Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 February 1903 — FUNSTON’S AESTHETIC SENSE. [ARTICLE]

FUNSTON’S AESTHETIC SENSE.

Robbed Off Slsn Painter’* Mark* from Colorado Boulder.. Bstes Park, Colorado, one of the many Meccas for the tourists In that picturesque State, bears upon Its fact some rather singular mementoes of a visit some years ago from General Funston. They show that the man of military prowe&s may also possess the artist’s sensitiveness to the esthetic fly In the ointment. Estes Park is a beautiful spot, and the General, who Is an enthusiast upon natural scenery, found every prospect pleasing until one day, riding along a thread of mountain road, he espied upon a large looming cralg, a great painted advertisement, which proclaimed, In more colors than the American flag boasts, the merits of a certain soap. Funston stopped his horse short ‘‘The dash-dashed-dashed wrertchl” he burst out, shaking his fist at the absent perpetrator of this crime of a paint brush. Then he rode oh a little way, o rl y to encounter more and bigger advertisements of the same soap. From the sheer of a precipice, from the. side of a huge rock on the wall of a canyon they Impudently defied tue fitness of things and General Funston, who each time stopped to curse the artist who, as the freshness of his handiwork proved, was only a little in advance of him. Funston called ouj; to passerby, when he had had six miles of this sort of things: ‘‘Do you see that?” shouted the enraged general. “Isn’t that an outrage on the face of nature? I warn that painter I Intend to lick him on sight” The funniest part of the episode was that the painter, who heard of the threat, evidently believed him, for he left that part of the country and perpetrated no more signs. The next funniest part was that the general removed by a week's labor of his own hands, with acids paid for out of his own pocket, the signs which had so excited his Ire. It Is enld that on boulder sides, where the paint was laid on heaviest and the acids most faintly, dim traces, like ghosts of old 6lns, of the defacing legends, still remain.— Philadelphia Press.