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Title: Children's Stories in American Literature 1861-1896
Author: Wright, Henrietta Christian (d. 1899)
Date of first publication: 1896
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1909
Date first posted: 29 April 2010
Date last updated: 29 April 2010
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #525

This ebook was produced by:
Brenda Lewis, Alison Hadwin
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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[Transcriber's Note: original spellings have been retained, with the
following exception: on page 106, the title "WILLIAN DEAN HOWELLS" has
been corrected to "WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS". The following words are
found both with and without hyphens in the original: farm-house,
common-place, re-lived, school-boy, home-life, school-life,
sweet-heart(s) and every-day. The following word is spelled in more than
one way in the original: idyll/idyl.]


                      CHILDREN'S STORIES

                              IN

                      AMERICAN LITERATURE




BY THE SAME AUTHOR


  CHILDREN'S STORIES IN AMERICAN LITERATURE,
  1861-1896. One vol., 12mo               $1.25

  CHILDREN'S STORIES IN AMERICAN LITERATURE,
  1660-1860. One vol., 12mo               $1.25

  CHILDREN'S STORIES OF AMERICAN PROGRESS.
  One vol., 12mo. Illustrated             $1.25

  CHILDREN'S STORIES IN AMERICAN HISTORY.
  One vol., 12mo. Illustrated             $1.25

  CHILDREN'S STORIES OF THE GREAT SCIENTISTS.
  One vol., 12mo. Illustrated             $1.25

  CHILDREN'S STORIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE.
  FROM TALIESIN TO SHAKESPEARE. One vol.,
  12mo                                    $1.25

  CHILDREN'S STORIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE.
  FROM SHAKESPEARE TO TENNYSON. One vol.,
  12mo                                    $1.25

  THE PRINCESS LILLIWINKINS AND OTHER STORIES.
  One vol., 12mo. Illustrated             $1.25




                      CHILDREN'S STORIES

                             IN

                      AMERICAN LITERATURE

                          1861-1896

                             BY

                   HENRIETTA CHRISTIAN WRIGHT


  NEW YORK
  CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
  1909

  COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY
  CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER I                                 PAGE

  GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS--1824-1892,            1

  CHAPTER II

  RICHARD HENRY STODDARD--1825----,           19

  CHAPTER III

  EDWARD EGGLESTON--1837----,                 28

  CHAPTER IV

  CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER--1829----,            50

  CHAPTER V

  EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN--1833----,          62

  CHAPTER VI

  BRET HARTE--1839----,                       72

  CHAPTER VII

  BAYARD TAYLOR--1825-1878,                   84

  CHAPTER VIII

  WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS--1837----,            106

  CHAPTER IX

  FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT--1849----,         125

  CHAPTER X

  THE SOUTHERN STORY WRITERS,                138

  CHAPTER XI

  LOUISA MAY ALCOTT--1833-1888,              179

  CHAPTER XII

  THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH--1836----,           196

  CHAPTER XIII

  NEW ENGLAND WOMEN WRITERS,                 210

  CHAPTER XIV

  GEORGE W. CABLE--1844----,                 236

  CHAPTER XV

  JOHN FISKE--1842----,                      251

  CHAPTER XVI

  MARK TWAIN--1835----,                      263




CHAPTER I

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

1824-1892


In a certain American classic there is a picture of a boy standing in
the shadow of an old warehouse and living, in imagination, a day that
belonged to another generation. The boy was George William Curtis,
and it was in his charming book, _Prue and I_, that he embodied
this experience of his boyhood. In the pages which describe the past
glories of Providence the author is picturing his native city, and
reproducing with an artist's touch the atmosphere which surrounded his
childish days.

At that time Providence was sharing the fate of many New England
seaport towns whose importance was passing away. The old, red,
steep-roofed brick storehouses were falling into ruins, the docks were
crumbling away, and the business part of the town was almost deserted.
In place of a fleet of great East India merchant-vessels moored to
the big posts, there were only a few insignificant sloops idly rocking
with the tides. Instead of the shouting and confusion of unlading,
there was but a group of idle old sailors gathered in the warehouse
doors.

But to the boy-dreamer who looked on, the silence and shadow of the
old stores seemed like those of royal treasure-houses. There were
still to be seen piles of East India wares--oriental stuffs, dyes,
coffees, and spices whose fragrance brought Arabia and China to the
senses. Occasionally a chance ship drifted into the harbor, and for a
few hours the Providence wharves lived their old life. Once when this
happened, young Curtis crept along the edge of the dock after the
unloading was over, and at great risk leaned over and placed his hand
against the black hulk. And thus, he records, he "touched Asia, Cape
of Good Hope, and the Happy Islands; saw palm-groves, jungles, and
Bengal tigers, and the feet of Chinese fairies."

From the gloom of the old warehouses he would very often go to the
sunny fields that lay upon the hills back of the town, and watch some
sea-bound ship, taking it for a type of his fortunes, which should
sail "stately and successful to all the glorious ports of the future."
The picture is bright and beautiful with the pure hopes of youth. It
is good to know that the dream of the boy was a prophecy of the noble
life it realized.

Providence was the home of young Curtis until his sixth year, when,
with his elder brother, Burrill, he went for a time to school at
Jamaica Plain, near Boston. From some fragments of description written
many years afterward we learn that this experience was a pleasant one.
The school was provided with large play-grounds, play-hours were long
and study-hours short. Near by was a pond for boating and fishing, and
beyond the village were groves for nutting and picnics. The master's
wife always took tea with the boys, and the master himself was a
good-natured man with a great fondness for playing practical jokes.
Once when he knocked at the dormitory door during an exciting
pillow-fight, the boys turned the joke upon him by putting out
the lights, and, pretending that they thought him one of their
schoolmates, pounded him so unmercifully that he was glad to rush from
the room.

But there were serious moments, too, in life. In one of these Curtis,
then about seven, arrayed himself in ministerial garb and solemnly
preached a sermon, from the landing of the stairs, upon the
consequences of evil-doing. Perhaps it was from the text of this
sermon that he a little later wrote a treatise on murder, which, he
said, always started with Sabbath-breaking; the Sabbath-breaker became
in turn a user of profane language, then a thief, and so went downward
by easy gradations until he committed murder. Such grave subjects,
however, only occasionally depressed the spirits of this happy flock
of boys. Curtis said that possibly they did not learn anything at this
school, but that they had plenty of good beef.

There was a very deep love and sympathy between the Curtis brothers,
and their life at Jamaica Plain, and afterward when they returned to
Providence, is reflected in the work of later years where the picture
of the brother is sketched with a loving hand.

While they were still very young boys they heard in their school-room,
at Providence, a lecture by Emerson, who was then beginning to be
known as an essayist and lecturer. Into these hearts, which had
just left childhood, the words of Emerson fell full of gracious
inspiration. He became their teacher of noble thoughts, their leader
into the realm of moral beauty. Much as the page of chivalric days
looked up to his chosen knight, they revered with boyish hero-worship
the great teacher. He gave them the best things that Puritanism could
bestow, and he became a far-reaching influence in their lives.

The Curtis family removed to New York in 1839, and the Providence
school-days came to an end. But above all others Curtis always called
Emerson his teacher; another tribute to the master to whom American
thought owes so much.

The new home was in Washington Square, then the upper part of the
city, with the open country not far away. The best-known people of the
day--writers, artists, musicians, lovers of all art--found their
way to the Curtis home. This companionship, together with systematic
study, fostered rapid intellectual growth; the boys made progress, but
city life did not entirely please them. About this time the Community
of Brook Farm was founded by the men destined to be among the
intellectual leaders of America. Every member was pledged to help with
the manual labor, and to contribute his share toward the intellectual
life. It was a dream of the old Utopia, where life was simple and
happiness abounded. The Curtis brothers begged their father to let
them go and share this ideal home, and he consented. Although they
went as boarders and did not become actual members of the community,
its life was theirs. Here, where Emerson, Hawthorne, and Dana ploughed
and hoed and planted, the two boys did their share. They drove cows,
raked hay, and pulled weeds in the morning; in the afternoon they
studied German, chemistry, and music; in the evening they danced or
sang, had theatrical representations or talked philosophy.

Young Curtis absorbed the healthy atmosphere of this unconventional
yet inspiring life, as he breathed the air from the dewy meadows and
wild-rose hedges. It was a part of the hope and aspiration of youth
brought down to actual touch, and he formed here more than one abiding
and uplifting friendship.

The charm of the life did not quite dissolve when the brothers
returned to New York, for within a few months they were again in the
country as inmates of a farmhouse near Concord. Here they did farm
work, made their own beds, cultivated a little garden, joined a club
of which Emerson and Hawthorne were members, and, in fact, lived
and did quite as they pleased. It was camp life with some of the
discomforts left out and some privileges added, and it was an idyllic
existence for a youth who did not know just what he should make of
life, but who had determined that he would make of it something noble.

While at Concord Curtis wrote two charming little stories that may be
called a prelude to his literary career. One of these tales is that of
the strange sights seen by a little girl who possesses a pair of magic
spectacles. It is full of the poetic grace of a genuine folk-story.
In the chapter on Titbottom's Spectacles in _Prue and I_, the same
_motif_ is used. Neither of the stories has ever been published.

His career was still undecided when, in his twenty-second year, Curtis
sailed for Europe and a trip to the East. Although calling no college
his Alma Mater he was still the representative cultivated young
American of his day. He was well read in the German, Italian, and
English classics, appreciated the best music, was a student of
sthetics, and had an earnest and intelligent interest in politics.
He believed that America, as embodying the idea of self-government
of states, had a mission to the world. In his soul he consecrated his
best powers to the service of humanity, and he was ready, when the
moment came, to serve it without thought of cost to himself. The ocean
travellers of those days took passage in packet-ships, and Curtis
was forty-six days in crossing to France. He spent four years abroad,
making the usual tours. He kept a diary, which became a record of
charming interest, but most of which remained unpublished. During this
time he sent letters to the _New York Tribune_, devoted to the public
questions of the day. The fact that he chose to write thus, while
surrounded by the Old World impressions, shows the trend of his mind
toward the higher political interests in which he became a leader.

During this trip Curtis seems to have made up his mind to a literary
career. Soon after his return he began to lecture, and a little later
went on the staff of the _Tribune_. _The Nile Notes of a Howadji_ is
the record of a trip up the Nile, and was the first book that Curtis
published. Like Longfellow's _Hyperion_, it has more than a literary
value as being the actual experience of one who was to become
prominent in American literature. In these chapters the author did
not aim at literal description. He was rather the happy traveller
transcribing for absent friends the pictures of the lands they have so
often visited together in imagination.

He made himself story-teller to the fireside group, and scene after
scene was sketched with faithful hand. To this young dreamer Egypt
still remained the land of wonder and inspiration, though its temples
lay in ruins and its people had sunk to the lowest level of humanity.
There is a wondrous charm in his sympathy with that great past, and in
his appreciation of the ideals of the race whose art and science laid
their mark ineffaceably upon the world. The paintings in the pyramids
and tombs of the common people, illustrating the victories of the
kings, the occupations of the lower classes, and even the games of
the children, all pictured in colors still fresh, had a wonderful
fascination for the young traveller. In gazing at them he forgot the
Egypt that he actually saw and seemed to touch hands with a vanished
race.

It throws a bright light on the character of the author to see him
thus able to make that old inspiration his own. Without the _Nile
Notes_ we should never have known so well the ambitions of his young
manhood when he was a dreamer of dreams. The chapters on the every-day
occurrences of the trips are also full of interest, and touched with
the author's characteristic humor.

The natives called all travellers howadji--shopkeepers--for such
they conceived to be the occupation of the wandering Europeans and
Americans who visited their land. To the native imagination the
howadji was a being created to bestow bakshish, or alms, to buy bits
of mummy bones, or even whole mummies, and to be cheated upon every
occasion. Curtis refused to be cheated, gave bakshish only to
the "miserable, old, and blind," and struck his followers dumb by
insisting upon doing nothing for long hours but sit gazing upon a
pyramid or ruined temple.

The journey up and down the Nile occupied two months, and the record
of it will always be interesting as embodying the experiences of the
Nile traveller in 1848. The literary charm of the book is great, many
of the passages being in reality unrhymed poems of peculiar beauty.
This volume was published in the spring of 1851, and was well
received. There was an English edition which received many flattering
notices, and this success confirmed the author in his determination to
make literature his profession.

Mr. Curtis's next book, _A Howadji in Syria_, continued his
journeyings in the East through Syria and Palestine. It is written in
the style of the earlier work, and partakes of the same charm.

His third book, _Lotus-Eating_, had originally appeared in the
_Tribune_ as a series of letters written during a summer's journeyings
through the Berkshire Hills, at Newport, and other sea-coast
places, and at Niagara. This book is in Curtis's most delicate vein.
_Lotus-Eating_ was illustrated by Kensett, one of the most popular
artists of the day, and a warm friend of the author. Both text and
drawings recall to-day the grace and beauty of some old miniature in
its quaint setting, a reflection of another and more picturesque age.

The _Potiphar Papers_ followed _Lotus-Eating_, and showed Curtis in
the light of a teacher of manners and morals to what was called the
best society. The Potiphar family was a picture of the rich American
without cultivation, and with no other ambition than to live in finer
houses, have better horses, and give more expensive dinners than the
rest of the world. In a series of letters by Mr. and Mrs. Potiphar and
their friends the author shows the folly of such silly ambitions.

But the book which brought Mr. Curtis the most fame, both because
of its artistic excellence and high literary value, is that charming
idyll, _Prue and I_. In these pages the hero is an old book-keeper who
lives in a humble way in an unfashionable street. But the book-keeper
counts himself rich because of his many castles in Spain, whither he
often travels, and about which he writes many delightful descriptions.
There are other characters in the book who also own castles in Spain.
Titbottom, the under-book-keeper, and Bourne, the millionnaire, share
and share alike in this wonderful property, which one is never too
poor to own, and never too rich not to desire. Each one tells stories
in which Moorish palaces, marble fountains, moonlit balconies, West
Indian sunsets, and tropical flowers are woven into an arabesque of
color; but somehow all suggest a dreamy-eyed boy lying upon a sunny
hill-slope watching an East Indian merchantman sail out of Providence
harbor and fade away into a dim horizon.

There is one sweet and touching chapter called "My Cousin the Curate,"
in which Curtis pays loving tribute to the character of his brother
Burrill. In the pages "Sea from Shore" is found that charming
description of Providence in his youth, and "The Flying Dutchman" is
the immortal legend transformed anew. Throughout the book are many
pictures of the New York of forty years ago; what was then fashionable
in manner, dress, and appointment; the favorite actor, the most
popular opera, the newest book, all are gossiped about by the old
book-keeper who looks on. The descriptions, with their quaint fancies
and poetic rendering, are alike rich in retrospective value.

Both the _Potiphar Papers_ and _Prue and I_ appeared first serially in
_Putnam's Monthly_, of which Curtis was for a time associate editor.
Five years after the publication of his first book Mr. Curtis took a
position on _Harper's Magazine_, and inaugurated the Easy Chair.
These delightful papers, which now are collected in several volumes,
included criticisms on art, literature, music, social events, and
similar topics, and were a never-ending source of interest and delight
to his audience. Like that of Holmes, in the _Atlantic_, it was a
purely literary office, and it showed, as no other review could, the
wide intellectual sympathy of the editor. The Easy Chair was conducted
for thirty-eight years by Mr. Curtis, being discontinued at his death.

In 1863 Curtis accepted the position of editor of _Harper's Weekly_.
Perhaps no other American writer has ever been in such peculiar touch
with the people as was the editor of the _Weekly_ at this time. It was
not a purely literary sympathy, for from the beginning his interest in
public questions was reflected in the editorial page. Whatever vexing
problem faced Congress, whatever measure in relation to government or
reform was before the people, was used as a text by the lay preacher
of the _Weekly_. The most unbounded respect was his, even from those
whose opinion differed from his own, while his admirers learned to
wait for the cool judgment and the wise word which never failed. Mr.
Curtis was a strong friend of the anti-slavery cause, and both before
and during the war he unflinchingly advocated its rights, though his
course cost him more than one personal friend. During this period as
a lecturer and delegate to conventions he reflected the creed of
the national party. He was nominated for Congress and accepted the
nomination, though he anticipated the defeat that awaited him in a
State where his party was weak. Throughout the entire struggle
he stood side by side with the great reformers, one of the most
interesting figures of that stormy period.

Perhaps the public movement with which Mr. Curtis's name will remain
most closely associated is the Civil Service Reform Commission, of
which he was the first president and always the leading spirit. The
object of this commission was to obtain legal power to advance all
Government clerks and employees by regular promotions, in place of
the political patronage which then obtained. This campaign for purer
public service was begun in 1871, and from that time Mr. Curtis's work
for it was unceasing, until the hopes of the reformers were fulfilled
by the passage of the Civil Service Reform Law, which led the way in
time to the needed reform.

From the beginning of his literary career Mr. Curtis had been known as
a lecturer of singular power. His lectures embraced a wide variety
of subjects, some of the most famous being those delivered before
colleges and at the meetings of the Chamber of Commerce in New York.
Seventeen of these addresses alone were devoted to the civil service
reform cause. His orations on the "Reunion of the Army of the
Potomac;" on "Wendell Phillips;" "James Russell Lowell;" "Burns;" "The
Puritan Principle;" "The Duty of the American Citizen to Politics,"
and other varied topics indicate the wide scope of this work. The
abiding affection which he had inspired in the people at large made
him one of the favorite orators at many commemorations of national
importance. His orations and addresses are collected in thirteen
volumes, and, with the _Harper's Weekly_ editorials, form a scholarly
review of one of the most interesting periods of American history.

Mr. Curtis's home was on Staten Island, where he died, in 1893.




CHAPTER II

RICHARD HENRY STODDARD

1825-


The first recollections of Richard Henry Stoddard, like those of so
many of our American men of letters, are of the sea. He was born at
Hingham, Mass., a little seaport town, where his ancestors had lived
for generations, and whence his father, Captain Stoddard, sailed away
in his ship one day never to return. Somewhere between New York and
the coast of Norway the brave little brig in which Captain Stoddard
had invested all his fortune went down. Perhaps it struck an iceberg,
or in the darkness of the northern sea mists came into collision
with another vessel; no one ever heard its fate, and the widow and
fatherless children only knew that to them had come that bitter
portion which the sea gives to so many of its followers. For the first
few years of his life young Stoddard had hardly any settled home, his
mother moving from place to place, whenever a chance of bettering
her fortunes presented itself. For a year or two he was at his
grandfather's house at Hingham, which was situated on a hill
overlooking the ocean, and below which was the graveyard where
generations of seafaring folk lay buried. Among the memories which
shine out from these earliest years are those of the old church at
Hingham, where he solemnly sat in the old-fashioned high-backed
pew, and of the admiring friends who, perhaps, on that same Sunday
afternoon, pressed round him while he gravely recited one of Watts's
hymns or some other of the pieces of which he had store. There is also
a remembrance of a trip to Boston in his grandfather's schooner, an
adventurous voyage no doubt to the small seafarer. From Hingham he
went to live in several other New England towns, never staying long
in one place, and settling at last in Boston, from which place, in his
tenth year, he removed to New York on his mother's second marriage.

In all his sojournings he had never been quite out of sight and sound
of the sea, and it was from this teacher no doubt that he learned to
be a worshipper of beauty. Years afterward, when he began to translate
his thoughts and emotions into verse, we find much of it touched with
that indefinable, haunting mystery which is found only in the poetry
of sea-lovers. And this quality is no doubt a reminiscence of those
childish impressions which sank into his mind and became a part of it.

Stoddard's life in New York was varied in experience, although he had
for the first time a settled home. The family was poor, and Stoddard
went to school or became a bread-winner alternately, as their fortunes
ebbed or flowed. At the age of fifteen he found himself confronted
with the fact that the boy who eats bread and butter sometimes has to
help pay for it to the extent of all his small might, and young as he
was even then, he had no notion of shirking his duty. He became first
the office-boy to a firm of two young lawyers, who had few clients,
but who, nevertheless, advised him to forget poetry and study law. He
worked for a time in a newspaper office; then he became book-keeper
in a factory. For three or four days he tried earnestly to become a
blacksmith, and at last, after much shifting of scene, he settled in a
foundry and learned the trade of iron-moulding.

But to his mind the actual boy neither copied lawyers' briefs, nor
handled an anvil, nor moulded iron. For in that world which he had
created for himself he did nothing the livelong day but think and
write poetry. Sometimes the poetry would be scribbled down in the
short noon recess, but oftener the hours of the night were given to
writing, rewriting, correcting, and revising the verse which he was
sure must lead into the pleasant ways of life at last.

Whatever odd moments he had that were not given to writing poetry were
spent in reading it. Out of his small salary his mother allowed him
a little spending money, and with this he bought books. Usually they
were second-hand volumes, picked up on streetstands, but occasionally
a new book found its way to the library, which grew year by year, and
was a mute record of the boy's ambitions. In this way Stoddard became
familiar with the best English poetry, and so got an education not
then to be had in many schools.

After several books of manuscript poetry had been filled and
destroyed, for he seems to have understood that this writing was only
a training, he at last ventured to offer a poem to a weekly magazine,
which accepted it, and the young poet actually saw himself in print.
About the same time he received some encouraging criticisms from the
poet N. P. Willis, who saw a little volume of his manuscript. His most
valuable acquaintance at this time was Mrs. Kirkland, the editor of a
magazine, who not only praised the young poet, but bought some of his
work for her magazine. Other successes followed, and finally Stoddard
had saved enough money to have a volume of his poems published;
although he only sold one copy of these poems, which was published
under the title _Footprints_, it yet tended to help him materially,
for it brought him to the notice of literary people. Like many another
poet, Stoddard owed much of his success to the kindly and generous
sympathy of older and successful writers. This little volume led to
his being introduced to the best literary society of New York, and
that was of inestimable value to the then unknown poet. In 1852, being
then in his twenty-eighth year, Stoddard published a second volume
of poems, and a year later, through the influence of Hawthorne,
he obtained a position as clerk in the Custom House, a place which
brought him an assured income, and yet gave leisure for his literary
work.

In this same year he published two dainty volumes for children, _Fairy
Land_ and _Town and Country_. They are full of delightful humor and
show the poet in one of his happiest moods.

The life of Stoddard has been emphatically that of the poet and
student. His whole career has been colored by one ambition, the
highest that can govern any writer, to succeed in his chosen calling
and do honor to American literature. Besides his poems, which have
passed through many editions since the appearance of his first little
volume, he has been connected with various newspapers and has been
the editor of a magazine. Among other things he has also edited
_Griswold's Poets of America_, _The Female Poets of America_, an
edition of the _Late English Poets_, and a collection of reminiscences
of well-known writers known as the Bric-a-Brac Series. Since 1880 he
has been editor of the literary department of the New York _Mail and
Express_.

To all this miscellaneous work Stoddard has brought the trained
intellect and artistic perception of the poet and student, and he has
stamped much of it with more than an ephemeral value. His work on
the _Mail and Express_ is a weekly review of the literary work of the
world, and is a good summary of the intellectual field of the day.

Some of the finest examples of his poems are found in the collections,
_Songs of Summer_, _The King's Bell_ and _The Book of the East_.
Single examples, such as the _Vanished May_, _Up in the Trees_, _The
Grape Gatherer_, _Dead Leaves_, show his sense of beauty, mingled with
the old Greek love of the earth, in perfect poetic union. In these
moods he is a true descendant of the early poet worshippers of nature.
_Wratislaw_, the story of a little hero prince, whose brave spirit
wrought noble deeds in the days when the Turk overran Europe, is
a beautiful specimen of the poet's art in dealing with legendary
subjects. So also is his _Masque of the Three Kings_, in which the old
Bible Christmas Story is told anew. A _Wedding Under the Directory_
is a quaint picture of a day, relived by another generation. In
1876 Stoddard was asked for a poem to celebrate the opening of the
Centennial Exposition, and responded with his _Guests of the State_,
a noble composition, full of that large sympathy, which made the
occasion a memorable one in the history of the nation.

The fact that most impresses one in regard to his work is his intense
feeling for beauty. And in this sense one can trace his literary
career from his earliest years. Such a nature must have unconsciously
been nurtured in those exalted moods which are revealed only to the
poet born. Through all his best work there is an undertone which is
felt rather than seen, and which hints of a deeper current underneath.

Some of his most charming work appears in transcriptions of the poetry
of the East--love-songs of the Tartar and Arab, of the Persian and
the Sclav. With true poetic sympathy he has wrought these pictures of
Eastern life into English verse that reveals all their own wild force
and fire.

Stoddard's life has been spent almost entirely in New York. As he has
devoted all his talent to his chosen work, so he has reaped the reward
that comes from such high endeavor, and won in its best sense the
poet's fame.




CHAPTER III

EDWARD EGGLESTON

1837-


In all the stories which relate to the settlement of the United States
none are more interesting than those which tell of the experiences of
the pioneers who fought face to face with the Indians in the valley of
the Ohio.

From the time when Daniel Boone and his companions followed Indian
trails across the Alleghenies and settled Kentucky, until far beyond
the period of the Revolution, the history of every settlement on the
frontier was one of bitter warfare with the red men. Before he could
build his house or prepare the land for tilling, the frontiersman had
to erect a block-house to protect the settlement against his wily foe,
and very often this fort-like structure was the home for weeks at a
time of the entire community. Whether the pioneer felled trees, broke
up the new ground, sowed, tilled, or gathered his crops he worked ever
with his rifle by his side. And the housewife, busy with spinning,
weaving, and other family cares, never went to her door without an
anxious glance to see that no lurking enemy was near. Very often, too,
in spite of all precaution, the smoke rising from his burning dwelling
would be the first warning that the settler would receive, and he
would hasten home to find his wife and children slaughtered or carried
away into captivity.

It required brave hearts to found homes on the frontier, where even
nature gave only in return for hardest toil, and still braver ones
to work steadily on in the face of treacherous Indian foes. But
the pioneer of the Ohio Valley did not know fear, and his record of
honorable accomplishment has made him a famous character in the story
of his country.

An old block-house of this region, the first that was erected on the
Indiana side of the Ohio, was built by Captain Craig, a noted pioneer,
who won renown both as a fighter against the Indians and as a leader
in the little band of settlers. It was men of this class, resolute,
brave, and self-sacrificing, which redeemed the Valley of the Ohio
from nature and the red man and made it habitable.

And although the struggle went on for years, it ended at last in peace
and prosperity for the pioneers. The Indians retreated toward
the Mississippi, thriving little villages grew up around the old
block-houses, and the outlying country, rich in valuable timber
or meadow lands, was as free from danger as the valleys of the
Connecticut or Hudson.

In Vevay, Ind., one of these little villages, about four miles from
the old block-house, was born on December 10, 1837, Edward Eggleston,
a grandson of Captain Craig. His father, a descendant of a Virginia
family which had won honor in the Revolution, was a prominent lawyer
of Vevay, where the boy lived until his third year. The family then
removed to the old Craig homestead, and in this region, so rich
in historic memories, young Eggleston spent six of the most
impressionable years of his life. As he was a delicate boy, school
life occupied a very small part of his time, though books were always
interesting to him. He above all implored to be taught to write, and
almost as soon as he knew how to write he began to express his own
thoughts, of which he had many. But the best education he could have
had for the work he was to do was obtained from the still lingering
picturesqueness of Western life, which surrounded him everywhere.

Life was still primitive enough in the Ohio Valley, and the interests
of the people were so closely allied that they seemed almost like one
large family. If a man wished to build a house or barn, he summoned
his neighbors to what was called "a raising," when all worked to raise
the building on its foundations. The crop of corn was husked at
a "bee," to which all the country lads and lasses came, and after
dividing into two companies, worked hard till one or the other won the
race by husking the last ear first. A supper in the farm-house kitchen
and a dance in the barn would follow, when the guests would separate,
to meet perhaps the next night at another "bee." Wood was chopped,
logs rolled from the forests to the river, where they were floated
down to the sawmills, and every other kind of farm work done in
the same way. In the households the women had spinning and quilting
"bees," and, in fact, from the oldest to the youngest, each member of
the community felt that he had its interests at heart.

While the frontier life had developed a certain class who were rough
in manner and careless in morals, the greater part of the people were
Methodists, and were sincerely and enthusiastically devoted to their
religion. In those widely scattered communities churches were almost
unknown, and services were held in the school-rooms or at private
houses, as might be most desirable. The ministers were as a rule men
of character and force, descendants in the next generation of stalwart
Indian fighters and frontiersmen, and into their work they put the
same energy which their fathers and grandfathers had used in winning
homes in the wilderness.

These Methodist ministers were called circuit-riders; they had no
settled parish, but each one had charge of from fifty to one hundred
parishes, which they were required to visit as often as possible. With
his saddle-bags and rifle the circuit-rider would travel from village
to village, claiming hospitality from the families under his care, who
always welcomed him gladly, placed their houses at his disposal, and
if the meeting was to be held in the school-house, stood ready to
guard him from the attacks of any of the rough class who might try
to interfere with him. The circuit-rider was undoubtedly the greatest
influence for good known to the Ohio Valley, and his respect and
esteem were sought by all. He did his work well, infusing into the
daily life of his followers an earnest desire for right-doing and a
hunger for spirituality which had a lasting effect upon the characters
of the builders of the Middle West. One of Eggleston's first memories
must have been that of the circuit-rider riding up to the door of his
grandfather's house and dismounting, while the heads of the family
stood ready to welcome him with respectful courtesy. And the
mind-picture photographed thus vividly was to be reproduced later and
form a unique contribution to American literature.

From the old homestead the family removed to Vevay on the death of
Eggleston's father, and here in his tenth year the boy began his
school life in the little school-house which has become so familiar to
his readers. The scenes and incidents of this experience are retold
in that charming volume, _A Hoosier School Boy_, with so loving and
faithful a touch that no one can doubt that they are the personal
memories of the chronicler. The ambitions of these boys, whose
greatest desire was to have an education, their hopes and
disappointments, their misunderstandings with their teacher, and their
manly apologies, their schoolboy games and plays, are all a part
of Eggleston's own experience. The school-house is a memory, not
a creation, and into it really walked one day the veritable little
Christopher Columbus, with his tiny voice and thin legs, to shame all
the big boys by reading better than they. Little Christopher Columbus
did not know that his biographer sat watching him with admiring eyes,
and no one dreamed that this episode was afterward to be incorporated
into that charming book. Eggleston's boyhood, like that of Howells,
was full of the energetic influence of the young West, an influence
which, after building homes in the wilderness and bringing
civilization to take the place of savage conditions, kept bravely to
its work of developing the frontier.

The youth of that period received only those things for which he
strived. Education, the boon more desired than anything else, was hard
to obtain. The country schools were either taught by old fogies, who
ruled with birch and rattan, or by young men, to whom teaching meant
only a means to livelihood while preparing for some other work. Here
and there throughout the country were scattered a few academies where
the higher branches were taught, but only a few boys had the means to
avail themselves of the privilege. The boy of the Ohio Valley fifty
years ago knew very early that his own will and strength must win for
him in the battle of life; and this knowledge brought into play the
best forces of his nature. Underneath the carelessness of boyhood
generally lurked an earnest desire to become useful to his generation,
and to this ambition Eggleston was no exception.

Life meant much to him early, and at nine years old the village school
at Vevay knew no better pupil than the delicate boy who had already
begun to learn that the patient endurance of ill-health must be one of
his greatest teachers. A few weeks at school would be followed by
many months of sickness, but his purpose never faltered. During one of
these periods of ill-health he was sent to stay for some months in a
backwoods district, where life was still in the rudest stage. Shut off
from books, Eggleston gathered from this experience stores of valuable
knowledge. Although only twelve years old, he was a student of human
nature, and the unfamiliar scenes became picture-stories of the
lives of the rough men by whom he was surrounded. Many years after he
reproduced the memories of these days with a faithfulness which showed
how vividly they had impressed him. There is, indeed, in all his work
the same charm that is found in the poetry of Whittier, and which
makes so much of it seem like a translation of the moods and feelings
of boyhood.

Besides studying, Eggleston was always busy writing. He was still a
young boy when his first contribution appeared. A country newspaper
had offered a prize for the best composition by a schoolboy under
fifteen, and he resolved to obtain it if possible. He was not at that
time in school, but was acting as clerk for a hardware merchant. The
editor, however, assured him that this would not debar him from
the competition. Thereafter every spare moment was given to the
composition of an essay on the given subject, and to Eggleston's
great joy he won the prize, although his employer had from that day
suspicions as to the real value of a clerk with a literary turn of
mind.

Not very long after, being again at school, he won high praise from
his teacher for a little essay on _The Will_, which, although full
of imitations of the writers he had been studying, still showed much
promise. At that time there were no railroads connecting the East and
the West, and the newspapers and books from the Atlantic coast were a
long time in reaching the frontier. There grew up, therefore, in the
Ohio Valley a little coterie of native writers, who represented the
best thought and culture of the region. Their poetry, fiction, and
essays were gladly welcomed by the Western newspapers, which often
devoted pages to this literature, and the writers thus gained much
local fame. The teacher who so kindly encouraged young Eggleston was
one of the best known of these Western writers. Although she found
fault with every other sentence of the little essay on _The Will_, she
still saw its merits, and to Eggleston, who had admired her fame for
years, her praise was very sweet. It was a great inspiration to him at
the moment, and the faithful criticism which she continued to give was
of inestimable value to the future novelist.

When he was seventeen Eggleston went to Virginia to visit his father's
relatives. Here he had a year's experience of Southern plantation
life. This easy, luxurious existence was a great contrast to life in
the Ohio Valley, but, although Eggleston appreciated it, his instincts
remained true to the wider freedom of the country of his birth. He
was destined to be the chronicler of the true story of much of that
Western life, and nothing could ever detract from its vital and
enduring charm. One of his Virginia uncles, who was rich and
childless, wished to adopt him, but Eggleston refused, and returned
home richer for the experience and for the few months' training from
an excellent Virginia school, but still devoted heart and soul to the
interests of the West.

A year later he was sent to Minnesota, in the hope that the climate
might benefit his health, which seemed completely broken. He was
threatened with consumption, and knowing that he had but this chance
for life, he threw himself desperately into the rough frontier work,
which kept him out of doors continually. He drove oxen to break up
new ground, wading through the wet prairie grass at day-break, and
broiling under the noonday sun. He felled trees, rolled logs,
and acted as chain-bearer for a party of surveyors. He fought a
troublesome cough and fever with the same determination, and in a few
months his youth and pluck had turned the scale, and he was on the
road to health. He now set out to walk from Minnesota to Kansas, and
it is a pity that he kept no journal of this experience.

A delicate boy travelling through the Western frontier for over two
hundred miles, he must have met with many unique adventures. He slept
at night in hunters' cabins, rough country taverns, little log-houses
of settlers, and sometimes out of doors under the shelter of friendly
logs and ties. He lived on the rude fare that supplied the wants of
the hardy backwoodsmen, and his companions were oftenest those rough
spirits who found in the excitement of frontier life a congenial
atmosphere. But the journey was accomplished, though on reaching
Kansas he was not allowed to enter its borders because of the
unsettled state that society had been thrown into by the political
troubles. Turning eastward, Eggleston resolved to travel home on foot.
When near the end of his journey his money and strength both nearly
gave out, and he was indebted to two friendly strangers for the
two dollars necessary to reach home. He arrived at the house of his
nearest relatives in such a tattered condition that the maid almost
refused him entrance, and his half-brother was for some moments
in doubt about allowing the relationship. This experience ended
Eggleston's boyhood. The next year, being not yet nineteen, he put
into execution a long-cherished plan. Knowing that his health would
never allow him to enter college, he put that wish aside, and filled
with a desire to make of life a noble achievement, he became that
ideal of the young West, a circuit-rider.

In entering the ministry Eggleston was fulfilling the hope of his
life. To one of his education and training the Methodist minister
of the day represented the ideal of self-sacrifice and spiritual
aspiration; he was a soldier of Christ, ready to fight, conquer or
die, in his Master's service, and to him the warfare seemed glorious.
Eggleston took up his new duties as the youth of old assumed the
honors of knighthood. It was a solemn dedication of his young life
to the service of humanity and the acceptance of a trust which he
faithfully fulfilled. The Methodism inherited and shared by the
generations to which Eggleston belonged did for the West what
Puritanism accomplished for New England--it made the every-day life
an impulse toward right-doing, and in this it laid strong and deep
the foundations of noble character and loyal citizenship. The republic
owes much to this valiant army of workers which Eggleston now joined,
burning with a desire to devote his whole feeble strength to the
common cause.

We can picture him thus, a delicate boy, riding from place to place,
be the weather what it might, finding his home among the members of
his scattered flock, suffering discomfort and often danger, anxious,
yet fearing nothing but that he might fail in his duty.

His first charge included a circuit of ten places, which he visited at
intervals. He carried his wardrobe in his saddle-bags, and as he never
for one moment gave up his determination to become a scholar, nearly
all the time he spent on horseback was passed in reading and study.

Much of Eggleston's experience as an itinerant Methodist minister
is reproduced in _The Circuit Rider_. The Ohio Valley in Eggleston's
youth was the border-land of town and village life, all the
great country westward being occupied only by Indians or by rough
settlements of hunters, traders, and miners. This place between, where
the civilization of the East met the wild life of the West, was
the scene of _The Circuit Rider_, into whose pages are wrought many
striking incidents of those successful times. The heroes of the book
are two youths, Kike and Morton, sons of valley farmers. Both are
turned from their wild lives through the influence of one of those
Methodist ministers so familiar to their times, and both renounce all
worldly ambitions to enter upon the life of the circuit-rider. The
story is touchingly in sympathy with the experience of the humble
country folk who figure in its pages. Their home life and their
spiritual struggles alike appeal to our interest; we are present
at their merry corn-huskings and apple-paring bees, at their
prayer-meetings, and camp-meetings. Each scene has the value of
local history, and nowhere in American literature is there a more
soul-stirring picture than that which traces Kike awakening to the
high conception of a life of self-sacrifice.

Eggleston's own experience as a circuit-rider came to an end after six
months, as his health broke down completely under the strain, and he
was obliged to return to Minnesota. The invigorating air and freedom
from care again worked their charm, and in a short time he was once
more engaged in preaching. His work now was on the Minnesota frontier,
where the Indians still lingered, forming a large part of the
population. The white settlements and Indian villages all along
the Minnesota River soon became familiar with the face of the young
preacher, who walked from place to place shod in moccasins, and
who brought into their rough lives the only refining and uplifting
influence that they knew. We can see the groups gathered round
him while he gives his word of advice or encouragement, the scene
recalling an episode in the career of Eliot, and reflecting a phase of
American life that has forever passed away.

But Eggleston's fame as a preacher soon made him in demand in the
larger towns, and less than two years after he entered the ministry he
accepted a call to the city of St. Paul. From this time his life was
spent almost entirely in cities. Owing to his poor health he was often
obliged to give up his duties as a minister and take up whatever work
presented itself as a means of support for his family. He had in the
meantime begun to write regularly for various religious papers, and
had successfully accomplished some editorial work.

In 1870, when Eggleston was in his thirty-fourth year, he accepted a
position on _The Independent_, and left the West for his new home in
Brooklyn. Although later years were again devoted to preaching,
this was the beginning of an uninterrupted literary life, which has
continued to the present day.

His first important book, and the one which brought him instant
recognition, was _The Hoosier Schoolmaster_, which was written as a
serial for the periodical _Hearth and Home_. Almost immediately
after its publication in book form it was issued in England, France,
Germany, and Denmark, and everywhere it was received with the greatest
favor. With true artistic instinct, Eggleston had gone for the
material of his book to the old familiar life of his youth. The scenes
which lingered in his memory when touched by his trained hand became
vivid pictures of new and peculiar interest. This revelation of the
picturesqueness of Western frontier life appealed to all, and the
vital humanity which throbbed through its pages touched every heart.

This book which made Eggleston a novelist showed him, also, the
probable place for his own contributions to American literature. He
became the novelist of the river frontier and prairie life, which
so fortunately for our literature lingered long enough to make its
lasting impression upon his youth. The titles of his successive books
show this life in many aspects. From the ideal reproductions of _The
Hoosier Schoolmaster_, and _The Hoosier Schoolboy_, in which we walk
hand in hand with childhood, through all the graver problems of adult
life we still follow the fortunes of the class that Eggleston's art
has made typical.

One of the most interesting of his books is _The Graysons_, the story
of a young law-student who is accused of murder, and whose acquittal
is obtained by Abraham Lincoln who pleads his cause. This introduction
of Lincoln into fiction was made by request, and the incident is
cleverly made to illustrate the keenness and sagacity of the great
statesman even while an obscure lawyer in an obscurer Western town.

Among Eggleston's juvenile works _The Schoolmaster's Stories for
Boys and Girls_, _Queer Stories for Boys and Girls_, _A First Book
in American History_, and a large amount of miscellaneous matter all
indicate his sympathy with the heart of childhood, and his ability to
enter into the questions and interests which make up the child-world.
They are genuine boys and girls who walk through his pages. Perhaps
the book which shows Eggleston at his best is _The Circuit Rider_,
with its fine insight into those spiritual problems which interest all
humanity. _Roxy_ is another delineation of character, which, in its
story of the struggle between right and wrong in the human heart,
suggests the old Puritanism of New England.

Besides his novels Eggleston has accomplished a great deal of work
on historical subjects, which has appeared in various magazines and
periodicals, and he has in preparation a history of the United States
to which he has already devoted much time in research in the great
libraries of the world. Some school histories and a good portion
of miscellaneous matter must also be included in his work. His
distinctive contribution to American literature is his reproduction
of a phase of American life which has now passed away, but which has a
unique value for the student of history.

The latter years of Eggleston's life have been spent mostly in New
York, where he now lives.




CHAPTER IV

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER

1829-


Charles Dudley Warner was born in Plainfield, Mass., in that lovely
and picturesque region which has become celebrated in American
literature as the birthplace of William Cullen Bryant. The country has
scarcely changed since those early days when the boy Bryant used to
wander over its fields and hills and hear in the neighboring forests
the cries of the wolves and bears which made their home there. The
Warner family belonged to the farmer race, which at that time made
up the larger part of New England life. The father was a man of fine
tastes, having a good library and being in frequent correspondence
with people in various parts of the country who were interested in the
public questions of the day. But while Charles was still a very young
child his father died, and the family was broken up for some years.
The boy was taken to the home of an aunt, who owned a homestead on the
Deerfield River, and it is here that his first recollections centre.
The lad's first school was in one of those little school-houses which
have been described in the verses of Whittier and Bryant, and his life
may in every respect be said to have corresponded to that so lovingly
portrayed in "The Barefoot Boy." This life makes a boy healthful
and manly, and the close communion with nature fosters those poetic
impressions to which the young mind is so susceptible. Warner was
happy in the care of his aunt and an older cousin, but there was one
great drawback to this otherwise contented life. At the Deerfield
farm-house there were no books except the Bible and one or
two religious works, and to a book-loving boy this was a great
deprivation. The family held to the strict observance of the New
England Sabbath, which extended from six o'clock on Saturday evening
to six o'clock on Sunday evening, and though much of this time was
occupied with church-going, there were many hours in which a book
would have been a boon. The imaginative child, however, has always a
little kingdom of his own to which he may retreat when disappointed
with the actual world, and in this fairy realm Warner spent many a
happy hour planning and dreaming of the future. He was but repeating
the experience of so many other New England boys in whose early days
seems to have lain the best training for the intellectual life.

But a lack of reading does not make a boy poor when he has at command
the fruits of meadow, field, and wood; when trout-streams exist for
him alone; when sunny days and rainy weather alike have their special
joys, and when nature is forever watching a chance to teach him
lessons of truth and beauty. The atmosphere of this quiet, uneventful
life was an influence for good--an influence which Warner afterward
gratefully appreciated.

Many a boy whose actual life has been bounded by the narrow confines
of farm life has had his first glimpse of the world beyond through the
pages of a book. In Warner's case this book was the _Arabian Nights_,
which his seat-mate brought to the little school-house one day and hid
amid the other boyish treasures in his desk. A district school-teacher
cannot see all that happens in his restless kingdom, and the urchin
had more than one stolen glance into the wonderful book while he was
supposed to be studying his spelling or doing sums. And what an ideal
world this was which the young discoverer had thus sailed into! Here
were genii, fairies, enchanted carpets, valleys of diamonds, and
masquerading pedlers who gave "old lamps for new." In this realm,
which the geographies so ignorantly omitted to mention, farm work
and even farm pleasures had no place. All was glittering, dazzling,
beautiful! Every day held new adventures, and one's intimate friends
owned miles of treasure-houses and inexhaustible mines of wealth.
When school was done Warner succeeded in borrowing this treasure, and
hurrying home, announced to his aunt and cousin that he had found "the
most splendid book in the world." Imagine his surprise and disgust
when these relatives, after an inspection of the precious volume,
said, gravely: "No, you cannot read this, Charles, it is not true."

But the boy evidently thinking that in such cases aunts and cousins
were as fallible as primary geographies, carried the book to the barn
and hid it in the hay, and there spent many an hour devouring the
enchanting tales.

Another book which he began at this time was _Cook's Voyages Around
the World_, the second volume of which had drifted somehow up to the
old farm-house door. These two books with the Bible were absolutely
all that Warner knew of the vast treasures of literature while he
remained at the Deerfield River farm.

But life broadened into wider channels when in his twelfth year he
was taken by his mother to Cazenovia, N. Y., and placed in the academy
there. The life at Deerfield had been that of the river, and fields,
and woods, but at Cazenovia Warner became emphatically the studious
boy, to whom books and study meant more than anything else in the
world. At the academy he was fortunate in his boy acquaintances, and
there he made friendships which have lasted through his life. One
of his friends was the son of a bookseller, in whose shop Warner was
allowed to browse at will. And here he learned to know Irving and
Cooper, Hawthorne, Prescott, and Bryant, and the other writers who
were founding American literature. This education which went on
outside the academy was also greatly stimulated by the talks and
discussions on literary matters between him and his comrades. And by
and by, as always happens in the case of boys who read and read, they
all began to write. Their first efforts took the form of poetry, which
somehow always seems to the boyish mind the easiest thing to write,
and thenceforth much of their interest in life lay in listening to
and criticising one another's verses. One of these boys while still a
youth wrote that celebrated song of how

  In their ragged regimentals
  The old Continentals

rallied to the defence of American liberty in the stormy days of the
Revolution.

Another has since become a famous scholar in literature and the
arts, whose name is known to two continents. Warner himself, who soon
forsook poetry for prose, can date his literary career from these days
when his chief ambition was to write and to write well. It was his
habit then and long afterward to walk up and down his room while
writing and repeat the sentences over and over, changing and polishing
them until they sounded rhythmic. The study of the best poetry of
America and England still went on steadily, and the boys often played
a guessing game as to author and verse. Sometimes the giver of the
verse would slip in a couplet of his own, and then laugh at the wild
guesses which placed his effusions among the English classics.

One of the most luminous memories of Warner's youth is that of a visit
to Irving at Sunnyside, whither he went under the guidance of one of
these early friends. The famous author received his young admirers
kindly and gave to Warner an ivy-leaf from the vine which had grown
from a slip plucked from the cottage of Burns's "Bonnie Jean." Neither
giver nor receiver foresaw, then, the link that was to be established
later by Warner's biography of America's first great man of letters.

In 1851 Warner was graduated from Hamilton College, which he entered
from Cazenovia Academy, taking the first prize for English. He
had already become somewhat known to the literary world through
contributions to the _Knickerbocker_ and _Putnam's Magazine_ and from
occasional visits to New York, when he became for a time a member of
that Bohemian world in which the younger generation of writers lived.

But although he had made a good beginning, literature was exchanged
two years after his graduation for the wild life of the Mexican
frontier, whither he went with a surveying party in 1853. After this
experience he studied law and practised it in Chicago for a few years.
But in 1866 he returned to his first ambition, and became editor of
the _Hartford Press_, which a year later was incorporated with the
_Courant_. Warner made of this newspaper one of the best-edited
journals of its class, and in its conduct won an enviable reputation
as an editor.

A year or two later he took his first journey to Europe, and on his
return contributed those papers to the _Courant_ which in 1870 made
their appearance in book-form under the title _My Summer in a Garden_.
It is in this little volume that Warner struck that vein of humor
which makes his work a delight to his large audience.

Another book which added greatly to his reputation at this time is
that called _Saunterings_, which contains his impressions of Europe in
this first journey. Very much of Warner's work has for its background
his journeyings in Europe and at home. His _Winter on the Nile_, _In
the Levant_, and _Notes of a Roundabout Journey in Europe_ are among
his most delightful reminiscences of foreign travel, while _Studies
in the South_, _Studies in the Great West_, and _Our Italy_, show
his wide familiarity with the scenes of his native land. He is a
sympathetic, cultivated traveller, by whom new impressions of art and
social life are appreciated, but who, nevertheless, sees all things
through that half-humorous light which delights American readers.
He is never too learned to extract fun out of a pyramid or cliff
dwelling, and, though an ardent patriot, he has no hesitation in
laughing at the foibles and eccentricities of his countrymen. His
characterizations of foreign and home life possess all the flavor and
freshness of the mind which looks at life from a new point of view. He
is the author of some charming essays, printed as _Back Log Studies_
and _As We Were Saying_, and he has published several successful
novels. If he is not a creator in the realm of art, he is a
keen observer and man of the world, deeply interested in his
fellow-travellers. His records of his impressions, although thrown
into the form of novels, are valuable chiefly for their sympathetic
view of every-day life.

One of our author's most charming books is that reminiscence of his
childhood, _Being a Boy_. Here we have the actual life of the New
England boy sixty years ago. All the little humble incidents of farm
life, all the simple pleasures, the delights of fishing and nutting,
of maple-sugar gathering, and the first party are noted with a
sincerity that makes the little narrative genuine history. Whittier
read this book more than once, and said it was a page out of his own
life-story. Outside its literary merit it is valuable as one more
truthful picture of the simple life of New England; a life whose
healthful duties and pleasures left wide spaces for the soul to grow
up to noble conceptions of manhood.

Besides his other work Mr. Warner has contributed a department to
_Harper's Magazine_, and has made some valuable additions to the
social science papers of the day. He has also served on the commission
for establishing prison reform, and he is well known as a successful
lecturer. Throughout his career he has followed mainly the lines laid
down for himself in his student days, and has bounded his ambitions
by the literary life. Since 1867 his home has been at Hartford. One of
our most successful humorists, he is also a striking example of those
earnest toilers whose work well supports the dignity of American
literature.




CHAPTER V

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN

1833-


Out of the many New England country boys who dreamed day-dreams one
came back in manhood to his early home and confessed that some of his
dreams had come true. This was not strange, for it is generally the
youthful day-dreamer whose after-life is fullest of accomplishment.
Nature, who is so wise a teacher, sends in these dreams such a vision
of the future that the soul is even then eager to press forward to its
realization. Sometimes this vision is obscured later by ambitions
that are ignoble; in such cases it fades away and is lost, like youth
itself. But the larger number of those who do the world's noblest
work is made up of men and women who received in childhood some such
revelation of the meaning of life. If with the day-dream comes a sense
of the beauty of nature--of the melodies which thrill through the
songs of brook, and bird, and forest aisle--and a desire to reproduce
them, the boy is apt to become a poet. Such a boy was Edmund Clarence
Stedman, born at Hartford, Ct., in 1833, being the son of a merchant
in comfortable circumstances.

When he was two years old Stedman was taken to Norwich to live with a
great-uncle, and it was with this pretty village, with its elm-shaded
streets and old colonial mansions, and with its outlying fields and
pasture lands, that his earliest associations are connected. In his
poem, _The Freshet_, there are many touches which recall his boyhood,
and which are in a sense biographical. The pictures of the group of
boys standing on the bridge or wading through the alder thickets
to the deep channel, where they fished and swam, and of the spring
freshet when the river rolled on like a flood, carrying cakes of ice,
lumber, rails, hay, and cattle along, are both scenes from the actual
experiences of the poet's youth. Throughout all his work one hears,
indeed, an ever-recurrent note that tells of early days; sometimes
the note is sad and sometimes gay, but always it is touched with that
regret which clings to the past.

The uncle with whom Stedman passed his youth was an eminent lawyer
and a man of learning. Very careful attention was paid to the boy's
education, as well as to the home life, which was carried on after
the strictest New England fashion. But Stedman, like other New England
boys, was all the better for this discipline. It developed strength
and endurance of character, a manliness of temper, and an indifference
to the minor ills of life, and this is invaluable training for any
poet. Stedman entered Yale at sixteen, and immediately became known
as one of its cleverest freshmen, though he rebelled often at the
discipline. He was a brilliant member of the college literary circle
and a contributor to the _Yale Literary Magazine_, which bestowed a
prize upon him for a poem on Westminster Abbey.

But his record as a scholar did not blind the college authorities to
his faults, and in his junior year the faculty suspended him for
some boyish escapade, and he never returned. Twenty years afterward,
however, when Yale had reason to be proud of his fame as a man of
letters, she called him to her halls and conferred upon him his degree
in the presence of an assemblage called together to see him thus
honored both as man and poet.

The immediate result of his leaving college was a determination to
begin life for himself, and at the age of nineteen he became editor
of the _Norwich Tribune_. The new venture was at once successful. Two
years later he took charge of the _Winsted Herald_, and conducted it
so successfully that it speedily acquired the fame of being one of
the cleverest newspapers published outside the great cities. But
gratifying as this must have been, the young editor sighed for new
fields, and in 1852 he removed to New York and became a contributor
to _Harper's_ and _Putnam's Magazines_, and a short-lived periodical
published under the name of _Vanity Fair_. Stedman was now twenty-one
years old. He had married, and as his magazine work could not support
him, he returned to journalism. His first important literary success,
as in the case of Lowell and Holmes, was based upon the publication of
a political poem.

The newspapers had just given to the world the story of John Brown's
capture of Harper's Ferry, and North and South alike were bitterly
excited over the event. This plain farmer was the most humble of the
anti-slavery leaders, yet his name was destined to be the war-cry of
the North for four years. He had, with a force of men, marched to
the fortress of Harper's Ferry with the avowed purpose of starting a
military crusade against slavery. The garrison, under the impression
that a large force was attacking, surrendered without a struggle, and
John Brown marched in and took possession. The fort was retaken in a
few days, but the event produced the most extraordinary agitation all
over the country. Every newspaper published an account of it, and it
was feared that the most serious results would follow.

What should be done with John Brown himself became a burning question,
the South clamoring for his death and the North demanding his
acquittal. While his fate was still under discussion there appeared in
the _New York Tribune_ a remarkable poem, in which all the feeling of
the moment seemed crystallized. Stedman was the author of this poem,
and no one but a true poet could so have entered into the spirit of
the old hero, to whom inaction seemed a denial of principle.

"How John Brown Took Harper's Ferry" is a ballad full of fire and
force. Stedman's power is shown in his fine appreciation of the
unselfish frenzy which possessed the old man and led him to offer
himself as a martyr in the cause he had espoused. One of the most
stirring ballads produced by the war, it will always hold a prominent
place in the lyric poetry of America. In less than two years after
its publication the author found himself war correspondent of the
_Tribune_, following the fortunes of the Army of the Potomac in its
first campaign. The South had decided that the question of slavery
must be settled by the sword, and the country was in the midst of
civil war.

Another poem published in the _Tribune_ about the time of the John
Brown episode showed the versatile talent of the new poet. This was
"The Diamond Wedding," a satire on the marriage of a young society
girl to a wealthy Cuban planter. A list of his gifts to his promised
bride appeared in the daily papers, and sounded like a catalogue of
the treasures of Haroun-al-Rashid. Stedman's poem struck the popular
fancy, which was also pleased by the publication of a song on the
charms of "Lager Bier." Encouraged by this friendly eulogy, he
published a volume of poems under the title _Poems Lyric and Idyllic_.
It is in this volume that "The Freshet" occurs, and also, among
several other good examples, the poem "Penelope," in which the old
Greek legend is retold in beautiful verse, which not only showed
Stedman's mastery of blank verse, but also his fine scholarship.

Stedman followed the fortunes of the army throughout the war, his
letters to his journal forming a valuable contribution to the war
literature of the day. He saw the first famous Battle of Bull Run,
when the Northern army was forced to retreat, and when it seemed for
the time that the war would be carried into the North. A reminiscence
of his experience in camp and hospital, on march and battle-field, is
found in his long poem, "Alice of Monmouth." But, although this poem
possesses passages of remarkable beauty, it does not show Stedman at
his highest reach. This is attained in those shorter lyrics, which are
so spontaneous, so full of natural poetry and so perfect in art that
they seem to spring unconsciously from the soul. One cannot help
regretting that our poet has not given us a more generous measure of
them. One of the most perfect of these lyrics, "The Doorstep," is full
of that tender regret which breathes through all the poet's work a
treasured memory of happy youth. "Country Sleighing" is another song
of nature, full of the dash and breezy story of the country winter
season. Again in "Holyoke Valley" the poet still looks backward to
his boyhood, and gives, through the music of poetry, one more bright
picture of the past. Among his other poems may be mentioned the ode
delivered before the graduating class of Dartmouth College in 1873,
called "The Dartmouth Ode," and a beautiful and touching tribute to
Horace Greeley, delivered at the request of the Printers' Association
at the unveiling of the bust of Greeley in Greenwood Cemetery. Among
other poems of occasions are the fine lines, "Gettysburg," delivered
at the reunion of the Army of the Potomac in 1871, and a monody on the
death of Bryant, delivered at the Century Club, New York.

Outside his poetry Stedman is known as a most conscientious and
scholarly editor of the work of other writers and as a critic of
original and thoughtful mind. He has edited, in conjunction with
Thomas Bailey Aldrich, a choice selection of the works of Landor, and
in 1875 he began the publication in _Scribner's Magazine_ of a series
of critical articles on the poets and poetry of the Victorian Age,
which forms one of the most valuable works of criticism in our later
literature. Following this came a volume of essays, called "The Poets
of America," and one entitled "The Nature and Elements of Poetry"--a
critical and imaginative study. He has edited also _The Library of
American Literature_, and an anthology of Victorian poetry, and made a
scholarly translation of the Greek idyllic poets. In all his literary
productions Stedman shows not only his fine poetic gift, but the sound
literary judgment and attainments of the scholar, and his work forms a
valuable contribution to American letters.

Stedman has passed the greater part of his life in New York, whither
he returned soon after the war, and where he has found opportunity not
only to write books but to be a successful business man.




CHAPTER VI

BRET HARTE

1839-


One of the favorite stories told by the men who had conquered Mexico
and Peru was that of a region of fabulous wealth, situated somewhere
in the region of the Sierra Madre Mountains, and ruled by California,
a white queen of divine origin. There, it was said, were hidden mines
of unexhaustible treasures, where emeralds, diamonds, and rubies were
as plentiful as gold and silver. There, also, the rain and dew watered
the most beautiful valleys in the world; the climate was beneficent,
and it was suspected that there would be found that magic fountain of
life, for which the brave De Leon had sought in vain. Many bands of
adventurers, bold of heart and full of hope, roamed the valleys and
toiled through the mountain passes in search of this wealth, but their
effort was unrewarded. The mountains kept their secret, and no glimpse
of diamond mine or wondrous fountain or beautiful queen was ever
revealed. At length the quest was given up. The Spaniards built homes
around the missions established by the priests, and with the help of
the Indians they tilled the soil, planted vineyards, and were content
with the plentiful annual harvests. Gradually little villages grew up
and the country became settled. But it remained Spanish, many of the
inhabitants being descendants of those old adventurers who had first
come hither in search of gold.

For three hundred years peace and content reigned in the valleys;
then, in a moment, all things were changed, as if by magic, by the
discovery of gold in the Sacramento Valley. California had, by the
treaty with Mexico, which ended the Mexican War, become a part of the
United States. The news of the great discovery had to be carried by
sailing-vessel around Cape Horn to the East, but no sooner was it
received than there began a wild rush for the Pacific coast. These
adventurers were not dressed in doublet and hose, like the Spanish
cavaliers, nor did they sail in those gaily decked vessels with which
the old Greeks loved to propitiate fortune. They came instead from
every class, and they travelled in any conceivable conveyance that
could be placed on wheels; many, indeed, went on foot, for the
voyage was long and expensive, and the overland route was in the main
preferred. Every country in Europe sent emigrants to swell the numbers
of the gold-seekers, and soon the prairies and plains of the West
seemed alive with the wagon trains, which kept close together from
fear of the Indians.

When the gold-fields were at last reached they were soon taken
possession of by the adventurers, who had turned soldiers in a common
cause. Their camp-fires gleamed from valley, and hill, and mountain
pass, and the entire country was turned into a great camp.

Many of the towns of California had been deserted in the first rush,
and as the tradespeople, farmers, and mechanics were equally engaged
in the search for gold, all other business was for the time being
paralyzed. It became almost impossible to buy the ordinary articles of
food and clothing, and any chance vessel which was willing to dispose
of its cargo might do so at fabulous prices.

Wigwams, tents, brush-huts, and log-houses served as dwellings for
Americans, Mexicans, Germans, Frenchmen, Austrians, Hollanders,
Chinese, and men of other nationalities, who lived and worked side by
side, shared one another's hopes and disappointments and successes,
and made it apparent that in the miners' camp at least all men were
brothers.

During the early years of the California emigration, when the first
excitement had abated, but while all the picturesque elements of the
life still remained, there came to the gold-fields a bright boy, who
had left his home in Albany, N. Y., to better his fortunes in the
West. This was Francis Bret Harte, whose father had been a teacher in
an Albany seminary. The boy himself tried teaching on his arrival, but
the attempt was unsuccessful, and he turned his attention to mining.
And here, because he was a poet, he saw many things that escaped the
eyes of others. Here, where the cultivated man of Oxford or Harvard
University worked with pick and pan beside the German peasant and
unlettered Chinese, he saw a new picture of life, but still a true
picture, because it reflected human nature. His finer sense grasped
the poetry, the courage, and the heroism that often inspired this
eager search for gold. He understood how the hope of the common
laborer and the dream of the scholar might spring from unselfishness,
and he saw that here, as on other fields, battles were lost nobly as
well as nobly won. He saw, too, that as years went on all the foreign
elements which made up the California of that day would blend to
furnish a unique page of American history. And because it is the
office of literature to record history, he believed that whoever
should preserve in prose and verse the every-day scenes of that
strange life would be doing valuable work.

His life at the mines was hardly more successful than had been his
school-teaching experience, and by and by he became a compositor in a
printing-office. Soon afterward he composed his first article in type
without previously writing it down, and so his literary career began.
A little later he entered the office of the _San Francisco Era_, then
an important newspaper on the Pacific slope. While in this position
he published anonymously a few sketches of life on the frontier. These
stories, so full of the genuine flavor of the mining-camp, attracted
some attention, but no one dreamed that they heralded a new voice in
American literature. Ten years after the discovery of gold a magazine
was organized in California under the title _The Overland Monthly_,
and Bret Harte was made its editor. In the second issue of the
magazine he published his story, "The Luck of Roaring Camp," which
showed how rich was the material that lay in the life of the far West
and revealed the impress of a master hand in literary composition. In
California, however, the story was not very popular. There the people
who read at all found their enjoyment in the books and magazines
familiar to cultivated society. Into the miners' camps came copies of
_The Edinburgh Review_ and _Punch_, but the true meaning of the life
of which they themselves formed a part had not yet been presented to
these eager adventurers.

But in the East "The Luck of Roaring Camp" was received with
enthusiastic praise. _The Atlantic Monthly_ at once offered to buy
similar sketches from the author--who had not made himself known--and
other periodicals and reviews spoke generous words in favor of the
young adventurer into this new world of art. Bret Harte became famous
almost in a day, and henceforth it was his task to fulfil his boyish
dream and put into literary form those records of an experience
that was rapidly passing away. Sketches, stories, poems, and novels
followed closely upon one another. He left no phase of this many-sided
life untouched, and the series grew at last into a faithful record of
the most picturesque and romantic episode of American history. What
diverse characters came to the writer's side and claimed his attention
as he wrote! Sometimes it was a miner who had failed in his quest;
sometimes a Mexican _ranchero_ with his light heart and merry
love-song; sometimes a convict who had escaped from prison and was
trying life anew in the freedom of the camps. Often it would be a
little child who would seem to tell its story to this ever-listening
ear,--a waif, perhaps, who had drifted into that wild company, which
yet kept its reverence for the innocence of childhood. More than once
the hero of the occasion would be one of those wild beasts who found
their homes in the vastnesses of the mountain forests, a grizzly,
watching with a dignified sense of his power the incomprehensible
antics of man, or a coyote slinking along a dusty road. For each and
all the author became a faithful chronicler, and because he had the
true poet's insight he became more than a mere chronicler. He lifted
all this motley assemblage forever out of the common-place of their
rough lives and showed that each was still real man or woman and
genuine kin to his race. Only a great artist could have done this.
Only genius could have so looked beneath the exterior and found there
the living signs of the brotherhood of man; the same genius which saw
but a humbler brother still in the ugly shape of Bruin, and to whom
the lazy coyote became only a "begging friar" living righteously upon
the largess of others.

As a background to his stories Bret Harte paints in scenes of
extraordinary natural beauty. He shows us, under the sunlight or
wrapped in storms, still set in their own atmosphere of loneliness,
the rude camps and settlements, the rivers and caons, which are the
haunts of his characters. The writer is, indeed, the poet of nature as
well as of the heart, and can reach easily her varying moods.

Among the most interesting of the stories which relate to child-life
are "A Waif of the Plains," the story of two children who were
separated from their party during the overland march to California;
"The Christmas Gift that Came to Rupert," the history of a
drummer-boy; "Wan Lee," the life of a little Chinese boy in San
Francisco; "The Story of Mliss," a miner's child, and "The Queen of
the Pirate Island," a delightful conception, possible only to that
land of bold adventure and tempting treasure. Perhaps it would not be
out of the way to include among these juvenile chronicles the story
of "A Boy's Dog" and the delightful experience of "Baby Sylvester," a
fascinating bear cub, who was adopted by a young miner, and fed on the
only milk that ever reached the settlement--for which service Adams'
Express made special trips. He could play tag, roll down hill, take
the cork out of the syrup-bottle with his teeth, dance, and shake
hands, and when he arrived at maturity he was still faithful to
his friends, and showed an ugly temper only to such human beings as
annoyed him.

Bret Harte's poems, like his prose, preserve the varying conditions of
early frontier life. They include also many verses written during
the Civil War, among which "John Burns of Gettysburg," "Caldwell of
Springfield," "The Reveill," and "How Are You, Sanitary?" are the
most notable. Here, too, is found that exquisite little idyl,
"Battle Bunny," the story of a white rabbit which was scared from its
hiding-place and took refuge in a soldier's bosom as the two armies
faced each other before battle.

Some of his best verses are written in the dialect of the camps, and
are full of his own delightful, distinctive pathos and humor. "Jim,"
"Dow's Flat," "Plain Language from Truthful James," "Babes in the
Wood," and "The Hawk's Nest" are among those that thus reproduce some
characteristic incidents of the wild life. His poem, "The Heathen
Chinee," was not intended for publication, but was written as a
harmless skit for the amusement of two or three comrades. When a
sudden exigency of the magazine dragged it from the reluctant author's
portfolio, from Maine to California a delighted public laughed over
it, but Mr. Harte himself has always lamented the fate that based so
much of his literary reputation on a bit of unfair doggerel.

Although he has spent years abroad, both as United States Consul
to different European cities and as a traveller, Bret Harte's work
remains distinctly American. The collection of stories now numbers
nearly thirty volumes; most of the titles, as _The Schoolmistress
of Red Gulch_, _Snow-Bound at Eagles_, _Two Men of Sandy Bar_, and
_Tennessee's Partner_, indicate the scene or nature of the sketch.

He is the historian of one of the most interesting movements in the
progress of the United States--a movement which began while California
was still a land of Mexican traditions, of grain and cattle-raising,
and ended only when it took its place as one of the most important
States of the Union. No one but an eye-witness could have written this
history faithfully, and American literature owes one of its greatest
debts to the man whose genius has thus illuminated the pages of the
nation's life.




CHAPTER VII

BAYARD TAYLOR

1825-1878


When William Penn stood under the trees and made his famous treaty
with the Indians there was in his company a young Quaker, whose
descendants continued for generations to be honored citizens of
Pennsylvania. As time went on the family mixed its Quaker blood with
that of some neighboring German Lutherans. In the seventh generation
from the days of Penn its most famous offspring, Bayard Taylor, born
at Kennett Square, in 1825, was as nearly German as Quaker, and it was
the German blood, no doubt, which gave his nature its strain of poetry
and romance.

The Taylor family were simple farmers, and the home life was plain,
though the thrift of both father and mother secured the children every
comfort. The mother's one desire was that her children should become
quiet, respectable members of a community that their name had honored
for generations. But to the fourth child, Bayard, this ambition always
seemed narrow. His earliest memories of himself were connected with
longings to flit as far beyond the home nest as possible.

At four years of age he became a reader of books, passing in due time
from Peter Parley to Gibbon, and learning Scott and Campbell by heart,
as well as copying long extracts from their works. Kennett Square
possessed a public library, volume after volume of which was devoured
by young Bayard. When he was seven years old he set himself gravely
to the business of writing poetry, placing his own verses with much
satisfaction among his copied extracts from the great poets.

Fond as he was of books, he was yet a genuine child, who delighted
in playing tricks, and had a very real terror of a piece of lonely
woodland that he had to pass through on his way to school.

He was an out-of-doors boy, too, and spent hours in swamp and field
making collections of frogs and baby turtles, eggs, and mineralogical
specimens. Among his other interests was a fondness for drawing.
He illustrated his own little manuscript book of verses, and made
pictures for the poems of his favorite authors. But his chief passion
was a desire to travel.

Books of travel and descriptions of foreign lands were read and
re-read and almost learned by heart. When called upon to write
compositions at school he invariably chose for his theme some
imaginary adventure in a strange country, or some fanciful description
of a remote corner of the earth, whose name alone was familiar to him.
Long afterward, in speaking of this desire of his childhood, he said
that he envied the birds their wings, and would have given his life to
make an ascent in a balloon.

His father had no sympathy with these boyish fancies. He intended
to make a farmer of Bayard, and he scolded vigorously over his son's
nonsensical ambitions. But farm service and farm life were distasteful
to the boy. He often shirked his duties, and his mother frequently set
him small tasks about the house, out of pity for his intense dislike
of the work of field or garden.

When he was fourteen Bayard was sent to Unionville Academy, where
he received his last and best school training from a competent and
earnest teacher. He studied Latin, French, and mathematics, and among
the young countrymen who came there for study he found two or three
friends whom he kept for life.

When he was fifteen, with two of these friends he walked from
Unionville to the Brandywine, noted as the scene of one of the famous
battles of the Revolution. This little journey, the first flight of
the boy into the world, made a deep impression upon him. More than
ever he longed to breathe the air of wider skies, to learn the lessons
taught by the art and history of the past, and to offer to the world's
work some contribution, perhaps, which should not be valueless. He
wrote a brief, but vivid, description of his little trip, which was
published in the _Westchester Register_, a local paper of some
repute. It was the first time he had seen his name in print, and its
appearance thrilled him with hope.

A year later the _Saturday Evening Post_, of Philadelphia, printed
his first published poem, "The Soliloquy of a Young Poet." Like
Longfellow, he himself had carried his first offering surreptitiously
to the newspaper office. As he read that the verses of "Selim," his
pen name, had been accepted, he seemed to stand on air.

There is no more attractive picture of ambitious and noble youth than
we get of Bayard Taylor at this moment. From childhood he had dreamed
dreams far beyond the imagination of ordinary children. He had read
poetry with his heart full of admiration for the men who could turn
life to such golden uses. He gave the simple and innocent worship of
his young soul to the famous authors who had taught him the meaning
and riches of art. A letter which he received from Dickens in reply to
one of his own brought him the greatest joy, and any whisper from the
great world beyond his own delighted him.

At seventeen he finished his course at Unionville Academy and went
back to the farm. But in his heart he was devoted to the literary
life. From his own confessions we know how he consecrated himself to
this work, cherishing a vision of high achievement and a hope that in
the great march of life he might not be found laggard.

Winning his father's consent to his learning the printer's trade,
he worked for two years in the office of _The Village Record_, of
Westchester. During this time he studied Spanish, continued German,
and wrote poems, which appeared in _Graham's Magazine_. But Bayard
Taylor, while setting type in the office of _The Village Record_,
was in spirit far away from the quiet Pennsylvania town, meditating
voyages of discovery into new worlds, and when he published his first
volume of poems, in the early part of 1842, the venture was a bid not
so much for fame as for funds to start him on his travels.

The little book, under the title _Ximena; or, the Battle of Sierra
Morena, and other Poems_, was published by subscription. He sent
copies to Lowell and Longfellow, whose approval he coveted, signing
himself their "stranger friend." The book did not bring in money
enough for a European journey. But the poet was young and strong and
possessed indomitable perseverance. He had often walked the thirty
miles that lay between his home and Philadelphia, and he felt that he
could walk through Europe. At any rate, he meant to try it. After many
disappointments he secured two or three engagements to write newspaper
letters from abroad, receiving some pay in advance, and with this,
added to another small store, he sailed for England, taking a
second-cabin passage in July, 1844.

Now began as interesting and romantic a career as even our poet could
have desired. Two friends joined him in his pilgrimage. Both were like
Bayard Taylor himself, young, strong, and ambitious. When they caught
sight of the Irish coast, after a voyage of nearly four weeks,
it seemed to them that they had entered another world. Dressed in
student's cap and blouse, with knapsack on back and pilgrim staff in
hand, Bayard Taylor made the tour of Europe. Like a true vagrant, he
wandered hither and thither as his fancy led him. For six months he
studied German in Frankfort, living in the family of a burgher, and
sharing with them their feasts and holiday merriment in true German
fashion. Though poor in purse, he was not too poor to reciprocate
their many kindnesses to him and his friends, and he tells a funny
story of a Christmas gift bestowed upon their kind hosts. It was
decided to make the worthy Germans a present of a carpet, such
luxuries being unknown to the frugal household. The young students
laid it down at night after the family had gone to bed, but in the
morning they were somewhat dismayed to find that the housewife could
not be induced to step upon it. It required much argument to persuade
her that the gift was meant for service, and it is likely that she
would have abandoned her sitting-room while the carpet remained had
not the donors insisted upon its use.

From his strain of German blood, perhaps, Bayard Taylor took more
kindly to German life and thought than to any other. As he journeyed
through the old picturesque towns, and wandered by the banks of the
rivers, that had been famous since the times of Csar, he felt fall
upon him the spirit of romance and mystery which seemed ever to brood
over this land. He loved the people with their simple lives and solid
intellectuality, and the legends and stories which clustered around
their mountains and forests seemed to come to him like reviving
memories of his own experience.

In the spirit of the old wandering bards he made his way through
the sombre forests of the Hartz Mountains, and rejoiced like a young
viking that he was able to ascend the Brocken in a raging storm.

All this time he was studying hard at German, preparing himself
unknowingly for one of the great labors of his life. All this time,
too, he was pressed for money. Travelling through Austria, crossing
the Alps, visiting Italy, he found it always necessary to earn his
daily bread. Sometimes he lived on six cents a day, and thought bread,
and figs, and roasted chestnuts sumptuous fare. Once his shoes were
so worn that they would not bear him another step, and he had to wait
five days at an inn until a letter came with remittances from his
publishers. Again he was so poor that he could take only deck passage
on the voyage from Italy to France, and made the trip with his
knapsack for a pillow, drenched to the skin and suffering horribly
from seasickness.

But he accomplished his desire. When he returned home, after a
two-years' absence, he found that his letters in the New York
_Tribune_ and other papers had won him sufficient fame to warrant
their publication in book form. N. P. Willis, the never-failing friend
of young authors, wrote a preface, and _Views Afoot_ came out under as
pleasant auspices as could be desired, and passed through six editions
in one year.

The appearance of this book marked the beginning of that larger
literary life to which Bayard Taylor aspired and which he attained.
A great and immediate satisfaction came to him now through friendly
letters from older writers, who gave the book generous praise and
welcomed the young author cordially to their guild. During a visit to
Boston made at this time Bayard Taylor was overwhelmed with delight
at the kind reception given him by Longfellow and the other men whose
friendship he had always longed for. The publication of his poem,
"The Norseman's Ride," a few months later brought him a letter from
Whittier, and marked the beginning of a friendship which lasted
through life.

After an unsuccessful attempt at publishing a county newspaper in
Pennsylvania, Bayard Taylor decided to try his fortunes in New York.

The city still retained many of the characteristics which made it
a congenial home for literary workers in the days when Irving and
Bryant, Cooper, Halleck, and Drake were winning their fame.

The wealth and fashion still centred in the lower part of the town in
broad, old-fashioned streets, whose houses were noted alike for their
culture and hospitality.

New York then, as now, led the newspaper work of the country, and the
younger writers were glad of positions on the dailies and weeklies.
Bayard Taylor obtained a position on _The Literary World_ at five
dollars a week, and earned four dollars more by teaching in a girls'
school. But he had already won a fair start in the literary field,
and his friends looked on his success as assured. Their faith was
realized; within a year Taylor was advanced to a position of twelve
dollars a week on the _Tribune_, while writing articles for magazines.

From this time Bayard Taylor's literary life divides itself into that
of traveller, newspaper writer, lecturer, novelist and poet.

Scarcely had he won his place in New York when he was sent by the
_Tribune_ to California to visit the newly discovered gold regions and
report the life of the mining camps. Bayard Taylor was the prince of
those literary free lances, the newspaper correspondents, who start on
adventures as wild and full of danger as those encountered by knight
or soldier of old. Civilization owes much to these men, always ready
and full of pluck, and who count danger of small moment in pursuit of
duty.

Bayard Taylor sailed from New York for California by way of the
Isthmus of Panama, taking from June till August for the journey. He
immediately threw his lot in with the miners, sharing their dangers
and privations, and became the poet of the California emigration
as Bret Harte afterward became its historian. He slept often on the
ground with his saddle for a pillow, toiled through ravines, traversed
forests, encountered Indians and wild beasts. In Mexico, on his
return, he had an adventure with robbers.

But he had caught the spirit of that marvellous outburst of energy
which in a few years transformed the thinly inhabited Pacific slope
into a region of towns and cities, whose aggregated wealth was almost
beyond credence. The record of what he saw, published under the title
_Eldorado; or, Adventures in the Path of Empire_, was a picturesque
and valuable contribution to the literature of the gold discovery.

The next year found him again upon his travels. This time he fulfilled
an old dream by visiting the Orient. His excellence as a reporter of
things comes from his power to merge his own personality in that of
the people he met. As soon as he entered a foreign land he ceased to
be Bayard Taylor, American traveller, and became Arab, Bedouin, or
Turk, as the case might be.

On the Nile it seemed he must have lived always in Egypt, and he was
served by his boatmen with peculiar reverence, as if they recognized
in him a higher genius of their own race. In Damascus he dressed in
the Syrian costume and smoked his pipe sitting cross-legged upon the
roof-top. In Constantinople he wore even the Arab burnouse and turban,
and was addressed in Turkish when he went to his bankers for money.
At another time he was denounced as an infidel by an Arab who saw
him drinking water on a fast-day. He himself rejoiced in the strange
Oriental life, whose customs and habits of thought appealed to him
so strongly. He called himself a worshipper of the sun, and says that
standing in an Eastern garden of flowers he took off his hat to the
god of day like a veritable Parsee. In India he became in spirit a
Hindoo, and visited temples and shrines like a devotee. Still loyal
to the mountain-tops, he climbed the highest point of the Himalayas
accessible in the winter season, and drank in the solemn and majestic
beauty of that region of mystery.

Under orders from the _Tribune_, he crossed Asia overland and joined
the United States squadron at Shanghai, where Commodore Perry gave
him the post of master's mate that he might witness the opening of the
ports of Japan to the commerce of the world. Finally he sailed from
China for New York by way of Cape Horn, reaching home two years and
six months after his departure.

Three years later he was again on his wanderings. After a short visit
in Germany he started for the north and travelled through Sweden,
Denmark, and Lapland. He travelled hundreds of miles by reindeer,
penetrating far within the Arctic Circle that he might enjoy that
wonder of the north, "a day without a sun." A year after, he was in
Greece breakfasting on "honey from Hymettus," and began learning Greek
that he might better appreciate the marvels of this land of beauty. In
the same year he visited Russia, returning to America in 1858.

After this, travelling occupied less of his time, although he again
made a tour of Europe, and as a representative of the _Tribune_
visited Iceland during the celebration of its millennial anniversary.

Iceland, the land of old memories and songs, impressed him strongly.
This little country, which had preserved its national life for a
thousand years, had still the vigor of the old viking days, when its
sailors ventured without compass or chart to the coasts of America,
and its poets sung its heroes' praises in verse that has become
classic.

Taylor's reputation had preceded him here, and he was called the
"American Skald" by the enthusiastic people.

As a lecturer, Bayard Taylor's fame was based upon the widely diffused
reports of his travels which had appeared for years in newspapers,
magazines, and book form. He published thousands of letters and eleven
books of travel, the most famous of these volumes including _A Journey
to Central Africa_; _The Lands of the Saracen_; _A Visit to India,
China, and Japan_; _Northern Travel_, and _Travels in Greece and
Russia_.

Through these publications he had won a name which, in the intervals
of life at home made him the most popular lecturer of his day. He
delivered hundreds of lectures on his travels, his enormous capacity
for hard work making this possible even in the midst of serious
literary tasks. Moreover, he had been building up gradually a
reputation as a novelist and poet. His first novel, _Hannah Thurston_,
is an American story of manners, the characters of which are drawn
from Pennsylvania life, although the scene is supposed to be laid
elsewhere. This novel was successful in America, and appeared in
German, Russian, and Swedish translations; but it is doubtful whether
its fame was not due more to the author's popularity than to its own
merit. The second novel, _John Godfrey's Fortunes_, was much more
individual and characteristic. In this were incorporated certain
experiences of the author's own literary life. There is a certain
vitality about these reminiscences that will always make them
agreeable reading. _The Story of Kennett_, the third novel, is the
most interesting of all. It is largely a history of the village life
of the author's boyhood, into which are woven many incidents of local
history. The tricks which the Quaker boys play upon their sober-minded
father and the account of the runaway match were family history, while
the descriptions of scenery, the thousand memories of boyhood, and the
tender handling of the subject all reveal the loyal affection in which
the author held the past. One other novel, _Joseph and His Friend_,
with some short stories contributed to _The Atlantic_ and other
magazines, sums up Bayard Taylor's work in fiction. While these novels
were successful in their day, they are perhaps the least valuable of
Bayard Taylor's work. His newspaper letters and his books of travel
alike are full of that personal charm which made the author one of the
most popular men of his day. They have, besides delightful touches of
color and light, a ready _camaraderie_, and a genuine sentiment.

But neither in fiction nor tales of travel did the author aspire to
the greatest achievement of his life. His boyish dream had been to
be a poet, a younger brother of Goethe, and Shakespeare, and his best
work is unquestionably his verse. Unequal though he is, yet Bayard
Taylor possessed the true poet's gift. His chief fault lay in
over-production. He wrote volume after volume of poetry which brought
him reputation but not critical approval. His beauty-loving nature
seemed to find poetry everywhere, and to demand its expression.

Much of his verse passes before the eye like sunlit pictures. This
is especially true of the _Poems of the Orient_. Here the traveller,
charmed by his surroundings, has turned poet, and plucked from
rose-garden and riverside a glowing wreath of song. The very breath
of the Orient flows through these poems, which express a genuine
inspiration. "A Boat Song of the Nile;" "An Arab Warrior;"
"Kilimandjars; or, a Russian Boy;" "Desert Hymn to the Sun;" "The Arab
to the Palm," and "A Bedouin's Love-Song" indicate by their titles
the progress of the poet's pilgrimage through the lands whose romantic
history had haunted his youth. In these and other ballads Bayard
Taylor showed the temper of the genuine lyrist. Among the shorter
poems "The Song of the Camp" has won a place in the heart of the
people.

The longer poems embrace pastorals, tragedies, masques, and a drama.
All show careful workmanship, for Bayard Taylor always approached his
art with a feeling that it demanded the best that he could give. Many
descriptive passages unvaryingly of great beauty are found scattered
through this work, which is pure and lofty in conception. Among
these longer poems "The Masque of the Gods" and "Lars, a Pastoral of
Norway," are perhaps the most successful.

One of the great ambitions of Bayard Taylor was achieved in his
translation of Goethe's _Faust_. To do this work he had for years
studied every available source of knowledge. His familiarity with
German was thorough, his sympathy with German thought complete. No man
of his generation was so well equipped for the work, and he succeeded
in producing a poetic, faithful, and spirited translation of the great
original.

One other ambition, the writing of the life of Goethe, he was not
allowed to accomplish. When apparently only in the midst of his career
he died suddenly at Berlin, whither he had been sent as Ambassador
from the United States. His early death was felt to be a serious loss
to American letters, as his accomplished work seemed to promise still
higher achievement.

Bayard Taylor's American home was for many years at Kennett Square,
where he built a charming manor-house, noted for its hospitality as
well as for the distinguished guests who visited it. He had a social
and loving nature, and easily won and kept the friendships which he
so dearly cherished. The poets Stoddard and Stedman were his lifelong
intimates. His boyish desire to be admitted to the circle of men of
genius found its realization in the place he held in the hearts of the
greatest men of his day.

His other and higher youthful hope--to perform nobly his part in
life--was also fulfilled. No man could have been freer from selfish
and mean undertakings than was he. Whether in his literary work or in
his diplomatic service he was ever guided by one principle--that life
and its gifts were to be put to their best uses, and that the measure
of noble purpose was the measure of the man.




CHAPTER VIII

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

1837-


Perhaps the most faithful story of a boy's life ever written is
given to us in _A Boy's Town_, a transcription of the home history of
William Dean Howells, from his third to his eleventh year. The "Boy's
Town" was Hamilton, O., whither the family had removed from Martin's
Ferry, the birthplace of our author, and this picture of a Western
town at that period has thus a unique value.

The greatest charm of this book is found in the utter absence
of anything like an effort at story-telling proper. There are no
hair-breadth escapes and few adventures, but one feels throughout
the genuineness of this revelation of a boy's hopes and fears and
ambitions. The narrative is in the impersonal form, and yet there is
a fascinating _camaraderie_ at once established between author and
reader. "When I was a child" is the note that sounds throughout,
and this magic suggestion colors the story with that reality which
children love far beyond anything else.

These child pictures show us the home-life and the heart-life of the
writer as nothing else could. The family belonged to the well-to-do
portion of the community, the father being perhaps better read than
most of his neighbors. Both father and mother were wise in the best
sense for their children's good. Of fun and frolic there was plenty,
but there was also the firm counsel to check all selfishness and mean
ambitions, to nourish regard for others, and above all to teach right
doing because it was right. Reading between the lines we see that
this father and mother, with their high conceptions of duty and their
constant example of earnest living must have moulded the character of
their children on broad and noble lines.

There is a delightful little confession of how the boy was once
somewhat ashamed of his father, because in the paper which he edited
he opposed the Mexican War. The leading people of Hamilton were in
favor of the war and the children took sides in the issue. General
Taylor, the hero of the hour, was the hero of the larger portion
of the Hamilton boys, and Howells keenly felt the bitterness of
unpopularity. But a little later he appreciated his father's bravery
in battling day after day for a principle, though it made his paper
unpopular and affected his business interests. When General Taylor
was nominated for President, the paper strongly opposed his candidacy,
because of his well-known sympathy with the cause of slavery. To favor
the anti-slavery cause meant often to lose one's friends and position,
yet the little paper became the organ of an anti-slavery crusade. Long
before election day Howells had ceased to be ashamed of his father,
and had come to admire his stalwart independence and his unselfish
heroism in fighting for what he considered right. Such an example as
this made home counsels a living creed and wrought in the children of
the family a desire to bend life to high uses.

About this time Howells first heard the _Biglow Papers_, which his
father read aloud as they came out in the Boston paper, and the famous
Hosea became an intimate in the family, and there seems after this
never to have been even the slightest distrust of his father's
judgment.

From these pictures of home life we see the Hamilton of Howells's
childhood as the typical Western town of the day which had not yet
quite outgrown the period of frontier life. All around the town were
log cabins, which served as the outposts of the unbroken forests
beyond, and it was to the forests that the boys looked for their
inspiration when thinking of the ambitions of later life. They were
all determined to be--if not real Indians, since nature had so cruelly
denied that--yet at least Indian hunters and slayers. Periodically,
there were companies formed for the extermination of the red man, and
the highest joy was to go off by themselves for a day's camping in the
woods, and try to forget that they were the children of uninteresting,
civilized white people. Howells began school when he was still very
young, attending first a small private school, and later the public
school of the town. Nothing occurred to him in his school-life of such
importance as the amazing discovery that he could make poetry by
rule. He found this out one day as he was fumbling the leaves of his
grammar, and he accepted the statement that poetry could be made by
rule just as solemnly and unequivocally as he would have accepted a
similar statement in regard to magic. From this time he never ceased
until he had mastered the rules of prosody--a word which, in itself,
must have sounded like an incantation. He wrote verses with the most
indefatigable zeal, and he had the uncommon joy of being able to see
them in print, for standing upon a stool in his father's printing
office, he set up the type himself, and, no doubt, watched the presses
afterward with all the responsibility of ownership. Verse-making,
which had often been tried before, now assumed a greater interest, and
before very long the young author was busy upon a tragedy founded upon
the stern discipline of one of his school-teachers. The teacher was to
be the tyrant against whom the boys were to revolt, much in the same
way as Spartacus and the gladiators revolted against their Roman
masters. The drama was finished, but never acted by the school-boy
company selected for the parts. This, however, did not discourage the
young author, who still continued writing poetry.

A part of the family education consisted in the father's reading
aloud to the home circle in the evening. In this way Howells became
acquainted with Moore's _Lalla Rookh_--which was the first poem he
ever remembers. Dickens's _Christmas Stories_, Scott's _Lady of the
Lake_, and some of the best English novels became familiar to him at
the same time. The first books outside his school-books that he read
himself were Goldsmith's _Histories of Greece and Rome_. A little
later his father gave him _Don Quixote_, and one of his literary
ventures was a romance founded upon the _Conquest of Granada_ as
related in the pages of Irving, and which he read over and over
without tire.

In fact he was always reading, and from his very young boyhood he
may be said to have been always writing; whatever other occupation or
share of active duty became his, seems in his own mind to have been
outside his real mission, which was that of writing. In this he
persisted always, so that he may be said to have grown up into
authorship.

Outside the home and school life were the never-ending and varied
experiences of ordinary boy life. There were muster and election
days, when the boys watched the soldiers drill with solemn joy, and
straightway inaugurated military companies among themselves. There
were Christmas holidays, which the boys celebrated, for some reason
unknown to Eastern boys, with guns and pistols, firecrackers, and
torpedoes. There were Easter-day, when they cracked their colored
eggs together in a game of win and lose; and April fools' day; and
the annual May party, when the girls took the lead and the boys were
content to play a secondary part; and Fourth of July celebrated with
processions and speeches and the usual noise. What would have seemed
strange to a New England boy was the absence of any Thanksgiving Day,
of which Howells did not even hear the name in childhood. Occasionally
travelling shows and circuses came to Hamilton, and sometimes a
theatre company, and at such a time the Howells children, owing to
their father's newspaper connection, were fortunate in being provided
with tickets that lasted throughout these short seasons of joy.
Besides these amusements there were nutting and shooting in the
forest, fishing in the Miami River, swimming in the canal and canal
basins, and the summer and winter sports in due season, many of which
held still that flavor of wildness which suggested the early frontier
life.

When Howells was ten years old he left school and began to learn the
printer's trade in his father's office, and not very long afterward
the family removed to Dayton; _A Boy's Town_ ends with an account of
this removal, and a pathetic little picture of how homesick Howells
became for the old home. So homesick indeed was he that there was
nothing to do but let him return there for a visit, a remedy which
cured him so effectually that he no sooner reached Hamilton than he
started back for Dayton, possessed by a feeling even stronger than
homesickness, and that was mother-sickness. At Dayton Howells and his
elder brother helped with the new paper which their father had bought.
They worked at the compositors' cases, and when it was sometimes
necessary would rise early in the morning and help distribute the
papers. Their education was carried on by their father in the evening,
and he also superintended the reading in which the boys now indulged
on a somewhat larger scale. One chief delight of the children at this
period was the number of travelling theatre companies which visited
Dayton; very often the best talent of the country was to be found
among the strollers, and it was in this way that Howells became very
well acquainted with the Shakespearean drama, and with old English
comedy, as well as with the actors and actresses who had attained, or
were destined to attain, an honorable celebrity. The Dayton home was
a happy one, where the intellectual growth kept steady pace with the
physical. But financially the paper was not a success, and the family
was obliged to seek another home.

Howells and his father walked from Dayton to the new home, driving the
cow and talking philosophy. This period of his life is preserved in
Howells's charming book, _One Year in a Log Cabin_. It is a delightful
transcription of the idyllic life of the woods. The little log cabin
was almost as primitive as those built by the early settlers. The
children helped the father cover the walls with newspapers and glaze
the windows; the great open fireplace, where all the cooking was done
and where the bread was baked in a Dutch oven set on the coals, was
a new and delightful joy to them; so was the unbroken forest, around
which still clustered memories of Indian warfare. At night these
memories, mixed with the Indian tales which the boys read insatiably,
made the bed-time hour one to be dreaded.

With true American indifference to circumstances the family life
went on in the same grooves. The manner of earning the living was
different, but the study and reading continued, the father still
acting as teacher. In his book, _My Literary Passions_, Howells has
told us the books that charmed him above all others as a boy. These
were Goldsmith's _History of Greece_, _Don Quixote_, and Irving's
_Conquest of Granada_. As he read these books he was for the time
being an Alcibiades or Don Quixote as the case might be. So powerful
was his sympathy with all heroic deeds that in reading Irving he
could never decide whether he were Moor or Spaniard. His boy
friends--especially one who had worsted him in a school-boy
battle--had infinite respect for his knowledge of the ancients and
referred to him for information with a deference that must have been
soothing. He says that later he rather liked the Romans better than
the Greeks, because they were less civilized, and more, in fact, like
boys.

For the want of space a large part of the family library still
remained packed in barrels, and rummaging in these one day Howells
came upon the poems of Longfellow. It was his first introduction to
that poet, who was thereafter associated with the happy memories of
this forest home. A life so close to nature left its own mark upon
mind and soul, and this is seen in that rare quality, the idealization
of childhood, which runs through the pages of _One Year in a Log
Cabin_.

This glimpse of frontier life seen through eyes still young, has
a charm like that of Longfellow's reminiscent poems of youth, or
Whittier's transcriptions of his boyhood, in which the perfume of
childhood still lingers around the deeper experiences of the man.

The log-cabin life gave place to newspaper work and another season in
the printing office at Columbus. Between sixteen and seventeen a love
for reading Shakespeare possessed Howells, and with a young friend,
also given to verse making, he would spend afternoons in the country
while they alternately read the tragedies and comedies of the great
dramatist. And so, although his education was desultory, by the
time he was twenty he was well read in the English classics, and had
besides a good knowledge of American literature.

Before very long Howells became known as one of the cleverest young
newspaper writers of the West. He also began to publish verses in the
newspapers. A trip down the Mississippi to St. Louis gave him a new
experience of life, which he embodied in a poem, _The Pilot's Story_,
a picture out of the history of slave life. This poem was published
in the _Atlantic Monthly_, in which other poems from time to time
appeared. About this time Howells published a book of poems, in which
were included the verses of a young poet friend, and very slowly he
began to gain a reputation for good verse making.

When Lincoln was nominated for President Howells was asked by a
Columbus publishing house to write a life of the candidate. For this
he received one hundred and sixty dollars, and he could conceive
no better use for it than to enlarge his knowledge of the world.
He accordingly made a trip to Montreal and Quebec, stopping, on his
return, at Boston.

Here he became acquainted with James Russell Lowell, then editor of
the _Atlantic_, with Oliver Wendell Holmes, and with other writers
of note, who received the young author with kindness, and whose
encouragement at that time was of the utmost value. In his
twenty-fifth year Howells received from President Lincoln the
appointment of United States Consul to Venice, where he lived for the
next four years, making, in the meantime, trips to other places of
interest, and familiarizing himself with Italian literature. The
result of this experience is found in his charming book, _Venetian
Life_, which was published in London in 1866, and in the volume,
_Italian Journeys_, published in New York a year later. These two
volumes mark the beginning of the serious work of Mr. Howells's life.
Although only sketches of the every-day life of modern Italy, they are
yet full of that peculiar quality which later was to stamp his fiction
and give it a high place in American literature.

Upon his return to America Howells lived for a short time in New York,
and did work for the _Times_, the _Tribune_, and the _Nation_. But
being offered the assistant editorship of the _Atlantic Monthly_, he
removed to Boston.

A pleasant summary of his experience as a resident of Cambridge is
found in his book, _Suburban Sketches_.

He began his career as a novelist in 1871, and assumed the editorship
of the _Atlantic_ a year later. Since then his works have succeeded
each other rapidly, his fame growing steadily from year to year.
While busy with his novels he has found time to produce two volumes
of verse, which include his earlier poems and those written since. In
these poems, many of which show the finest poetic feeling, we have
a new view of the successful novelist. Here may be seen his early
susceptibility to natural scenes, as well as the more emotional
side of his character. Some of these earlier poems are full of
that reminiscent charm in which the hope, the ideality, and the
unaccountable sadness of youth shine out with tender grace. The
later poems also are replete with that susceptibility to feeling
and impressions which can find fit expression only in verse. All his
poetry may, in fact, be said to be transcriptions of those moods
of mind which come and go like day-dreams, and which yet show the
author's mind in a clearer and truer light.

Some papers on Italian literature, the conduct of the Editor's Study
in _Harper's Magazine_, and other miscellaneous work have run side
by side with the preparation of Mr. Howells's novels. Out of the
numberless stories told for the amusement of his children, he has
collected a dozen or so under the title _Christmas Every Day and
Other Stories_, and made a most charming contribution to juvenile
literature.

Howells's gift above all others is to take the ordinary occurrences
of life and make them interesting. To him the commonplace appeals as
a very large part of actual life, and he has found his inspiration in
dealing with mankind at large rather than with unusual personalities
or incidents. His theory is that character and experience are the
result of growth, and of that slow growth which is built moment by
moment and day by day. Human life thus running on from hour to hour
presents to him a picture of the real struggles, conquests, or defeats
of the soul in the common relations of life, and his long series of
novels are but histories of the battles won or lost by people whose
experiences are never extraordinary but only such as are met by the
larger part of mankind. To him those rarer idealizations which appeal
to the genius of Hawthorne or Poe are forced out of sight by the
actual contact with the many thousands who march on monotonously day
after day and yet whose experience sums up the moral achievements of
the race.

This series of novels began with the publication of _Their Wedding
Journey_ in 1871, the success of which determined Howells's career
as a novelist. This delightful little ending to an old love story was
followed by _A Chance Acquaintance_, in which were incorporated some
charming impressions of Canadian travel. None of the succeeding works
has been cast in quite so light a vein.

Throughout these character studies, which now number many volumes,
there runs the earnest seriousness of the man who is in sympathy
with the aspiration, and yet whose large charity can make him easily
tolerate the defects of mankind.

Sometimes the novel treats of the experience of an individual and is
the history of a commercial success, as in _The Rise of Silas Lapham_;
or of an intellectual struggle, as in _The Minister's Charge_; or of a
crime, as in _The Quality of Mercy_; very many of the later works deal
with those social questions which are now under the consideration of
every earnest thinker.

In his _A Traveller from Altruria_ Howells has treated one of these
questions with unsparing hand. It is in these and similar books
that one sees the Americanism of the author and is made to feel his
interest in the highest welfare of his native land.

Mr. Howells has in _The Mouse Trap and Other Farces_ given us some
delightfully humorous situations treated with all the delicacy of his
art. In his _Modern Italian Poets_ he has embodied the experience of
twenty years' study of a century of Italian poetry, in a series of
essays showing remarkable appreciation and insight. Some miscellaneous
work in lighter vein shows still the genial fellowship which Howells
always establishes between himself and his readers. With the exception
of the different periods passed abroad, Mr. Howells has spent his life
since leaving Ohio in Boston and New York, in which latter city he now
lives.

The generous nature of the man is shown in his wide intercourse with
his fellow-men in all grades of social life. His studies of human
nature reflect always his own point of view, from which he sees man
struggling ever with difficulties and discouragements, yet pressing
patiently on toward higher levels.




CHAPTER IX

FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT

1849-


In the year 1866, a little girl left her birthplace in Manchester,
England, and came to America to live. Her new home was in Eastern
Tennessee, and thus her first impressions of America were connected
with great mountain ridges reaching up to the sky, miles and miles
of unbroken forest, and an unending succession of wild flowers which
decked wood and stream with ever-changing beauty. These surroundings
made the child supremely happy, for all her life she had longed for
great out of door spaces to breathe in, great trees to play under, and
flowers so plentiful that one could not count them; so the new home
seemed enchanting.

Manchester, where her life had been theretofore spent, was one of the
great manufacturing cities of England, and all day long the smoke from
the tall factory chimneys hung over it and shut out the sky, while the
streets were given up mainly to the dwellings of the operatives, or
buildings connected with the commercial life of the place. Here and
there, however, were pleasant little squares and streets, where the
people of the better class lived, and one of these squares had
been the home of the child, Frances Hodgson, who, until she came
to America, tried very hard to "make believe" that the trees in an
English square represented a forest, that the clouds of smoke were
real clouds, and that the rose-bushes, lilacs, and snowdrops of the
garden opened into vistas of tropical bloom.

Many years after, when this little girl had become a woman and had
children of her own, she wrote a book in which she put many pictures
of this Manchester life; both the real world and the dream world, in
which, like all imaginative children, she often wandered. And here we
learn that, as far back as she could remember, she was given to making
up stories--and, with the assistance of her dolls, acting them in the
privacy of the nursery--about everything that she heard or read, or
that in any way touched her own life.

This naturally led to writing the stories down as soon as her little
fingers could manage it, and she seems to have had a very droll
time in trying to procure the paper so necessary for the work. Old
exercise, or account books, which still held a few pages untouched by
butchers' and grocers' accounts, were her principal resource, and it
was in one of these she inscribed her first poem while she was still
such a little child that even the memory of what it was about soon
passed away from her. Another poem, written on a Sunday evening when
the family were at church, she remembers better. It was a stormy
evening, and she started out to write a sad poem about loneliness,
but her melancholy gave out at the end of the first stanza, and with
childish adaptability she forthwith turned it into a funny poem. It
had enough cleverness to attract some praise from her mother upon her
return from church, which so delighted the young author that it laid
a little seed of desire to do still better things; it is possible that
it was this very little seed which grew and bloomed at last into some
very beautiful flowers of literature. At any rate, from this time
the writing of stories went on quite indefatigably; whether they
won praise or blame the practice must at least have been useful
in developing a power for sustained effort and a persistence under
difficulties, for outside the lack of paper there was also the harsh
and biting criticism of two brothers, whose souls were devoted
to cricket and who thought themselves quite ill-used in having a
"romantic" sister.

But in her younger sister, Edith, and in a few schoolmates, Frances
found an audience which would listen with delight to her tales,
whether written or told, from day to day in the intervals of lessons.
It is probable that these stories showed little if any literary
promise. They were in the main tales of romantic lovers and
sweet-hearts, who bore a suspicious resemblance to the heroes and
heroines of Scott, Dickens, and the novels published in _Blackwood's
Magazine_; but their composition made an agreeable occupation for her
active little mind, and rendered her happy, and this was a great deal.

After their removal to America, which was brought about by the desire
of the mother to better the fortunes of her fatherless boys and girls,
Frances continued her story-telling and story-writing, having still
the sympathetic sister as auditor. And one day when the two girls were
conjuring plans for helping the family finances it suddenly occurred
to the young author to write a story and submit it for publication.

But this was a formidable task, for Frances was absolutely sure that
no editor would accept a story not written on foolscap paper, and this
she neither possessed nor had the means of getting. Where could she
obtain the money to buy this paper? The sisters pondered and pondered
this difficult problem, and at last they hit upon a joyful solution.
Two little mulatto girls whom they knew were making money by gathering
and selling the wild grapes which grew in abundance in the neighboring
woods. Negotiations were entered upon with these children, who
promised to sell also the grapes which Frances and her sister might
gather. In this way money was obtained for the foolscap paper, and as
that had been the most difficult part of the business the story was
soon dispatched to the magazine, with a modest note to the editor
telling him that the author's "object" was "remuneration."

This venture was not entirely successful, the editor of the magazine
being willing to accept the story but not to pay for it. Frances
therefore asked for it back, and having still enough grape money left
to purchase the needed stamps, she promptly dispatched it to another
editor. The story was a little romance of English life, some of its
scenes having actually been written while the author still lived in
Manchester, and the new editor had some doubts as to its originality.
He therefore laid a little trap for the young girl, and wrote to say
he would reserve judgment until he could see another story from the
same hand. Frances replied with a new story that was American in
character, and this versatility seemed to convince the editor that he
had really discovered a new story-writer; he sent thirty-five dollars
for the two tales, and the girl's life as a fully fledged author
began.

Other stories appeared rapidly during the next few years, and the
reputation thus gained was greatly increased by the publication in
1872 of _Surly Tim's Trouble_, a dialect story. A year later the young
author married and made a trip to Europe. Perhaps the home of her
childhood thus revisited brought back early scenes with new force;
perhaps the memory of them had always lingered in the impressionable
heart, at any rate the first great success of the author, now Frances
Hodgson Burnett, came with the publication of _That Lass O' Lowrie's_,
a story of Lancashire life. Years before, while still a little girl
"making believe" that her real world was all that her dream world
appeared, she had noticed, with a child's sharp intuitions, a certain
factory girl who used sometimes to wander into the square, and who
somehow seemed different from her companions. Although this girl was
never "made into a story" yet her personality lingered in the child's
consciousness, and in later years stepped out from the land of shadowy
memories and became the Joan Lowrie of the book. She was changed from
a millhand to a collier's daughter, and the scene was laid in one of
the English coal districts. It was the love story, pure and sweet,
of this uneducated girl of the mines and the young overseer, whose
position both as regards birth and education was far above her own.
And it was told with such sympathy, such directness and force, that
it appealed to its audience as a real story of actual life. The author
had indeed long since ceased to "make up stories." Her imagination
had become instead a magic lamp revealing to her the possibilities
and experiences of the lives that touched her own. Sometimes a little
glimpse would suffice to show her what lay behind, sometimes two or
three scenes would arrange themselves so vividly as to indicate the
whole drama, but always at the bottom of the story could be seen a
foundation of truth.

In _That Lass O' Lowrie's_ the colliers speak that Lancashire dialect
which Mrs. Burnett had learned surreptitiously as a child, either by
listening to the factory people as they passed the gates of the square
in which she lived, or by stolen visits to their homes in the back
streets. The dialect and its idioms had a fascination for her; she
and some of her little friends learned it with much greater enthusiasm
than they devoted to their French, and when no one was listening they
held long conversations and talked as the "back street" people talked.
It was an accomplishment that served well in after years, and Mrs.
Burnett's power for the picturesque reproduction of scenes unfamiliar
to her readers is no doubt due in some measure to her self-training of
ear and eye in her old life at Manchester.

Another interesting story of English life is _Haworth's_, in which the
hero is one of those dreamers of dreams, lucky enough to realize his
ambitions. One or two of the characters in this book give Mrs. Burnett
an opportunity to indulge in that delightful sense of humor which
lights nearly all her work, and which shows her keenly alive to the
comedy of life.

Perhaps her touch is nowhere more faithful than in her story of
American life, _Through One Administration_. And in _A Fair Barbarian_
she shows an equal power of picturing the contrasts of American and
English life.

In her charming juvenile book, _Piccino_, Mrs. Burnett tells how
_Little Lord Fauntleroy_, her first phenomenally successful child's
book, "grew." It was really a life study of her own little boy, whose
sweet and merry disposition, thoughtful sayings, and infantile wisdom
made him the delight of the house. His odd little views of American
and English life suggested to her the idea of a story in which a
little American boy should be brought into contact with aristocratic
English life. How well she succeeded is evinced by the enormous
circulation of the book, which went through edition after edition, and
by its adaptation into one of the most successful dramas of childhood.

_Giovanni and the Others_ is in itself a collection of beautiful
stories of childhood, with whose dreams and hopes Mrs. Burnett is
always in such loving sympathy.

An ideal child's book is _Sara Crewe_, the story of a little orphan
girl whose miseries are turned to joys by fairy fortune. This small
heroine is one of the most fascinating of the author's productions.
She is so real, so pathetic, so much a simple, ordinary little girl,
perplexed with the troubles that often visit the young, yet bearing
through it all that infinite child faith in goodness and love.

_Little St. Elizabeth_, _Piccino_, and _Two Little Pilgrims' Progress_
are also interpretations of the child mind. In all her work it is this
power of sympathy which moves her to the highest efforts of her art.
In that charming autobiography of her childhood, _The One I Knew the
Best of All_, the reader is struck by this note of sympathy which
sounds in her earliest recollections. Whether at play in the garden,
or perched upon the shelf of the old "secrtaire," reading tales
out of _Blackwood_, or listening to the factory people in the back
streets, or weaving romances for the amusement of her little friends,
the child was always for the moment intensely alive to the situations
she had created. She lived thus in many worlds, moved among many
scenes strange to her own experience, and learned early that one of
the best things in life is to forget one's own self in the experiences
of others.

This power of self-forgetting, this art of wandering through realms of
thought unknown to actual touch, are the chief factors that make Mrs.
Burnett's productions living characters, whose interests fascinate,
and whose fortunes become for the time our own.

Mrs. Burnett calls Washington her home, but she also lives much
abroad. One great sorrow of her life was the loss of her son Lionel,
the older brother of Little Lord Fauntleroy. Perhaps it is this which
has touched some of her work for children with a subtle sadness.
This has found its best expression, however, in the desire to give
practical aid to the many boys whose fortunes have been less fair than
those of her own sons, and who owe much to her generous sympathy with
their need. It is a pleasant thought that this dark shadow should
have turned into the sunshine which has lighted many young lives that
without it would have been shadowed too.




CHAPTER X

THE SOUTHERN STORY WRITERS


One of the functions of literature is to record the story of the home
life of a nation. In the United States this life has developed under
very varied conditions, and the stories of East, West, and South all
differ widely from one another. New England society was made up of
different elements from those which composed that of the Southern
plantation or the Western mining camp; yet the picture of each
community is interesting and valuable.

Among the most interesting of these stories of social conditions
are those relating to the South. Here many different pictures are
presented, and American literature has been fortunate in being able to
have them transcribed at first hand.

This has been done by the men and women whose memories go back beyond
the war, and yet who were still young when the South began that great
effort of rebuilding, which has made its recent history one of
such splendid achievement. These stories of the South before and
immediately after the war could only have been written by Southerners.
Every word and incident, every scene and finished picture, is full
of that child love which only the native born can feel; the same love
which sacrificed all in the dark days of the war, and which still
cherishes with passionate devotion the memory of the past.

Under such inspiration the literature of the new South comes to us
full of tender meaning. Its writers give to us the recollections that
are most sacred to them, and we have in them not only a picture of
Southern life, but a revelation of the heart. All the broken, childish
memories of plantation songs, folk-lore tales, and negro superstitions
that floated in the mind for years are here crystallized into form,
and make a record of vital and enduring value.

Much of this literature has been thrown into the form of the short
story, and among the most delightful of these writers is Colonel
Richard Malcolm Johnston, the historian of the "crackers," or poor
white people of middle Georgia. Colonel Johnston was born in Hancock
County, Ga., in 1822. His father was a large planter, and his earliest
years were spent upon the farm. This life differed in many ways from
the usual life of the plantations. Usually the poor whites of the
South were looked down upon and despised because of their ignorance,
poverty, and shiftlessness. But in the regions of middle Georgia
the conditions were different. The poor white was still ignorant and
shiftless, he was often lazy, and he was never very successful, but
in some way he managed to make himself respected. The life of the
planters here was very simple. Their children played with those of
their poor neighbors and negroes, and in this happy community of
interests young Richard spent the most impressionable years of his
life. His intimates were the little black and white children, who,
though different in birth, knew as well as he the secrets of wood and
stream. With them he set traps, fished, played games, went to mill,
and shared his holiday joys and presents. When some wandering master
would open a school for a few weeks in the neighborhood, Richard
would attend hand in hand with the little "crackers." Together they
struggled over reading, writing, and arithmetic, and when the teacher
was surly and unjust, as often happened, they endured together his
harshness and cruelty.

In this atmosphere the boy learned to know the fine elements of
character that often lay beneath the rough exterior of his poorer
neighbors; here too he imbibed that sweet and broad humanity which
breathes through all his work and makes it seem the presentation of a
nature exceptionally noble.

In his series of stories called _The Dukesborough Tales_, Colonel
Johnston has described one of those country temples of learning so
familiar to his childhood. _The Goose Pond School_ is a memory of
one of those ill-conditioned creatures who, under the pretence of
teaching, made miserable the lives of the ten or twenty children
committed to their charge. Happily this specimen of instructor was
rare, even in Colonel Johnston's youth, when corporal punishment was
thought so essential to good discipline. This story, containing so
much tenderness and sympathy, is a revelation of the heart of the
boy who treasured it so many years. The picture of the little hero
struggling with injustice, disgraced in the sight of his mates, and
yet enduring it all bravely for the sake of his mother, shines out in
the bright lights which the author loves to throw upon the character
of the humble "cracker."

Another reminiscence of youth is found in _The Early Majority of Mr.
Thomas Watts_, the scene of which is laid in Powelton, whither Colonel
Johnston's family had removed. Powelton had an excellent school
conducted by a staff of New England teachers. Boys and girls sat
together and learned the same lessons, and Richard Malcolm Johnston
was one of the most promising pupils, and began here the serious study
for that ripe scholarship which he attained. The types of character
which abounded in Powelton have passed into literature, _The
Dukesborough Tales_ being but so many transcriptions of the different
personalities found in this little hamlet of one hundred and fifty
inhabitants. It is evident that the boy who was studying mathematics
and Latin so diligently, who was first on the playground and the
leader of all boyish escapades, was beyond this a student of his
fellow-beings. _The Dukesborough Tales_ could only have been written
by one familiar from childhood with the originals. For beside the art
which gives them a high place in literary composition, they are full
of the flavor of the soil.

From Powelton Johnston went to college, and after he was graduated
studied law. For ten years he practised in the circuits of northern
and middle Georgia, travelling from court to court, much in the same
way that the circuit preachers of the West discharged their duties. It
was an experience full of charm for the young lawyer who always
found human nature so interesting. Many funny incidents relieved the
monotony of the law business, while constant companionship with the
country people made a valuable study for their future historian. The
circuit lawyer, like the circuit rider, has now passed away; but his
picturesque figure is preserved in the records of Colonel Johnston's
memory, and his likeness, traced amid his unique surroundings, has
found a permanent place in our literature.

In 1851, in his thirtieth year, Colonel Johnston accepted the
professorship of _belles lettres_ in the State University of Maryland.
Four years later he started a boys' school at his plantation, where he
endeavored to put in practice certain ideas which he held of broader
education. He was over fifty years old when he began writing those
stories of Georgia life which have made him one of the leading writers
of the South.

But his whole life had been really an education for this work. He
had had a soldier's training in the field of fiction--the practical
experience, and the hand to hand touch with the life he described. All
his characters are genuine. He lived with them as boy and man, and he
knew their hearts as only such a close companion could. This absolute
fidelity to nature, combined with the finest artistic perception,
makes of these stories _genre_ pictures of rare value. They are,
moreover, touched by that homely love which shows the artist native
born.

Almost with the first presentation of this life Colonel Johnston
became famous. His stories succeeded each other rapidly, and the
several collections of them have an assured place. _The Dukesborough
Tales_; _Mr. Absalom Billingsbee and Other Georgia Folk_; _Two Gray
Tourists_, and others of the series alike illustrate the author's
happy gift for producing unique and picturesque character studies.

Besides his work in fiction, Colonel Johnston has written, in
conjunction with a friend, a history of English literature; he is
also the author of a life of Alexander Stephens, a biography of great
value. His genial personality pervades all his work, and makes the
kindly humor, the generous heartiness, and the exquisite sympathy but
a reflection of his own rare nature.

       *       *       *       *       *

Among the children who walked the streets of New Orleans immediately
after the war, and noted the changes that were rapidly transforming
the old city, was one bright-eyed girl who was destined to become one
of its most interesting historians. Born of mixed Irish and Southern
blood, she had inherited from both races the qualities that go to make
up the story-teller. The everyday, yet constantly changing scenes of
her childhood were picturesque and wonderfully interesting, for New
Orleans, above all others, was the city of contrasts.

In the French quarters still dwelt the aristocratic Creole families,
descendants of the original settlers, who had retained for generations
the traditions of the French race. In the business portion could be
seen the typical Irish and Yankee face mingling with the Southern
American. Along the wharves and in the market the Italian emigrants
vended their wares, and everywhere swarmed the negro, the birthright
of the old city, since the beginning of slavery.

Long after the girl had reached womanhood, the recollections of home
and street and school still remained vivid, and ever more and more
they began to weave stories in her mind. At first she was hardly
conscious of this, it seemed so much like the old pictures of
her childhood which had come and gone at will; but by and by
the characters in the stories began to say and do things quite
independently, as if they were real people, and at last, because they
seemed to insist upon it, they were written down.

They were none of them exactly true stories, being nearly all made up
of different scenes fitted in together, but they were exact pictures
of the life of New Orleans as the author had seen it, and in this they
had a value all their own.

Lying close beside these impressions were others of maturer years,
spent in the country districts of Arkansas, among those village types
which are as curious and interesting in their way as the typical New
England villagers. And presently, these unique personalities stepped
out from the shadowy fields of memory, and also began weaving stories
about themselves. As in the case of the others, they were not exactly
true stories, yet they were all things that actually happened, or
might have happened, in the lives of the Arkansas country folk, and
they verified the old adage that no life can really be, or seem to be,
humdrum, if but the proper observer appears to record it.

It was inevitable that these stories should also be written down, and
gradually they began to appear in the different periodicals. They were
well liked, and by the time they had grown into bulk for a volume,
their author, Mrs. Ruth McEnery Stuart, had won a name as one of the
most interesting local historians of the South.

The stories which deal with the street scenes of New Orleans and with
old plantation life are full of color and picturesque effect, and they
are all vividly true to life.

Whether Mrs. Stuart is describing an Italian fruit vender's booth, as
in _Camelia Riccardo_, or the little bare hut of an old negro, as
in _Duke's Christmas_, each touch is faithful to the life; there is,
moreover, in the tales of negro life that same subtle blending of
humor and pathos which characterizes the race itself, and makes of the
little sketches genuine life history.

_A Golden Wedding_, a story of a man and his wife who were separated
before the war and only re-united in old age, is one of those pathetic
memories of slavery transcribed with a loving sympathy which wins the
heart, while the author is equally ready to enter into a relation
of the violent flirtations of the _Widder Johnsing_ or the desperate
courtship of _Jessekiah Brown_. Not the least valuable thing about
these stories is their reminiscent suggestion of many phases of negro
life that must inevitably soon pass away. The bits of local color, the
poetic yet crude imagination, the careless jollity and the childlike
abandon of spirits all belong to the negro as he was before the war,
when he was an irresponsible, fun-loving, yet often pathetic figure.
With responsibility, education, and the dignity of freedom, the old
life must at last pass, and it has been a task full of rich result to
thus preserve the old plantation traditions of this picturesque race.

In her delineations of Arkansas country life Mrs. Stuart is equally
happy. Perhaps she reaches the highest point in her work in _The
Woman's Exchange of Simpkinsville_, wherein is told with tender
reverence the story of a man who devoted his life to science, never
dreamed of fame, who died unknown, and yet who left behind him a
finished work so beautiful in scope that it placed his name high in
the list of those who labor for the world's good. _Bud Zundt's Mail_,
and _Christmas Geese_ must also be reckoned among the best of these
stories of Arkansas life.

In her stories of negro life Mrs. Stuart's work has a distinctive note
not found in that of any other Southern writer. The picture is
always taken from the negro's point of view, and thus reflects many
interesting side lights. The pathos and humor, tragedy and childlike
lightheartedness are always presented in natural proportions in these
sketches of the experiences of the race whose history has been so
unique, and shining through them all is ever seen that subtle sympathy
with the situation which is the mark of the Southern blood. The
chronicler is always the foster child of the cabin who brings her gift
of art and lays it with loving grace into the black hands whose tender
ministry formed her earliest recollection.

Mrs. Stuart's third book, _Babette_, is the story of a little creole
girl who was stolen from her parents and who grew to womanhood before
she was restored to her family. This little story contains many
charming features necessarily absent from Mrs. Stuart's other work.
The description of the _Mardi Gras_, and of the miserable Italian
settlement where Babette lived with the old woman who stole her, the
little pictures of creole family life, and the local setting, are all
vivid reproductions of the scenes familiar to the New Orleans of
the author's youth. Of less artistic value than the other work, the
romance of _Babette_ is yet warm with the colors of youth, pluck, and
fine ambition.

Among her other juvenile work, _Solomon Crow's Christmas Pocket_,
a Christmas tale with a picturesque little negro for the hero, will
always hold a high place. _Lady Quackelina_, the history of a duck
whose eggs were exchanged, and who, to her great consternation,
hatched out twenty small guineas, is another of this author's happy
conceits.

Quackelina had the good fortune, however, to have her legitimate
children restored to her, as they were wandering away from their
foster-mother, the guinea-hen. The little odd turns of thought
peculiar to ducks and guinea-hens are here translated by Mrs. Stuart
with the felicity that shows her facile talent at its best.

_The Two Tims_, another Christmas story, is full of that subtle pathos
which clings to all her studies of negro character. Old Tim, the
grandfather, is rich in the possession of a banjo that was "born
white" and had been played on with "note music" by its former master.
The relation of how old Tim came to share this priceless treasure
with young Tim makes up the story, which is one of the sweetest and
tenderest to be found in the author's work.

       *       *       *       *       *

Other stories of children, some miscellaneous matter that has appeared
in periodicals, and several delicate, beautiful studies of Arkansas
folk-life, comprise the rest of Mrs. Stuart's contribution to
literature, while her pen is still busy with the preparation of other
work.

No one can tell just when that delightful relative, Brer Rabbit,
entered upon the career which has made him famous. It is more than
probable that under different aliases he figured in the household life
of nations so old that they might be styled the great-great or even
fairy grandmothers of the American Union. Of this we are not quite
sure. But we know that the African, to whose simple mind the whole
animal creation seemed big and little brothers, guarded Brer Rabbit's
claims with loving fidelity. They enshrined his deeds in their
unwritten history, and when the days of slavery began they brought him
with them across the sea and gave him a place of honor in their humble
cabins. Here for generations the story of his adventures delighted the
children of the South, and we can never be sufficiently grateful to
Joel Chandler Harris for giving it literary form.

This prince of biographers learned the story of his hero from the lips
of the old colored uncles and mammies who were the historians of the
plantation. Learned scholars have since that time tried to find
the sources of this curious history, but they have not been very
successful. They only know that through the changes of centuries,
during which time the African lost his nationality and language, he
has kept these legends and superstitions in his heart.

These folk-lore tales which thus cling to the mind of a race are as
much a part of it as its physical characteristics; they are often the
only records of its early history, and as they drift down the stream
of time they become valuable mementoes of the far-off days of a
people's beginning. The American slave guarded the legend which
was still cherished by his brother in Africa, but the memory of
its meaning had long since faded from his mind. But Mr. Harris,
by collecting these stories, has still done valuable work for the
scholar, while to literature he has added new treasures.

Joel Chandler Harris, like Colonel Johnston, is a native of Georgia.
He was born at Eatonton in 1848, and as a very young child he
confesses to a desperate ambition to write something that might
appear in print. This innocent desire he expressed so freely that
his fellow-townspeople could not help becoming interested in its
fulfilment. A boy who wished to write was a phenomenon in Eatonton,
where the juvenile mind inclined to less ambitious pleasures, and
young Harris was looked at by his associates very much as they would
have regarded an Arctic traveller, or a visitor from Japan. Still he
was a genuine boy, and outside of his inclination toward literature,
his companions had no cause to distrust the ambition which was as
distinctly toward fun as they could desire. Harris was the leader
in boyish escapades and adventures, and none the less a true leader
because his mind sometimes took flights far beyond the horizon of
daily life.

His wish to write was fostered by a little incident which thrilled
his soul with delight. A "real editor," who had learned somehow of the
boy's aspirations, gravely presented him one day with a copy of his
paper. Harris felt as if he had received his commission, and what
romance of the future he wove around this trifling circumstance only
the imagination of boyhood can understand.

When he was fourteen life seemed to shape itself toward the attainment
of his desire. A paper called _The Countryman_ was started on the
Turner plantation, near his home, and an apprentice to learn printing
was desired. Harris saw the advertisement, and flew to the office,
where his eagerness and his unqualified promise to devote himself to
the work secured him the engagement.

Now began an ideal existence for the boy, who by this time had grown
into a student. Books were rare in the Harris home, but at the Turner
plantation there was a valuable private library, and to this the young
apprentice had free access. He read like one who was reading for a
prize; and in this flight into the intellectual world it seemed that
his spirit was finding its true element. His childish ambition to
write something for print now appeared to him to have a meaning; it
was with joy that he applied himself to the practical details of his
work, feeling it a means to a higher end.

The printing office was in the woods, where came many uninvited
visitors with tempting offers of recreation. Blue jays swung in
the trees and scoffed at work; woodpeckers hammered upon the roof;
squirrels played upon the window-sill and pretended that the gathering
of winter stores was no part of their existence. What boy could
withstand such temptations? Harris could not. He was in the main a
faithful apprentice, but many an hour was spent in the wood haunts
of these wild children of the forest. Here he learned wood lore
and became skilled in the interpretation of bird song and squirrel
chatter; here it seems he must have become familiar with those
fascinating, human-like traits of animal character which he has
transcribed so faithfully in his work.

This shows that he was a student of other things than books, and
presently his mind took another and still wider outlook. He associated
much with the country people who lived in the neighborhood, and very
often accompanied them in fishing trips and hunting expeditions to the
mountains. Without knowing it he now became a student of human nature,
and thus gained the knowledge that could best fit him for a literary
career. The picturesque side of this life appealed to him as well as
the deeper meaning which lay beneath its commonplace ambitions and
struggles; no phase of it seemed uninteresting, and the insight and
experience so acquired became potent factors in his education. Study
from books still went on; by the light of his knot-wood fire he spent
long hours over history, biography, and poetry. The widest knowledge
forms the best training for the specialist, and unconsciously Harris
was receiving that liberal education which makes his _Uncle Remus
Stories_ such minute and faithful revelations of animal character that
it seems Brer Rabbit himself must have been the scribe.

The war put an end to this happy existence. The Turner plantation lay
along the route of Sherman's march to the sea, and the printing-office
went out of existence. Harris, however, kept firm hold of his purpose,
and almost immediately after the close of the war entered the office
of the _Savannah News_ as associate editor. He had determined to
devote himself to newspaper work, and for this he trained himself as
thoroughly as opportunity offered. It was characteristic of his mind
that his chosen calling should seem an end in itself and not merely
an introduction to the literary life. His editorial work was from the
beginning conscientious and scholarly. It was the outcome of a brain
which saw clearly the accomplishment that might lie in this field,
and from first to last it thrills with the fine purpose and masterful
energy of the ideal newspaper editor.

After he had become editor of the _Atlanta Constitution_, Harris
conceived one day the idea of transcribing one or two of those
folk-lore stories which he had heard so frequently from the lips of
the negroes. The result took the form of the first two of the _Uncle
Remus Stories_, and as an experiment he printed them in his paper. The
reception they met surprised him. Uncle Remus seemed at once to step
into the place which the ages had prepared for him. His chronicle,
like other long-neglected fragments of old-world lore, had been drawn
at last into the great stream of literature, and had become
history. Scholars recognized the value of this new gift to folk-lore
literature, and welcomed each succeeding story with delight, while the
popular taste made of Uncle Remus a favorite hero.

By the time the stories had grown into a volume, critic and laymen
alike appreciated the debt that American literature owes the South
for the preservation of these charming legends. Mr. Harris's gift as
a writer has made of these stories almost perfect pieces of art. The
skill with which he effaces himself, and makes Uncle Remus the real
narrator is marvellous. This old time, consequential, but delightful
product of plantation life, dominates the series, and relates
the adventures of Brer Rabbit with all the respect of the genuine
historian for a favorite character. Interwoven with the legends are
those innumerable reflections of the negro character which show their
jollity and homely wisdom in the most charming light. We might have
learned from some other source why the guinea-fowls are speckled, but
only Uncle Remus himself could have woven into the narrative those
threads of shining recollection which show the very warp and woof of
the author's brain. _Brother Fox's Fish Trap_; _The Moon in the Mill
Pond_; and _Why Mr. Possum Loves Peace_, are other expressions of the
African's appreciation of the animal cunning which he himself largely
possesses. Equally full of the personal element is the delightful
_Story of the Little Rabbits_, an irresistible appeal to the
child-mind, which sees in all young things a likeness to itself. _Mr.
Rabbit and Mr. Bear_, and _How Brer Rabbit Found His Match at Last_,
are among the most fascinating adventures of our hero, who retains
his place in the reader's heart even though overmastered by cunning
greater than his own.

These stories have all now been successfully produced in book
form. Mr. Harris considered their preparation as incidental, and
emphatically pronounces his work to be that of journalism. But he has
created an artistic success that our literature could not well spare.

       *       *       *       *       *

The personal history of F. Hopkinson Smith, one of the most popular of
Southern writers, is the story of pluck. Long before he ever thought
of writing he had laid his life out on other lines, and had wrested
success out of many disheartenments. Mr. Smith says that the secret of
his success in painting, writing, and civil engineering, is the result
of the severe application of his motto--_work, work, work_, and that
indomitable perseverance has alone made accomplishment possible.

He was born in Baltimore, in 1838, of an old Virginia family, and
his early years were spent in that atmosphere of refinement and good
living which obtained in the Southern home. He was an active boy, fond
of fun, and a leader in the amusements which cheered the open-hearted
hospitality of the family life. The old-fashioned house was dominated
by the spirit of his mother, a remarkable woman, to whom everybody
turned for advice, and who was called "the oracle" by relatives and
friends alike. The mother and son were companions and comrades, in the
fine sense of the word. To her he turned for sympathy in his boyish
interests, and it was her beneficent influence which shaped the
ambitions of his manhood. He took lessons in drawing from an old
artist, giving up his Saturday holidays to learning the secrets of the
art he loved so well. Drawing, reading, and study, however, all gave
place occasionally to pure fun, when he would play practical jokes
upon the old-time watchmen who had charge of the Baltimore streets, or
lead his companions in the mischievous escapades which originated in
his own fertile brain.

Hopkinson was prepared for Princeton College by the time he was
sixteen, but a change in the family fortunes made it necessary for
him to abandon a college career and he entered a hardware store as
a shipping clerk, at a salary of one dollar a week. After various
experiences in business life Mr. Smith became a contractor, and
furnished material for the construction of government buildings along
the coast. And not very long after he became a civil engineer. Mr.
Smith did not take a course at any school of technology to fit him
for his new duties. His art was entirely self-taught, but he had a
background of practical experience that made invaluable training.

His first work in his new profession was to build a stone ice-breaker
around the light-house at Bridgeport, Conn. Since then Mr. Smith
has built light-houses, sea-walls, life-saving stations, and other
government coast buildings, his field of work ranging from end to end
of the Atlantic seaboard. The work of which he is most proud is the
Race Rock Light-house off New London. He was six years in building
this light-house, the situation being so difficult to conquer that
more than once it seemed that it must be abandoned. The foundation had
to be laid far beneath the waves, and often storm and sea combined to
undo the patient efforts of months. Mr. Smith almost lived on the rock
with his men, and when a terrific storm would arise and the structure
was in danger he only became more resolute, though he knew the work of
a whole year might be swept away in a single night. He says that the
Race Rock Light-house made him; out of this effort had come a faith in
the power of persistent effort which nothing could ever efface. One of
Mr. Smith's most interesting pieces of engineering, was the laying of
the foundation of the statue of Liberty enlightening the world in New
York Harbor.

During these busy years of active, practical out-of-door life Mr.
Smith was busy at spare moments with pencil and brush. Gradually he
won for himself a reputation for his watercolor drawings, and for
fifteen years he spent every August in the White Mountains studying
from nature. Travel in the West Indies, Mexico, and Europe, completed
his education for the life of the artist. Of late years he has
spent nearly every summer in Venice, whose picturesque beauty he has
reproduced over and over again with faithful touch.

His literary life is an outgrowth of his work as an artist. During
the publication of a reproduction in book form of a series of his
water-color drawings the publisher wrote and asked Mr. Smith if he
could not supply some brief descriptions of the points illustrated. In
compliance with this request the artist wrote the sketch _The Church
of San Pablo_; which formed the initial number of the series of
interesting sketches published under the title _Well-worn Roads_, the
author's first book. During the ten years following its appearance,
Mr. Smith has won an honest fame for artistic literary production.
Much of his work has been descriptive of the places which he has
visited, but in the domain of fiction he has also been a successful
adventurer. True to the instinct of the Southern writer, Mr. Smith
has given us as his masterpiece one of those rare pictures which
illustrate life in the South. From memory and experience he gathered
the elements which made up the character of a Southern gentleman of
the old school, and presented, in _Colonel Carter of Cartersville_,
a picture so faithful that it is worthy of rank as a family portrait.
The motive of the story revolves around the continual difficulties
which beset the old gentleman because he cannot remember that what
is bought must be paid for. The book abounds in graceful and humorous
situations, and the character of Colonel Carter, always honorable and
high minded, shines luminous to the end. The success of the book led
to its dramatization; and its success as a piece of artistic light
comedy has abundantly illustrated its dramatic possibilities.

Mr. Smith has not, however, confined himself to the representation
of Southern life. _Tom Grogan_, next to _Colonel Carter_, his most
important work, is a spirited and valuable piece of portraiture, whose
original was found among the force employed in building the sea-wall
around Governor's Island. Here, among his gang of laborers, the author
found the cheerful, capable Irishwoman who is the heroine of the book.
The story is full of the sympathy with human nature which Mr. Smith's
experience as a leader and director of other men's actions has so
largely developed.

Like Joel Chandler Harris, Mr. Smith considers his literary career as
almost incidental. He says that he is a civil engineer, who is lucky
enough to find time to devote to literature and painting. But the
character of his work shows the temper of the true artist, who serves
art for its own sake, and who is willing to bring to the service his
most earnest devotion.

       *       *       *       *       *

No part of the South shows more interesting social conditions than the
region of the Tennessee Mountains. Here, where for so many years the
settlers were remote from the rest of the world, they developed
tastes and interests widely different from those of Southern city and
plantation life.

The daily life of these people was simple in the extreme. While the
East was building great manufacturing and commercial interests, the
South developing the luxurious life of the plantation, and the West
pouring its resistless energy into the mining of gold and silver, the
dwellers of the Tennessee Mountains still kept to the primitive habits
of early frontier life. The men hunted, fished, and tilled the soil
only as strict necessity required. The women wove and spun, the
mothers and daughters performing all the household duties. The girls
were taught only the simplest home tasks, while each boy was trained
into such a knowledge of wood lore, hunting, and shooting as would
have delighted the heart of Daniel Boone.

The life in the main was that of a community whose interests are
one. No one was rich, yet in these little homes, barely furnished and
unattractive, no one thought himself poor. Hospitality abounded, and
each gave to the other's need with a generosity that knew no touch of
either patronage or shame.

But however simple it may be, the life of every people is full of
events which make up home histories and heart histories; there came a
day when the Tennessee Mountains found their chronicler, and as seemed
most right, the chronicle was written by one who was mountain born.

This was Mary Noailles Murfree, who was born at Grantlands, the family
home near Murfreesboro, named after her ancestor, Colonel Murfree, of
Revolutionary fame. Miss Murfree made her studies of Tennessee life
from nature. Her childhood was spent among the people whose humble
lives she describes with the loving fidelity of a native historian.
Though well-born and tenderly reared, her heart, educated by contact
with these mountaineers, responded generously to their unaffected
worth.

She saw that here survived a race which still held many traditions of
the young days of the republic, when communities were welded together
by common interests, and where simplicity of living very often bred
largeness of nature.

Under the often uncouth exterior of these men and women she found the
most generous hospitality, the delicacy of sincere good fellowship,
and the inborn self-respect that made the mountaineers genuine lords
of the soil. She saw, too, the finer graces that lay like bloom upon
these rough lives. In her lovely sketch of girlhood--_The Star in the
Valley_--one sees the flower-like innocence and charm of the young
heroine shining out amid her sordid surroundings, while her story of
self-sacrifice appeals to the heart.

Again and again this note of human sympathy, sweet as a wild bird's
song, and with as legitimate a place in the great harmonies of life,
thrills through these vivid transcriptions. Sketch after sketch
presented itself to the author's mind, was written down and published,
and in 1884, a volume of the stories appeared under the title, _In the
Tennessee Mountains_.

Miss Murfree's work appeared from the beginning under the pseudonym,
Charles Egbert Craddock, and she had won fame long before her
personality was discovered. All her stories, now numbering several
volumes, have been published under her pen name. The titles of the
books--_Where the Battle was Fought_; _Down the Ravine_; _The Prophet
of the Great Smoky Mountains_; _In the Clouds_; _The Story of Keedon
Bluffs_; _The Despot of Bloomsedge Cove_; and _His Fallen Star_, all
show their local setting, and are interesting as being stories of the
home life of a people still in the primitive stage of its existence.
The Tennessee mountaineer will lose his individuality with the
advancing tide of modern social life; but his unique personality
will be preserved by Miss Murfree's art, and will furnish one more
picturesque element in the history of American life.

       *       *       *       *       *

During the Civil War the Army of Northern Virginia was encamped for
two winters not very far from the home of Thomas Nelson Page, then
a boy of eight years. On either side the plantation ran the two
principal roads leading to Richmond, and it was known throughout the
country-side that the army under Grant would probably pass that way
when on its road to the Southern capital.

Much of the storm and stress of the actual struggle went on in this
region, and the younger generation received an impression of the war
only possible to eye-witnesses. Thomas Nelson Page was born of an old
Virginia family which had been distinguished since colonial days. His
great-grandfather on his father's side had been the friend of Thomas
Jefferson and one of the leading patriots of the Revolution, while
from his mother he was descended from General Thomas Nelson, one of
the signers of the Declaration of Independence. The boy's own father
was a major in the army of General Lee. As in many other Southern
homes of the day, nearly every incident of life on the Page domain
centred in some way around the war. The children knew little else
besides the talk of battle and campaign, and they were so young that
their memories hardly went back beyond the dark days in whose shadow
they were living.

Young Page received thus in childhood those impressions which sank so
indelibly in his mind that when revived in after-years they were still
fresh and vivid. He knew all the discomfort that beset a neighborhood
over which armies marched backward and forward, and he shared in the
excitement which filled every heart when the news of Grant's advance
was alternately reported and denied. Much of the actual horrors of
war were also known by the boy, who became familiar with stories
of defeat, of prison life, and of death, long before the age when
children more happily placed learn of these things. These stories,
told by fugitives, flying from the Northern Army, by soldiers home on
furlough, or wounded and dying far from home, found their way to his
ears and became a part of his life. It was natural that when he had
become a man the memory of those childish days should prompt him
to write down some of the experiences which still lingered in his
recollection.

His first published story, _Marse Chan_, was written after reading
a letter which had been taken from the pocket of a dead Confederate
soldier. This letter, which was from the soldier's sweetheart,
expressed one of those touching incidents furnished by the war, and
which Mr. Page used to such good effect that the story is considered
by some the best piece of fiction born of the struggle.

The success of this story upon its appearance in the _Century
Magazine_ made its author famous. He received letters from all over
the United States and from many places in Europe congratulating him
upon the pathetic and faithful picture he had drawn.

In this story the author struck a note which vibrated with the tumult
of the actual struggle between North and South during the Civil
War. _Marse Chan_ is the hero of the humble negro who is made his
chronicler, and the tale is told with all the passion of hopeless
sorrow.

In this story Mr. Page deviated somewhat from the custom of other
Southern writers. Their work mainly lay with the conditions preceding
or following the war. But the author of _Marse Chan_, following
the lines of his first story, has very largely chronicled the
heart-history of the war itself. When, as in the case of _Marse Chan_
and _Meh Lady_, the story is told by some faithful, devoted slave, the
effect is indescribably pathetic. All the bitter feeling that raged
between the two sections seems to fade away in the presence of a love
so loyal and so unselfish.

_Marse Chan_ was followed by other stories of equal interest, the
series being embodied in book-form in 1887 and entitled _In Old
Virginia_.

The next year appeared that charming little juvenile, _Two Little
Confederates_, a story of pluck, adventure, and boyish heroism, for
which the events of the war served as a background, and into which
were woven many vivid pictures of the life of the period.

A series of essays--_The Old South_--still further vindicated Mr.
Page's claim to recognition. These essays, treating an old subject
from a new point of view, are full of that delightful color which
tinges all the author's work. They are, moreover, examples of
admirable workmanship, showing an artistic perception and a mastery of
form.

_On Newfound River_, _Pastime Stories_, together with other material
not collected in book-form, have, with their appearance, won still
higher fame for their author.

       *       *       *       *       *

Since the publication of his first volume, _Flute and Violin_, in
1891, James Lane Allen, the historian of the blue-grass country, has
continued to present, one after another, charming pictures of his
native State.

_Flute and Violin_ is a story of the early days of Kentucky, when
the "dark and bloody ground" was one of the outposts of American
civilization. This little tale of two native musicians, one an old
parson and the other a lame boy, shines with a tender light across the
background of bloodshed and ruin which darkened the early annals of
frontier life. Equally sweet and true to the finer sides of life are
the stories of _Sister Dolorosa_ and the _White Cowl_, published in
the same volume. In _A Kentucky Cardinal_ and _In Arcadia_ Mr. Allen
has transcribed his love for nature into two pretty romances, he
being a naturalist in the same degree that he is a novelist. His
descriptions of Kentucky wild flowers, birds, fields, and roads are
so true to nature that they might be inserted in treatises on natural
science.

The literary world of to-day knows no voice truer and sweeter than
that of this poet of his native fields and woods.

Among Southern writers in other fields Miss Grace King, Miss Sarah
Eliott, Miss Molly Elliot Seawell, and others, following the lines of
Southern thought, have presented its social life from many points of
view. Thus expressed by the able and sympathetic artists, Southern
fiction forms one of the most interesting movements of American
literature.




CHAPTER XI

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

1833-1888


Louisa May Alcott, though born in Germantown, Pa., was by inheritance
a child of New England, of which her father and mother were both
natives. At the time of her birth her father had charge of a school,
which, two years later, he gave up and returned to Boston, removing in
turn to Concord when Louisa was eight years of age.

All the world has read in _Little Women_ the chronicle of that
happy childhood passed in the shadow of the Concord elms; and the
experiences of the sisters Beth, Meg, Amy, and Jo, have won a place in
American literature which the child-heart will never willingly let go.
Undoubtedly the liveliest and brightest of the merry group of girls
was Louisa herself, whose wit made stock out of household calamities,
and whose ambition made defeat but an incentive to fresh endeavor.
Two generations of children have now thrilled with delight over the
recitals which have made that home-history, a great part of which is
autobiographical, one of the most sympathetic revelations of childhood
ever given to the world. For above and beyond the tale of merry
adventure or mad escapade, there thrills that reminiscent quality to
which the heart of childhood ever responds. Jo toiling from cellar to
garret in her childish yet serious masquerade of Pilgrim's Progress,
or Beth perplexed with tender pity over the mystery of death, are
alike typical of the genuine thoughts of the child, and the youthful
reader is often living over his own experiences when perusing this
fascinating record. This unique charm, which is necessarily absent
in great works of imagination, will no doubt give the story of Louisa
Alcott's early days a permanent place in literature, as it has already
accorded it a fame which rivals the classic renown of Robinson Crusoe
and Robin Hood.

The happy life of the Alcott girls at Concord was shared by the
children of Emerson, Hawthorne, Channing, and other prominent men of
letters whose homes were then in that quiet village. Mr. Alcott
was his children's teacher, and very often he was their most genial
play-fellow. Their mother, a woman of noble nature and rare force of
character, was their tender friend as well as their loving adviser.
All the children kept diaries, and in Louisa's is recorded many of her
struggles with a rather tempestuous nature, and many earnest resolves
to be a "good child." Scattered here and there through the pages of
the diary are found little notes from her mother, commending some
special act of obedience or self-restraint, praises dear to the
child's heart, whose highest ambition was to be dutiful.

To the Alcott children, books of course were familiar. Before she
could read, Louisa played with books, building houses of histories and
bridges of dictionaries. Even then she was possessed with a desire to
write, and inscribed strange characters in the blank pages of Plutarch
and Bacon. When the time for lessons and reading actually began,
the children all became omnivorous readers, Louisa devouring novels,
histories, poetry, and fairy stories with unappeasable appetite.

Being a New England child she was also taught to sew, becoming so
skilful in this accomplishment that she set up a doll's dress-making
establishment, which became famous for its select styles, and was
patronized by all the children in the neighborhood.

The Concord house had a large garden and barn attached, both of which
were a delight to the children. In the garden their father gave them
practical lessons in botany and in the study of nature, and in the
barn they held meetings, discussed books, and acted plays. Once they
found a little robin lying cold and starved on the garden-walk. They
warmed and fed the pretty thing, and Louisa, full of tender pity,
celebrated the event in her first poem, _The Robin_. The verses
pleased her mother, whose praise was very sweet to the eight-year-old
child. From this time she frequently wrote verses inspired by the
circumstances of her childish life. Her prose efforts were always more
ambitious; dramas and tales of heroic adventure were the only things
thought worthy her pen, and the plays were undoubtedly a success. They
were acted in the barn, and for the time being the real Cinderella
walked before the eyes of the audience, and the brave prince truly
waked the Sleeping Beauty with a kiss.

By the time she was eleven years old Louisa, though so famous among
the children of her set as an author of lively plays, was storing
her mind with good literature. She read Plutarch's lives and Scott's
novels, Goldsmith, the life of Martin Luther, and the English poets
outside the daily lessons, and the daily household tasks, for the
Alcotts were poor, and the girls had each her special work.

Between eleven and fifteen Louisa passed the years at Fruitlands, a
little settlement that Mr. Alcott had founded near Concord. It was
during this time that the children learned that in the coming years
their mother must look to them for help in the support of the family,
and bravely they set themselves to the task. Louisa in particular was
inspired by a passion to be her mother's helper. Her whole soul was
devoted to this object, and every scheme which presented itself to her
mind had this end in view. For herself she cared as little as it was
possible. One only little wish and ambition did she have, and that was
to possess a little room of her very own where she might retire and
"think her thoughts" without interruption, and do such work as came to
her.

In one of those sweet correspondences which the old diary has
preserved she confessed this desire to her mother. In an answering
note we learn that the overworked and overworried mother found time
and means somehow to accomplish this desire, and the little room, with
work-basket and desk by the window, and a door that opened into the
garden, made glad the heart of the unselfish child. About this time
Emerson presented her with Goethe's _Correspondence with a Child_, a
book that fired her imagination and introduced what she has termed
the "romantic period" of her youth. She was fifteen, and it suddenly
occurred to her that it would be an interesting thing to have such
a friendship with Emerson as existed between Goethe and the child
Bettina. She took to writing letters, which, however, were never sent;
she wandered around by moonlight, and sat at midnight under the trees
looking at the stars. Presently, however, her New England common-sense
came to the rescue. She realized that her poetry was nonsense,
and that she, in fact, had been very silly to try and worship as a
romantic hero one whose friendship had from earliest years led her
soul into noble paths.

When Louisa was eighteen her serious ambition was to write plays and
become a successful actress. Her sisters had entire confidence in her
ability to do both, and much labor was spent over the production and
enacting of lurid dramas. It was a great event when the manager of
a Boston theatre actually consented to bring out one of these plays,
called _The Rival Prima Donnas_, although from some mistake of
the management it was never produced. Later, a farce called _Nat
Bachelor's Pleasure Trip_ was produced at the Howard Athenum and was
fairly approved by the public and press.

During these early days of playwriting the Alcott girls were striving
in every way to share the burden of the family expenses. Louisa sewed,
taught, and wrote, but none of these things paid very well. The family
poverty was a real and very distressing fact, and no way seemed to
open toward a successful fight against it.

By the time she was twenty-two, however, Louisa had decided that her
talent lay in the way of authorship. She at that time published
her first book, a little volume of tales that she had written for
Emerson's daughter Ellen, and which came out under the title, _Flower
Fables_. This book contained some pretty fancies and showed some
talent, but it is now only valuable as marking the beginning of a
successful career.

Many short stories and poems had by this time found their way to
different papers and periodicals, and for the next seven years her
pen was busy, though the remuneration she received was not entirely
gratifying.

But the pleasure which this success brought was saddened by the
fatal illness of "Beth," Louisa's favorite sister. After two years'
suffering "Beth's" gentle spirit slipped away, leaving a place forever
desolate in "Jo's" faithful heart. The old, revered friends, Emerson
and Thoreau, helped to carry the little, worn-out body to its last
resting-place in Sleepy Hollow, and Louisa wrote in her diary that she
knew what death meant.

In 1861 Miss Alcott published her novel _Moods_, the most ambitious
work she had yet attempted, and one on which she placed many fond
hopes. But although _Moods_ represented all the ideality and poetry
of life as it then appeared to the young author, it was not a great
success. She had toiled faithfully over its composition, and had
wrought into it many of her own girlish dreams, but the heroine was
not real, and many of the situations were artificial. The defect lay
in the author's own gift, which did not reach out to work of a purely
imaginative character.

Miss Alcott was bitterly disappointed over the meagre success of
_Moods_, which she attributed to the many changes she had made in it,
through the advice of the different publishers who had rejected it. In
spite of the fame that her other books brought, _Moods_ always held a
warm place in her heart. Her true work for literature was indicated by
an experience which widened her mind and expanded her sympathies as
no girlish day-dreams could ever do. This was her life as a hospital
nurse at the front during the early days of the Civil War.

The Alcotts had no sons to devote to the cause of the Union, but they
sent their bravest and brightest one, the daughter whom the father so
proudly called "Duty's faithful child," to serve her country in its
hour of need. Miss Alcott was detailed to the Georgetown hospital,
and here she entered heart and soul into her duties. The hospital was
poorly equipped, and both patients and nurses suffered from bad air,
impure water, and damp rooms, but all put thoughts of self in the
background, and kept as cheery and bright as possible. The new nurse
was a great favorite with the soldiers, who appreciated her fun and
laughter, her unfailing devotion, and the womanly tenderness which
never found her too tired to write messages to their far-off friends.

Though often worn out, she never omitted her own home letters, which
were faithful transcriptions of the daily hospital life. All its
sadness and pathos appealed to her, and its humorous side, for it had
one, found a response in her merry heart. Her experience here ended
after six weeks, owing to a serious attack of typhoid fever. The bad
air and drainage of the hospital had done their work, and Miss Alcott
returned to Concord, where she was for many months an invalid. She
never entirely recovered this shock to her health, and the invalidism
from which she suffered in her last years in reality dated from this
time.

Upon the suggestion of a friend she resolved to throw her experience
at Georgetown into literary form, and wrote the first three of her
_Hospital Sketches_. These immediately attracted so much attention
that the series grew into a book which was published in 1865. This
work, so full of real life, of the beauty of heroism, patience, and
duty, brought Miss Alcott her first taste of fame. Eminent men, among
them Charles Sumner, wrote congratulating her upon her success, and
she found herself lionized by a public that was grateful for this
glimpse of life at the front. About this time Miss Alcott published
in the _Atlantic Monthly_ her beautiful poem, _Thoreau's Flute_, a
tribute to the character of that noble poet, and the most perfect
piece of verse that the author ever made. A new and abridged edition
of _Moods_ appeared also, and owing to the popularity of _Hospital
Sketches_, won a gratifying success. From this time Miss Alcott had
no difficulty in finding a market for her wares. Her short stories and
sketches were eagerly accepted by the best magazines and papers, and
she even had some difficulty in keeping up with the demand for them.

In 1865 Miss Alcott made her first visit to Europe. She started as
companion to an invalid lady, as her means did not allow her to make
the trip otherwise, but later she joined her own friends and completed
her visit in their company. This was a delightful experience, restful
and health-giving to the hard-working author. It was her first real
holiday and she enjoyed it with that fresh, buoyant spirit that was
so characteristic of her. Upon her return a Boston publisher asked her
for a book for girls, and from this demand, which she feared at first
she could not comply with, grew her famous story _Little Women_. The
full power and beauty of this story was unsuspected by the author, and
she was dazzled by the brilliant success which followed.

Thinking that she was merely writing down the merry life of a happy
family of girls, she was in reality making a transcription of typical
New England girlhood, and putting the touches to a picture of rare
value. All the best in New England blood and manners filters through
the pages of this book. Pure living, noble thinking, high ideals
here find a place and reflect the girlhood which was blessed by the
friendship of Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and other of her father's
associates, and which was guarded so tenderly by that father himself.

This book, which may be said to have heralded a new literature for
children, was hailed with acclamation by the young audience for whom
it was written. The publishers were busy keeping up the demand for
the books, and Miss Alcott began to receive letters from all over
the country demanding another volume. England, France, Holland, and
Germany brought out rapid editions, and by the time the second volume
was ready Miss Alcott's name was a household word wherever children
read books.

This height, so unexpectedly but justly won, Miss Alcott never lost.
For nearly twenty years longer the children of the land gave her the
first place in their affections, while each successive book seemed to
them a personal gift from the author. She was the friend and ideal of
thousands of boys and girls who never saw her, but who felt, beyond a
doubt, that their interests were known, and their hopes and ambitions
dear to her. Far beyond what the author ever dreamed, these sweet and
true stories of young life influenced the generation to which they
appealed. Beyond what she had hoped, the little lessons of duty and
noble living learned in the old house at Concord brought rich and
noble harvest to far wider fields.

The home life of the family was at this time very happy. The eldest
daughter, "Meg," was married and had two charming children, the "Demi"
and "Daisy" of _Little Men_, though both babies were in reality boys.
The youngest daughter, "Amy," was making progress in the study of art,
and "Jo" herself was happy because she could earn money to make the
others happy. Soon after the publication of _Little Women_ she went
abroad with her sister May, the "Amy" of _Little Women_, remaining
four years; work as well as travel occupied the time. The day she
arrived home her father met her at the dock, with a red placard pinned
in the carriage window, announcing the publication of _Little Men_.
Like its forerunner, it scored a great success. The other numbers of
the _Little Women_ series grew rapidly, _Old-Fashioned Girl_, _Eight
Cousins_, and _Rose in Bloom_ being perhaps the favorites next to the
initial volumes. _The Spinning Wheel_ series, _Aunt Jo's
Scrap-Bag_ series, and _Lulu's Library_--three volumes for small
children--appeared as the years went on.

Miss Alcott was also the author of a novel called _A Modern
Mephistopheles_, published anonymously in the _No Name_ series. One of
her best-known books, _Work_, is founded on the incidents of her own
experience in her girlhood days, when money was scarce in the Alcott
family, and the young daughters were striving in every way to lift the
burden from father and mother.

Her sister May married and died abroad, leaving her baby-girl to Miss
Alcott, and to this little niece she gave henceforth a mother's love.
Her own mother and father were ever her dearest care, and her greatest
happiness lay in the knowledge that she had relieved their old age
from want.

Miss Alcott died after a short illness in Boston in 1888.

Time had given to her the reward she would have chosen above all
others--the knowledge that her work brought not only success, but that
it carried its own message of life's great intention to each young
heart that it reached.




CHAPTER XII

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

1836-


Thomas Bailey Aldrich, poet and novelist, was born at Portsmouth in
1836. Like many other New England seaports, Portsmouth, at the time of
the poet's birth, had long ceased to be a wealthy and important town.
No longer East India merchantmen, Mediterranean trading-vessels,
English and French ships, or great whalers came up to its docks to
leave their cargoes and sail away again to the distant lands whose
names were so familiar to the inhabitants of the old town. That
was the Portsmouth of the past which had shown such fine fighting
qualities during the Revolution, and whose oldest inhabitants still
remembered how their hardy little town did brave coast duty in the War
of 1812. The Portsmouth of Aldrich's youth was a quiet, sleepy place,
which seemed to be glad of a chance to spend its old age quietly, and
whose disused wharves and crumbling warehouses attested a long and
honorable career, though, like other earthly things, it had come to an
end.

In this quaint old town the better class still dwelt in the family
mansions built in the eighteenth century; the fisher-folk lived in a
separate part of the town, and they still flocked to the wharves on
the rare occasions of the appearance of a new sail in the harbor, in
the hope that here at last were tidings of some husband or brother
who had been lost sight of for many a day. The actual interests of the
place still centred around the sea, though the fleets which came in
sight of the beautiful harbor, one of the finest in the world, seldom
dropped anchor there. But the atmosphere was full of the romance and
mystery of the ocean. Old sailors who could tell tales of ship-wreck
and bold privateering still haunted the wharves on sunny afternoons,
and could be found available for story-telling in their cosey little
cabins on stormy winter days. The expressions which the children heard
in the streets, and often at home, in regard to the wealth, the local
news, and world at large were often nautical relics of life on the
quarter-deck riveted into the common New England speech. "Nor'easters"
and "sea-fogs," "a squally fore-and-aft sky," and a proper lack of
respect for long-shoremen known as "butter-fingered land lubbers,"
were localisms familiar to all ears. The boys were all "messmates,"
and every one looked forward to owning a three-masted ship, for the
sea, of course, was the only proper theatre of action for a Portsmouth
boy.

Ardent lover of his native town as he grew to be, Aldrich in his very
young childhood had a vague dream of Portsmouth and all the rest
of New England as a barren waste inhabited by red Indians and
poor-spirited whites who lived mainly in log huts. He imbibed this
comical notion from a residence in New Orleans, whither he was
taken while yet an infant, and where he lived for some years. In his
charming _Story of a Bad Boy_, a biography of his childhood, he
has told us how surprised he was to find that civilized and even
respectable people lived at the North, his old nurse Chloe having
always taught him that a "Yankee" was a being to be despised, utterly.
Being taken to Portsmouth however to attend school, he soon became
appreciative of the fine qualities of his stately white-haired
grandfather, in whose family he lived, while his life at school opened
up new vistas of delight. He had a very healthy and happy boyhood,
many incidents of which are transcribed with grateful affection in the
pages of the _Bad Boy_.

It is essentially the story of a New England boy of the generation
which had escaped the sterner discipline of an older day. Still
careful of the training of mind and character, the Puritanism of
New England had in Aldrich's youth lost many of its unlovely
characteristics. There was less gloom and formality, and, except in
the observance of Sunday, many of the usages of early times had passed
away.

Sunday was still, however, strictly kept. Aldrich gives an amusing
description of that day on which his grandfather no longer appeared
any relation to him, and when boyish sports, Robinson Crusoe and the
Arabian Nights, were exchanged for three sermons a day and a visit to
the family burying-ground.

With this exception, at school and at home, his life was full of
healthful duties and pleasures. He describes particularly his delight
in the first snow-storm which he saw in Portsmouth after his return
from New Orleans, and how he stood by the window for hours watching
the unfamiliar, beautiful scene. He made good progress at school,
learning mathematics and Latin in the thorough New England fashion. He
had a host of boy friends, as healthy and fortunate as himself. He
was a prominent member of a flourishing secret society formed for
the perpetration of dark and mysterious deeds; once he and the other
members of the society cleaned some old rusty cannon which adorned the
wharves, fired them off with a slow fuse at midnight, and awakened
all the inhabitants under the impression that the town was being
bombarded.

He owned a part of a boat and used to cruise among the islands off the
harbor, and once he experienced the bitterness which many dwellers by
the sea know, in seeing a young companion drift out forever from
sight in the face of a great storm which destroyed twelve sail of an
outgoing fishing-fleet before its fury abated.

Perhaps the dearest of his boyish treasures was his pony, Gypsy, who
was "pretty and knew it, and passionately fond of dress;" who loved
boys, and would have nothing to do with girls; who could "let down
bars, lift up latches, draw bolts, and turn all sorts of buttons;" who
once ate six custard pies that had been placed to cool, and enjoyed
the wickedness of the feat as much as did her young master. She was an
affectionate creature, too, and used to steal off whenever she could
and go to the Temple grammar-school, which her master attended, and
wait for him with her forefeet on the second step. Aldrich's first
composition was devoted to the praise of the horse, a tribute to
Gypsy, and when his school-days were over he was only consoled at
parting from her by his grandfather's solemn promise to sell her to
a circus, for Gypsy had histrionic talent and could "waltz, fire a
pistol, lie down dead, wink one eye," and do other tricks worthy
of admiration. In her larger sphere she became the belle of the
circus-ring, and performed wonders on the tan-bark.

When Aldrich was fifteen his father died suddenly in New Orleans. This
changed the boy's life materially, as a college career had to be given
up and some means of livelihood secured. At this juncture an uncle
offered him a situation in his business-house in New York, and it was
thought best that he should accept this position. In the last glimpse
which he gives us of himself in the _Story of a Bad Boy_ he says that
his uncle insisted upon his taking the offer at once, being haunted by
the dread that if left to himself the boy might turn out a poet.

This hint carries us to the beginning of Aldrich's literary career. As
in the case of many other poets, this calling was not self-chosen.
The boy's ambition was to become a Harvard student, and it was only
a sense of duty and an unselfish wish to save his grandfather further
care that led him to consent to a business life. But in the end his
choice wrought well for him. Denied the means of carrying on his
studies as he would have liked, he became his own teacher. In the
intervals of work he read and studied, and because he was a poet born
he composed verses. Almost before he knew it this last occupation
engrossed more and more of his time. The fancies which at first chased
through his brain, the creatures of an hour's recreation, came at last
to take up their abode there and to demand serious attention.

In this regard Aldrich's gift shows that it springs from true poetic
inspiration. Even in his earliest verses there is evidence that behind
the imagination and fancy lay the sense of the poet's mission to
reveal in the form of art the beauty and harmony unseen by the common
eye.

It is to be presumed that the young poet kept these aspirations very
carefully from the knowledge of his uncle, who certainly could find
no fault with the manner in which his nephew's office duties were
performed.

By the time he was eighteen Aldrich had prepared for the press a small
volume of poems, which he published under the title, _The Bells_.
Before he was nineteen he had written the _Ballad of Babie Bell_, that
exquisite monody of babyhood which brought him instant recognition as
a poet of more than ordinary promise. The _Ballad of Babie Bell_ and
other poems appeared in book form in 1858. Aldrich was then twenty-two
years old. He had secured a position as publisher's reader, and had
contributed poems, essays, sketches, and stories to _Putnam's_, the
_Knickerbocker_, _Harper's_, and the _Atlantic Monthly_. In newspaper
work he was connected with the New York _Evening Mirror_, the _Home
Journal_, the _Saturday Press_, and other prominent newspapers of that
date. The literary life lay before him. Other volumes of poems were
issued, each showing the poet's true insight. From 1865 to 1874 he was
editor of _Every Saturday_, and the following year he went abroad on a
vacation justly earned.

He visited England and Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, and Austria.
To each place he brought the sympathy of a finely attuned nature, and
from each he seemed to carry away some experience that broadened his
intellectual outlook. The itinerary of this journey was published
afterward in the _Atlantic Monthly_ in a charming series called _From
Ponkapog to Pesth_.

Aldrich was later made editor of the _Atlantic Monthly_, a position
which he held for a number of years. In American poetry this author
has created a school of his own. The peculiar temper of his gift was
shown in the _Ballad of Babie Bell_, in which the fragrant grace and
innocence of babyhood seems to have been revealed to the poet in as
pure a vision as ever came to a knight of the Holy Grail. This story
of the death of a child, in which death is made so beautiful and
childhood so holy, indicated that fineness of perception which is
Aldrich's most striking characteristic.

All his conceits and fancies, his illustrations of life and character,
both of his lighter and graver hours, reveal that delicate, inward
vision which make his work so distinctive. His subjects are as varied
as his own vagrant fancies, which seem to find all places in earth and
air welcome and habitable. Sometimes it is a monk of the Middle Ages
whose sin and repentance he incorporates in charming verse as in
_Friar Jerome's Beautiful Book_. Again it is the old Hebrew story of
_Judith_, or the Roman legend of _Ara-Coeli_, telling how the little
waxen _bambino_ found its way back alone in the storm and darkness to
the convent from which it had been stolen.

An Indian maiden whose memory had become legendary long before the
discovery of America; an old Greek coin bearing the coined head of
Minerva; a castle of feudal days with arches crumbling to dust and
drawbridge falling, each claims his fancy, and is by him woven into
the graceful and beautiful fabric of his verse.

Nowhere is his touch more sensitive than in his appreciation of
nature, as known to New England, where ice-storms and sleet and hail,
fogs and bleak winds all become a part of the poet's consciousness
and teach their own lessons of courage and endurance. New England wild
flowers and summer fields have also their tribute from their own poet,
who sings their praises in _The Blue Bells of New England_ and who
acknowledges no enchantment so binding as that of the May of his
native land. _The Sisters' Tragedy_ and the beautiful _Monody on the
Death of Wendell Phillips_ are also among the notable poems. _Wyndham
Towers_, the most ambitious of the later poems, is a legend of the
days of Elizabeth, which reappears in the reign of Charles the Second.
This story of two courtiers of Elizabeth, who were brothers and
rivals, and whose fate remained a mystery for over a century, is told
by Aldrich in charming verse, characterized by his own peculiar
graces of touch. _Unguarded Gates_, a collection of his latest poems,
contains many beautiful specimens that reveal the master's mind, still
alive to all those subtle varying moods of thought, which make his
work so distinctive.

In prose Aldrich has produced more than one novel of character, true
to the old New England traditions which moulded the thought of the
Puritans, and artistic in execution. His prose, like his poetry,
possesses the undefinable quality which sets it apart from other
contemporary work. Among his novels, _Prudence Palfrey_ and the
_Stillwater Tragedy_ are the best, while of his shorter stories,
_Marjorie Daw_ ranks easily first, both in point of literary
excellence and from the will-o'-the-wisp remoteness which marks its
relationship to the genuine fairy-brood.

In some ways the fancy of Aldrich very nearly approaches that of
Hawthorne. Above all other New England writers these two possess the
charm which unlocks that realm of fancy wherein wandered Spenser and
Shakespeare, Shelley, Coleridge, and Keats. This wonder-world is not
always open, even to poets; whoever enters it must wear the badge of
the elfin crew which wanders invisible at will, and which only kindred
sight can discover. Aldrich, true knight of this goodly fellowship,
has visited their haunts more than once. That he was well received is
evinced by the secrets he has brought back and which he has woven with
the poet's cunning into his art.




CHAPTER XIII

NEW ENGLAND WOMEN WRITERS


In New England, as well as in the South and West, the novelists of
to-day have pressed their own surroundings into the service of
art. The pictures they have given us are thus true to nature. They
illustrate the quiet hours of the nation's life, the hours in which it
truly grows and fulfils the purpose of its being, and the pictures are
therefore very valuable. Most of this fiction is thrown into the
form of short stories, and these are contributed by so many different
authors that we are able to get many points of view.

The material here used is perhaps not so picturesque as that offered
to the writers of the South and West; New England, except in its
earliest days, has never been the land of romance; but here the
progress of those ideas that make a country's greatness has gone
steadily on. The writers of to-day still reflect the thought and
manners that were moulded under the influence of the great men of
the past. The genius of Hawthorne and the spirit of Emerson made a
permanent impression upon American art and life, and the children of
their own blood have not forgotten their lessons. Thus we find New
England fiction largely dealing with the moral life of the people.
Character sketches, stories of temptation, defeat and victory, battles
lost and won by the soul, form the _motifs_ of these tales; and
although New England to-day can claim no great novelist, yet
its artistic purpose is as pure and elevated as when it laid the
foundations of American literature.

Interwoven with these stories are many pictures of manners and home
surroundings which make an atmosphere of reality. This atmosphere,
changing with every age, as the conditions of life change, has been so
reflected in the work of to-day, as to make it in itself a mirror of
the every-day history of the people. And this has its value also.

Perhaps the work of no woman writer so intimately connects the spirit
of the New England of the past with that of to-day as does that of
Mrs. Julia Ward Howe. Mrs. Howe has always been an advocate of ideas.
Life has seemed to her a mission of service; although not a Puritan by
descent, she has fought nobly in the cause of Puritanism, the cause of
justice and humanity. Though her anti-slavery and philanthropic work,
and her advocacy of woman suffrage have occupied much more of her
time than her literary life, yet her writings belong eminently to the
history of American literature. They represent very strongly the ideas
which the republic has always sought to maintain, and in one case
their author embodied in verse the spirit of the nation in one of its
greatest hours. That poem, _The Battle Hymn of the Republic_, was a
song and a prophecy of liberty in its highest sense. It was a reminder
of the part that America had elected to play in the great drama of
national life. Wherever its words fell they stirred the soul to such
noble response, that it became the war-cry of the nation. It was sung
in schools, and incorporated in the services of the Church; under its
inspiration the Union forces marched on to victory, and the republic
may be said to have achieved the great intention of its existence to
the beat of its triumphant measures.

The air to which the song is set was heard originally in the South.
A visitor from the North, present at a colored meeting, was struck by
the vigor and swing which characterized the singing of this tune,
and on his return wrote down the melody. The popular war song _John
Brown's Body_ was afterward written to this music. During a visit to
Washington in the first year of the war, Mrs. Howe went one day to see
a review of the troops; the drill was interrupted by a movement on
the part of the enemy, and the sight of the troops filing back to
cantonments fired Mrs. Howe's heart; she began singing _John Brown's
Body_ as the men marched past, and the inspiration of the _Battle Hymn
of the Republic_ came to her in that moment; the next morning at dawn
she rose and wrote the words of the most famous song of the war.

Mrs. Howe was born in New York in 1819. Her father, Samuel Ward, was a
man of wealth and prominent in public affairs. The family mansion
near Bowling Green, then a fashionable neighborhood, was noted for
its hospitality, and the children were accustomed to meeting the many
famous men and women who found their way to New York. Julia was the
fourth child, and was considered remarkably clever even in this family
of bright children. She began to write poetry while still a very
little girl, and since she was a born leader, she insisted that her
younger sisters should also write poetry. Many childish scenes of
despair occurred before this resolution was set aside, but Julia still
retained her faculty for leadership. Whatever she believed was so
vital to her that she seemed impelled to impress others with the same
view. This characteristic, broadened and strengthened by favorable
circumstances, enabled its possessor in later life to accomplish a
noble work for humanity.

At the time of Mrs. Howe's childhood New York was the home of that
brilliant circle of poets, essayists, and scholars who followed in the
footsteps of Irving and made the culture of the day a noble foundation
for its future literary life. Some of these men had been among the
first Americans who made pilgrimages to the old world in search of the
higher cultivated artistic life denied them at home. Many of them had
given to European society its first glimpse of the best social life of
the new world, and in more than one instance the nature and charm of
their talents were appreciated abroad as well as at home. New York
was still a small city. The fashionable streets were found in
neighborhoods not far from the Battery, and the social life, though
dignified, was in many respects very simple. Old-fashioned stages and
family carriages were the means of conveyance beyond the city limits
along the shady country roads which led toward Boston and Albany,
and which are now known as the Bowery and the Western Boulevard. Much
picturesqueness characterized the houses, many of which were built
in the old Dutch fashion, and surrounded by large, luxuriant flower
gardens. Christmas, Thanksgiving, the Fourth of July, and above all
the Dutch New-Year's-Day, were still dignified festivals, honored and
enjoyed by all classes alike.

In this atmosphere of ease and unostentatious wealth, of cultivation
and thought, Julia Ward grew to womanhood. By the time she was
seventeen she was an acceptable contributor to the leading magazines
of the day, and at the time of her marriage with Dr. Howe, in her
twenty-fourth year, she had laid the foundation of a successful
literary career.

After a visit to Europe Dr. Howe and his wife, with their baby
daughter, lived for a short time at the Institution for the Blind near
Boston, of which Dr. Howe was director. Dr. Howe had already won
fame for his successful attempt to educate the blind deaf-mute Laura
Bridgman, and his noble work for the blind continued to engage his
interest. He remained director of the institution all his life,
residing for many years at a charming country place called "Green
Peace." Mrs. Howe, from the time of her removal to Massachusetts,
became identified with the political and social movements in which
that State always led. One of her children speaks of her as having
been a "Bostonian of the Bostonians," from the beginning of her
married life. It is certain that her own nature responded warmly
to the progressive New England spirit, and that her talents and
earnestness won her a high place in the band of men and women who
represented New England thought.

In 1853 Mrs. Howe published her first volume of poems under the title
_Passion Flowers_. Although brought out anonymously the authorship was
at once accorded to Mrs. Howe by Emerson, Longfellow, and other poets,
who recognized in the verse her own fertile fancy. In the following
year another volume, which was largely an appeal for the freedom of
the Southern slaves, appeared under the title _Words for the Hour_.

From this moment Mrs. Howe's literary life became identified with
the anti-slavery cause. Poems, articles, editorials, and lectures all
spoke the same word for humanity, and the author became known as one
of the leaders in the cause. _The Battle Hymn of the Republic_ only
added another laurel to the fame she had already won as a tireless,
fearless, and able advocate for the freedom of the slave.

When the war was over Mrs. Howe's pen still wrought for large issues.
Well known as a lecturer, her efforts now were directed to questions
of character, ethics, and the purpose of life. She was still a leader
in the intellectual world, and the most eminent men of New England
cherished her friendship.

Almost from the beginning of the movement Mrs. Howe has been a
champion of the woman suffrage cause. She has been one of the workers
who have done much for the broader education of women and opened to
them wider spheres of usefulness. But her spirit is too large to be
confined closely to one interest. The world has been her field of
action, and whenever the word was needed there it has been spoken. In
1867, when the Greek inhabitants of the island of Crete revolted
from the Turkish Government, Mrs. Howe and her husband crossed the
Atlantic, carrying money and supplies to the brave little band of
rebels. In 1872 she was in London trying to bring about a woman's
peace congress, having for its object the abolition of war among
civilized nations.

When the republic of Santo Domingo desired to be annexed to the United
States, Dr. Howe was one of the commissioners appointed by the United
States to inquire into the feasibility of the plan. Dr. and Mrs. Howe
passed two winters in the island, living at one time in one of those
large marble houses which the natives call "palaces," and making
journeys of inspection as to the wealth and resources of the country.
Their house was guarded by native soldiers, and wherever they went
the inhabitants vied with one another in offers of hospitality and
friendship. It was Mrs. Howe who revealed to these simple people to
what stature womanhood might grow. Her gracious influence seemed to
represent to them the blessings that might flow from a union with the
great republic, and it was into her sympathetic ear they poured the
story of their disappointment when their dream of a larger national
life came to an end.

In later years Mrs. Howe's interests have been very closely connected
with the New England Woman's Club, an outgrowth of her brain, devoted
to the broader advancement of women. This last project connects her
ideals closely with those of her young womanhood, when in all and
above all she conceived life to be but the instrument for the working
out of noble purposes.

Her place in American literature is representative. While the mass of
her work is of necessity ephemeral, it is yet of invaluable character.
Whenever, during her career, the nation has stood in danger from foes
within or without, she has come to the front with her pen and the
influence of her noble personality. So greatly has she wrought in this
regard that the history of her literary career would be the history
of the causes which have affected the national life for the last fifty
years. No merely artistic gift, however great, could have won for her
this place.

       *       *       *       *       *

Louise Chandler Moulton, poet and prose writer, was born at Pomfret,
Conn., in 1835. Around her childhood still lingered the traditions of
old New England life, and her education was almost as strict as that
of her Puritan ancestors. Louise was taught her catechism and the duty
of going to church three times on Sunday, to do her little stint of
sewing, and to listen respectfully while her great grandmother read
her extracts from the Greek philosophers in the original. She was
also taught that it was sinful to read novels and to dance, or to
play backgammon. She was an only child, and as she had a loving little
heart, the affection her parents lavished upon her made the home
atmosphere most sweet and sunny. Like many another New England child
she often forgot the terrors inspired by catechism and sermon to find
pleasure in the world which she created out of her own fancy. This
world of imagination was in her case peopled by creatures so real
that they formed an actual part of her life. Often the same characters
occupied her attention for months, and she would hurry away from
lesson and task to live through hours of emotion and experience with
these children of her brain. Once she spent a whole summer watching
these imaginary characters act what she called a "Spanish drama." As
soon as she appeared in the garden they would flock around her and go
through the parts which they seemed themselves to create; if they came
to grief, she was genuinely moved, and once, when one of them died,
she was utterly overcome. Outside these fancies the voices of nature
awakened many curious thoughts.

The wind whistling through a certain keyhole seemed to her distant
bugle notes, or the wailing of lost souls, while the tones of rain and
sleet had each alike its own weird interpretations. It is from such
imaginative children that the New England poets have sprung, and when
she was about seven years old the little day dreamer began to put her
thoughts into verse. Very curious bits of doggerel must have been the
result of these moments of inspiration, but they no doubt expressed in
some queer fashion the fancies teeming in the restless little brain.
When she was fifteen Louise's first printed verses appeared in a
Norwich newspaper, and three years later a volume entitled _This,
That, and the Other_, appeared. In this were included the stories,
poems, and sketches which had been printed in various magazines
and papers, and which had won for the young author considerable
reputation. The book was kindly reviewed by Edmund Clarence Stedman
and other critics, and the author almost immediately took the position
she has since held as one of the most sympathetic of New England
writers. In her prose work Mrs. Moulton has dealt with those studies
of character which have such a charm for New England writers, and in
the portrayal of which she has been strikingly successful. Her stories
and novels have appeared in book form under the titles _This, That,
and the Other_, _Jono Clifford_, and _Some Women's Hearts_.

Some charming books for children, written primarily for the amusement
of her own little daughter, show Mrs. Moulton's talent in another
light. These tales--_Bedtime Stories_; _More Bedtime Stories_; _New
Bedtime Stories_, and _Firelight Stories_--have won a wide hearing.

But it is by her poetry that Mrs. Moulton will be longest remembered.
Her poems are full of melody, of light, and color; they are charged
with an intense feeling for nature, whose moods they reproduce with
exquisite fidelity; they are, in most instances, singularly perfect
in form, while the beauty of certain single lines stands unchallenged.
But above all they are the songs of one who sings spontaneously and
naturally, to whom the outside world and the life of the soul
have alike revealed themselves in music. In them is found the true
expression of the author's gift as one of the best lyric poets of
America. Some single poems, as _The House of Death_; _How Long_; _In
Pace_; and _Left Behind_, have won a wide fame. Her poetry has been
published in two volumes, _Swallow Flights_, and _Other Poems_.

       *       *       *       *       *

Another writer of the same generation as Mrs. Moulton is Harriet
Prescott Spofford, daughter of Joseph N. Prescott, a descendant of one
of the families which have made New England famous. Miss Prescott's
first work marked her at once as a unique personality. Hitherto the
fiction of New England had been stamped with a distinct moral purpose
around which the tale was woven. But in the brilliant and dramatic
novels _Azarian_, _Sir Rohan's Ghost_, _The Amber Gods_, and in the
short stories which belong to the same period, this author seems to
have created an art peculiarly her own, for above all other things
they appealed to the sense of beauty. The language in which they were
written was new to readers of fiction, and they were carried along by
it as by beautiful music. This gift of expression, chastened later to
a severer beauty, so intensified the charm of the story, itself
always dramatic, that it seemed on first reading the author must have
sacrificed the purpose of the true story-teller. But stripped of their
luxurious dress the stories would still remain genuine experiences of
life in New England, though seen from a point of view seldom attained.
The poetic faculty so apparent in her prose has made Mrs. Spofford's
verse equally felicitous. Her mood in her earlier and perhaps most
successful work was an alien one to New England fiction, full of a
tropical beauty, and dominated by a rare imaginative faculty, and
it will probably give her contributions a permanent place among New
England writers.

       *       *       *       *       *

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps has, in her stories and novels, dealt almost
entirely with questions of conscience and morality. She came of a line
of theologians whose lives were spent in discussing and teaching the
principles of puritanism, and much of their seriousness of purpose
became her inheritance. Her first story appeared in the _Youth's
Companion_ in 1857, before she was fourteen, and five years later
_Harper's Magazine_ published her story, "A Sacrifice Consumed," one
of the first stories called forth by the war. The year following she
began writing the book which made her famous, and which appeared in
1868 under the title _The Gates Ajar_.

In this story the author, for the first time in American literature,
showed how completely the old puritan idea of the hereafter had passed
away. In its place had come a belief in the unfailing love of God, and
a hope of the blessedness of the future life. The book brought comfort
and help to thousands who had outgrown the gloomy creed of their
ancestors, and whose hearts were still mourning the loss of friends
who had fallen in the war.

But although the book achieved a remarkable success the author did not
follow it with others of a similar character. She began instead the
publication of a series of short stories dealing wholly with the
problems of human life. Many of these stories are so sad, that they
seem to show life only as a tragedy, but the author's purpose was to
preach the truth in order that good might come of it. These stories,
published later under the title _Men, Women, and Ghosts_, were
followed by _The Story of Avis_, a novel of remarkable force. Like her
other works, _The Story of Avis_ is a sermon thrown into the form of
fiction, but the artistic sense of the author is shown also in this
book as in no other. If Miss Phelps had not written fiction she would
still have become a poet; few writers possess such insight, and fewer
still are governed by the sense of beauty that dominates all her work.
Her fiction is full of beautiful lines showing the finest sense of
color, while her volume of _Poetic Studies_ illustrates how far
her poetic instinct might have reached had her art been confined to
verse-making.

_The Story of Avis_ is full of color and rhythm, and is one of the
best instances of how far words may be made to reproduce the lights
and shades of the world of nature. These two characteristics, the
moral purpose and the sense of beauty, have dominated all the author's
works. Although her later works, _Dr. Zay_, _Beyond the Gates_, and
others have been eminently successful, yet she reaches her highest
point in such short stories as _A Madonna of the Tubs_, _The Lady of
Shalott_, _Cloth of Gold_, and _Jack_. In these powerful tales, which
read like poems, both characters and background are sketched in such
fine lines as to place them among the best American fiction. The
tragedy of common life which has always appealed to the author,
and which has been her most successful theme, has never been more
artistically treated. Miss Phelps was born in Boston, but her girlhood
was spent in the old town of Andover, where her father was a professor
of theology. She studied mathematics and the classics at the Andover
Female Seminary, one of the celebrated schools of the day, and, like
all the youth of her generation, she was taught that one of the chief
duties of man was to brood over the theological problems that had
puzzled her puritan ancestors. She has lived the greater part of her
life in Andover. In 1888 she was married to the writer, Herbert D.
Ward.

       *       *       *       *       *

Lingering to-day among old New England villages and country sides
are many characteristics of other days. For, while society has been
progressive, the people have kept many quaint habits of thought
and speech, much in the same manner as they have preserved in their
garrets the furniture and costumes of their ancestors. Thus, the men
and women found in village and farm-house seem often survivals of
another generation, and the story of their simple lives is full of
interest. In another generation, perhaps, these types will have passed
away, and the individuality which has stamped New England life from
its beginning will be lost.

Mary E. Wilkins has preserved in her sketches of this life many of its
unique characteristics, and has studied detail so carefully that her
work has a distinct value in the literature of American social life.

No feature in the apparently humdrum existence of these people has
seemed to Miss Wilkins uninteresting. She makes us sympathize with
their little ambitions and humble denials and sacrifices, until we
feel we have entered into close relationship with their lives. We
realize the misfortune of the poor old lady who could not afford a
front door, and see the utter demoralization that follows when a lone
spinster loses her pet cat, her only companion and friend. There is a
sermon preached in the story of the old woman who earned her living
by making patchwork quilts and who, through a mistake, put the pieces
that belonged to one neighbor into the quilt intended for another. The
author's gift, as a genuine story-teller, makes the work alive with
human feeling, and gives to these uneventful tales the charm of
romance. Her power for presenting a picture is equally great. We see
the old farm-house kitchens, the sunniest and brightest parts of the
home, and have glimpses, much like those that come to the occupants
themselves, of the prim "front rooms" that are so seldom used. We see,
too, the orchards, meadows, and fields rich with harvests or lying
bare under the winter skies; every detail of farm and village life
comes before us vividly as if photographed; the farmer's wife busy
in the kitchen, the farmer himself sowing or harvesting, their son
donning his Sunday clothes for a visit to his sweetheart, or their
daughter up in her bedroom trying on the sheeny silk which she is
soon to wear as a bride, are all careful copies of the originals whose
personality supplies the human interest in these unique surroundings.

From the first appearance of the stories in various magazines and
periodicals Miss Wilkins was recognized as a writer whose work must
bear a permanent value. This New England life, with its limitations
and often unlovely characteristics, was yet a survival of the old
puritanism, though the spirit of the past had been in many instances
subverted. Much of the hardness and unresponsiveness of these people
were an inheritance as legitimate as their stern sense of justice and
love of truth. Miss Wilkins, by seizing the salient points, has given
to their characters just that balance between the old and the new New
England which really exists, though time must speedily destroy it.

The short stories and sketches of Miss Wilkins have been published in
two volumes, under the titles: _A Humble Romance_ and _A New England
Nun_, each book taking its name from the leading story. _A Humble
Romance_ is, perhaps, the best of the short stories. The descriptions
of the tin pedler vending his wares is like a scene from Dickens,
while the human interest of the story is traced with the finest art.

Besides her short stories, Miss Wilkins has published two novels,
_Jane Field_ and _Pembroke_, the first a charming love-story and
the second a tragic study of the unlovely side of rustic character,
relieved by the sweet and steadfast faith of a young girl. Some
charming stories for children show Miss Wilkins's talent in a new
light. Of these _Young Lucretia_, which gives the title to the book,
is a fair example of the author's insight into the ambitions and
interests of the child mind. Young Lucretia, who had never had a
birthday or Christmas present, and who lives with some old aunts who
have long since forgotten that they ever were children, is a quaint
little picture of the old puritan up-bringing joined to the usages of
modern life. We sympathize with the poor little heroine when she has
to wear dresses made out of her aunts' cast-off garments, and we
do not blame her for surreptitiously conveying some packages to the
school-house Christmas-tree, so the children may not think she is
utterly without presents. It was a sweet thought to leave the little
maiden glowing in the happiness of a new-fashioned dress, with her
heart throbbing over the thoughts of a real Christmas party, and with
her two eyes "shining softly, like stars," as she gazes from the dusky
fireplace into the face of the kindly visitor who has brought this
gladness.

Among Miss Wilkins's other work she has given us one reflection from
those dark days of the Salem witchcraft. This she has embodied in her
play, _Giles Corey, Yeoman_, in which all the relentless spirit of
persecution is pitilessly portrayed. Giles Corey is a study, full of
dramatic force, and dominated by the tragic elements that underlay
many phases of puritan character. Miss Wilkins has made in this play
another claim to her rank as the greatest power in New England fiction
to-day, and as the author whose artistic realism embodies the highest
purpose of modern literary art.




CHAPTER XIV

GEORGE W. CABLE

1844-


George W. Cable was born in New Orleans, where his childhood, youth,
and early manhood were spent. The New Orleans of his childhood--a
city of shrubs and flowering trees, of vegetable gardens surrounded
by palisade fences, of handsome old-fashioned houses, unpaved streets,
and empty, marshy lots--is to him a pleasant memory. Through the
streets he wandered, with his head full of day-dreams, and when not
busy with study or play, formulated a plan of life entirely different
from that he actually lived. A conscientious pupil and omnivorous
reader, his early ambitions were still far away from such leanings;
long before he had mastered his geography he had determined upon a
career of adventure, and it was a bitter disappointment to him to
learn that his favorite romance, _Paul Jones, the Son of the Sea_, was
not true. Yet even the names of foreign countries had a fascination
for him, while the masts of the ships clustered at the docks were an
inspiration. Even the ballast, which consisted sometimes of stone
from Spain, had such an interest that it led to an attempt at studying
geology.

Naturally the wharves had a great attraction for such a boy, and
thither he used to go with his brother, day after day, to watch the
vessels come in and depart, and to weave stories about their voyages.
Once when a revenue cutter anchored across the river the two boys,
though poor in pocket-money, paid their way over the ferry in order
that they might sit down upon a stump of drift-wood and inspect her
at leisure. Good fortune sent an official in their way, who, amused by
their interest, invited them on board, and allowed them to inspect the
various quarters, and to hover with delight over the sailors' lockers,
where the thread, needles, and other outfittings suggested all the
delights of sea life. The fact that he could not really travel turned
his attention, perhaps, to the literature of travel and he began
writing a story of two Spanish brothers who, in by-gone days, had made
a voyage from Spain to the Caribbean Sea. This narrative was intended
to embody all the wild and romantic tales that the young author had
dreamed out, but only one chapter was ever written, though it was
promised a place in a school paper of which Cable had been chosen
editor--because he wrote a good hand. Much serious work went on hand
in hand with these day-dreams and longings. Before he was ten he had
read Hume's _History of England_, and had set to work to memorize the
Declaration of Independence. At all times he would rather study than
play, and Burns, Scott, Cooper, Shakespeare, and the Bible were read
and re-read in the intervals of school work.

When he was fourteen his father died, and Cable was obliged to
leave school and earn his living. He found employment in a customs
warehouse, his special work being to put brands on the different
articles. This prosaic work had, however, a certain charm for him,
and as he marked the silks and spices from the East, the delft from
Holland, olives from Spain, linens from England, and calicoes from
France, he took many imaginary voyages to those countries. The
interest of the student was still strong within him, and every
possible opportunity for study was embraced.

When he was nineteen he entered the Fourth Mississippi Cavalry and
served for the remainder of the war, carrying his Latin grammar and
reader all through the campaign.

The war over Cable went back to commercial life; no idea of a literary
career came to him, though from time to time he wrote newspaper
articles upon various subjects, and at one time was a regular
contributor to the New Orleans _Picayune_. But a student of the best
fiction and of literary style, gifted with poetic imagination and an
intense feeling for humanity, Cable found after a time the impulse for
story-telling strong upon him. This was augmented by reading in some
old newspapers various accounts of the life of New Orleans in its
early days. The social life, perhaps, of no other American city had
so picturesque a beginning. The old French families never became
Americanized even after the union of Louisiana with the United States.
They kept their family traditions and social usages, regarding the
Yankees who came to make their home there as intruders. All the old
French love of gayety, of gentle breeding, and of refined living made
New Orleans a city of which the social life was the leading feature.
The Creoles, the descendants of the early French settlers, remained
French for many generations, even speaking English as foreigners, long
after Louisiana had begun to send representatives to Congress.

Many charming episodes of this early life were preserved in the
old newspapers which came into Cable's hands from time to time, and
inevitably the long past scenes were re-lived in his imagination. Just
as inevitably the time came when certain incidents and characters
wove themselves so distinctly into stories that they had to be written
down, and when Cable had so transcribed three short stories his work
as the portrayer of the old French life of Louisiana had begun.

One of these stories, _Sieur George_, was published in _Scribner's
Monthly_. Being a venture into new fields its novelty no less than
its art appealed to Northern readers, and when another story, _Jean-ah
Poquelin_ appeared some time later the author felt from the wealth of
friendly criticism that his choice of material had been a wise one.
Other stories were written, the series being published finally in
a book called _Old Creole Days_. The success of this little volume
showed how truly the author had entered into the spirit of those old
days, which had become but a memory. His next work naturally dealt
with the same period in a fuller and more picturesque degree.

Having in view a picture of strong lights and shadows, yet one true
to life, Cable chose for his subject one of the old representative
families of New Orleans, and throwing in as a background one of the
many tragedies that shadowed the history of slavery, he presented a
vivid and picturesque creation of historic value. All the domestic and
social events which would go to make up the history of a wealthy and
influential Creole family were pressed into service, while underneath
ran, like a moral, the reflected purpose of a life far different from
that of the present day. Cable supplied the tragic element of this
novel in the story of the negro _Bras Coup_, who resisted authority
because he had been a chief in Africa and whose sad fate had been
discussed for generations around plantation firesides. But this sombre
side of the picture was relieved by many charming episodes. All the
grace and exquisite gentleness of breeding for which Creole men and
women were celebrated, made this picture of old Creole life of rare
value. The Grandissimes, whose family name gave the title to the book,
became a familiar word as the story of their lives appeared from month
to month in the magazine through which it was running as a serial.
Although _The Grandissimes_ was a work of fiction, it created an
intense interest in the period which it described. Northern readers
were especially charmed by a view of the luxurious and peaceful life
that went on in Louisiana while the English Colonies were fighting the
Indians, redeeming the soil, and finally winning their independence
as a nation. During all this time the French in Louisiana, both on
plantations and in cities, were reverencing their king, holding to the
traditions of their ancestors, and opposing in the end as bitterly as
possible the idea of annexation to the United States.

The Creoles were pleasure-lovers. They had beautiful houses surrounded
by large gardens, and their fte days were numerous and strictly
observed. Much of their enjoyment was of the simplest kind. The
birthday of a relative, or the christening of a child was made the
occasion for a celebration to which all the many branches of the
family were invited, and where merrymaking went on from morning till
night. Many striking scenes in _The Grandissimes_ illustrate this
feature of Creole life. There is also obvious throughout the book, a
comical reflection of the resentment felt by one member of the
family, because France had sold Louisiana to the United States. This
individual, Raoul Innerarity by name, even went so far as to paint a
large picture showing Louisiana, in the shape of a badly drawn female
figure, "rif-using to hantre de h-Union." Other touches throughout the
book show the feeling that existed, while many charming pictures of
home-life abound.

_The Grandissimes_ made Cable famous. Although it elicited much
adverse criticism from readers who denied its truthfulness as a
picture of old Creole days, it yet must be considered as one of the
best works of fiction produced by a Southern writer. It has been
followed by innumerable transcriptions of Southern life from other
hands, but to the author of _The Grandissimes_ must always remain the
credit of being the pioneer in this fascinating world of romance.

Mr. Cable's second book, _Dr. Sevier_, deals with the period of the
war, though it is not a war story. The hero, Dr. Sevier, is a noble
character, whose forgetfulness of self and absorption in duty form the
theme of the moral which runs through the book. A love-story, and the
struggle of a man with misfortune, some echoes of war times, and many
scenes of New Orleans life in 1863 and 64 are also woven into
the story, which, although it lacks the picturesque charm of _The
Grandissimes_, is yet valuable as a chronicle of many real events.

When England took Canada from France, and the Acadians were driven
away from Nova Scotia by the English, they naturally sought refuge in
the American colonies which still remained French. Many of them
found homes in the West Indies, but many more fled to the lowlands of
Louisiana, and gathering together friends and family formed themselves
into little homesteads. Gradually a primitive agricultural community
arose which differed in almost every respect from the plantation life
of Louisiana, although the Acadians remained loyally French.

They were never very wealthy, they were seldom slave-owners, their
wives and daughters still performed the household work, and their
children, as a rule, could neither read nor write. But they had kept a
certain simplicity of character and an ideal of life that made them in
the main truthful, loving, and self-respecting. Sometimes their little
villages dotted the prairie lands, joining one another by straggling
houses and homesteads along the high roads. Sometimes they gathered in
little hamlets along the outskirts of the great plantations, the men
and women earning their livelihood in the cotton and sugar fields.
Very often they were found in the swamp lands and cities adapting
themselves to new conditions. But always they remained separate in
habit and life from the Creole.

To one of these little Acadian settlements which had grown up on the
Louisiana prairies Mr. Cable went for the inspiration of his third
novel, _Bonaventure_. The hero, Bonaventure, was an orphan boy who was
being brought up by the village cur. This old priest, pious, loving,
and beneficent, saw in Bonaventure a soul that would be sure to work
largely for good or evil, and he watched over the child with zealous
care. The story tells how Bonaventure, in the first trial of his life
yielded to temptation, how he repented and by self-sacrifice wrought
out his punishment, and how he finally became the great hope of the
Acadians by becoming a teacher and bringing to their children the gift
of education. The story has three divisions, the separate scenes of
which illustrate the life of the prairies, the plantations, and the
swamps of Louisiana. In each the local color is true and effective,
the scenes and incidents being in many instances studies which
the author made while visiting the regions as an official of the
government.

This little story, in which the Acadian was introduced into literature
for the first time since the publication of Longfellow's _Evangeline_,
shows Mr. Cable at his best as a story-teller pure and simple. One of
his most successful books, it is also one in which he has incorporated
most conspicuously his own large faith in the possibility for good
which lies in every human soul.

During the production of these three novels Mr. Cable had also been
busy at other literary work. Much of this has been devoted to a
study of Louisiana and New Orleans from a historical point of view.
Searching among old records and historical documents, newspapers,
and Government reports, he sifted out the material for a series of
brilliant articles, since published in book form under the title, _The
Creoles of Louisiana_. Here he pictured the growth and life of the old
colony, in poetic yet truthful words, which made the record read like
romance, although it was genuine history. Other historical articles,
as _New Orleans Before the Capture_, and some Encyclopdia articles,
further illustrate the author's power for picturesque effect in
dealing with facts, while his _Strange True Stories of Louisiana_,
edited from original documents, show how well his art can make truth
reveal itself in all the fascinating colors of romance. _Madame
Delphine_, another story of creole life; and _John March, Southerner_,
a story of the time immediately following the Civil War, and the
scene of which is laid partly in the South and partly in the North,
completes the list of Mr. Cable's novels.

His work, which first revealed the possibilities for literature that
lay in the old-time Southern life, created a new field in American
fiction. Not only are his stories valuable reminiscences of other
days, but they are full of an uplifting faith in man and in the power
of goodness to adjust the many evils that deface human institutions.

Outside of his other literary work, Mr. Cable has been an aggressive
worker in the field of practical politics, writing many essays upon
the questions which affect the state and municipal government of the
Southern States. He is also well known as a lecturer and critic
upon literary art, and in recent years he has become one of the most
popular platform readers, commanding large audiences wherever he
appeared.

His home has been for many years at Northampton, Mass., from which
place as a centre he directs many interests outside his own life.
Among these may be included a number of Home Culture Clubs, which
bring him into touch with thousands to whom his help and advice are an
inspiration.




CHAPTER XV

JOHN FISKE

1842-


In history and philosophy the work of the past generation of American
writers has been supplemented by that of John Fiske, an original
thinker whose writings reveal much of the vital significance of
scientific thought.

John Fiske was born at Middletown, Conn., where he lived during
boyhood. His grandfather's home, in which he was bred, was a typical
New England household, and he was carefully trained in all the
precepts of good conduct. One of his first memories dates from the
time when he listened gravely to the discussions that were frequent in
the home on religion, politics, and morals. From these conversations
it was, perhaps, that he very early pondered over questions of right
and wrong, and settled the prestige of all the kings and queens of
the world--which he had learned in chronological order--by classifying
them as "good" or "bad." When moral questions became too hard for him
to decide he would refer them to some older head, being firm in the
conviction that grown people knew everything. Thus he once astonished
the cook by asking her if Heliogabalus was good or bad, and he not
infrequently puzzled other people by his persistent effort after
information.

Fiske cannot remember when he learned to read, but he was studying
Latin at six, and at seven was reading Csar. Goldsmith's _History of
Greece_, and the _History of the Jews_, by Josephus, were read before
he was nine years old, with the whole of Shakespeare, some parts of
_Paradise Lost_, and Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_, the last a special
delight because here were argued those questions of right and wrong
which always fascinated him.

Notwithstanding this serious bent of his mind Fiske had a healthy
boy's love of play and out-of-door life. And in this New England home
he had also certain duties which he performed faithfully. Apart from
his love of reading, and his faculty for asking startling questions,
he seemed on the outside an ordinary boy. Yet from his earliest years
he was a thinker. Just as Emerson in his boyhood pondered over the
meaning and uses of life, so Fiske puzzled over moral questions and
the duty of man to the race.

Side by side with this seriousness lay his inexhaustible thirst for
knowledge. To satisfy this he read and re-read every book that he
could lay hold of. History especially delighted him. By the time he
was eleven he knew his Froissart as only such a boy could. In the
lively company of that goodly poet he visited the court of Edward III.
and saw the tournaments and pageants, the knightly deeds and historic
spectacles of the age of chivalry. Feudal castles, royal hunts, the
clang of armor, and the shouts of battle filled eye and ear while
he wandered through those fascinating pages, though outside the snow
might be lying on quiet New England fields, or the sun shining on
scenes so commonplace that they seemed part of another world.

With equal delight he followed Gibbon through his story of the fall of
Rome, once the mistress of the world, and whose armies and law-makers
had moulded the modern nations out of the savages who lived on the
banks of the Seine, the Rhone, and the Thames.

The works of Robertson and Prescott were also a never-ending source
of pleasure. Some idea of the extent of his general reading may be
gathered from the fact that at this time he compiled from memory a
chronological table extending from the age of Homer to the year 1820,
and filling sixty pages of a large blank-book.

Two years later he studied men from Horace and Sallust, Cicero and
Juvenal, and other Latin writers, and as he had been studying Greek
for four years he began a course of the Greek philosophers, poets, and
historians.

In the meantime there came a desire to write. By the time he was
fourteen this had formulated itself into the intention to write a
work on the philosophy of history. This idea did not seem in the least
unusual, to him, and he was puzzled to find that the minister, to whom
he confided his plan, did not sympathize with him as enthusiastically
as he had expected. Soon after this Fiske began a course of scientific
study, taking up geology, zology, botany, and kindred subjects. By
the time he was ready to enter Harvard he had also taken a course in
mathematics, had studied navigation and surveying, was reading French,
Italian, and Portuguese, and keeping his diary in Spanish.

Few young men could boast of such a mental equipment as Fiske's
when he entered Harvard in his nineteenth year. But great as was the
knowledge he had absorbed from books, the development of his mind had
been still greater. Although in the main unconscious of it, he had
become a profound thinker; while engaged in tracing the world's
intellectual progress through ancient and modern times he had gathered
the self-poise, and command of material which made him, later, one of
the intellectual forces of his generation.

While at Harvard Fiske took a two-years' law course, intending to
practise for a living; but he had been moulding his life on other
lines, and he found it impossible to ignore this fact. Every detail of
a lawyer's business was distasteful to him, and after a short trial
he gave up his office and turned to the literary life. He had already
become known as a writer for reviews and other periodicals, and
although his friends thought it unwise for him to place dependence
upon literature, his success soon proved that his choice had been a
wise one.

In nearly every case Fiske's books have been the outgrowth of lectures
delivered in colleges and other educational institutions, or in
public halls. His work has been on two distinct lines, history and
philosophy; in the first he now stands as an acknowledged authority;
in the second he is known as a brilliant expositor of Spencer and
Darwin, and as a thinker who has himself made a distinct contribution
to the theory of evolution.

In one of his early books, _Myths and Myth Makers_, Fiske relaxed
somewhat from his severer studies to trace in some charming chapters
the history of various popular superstitions and legends. While the
book shows the hand of the scholar, it also shows the light fancy
which he could bring to play upon his subject; the gift of the
story-teller is apparent here, as many of the fairy stories which
charm children to-day are traced back to an origin older than the
first records of written history. In pleasant fashion we are here
taught that many popular heroes who have figured in the folk-lore of
England, France, Germany, and other countries, were, after all, but
wandering free lances, whose real home was far away in Asia, in those
fertile table-lands where man first learned to till the soil and raise
herds. When that old Aryan race, the mother of the greater part of the
world to-day, began to migrate it carried along with it those heroes.
Since that time they have been veritable gypsies, taking up their
abode here, there, and everywhere, but keeping always close to their
blood relations, so that whoever hears the story of their adventures
knows that the writer is of the old mother-race, and that he is but
retelling the tales that his kindred have listened to for thousands of
years.

Fiske's most important historical work is his _Discovery of America_.
In the intervals of other work he was for a period of thirty years
going over the ground necessary to the accomplishment of this great
task.

Beginning with Ancient America, he traced the history and achievements
of the tribes which existed ages ago on the American Continent, and
whose ruined temples, fortifications, and dwellings were a marvel to
the European discoverers. The author's wide knowledge of universal
history and of prehistoric times enabled him to illuminate his work
with many pictures of wonderful interest. Thus in describing the
Eskimo, probably the first white race of America, he brings in also
the story of the cave-dwellers of Europe, from whom the Eskimo are
supposed to be descended. In doing this he presents a vivid picture
of those curious people who lived in caves above the shores of inland
lakes, who hunted the mammoth and mastodon, and left behind them many
carefully drawn sketches of their warriors and hunters.

These chapters are followed by others of equal interest, in which we
trace the story of the ancient Mexicans and Peruvians, of the Pueblo
Indians, and the tribes of the plains; then we have accounts of the
old stories which claim that the Chinese were the first discoverers of
America, these being followed by the tales of the Irish adventurers,
and of the vikings. There is also a summary of the fanciful stories
which floated over Europe long before the days of Columbus, in which
philosophers, travellers, poets, and witches alike prophesied the
existence of another continent far beyond the confines of the Western
Sea. We have also a description of the state of Europe during this
time when men were searching for Cathay and its inexhaustible mines of
wealth, or carrying on the Crusades, or searching for the Indies over
new routes, on which they supposed--if the world were round--they
would have to sail uphill and down-hill to reach the other side.

With the same fertility of resource the story is carried down through
the voyages of Columbus and the other explorers, the conquest of Peru
and Mexico, and the colonization of the New World and its subsequent
history until 1806, when Lewis and Clarke crossed the Rocky Mountains
by following Indian trails, to survey the new territory just bought
from France by the Government of the United States. This work, which
is in reality a summary of the world's progress in scientific thought,
shows the author's conception of the sphere of historical writing.
There is a mastery of detail which makes it an invaluable guide for
the student, and a philosophical breadth that is equally instructive
to those who like to trace the events of history to their moral
sources.

Another valuable work is the _Beginnings of New England_, which
was elaborated from a course of lectures delivered at Washington
University, St. Louis. This book has a peculiar interest for American
literature, as it contains a history of the growth of the idea
of popular government from the earliest times to the verge of the
American Revolution. Comparing the rule of the ancient world with that
of the modern, the author shows how the idea of popular government
first arose, how it took root in the Anglo-Saxon race, formed the
charter of English liberty, and finally was embodied in distinct form
in the English colonies of the New World. The story of the Puritan
settlement of New England, of the warfare with the Indians, the
founding of Harvard College, and the growth of civil institutions,
is followed by a recital of the troubles with the mother country, the
tyranny of Andros and his overthrow as the last royal governor. This
work, dominated by Fiske's masterly style, forms a preface to the
_American Revolution_, a brilliant and learned history of the causes
that led to the revolt, and in a series of luminous pictures takes us
successively through the scenes of the French Alliance, Valley Forge,
the war on the frontier and ocean, the treason of Arnold, and the
final victory at Yorktown. Some of the finest examples of the author's
work as a literary artist are found in this book. He shows here,
too, that genius for characterization which marks the true historian.
Nowhere in historical composition are shown more striking descriptive
powers than where he draws the comparison between the character of
Benedict Arnold and the common soldier of the Revolution, who held the
honor of his country sacred, and who counted personal loss as nothing
in the accomplishment of a holy trust.

_The Critical Period of American History_ follows naturally, taking
up the period from the end of the Revolution to the inauguration of
Washington. The Revolution had left the colonies free from British
rule, but there was still no bond of union between them. Each State
was independent of every other, and it seemed for a time that
although they had fought side by side for freedom, jealousies and
misunderstandings would now keep them far apart. The wisest men of
the age saw the need of a general government to which all should be
equally bound, and for many years their efforts were directed toward
this end. Fiske relates the story of this critical period, during
which it seemed sometimes that the States were drifting toward
anarchy, so impossible was it for them to decide upon a concerted
plan of action. Finally, however, after a succession of leagues,
conventions, and federations, the States, one by one, accepted the
Constitution as it was laid before the Legislature of Pennsylvania
by Franklin, and the United States took their place as a nation.
This work is one of the most important contributions ever made to the
history of the United States, and, like the author's other work, it
is dignified in diction, lucid in style, and abounds with a wealth of
material that makes it serve as a text-book for the student as well as
a volume for the general reader.

In _American Political Ideas_ Fiske traces the growth of American
political life from the primitive town-meeting of the early settlers
to the rise of great civil institutions. The book has a particular
interest as showing how the Anglo-Saxon race through all its
wanderings has still kept to its early traditions.

Apart from his historical work the genius of Fiske has found its best
expression in his philosophical writings. His _Cosmic Philosophy_,
the earliest of his philosophical works, embodied the discoveries of
Darwin and the other great evolutionists. In this as in all his works
Fiske has consistently persevered in preaching the doctrine that moral
ideas underlie all great scientific discoveries, and that evolution
is the means used to develop the race spiritually. In his _Destiny of
Man_ and _The Idea of God_, this idea is illustrated by arguments so
forcible, and by so clear an insight, as to give the author high rank
as a teacher of spiritual truths.




CHAPTER XVI

MARK TWAIN (SAMUEL L. CLEMENS)

1835-


Among the writers who have added greatly to American literature by
transcribing the humor that lies in the American nature, the one who
has won distinction under the pen name of Mark Twain perhaps ranks
first.

Samuel L. Clemens was born in Florida, Mo., in 1835, but while very
young his family removed to Hannibal, on the banks of the Mississippi,
where his childhood was spent. The Hannibal of that day was a typical
river town of the West, whose existence depended upon the traffic
brought to it by the passage of the steamboats up and down the
Mississippi. This river was then the great highway between the States
of the Middle West and New Orleans, the dept to which was taken much
of the produce from the farms and plantations along its banks. All the
towns and villages along the Mississippi, from New Orleans upward
for hundreds of miles, depended largely upon the river for means of
communication with the rest of the world; the flat-boats, keel-boats,
rafts, and steamers that passed in endless succession up and down
were, as a rule, manned by men from the river towns, and it was the
height of every boy's ambition to be a steamboat captain, or failing
that, a pilot, deck-hand, or even cabin-boy.

In his book _Life on the Mississippi_ Mark Twain has given us a sketch
of the typical boy of his early days, who only knew real happiness
during the short time occupied by the lading and unlading of the
freight from the two steamboats that passed daily by Hannibal. He says
that the town was really awake only during these two intervals, and
that after the last boat had steamed away again, Hannibal went to
sleep and slept until time for the appearance of the next day's boat.

Like the other boys of the village, Samuel Clemens desired above all
other things to be a pilot on one of the steamers that plied between
St. Louis and New Orleans. But as his family objected to this
occupation for him he was apprenticed, at the age of thirteen, to a
printer; after learning his trade he visited various cities and worked
at the printer's case in St. Louis, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, New
York, and many smaller towns. But dissatisfied with this life he
finally returned West and fulfilled the ambition of his boyhood by
becoming a pilot on the Mississippi.

_Life on the Mississippi_ is full of the detail that characterized
the lives of the boatmen of that day, and it contains, besides, many
picturesque illustrations of a phase of American society that was
confined to that period and place alone.

It is therefore a genuine bit of local history from the pen of a
native historian, and it has its own place in any study of American
social life. Not the least amusing and interesting of these sketches
is the one describing what a river pilot had to learn in the days of
Mr. Clemens's youth.

The boys of Hannibal had supposed that the least intelligent of them
could readily learn to be a pilot in a few hours--it seemed so easy
just to steer in and out of the docks, to keep clear of other boats,
and to guide up or down mid-stream. But the youthful adventurer who
actually stood beside the pilot at the wheel, taking his first lesson
in river navigation, found that learning to steer was not so easy.

Mark Twain says that the pilot on his boat was expected to know every
bend and point on the Mississippi River for fifteen hundred miles and
how they looked in daylight, at dusk, and at night; how their shapes
might change as the river twisted and turned; how they looked when the
shadows hung around them on moonlit nights; how to tell them from the
shadows themselves, and how to feel their presence when the blackness
was so great that no man could see anything a yard ahead. The pilot
was also supposed to know the depth and width of the river at every
point; to be acquainted with every rock, snag, and bar, island, and
reach; to know every plantation between St. Louis and New Orleans,
and thus be able to land any travelling planter at his own door. But
intricate as this knowledge seemed, Mark Twain was able at last to
master it, and he became one of the best pilots on the river. He was
able also to store his mind full of pictures of river life, and when
he reproduced them many years afterward in _Life on the Mississippi_,
the reader was able to see again the busy life of those long past
days. Incorporated into the pilot's story are also many interesting
accounts of incidents and persons in some way identified with the
region. The visit of Charles Dickens and of Mrs. Trollope, an account
of the Mardi Gras, some old Indian legends, and a visit to Mr. Cable,
who had just published _The Grandissimes_, brings the narrative down
to the present day and summarizes the development of that part of the
West and South.

In his twenty-sixth year Mark Twain ceased to be a pilot, and for the
next few years became a wanderer, visiting Nevada, California, and
other Western States, the Sandwich Islands, and finally New York,
where he published his first book under the name that has won him
fame, and which was taken from the old river measurement, "Mark
twain." The principal story of this first book, _The Jumping Frog and
Other Stories_, had previously appeared in a newspaper, and with the
other sketches had won for the author some reputation. He had during
his travels been clerk, newspaper reporter, editor, and lecturer,
being sometimes successful and often unsuccessful. Now, with a desire
to see more of life he sailed for Europe. Two years later appeared an
account of his European journey in the book entitled _The Innocents
Abroad_. It was this book which in a few months made the author famous
wherever the English language was spoken. Professedly a book of travel
it was in reality a burlesque on books of travel. From first to last
the pages were full of comical descriptions of all that travellers had
hitherto revered. Historical cities, palaces, museums, works of art,
even the very rivers and mountains that had helped to make history
were by this irreverent scribe made to take on lights and colors so
humorous that it seemed as if the author had discovered a new Europe.
_The Innocents Abroad_ experienced a success accorded to few books. It
had an immense sale, and so universal was the appreciation of it that
even the mention of the author's name would evoke a smile. In his next
two books, _Roughing It_ and _The Gilded Age_, Mr. Clemens portrayed
American life on the plains, and as represented by the character of
Colonel Sellers, one of those impractical enthusiasts whose schemes
for making money without work forms the background for a character
sketch so vivid that, thrown into dramatic form, it has proved one of
the most successful of modern plays of its class.

But Mark Twain's love of humor and his indescribable faculty for
seeing the funny side of everything are closely balanced by his power
as a student of human nature and by his genius for the pathetic. His
first works belonged strictly to the domain of humorous literature,
but his later work has shown the serious side of his nature and his
attainment both as a student of books and of men. A striking example
of this is found in some of his juvenile works where are strongly seen
the tender sympathy of the man with all the impractical and romantic
schemes of boyhood, and the fine vision which sees in the ambition of
the child the impulse that often leads to noble manhood.

In one of these juveniles, _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_, the
author has taken for his hero a typical boy who belonged to Hannibal
as it was in Mr. Clemens's youth. This boy is made to do all the
things that the young Samuel Clemens and his friends wanted to do and
could not. He runs away from home, lives on the Mississippi for days
on a raft, and has all the adventures that were dreamed of by the boys
whose horizon was bounded by the great river that was at once their
pride and their despair. _Huckleberry Finn_, outside its romance, is
also a careful study of types that abounded in the West. Negro dialect
and backwoods speech, the manners of the river boatmen and the customs
of the lower class of Missouri landsmen, are all woven into the
story with the nicest art and serve to make it a delineation of high
artistic value.

In another book, _Tom Sawyer_, Huckleberry Finn appears as the friend
of the hero, and hand in hand these two boys walk through the pages of
an ideal boys' book, one in which pluck, manliness, and heroism form
the motive for the action, at once simple, natural, and sincere. These
two books, with _Life on the Mississippi_, are studies that American
literature is much the richer for. They are distinct from other
sketches of social life in dealing with a class that had hitherto been
unchronicled, and they place the author among the valued contributors
to the history of American social customs.

A book that departs entirely from this view of life is _The Prince and
the Pauper_, a study of life in the days of the young King Edward VI.
of England. In this book Mr. Clemens takes for his theme a subject
which he says may be history, or only legend or tradition, and adds
that the events chronicled may have happened or may not have happened,
but at any rate they could have happened. Thereupon he spins a pretty
story about Edward VI. and the little pauper, Tom Canty, who by the
simple expedient of exchanging clothes with each other set the whole
kingdom by the ears and nearly lost Edward his crown.

Many pictures out of English history are woven into this story in
a way that shows the careful research of the student. London in the
early part of the sixteenth century, with its palaces and wretched
beggars' hovels, with its famous Tower full of prisoners of noble
birth, and its military parades and street fights between apprentices
and serving-men, passes before the eye like a panorama, while the
picture of the little king, who, clothed in rags and mistaken for a
beggar, still demands homage from everyone, is startlingly true to the
age when royalty was considered a divine right and the king's person
a sacred thing. The story, which takes the unhappy Edward over many
rough ways and in much strange company, in which he travels with
beggars, thieves, and outcasts, is full of many pathetic incidents
which illustrate the society of the day. A few brief descriptions here
and there show the author at his best as a lover of his kind and the
possessor of broad and noble sympathies.

Another book of which old English scenes form the inspiration is _A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court_. Here the author takes for
his hero a typical Connecticut Yankee of the nineteenth century,
and transports him back to the days of the Round Table. The hero's
adventures with King Arthur and Lancelot, his contempt for the usages
of chivalry, and his disgust at the ignorance of the knights of the
Round Table, are amusingly detailed by the hero himself, who by his
knowledge of modern science outdoes the magic of Merlin, introduces
telephones and bicycles into the country, starts factories, schools,
and polytechnic institutions, and is only kept from making a modern
nation of ancient Britain by the discovery that the people themselves
do not want these changes, that they are content with their own
ignorance and Merlin's magic, and that progress, as known to
Yankeeland, is a thing they will have nothing of.

_Pudd'n-Head Wilson_ is another story of American life strong in
conception and vigorous in handling. In some ways this book shows Mark
Twain at his highest point, as the keen observer and critic who can
read the emotions of the soul and out of the study build up one of
those characters in whose delineation modern fiction is so successful.
_Tom Sawyer_, the boy, and _Pudd'n-Head Wilson_, the man, alike belong
to the American novels that will live. In these, as in all his later
work, though the humor is always present it is the graver side of life
that claims attention and shows the author as the careful student of
character.

Mark Twain's latest book, _The Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc_,
is a beautiful chronicle of the brave maid of Orleans whose story has
touched the world for hundreds of years. Mr. Clemens spent a year
in Paris getting material for this work; he became a frequenter of
libraries and a student of old records and memoirs, pursuing his study
with all the zeal of the historian. His industry was rewarded by the
production of a beautiful historical romance, in which the character
of Joan shines fair and true amid the actual surroundings that girt
her short life. Nowhere in his work is more apparent his reverence for
womanhood and his appreciation of fine character than in this tender
portrait of the young girl whose tragic fate he made his theme.

Mr. Clemens's home is in Hartford, Conn., where he has lived for
many years. Outside his literary career he is known as a lecturer
of singular success, and within and far beyond the home circle he is
cherished for those fine graces of character and that sympathetically
affectionate nature which have won him innumerable friends.




[End of _Children's Stories in American Literature 1861-1896_
by Henrietta Christian Wright]
