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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 upon any voyage of discovery, never running against any shoals or rocks, never breasting any storms—such a man, sailing peacefully on until he enters the great port of Death, may have a very pleasant time of it; but, when his voyage is over, the log-book is found to contain precious little which is of interest to the world. On the other hand, the mariner who strikes boldly out in search of adventure, who runs his frail craft over unexplored waters, who finds himself often stranded upon treacherous coasts, and who laughs at danger and glories in the hardships of an adventurer’s life—such a voyager leaves behind a record which must needs be racy reading. And even should it happen that this plucky mariner plays the pirate at intervals, that certainly would not detract any from the interest which attaches to his exploits.

A knowledge of men and the world comes only from personal acquaintance with the one and experience in the other. There is a sort of wisdom which is not contained in books. The man who would possess himself of that must tread the by-ways as well as the highways of life. This Ben Hogan has done. He has been a close observer of human nature, and he has made his observations from many and various points. Profiting by what that great teacher, Experience, has taught, he has become, in his own way, a philosopher. He has learned to gauge men at sight. This rare faculty has stood him in good stead throughout all his checkered career. In many of the exciting scenes which this work will undertake to describe, the power of measuring men for what they were worth proved the winning card in Hogan’s hand.

Added to this keen insight into human nature, he possesses a quick appreciation, not only of the humorous but the pathetic. Nobody ever appealed to him for aid without meeting with a generous response. It might appear to those who have met him only in the character of a jolly good fellow—the companion of an hour, over a bottle of wine—that he is not the sort of man who concerns himself about the misery and misfortune in this world. But such a conclusion would be eminently unjust. His sympathies have never been hardened by the rough knocks which the world has given him. And it is this very quickness of sympathy—this power to feel for others—which makes the poet.

Here, then, at the very outset of his task, the biographer has made his subject a gentleman, a philosopher, and a poet.

What! a pugilist a gentleman? A dance-house proprietor a philosopher? A prize-fighter a poet?

Calm your ruffled temper, oh, indignant critic! Let your fretful quills resume their normal, horizontal condition. This little book will not shake the rock-founded morals of society. Not at all. Is it against the law of Moses or the prophets that a pugilist should be a gentleman? That title, remember, can not be conferred by royalty. It can not be inherited along with houses and lands; but it may rightfully be claimed by the man, whether preacher or pugilist, who acts honorably toward his fellow men, who gives respectful attention to the opinion of others, and who endeavors to conduct himself so that his presence is always welcome. If that be a fair definition of a much-misunderstood word, then Ben Hogan is a gentleman. And why may not the proprietor of a dance-house be a philosopher? Is our barking critic quite sure that he knows what philosopher stands for, or what philosophy means? Not book-learning—for, bless your ignorant soul, Socrates himself counted life too precious to waste in reading. Your dictionary will tell you that the word philosopher means properly a lover of wisdom. There never lived a more passionate lover of wisdom than Ben Hogan. And for the poet: Does it follow that because a man hardens his muscles he likewise hardens his heart? Poetry loves to spring out of seemingly unseemly places. It grows in rough soil and flourishes where the sunshine never reaches. Bret Harte found truer poetry in the life and death of Poker Flat’s outcasts, than Martin Tupper could in the whole range of domestic morality. It is not necessary that a man should write verses to be a poet. What is demanded of him is a sympathetic nature. And that Ben Hogan has.

Perhaps the reader who happens to enjoy a personal acquaintance with the subject of this biography, may consider the foregoing as pretty steep flattery, not to say amazing nonsense. Let him remember, however, that the luxury of getting up a book about oneself is expensive; and certainly a man has a right to order that written which pleases him best. Mr. Hogan has availed himself of this privilege. He desires the world to know how great a man he is. He wants all his illustrious deeds embalmed in print. If, after reading this volume it shall occur to the world that Mr. Hogan is deceived with respect to himself; that he is not a great man at all, and that his illustrious deeds ought long ago to have landed him in prison—if the world, I repeat, shall come to any such conclusion as this, why, then it must settle accounts with Mr. Hogan himself. Greatness has been unappreciated before now, and it is possible that some will fail to understand why a man should voluntarily proclaim himself to be “The Wickedest Man in the World.”

THE “SAILOR BOY” PUNISHES HIS ADVERSARY.

THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF

BEN HOGAN:

THE WICKEDEST MAN IN THE WORLD.