It stands now a rather useless encumbrance--a whited sepulchre--a marble memorial of the Solid South and the Kentucky that was, on whose portal might truthfully appear the legend: "_A jolly place it was in days of old, But something ails it now_" Aris Throckmorton, its manager in the Thirties, the Forties and the Fifties, was a personality and a personage.

The handsomest of men and the most illiterate, he exemplified the characteristics and peculiarities of the days of the river steamer and the stage coach, when "mine host" felt it his duty to make the individual acquaintance of his patrons and each and severally to look after their comfort.

Many stories are told at his expense; of how he made a formal call upon Dickens--it was, in point of fact, Marryatt--in his apartment, to be coolly told that when its occupant wanted him he would ring for him; and of how, investigating a strange box which had newly arrived from Florida, the prevailing opinion being that the live animal within was an alligator, he exclaimed, "Alligator, hell; it's a scorponicum." He died at length, to be succeeded by his son John, a very different character.

And thereby hangs a tale.
John Throckmorton, like Aris, his father, was one of the handsomest of men.

Perhaps because he was so he became the victim of one of the strangest of feminine whimsies and human freaks.