Life — December 5, 1907 — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

I saw thee, strenuous Teddy, For daring deeds prepare; ‘The weapon of a naturalist— ‘A Winchester—you wear. Was there no Harriman at home, No liar in his lair, ‘That you should swim the swamps to swat The inoffensive bear? * * * UT what of Chateaubriand’s staggering bear?—of whose plight no one but a pot-hunter would take advantage. To go forth “loaded for bear” is one thing; but when Bruin is himself ‘loaded”—perish the thought. The strange things we see when we haven’t a gun is an experience become proverbial; and Chateaubriand carried neither gun nor camera. We have only the simple, casual record, made with- out vaunting or thought of newspaper notoriety. It is true that “Atala” was first published (1801) in the feuilleton of a French newspaper, Le Mercure de France; but there is no record that this bear story attracted in itself the least attention, or that Chateaubriand was reproved for it by the First Consul. It will be objected by incredulous persons incapable of distin- guishing an elm tree from an oak, in their soberest moments, that this writer was the founder of the romantic school in French literature. ‘To this we reply that he was also a soldier and politician, that his writings were based on his personal ob- servations in the American wilderness, and that he was the foremost man of letters of his day. Finally, that he was himself a skeptic. * * > PULL minds delight in gibing at the least touch of imagination in chron- icles of fact. But Chateaubriand had the poet’s vision, As Dr. Egan, our minister to Denmark, once sang of his namesake, Maurice de Guérin: The old wine filled him, and he saw, with eyes Anoint of Nature, fauns and dryads fair Unseen by others The old wine filled the author of “Atala,” too; but his specialty was snakes and bears rather than fauns. With the precise effects of grape-juice, eaten or imbibed in excess, we do not pretend to be familiar. Possibly it would stagger the tame imagination in its contemplation of Bruin thereby staggered. For our own part, we are glad that grapes do not grow in profusion near the North Pole, which Amundsen expects to annex with the aid of polar bear teams. More embarrassing than any mishap which has yet overtaken Mr. Walter Wellman would be to have your polar draught-bear jagged with grape- juice and floundering on the edges of an iceberg. “T never saw a sunset like that,” said the lady critic of a Turner painting. “But don't you wish you could?” was the memorable, if somewhat ungrammatical, Tetort. And, anyway, Chateaubriand as a Franklin 4-cylinder, 16 b p, $1,850. High power with light-weight makes an automobile ‘do things”’. Of course—nobody doubts that. And yet automobile manu- facturers keep on handicapping their machines with the weight and inefficiency of a water-cooled engine. The Franklin cuts out all the weight of water-apparatus and the extra material necessary to carry that weight. By close study of design, materials, and construction, every part of the Franklin is made light-weight but strong. The Franklin engine is smaller because it works at the tem- perature of the highest efficiency, 350° or more. A water-cooled motor can’t keep up to this temperature, the water would boil away. This is why the Franklin went 95 miles on two gallons of gaso- line in the great Efficiency Contest, while the nearest water-cooled machine stopped at 48 miles. Type G, the light family touring-car, is a striking example of high power with light-weight and perfect strength. 1t does more and lasts longer than any machine at or near its price. It is the easiest on tires, fuel, and repairs, and gives the most service, dollar for dollar. You’d better look into this matter of light-weight and the Franklin. The 1908 Franklin catalogue goes very fully into the subject. 1908 Franklin Models 28 h p Touring-Car or Runabout $2850 42 h p Touring-Car or Runabout $4000 Landaulets and Limousines Prices f 0 b Syracuse H H FRANKLIN MFG CO Syracuse N Y Member Association Licensed Automobile Manufacturers 16 h p Touring-Car $1850 16hp Runabout $1750 NOW READY—The 1908 Catalogue of Life’s Prints Reproducing in carefully printed miniatures, 163 of LIFE’S latest and best pictures by Huts, Clay, Read, Balfour Ker, Blashfield. Gibson, Gilbert, Budd, Flagg. Bayard Jones, Squires. Broughton, Jacobs, Stewart. Hanns, Grant. Phillips, and others. LIFE'S FRINTS provide an inexpensive but rot cheap form of mural decor: tion, They are embellishments for any home, the most costly or the simplest. The new Catalogue will be sent to any cddress on receipt of ten cents, by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY, Seventeen West Thirty~ t Street, New York comicbooks.com