For Dogs

In Manhattan last week at their semi-annual International Conference for the Investigation of Vivisection, anti-vivisectionists displayed their might and main. Their might: 150 delegates, representing 125 U. S. humane and antivivisectionist societies. Their main: protest to President Hoover against the "political activities of the U. S. Public Health Service and U. S. Army in opposition to a bill to exempt dogs from vivisection in the District of Columbia"; a protest to Governor Albert Cabell Ritchie of Maryland that his State Board of Health has been active against anti-vivisectionists. Mrs. Ruth Hanna McCormick, Senatorial candidate in Illinois, telegraphed: "My aid to you officially whenever opportunity presents."

Anti-vivisectionists detest the American Medical Association, which swats them as though they were annoying horse flies. Mrs. Jeanie McCredie Matile of Chicago meant no pun when she declared that there was "a steadily growing revolt against the dogmatism of the A. M. A. by its own members." Dr. Alonzo Eugene Austin, Manhattan homeopath, occasional physician to John Davison Rockefeller Sr., not a member of the A. M. A., testified: "If it were necessary to tie these little animals down to get our experience of how to cure people, I'd give up the medical profession tomorrow. I have never yet felt I had to use serums and I never will use them. At $5 a vaccination ... I have lost a great deal of money, because I would not use them."

Mrs. Isabel Spelman Devereux of New Orleans said she wants the League of Nations to recognize the rights of animals, to anticipate "animal citizenship."

A striking suggestion was that of Constance Collier, 52, big, throaty English actress (The Firebrand, Our Betters, Serena Blandish, The Matriarch). Like many another talented person, notably Mrs. Irene Castle McLaughlin (now retired), Miss Collier suffers when dogs suffer.* Suggested she last week: "If vivisection is so necessary, why not experiment upon persons who break the laws instead of upon animals?"

For Frogs

Along the main street of Angels Camp, Calaveras County, Calif., last week gathered 10,000 coatless, holiday-bent people. It was the day of the International Championship Standing Broad Jump for Frogs. As the impatient crowd elbowed to get nearer the street an official of the town's greatest sporting event pushed his way through, drew a chalk-line on the pavement, placed the first contestant on it.

The frog blinked at the clicking cameras, at the judges in the motorcar before him. Giving a terrific lunge he flew through the air, came down with a plop. Alert officials were quick to measure the distance, record it. Then the second frog was loosed upon the street.

When "The Pride of San Joaquin," onetime (1928) world champion, was brought forward, he was conceded not a chance. His jumps last year were feeble. Everyone agreed that he was through but watched closely as he took a deep breath, drew his muscles taut and with a splendid lunge, threw his old body 12 ft. 10 1/2 in., landing like a hunk of dough. The crowd was wild. "The Pride" had come back.

Blushing happily, Louis Fisher, owner of the new champion, held his winner in one hand, gathered the trophy (a silver loving cup) into the other. He predicted new triumphs for "The Pride."

Angels Camp's annual contest, started in 1926, was inspired by Mark Twain's famed story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." It was this story which overnight made Twain famous, launched him on a literary career. In it he delineates the experiences of an old reprobate who wanted to bet on everything, even that the parson's seriously ill wife would die when her physician said she was recovering.

Greatest triumph of Mark Twain's Jim Smiley was the training of a broad jumping frog on which he won many a bet. Chief concern of the story is about a bet Smiley made with a stranger that his frog, "Dan'l Webster," could jump farther than any frog in the country. The frogs were lined up. The stranger's animal gave an ineffectual leap, went a few feet. Came Dan'l's turn to jump. He would not budge. Said Mark Twain:

"Smiley stood scratching his head. . . . And he ketched Dan'l by the nape of the neck, and lifted him up and says, 'Why, blame my cats, if he don't weigh five pound!' And turned him upside down, and he belched out a double handful of shot. And then he see how it was, and he was the maddest man--he set the frog down and took out after that feller. .

* At Deerfield, Chicago suburb, Mrs. McLaughlin has a dog refuge named "Orphans of the Storm." Last February the kennels burned down (probably set on fire). Ninety dogs died.

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