What first struck me was his prodigality in talk. He scattered treasures of anecdote and observation as Aladdin of the wonderful lamp orders his slave to scatter gold pieces. The trait is not common amongst men of letters; they are the worst company in the world; they are taking, not giving; if they have not a notebook and a pencil brutally before you in their hands, they have a notebook and pencil agilely at work in their heads; your pleasure is their business; the word that comes from their lips is but a provocative to gain one more word from you; the smile that answers your smile is but a grimace; and their good stories, until they have been published, are locked behind their lips like books in a safe-deposit box. Flynt had no safe-deposit box for his good stories, and no gift for silence; the anecdotes in his books are amazing; the details of just how he got them are still more amazing; he never learned to use up his material, to economize, and he was more amazing than his material.
He invited me the night I met him to go with him on one of his wanderings. A Haroun-al-Rashed adventureit seemed to me. I closed with the offer at once and asked how I should dress. I had an idea that I must wear a false beard and at least provide myself with a stiletto and a revolver, and be ready to use them. "Why, you will do just as you are," he said. "I shall go just as I am." He did not know it, but he did not tell the truth. He did not change his clothes, but at the first turn into side streets he changed his bearing, the music of his voice, his vocabulary. I could scarce understand one word in five. He was a finished actor; Sir Richard Burton, of course, was his ideal; always in the Under World he passed unsuspected; always from the start of our tramping together he had to explain me. I could never pick up the manner, and indeed was too amused to try; his habit was to explain me in whispers as a dupe, and I had once to rescue him from a fight brought on because he would not consent to sharing with his interlocutor the picking of my pockets. I had more than once to rescue him; he had the height and body of a slim boy of fourteen, but just to see what the beast would do he would have teased my lord the elephant, and he took a drubbing as naturally as any other hardship.
A finished actor, I have written; and an actor knowing to his fingertips many parts. One instance must suffice. I figured usually—I have said it—as a dupe. I was on this night cast for the part of an accomplice, and he for the part of a bold, bad breaker of safes and doors and windows. The character was conceived in an instant. An instant before we were two very tired, very quietmen, strolling home through the Bowery in a bitter, drizzling rain at three o'clock in the morning.
"Say, mate, what's the chanst for a cup o' coffee?"
The speaker was a fully togged out A. B. for the service of the U. S., and on his cap were the lettersOregon. To me the disguise was perfect. He did a bit of the sailor's hornpipe on that slippery, glistening pavement where the rain fell and froze under electric lights.
"The chances are good," said Flynt; and he led the way into a house near by.
The front of the house was as unlighted as respectability demands a house should be at three o'clock in the morning; but there was a dim light at a side door. We went in under the dim light and found music and dancing, and little tables at which we could be served with almost anything except coffee. The "Oregon" took "Whisky straight—Hunter's if you've got it."
"Out at the Philippines?" asked Flynt.
"Sure thing."
"Came round the Cape?"
"Did I? Say, I'll tell you about that."
"Battle of Santiago?"
The sailor was in the midst of the battle of Santiago when Flynt smiled and said quietly:
"Have you seen the Lake Shore push yet?"
To me, at that time, the words were pure enigma, but the color faded out of the sailorman's cheeks, and he dropped back in his chair and said:
"Hell, partner, who are you?"
The rest of the dialogue was swift; I could not follow it; I could only memorize.
"Where did you get those duds?"
"Bought 'em for nine dollars at No. — Bowery."
"What is the lay work?"
"About four per. But the war's played out here; I'm going to shift up State. Where did you get your duds?"
"Just got out."
"Thought your hands looked white. Where did you do your time?"
"Joliet."
"Joliet!—why, I did five years there myself."
And they fell to discussing wardens. Flynt knew the names of the wardens.
"Say, have you got anything on?"
"A little job to-night uptown."
"Can't you put me next?"
"It's my friend's."
This with a nod toward me. The little job uptown was mine. Never having heard before of the little job uptown I declined to put any one next; and we gave the sailorman coin to do a hornpipe for the sitters, and left, presumably, to do the little job. We left in an odor of sanctity, almost of reverence; we were supposed to be accomplished cracksmen, and in high fortune; princes and millionaires of the Under World.
A finished actor—I come back to that—and the streets were his stage, and the first chance word his cue. In a house he was not at home; when he put on the uniformhe must wear at dinner, he put off his memory, his experience, his wit. His anecdotes, his good stories, lived in his "business suit," and refused to wear a Prince Albert or a Tuxedo even, and waved him farewell at the mere sight of a crush-hat. Make no mistake; the anecdotes were as clean as what he has published; but he was to the end a boy; he was shy; and except on his own stage he was shy to the point of silence or of stammering. He knew books; the books dealing with the Under World he knew rather well; but I fancy he never read them except when he was ill. His book was the men in the street; any man, in any street; policemen, cabby, convict, or men of gentle breeding; him he would read from dawn to dawn very shrewdly and gaily, so long as the tobacco was good; and if the tobacco was not good he would still read. I have given one instance of his getting under a man's guard, of his turning him inside out and inspecting him, not unkindly. It was his habit to get under the guard of everyone he met, to turn them inside out, and inspect them, not unkindly. He talked to any one, every one, who gave him an opening; but the man who got the first hearing was the vagabond. In our strollings we never passed one without a halt, and an interview, and copy. "They are all friends, humbugs," he said philosophically; "I have been one of them myself." But he always gave generously for his means, and though he had begun by censuring me for giving, for giving in ignorance, he expected me always also to give.
Again, one anecdote must serve for many. The scenewas Fifth Avenue, two blocks north of Washington Square. The petitioner was a well-set-up, firm-built Englishman, clean-shaven, aged twenty-five, who said to me:
"I beg your pardon?"
"Yes?" I said and halted.
"It's rather beastly, but I need a drink and I haven't a penny—not a sou."
I said "Diable," and put my hand into my pocket. The man's clothes, accent and bearing presumed so much that if he needed a drink he needed food. At once Flynt intervened. What was said I do not know; the two stepped aside; but presently there was laughter from both Flynt and my beggar; and we three sat at table later, and told tales, and flushed one another's secrets. My beggar was a gentleman ranker out on a spree (it is Kipling of course), damned to all eternity, but his guard once broken he was amusing, and Flynt knew the trick to break his guard.
"Why, after I was dropped from the service, and it came to selling my wife's jewels, I had rather beg than that, and I cannot get work," he said simply. "They say my clothes are too good. What the deuce is the matter with my clothes? But begging is not so bad; I make a good thing of it."
At the moment the point I wish to make is that Flynt knew his vagrant in the open. He had a profound contempt for the books written by frock-coated gentlemen who have academic positions, and say "sociology," and measure the skulls and take the confessionsof the vagrant in captivity. Skull for skull he believed there was small difference between that of the first scamp and the first minister of the Gospel. I set that down for what it is worth as his opinion. The confessions of a vagrant in captivity are always, he said, false. This I fancy is almost true.
I had chose a passably dreary seminary course in Harvard in which all the literature of criminology had been got up and reported. I myself had looked into some of the books—too many—some is too many. Five minutes of Flynt's talk turned my books into a heap of rubbish. Five hours' stroll with him made me forget that the rubbish heap existed. At his best, and it was at his best that I knew him, he was what he wished to be—the foremost authority among those who knew him in the side streets.
He had paid for his knowledge—paid with his person. "Old Boston Mary" I believe to be in part fiction; I could never surprise the little man into a confession; but he has lain on the trucks of a Pullman and in the blinding cinders and dust seen his companion lose grip from sheer weariness, and go—to meet Boston Mary. He had tightened his own grip, and been sorry. He could do no more.
In "My Life," Josiah Flynt says, "I have spoken of Arthur Symons' interest in my first efforts to describe tramp life. I think it was he and the magazine editors who abetted me in my scribblings, rather than the university and its doctrines of 'original research.'... His (Symons') books and personal friendship, are both valuable to me, but for very different reasons. I seldom think of Symons the man, when I read his essays and verses, and I only infrequently think of his books, or of him as a literary man at all, when we are together."
Josiah Flynt not only greatly admired Arthur Symons, the distinguished Englishman, as poet, master of prose, and critic, but had an affectionate regard for him, one expression of which was his use of the nickname, "Symonsky." While Flynt's guest in Berlin, Symons had some difficulty in persuading a letter-carrier that a communication from London was for ArthurSymons, Esq., and not for someHerr Symonsky! The Slavic twist to the name amused Flynt, who seized upon it. His shy, affectionate nature found an outlet in renaming close friends.
After one of his visits to London, I asked Flynt if he had seen much of Symons.
"Symonsky put me up, you know," he replied; then with a quick, side glance and a smile, as he lighted a cigarette, "but, to be perfectly frank, whenIwent to bed,hewas getting up!"
Here we have defined in a sentence the difference between the two men. Their natures, like their lives, were never parallel; they only just touched one another's imaginations in passing!
Flynt was then studying London'sUnder World—the great city's blackest corners and darkest ways; while Symons, as it chanced, was seldom out of the lime-light circle of London concert halls, preparatory to writing his "London Nights."
Both men were the sons of clergymen, and launched in life's calmest, safest waters, at about the same time, though on opposite sides of the Atlantic. It was their own volition which led them to take to life's high seas. Symons went from his small town to London, which, in spite of continental sojourns, has remained his permanent mooring. Flynt took to the "open" at an early age, and tied up in whatever harbor the storm drove him. American by blood and birth, he felt at home in Russia, Germany, France, or the British Isles, if given theMask of No Identity.
One of the swiftest currents of London life flows down the Strand. There, Josiah Flynt, in what disguise he chose, could do his "work," and, when he would, step over the sill of the old Temple and find a welcomefrom his friend, who had chambers in Fountain Court, that silent square of green, which slopes to the Thames, and is kept fresh and cool by its jets of water and great shade trees. Symons lived in the building to the right, after entering the Court, and up a winding flight of old stone steps.
It was in these bachelor quarters of his (he has since married and moved away) that I first saw Symons, the year after Flynt's "Tramping with Tramps" had appeared in theCentury Magazine. I had been invited, through a mutual friend, for tea, one cool afternoon in June, and we sat on an immense tufted sofa, before the grate, while our host stood, back to the fire, and talked of other people's work.
I can see him now, big, blond and very English, his hands deep in the pockets of his gray tweeds; an old, brown velveteen jacket, faded blue socks and soft tan slippers, harmonizing with his "stage-setting"—well mellowed by time. Books lined the walls, and a spinnet, on which Symons played, when alone, stood in one corner. He had prepared tea and elaborate sweets for us, and then forgot to offer them, so busy was he, talking of his friend, Christina Rossetti, whose poems he had just edited! When he spoke of Olive Schreiner, some one asked him if she was interesting, and I remember quite well Symons' reply: "I stood all one night listening to her talk!"
Even at nineteen, in his "Introduction to the Study of Browning," commended by Robert Browning himself, Symons had proved himself to be an artist, and he isalways lyric. Flynt was never an artist in the same sense, in his literary work—and epic to the end! He knew and understood the ways of men, and had the gift of words; but when he wrote for publication, his imagination seemed chained to earth. It may be that he was too much "on the inside" to get his subject in perspective. Then, too, it must be remembered that Flynt was the tramp writing, not the literary man tramping.
Armed with ancestors of distinction, birth, training, education and the influence of cultured parents, he abhorred all social anchors and obligations. I remember his once saying to me, "My mother has sent me my books from Berlin. Her idea is to anchor me, I think, but I'll leave them boxed for a while, for I'm uncertain about my plans." He was "always a-movin' on!"
Flynt was not a great reader, yet he had a wide knowledge of books—gleaned one scarcely knew when. The child of book-loving parents, he started out in life with a valuable equipment—an innate respect for books and their authors. In every case, however, I think that his chief interest lay in the man, not his literary output. In spite of the sordid realism of his writings, the manner of his last years, and the regretted circumstances of his death, there was a poetic vein, which, like a single, golden thread, ran in and out, the warp and woof of his mind. This betrayed itself in conversations with intimates, and when discussing books of travel or their authors. Especially did Sir Richard Burton and George Borrow fire his imagination. "Lavengro"and its author were discussed during one of our last conversations.
The "white road" and the sea may have meant something to him as such, but to me he never spoke of either, except as highways; hence I conclude that as such only did they make their appeal to him. Man, not nature, attracted him, and it was always man in the meshes of civilization.
He was a victim to morbid self-consciousness, and this was one reason for his avoiding people of the class in which he was born. Give him a part in a play—he was gifted as an actor—the disguise of a vagabond, or whisky with which to fortify himself, and the man's spirit sprang out of its prison of flesh, like an uncaged bird.
This effect which whisky had upon him, led Flynt to give it as a reason for the "perpetual thirst" of some. He used to say, "Whisky makes it possible for me to approach men with a manner which ignores all class barriers. Pass the whisky and it's man to man—hobo, hod-carrier or king!"
Flynt was a slave to tobacco, which he preferred in the form of cigarettes. One never thinks of him without one, so no wonder he was called "Cigarette" in Trampdom!
His family thought that the too early use of tobacco stunted his growth, for, when seated, the upper part of his body, being broad and strong, suggested a larger man than he proved to be when on his feet. He stood not more than five feet three inches. He was naturallythin and nervous, with quick movements of the body, and an ever-changing expression of face—a face clean-shaven and rather boyish. None of his photographs give any idea as to his appearance, because the abiding impression received from him was produced by his magnetic personality and individual mannerisms, one of which was a way of dropping his head forward and looking up through frowning eyebrows. He decorated his speech with Russian, French or German words, thrown into a sentence haphazard, and spoke in a voice pitched low and used rhythmically. He had an impressionable, volatile nature, and seemed really to become one of the race which at the moment filled his mental vision.
Flynt's ethical code was that of the Under World, and, in some respects, superior to the one in use on the Surface of Life.
A prominent sociologist said recently, "Flynt had the field to himself; there is no one to take his place at present. Few men who live and know the life of the Under World, as he did, have his mental equipment. Many can retain the facts, but are unable to handle them as satisfactorily; then, too, to be friend and companion of tramps and criminals, and of men like Tolstoy and Ibsen, is to possess a wide range of octaves in human experience and mental grasp!"
Flynt's talent for languages enabled him to pick up the vernacular, even of underground Russia, in an incredibly short time.
As he says himself,Wanderlust, not the scientist'scuriosity to verify theories, led him on to his well-merited distinction as criminologist, and down to his ultimate undoing, at the early age of thirty-eight.
"Beyond the East the sunrise,Beyond the West the sea,And the East and West theWanderlustThat will not let me be."
While Flynt had most of the appetites, good and bad, possible to man, he was not a weak man, but a physically selfish one, strong in his determination to "enjoy." Condemned to an early death by the excessive use of stimulants, he agreed to write his "Life," did so, and then shut himself in his room in Chicago, to pass out—unafraid, unaccompanied, uncontrolled—a characteristic ending!
That Josiah Flynt has started on his long journey, that this world will see him no more, is impossible for his near friends to realize, so accustomed are they to his periodical disappearances and his unfailing return to their midst.
He who preferred the byways, the crooked winding paths, has at last struck the broad, straight road where there is no turning back. It is he who must wait for us now, as we push on, with his cheerful "Good luck! Be good! Don't forget me!" ringing in our ears, and in our hearts Stevenson's words:
"He is not dead, this friend, not dead,But in the path we mortals tread,Got some few trifling steps ahead,And nearer to the end,So that you, too, once past the bend,Shall meet again, as, face to face, this friendYou fancy dead...."Push gaily on, strong heart! The whileYou travel forward, mile by mile,Till you can overtake,He strains his eyes to search his wake,Or, whistling as he sees you through the break,Waits on the stile."(R. L. S.)
Flynt often talked of his death after disease fastened upon him, but always with an inconsequence as to what lay beyond the grave—not bravado, but the philosopher's acquiescence to the inevitable, whatever it be. He had great faith in the loyalty of friends who might survive him. "So-and-so will speak a good word for me, I know!" he would say. Separation, by geographical distances, never bothered him, yet he wrote but few letters. He seemed to get satisfaction out of his belief that he and his nearest friends communicated by thought transference: "The wires are always up!" Doubtless he passed out with the conviction that this would continue.
The man's spirit remained childlike in its tender, confiding quality, and pure, in spite of the fact that he dragged his poor body through the mire of life.
His generous nature and faithful friendship have set in motion currents which are eternal.
To complete the story of Josiah Flynt's life is not an easy task. His later years were lived in the open, it is true, and the details of his movements were, in every case, known to at least one of his friends; but his own love of mystery and the delight that he found in mystifying others led him to conceal from one friend what he freely told to the next.
If all his friends could come together and compare notes, the result might be a consecutive account of what he did during those years. But alas! some of them are dead. Alfred Hodder, who knew more than most of us, died only a few weeks after Josiah.
"My Life," however, makes little pretense of being a complete biography in the accepted sense. Rather it is the disjointed record of those incidents which in their combined impression brought him most nearly to the understanding of himself. The mere facts of life did not seem very important to him; feeling was everything. And few men who have set out to write their own stories have been able to show themselves as truly as he has shown himself. That is because he was essentially a man of feeling—sensitive, proud, filled with sentiment—though only his close friends may have known this of him.
When he had nearly completed his "confession," as he liked to call it, he said to me one day: "I have given them my insides." He did indeed make the strongest kind of an effort to let the world see him as he honestly saw himself—and I think he saw himself more honestly than most men do, for he was free from self-exaltation. Always he was humble about his own limitations.
If anything is to be added to what he has written about himself, it should comprise those experiences which he would have been most likely to relate, had he lived to write more. And first, doubtless, he would have told something of his work in investigating "graft" in several of our larger cities. As far as I can find, he was responsible for the introduction of the word "graft" into book English. It was a word of the Under World, and he lifted it to the upper light. The articles inMcClure's Magazine, in which he exposedpolice corruption, were also, if I am not mistaken, the first important examples of modern "muck-raking." They are still obtainable in printed form, and Josiah probably would have said little about them in his book. But he certainly would have related with relish the week's wonder of his escape from the New York police. When the article about "graft" in New York was published, the "Powers That Be" in the metropolis were loud in their denunciation of Josiah Flynt. They swore roundly that they would make it hot for him when they caught him, and the daily press announced that he was to be arrested and compelled to make good his statements. But Josiah Flynt had disappeared. The police did not find him, and it was some time before he came back to his old haunts.
There was reason to think that the police were only "bluffing." There was also reason to think that Josiah would be able to "make good," if he were captured and examined by a police tribunal. Nevertheless he hid himself in obscure lodgings in Hoboken. An escaped criminal would not cover his tracks more carefully. The truth was that the opportunity for mystification appealed to him irresistibly. He exaggerated the necessity for concealment in order that he might enjoy to the full the sensation of being vainly hunted. For, as I have said, he always loved to make mystery. I have seen him, during a quite harmless expedition along a New York street by night, take elaborate precautions to avoid approaching strangers, on the assumption that they were "hold-up" men. Such avoidance of hypotheticaldangers was to him a most fascinating game—a game which he was well qualified to play.
He found a melancholy and sentimental pleasure, too, in keeping himself in the background at times when such inaction was contrary to his happier desires. I remember that, in 1887, during the time when he was living in the Under World, after his escape from the reform school and before his appearance at his mother's home in Berlin, he made one brief and characteristic emergence which may throw light upon this trait in him. Josiah was my cousin. At that time the home of my family was in Detroit, Michigan, and one day Josiah put in an appearance at my father's office. He was ragged and unkempt, and uncertain in his account of himself. By his own story he was a detective engaged in an important case, and he asked for money enough to get him to some near city. My father tried to persuade him to go home with him to the house. The little vagabond refused, but he added: "I found out where you lived and went up and looked at the house, and I stood and watched the boys [my brother and myself] playing ball in the next lot." He had remained at the edge of the lot for some time, taking strange and wistful pleasure in his own forlornness.
Reference has been made by others to the fact that there was one romantic passion in Josiah's life. For years he worshiped from afar a girl who possessed grace, intelligence, and beauty, though so far as his friends know he never offered himself to her. In July, 1894, I was with him for a few days at his home inBerlin. He told me at that time that the girl he loved was on the continent, spending the summer at a mountain resort. He had come to the conclusion, he said, that it was time for him to go to her and declare himself. Accordingly, he did make a pilgrimage of many hundred miles to the place where she was staying, dreaming we may not guess what dreams along the way. It was many months before I saw him again. When he began to speak of the girl in the same old terms of distant adoration, I asked him about his journey of the preceding summer. "Well," he said, "I went there, and I saw her, but I didn't speak to her." "Did she see you?" I asked. "No," he answered. Again he had been the watcher by the wayside standing in shy self-effacement while the girl of his heart passed by.
A few years before his death Josiah, in what was undoubtedly an honest and serious determination to improve his health and his habits, went to Woodland Valley, in the Southern Catskills, and there had built for him a comfortable little "shack," on the grounds of a beautifully situated summer hotel. Different friends were with him during the time he spent in the mountains, but every now and again the call of the city became too strong for him to resist. While he was living at the "shack" he made a few of the conventional trips to the summits of near-by mountains, but his interest was usually centered in simply "getting to the top." The goal once reached he would enjoy for a few moments the pleasant sense of obstacles overcome, andthen, after a casual glance at the "view," he would say: "Well, now let's go back." His real life at Woodland was his interest in the natives of the valley. He worked himself into close acquaintance with them, and sought to understand their point of view. Even after he had given up his shack, he still held to the valley as his place of refuge. He bought a little tract of land there and, to the time of his death, talked of building upon it a snug but permanent home.
Mr. Charles E. Burr, to whom Josiah so often refers in his narrative, supplies the story of an interesting period. I will quote him. "In the summer of 1904," he says, "I had some correspondence with Flynt, who was then in Berlin. The tone of his letters made me think that a few months in the Indian Territory, where rigid prohibition laws are enforced, would benefit him. I therefore offered him a position as car-trailer on the Southwest Division of the Saint Louis and San Francisco Railroad, with headquarters at Sapulpa, Indian Territory. The offer was accepted, and Flynt came to Sapulpa about the middle of August, by way of Galveston, Texas.
"The duties assigned to him kept him on the road much of the time. Whenever the opportunity came, I saw to it that he made the acquaintance of interesting characters who lived in the Territory and in Oklahoma. Among them were several United States deputy marshals who were known as 'killers,' and he afterwards told me that he had got from these men a fairly complete account of the 'Apache Kid' and his numerousgun-fights. I once sent Flynt to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to interview the famous Apache, Geronimo, but the old chief was in a bad humor and would not talk.
"During September horses were stolen from a car at Okmulgee, Indian Territory, and Flynt and two United States marshals went with me in pursuit of the thieves.
"The trail led us into the heavily timbered Arkansas bottoms, long the home of the outlaws and 'cattle rustlers' of the Territory. At the end of a continuous forty-mile ride we found some of the stock, and Flynt, who was not accustomed to sitting a horse, then declared that he would rather die on the prairie than ride that broncho any farther. He drove back to Okmulgee with a rancher whom I employed to take the recovered horses.
"Later, Flynt became more accustomed to a saddle, and rode to many points of interest near Sapulpa. He once told me that he had made several trips to the home of a half-breed negro who lived near a ledge of rocks called 'Moccasin Tracks,' about five miles from Sapulpa. This half-breed had a bad record. The United States marshals had him 'marked,' and planned to 'get him' at the first opportunity, but Flynt said that he was a very interesting man to talk with.
"I left Sapulpa in October, and Flynt accompanied me to Chicago, where he remained until March. He was very proud of the certificate which was issued to him when he severed his connection with the Saint Louis and San Francisco.
"These certificates are commonly called 'Letters of Identification.' Flynt always referred to his as his 'Denty,' and he took much pleasure in showing it to his friends. He gave it to me a few days before his death and asked me to keep it for him."
From this "Denty" we get a rough description of Josiah Flynt as he was in 1904. "Age, thirty-five years. Weight, one hundred and twenty-five pounds. Height, five feet five inches. Complexion, light. Hair, light. Eyes, brown." It also gives as his "Reasons for leaving the service": "Resigned. Services and conduct entirely satisfactory."
In the autumn of 1905 the insurrectionary outbreaks in Russia were assuming such proportions that a serious revolutionary war was not improbable. Josiah secured a commission from a magazine to go to Russia and investigate the situation. His health was by no means good, and his temperate life in Oklahoma had had no permanently good effect upon his habits, but he set forth eagerly to do his work. He gathered much interesting material, and he wrote the required articles. He became very ill, however, and for a long time he lay at the point of death in a German hospital. When he returned to America for the last time, in the first warm days of 1906, he was broken, changed in his looks, a feeble shadow of himself. He told me then that, while he was so near death in Germany, the two thoughts that did more than anything else to get him on his feet again were his desire to see his mother and his determination to "make good" with his articles, which werenot completed until his partial convalescence had begun. I had helped to get him that Russian commission, and it seemed to be ever in his mind that, since I had "stood for him"—that was the way he put it—he must not fail. From his bed of pain he dragged himself to "make good." Loyalty such as that was one of his strongest traits. I remember that once, while he was living in the Catskills, a distant relative sent a request for some money to help him out of a difficulty. Josiah came to New York by the first train he could get, and went to one of the savings banks in which he kept his funds. The relative received the money he needed. Before returning to Woodland Josiah told me of the errand which had brought him to New York. He added: "We must always stand by the family."
It was late in 1906 that Flynt began his last task. He was sent to Chicago by theCosmopolitan Magazineto "write up" pool-room gambling. Unable to give to this work the old energy of investigation, he was helped to a creditable showing by people who had the information he desired. He must have known that he was near the end. In every letter that he wrote to me during those last weeks he referred again and again to his having seen "mother," or his expectation of spending the next day with "mother," or of his plan to "make a short trip with mother." All his love centered more and more closely in her as death approached him, though, indeed, for years his chief thoughts had been of her. She was spending those last weeks in a suburb of Chicago, and he especially welcomed the workthat took him to Chicago, because it made it possible for him to see her often.
But when, about mid-January, 1907, he came down with pneumonia, he would not let his friends admit her to his room in the Chicago hotel. She was not to witness his suffering. He died at 7p.m., on January 20, after two hours of unconsciousness.
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The Salt Lake City Tribune says:"This is a live, virile story of the boundless West ... of very great attractiveness."
Illustrated, cloth, decorative. Price, $1.50.
The scene of this charming, idyllic love story is laid in Central Indiana. It is for the man who loves the earth under his foot, the splash of the black bass, the scent of the pine wood, and the hum of earth close to his ear.
The New York Times says:"The novel is imbued throughout with a poet's love of nature, and its pathos and tender sentiment place it in the category of heart romances."
Illustrated, cloth, decorative. Price, $1.50.
A great, strong, masterful romance of American life in the early sixties. Love, romance and adventure are paramount in this wonderful story.
The Chicago Record-Herald says:"A story that grips the reader's attention, whets his appetite, and leaves him ever eager for more."
Illustrated, decorative cover design, boards. Price, $1.25.
For the man who enjoys sport of all kinds—for every person who has even an "ounce" of humor—this book will prove a gold mine of fun.
The St. Louis Republic says:"Most enjoyable."
Albany Times-Union says:"One of the jolliest of fun making books."
Illustrated, cloth, decorative. Price, cloth, $1.50 net. Flexible leather, $2.00 net.
An encyclopedia that fits the pocket.
The Chicago Evening Post says:"THE BOOK OF CAMPING AND WOODCRAFT is one of the most alluring and easily the most complete manual of camping now available."
Illustrated, cloth, decorative. Price, $1.25 net.
A practical experience book telling what is necessary for comfort and convenience in the camp and on the trail.
The Albany Evening Journal says:"The book will undoubtedly be eagerly sought by every one of Mr. White's large circle of readers and will prove a valuable guide and helpmate to those who love outdoor life."
Illustrated, cloth, decorative. Price, $1.25 net.
Mr. White has done nothing more charming or more instinct with the subtle spirit of the outdoors.
The Nation says:"As an opened-eyed forest rambler and mountain climber he (Mr. White) is easily in the first rank of nature writers."
Illustrated, cloth, decorative. Price, $1.25 net.
Written in the spirit of an Izaak Walton.
The San Francisco Bulletin says:"It is a classic that for pleasant philosophy and a sound defence of amiable mendacity stands alone in the literature of sport."
Illustrated, cloth, decorative. Price, $2.00 net.
It is safe to say that this work is the author's most important book—as well as his most entertaining.
The Boston Globe says:"It is one of the best collections of descriptions on sea angling ever landed between book covers, and, being fact instead of fiction, it is doubly interesting."
FOOTNOTES:[1]Mr. Flynt's prophecy has been approximately fulfilled. Without subscribing to his suggestion that the majority of our great financiers are "crooks," it is certain that the metropolis is just now, and has been for some time past, suffering from a crime-wave of an almost unparalleled height and vehemence. The pages of the daily newspapers and the admissions of the police authorities furnish proof thereof.[2]Note by the Publishers.—It was Josiah Flynt's intention to add to his autobiography some concluding chapters of a philosophic and sociological nature. Among other subjects, he intended to prove that there is no such thing as honor among thieves, and to show conclusively that there is no real happiness in unlawful existence.The call to the road which goes, but does not return, came to him, however, in January, 1907, when his life came abruptly to an end.To Mr. Bannister Merwin, his relative and friend, we are indebted for the following account of Flynt's movements during the last few years of his life.
[1]Mr. Flynt's prophecy has been approximately fulfilled. Without subscribing to his suggestion that the majority of our great financiers are "crooks," it is certain that the metropolis is just now, and has been for some time past, suffering from a crime-wave of an almost unparalleled height and vehemence. The pages of the daily newspapers and the admissions of the police authorities furnish proof thereof.
[1]Mr. Flynt's prophecy has been approximately fulfilled. Without subscribing to his suggestion that the majority of our great financiers are "crooks," it is certain that the metropolis is just now, and has been for some time past, suffering from a crime-wave of an almost unparalleled height and vehemence. The pages of the daily newspapers and the admissions of the police authorities furnish proof thereof.
[2]Note by the Publishers.—It was Josiah Flynt's intention to add to his autobiography some concluding chapters of a philosophic and sociological nature. Among other subjects, he intended to prove that there is no such thing as honor among thieves, and to show conclusively that there is no real happiness in unlawful existence.The call to the road which goes, but does not return, came to him, however, in January, 1907, when his life came abruptly to an end.To Mr. Bannister Merwin, his relative and friend, we are indebted for the following account of Flynt's movements during the last few years of his life.
[2]Note by the Publishers.—It was Josiah Flynt's intention to add to his autobiography some concluding chapters of a philosophic and sociological nature. Among other subjects, he intended to prove that there is no such thing as honor among thieves, and to show conclusively that there is no real happiness in unlawful existence.
The call to the road which goes, but does not return, came to him, however, in January, 1907, when his life came abruptly to an end.
To Mr. Bannister Merwin, his relative and friend, we are indebted for the following account of Flynt's movements during the last few years of his life.