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 217 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 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.