The Bourbon news. [volume] (Paris, Ky.) 1895-19??, 1902-01-31
THE LOVE OF HUMBue.
Philosophical Remarks on a Curious
Trait OF Human Nature and an
Odd Character.


make the discovery which finally
brought disaster to Gen. Neff: But"
the younger child will say, Its
not that way" ''Never mind" the
older one will reply, "well play it's
that way" Then for the next hour
they will be happy in an enchanted
world of their own, playing that
things which are not that way are ex-
actly the way they want them. In
one way or another they are likely to
go on doing this all their lives-per-
haps at rarer and rarer intervals
after they are 40, but even then occa-
sionally. When they grow too tired
to play for themselves through the
use of their own imaginations,
they will eXpend from % cents to So
in buying a work of fiction in which
some ingenious person uses his mag
ination to do their playing for them,
says the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.
Gen. Jeff was an ingenious person
with an active imagination, which he
put at the service of anyone who
showed the least inclination to play
that things which are not so will
turn out the way we want them. He
was a tall, dignified man, with a be-
nevOlent cOuntenance, gray hair, a
silk hat and a kind smile. He also
had a great fund of politeness and a
mildly deprecating manner, which he
reserved for emergencies. He was
passing through one of these emer-
gencies the last time he visited ST.
Louis. 1t was, in fact, not only an
emergency, but a crisis, for, in spite
of his benevolence, his kind smile and
his silk hat, he was being searched in
front of the bar of the police station,
under the direction of a sergeant,
on whom he was eXhausting the re-
sources of his politeness and his dep
recating manner. He was just assur-
ing everyone of how much the mis-
take made in treating him with such
indignity would finally be regretted,
when from a private, pocket some
where on the inside of his frock coat
the officer extracted what seemed to
be large roll of money. That"
said the officer, lis his bundle"
When Gen. Neff, who used only
the choicest English, heard this
coarse expression, he was shocked
into silence. He said nothing as the
sergeant unrolled the bills and
showed that the whole interior of
what appeared to be a competence
was composed of brown paper. Take
him down. said the sergeant. Good
night, gentlemen!" said Gen. Neff.
On looking into Gen. Neff's private
history, found that he had spent his
life-or at least the professional part
of tin convincing other people,
many of them entire strangers to
him, that he had been sent by Provi-
dence to reward their merits by max
ing all the things they had been play
ing turn out to be so in an incred-
IDLY short time. He appeared to them
as the enchanter or the good genius
appeared in the fairy tales of their
youth. In half an hour after his first
meeting with a farmer who had come
to the city to economic in buying his
supplies he would show him a way to
raise his mortgage and have enough
left in the bank to build a modern
house in place of the old farmhouse.
Many other things of this kind he
could do-so many that he came to
be known as the most expert conf
dence man" of his generation, a man
of many names and many cities, but
always with a benevolent cOunte-
nance and a kind smile which never
left him even when he was being
locked up.
Gen. Neff kept his mental reserva-
tons wrapped up inside the genuine
bills along with the brown paper they
concealed and so ended by becoming
a confidence man instead of a really
benevolent enchanter. If a man is
really benevolent and really an en-
chanter, he may be of great use in
the world, but the most benevolent
man ever knew stopped the attempt
at enchantment very early in life. He
also had gray hair and kind smile, but
if i had gone to him in the hope that
he would advise me in the way l
wishedtO be advised, / knew he would
have told me ito do the thing l never
liked, which is the thing l ought"
Outside of the beautiful world of the
enchanted humbug, there is another
world in which he lived for more than
half a century Perhaps it took him 30
wears in it to learn the kind of smile
he had during the 20 years 1 knew
him best, but however he got it, or
however long it took him to learn it,
he learned it by finding first, not
what was pleasant, but what was
true-not what he liked, but what he
ought. When things were not right
he did what he could to set them
right, instead of dreaming they would
come right, but / think he spent most
of his life in setting himself right,
and that he acquired his kind smile N
doing it. And so he had peace at
last"
Love Laughs at Dogs, Also.
The Damsel-Oh, Harold! I've been
ca friUhtened for Won Papa has