clothes from a storekeeper
and paid with a forty-dollar check. Then he skipped the town and for several
weeks we did not hear anything about him. One day a wire came from Sheriff
Henderson at Woodstock, Illinois, who had him in custody. He had tried to
cash a check in that city, but the sheriff was too quick for him
and landed him in jail. In the meantime, we learned that this blue
blooded gentleman was a graduate from seven penitentiaries, and
was wanted by the reformatory at Mansfield, Ohio, where he will
go when his five years in this prison expire. As he has ten years
to serve there and several charges against him in Iowa and Illinois
the "Count's" future is not altogether a pleasant one.
But then he is used to it and seems to prefer life behind the bars
to life on the outside. He is also an artist, but as such he is
a rank failure. He painted a picture of a landscape, a duck is
flying across a stream, but the duck is much larger than the mountain
in the pic-
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ture. On another picture is a lion and a dog, but the
dog looks more like a giraffe than a dog and it is a mighty fierce
looking lion. The boys at Lancaster were glad to hear of him being
caught. One of them wrote the following rhyme about him:
"Oh, there was a little German
man
Von Werner
was his name,
With a brass cornet and fiddle
This German won great
fame.
They sent him to Lancaster
To rest a little spell
Where they
petted him and humored him
And fed him mighty well.
They said he
was the finest
Violinist in the land.
They made him the little
master
Of the Melick Concert Band."
There lingers in Lancaster a young colored man, number 4585, who
paints in oil and water color both. He has painted some beautiful
portraits, and if any of my readers would like a portrait painted,
it would be well to get the warden's permission to have him paint
you one. Another genius is out there, he is a cartoonist, one of
the best in the country, Mr. Naylor. The front and
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