Show LOST IN THE 1IAMMOTH CAVE A Traveling Man Tells a Story to a Nervous Bartender There is a place down south where one can hear the heart of a man six feet away distinctly and olearly Each systole and diastole is as unmistakable as the tick of a big mantel clock The speaker was a Chicago traveling man and he was addressing a half dozen loungers in a downtown saloon Six whistles of incredulity from as many throats Its a fact Ill swear to it Thousands who have been there are witnesses to it he asserted One by one they sorrowfully departed until the last one who said mournfully John a bit of advice Let your lies be probable Well if that dont beat all declared the traveling man to the bar tender I might have told em I caught a fortypound bass and theyd have believed it or affected to do so But because I tell em something true they never heard of before they make me out a Munchausen or wocse It is down in Mammoth cave Kentucky Our guide stopped our party by the shore of the Echo river and had us put out our lanterns that we might be in darkness which might be felt Darkness was itl The darltest place in all the universe Well the idiot had lost his matches and there wasnt one to be had among us all Scared wasnt the word Ihe miles under ground The guide reassured us by declaring that relief must be bad in a few hours at most That didnt reconcile us much We stayed there ten mortal hours before a search party sent outfrom the hotel reached us Then it was as we sat in the darkness we observed ob-served the heartbeatsnot only our own but those of our companions We thought it was due to the thumping that came of our scare But bless you noit wasnt For after we were found and on our way out we tried it and learned that it was possible anywhere in the cave so great is the awful silence The bartender silently prepared a choice decoction and handed it to the story teller with You may drink this at my expense on condition that you dont repeat that cussed yarn any more in this place Two or three telllns of it would drive away the last customer cus-tomer forever tt And yet travelers to the Mammoth cave confirm the traveling mans story Cliicago Mail |