The Helena Independent

ANANIAS IS ABROAD.

Joe Mulhatton Turns Up in Kansas City Alive and In Good Health

It is a little strange to meet a fellow who claims the distinction-and stands ready to make good the claim-of being the biggest liar on earth. The Kansas City News had a visitor of this kind yesterday in the person of Joseph Mulhatton. Mr. Mulhatton is one of the best-known traveling men in the country. He hails from Kentucky, and is an artistic liar. Mr. Mulhatton doesn't build his colossal fabrications with a hatchet and saw. He exerts great ingenuity. When he turns out of his busy brain a story marked complete, it may be taken for granted that there is a lie afloat as is a lie.

Coupled with a vivid imagination of the Rider Haggard stripe, Mr. Mulhatton has a flow of language that is wonderful. He is a graceful writer, and any paper in the country is proud to publish a Mulhatton lie.

One of Mr. Mulhatton's stories, that provoked the widest discussion and started an international controversy, appeared about two years ago.

The narrative read that James Guthrie, a well known Kentucky planter had gotten a carload of monkeys from South America, and had trained them to break hemp and work in cotton. The story dwelt at length on the tractability of the monkeys, and told of several riots that the working people precipitated on account of the new class of competition. The story went the rounds of the country and finally our English cousins took it up in all seriousness, and the London Standard had an editorial of a column and a half on the new labor problem and predicted the most fearful consequences to the working classes. Mr. Mulhatton has discovered more caves than any other six men on earth. His cave stories have no limits: neither have his caves. The Mammoth cave sinks into insignificance in comparison with the gigantic holes that have flourished in Mr. Mulhatton's brain. It is estimated that one-half the enormous meteors that shoot across the sky and fall in some out of the way place are seen by Joe Mulhatton. His meteors may be readily recognized. They are always the largest on earth and are red hot. The freaks and monstrosities that Mulhatton finds are without number. He discovers mines of untold wealth. He has started numberless Indian raids. He has seen it rain frogs and fish and snails. He has seen snowstorms with the thermometer at 100. He discovers people of unheard of age. In fact, when Mulhatton's imagination is in good working order, it is the liveliest on earth. Mr. Mulhatton is always introduced as "the biggest liar on earth."

When I first met him I showed him his monkey story in the London Standard, and he said he would rather have fooled an Englishman than to have inherited a fortune. When asked why he troubled himself to get up such enormous lies, Mr. Mulhatton said: "I have discovered that there is nothing men will believe quicker than a whopping lie. I never manufactured a malicious story, but in traveling about there is always something that suggests itself. I write it off and send it to some paper and away it goes."

No traveling man is better known than this distinguished liar. A few years ago he was the drummer's candidate for president on a platform that made the country roar.