Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 146, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 June 1911 — BOLD BY TRICKERY [ARTICLE]

BOLD BY TRICKERY

Cook Turns Modern Science to Good Account. Man Without a Conscience Visits Numerous Chiefs and Induces Them, by Means of Talking Machine, Into Signing Away Lands. New York.—“l was reminded by a story I saw the other day,” said a soldier of fortune, “of some of my experiences' on the Gold Coast, when I had a cook who had the same fondness for cats as the cook mentioned by another traveler. My eook was named Quace Mensch, and he had an interesting career. ’ "He was an Accra, and he had been trained by some Englishmen, who had taken him to London. There he had got into a fight of. some kind, for which he had spent a year in jail, , but he had learned to cook well, and that is something that is worth while in that part of the world. “Quace Mensch served me so faithfully one year that when I went to England I asked him what I should bring him on mF return. He said there was nothing he would like so much as a phonograph into which he :ould talk and make records of his own. I thought this was an odd prefarence, but when 1 went back to the Gold Coast I took a machine with me, and Quace Mensch was delighted. He served me faithfully for awhile, ind then he suddenly disappeared. I learned that he had taken to the !»ush. It was a long time before F heard from r him again, and then ope lay he turned up loaded down with leeds to land which was suspected of Tearing gold. “I asked him how he got the deeds. He grinned. I cannot attempt to jive his dialect, but he said the phonograph was responsible. “ ‘I talked Into the machine in the F&ntl language,’ he said. ‘I said: ‘Chief, this man is a big juju man, md a friend of mine. You must give alm your whole place If you want me to be good to you.” “‘I went to village after village, carrying the talking machine, and saw chief after chief. I would place the phonograph so they could not see ’what it was like, and then I would say to the chief that I was a juju man, and I was prepared to prove It. He would not believe me, hut when I had got him quiet I would turn on the phonograph and tell them that the great juju was speaking. Of course, they had not heard of a talking machine, and when they heard this voice coming from a little horn, they would get scared and beg me to take all they

had If only I would promise to get the great juju to look after them. I always promised, and they would make haste to deed to me any piece of land I asked for.’ “That cook, of course, had no such thing as a conscience, and you can see what civilization had done for him. I have heard recently that he is now the richest man on the whole Gold Coast and he got all he has out of the phonograph I gave him.”