Waterbury evening Democrat., 1905-11-13
THE ART OF LOAFING
As It Is Viewed by General
 Jake Smith.
CONSISTS IN ACTION, NOT IDLEEEss

Veteran Fighters Idea of a Life of Leisure-Is to Broaden All That Is
 Most Refined In a Mans Tastes.
 Will Automobile In France and ! Wants Chiefly to study Art In Fa- nous Galleries Abroad.
 General Jacob Hurd Smith, U S. A.
 (retired), who won fame as a great ! fighter in the rebellion in Cuba and in
 the Philippines, recently sailed for Eu-
 rope with the express purpose and de | liberate intention of loafing, says the
 New York World. Loafng, according 1 to General Smith, is a science, even a fine art, and he goes to Europe to loaf ] because he can find no one in America
 who will loaf with him in the way he wants. People here are too busy, or think they are, which is just as bad, to spend time in enjoying themselves, and he is sociable, genial soul who
 feels that by life of fighting he has
 earned the right to enjoy himself, but he does not like to loaf alone.
 What Is loafng for me-" he said,
 may not be Ioafing for others. Some
 retired army officers have ideas of re-
 taxation that do not appeal to me I visited one man recently and said to him, General, now that you are out of the army, what are you going to do
 with yourselfT And he answered grayely, I am studying turtles An other good friend of mine I found in his garden. deyoting his life to raising roses. I told those fellows they were burying themselves. they were too mar row In their ideas. but they seemed happy and satisfied.
 My idea of spending life of leisure is to broaden as much as possible all that is most refined in mans tastes. l call loafing and what most men in this country think they are too busy to do. Since I was retired from active service three years ago, at the age ; of sixty-two. I have spent a large part of my time in Europe, studying the methods of European armies and en- toying myself in my own way. Now am going back there for the winter" General Smith is a short. slender man, who looks very like Field Mar shal Lord Roberts of the British army. His shoulders are square, his chest deep, and he carries himself like true soldier. His face is scanned and criss- crossed with the wrinkles that years of hardship and peril have stamped; bis nose is of the aquiline type that Napoleon required in his generals; his eyes are pale greenish blue and look at you with penetrating fearlessness, amounting even to fierceness when in- tensity of thought or expression deepens the two lines that rise from his nose and bisect his forehead. but that melt into tenderness when he speaks of his wife or the boys who fought under him and were killed. He is bald, with 2 fringe of iron gray hair and a thick but. closely cropped iron gray mus tache. He dresses with the same quiet refinement
 A picturesque forcibleness character izes his speech. the force that is exem- plified in his famous dispatch to Gen eral Otis from Annaiees when besieged in that Luzon village by force of na- tives far larger than the handful of men he had under him: T will hold this place till hell freezes over and then fight on the lcer'
 "Mrs. Smith and I sail on Saturday direct for London. We shall be enter tained by some friends at Hampstead for about ten days. and then we go to Paris, where 1 have many friends. From there we go down the Loire to Tours and. making that city our head quarters. spend a few weeks automo- billing about among the chateaux. have a friend who has a ine fast motor car. and I shall act as chauffeur Oh. yes, understand the car. I spent sev- eral weeks last spring in the factory of the makers studying it's mechanism, and can take 1t all to pieces and put 1t together again without trouble. From Tours we shall go into central France, through the Puy de Dome re- zion, down to the Riviera and SO on to Italy. reaching Rome about Christmas. I want to spend Christmas day in Rome. After a few weeks there we shall sail from Naples for Palermo and will spend the early spring In Sicily, then back to the continent. to Baireuth in time for the Wagner fes- tival. then to Munich for the musical season thtre and SO back home about the list of June. I have laid out no definite itinerary. but this is an out line of my general plan. which I shall vary as the spirit moves me
 Tt may seem a strange thing for an old soldier to be fond of. but art is what I want most 10 study. I want to be able when I look at a picture to recozniEe the painter by the style. to know the school and the history of the artist and. further still. 10 know pre- cisely why ! admire the picture. what gre the qualities in If which appeal to my sense of beauty. ike 10 roam about in the famous galleries Of Eu- rope. I Ike to meet and to know the men who can give me new and intelIi- gent views sf things which are worth knowing. ! like to talk with men who have time 10 devote to the finer things Of life. do not want my horizon to be bounded by turtles or by ro~es. alarming in their ovn nzrrou way as these things may be. [ have net much