State

Н. Н. Brimley NOW just in case there are one or two of my readers who are not familiar with Carl Akeley I will say that he was the lad who wrote “In Brightest Africa,1' and was perhaps the world’s foremast big game hunter, and one of the greatest tax¬ idermists. He was gored bv an ele¬ phant: he fought bare-hande<l a battle with a 100-pound leopard that sprang upon him suddenly, knocking liis rifle out of his hands. Akeley was almost tom to ribbons, but he killed the great eat with his bare hands. The great African room in the American Mu¬ seum of Natural History at New York was the work of his hands. Moreover, he was one of the most intimate friends of Roosevelt — Theo¬ dore, not Franklin, for Theodore was a mighty hunter himself as you’ll know if you have read his African Game Trails. Г would not exactly classify my subject along with Carl Akeley, as men of the latter’s calibre appear at very infrequent intervals, but some of our man’s characteristics do. in a way, call the former to mind. He was born near Bedford, Eng- land, but do not hold this against him, for remember that from this soil came William Shakespeare and— Churchill 1 Moreover, he got over it just as soon as ho could for he be¬ came a naturalized (and good) Amer¬ ican just as soon as he reached the years of discretion. Ho was born 'way back in 1*61 and came from a race of men who, as did Robert Burns, lived close to the soil. Ilis forebears were farmers, except such time as they took off to oversee the gentle art of brew¬ ing that heavy English beer which is so closo to the heart of every son of John Bull. The scene of his nativity held much of interest, for he was born near the river Ouse, into which he of course fell long before he could swim ; and within sight of his birthplace are the remains of old Danish fortifications clearly de¬ fined above the banks of the river; while within the town of Bedford (where our brother John Bunyan spent twelve years in jail 1) there is still to be seen the ruins of a castle built by William the Conqueror, circa 1060. But these surroundings, while medieval, were not primeval, for there was a daily mail which brought down the “Englishman's Bible,” the London Times, which was rend down to the last advertisement. His Education The young farm-raised boy did not get to Eton, Rugby, Harrow or other prep school for “My Lords and Gen¬ tlemen,” but he did attend a local “boarding school” of the same general type for eight years and secured all the essentials of a thorough fundamen¬ tal education, with some outstanding individual honors, on which he lias built by omniverous rending. Yes, he played football, for he has been all his life an enthusiastic devotee of every form of sports and outdoor life. From early youth he was, and still i<, passionately devoted to the life of field and stream and there was no wild creature which did not hold for him a «loop and absorbing interest. Agriculture has not always been prosperous in England any more than in America, and several seasons of poor crops and low prices so dis¬ couraged the Brimleys that they deter¬ mined to migrate either to Australia or Canada. But how strange and mys¬ terious are the ways of Providence, for right on the scene at just the right time was an immigration agent of the North Carolina Board of Agriculture, and lie induced the Brimleys to try their luck in Carolina. Nor did they meet a warm reception when, at mid¬ night on the last day of I860 they reached our goodly city of Raleigh. Their reception there was anything but a warm one, for it was the coldest weather ever experienced in the sec¬ tion— so cold that the young immi¬ grant had to take up the carpet from the floor to try to keep from freezing; and the water in the pitcher (no fau¬ cets in those days) was frozen solid next morning. It was prophetic that the hotel at which he stopped should have occupied the site of what is now the Agricultural Building, the very spot on which his life’s lalwrs were to l*> spent ! Taught School An effort at farming proved a total and disastrous failure; but there was one expedient on which the young stranger could fall back — school teaching. And so he betook himself, foreign accent and all, to a one-room log cabin schoolhouse, without glass windows, located near what is now Meredith College, but which was then in the wild and open country. He always had a flair for everything pertaining to outdoor life, and early in his career began doing odd jobs in taxidermy, without a preceptor, guided by a fifty-eent book on that subject which had strayed into his hands. But he had a natural genius and talent for such work, and when our stnte had its “Centennial Exposi¬ tion" in 1884, the authorities secured the versatile young Englishman to lie fame here as a lad from Eng¬ land, and he has given North Carolinians more information about the wild-life in this state than any other individual. By R. C. LAWRENCE 7