The Birmingham age-herald., 1902-12-10
THOMAS MAST DEAD.
Noted cartoonIst Victim of Yellow
 Fever.


 Thomas Mast. who died at Guayoquil, Ecuador. on December 1, was unique genius, who at one time was regarded as the foremost American cartoonist Though at the time of his death he was eonsul-general at Guayaquil. he will be remembered for the work of his pencil rather than for any official position he held.
 Born in Landau. Bavaria. September 27, 1S4o. Mast was brought by his parents to America when a mere infant. Writ ing of his boyhood he said:
 My natural inclination was toward caricature. 1 was never fit for anything else. In the old National Academy Art school in New York city in the ffties when l was but young boy, the sides of my crayoned sheets used to be full of caricatures, in great part those of the political heeler. loved him then; love him now. Old William E. Burton of the Chambers Street theater, New York, gave me my first idea of comic art. When was IA years old and rather diminutive applied for a position at the great pub fishing house of Frank Leslie. Frank Leslie told me to go down and sketch a ferryboat. I sketched it. It was accept ed and I started out upon salary of s5 a week."
 The most important work Mast did for Leslie was the Heenan-Sayers fight in England. Soon afterward he began work on Harpers' Weekly. He did not at once develop the gift which made him the most powerful cartoonist in America, but from the first he made cartoons and little else. They were not humorous at the start, in 1864, but were upon war subjects.
 Toward the close of 1864, when McClel- Ian was nominated for President by the Democrats, Mast began his political work, which ended brilliantly in 1871, when he began his attacks on William M. Tweed. Most of his work at that time on the wooden blocks which were to be carved out into woodcuts afterwards. He did a part of his work with india-ink wash on the wood in the same way. He parted with the Harpers later, owing, it is said to difference of political opin- ion, but returned to the Weekly after long absence at a salary that was then considered remarkable. In the interim he drew cartoons in England. Some said that he got $15,000 a year and some that the figures were $10,000. But his star had declined. Keppler of Puck, had filled the field ,and with merits that Mast nev- CT had and with no limitations or letters.
 Mast could not recover his old place as the chief American cartoonist, He had made much money, but lost most of 1t in a western mining venture. Had Mast n " progress of the country or had he stopped work in 1872, his fame would have been splendid.
 In the closing year of the civil war he was more detested in the south than the most rabid abolitionist, and in the same measure he was idolized In the north. The Union League club of New York gave him a set of plate for what he did to glorify the northern cause. When he fought Tweed with his pencil it was re- ported that his life was threatened and that great bribes were offered him. Tweed was reported to have said that Nasts' pictures worried him more than all that was written by his opponents.
 The artists personal popularity was considerable. His lecture trips when he gave blackboard talks all over the coun- try, made him well known In even the smaller cities, and travellers say that there is scarcely a clubhouse between the Atlantic ana Paclnc cOdSIS III WHICH the visitor will not see Thomas Nast's beard ed face, drawn by himself, framed and in a place of honor.
 It was his ability to express a popular sentiment in a picture that gave him his in vogue. His drawing das always crude inartistic and did not appeal to the pub lie taste of the present day. He had out lived his fame.
 President Roosevelt, like many promi- nent men was kindly disposed toward the old cartoonist, and when the government of Ecuador requested the removal of Per " M. De Leon, consul at Guayaquil, he named Mast for the place.
 When he was an applicant for the posi- ton he treated the subject in a jocular way drawing a fierce cartoon of himself as consul and sending 1t to the secretary of state This pictured him with bristling mustachios and an aggressive air, carry ing valise marked '"r. Mast, Guayaquil, Ecuador
 He was appointed consul May l. left for his post July 1, and had been in South America less than six months when he fell a victim to the scourge of the tropics.