THE GIANT KILLER Chapter Four

 

I know that both Phineas T. Barnum and George Hull each possessed “the ingenuity to dupe, diddle, defraud and gull a whole continent.” But Barnum rebelled against those, like Hull, who held their customers in contempt. “I don't believe in duping the public”, Barnum wrote, . “but I believe in first attracting and then pleasing them.” He always tried, he said, to give them more than their money's worth in entertainment. 

On the day the Cardiff Giant saw the light again on Mr. Newell's farm - 16 October 1868 - the self proclaimed “Prince of Humbug” was trying to rebuild his American Museum in New York City, after it had burned down (above) for the third time  The man who had brought America and the world “Tom Thumb”, the "Feejee Mermaid", Jenny Lind “The Swedish Nightingale” (two above), and Chang and Eng, “The Original Siamese Twins”, was finding the revival harder every year.

That fall  P.T.  traveled to cast a professional eye upon the giant still in the ground. Barnum saw the road south from Syracuse “jammed with wagons, stage coaches, horses and people on foot, all bound for Cardiff to take a glimpse at the giant.”  And he paid admission into the tent to gaze upon the great stone face, and feet and over sized circumcised penis. Before boarding the train back to New York City, Barnum (above) told a reporter, “They must not call me the Prince of Humbugs after this. That beats anything I ever did in my life.” But was it the appearance of the giant which made Barnum wary? Was it the presence in Cardiff of his competitor, Colonel Wood? Or did it have something to do with the immoral amoral always black clad mocking presence of George Hull?

As the money began to roll in a member of George Hull's inner circle announced he wanted out.  H.B. Martin, the blacksmith from Marshalltown, who had suffered the month long 40 mile odyssey across Iowa with George, had suffered enough. Maybe he was experiencing an attack of morality, maybe the rising publicity made him nervous, or maybe his brother Frank needed financial help in opening a planned grocery in Ackley, Iowa. Whatever his reason, Martin asked George Hull to buy out his share in the giant.  As soon as the cash was in his hands he disappeared back to Iowa, and was never heard from again in this giant tale

He missed getting rich by a week. The giant had cost Hull and Martin less than $3,000 (Fifty thousand in 2014 dollars). Originally George Hull had ½ share of the giant – it had been his idea - while Newell and Martin each had ¼ share. Buying Martin out had cut into George's profits, and he needed an immediate influx of cash. His cousin, “Stub” Newell still had physical possession of the stone behemoth, and every day increased the chance the farmer would realize the old axiom that possession was nine tenths of the law. Luckily for George, an entrepreneur from Homer, New York stepped up eager to solve his problem: the square jawed David H. Hannan.

He was one of the biggest land owners in Courtland County, New York. Our old friend Mr. Andrew White, described Hannan (above) as “...a horse-dealer in a large way...” (think used car salesman) “...and banker in a small way” (think loan shark). White described Hannan as “keen and shrewd...who had fought his way up from abject poverty, and whose fundamental principle, as he asserted it, was "Do unto others as they would like to do unto you, and–do it first.”.”

Hannan's partners were a whose-who of Syracuse society. Dr. Amos Wescott (above)  was a successful dentist who had served a term as mayor of Syracuse in 1860. Amos Gilbert's family had settled in the area in 1810, and remained powerful in the Baptist church, with the pentagonal rounded out by William Spencer and Benjamin A. Son. Each had invested $5,000 (ninety thousand in 2014 dollars) in the joint venture, and the second week of the exhibition they paid Hull and Newell $23,000 cash ($400,000 in 2014) for a ¾ share of the giant. It seemed a safe in vestment. In two weeks in the out-of-the-way village of Cardiff, the Giant had sold $7,000 in tickets, at 50 cents apiece.

On Sunday, 5 November 1869, the Cardiff Giant was winched out of his temporary grave...

...and loaded into a wagon for the 12 mile journey to Syracuse. He was greeted at the city limits by a marching band playing “See, the Conquering Hero Comes” by Handel. 

His new home was in an exhibit hall on Vanderbilt square, across the street from the open air New York Central Railroad station (above). The next day, Monday, 6 November, 1869,   6,000 people paid $1 each to stare down at the impassive great stone face, and feet and penis, profiting in one day what had taken an entire week to match in Cardiff. The New York Central railroad added a 10 minute delay to all trains passing through Syracuse, long enough to give passengers time to cross the street, pay their dollar and gaze upon the impassive gypsum.

One poet wanted the giant to explain himself. “Speak out, O Giant! stiff, and stark, and grim, Open thy lips of stone, thy story tell; And by the wondering crowd who pay thee court. In thy cold bed, and gaze with curious eyes On thy prone form so huge, and still so human, Let now again be heard, that voice which once, Through all old Onondaga's hills and vales, Proclaimed thy lineage from a Giant race, And claimed as subjects, all who trembling hear. “ One whom the giant spoke to was Galusha Parsons, a lawyer of “most excellent character, sterling integrity, and with much aggressive force”. More importantly, Parsons was from Fort Dodge, Iowa.

The 41 year old Parsons (above) was returning from Washington, having made oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Beeson  v Johns.  He had also just been elected as a state representative for Webster County, Iowa.  Taking advantage of the ten minute stop over in Vanderbilt Square to visit the famous Cardiff Giant., Parsons recognized the stone as home grown. He immediately cabled his political ally Mr. Benjaman Gue, the editor of the Fort Dodge “North West”.  Parsons told Gue, “I believe it is made of that great block of gypsum those fellows got at Fort Dodge a year ago, and shipped east.”

Gue (above) quickly uncovered the truth. The 28 July, 1868 edition of the “Boone Standard” had contained an account of the curious 11 feet 3 inches long, 3 feet 2 inches wide, 1 foot by 10 inches thick, 3 ½ tons of gypsum, shipped to Chicago. But rather than rush into print, editor Gue dispatched reporters to Chicago, to hunt down the sculpture of the giant, and to New York state, to hunt for George Hull's fingerprints.

Meanwhile, over its six week stay in Syracuse, the giant maintained an average of 10,000 visitors a week, at a dollar each. The curious ranged from day laborers to miners, politicians, secretaries, and even Professor O.C. Marsh. The latter – joined by 24 year old Fillmore Smith, a mining engineer -had the audacity to put in print that gypsum was soluble in water, which meant the smooth features of the giant could not have laid in the damp ground behind Mr. Newell's barn for hundreds or thousands of years without dissolving. Marsh labeled the giant “A most decided humbug”.

Our old friend, Andrew White (above), who would one day help found Cornell University, had touched on a more prosaic reason not to believe in the giant. Back in October, he had pointed out, “there was no reason why the farmer should dig a well in the spot where the figure was found...it was convenient neither to the house nor to the barn”  He called the giant “undoubtedly a hoax”. So why was anyone still believing in it?

In fact there was not one Cardiff Giant, there were many. In post revolutionary America, up state New York was the birth place of new religions and the revival of the Great Awakening for many others: the astounding Joseph Smith and his bookish Mormonism, the precipitate diurnal Seventh Day Adventists, the passionate celibacy of the Shakers, the faux spiritualism of the three Fox Sisters, the postponed second coming of the Millerites, and the coitus interrupters of the Oneida post renaissance utopians. These Christian sects had Genesis, 6:4 on their side, “There were giants in the earth in those days...”

To the religious the Cardiff Giant was a fossil, a petrified man, a physical validation of faith. The passionate poet Ralph Waldo Emerson called it “a bona fide petrified human being..” Another preacher explained, “This is not a thing contrived of man, but is the face of one who lived on the earth, the very image and child of God.”

A Yale Divinity student, Mr. Alexander McWhorter, viewed the giant in Syracuse and believed he was obviously a statue. As proof, he found several lines of Phonetician carved into his thigh. Luckily, Mr. McWhorter could read ancient Phonetician, and translate the tale of ancient sailors blown to a distant shore (and 400 miles inland) who had carved the giant to memorialize their survival. Nobody else who could read Phonetician could find any on the giant. But lots of people who could not, were willing to believe the ancient language was there, even though they could not find it.

At a gathering of “experts” in Syracuse, judged by an audience who paid $10 apiece to witness the debate, the jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes drilled into the giant's head (behind the ear, so as not to disturb the esthetics) and found nothing but solid stone. The giant, said Holmes, was a statue, but “of great antiquity.” Holmes was followed on the platform by Eramus Dow Palmer, a sculpture. He declared the giant was indeed a statue, but a really bad one, done by a recent amateur. Before Palmer could finish his artistic destruction of the giant, Cyrus Cobb, a competitor of Mr. Palmer's, leap onto the platform and announced “Any man who calls this a humbug brands himself a fool!”  The lecture hall dissolved into shouts and accusations, and one man began beating the living daylights out of the art critic, Palmer.

Once the assailant was arrested, and the hall cleared, a reporter cornered farmer “Stub” Newell, and asked what it all meant. Was the giant a petrified man, an ancient statue, or a cheat?   Newell shrugged and explained, “You pays your money and you takes your chance. They got to see my giant. They got to hear four geniuses at two dollars and fifty cents per genius, and also saw a good fight. That seems like a fair value to me.”

To the Syracuse syndicate – horse trader Hannen, Dr. Westcott, et al -  the melee was delightful news. After tripling their investment, they were ready to take the giant on the road.

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THE GIANT KILLER Chapter Three

  

I suspect that George “the giant killer” Hull suffered from a kind of “moral insanity”. Perhaps this is why his chosen appearance - fancy dark clothes, black top hat and a black handlebar mustache - became the epitome of villainy for generations. Today he would be called a sociopath. The primary victim of his disorder was his wife, Helen. She was 16 and pregnant when they married in 1856. And she was his niece. And George's best chance for salvation.

George had begun his criminal career in his twenties, having devised a new method for marking cards. His partner would sell the decks to saloons and gambling clubs at a discount, and then George would appear as a passing salesman, to read the cards and rake in the profits. After a couple of years, George was arrested. Released from jail, his brother took him in and gave him a job in his Bimington cigar factory. George repaid the favor by seducing and impregnating his daughter, Helen.

The family helped the new husband buy a small farm five miles to the north in Port Crane, now Fenton, New York. By the time his second child, Sarah, was born in 1860, George was growing enough tobacco to both sell to his brother, and to open his own cigar shop in Port Crane. Through the four years of the American Civil War, all of George Hull's battles were personal. When it looked like his business would fail, in September of 1864, George torched his own shop and home. With the insurance money, George moved his family to Baraboo, Wisconsin, and enlisted his Iowan brother-in-law to sell his left over cigars.

At about the same time, in the tiny village of Homer, New York, Gideon Emmon was enlisting in company E of the 185^th Volunteer Regiment. But Gideon's war lasted just 6 months and one battle. On the last day of March, 1865, his regiment occupied the White Oak Road, outflanking rebel positions south of Petersburg, Virginia. After digging in to their new position, the 185th was attacked by Rebel infantry, causing just six causalities. History books record this as a mere prelude to the next day's Union victory at Five Forks, which forced the Confederate Army to abandon Richmond, and start on the road to Appomattox Court House and surrender. But Private Gideon Emmon did not participate in that victory. When he finally came home to Cardiff he was on a full disability pension to compensate for his missing left arm and his shattered mind, suffered that 31 March, 1865.  He treated his nightmares and pain as best he could, and worked what few odd jobs could be performed by a one armed alcoholic in a farming community. All of this made Gideon an odd hire to dig a well.

His employer on Saturday, 16 October, 1869, was William Newell, nicknamed “Stub” because of his height and stubbornness. He was described at the time as “A man of pretty good intelligence...but not an educated or learned man in any way.” A modern historian calls him “a sober, honest sort of farmer,” “a private man who certainly didn't court celebrity” and “entirely unremarkable” He was also a cousin to George Hull. At about nine that cool clear fall morning, Mr. Newell led Gideon Emmon and fellow veteran Henry Nichols, down the slope from the farm house, and around the barn,  to the only dry spot in the field beyond (above). It was here that Mr. Newell told the men he wanted his new well dug. .

Either workman might have asked why a farm which already had a well between the house and the barn, wanted a second well at the edge of a swampy field, bordering the reds and yellow trees lining Onondaga creek to the north. But they were happy to have the work on such a cool day. Henry Nichols just picked up a shovel and started digging, while Gideon grabbed a bucket to tote the soil away for dumping. With just one man able to handle a shovel, it was slow work, even allowing for the loose rich black soil. It took two hours for Nichols to clear three feet of earth, and before eleven Nichols' shovel clanged against a rock. Amazingly for this region, it was the first large stone encountered, and the pair began to clear the dirt to discover the size and shape of the obstruction. They stopped when a huge white toe emerged into the light.

Gideon ran to fetch Mr. Newell, who, with a third witness, ... er workman..., was gathering stones for the lining of his new well. And as a stroke of luck, a fourth witness, John Haynes, another local farmer on his way to attend a fair in Syracuse - 12 miles to the north - just happened by at this moment. All five men rushed to the back of the Newell farm to see the toe. Newell and Haynes jumped into the hole and began to assist in the clearing of more soil.   Quickly a pair of feet emerged into the sunlight. One of the men - I suspect it was Hayes – observed, “I declare, some old Indian has been buried here!” The digging became frenetic. Hayes said, “as fast as they cleared the body toward the head, I cleared the dirt off about up to the hand on the belly.”

By sunset that Saturday evening, neighbors were walking over to the Newell farm to have a look. The Syracuse Journal described the excitement. "Men left their work, women caught up their babies, and children in all numbers hurried to the scene..."  Sunday brought larger crowds, as people stopped by on their way to and from church. And, of course, John Haynes carried word of the discovery to the city of Syracuse. On Monday, 18 October 1869 the “Syracuse Standard” published the news under the headline “PETRIFIED”, and described the Giant in detail. “It has been...examined by physicians, and they assert positively that it must have been once a living giant. The veins, eyeballs, muscles, tendons of the heel, and cords of the neck are all very fully exhibited...Mr. Newell proposes now to allow it to rest as found until examined by scientific men. It certainly is one of the connecting links between the past and present races, and of great value.” The telegraph spread the story in minutes across the country, “A NEW WONDER” and “THE PETRIFIED GIANT” Added the Syracuse paper, “ The story has passed from one to another till very many, probably ten thousand of our citizens, have already heard of it.”

Monday morning the look-y-loos where met by large tent (above)  erected over the giant, which a “Dr. Boynton” declared was actually a statue, “of a Caucasian. The features are finely cut and are in perfect harmony.”. To enter the tent and gaze upon the giant for fifteen minutes, visitors now paid 25 cents. Mr. Newell took in $220 that Monday. And with 400 visitors a day making the trek down from the rail head at Syracuse, the crowds kept growing, the average day's take was well over $500. One visitor observed, "The roads were crowded with buggies, carriages and even omnibuses from the city, and with lumber-wagons from the farms — all loaded with passengers.”. That second Sunday after its discovery, 2,600 curious viewers shuffled through the tent, now paying 50  cents each..

The visitor quoted above, Mr. Andrew White, tried to maintain his scientific detachment once he was inside, but “with the subdued light from the roof of the tent...and the limbs contorted as if in a death struggle...An air of great solemnity pervaded the place. Visitors hardly spoke above a whisper."  The town's one hotel did a month's worth of business every day. Stands to sell sweet apple cider and gingerbread suddenly appeared, to tend to the crowds, a few even renting space on Mr. Newell's farm. Pamphlets appeared (above), almost magically, detailing theories about where the Cardiff Giant had come from. Almost unnoticed in the crowds, George Hull slipped into the village, as did H.B. Martin. They brought with them Colonel J.W. Wood, one of P.T. Barnum's competitors.

Joseph H. Wood (above) claimed the title of Colonel thanks to his experience as an 18 year old  in the 1835 “war” between Ohio and Michigan territory. He spent the next 15 years operating a “traveling museum” out of Cincinnati, then opened a stationary one in Philadelphia's old Bolivar Hotel. When that burned down in 1857, he opened a new one in St. Louis, and with a partner in 1859 opened “The Great Burlesque Circus - A Pantomimic and Acrobatic Exhibition of Dogs and Monkeys” in Chicago.

In 1862 J.H. Wood opened another museum (above) on East Clark Street in Chicago. Observed the Colonel's own publicity, it was “remarkable for its specialties.” For a mere 25 cent entrance fee, you could gaze upon “...more than sixty cases of birds, reptiles, insects, and objects from around the world, all arranged somewhat haphazardly.” On display was a model of the Parthenon, Daniel Boone’s rifle, mummies and a 96 foot long whale skeleton. Some of his exhibits were even real. “Col. Wood, the proprietor, knows he has a good thing, and that he does not hide it in the dark.”

His arrival within a week of the “discovery” of the Cardiff Giant, as it was now being called, testified to Wood's deep involvement in the creation of the fraud. And it guaranteed the rapid collapse of the entire scheme.

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THE GIANT KILLER Chapter Two

  

I think the most profound insight into the black heart and soul of George Hull was the description of him given by one critic who said simply, "George was a confirmed scoundrel”.  In the summer of 1867, several months before George's alleged epiphany with the Reverend Turk in Ackley, a blacksmith from 35 miles south  in Marshalltown,   named H.B.. Martin, signed into room 11 at the St Charles Hotel in the tiny outpost of Fort Dodge, Iowa. The village had only 700 souls or so, so H.B. Martin's behavior easily stood out.

Martin closely examined buildings clad in the local gypsum, and was seen walking outside of town, pausing to visit those places where the Des Moines River and its tributaries had sliced open the glacial loess and revealed the beds of gypsum (above)  below.  Seventy million years earlier a tongue of an inland sea had invaded this land, advancing again and again, leaving behind after each evaporate retreat a dry chalky precipitate, layered beds of gypsum, up to 300 feet thick. Martin asked few questions, and avoided sharing his own concerns with the locals. And after a few days, Mr. Martin checked out of the St. Charles Hotel, and disappeared

One year later, on Saturday, 6 June, 1868, Mr Martin returned to the St. Charles Hotel, this time registering as a resident of Boston, Massachusetts. This time he was accompanied by a tall, broad shouldered, fellow dressed all in black,  named George Hull, who gave his address as Birminham, New York. On Monday, 8 June, the two visited Mr. C.B. Cummings, who owned an outcrop along Soldier Creek, north of town. The pair explained they were looking for a sample of the geologic wonders of Fort Dodge, to be displayed in New York City. How much, they asked, would the old man charge to supply a single block of his gypsum, 12 feet long, 3 or 4 feet wide and 2 or 3 feet thick.

Cummings assumed he was dealing with idiots. He explained that besides being expensive, such a block would weigh three tons. There were no wagons in Iowa that could carry that weight to a rail head on the abysmal Iowa roads. Hull and Martin assured Mr. Cummings that price was no object. Cummings smelled trouble and told the pair to buy their giant block of gypsum from somebody else.

Hull and Martin doggedly shifted their activities to the south of Fort Dodge, where they leased a small “improved” one acre lot and hired a man to cut a 12 foot block by 4 feet by 3 feet off the a gypsum ledge hanging over Gypsum Creek. The quarry man, Mike Foley, took their money and offered no suggestions on the practicality of their scheme. He split $15 with his friend, George Webber, and two other men to help him load the three ton block onto a heavy duty wagon. It took four horses to pull the block, and on Sunday, 14 June, 1868 they started toward the nearest rail head, 40 miles to the south, at Boone, Iowa, then called Montana, Iowa.

It would take them 43 days to get there, at an average speed of of less than a mile a day. First the wagon broke down, just as Mr. Cummings had warned it would. Hull and Martin, with the assistance of Foley, managed to fashion repairs and strengthen the wagon. But the first bridge they came to collapsed under the load, damaging the wagon again. It took a few days to make those repairs, after which the three men struggled to muscle the wagon and its three ton block across a stream, and up the opposite bank. Once on solid ground again, Hull allowed Foley to shorten the block, shaving its weight by over a ton. I'm willing to bet the poor horses, if they could have spoken, would have thanked Mr. Foley.

The entire journey was a test of endurance,   a “Fitzcarraldo” trial of sweat and blood and determination, a journey to Hull and back, and no less admirable because it was not being suffered in an humanitarian effort. Perhaps never in human history was so much been suffered by so few for so long,  just to cheat so many out of so little.  But on Monday, 27 July 1868, the exhausted horses staggered into Boone/Montana, Iowa and dragged the wagon and block and the exhausted pair of would-be crooks up to the Northwestern Railroad station. Freight charges were paid, and the block was loaded into box car number 447. The next day it started its journey east.

Mike Foley left the party in Boone. He used his payment to invest in a livery stable in Fort Dodge, which he ran for several years. The exhausted H.B. Martin disembarked as the train passed through his hometown of Marshalltown.  And the black-hearted George Hull accompanied his precocious cargo on to Chicago.

Literally on the shore of Lake Michigan, George Hull had found a sculpture who was willing to create his giant. German immigrant Eduard Gustave Burkhardt had made a good living cutting headstones and carving angels and figureheads, working in a barn in the center of the Old City Cemetery, between North Clark Street and the lake, in what is today Lincoln Park. 

But in 1866, with cholera killing 5% of the population of Chicago every year because bodies were decomposing in soggy ground adjacent to the source of the city's drinking water, (Lake Michigan) Cook County banned any new burials in the old cemetery, and Eduard found his business moving out to the private suburban cemeteries. He was glad to get the assignment from Hull, grateful he and his two apprentices , Henry Salle and Fred Mohrman, had paying work for another month. None of them ask many questions.

Hull stayed at the “Garden City”, a “third rate hotel” in downtown Chicago, but spent most of his time in Burkhardt's studio, where, legend has it, he served as the model for the face of his giant (above)  - sans mustache, of course. Like a child playing with a new chemistry set, as the sculptors chipped away and then smoothed the shaped gypsum with sandpaper, Hull experimented with stains to give the emerging giant an aged appearance, and applied sulfuric acid to the back of the head to suggest immersion in water. Darning needles were even used to simulate pours in the giant's skin. The carving took seven weeks, and when finished was 10 feet, 4 ½ inches tall, 3 feet 1 ½ inches broad at the shoulders, and was down to a fighting weight of just under 1 ½ tons. On 22 September, 1868, the giant was boxed and labeled as “finished marble”, and shipped by rail to a Mr. George Olds,  in Union City, New York.

To his credit - if that is the correct term - Eduard Burkhardt never claimed his work on the fraud. But because Eduard died a few years later, and his business went bankrupt and was sold off in 1875, the shame of a failed business got mixed up with his participation in the fraud, and the Burkgardts never publicly recognized Eduard's willingness to feed his family and workers by whatever means necessary.  Blaming the immigrant sculptor for the success of George Hull's fraud is no less absurd than blaming the Reverend Turk for inspiring the fraud.

On Tuesday, 13 October, 1868 the eleven foot long wooden crate arrived via the New York and Erie railroad at the tiny station of Union (now Endicott) New York, just ten miles west of Bimingham. It sat there for three weeks, until Wednesday, 4 November, when a tall man with a round face, sharp blue eyes and a black mustache, identifying himself as George Olds, arrived to claim the huge package. He and another man supervised the loading of the box into a heavy duty wagon, pulled by a team of four horses. And they immediately set off on the road north, toward Syracuse.

Experience had better prepared George Hull and H.B. Martin for this journey - the burden was half the weight and the roads of upstate New York were in far better condition than those on the Iowa frontier. The pair stopped overnight at an inn run by a Mr. Luce, and the next day continued 30 miles up the Tioughnioga River valley, passing through the village of Homer. Here, George Hull happened to run into an acquaintance, who greeted him by name and asked what he was transporting. George told him "castings" and cut the conversation off. 

The encounter spooked Hull, and 15 miles further north up the road, at the village of Tully, Hull checked into the hotel on the shores of Green Lake. Martin continued on alone. On the rainy Monday evening of 9 November, 1868, the giant approached its destination, ½ mile west of the tiny village of Cardiff, across Kennedy Creek, on the farm of William C. "Stub" Newell.

Mr. Newell had prepared the ground, digging a five foot deep, 12 foot long trench in a low spot behind his barn, hidden from any prying eyes. The wagon was left in a stand of woods until after nightfall, when it was backed up to the trench. Hull had arrived to help, having walked all the way from Tully. The crate protecting the giant was broken down, and the statute allowed to slide off the wagon and into the earth. Some quick work in the mud, and in the morning H.B. Martin returned the hired wagon and horses to Union, and caught the next train for Chicago. The morning of 10 November, George Hull reappeared at his hotel in Tully, soaking wet and covered in mud. He checked out and returned to his home in Birmington, New York. 

But as Sherlock Holmes would have said if he was a real person  – “The Game was afoot.”

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