[A FINAL WORD][2]
By Bannister Merwin
To complete the story of Josiah Flynt's life is not an easy task. His later years were lived in the open, it is true, and the details of his movements were, in every case, known to at least one of his friends; but his own love of mystery and the delight that he found in mystifying others led him to conceal from one friend what he freely told to the next.
If all his friends could come together and compare notes, the result might be a consecutive account of what he did during those years. But alas! some of them are dead. Alfred Hodder, who knew more than most of us, died only a few weeks after Josiah.
"My Life," however, makes little pretense of being a complete biography in the accepted sense. Rather it is the disjointed record of those incidents which in their combined impression brought him most nearly to the understanding of himself. The mere facts of life did not seem very important to him; feeling was everything. And few men who have set out to write their own stories have been able to show themselves as truly as he has shown himself. That is because he was essentially a man of feeling—sensitive, proud, filled with sentiment—though only his close friends may have known this of him.
When he had nearly completed his "confession," as he liked to call it, he said to me one day: "I have given them my insides." He did indeed make the strongest kind of an effort to let the world see him as he honestly saw himself—and I think he saw himself more honestly than most men do, for he was free from self-exaltation. Always he was humble about his own limitations.
If anything is to be added to what he has written about himself, it should comprise those experiences which he would have been most likely to relate, had he lived to write more. And first, doubtless, he would have told something of his work in investigating "graft" in several of our larger cities. As far as I can find, he was responsible for the introduction of the word "graft" into book English. It was a word of the Under World, and he lifted it to the upper light. The articles in McClure's Magazine, in which he exposed police corruption, were also, if I am not mistaken, the first important examples of modern "muck-raking." They are still obtainable in printed form, and Josiah probably would have said little about them in his book. But he certainly would have related with relish the week's wonder of his escape from the New York police. When the article about "graft" in New York was published, the "Powers That Be" in the metropolis were loud in their denunciation of Josiah Flynt. They swore roundly that they would make it hot for him when they caught him, and the daily press announced that he was to be arrested and compelled to make good his statements. But Josiah Flynt had disappeared. The police did not find him, and it was some time before he came back to his old haunts.
There was reason to think that the police were only "bluffing." There was also reason to think that Josiah would be able to "make good," if he were captured and examined by a police tribunal. Nevertheless he hid himself in obscure lodgings in Hoboken. An escaped criminal would not cover his tracks more carefully. The truth was that the opportunity for mystification appealed to him irresistibly. He exaggerated the necessity for concealment in order that he might enjoy to the full the sensation of being vainly hunted. For, as I have said, he always loved to make mystery. I have seen him, during a quite harmless expedition along a New York street by night, take elaborate precautions to avoid approaching strangers, on the assumption that they were "hold-up" men. Such avoidance of hypothetical dangers was to him a most fascinating game—a game which he was well qualified to play.