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By

B. S. ADAMS

P to the time of her husband's death, Mrs. Nelson Bennett had never taken any active part in business matters; but the acid test is in being equal to emergencies-able to master a situation despite contingencies arising from unforeseen circumstances, and in this Mrs. Bennett made good.

In the midst of a great engineering work Mr. Bennett was taken suddenly ill and died; but his plucky wife grasped the reins and guided the unfinished million-dollar job through to completion. Had she not done so his estate would have lost the profit of the work and forfeited the bond he had assumed, which would have meant financial ruin. Overwhelmed as she was with grief, she never allowed herself to lose

THE TASK THAT MRS. BENNETT COMPLETED In memory of her husband, who began the work, the tunnel was given his name.

sight of two salient points: that the work must not stop, and that she herself must carry it on to completion.

For many months prior to his decease, Mr. Bennett had been engaged upon the construction of a tunnel through Point Defiance, a rugged promontory on Puget Sound, which the Northern Pacific Railroad Company was building in connection with its water-grade line to Tacoma; and although the big bore had been completed some six weeks earlier, the work of timbering and putting in the concrete lining was hardly more than well under way when the unexpected death of the chief executive left a great many very important features of the gigantic project without a guiding hand.

In the midst of Mrs. Bennett's first disquieting reflections came a telephone message to the effect that a man who had once been slightly connected with her husband was attempting to establish the claim of full partnership with him, and had even gone so far as to notify the superintendent that on the following morning he would be at the tunnel to assume entire charge of the work. Immediately following this came a message from the superintendent himself stating that his crew of more than three hundred laborers, principally Italian, were on the point of quitting as is their usual custom whenever a death occurs, and declaring that such disorganization of the work at that particular time would inevitably mean failure.

Putting the case of the claimant in the hands of her attorney, Mrs. Bennett hurried out to the scene of operations. She had the workmen assembled, and through interpreters made her position clear to them, ending her

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TACKLING THE MAN'S JOB

brief talk with a strong appeal to them to stand by her and help her finish the big job her husband had begun. To her great encouragement practically every man promised to stick to his post and kept his word.

In company with the superintendent, J. C. Denney, Mrs. Bennett then went over every foot of the big tube from the east portal to the west, a distance of some forty-four hundred feet, to familiarize herself with the work. The next few days she devoted to studying the specifications of the contract and acquainting herself with the details of the stupendous task she had determined to undertake. One week after her husband's death, Mrs. Bennett formally took command of the "big job", as it was locally designated.

For a while the work progressed rapidly, and, Mr. Denney predicted that it would be finished in record time, but once more a thunderbolt dropped out of a clear sky. With no preliminary warning, the timbering not far from the east portal of the tunnel suddenly gave way, and thousands of tons of earth were precipitated inward. The cave-in measured a distance of one hundred twenty-five feet, and all further work had to be suspended until the dirt and débris were removed.

MRS. NELSON BENNETT

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If she had not finished her husband's big job the family finances would
have been ruined. Against great odds she carried it through
and the tunnel was turned over to the railroad on time.

In this second emergency Mrs. Bennett again proved herself equal to the demands of a difficult situation. Early and late, rain or shine, she was on the ground, personally directing the clearing away of the old timbering and the removal of the dirt, and going about among the workmen with a friendly word for each. Her courage and energy seemed inexhaustible, and her deter

mination to bring her task to a successful completion never wavered.

Hardly had the damage wrought by the cave-in been repaired when still another accident occurred which deprived Mrs. Bennett of the man whose fidelity, capability, and generous cooperation had been her mainstay from the moment she assumed the management of things. While rearranging electric light wires in the tunnel, Mr. Denney was instantly electrocuted. But with the

same indomitable spirit with which she had faced and overcome the many obstacles that to ninety-nine women out of a hundred would have seemed utterly hopeless and insurmountable, Mrs. Bennett pushed steadily onward, until, on March 11, 1914, she was able to turn the great tunnel over to the Northern Pacific Railroad within contract time.

It was the company's original intention to name the big tube the "Point Defiance Tunnel", but at a subsequent meeting of the directors it was unanimously voted to call it the "Nelson Bennett Tunnel" in memory of the man whose efficiency and square dealing had saved the Northern Pacific a good many thousand dollars.

PAWNSHOP FOR ANIMALS

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IME was when it was a serious matter to have an elephant on one's hands out of season; that is, after the circus tents had been put away for the winter. It amounted to the same thing as having a "white elephant", and was far more real than the one made famous by P. T. Barnum; but now an elephant is worth gold to the possessor, who has only to pawn. the brute. An animal pawnshop is something out of the ordinary; but in New York there is such an institution for wild animals, as well as for all kinds of domestic animals, from horses down to Fido, and the place has been doing a lively business for about eight years. There is no trio of gilded spheres over the entrance to indicate to the uninitiated that it is a life-saving station for the downand-out owner of trained animals; but those in need of its help find a way to it as unerringly as a sailor discovers a dramshop in a foreign port.

Across the counter of this loan-shop, figuratively speaking, lions, tigers, elephants, and, in fact, every kind of an animal in captivity, have at one time or another passed within the past eight years. These formidable beasts are brought in by animal trainers, circus. owners, and vaudeville performers,

who, finding themselves temporarily "strapped" and unable to feed either themselves or their animals, jump at the opportunity of "hocking" the latter, and thereby securing sustenance, for both.

As this is a very unusual business, only a most experienced animal man could conduct it at a profit. To do so he must know not only the market value of every animal which is likely to be offered as security, but also the animal's capacity for food, for, obviously, it would not do to loan much on an animal which would "eat itself up" long before the owner might be expected to redeem it.

"That's why I like to loan on camels," commented Dr. Martin J. Potter, who is the trainer of the New York Hippodrome animals, and who conducts what is probably the only animal "hock-shop" in the world. "Camels," he added facetiously, "can go. for nine days without a drink, you know, and water rent is no small item."

Then more seriously he said: "I have to be most careful, too, not to be imposed upon. With all my caution, however, they sometimes get the best of me. Not long ago I loaned a fellow twenty dollars on a dog. The animal was worth fifty dollars at the

PAWNSHOP FOR ANIMALS

outside. I didn't see how I could possibly lose out by taking him, and I wouldn't have lost out, either, if I had kept him But this was a trick dog, and the swindler did not tell me that one of that dog's best tricks was opening doors and letting himself out. The dog let himself out and me in at one and the same time.

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they are legitimate. What if they do charge twelve to fifteen dollars a week for the keep of an elephant, or ten dollars for a camel, or ten dollars or more for a healthy man-eating bear with a ravenous appetite!

The collaterals accepted by this firm for loans made include almost everything in the animal kingdom, haired or

"I had a lion in here last week that feathered, which may be trained for

caused a little excite

ment. A couple of green hands working here forgot to feed him at the right time and he commenced to get fussy. His chain broke and he was loose in the stable. As a matter of fact, the lion was a decrepit beast that had served his time in a side show. One had to handle him with gloves on for fear of scaring him; but the way those two greenhorns moved around the stable was a side show in itself. Finally one of them remembered the saying that if you twist an animal's tail the victory is yours. They tried it, and the animal roared

with pain. Believing that their end had come, the two men ran terrorstricken out of the place."

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WHERE THE LIONS AND TIGERS ARE WORTH MONEY TO THEIR TRAINERS
The itinerant showman finds this pawnshop a life saver in some of the cold winters.

The "brokers" of this odd pawnshop are not at all likely to become entangled in the meshes of the law because of usury in rates of interest. They do not charge interest. Their only fee is the one charged for the keep and feed of the pawned animals; and since they are in business principally to trade in and supply trained animals of all kinds, particularly horses, for the stage, the care of animals is directly in their line,

the stage: elephants, camels, horses, ponies, donkeys, monkeys, bears, lions, leopards, tigers, dogs, goats, cats, rats, mice, snakes, coons, foxes, parrots, canaries, and possibly others. At one time there were about forty trick donkeys alone in their place subject to the call of a pawn ticket, and the amount of the loans, plus care and feed

ERN COWS

By

PHILIP R. KELLAR

'N the pit silo the farmers of the semiarid regions of the Southwest have found a valuable aid in their efforts to wrest a living from the soil. In the winter of 1913-14, following the unprecedented drought of 1913, it proved its value to such an extent that hundreds of them have been constructed by the farmers of Western Kansas, Oklahoma, Eastern Colorado, Northern Texas, and New Mexico. In one Colorado county alone-El Pasothe existence of a few pit silos last fall

TWO BUGGY WHEELS AND A DERRICK MAKE A FINE HOISTING MACHINE FOR REMOVING SILAGE FROM A PIT

saved fifty thousand dollars' worth of live stock which would have perished in the severe winter following the dry summer. There were more than two hundred pit silos in this county the past summer.

The silo is getting to be an old story on the prosperous farms of the Middle West. The value of the great tank to preserve the feed values of forage crops and utilize them through the winter and spring when the pastures are resting, has been tested so often that nearly every successful farmer has constructed one or more of them.

The pit silo is only about three years old, and has been in extensive use for only two years. It is not a new thing, but it is new in the Southwest, where it is more valuable than in any other farming region in the United States. A few pit silos have been in use in Iowa, in Illinois, and even in Mississippi, for a number of years, but their use in these regions has not spread.

A silo is a water-tight structure into which corn and other fodder are packed while green so tightly that no space is left for air, and with enough moisture to insure fermentation. The material is generally cut into strips not more than an inch or two in length. In the winter, after the fermentation and curing process have been completed, the silo is opened and the "mash" is fed to live stock. It is as palatable and nourishing as green fodder, and exhaustive and long-continued experiments have proved that beef cattle, milch cows, hogs, horses, mules, and sheep thrive upon it. The process preserves about ninety per cent of the

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