Show i NYE AND COLUMBUS I The Man Who Found America Is Run to Earth I I t THE GENOESE IS SURPRISED i I While In a Waxey Stale and Only Partly ClothedBens Burglarious tc c t Tendencies 0 I FOR THE SUNDAY HERALD By special arrangement with the author i Wandering about the other day and waiting for Otero to come forth and dance at the Eden Musee the manager said all of a sudden as he noticed that j I was being mistaken for a new wax figure j and that I seemed embarrassed b y the way people especially strangers I I I s t fTAKN TAKEN FOR WAX were feeling of me and wondering if I L were hollow Come up stairs with me want to show you something Did you I ever go into tho work room where wax igures are made No Well take theelevator with me Otcro will not dance yet for an hour mIl you L can see the whole business studio workshop work-shop etcin that time and you will I enjoy it just a much L you would re maininghero with that vacant and guile less look being constantly taken for Henry Irving or the deathbed of Napoleon Na-poleon S I said yes we would go I had I never watched the process and very fey people a I understood i were per nitted t go into the mysterious chambers cham-bers where great men were made and I tinmade even quicker than the newspapers news-papers could do it The principal works wax works I may say or tableaux foundry would seem to be facing Twentythird street one door above the entrance Quite a number of people are busy there all the time adding new figures fig-ures and tableaux to the ue t great collection in the halls below Every time a monarch mon-arch croaks and a new president is elected elect-ed the genius of the wax sculptor up there is called into nse and before you know it the head of the new republic in a neat fitting suit of clothes is inserting f his nice pink hand into the bosom of his frock coat and trying to look far away while people are watching him earnestly i the great group of potentates I was first introduced to the main wax worker and artist of the whole establishment i estab-lishment whose name I wish I had secured i se-cured because he was so courteous and obliging He showed me all about it b so that I could now do it myself i at any time I should decide to retire from literary pursuits and give myself up entirely gve tirely to art The artist of whom I speak makes head and hands and finishes up the job i while another artist whose name I did not get accurately enough to print unless i un-less I could at once escape makes the bodies The process is very simple indeed L in-deed Anybody could do it I is as easy as running a paper or perfecting the tariff so as to be generally agreeable Tho sculptors were working on a group of Christopher Columbus Tho artist has seized upon the happy moment when Columbus is just about to discover America Amer-ica and ho is debating in his own mind whether or not there is anything in it One can see readily by his deep earnest look that it is a problem in his brain which he has not yet settled whether it will pay him to discover a country which will introduce the use of ping tobacco to-bacco and freedom Columbus was at this time very poor Frt he had sought to secure a concession conces-sion from the legislature of Spain but in Spain it costs as much to get a just appropriation as it does in Albany Ho went on t show that if he did not discover dis-cover America some one else would and that the result would be that some less deserving and far plainer man would I get his pictures the American greenback green-back But pooh pooh said the legislature legisla-ture seeing that Columbus had no means with which to promote legislative legisla-tive action and he being a plain man entirely ignorant of whether a bill had t go to its final passage or over to the Smithsonian Institution was guyed and fooled with by men who should have known bet r until his money was gone and our best Indian tribes were waiting impatiently all the time to be discovered eredAlas some great chief would say after vainly searching the horizon another an-other day has went by and my people remain undiscovered My great speech t the pale face which I have prepared for the Fourth Reader is still in Fourh sti manuscript manu-script form Day after day goes by and we get no reliable European news Bah iV He would then eat a light breakfast of maize get married and taking his cross gun on his shoulder go out and shoot a canvasback muskrat for his luncheon Columbus a he will appear at the Eden Musee has a dark but pleasant face and pleasant whisker I took his head in my hand and looked into his steady gentle eyes Also into his vacant head The head and face of the figures are made first in clay as n sculptor would do it It is fun 1 made one I was pleasing but the man it resembled I had never met He was n stranger to me When the clay is sufficiently hard to use for that purpose a plaster mold is made from it in sections of course so that it may be easily removed then the melted flesh colored wax i poured until iti has attained a thickness of from a eighth t a quarter of an inch and then it is allowed to harden After sufficient time for this the bust is removed and thi but i num l f f a bo red and catalogued so that it may be again called into use years henceaf anything any-thing should to bring this ng occur brg up figure fig-ure to the public notice The Worlds fair now of course at once attracts at1 ten bon to Columbus and his group of rose cky pie biters from Spain Her we ro-se e them in all their wanton wildness and freedom Columbushad not got Ills clothes on yet when I saw him He has a good figure though and a nice pink toro He was CO years of age at the time he had this torso taken I believe i The bodies of the entire Columbus group had been made and with cheap i ribbed underwear on them they stood in a little convention at one end of the I room Some were kneeling some were I standing and some were in other attitudes atti-tudes that would have looked heroic i the drapery had been little more extensive exten-sive The bodies and limbs are made as follows First they are modeled in clay in the position exactly that they are to assume when completed Then the mold is made from this and then the wax is put in first followed by a heavy coarse cloth three thicknesses of which are used to give strength and firmness of character to the subject A lady was engaged in dressing the figure of Columbus She attends to the costuming all the wax people She was just putting a wad of excelsior into his bosom as I entered Another young lady has the somewhat monotonous job of putting on the hair and whiskers one at a time Many think that the waxworks works wear wigs but this is not true I Each hair is put into the wax by means i of a little steel jabber and the wax pressed down again to hold it It thkesh three days to put the hair on a man like Liszt or Ole Bull In getting up a figure t of Col Ingersoll of course oneday would 1 b ample In the Columbus group there is one sailor who has not shaved fern week This is effected by putting the beard in full and then clipping it to the proper length He looks quite lifelike and has irregular teeth which with his t sandy stubby beard give him a regular sea dog look gve Ferdinand will bq represented alsp I I saw his bust in beeswax Ito was rather a plain man with n look of anxiety which I attributed to a feeling of uncertainty uncer-tainty about the time when his new clothes would reach him from Grand street Ferdinand rescued himself from j oblivion by giving his hand in marriage to Isabella of Castile on the 18th of October Oc-tober 1169 Five years later Ferdinand was proclaimed king on the death of Henry IV who was Isabellas brother I I is said that her folks opposed the i marriage on the ground that Ferd could not give the necessary bonds even if he gve got the office of king but he did and I gave good satisfaction I In 1492 Ferdinand drove all the Jews out of his dominion because they would not advertise in i a paper with which he nw j was connected It was in this same year i that 1 Isabella fitted out two of the three ships necessary for Columbus to go in J and discover America and when he re I turned 1 Ferdinand and Isabella obtained a i bull from Pope Alexander confirming their 1 title to all the territory they had j then i or might thereafter discover in the j western > hemisphere So Ferdinand and Isabella ha4 quite a lot of wild land for sale at the close of that year which i thoyhad i kept would now be very valuable val-uable Take Minneapolis and New I York for instance both of these towns I I were then in their infancy and the ground j was cheap Take the land for instance i i on which Trinity church and Dalys billiard hal now stand Th < 4 i lot l are now worth millions of dollars i and i yet a few n years ago they were secured I se-cured by planting the Spanish flag on lour i coast or buying a state of the improvident im-provident red man with n schooner of Tokay wine and a red cornelian nose ring I Isabellas bust a it 1 appear in this great historical tableau wjll have a brunette bru-nette appearance with black hair She 1 have a far off look and hollow legs She was having her measure taken for a I throne on the day I visited her Isabella Isa-bella died Nov 20 1504 and Ferdinand j after pawing up the earth with his tu j multuons grief and making a perfect t show of himself at the grave proceeded to mary Gennaine De Foix She was I niece of Louis XII of France and if she i had been n grass widow could havo I been called De Foix Grass which would i have been a bon mot Ferdinand died I Jan 23 1516 and had a marble prevarication cation placed over his tomb which went i 1 tVI0 1 I 1 0 0 r 1 q r I1p11i JI 4I I > l If 0 i r 1 t 3ciL 0 ii j t r II t I J cpI cp-I D i 1 DIGNIFIED FOR ONCE on to state that it would be a cold day before Spain had another king with a much pop and high purposes as Ferd hadThe The eyes of wax figures are of glAss and are fastened in by means of rods which pass up through the interior of I the head and fasten the eyeball from tho rear Wax people are noted for their dignity and repose They have no brains but they never forget to bo dignified dig-nified I hate dignified people I nevet tried to be dignified but once and that was two weeks ago I wore n nandsome new frock coat and suit of dark blue and a new shining Russia iron silk hat to drive my family over the Finger Bowl road on Staten Island and on to South Beach I was proud and haughty dressed up serene and mentally vacant in order to look dignified People who saw u driving thus afterward paid mea me-a high compliment by tellintf rav wife wie what a dignified and thoroughly clerical looking coachman she had Since that I have not tried to look dignified I We had quite a fright not long ago and I might tell it here perhaps as well a elsewhere for I think the chief charm about a letter of this kind is its informality infor-mality truth and accuracy My wife is not easily frightened She is a Chicago girl who married beneath her station s I am told but we will let that pass The other evening she was comparatively alone and reading Three I l 1 J I a N t I I Men in a Boat She likes English humor hu-mor because it 13 so pure and has such plain directions with each book She was reading it thoughtfully and prayerfully prayer-fully knowing that no one could read English humor and not go away a better man when she heard a heavy footfall along the hal I was not my footfall for mine is light I would not wilt a maidenhair fern I tad so lightly special at a late hour The tread slowly approached M y wife shivered and bolted her door The step turned toward the bathroom She had heard of burglars coming into a private residence taking a bath and then going away after stealing n few things Later she heard him slashing around in the bathtub at a great rate and she was thoroughly scared She tried to call some of the servants but could not reach them Finally after what seemed like a thousand years she decided to seer fc see-r herself She could not wait So with loudly beating heart she opened the door of tho bathroom softly a a < I i The light was low but in the bathtub just above the water was the pale still face of a man Ho had borrowed our bathroom for suicidal purposes When I came home all was in confusion con-fusion I was never so welcome In a little brief excited talk I was told what had happened I took my trusty Ex callibar and went to the door listening to see if the dead burglar had revived He had not Slowly opened the door and peered inTo in-To go back a little must add that we have a bust of Benjamin Franklin at our house which every year requires washing wash-ing The help had decided at n late hour to give Benjamin a bath and with heavy tread had sought the bathroom for that purpose So when the mistress of the house went there to discover the burglar she found the white set features of the great man apparently drowned in the bath Try it some time if you think it improbable im-probable You will be surprised So no more at present |