The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-03-29

] fish and continental galleries but who practically since the beginning of the | war, has neglected her brush and pa l lette in favor of the fine work of sending food and clothing to the allied prisoners in the hands of the enemy and who at last accounts was dispatch
 ing these at the rate of something over 250 a week!
 Mir Humphrey, who is the most
 agreeable of hosts and the most de- lghtful of raconteurs as well as one
 of the most jealous of "too old for ac-
 tive service" patriots, is a veteran of another great war. He fought in the
 American civil war on the side of the
 south for the best part of two years.
 He went into that great conflict al
 the age of 1S fresh from college, and
 was wearing the rebel grey. when Lee surrendered. After that he engaged in mining in California. Nevada and oth CT parts of the United States and Can ada for upward of 20 years with hun dreds of men. including many Indians,
 under him, took a leading part in the hazardous timber industry in the vir- gin forests of the uppermost reaches
 of the Ottawa river At this time he
 was an expert at piloting the great
 rafts by means of which the rough
 hewn timber was brought down, hun dreds of miles, over precipitous
 slides" and through turbulent rapids
 from the primeval forest to the booms
 at Quebec Persona grata, for many
 years, at Government House, his
 guests on some of these trips included
 many celebrities of the times--among
 others the late Duke of Argyll Cthen
 Marquis of Lorne) and Princess Louise,
 Queen Victoria's daughter, not to men,
 tion Mark Twain. whom MT. Humpn
 rey previously had known in the Amer
 ican west and of whom in those early
 days he has many good stories to tell.
 At the time of the famous Minnesota massacre" in which thousands of whites, men, women and children, were butch cred, tortured and mutilated by savage redskins who had escaped from the reser- vations of that state, MT. Humphrey was in the thick of the trouble, and narrowly escaped with his life after running fight, the story of which, as he told it to me, provided more thrills to the min ute than the liveiest wild vest film or story that ever one had read. In more recent years, this much adventured spe- cial constable has travelled 1000 miles down the River Danube, and had other exciting experiences while hunting as the guest of prince in the Carpathians. He was in Belgrade when Queen Natalie, the illfated spouse of King Milan was ex- pelled from the country, and was a spec tator in that strange drama at consider able peril from the bullets and bayonets of the regiment that charged the fren- zied mob of sympathizers with the de- posed queen. He has been in South America, too, as well as in other parts of the continent of Europe and done lot of other picturesque things-includ- ing carrying on experiments at the bot tom of one of the deepest wells in Eng land!
 One of the illustrations to this article is an uncommonly good caricature of it's subject by Max Beerbohm, the clever brother of Sir Herbert Tree, who is one of MT and Mrs. Humphreys many friends in the artistic world. About this our special tells an amusing story.
 "A while ago. said he, "my wife lost an article of some value and a police in- spector called to get details about it. While waiting in the hall, he spotted that caricature, which is probably one of Max Beerbohm's best, and studied it care fully for a minute or more. Finally he said:
 Well, MT. Humphrey, it's like you, but I don't call it a good photograph.
 When I first talked with this vener- able guardian of the Kings London resi- dence it was soon after the destruction by British force sent especially to carry out that work of the Rumanian oil wells and granaries.
 I've been especially interested in that" said MT. Humphrey, because I helped to burn up over $4OOO,OOO worth of tobacco in Petersburg, Va, shortly before the end of the civil war The fighting just before that, in which I took part, was, by the way, the same that you see in the big battle scene in the Birth of a Nation film. We had been falling back slowly on Petersburg, fighting as we retreated