the sky on a clear night was visible. more than one hundred miles distant. When Beck made the tests for it in Germany he found that newspapers could be read in its light fifteen to twenty miles away on a clear night. Targets have been "picked up" on a hazy night eight to ten miles away and buildings have been photographed five and one-quarter miles from the lamp. The inventor found that a screen placed two miles away and illumined. by his lamp will act as a secondary source of light and itself give forth as much light as a hundred-candle-power bulb.

The Beck lamp is so powerful that the observer who is trying to locate a target or other object has to be careful to keep a considerable distance from it. If he stands close to it his line of vision will be through a portion of the beam of light, making it very difficult to see. It is like looking into a dark room through a lighted one.

One of the most important parts played by searchlights on our battle

In working out his invention, Beck evolved a new principle in arc-lamp construction. It is really the first radical improvement made in the arc of a searchlight in twenty-five years.

Theoretically, a mathematical point of light in the focal point of a parabolic silvered mirror would give the best beam of light. However, this is not possible, for the source of light or arc must be larger than a point. Therefore the larger the source the poorer the reflected candle-power. The old types of lamps in use have a carbon arc in which the source of light is from the crater of an arc. In lamps of fortyfour-inch diameter the carbons are at present one and one-half inches in diameter. They cannot be made smaller in existing lamps because they vaporize on account of the high current strength. The candle-power of the present arc itself is fifty thousand.

Mr. Beck uses carbons only fiveeighths of an inch in diameter instead of one and one-half inches. They are not pure carbons as have already been.

in use, but carbons with mineralized cores of light-emitting gases. Thus the initial candle-power of the Beck arc is one hundred and fifty thousand. This is multiplied three thousand times when reflected, by reason of its small

area.

The effectiveness of this great searchlamp is attributable to its alcohol vapor cooling system. and to the mineralization of the carbons. With

66

With

the same amount of current used to ignite the arcs in the old lamps the Beck light can turn out a beam six times as brilliant. The tests made at the Brooklyn Navy Yard were superintended by Mr. Beck himself, and the reports are now in the hands of the War Department officials at Washington. If the reports meet with approval the Beck lamp will be placed on every ship of importance in the navy.

O

LD STEAMBOAT" was the world's champion bucking horse. He was the star performer at world's championship riding contests at Denver, Cheyenne, and other western cities, and made hundreds of the best riders in the West "pull leather". He was always saved for the last exhibition, and the champion rider was given his real test when he bestrode "Old Steamboat". Thousands came to see him buck, and the big black outlaw horse, who never could be tamed, drew at least one hundred thousand dollars to the gate.

Steamboat was seventeen years old when he died recently, and for fifteen years he had been fighting men who tried to ride him. He was born on the Wyoming range in the Chugwater country in the eastern part of the State. His life until he was two years old was one of absolute freedom. At two years he was brought in with a bunch of other colts bearing the brand of the Swan Land and Cattle Company, one of the biggest live-stock outfits in

assigned to one of the cowboys and taken out on the round-up as part of his "saddle string". The horse promptly threw his rider, but the cowboy thought he could tame the fiery bronco eventually. At last, however, he gave up in disgust, and then the other cowpunchers took turns trying to break the animal, but all were thrown, in cowboy parlance, "higher than Dad ever hung bacon".

The fame of the big black horse began to spread. Steamboat was named for the hot springs near his birthplace, which make a sound not unlike the chugging of a steamboat. Later, when a "Young Steamboat" was brought into the arena-a frank trading on the name of the famous outlaw-the "Old" was attached as a prefix to designate this worst of all bad horses. In 1899, Denver gave the first of a series of cowboy carnivals, valuable prizes being hung up for the best riders, and wild horses were gathered from all over Wyoming and Colorado. Steamboat threw one ambitious rider after another at this carnival, and his fame was

853

At that time no wild west show would buy Steamboat because he was not the type of "bucker" wanted. What the show managers wanted for exhibition purposes was the bronco that made a few fancy leaps

and then ran away. But

gush from nose and ears and they would be seized with fits of coughing. One man claimed he had "ridden" the horse but technically the feat was never accomplished.

"Old Steamboat", fighter though he was, scorned tricks. He fought in the open

COPYRIGHT. E. STIMGON

Steamboat never ran. He simply put his head down and made a business of bucking. He came down in a series of crashing descents that shook every bone in the rider's body. twelve hundred pounds, which is much heavier than the average western bronco, and he made every pound felt when he hit the ground. Cowboys who have made good rides on Steamboat have told the writer that it was agony after the first

He weighed

and "on the square". He had the

respect of every champion he unseated, because he turned the trick by bucking and not by plunging backward or rolling over as many horses will do. Such was "Old Steamboat", outlaw of outlaws. They talk of putting up a monument to him at Cheyenne-a real monument of the sort that honor men who have never tasted defeat. He deserves one, for the West will never see his like

P

ICTURE to yourself a dozen sailor boys on shore leave from an American battleship riding at anchor in the harbor of an Oriental port. Young and happy, with money jingling in the pockets of their spotless uniforms, they halt for a moment in front of a bamboo shack where a native is tattooing a dragon on a man's back.

"There's your chance, Malcolm," said one of the American boys banteringly.

"All right, it's a go," answered Malcolm; and without much trouble he gave the native to understand that he wanted a blue anchor tattooed on his left arm. The

but when the fleet steamed away from Japan, there was one brown-eyed boy who did not go with it, and that was Malcolm Higgins. High up on the cherry-blossom hill he stood and watched through burning tears the great ship which had brought him hither slipping away from his sight over the horizon into the world he would never see again.

What is Malcolm Higgins now? Stone blind, helpless, and hopeless, a stranger in a stranger people's country-a victim of that dread disease which for centuries has baffled medical science and been the scourge of every nation on the globe. With the Philippines, the Hawaiian

jackies stood around admiringly while the work was being done, then went proudly back with Malcolm to their posts of duty on board the man-of-war.

A few weeks later, Malcolm's left arm began to itch and pain him. He consulted the ship's physician, telling him about the native who had done the tattooing. The doctor did not say much,

Islands, and Porto Rico as part of the United States, what to do with and for leprosy has become a question which constantly obtrudes itself. Only three States-Louisiana, Massachusetts, and California-have done anything definite for the care of the lepers.

How urgent the need is for a national leper home is shown by the experience

of the leper who, a few years ago, was hurried in a box car from one State to another until he reached the fourteenth State-West Virginia-where he died.

Equally striking is the instance of a. man thirty-five years old who appeared at a St. Louis clinic some time ago. He had been a soldier in the Philippines ten years before, and had but recently noticed an eruption of the skin.

He was a leper. As such, his case would have to be reported to the Board of Health at once. The health officers hustled him out to a shack near the smallpox hospital and shoved him into a dark room, where was crouched a Chinese leper, hideously mutilated by the disease. In terror the soldier escaped that night. The evening papers had lurid accounts of the whole affair.

The unfortunate man fled across the river to his brother's home in Illinois; but the papers had preceded him, and his brother's family drove him from their

yard. He was hunted like a mad dog, and finally returned to quarantine. Food was brought down from the smallpox hospital and put within reach, so that he and the Chinese leper could obtain it. This man was an American, but this treatment turned him against his country and he fled to Mexico.

Is leprosy to increase in our country? One noted physician is quoted as saying that leprosy is increasing here, and will continue to increase, because thousands of our citizens have been exposed in the Philippines and other island possessions. The incubation period in cases of leprosy he declares to be very long, extending from three to fifteen years. "I have known," he writes, "several instances where the incubation period has been from ten to twelve years." He cites the case of an American who had helped open a railroad in the Philippines; his eruption appeared ten years later.

Little wonder, then, that with leprosy