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WITH BABIES FOR BAIT, Wunters in Ceylon Lure Crocodiles to Their Death. The fondness of crocodiles for babies is used by hunters in Ceylon to lure the reptiles to death. A nice, fat baby is tsed by the leg to a stake near some pond or lagoon where crocodiles abound. Soon the child begins crying and the sound attracts the crocodiles within hearing distance. They start out immediately for the wailing infant. The hunter in the meantime conceals himself in the bushes of Swamp grass near the baby, with a rifle in his hand projecting out and almost over the child. He remains perfectly quiet and the reptile, intent on its prey, notices nothing but the screaming and kicking child. As the monster approaches to within a few feet of the bait the hunter sends a bullet directly into the alliga tor’s eye, causing instant death. A miss would mean death for the baby, but the hunters are expert shots and at the short distance at which they fire a miss is next to impossible. As a rule the sound of the firearm scares the baby worse than the presence “of the croco dile’s jaws and the rows of sharp and glistening teeth, but after being shot ‘and speaking to each other in this se date and meritorious fashion!— “With ever new delight we now attend The counsels of our fond maternal friend.” “The Western Idea.” It seems just a bit strange and awk ward that as we grow older as a people we cannot get away from this “West ern idea,” this stigmatizing a portion of our country because it is accom plishing with certain enterprising meth ods what could not possibly be accom plished by any other. It cannot be that we are jealous in the East, because we attach so much importance to the West. It cannot be that we are ashamed of the West, because we like to speak with pride of it. Its people cannot differ so very much from us since half of the American West is really made up of Eastern folks. But yet we go on and on, and everything in the West that is not to our taste is ‘the Western idea of things.’ * * Surfeited with section alism, we are full of the notion that one part of our country is superior to another. We have still to learn and im bibe the idea that America is America, whether it be New York, Boston, Chi cago, Denver or San Francisco. Over a few times the child takes the shooting as a matter of course and pays little attention to it. So expert are many,of the hunters that they do not shoot the alligator until it has ap proached to within a few feet of the baby. Then, with but a few inches of space between the muzzle of the rifle and the eye of the alligator, the fatal shot is fired. School Theatricals a Century Ago. Miss Agnes Repplier writes a little sketch entitled “At School a Hundred years Ago” for St. Nicholas. Of one form of diversion allowed the pupils, Miss Repplier writes: Few things more amusing than Miss Witford’s “Early Recollections” have ever been told in print. We know ev erybody in that school as intimately as Mary Witford knew them in the year 1796. The English teacher who was so wedded to grammar and arithmetic —Mary hated to study the French teacher whom she both loved and fear ed, who had a passion for neatness, and used to hang around the children's necks all their possessions found out of place, from dictionaries and sheets of music to skipping ropes and dilapidat ed dolls; the school girls who came from every..part of England in France; above all, the school plays— “The Search After Happiness,” which they were permitted to act as a great treat, because Miss Hannah More had written it. If you know nothing about “The Search After Happiness” you have no real idea how dull a play can be. Four discontented young ladies go forth to seek “Urania,” whose wisdom will teach them to be happy. ‘They meet, “Florella,” a virtuous shepherd ess, who leads them to the grove where Urania lives. Here they are kindly received, and describe all their faults at great length to their hostess,so who sends them brimful of good advice to their respective homes. ‘Think of a lot of real school girls acting such a drama. We have to learn in this country to ac cept a man as an‘ American whether he lives in Chicago or in Portland, in New York or In Tacoma! He lives in Amer ica, and that makes him not an Eastern man, ‘nor a Western man, nor a South ern man,but an American, living not after an Eastern idea; a Western fash ion, nor a Southern fancy, but under one central American idea: equality.— Ladies’ Home Journal. USING A BABY FOR CROCODILE BAIT,
Newspaper Details
South Riverside Corona Courier
South Riverside, California, US
Sat, Oct 17, 1896
Page 7
Full Page
Clipped by
Mercedes L.
USA 11 Jun 2025
Other Publications Near South Riverside, California
South Riverside Bee
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