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Show KNXW ALL ABOUT SNAKES. Dp. S. Weir Mitchell, the Philadelphia specialist, is an expert on snakes. He has made as great a success in studying and classifying them and analyzing the effect of their poison on the human system as he has ln studying the nerves and writing novels. He has taken up this work through love. The snake interests him more than any animal. He never tires of studying it, dead or alive. Ho is supposed by scientists scien-tists to know more about the variety, the habits, the life and the poison of Eve's tempter than any one living. His house oa Walnut street pontains a rare collection collec-tion of snakes In bottles. There Is another man in Philadelphia, however, who knows snakes also. He has no scientific knowledge of them. Much of bis lifetime he has been dealing In them, and he keeps thousands in his home. F'rom cellar to attic the place Is alive with reptiles. rep-tiles. Through the lower part of the house they are kept in cages; in the attic the arc permitted to run wild. He picks them up in a careless way. handling them as if they wtro angleworms. angle-worms. He sells to the circuses. He provided pro-vided the snakes that were eaten by thai terrible specimen of humanity who belongs be-longs to the Smithsonian Institution, am! who was carried around as a sido show. Now. Dr. Mitchell wanted a rare enako for his collection. He heard that It va to be bought in this man's shop. He went to the place, and the mar. showed him ,through. Mary things that the owner said wero contradicted by the visitor. After half an hour of argument the snake-seller became ungry. He thought ha knew moro about snakes than any living man. and here was an unknowi; person contradicting him; one who proved what he sa'd. Holding the big snake in his arms, he finally asked: "Who are you, anyway?" ' I am S. Weir Mitchell," said the visitor. vis-itor. And the snake-seller tells today of the paralyzed feeling he had when he found he had been "sasslng" the man of all men whom he most desired to meet. |