERE is more than the usual amount of complaint this year about the output of the melon factories. In old times, when there was a season for melons, and they grew on vines that started under glass, and were eaten by bugs, every now and then a melon was good. Indeed, the personally-con- ducted, hand-picked melons attained toa very respectable average of flavor and excellence, so that folks got the habit of eating them, That habit became fixed. Then the season was pxtended to cover six or seven months instead of two, and gradually the factory-made, union-label melon prac- tically superseded the earth-grown article. We compliment the factories on their union-label melon. It is won- derfally lifelike in appearance. It even has seeds in it, which was, of course, unnece and a mere com- pliment to the bayer. It is well crated, bears travel fairly, and is, perhap: good as any melon to sell to hotels. But is it good to eat? No, it isn’t. The only good-to-eat melons are those that grew, and only a few of them. comicbooks.com