Los Angeles herald., 1910-02-13
RUBBISH HEAP
YIELDS ART GEM
MADONNA PAINTING HUNG FOR
YEARS IN SALOON
NEW OWNER HAD 1T THROWN
INTO BACK YARD
italian Porter with a Sense for the
Beautiful Accidentally Finds
1t and Recognizes
Its Worth

In the course OF half a century a
good many gay old topers tottered in
and out of Joe Guthries saloon up in
Sacramento. So did a good many who
were not old topers. Day in and day
out, among that nondescript row of
thirsty men, leaned some men VINO
could quote miles from the works OF
the worlds greatest poets.
Joes place wasn't much to look at,
inside or out. Decoration wasn't in
his line. He believed a foyer of a
theater and a gin mill were two differ
ent things. But just to break the mo-
notony of the broad eXpanse of wall
in front of the bar he hung up three
pictures.
And so it happened that a good many
old topers, down through fifty odd
years ran the gamut of this shabby
exhibit. They paused before the first
and peered hard and admiringly at
the picture of Jem Mace the old
fighter, whose massive proportions
grew as they looked. Then they
passed on to the secondhand passed
it. 1t was only a dusty old painting
of a woman-just a glance-it held no
fascination for them.
But the third-that always held
them up. 1t was an old chrome OF the
Derby, whose bright colors all the dust
and CRIME in Sacramento couldn't dim.
They gaped at it by the minute and
wondered if the big bay on the pole
got away with the money.
Paintings Fascinate
The man who knew Dickens and Mil
ton and Shakespeare, the gambler,
the sport, the grocer, the baker, the
candlesticll maker-the whole crew of
them-saw Joe Guthrie's little art gall
lery just as the topers had seen them;
stopped at the first, spurned the sec
ond held up before the third, then
passed out, always to connect Joe
Guthries saloon with Jem Mace and
the Derby in their minds eye.
Sometimes Joe himself, when he was
about to shut up shop, used to pause
before the little group and peer up at
the middle one-the battered oil paint
ing of the woman. Close to, she looked
young and quite pretty, some would
say. That cord was frayed near the
top, and Joe frequently contemplated
it vaguely wondering how soon it would
fall down? Beyond that it gave him
no concern except-well, except once in
a while he remembered how the old
thing came into his possession, that a
long time ago, fifty-three years to be
exact, Jim Lansing, breathing his last
after vicious gun fight in the saloon,
gave it to him and tried to tell him
something. Joe took the picture and
hung it up in the saloon. So it was
that the picture often reminded him of
Lansing and made him wonder what
he wanted to say in those dying words.
But he never could, and as he didn't
know anything more about the dead
man than that he came up from Texas
and got killed in q barroom fight, 1t
didn't bother him much.
New Idea About Saloon
Not long ago Joe sold his place to
Charles Schneider, a fellow townsman.
Schneider's ideas about a saloon were
vastly different than Joe's. For in
stance, he wanted no sordid and mean
ingless pictures hanging on his walls.
Pictures of fighters and races and deeds
of violence his instinct told him were
apropos and in keeping with the en-
vironment of the saloon. For what
they were worth, Schneider pushed
Jem Mace down at one end of the
place and the Derby at the other to
make room for the new ones he
promptly put in. But the old one in
the middle he jerked down in disgust
and SHE'D it out into the rubbish pile
in the back yard without compunction.
There it laid, and there it might have