href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@44282@[email protected]#CHAPTER_XXIII" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">CHAPTER XXIII.

Ben’s Generous Act in Indiana—Under Arrest in Pittsburgh with Kitty—Goes West—Life in Grand Rapids—Mistaken for a Minister 194   CHAPTER XXIV. One More Challenge to Allen—Return to the Oil Country—Ben and McDonald—Opens Dance-House in Elko City—Bullion House—Kitty Runs Away 202   CHAPTER XXV. Saratoga Trip—Bullion again—Arrival in Tarport—Opens Dance-House—A Groundless Scandal—The Truth about the Girl Carrie 209   CHAPTER XXVI. Ben Leaves Tarport—What some of the Oil Country Papers had to say about him—Arrival in New York 213   CHAPTER XXVII. Ben as a Reformer—His Opinions on the Temperance Question—Physical Culture—The Social Evil—Prisons and Penitentiaries—Gambling 221   CHAPTER XXVIII. Conclusion 237

 

 

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INTRODUCTORY.

 

The life of any man is interesting as it reveals human nature and discloses character. Biography is in itself a combination of all those elements which go to make up literature. It is humor and pathos; it is poetry and prose; it is the sternest tragedy and the broadest farce. Fiction builds its most fantastic structures upon the inventions of the brain. Biography writes in lasting characters upon the granite front of truth. The record which it leaves is more wonderful than any flight of fancy—more startling than any outburst of imagination.

If it were possible to read the history of men’s lives written upon their faces, the world would have little need of romances. This shabbily-dressed figure, which to-day you jostle against in the street, might furnish material for a volume of exciting tales. That white-faced woman, who stares with a half-frightened look at the passers-by, could unfold a tale of more terrible interest than ever evolved itself from the brain of the novelist. Around and about us, in all places and at all times, the surging sea of humanity casts up its broken spars and dismantled hulks. Those who sail in calm waters, or walk the beach, may pick up these remnants of wrecks, and find in them clews to voyages full of tragic interest.

Since this duty is often neglected by the more prosperous voyagers, and since men’s faces are not books which they who run may read, it falls to the lot of the biographer to show to others the mystery of life.

Probably no man’s career, if truthfully told, would be wholly barren of interest. In proportion to the eventfulness of that career it gains in interest. But it is a very serious mistake to assume that a person’s avocation in life determines the rank to which he ought, properly, to be assigned. The art does not make the artist. It happens that there are a good many preachers in this world who can not preach, a good many actors who can not act, a good many writers who can not write. It happens, too, that there are a good many people who can not do anything—whose excuse for existing remains forever a conundrum. The written lives of such harmless ciphers would be of interest only in so far as they might show the uselessness of the subjects. But a study of any character which is strongly marked ought to prove both entertaining and instructive. Nor is it necessary that such a character should be spotless, in order to teach some wholesome lessons. It has been the lot of the writer to meet some eminently respectable persons who were at heart the most consummate hypocrites. He has known school-teachers who harped upon the necessity of bookish knowledge, while they fastened singular verbs to plural subjects. He has met newly-fledged college graduates who talked loud over a “liberal education,” and floundered in the shallow waters of English syntax. He has talked with crushed poets who cried out against the stupidity of the world, and read their own verses, more limping than the Count Joannes as Romeo. He has listened to straight-laced Puritans pray to be made more Christ-like, and seen them, an hour afterward, turn a starving beggar empty-handed from their door. He has heard pious directors of savings-banks denounce the stage as an instrument of the devil, and learned, the next day, that these sleek Pharisees were under indictments for robbing the poor. He has talked with alleged “statesmen” and found them roughs; with professed Christians, and found them narrow-minded bigots; with the representatives of what is called fashionable society, and found them noodle-heads. One day he met and talked with Ben Hogan, and he found a gentleman.

Does that surprise you?

Let us not fall into any misunderstanding at the outset of this narrative. The qualities which go to make up a gentleman are more readily appreciated than explained. They may be possessed by any man, no matter what his calling in life. They may be acquired under the most unpropitious circumstances, or they may never be acquired, in spite of surroundings and the advantages of education.

Ben Hogan is no saint—but it may be well to add that this volume is not undertaken with a view to promulgating an immoral lesson. Yet, though the hero shall not prove a saint, and though the record of his life may contain some shadows, it is believed that nothing in the pages which follow will be found to offend good taste. Saints, as a general rule, do not make first-rate material for the biographer. The man who launches his craft on life’s sea and sails along in quiet waters, never striking out