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Show . h, A VIEW OF SALT LAKE CITY i i THE MAN WHO GAVE US THE WORD "GRAFT." "Graft," the word of 'wide-spread use, is the real monument of "Josiah Flynt," the name by which the soci-oligical soci-oligical writer, Josiah Flynt Willard, was known. So declares the New York Evening Post in summing up the picturesque career, just closed, of the man who was probably the most genuine of the American explorers ex-plorers of the "submerged" world. "Borrow would have recognized in 'josiah Flynt' a litciary descendant, and one influenced by the same wanderlust," wan-derlust," says the New York Evening Sun. The tramp was to Flynt "a person per-son to be studied with sympathetic interest." From his writings resulted a sort of "realistic sociology," to which there have been many contributors, contri-butors, none of which have quite achieved the qualities of their prototype. proto-type. Says the Evening Sun: "The magazines have been full of accounts of the investigations of all sorts of inquirers, 'from the Chicago stock-yards to society at Washington. But the Walter Wyckoffs and so on were lacking in the very quality that made the man they tried to imitate preeminent. He never took on a superior su-perior air or behaved with condescension condescen-sion to those about whom he was curious. lie was simply interested in the life of all sorts of queer people crooks, petty graftgrs, the enemies of the policeman in general. The books he wrote about them were the natural result of the travels. The travels. werc never undertaken for the purpose pur-pose of writing the books. There is an essential distinction here." The history of the word "graft," now so common and inevitable as to seem to have been created by the thing it represents, is traced by the Evening Post to its source in one of Mr. Willard's books. Thus: "When, six or seven years ago, a volume called 'The World of Graft' and describing the life of the 'underworld' 'under-world' began to attract notice, the ordinary or-dinary respectable readers had to find out what the last word of the title meant. They learned that it was a jiort of thieves' Latin for the ill-gotten gains of the powers that prey. It applied to the petty thief's takings, the swindler's gains, the gambler's winnings, the corrupt policeman's hush-money. But there was some fascination about the word. It began to appear in respectable company. Gradually it lost its quotation-marks. It lost its original meaning at the same time; The term 'grafter' came to be reserved for the unfaithful cm- ployec or public servant, the purchas-i j ing agent who accepted secret com- f missions, the legislator who spld hjs j vote, the official who held an interest j in public contracts. With that meaning, mean-ing, the word passed t)ic stage pf slang within an almost incredibly short period, and as yet shows no signs of disappearing from our speech." s Vagabondage is no new thing for a man of good family and education, remarks the same paper. "There is an appeal to every one who possesses either intellectual curiosity or love of adventure" in the kind of exploration that Sir Richard Burton, Dorrow, and Charles Godfrey Leland underwent. But "it was a sordid and depressing world enough to which Josiah Flynt introduced his readers." His ac- j counts, however, were free from the f dilettantism, continues The Post, of ,j such writers as Richard Harding Dav- t is, who once lived, disguised, among the thieves of Philadelphia; of Riqharcl fl Wihitcing and Arthur Morrison, who have "interpreted their London of mean streets;" of Prpfcssor Wyckoft or Mrs. Van Vorst. To quote fur- , thcr: ; "Josiah Flynt's people, outcasts, I criminals, and scmicriminals, abnorm- r-, alitics generally, did not make the H same human appeal as the gipsies or the honest poor. He lacked the gen- J, ins ically to ennoble his narratives, i. however vivid and searching they ' might bc.t Pity and terror were not i the emotions they arouscdj rather, t plain curiosity. Such influence as i they may have had was in their dis- closure of corrupt alliances between the criminal and the officers of the 1 law. Like any ordinary 'cxposer,' he jj encountered for a time the wrath, of those whom he had criticized, the l) high police officials of this city, For il a fortnight after his account of crime in New York was published, our i I whole police force was hunting, him fj unsuccessfully." Jj 1 |