Springfield globe-republic. (Springfield, Ohio) 1884-1887, 1886-06-24
STORY OF A BOHEMIAN.
GEORGE II. BUFFERS ADVENTURES
AMONG THE MUMMleO PhARAOHS.

Champagne Poured Down the Throat OF
the sphinI-Shaking Up an Ancient
City-Sending Mummies Home to the .
Boys-The Close.
George II. Butler, who died in obscurity .
and poN erty the other day in Washington, /
supplied the cowboy element in journalism |
for a while In some respects he was re !
markabe man, and he hung for u time upon
the skirts Of large events like rough but /
brilliant spaugle He was one of those
American products who combine active !
brains and active muscles In ephemeral lit /
erature who drank deeply at the Peorlan
spring of frontier journalism, and carried u
club in his mind with which he made re
marks that were chi fly personal
Well George stood for while head and
shoulders above his contreres on his own
phrases He had a man of strong person
ality behind HIM, for II while, in the person
of George Wilkes, whose columns he used
Then, ali at once through the influence of
his brother, Ben Butler, George Butler got
the appointment as consul to Egypt
when that country was under the extrava-
CANT and voluptuous khedive, ami George
married the brilliant AMI beautiful Rose
Eytinge and started for the land OF the
pyramIdS The story of his conduct and
adventures there, official and private, has
never been told A kind of t. emulous 81
lence encompasses the record. Ii Is doubt
full If such colaborateurs as Jules Verne
and lola would tell 1t, Cor the simple rea-
son that they would despair OF having 1t
believed That ancient mariner, Capt
Marryat would have rsvelled in It
WITH MODERN IMPROVEMENTS
Egypt was full of American officers, spec
ulators, dVenturers, tourists The khedlve
was squandering millions He tried to make
Cairo n combination of Paris and Chicago
lie wanted all the modern improvements,
even to an original Italian opera by Verdi,
which, by the way, has been sung round
the world since. He even dreamed Of an ele-
waited railway TO connect the pyramids,
and thought of putting down the Nicholson
pavement on the shores OF Lake Murls
In the land OF the Ptolemles arrived the
Cleopatra of the drama TO SIT down amid the
souvenirs of the Cleopatra of history. There
stretched the gigantic aui my sterIous Nile
into the trackleSs sands and unbroken ST.
lence OF the desert Here swarmei the ad-
yenturers of the nineteenth century on
mummied ground, scentIng new enterprises
in the murky atmosphere OF that graveyard
OF nations
II there i anything that an American of
Mr.. Buffers type regards with a deep and
daring impudence it is the past There is
only one prevailing sentiment in his breast,
anu it Is the sentiment OF Now. There were
no forty centuries looking down on him
The fact Is be looked down from the ped
estal of his AmeTicanism on so centuries
He inspected Alexandra very much as
he would have gone Summing. He took in
that ancient city, bigger at one time than
Rome and stretching still in broken lines
from what were once the palm groves Of
Pnaros to the libyan scenes of Canobus-
like the outspread CLOAK of a Macedonian
horseman-and he remarked that 1t ought
TO lie shook up
My feeble pen utterly refuses 10 put into
comprehensive narration the exact meth
DDS adopted by George to shake up CAIRO
and Alexandria Wild stories came across
the ocean at intervals of his progress in
moderni ing the customs of the Copts Now
and then American officers returned with
strange accounts on their lips of how George
had taken the khedives yacht and gone up
the Nile with brass band and q choice
crowd and hal cleaned out every village
between Cairo and Karnac while the band
played the "Star-Spangled Banner, Of how
they had poured quarts Of extra dry"
down the throat of the Sphinx while the
chorus went up weirdly over the debris OF
tine past OF "Kally Round the Flag, Boys"
SENDING MUMMIEs TO THE BOYS
In the yellow dusks of that sunset land
can see the dark eyed hose Eytinge sitting
on a broken block Of marble, where l,H1J
years ago the magnificent cangia of Cleo
patra swept over the tuTbid waters, and
Chairman swung her fan Of tropical feath
ers, and where now the drowsy scent of
the mummiei earth fills all the air with the
liant opiate OF the forgotten Strange
Orient dreams must have swept like phan-
toms sun tipped, through the brain oI the
American woman, cast there on a memo
rial shore by the mad incidents of American
life
But her husband was sending mummies
to the boys at home There wasn't a poll.
tician or u prize Ii ghter that didn't get one.
think John Morrissey had four, and there
was a chop house on the Sixth avenue that
had three GeOrge sent the descriptions
with them This" said he, on one occa-
sion, AS the dried carcass OF Ramesis l.
He is said to have been a high old duffer
and married his own sister. He's well pre-
served Set him up with the boys He has
d fine Rembrandt expression, on a three
quarter view. Get Sarony TO pose him"
Ali this Egyptian experience is now like
the traditions Of Egypt 1t aas a faraway
odor. But there must be official memo
randa In the state department that beat the
far-famed dispatches of John PhrniN-
Oriental intrlgues; Arabian nights narra-
ratioIIs Of Americans who came back;
Monte CristO schemes Of English and Amer
lean contractors who tried TO use the consul
who invariably drank too much champagne
at the wrong time
by and 10y George came home quietly
There was a discreet hush about it, and he
turned up at the AstOr house with the
boys" one daf. Then, to put it broadly,
be plunged into bohemian literature and
champagne BIn life seemed to have lost
it, LesL After a man has rustled the Phar
oahs, Union Square Is dull When a man
has astonished the past and the present sim
ultaneously the merely contemporaneous
human inter, st of New York is weak
An English engineer told me afterward
that he was IN Egypt with Butler and that
he Butler, could have made a million of
dollars there had he chosen Enormous
sums were being expended, not only by the
khedive, but by English and American
competitors for the yiceroyal patronage 1t
is morally certain that George did not make
cent He came back poor and he died
stood by him
remember interviewing him once about
Egypt and the conference was mainly in
teresting to me account Of bis strong
masculine indifference to everything that
made Egypt interesting A splendid mod
ern contempt breathed out Of HIM and
swept the lmmemorial out Of sight His Of
fetal career reminded me of Gothic dra-
goon quartered in a storiei cathedral -Nym
CrInkle in New York World
The Boy and the Hornet.
A Boy he Stuffed his ole Clothes with
Straw and put the Dummy in a fence
corner of the Medder Bime-by an Old
Hornet came along on his Way home from
stealin' Wool, and as Soon as he set Eyes
on the Boy he sad:
Looks like Thunder Shower off there
and it won't do for this Boy to get Wet.
He seems like Boy anxious to get up in
the World, and guess III Lift him"
He lit down on the straw-stuffed body
and Jabbed in his Ole Stinger for keeps,
and he was expectin' TO hear Screams of