IN THE VOLCANO BUSINESS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 256, 28 October 1899, Page 11 (Supplement)

IN THE VOLCANO BUSINESS.

"I'm half inclined to think he was a liar." said Judge Crabtree, thoughtfully.

"I've heard rumours of a revival of the lost art of lying," returned his law partner, Major Dodge. '•lie may have been a fraud, too, and not the sou of my old friend Tom Hunker, after all," went on the judge. "Do you know anything about running a volcano —ever have any friends in the volcano business."

"[•know a man who recently bought a Hough Rider broncho and tried to subdue it himself," returned the

major. "This was a stationary volcano, said the judge. "Itseems, accordingto his story, that he is just back from Southern Mexico. Said he wont down there last spYing. Had $100,000 to invest, and thought he'd gO into the hotel business. Heard of a fine summer hotel up in the San Eambuukado Mountains. Owner retiring on account of ill-health brought on by insomnia. Looked it over. Seemed to be all right. Bought it cheap. Two thousand acres of hind, game preserve, golf links, rifle range, half mile trotting- track —all the comforts of home. Went back a niomh later to open for the season, but found .

A GEAT BIG IMPUDENT VOLCANO spouting away like a campaign orator near the centre of this, property and just beyond the golf links. He inquired of the" neighbours, and found that it was one of these periodical volcanoes, and that it. kept quiet part of the time, though generally it was on the rampage. This accounted for the former owner's insomnia. You can't sleep with a volcano taking on in your backyard—so the fellow said, and it looks reasonable.

"]Je inquired further and discovered that the house had always been a dead failure. The landlord would no sooner g-et it ful than that old volcano would pipe up and frighten 'em: all away. Sometimes it would keeep quiet for a week or two, and matters would run on pleasantly enough, and the golf matches would be resumed. The volcano made a fine bunker, but the crater was a sad place in which to lose balls. After a few score of balls had been lost down it, the thing- would start up and just scatter them all over that part of Mexico. That volcano

made some of the most magTiificent drives on record.

'•Well, my young friend decided not to be bluffed by a volcano —so he said. He waited a few days until itbecame quiet, then he went up and looked into the crater. lie found the hole into the crater. He found the hole which reached down into the bowels of the earth pretty nearly round and

quite regular. He went back and hired 300 native labourers, and took them about half way up the side of the mountain, and ran a tunnel straight into the side of the thing till it intersected the shaft of the volcano. Then what did he do—so he said— but put in a big iron damper, like a stove pipe damper, made of plates taken off

AN OLD ARMOUR-CLAD WARSHIP

which he got at a bargain, with the propeller shaft roach back into the tunnel to be used in turning the damper. (You understand that I'm giving you the story as I got it from the son' of an old schoolmate.) By this time his hotel was full, and, just to amuse his guests, every afternoon at four o'clock lie would open the damper and let the thing spoilt until dinnertime. Then he would shut it off for an hour and a half, and give another exhibition in the evening. It was a great success, and instead of the volcano hurting the business, it gave it a great boom. The fellow said it .showed what Yankee ingenuity can do."

"Why did he have to borrow money from you if he had such a paying property?" asked Major Dodge. '•Well, yes, he did borrow a couple of dollars* before he got through," admitted .^Tudge Crabtree. '"He said he \ised tcTkeep the volcano shut off over Sunday, and that it always made an awful fuss Monday. On Monday it got carrying on so that it started up an earthquake, and shook his hotel into 10.000 pieces, and broke up his business. Even Yankee ingenuity, it appears, can't control an earthquake."— '"Harper's Bazaar."