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.