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Show THE GREEDfOR GOLD. Men r Who Sweep all Scruples from Thoir - Path to Gain the Coveted Gold Pleoe. I0B0ING PIOKLE FGETUNE'S FAVOB , One Adventurer Now Dying in a Peni-tontary, Peni-tontary, Another in Custody, A Third a Fugitive, Etc. ! Stronger than the love of woman, fiercer than the desire of the mnn-eating tiger, mightier than the whirling fury of the cyclone is the never satisfied thirst of that rapacious portion of the human race whose thirst is the thirst for gold. Long ages have passed since King Midas had his wish, unil felt the yellow wine within the royal beaker turn to molten metal at the touch of his charmed ond cursed lips. He had attained his utmost desire; a willing god had granted bis request; riches beyond the most tremendous dreams of avarice displayed dis-played thomsclves beneath the magic of his merest touch. Yet his life was anguish, und his death fantastic in the terror of its torments. So much for the old legend, the symbolical sym-bolical myth of grasping cruelty which at- tuins its object, grinds beneath the heel of papers received his contributions with favor. A few years of steady work and intelligent in-telligent application- would have mode him a rich man, but ho preferred to reach affluence by the short cut of fraud. As an attorney he swindled widows and orphans; as a newspaper man he abused tho confidence confi-dence of his associates, and as an acquaintance acquaint-ance he imposed upon the credulity of those who trusted him. Now, with his pockets full of ill gotten wealth, he is a fugitive from Justice. The cases cited above are sorrowful to contemplate, but probably none of the three can equal in horror of detail that of the Kansas City miser, Peter Lefler. This miserable old man had lived out the allotted allot-ted tale of threescore and ten years. His early history is obscure, but for the last quarter of a century he had kept a small store on North Third street. Ho dwelt alone in a miserable hovel. Outside of business hours he shunned his fellow man and he was regarded by his neighbors as a poor unfortunate whose scanty income from trade brought him the bare necessities necessi-ties of life. But the outcome shows that he like the others was a victim of the awful aw-ful and relentless thirst for gold. He had toiled and saved, and spared himself in no direction that he might add to his store of shining mctul. At the age of 70, alone, friendless, unnttended, he first saw the tiollowness of his life's ambition, and locking lock-ing up his little shop sought the filthy buck room in which he had spont so many solitary nights and ended his dreary life with a shot from a revolver. Bo meager was his patronage that days passed lief ore tlio poor wretch's tragic end was known. When found he sat dead in a chair. A frlghtfail hole marked tho middle mid-dle of his forehead. Hewus naked above tho waist. His false teeth, says The Kansas Kan-sas City Times, protruded several inches from the mouth. The nose had rotted and sunk into the skifll, leaving only a deep indentation, and maggots were worming themselves in and out of the apertures in his face, He was thought to be a pauper, but in the cellar was found a bag of gold oppression or fraud the victims of its in-sntiato in-sntiato desire, and stands triumphant but dismayed upon the awful pinnacle o! oppression or fraud C&tvfffi' "'o v'ct'ms f Its in-j in-j "iaedRk 8"ti"te desire, and yj stands triumphant ft : b '"it dismayed upon u jfW'Uf1! f ''ie aw'"' pinnacle o! M'CABTKBr,l890. a success that f&gf. tWiVs-bus tWiVs-bus been reached '4 SvSHlilS' regardless of HVSJjm 'Z? others' suffer- V I Mil' I in a. mid from ' i: '' M'CARTNEr,1890. a success that bus been reached regardless of others' suffering, suffer-ing, find from which the victor m'cartney, 1878. stretches out an appealing band only to learn too late that depths of misery attend the achievement of success, aud that the golden prize within his grasp has crushed like an apple of bodom and disclosed an interior made up only of tho ashes of disappointment. dis-appointment. The tale is world old but ever new this tale of men who have struggled along de-vious-and desperate pathways to secure tha vast power that wealth alone can give. Some have sought the fields of speculation and climbed to prosperity with pitiless glee over tho wrecked fortofc's of their less lucky but equally culpable comrades. Others have toiled and saved and hoarded, starved their bodies, impoverished their minds and viewed only, glimmering through tho durkness of their mental and physical squalor, the glorious yet sullen star whose name is gold. Still others havo trod the somber highway of crime, and endeavored by brute force or cruel cunning cun-ning to wrest from the honest, the credulous credu-lous or the unguarded tho treasure which represents the accumulations of honest industry. in-dustry. For all of these, the swindler, the thief or tho miser, there is but one end. The unlawful thirst for gold means almost without exception disappointment, die-grace die-grace and death. FETEIt LEFLER. pieces. In a drawer lay a bank book sliow-' sliow-' ing a large sum to his credit, and notes , given by responsible parties for hundreds of dollars. The till also contained a handsome hand-some sum of money. In addition to these was found a will by the provisions of which small fortunes were left to five persons living in Baden, Germany, Ger-many, and two other people resident in Knnsos City. The old man directed that after the payment of these bequests and a magnificent disbursement for his funeral the residue of his estate should be turned over to the Young Men's Christian association associa-tion of Kansas City, with the exception of his stock of goods, which ho bequeathed to an old cripple named William Taylor. Viewed in all its aspects can it be said that there is one redeeming feature to brighten the somber history of the world old inordinate greed for gold? Fbed. C. Dayton. HAKRV S. MAKHF1KI.D. Take, for example, the case of Pete McCartney, Mc-Cartney, who is gasping out the lost days of his life in tho Ohio penitentiary. Probably Prob-ably no man In the United States has had a bettor general education or has made a more thorough study of the principles of engraving. He is a skillful chemist, an expert manufacturer of the finest of artists' art-ists' tools, and possesses a remarkablo knowledge of the manner in which paper used for bond or monetary purposes is made. Yet fo? forty years this singularly gifted man bos devoted all his energies, education and special skill to the uttering of counterfeit currency. His illicit enterprises, enter-prises, undertaken with a desire to accumulate accu-mulate a fortuno at the expense of others, have brought him, on the whole, nothing but merited disaster, and now old, penniless penni-less and forsaken, the famous king of American counterfeiters lies dying within tho frowning walls of a prisou. He is but one, hovvovor, of the mauy who have dulled the law aud found that the law Is more powerful than criminal ingenuity. One of his younger brothers in the comradeship com-radeship of crime tho other day begun his experience of the thorny road along which McCartney so long has trod. His name is Harry S. Mansfield, aud until recently ho was the trusted ageut at Topeku, Kun.. of SEYMOUR K1SCH. the Kansas and Texas Coal company. Large sums of money passed through his hands, an opportunity presented itself and the greed for gold swept away the barrier of principle as a sudden summer torrent bears down before its resistless fury the frail obstruction of the flimsy dam. He put in his pocket tC.OOO of the company's money, fled to Canada and with the stolen cash started a business enterprise in London, Lon-don, which had just begun to prosper when detectives swooped down upon him and carried the amateur in crime back to Kansas Kan-sas to answer for his sins. Like McCartney and Mansfield, Seymour Kisch might have prospered along the ordinary or-dinary lines of honest enterprise. He was well known and liked in the business and ocial circles of Chicago, and had achieved a respectable reputation, both as a lawyer and a journalist. Clients willingly intrust ed him with t'jecausand the news- |