I want to give Virginia a perfect system of county roads, so that one may get off at a station and go to the nearest country-house without breaking his neck, and it would take five hundred millions to do that.

It may be, as the doctor laments, that "The old Virginia gentleman, All of the olden time," has passed away, the colonial house is modernized, and the ghost, the killing of whom would be "an enormity far greater than the crime of killing a live man," has been laid to rest for half a century, but the old scenes and the old-time life come back to us who once knew it, in the pages of the perennial boy who recalls the time when "me and Billy Ivins and the other fellows set forth with six pine poles and a cymling full of the best and biggest fishing worms," to fish in the Appomattox where it "curves around the foot of Uncle Jim's plantation," and where there is a patriarchal beech with a tangle of roots whereon the Randolphs of historic note were wont to repose in the days long gone. This fishing party is under the fair October skies when "the morn, like an Eastern queen, is sumptuously clad in blue and gold; the sheen of her robes in dazzling sunlight, and she comes from her tent of glistening, silken, celestial warp, beaming with tender smiles." "It is a day of days for flatback, provided the moon is right." But "Billy Ivins swears that the planetary bodies have nothing to do with fish—it's all confounded superstition." So they cast in their hooks, "Sutherland's best," and talk about Harper's Ferry and "old Brown" until one of the party "thinks he has a nibble" and begs for silence, which at once supervenes out of respect for the momentous interests hanging in the balance. When the excitement is over the frivolous Bagby takes advantage of the relief from suspense to make an exasperating pun, after the manner of a newspaper man, and "Billy Ivins swears he will kill him for a fool."

Oh, there were great old times on the Appomattox in the olden days, before its waves had turned battle-red and flashed that savage tint along the river-bank for all coming time.



A part of the conversation shows us that this fishing expedition took place in the autumn of 1859, not a year before Dr. Bagby was called to the post of editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, taking the place of the poet, John R. Thompson, who was sent to England to lead the forlorn hope of a magazine to represent the Southern cause in London. A banquet was given at Zetelle's restaurant as a farewell to Mr. Thompson and welcome to Dr. Bagby.

The office of the Messenger was in the Law Building, a four-storied structure erected in 1846 on the southeast corner of Capitol Square, fronting on Franklin Street. Here he was hard at work, making the Messenger worthy of its former editors, his predecessor, Mr. Thompson, Mr. White, of early days, Edgar A. Poe, and a succession of brilliant writers, only less widely known, when the guns before Sumter tempted the new editor to the field, a position for which he was ill fitted as to physical strength, whatever might be the force of his patriotism. He was soon running risks of pneumonia from the effects of over-drilling and the chilling breezes from Bull Run Mountain, and making up his mind "not to desert, but to get killed at the first opportunity," that being the most direct route he could think of to the two prime essentials of life, a clean shirt and solitude. He neither deserted nor was killed, but was detailed to write letters and papers for one of the officers, and slept through the fight of the 18th at Manassas as a result of playing night orderly from midnight to morning.

Under the cloudless sky of the perfect Sunday, the twenty-first, he watched the progress of the battle till the cheer that rang from end to end of the Confederate line told him that the South had won. After midnight that night he carried to the telegraph office the message in which President Davis announced the victory and, walking back through the clear, still night, saw the comet, forerunner of evil, hanging over the field, as if in recognition of a fiery spirit on earth akin to its own. At headquarters on Monday, the 22d, he looked out at the pouring rain and raged over the inaction which kept the victorious army idle on the field of victory instead of following up the advantage by a march into the enemy's Capital, a movement which he thought could have been carried through to complete success.

Having watched over his wounded friend, Lieutenant James K. Lee, until death came with eternal peace. Dr. Bagby was sent with the dead soldier to Richmond and soon afterward was discharged because of ill health, "and thus ended the record of an unrenowned warrior."

He returned to his work on the Messenger and the editorial sanctum became the meeting place of the wits of Richmond. It was here that the celebrated Confederate version of "Mother Goose" was evolved from the conjoined wisdom of the circle and written with the stub of the editorial pencil on the "cartridge-paper table-cloth," one stanza dealing with a certain Northern general thus:

Little Be-Pope came on with a lope, Jackson, the Rebel, to find him; He found him at last, then ran very fast, With his gallant invaders behind him.

The various authors were astonished to find their productions in the next issue of the Messenger and were later dismayed when the verses were read at a meeting of the Mosaic Club, each with the name of the writer attached.

While editor of the Messenger, Dr. Bagby wrote occasionally for the Richmond Examiner, thereby becoming associated in a friendly way with its editor, John M. Daniel, whose brilliant and continuous fight upon the administration at Richmond kept him vividly before the public. Though the genial doctor deplored the aggressiveness of the Examiner, he could not resist the temptation to employ his trenchant pen in treating of public affairs. This led to his possession of the famous latchkey which "fitted the door of the house on Broad Street, opposite the African Church," a key of which he wrote that it "has its charm," and certainly one which he made more enchanting to his readers than any other such article has ever proved.

These two men, so different in view-point and expression, so similar in principle and purpose, met in Washington in 1861 at Brown's Hotel, that famous old hostelry dear to the Southern heart in the years before the tide of war swept the old Washington away forever and brought a new South to take the place of the old plantation life. Congenial as they were in many ways, the possession of the latchkey, Dr. Bagby tells us, did not argue an intimate personal relation, as the fancy of the brilliant editor of the Examiner was apparently changeable, and wavered when he discovered that his assistant neither played chess nor talked sufficiently to inspire him to conversational excellence. But the key opened to the younger man, whenever he so willed, the pleasant three-storied brick house on Broad Street where the valiant editor kept bachelor's hall in a manner that would suggest the superfluity of complicating the situation with a wife and family.

That latchkey gave to its holder entrance to the first floor front room parlor where hung two fine paintings, the special treasures of the fastidious owner, and if he could not play chess upon the handsome mosaic chess-table he could at least enjoy its artistic beauty. The dining-room contained a set of solid antique-patterned tables to which Mr. Daniel was wont to refer as the former property of "old Memminger," that is, Secretary Memminger of the Confederate Treasury, who had sold his household effects on leaving his home on Church Hill. Over the mantel in the bachelor's chamber hung a miniature on ivory, "the most beautiful I have ever seen," said the doctor, an unknown beauty whose charms mystified as well as enchanted the observer; a wondrously accomplished lady of title and wealth whom Mr. Daniel had known abroad. The visitor must have viewed with some degree of curiosity the effective arrangement of mirrors in the dressing-room, whereby the owner of the mansion surveyed himself front, rear, head and foot, as he made his toilet, perhaps reflecting humorously upon the dismay of his manager, Mr. Walker, upon being advised as to the necessity of wearing a white vest to a party: "But, Mr. Daniel, suppose a man hasn't got a white vest and is too poor these war times to buy one?" "—— it, sir! let him stay at home," was the decisive answer.

On a second floor passage was an object which must have excited more envy than the magnificent mirrors and solid old furniture were capable of arousing—a bag of Java coffee, and coffee thirty dollars a pound—the latter fact not deterring the luxurious owner of this stately abode from imbuing his pet terriers with the coffee-drinking habit. A little room cut off from a passage in the third story was a library of old and rare editions of the classics. A back room, sunlit and warm, gave a view of James River, the Henrico Hills, and the spacious dells and forests of Chesterfield. To the mind of Dr. Bagby all these things were represented by "John M. Daniel's Latchkey" and, for all the charm of "Home, Sweet Home," is it not better to have the privileges without the responsibilities of a latchkey?

Next to the editorial office of the Messenger that of the Daily Examiner was the place with which Dr. Bagby was, perhaps, best acquainted in Richmond. There, with the fiery editor, he spent his evenings in reading proof, comforted by a mild cigar and protected by a Derringer which Mr. Daniel would put on the table when he first arrived, a not unnecessary precaution, for if there was one place more dangerous than another in the Richmond of war days it was almost any point in the near vicinity of the belligerent editor of the Examiner.

Dr. Bagby was married to Miss Parke Chamberlayne of Richmond, and we may be sure that she was the model from which he drew his charming study of "the Virginia lady of the best type," who accompanies "The Old Virginia Gentleman" in his pages.

After the close of the war Dr. Bagby attained high distinction as a lecturer on Southern topics and later served his State as assistant secretary. But in all that he did there was with him the lost dream of the nation he had served so well through the dark and stormy years of strife, and in August, 1883, he passed beyond into the land where earth's broken hearts are renewed to youth.

It was written of him: "There is no man left in Virginia fit to lift the lid of his inkstand."



"WOMAN AND POET"

MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON

"Whoever has the good fortune to follow its trails and shimmering waters is already half a poet," wrote Professor Harris of the road that leads down from the verdant hills of the Alleghanies over picturesque gorge and crag and fissure into the quiet of the valley and brings us by exquisite stages to the beautiful town of Lexington, Virginia. Making that journey in taking my boy, fourteen years old, to the Virginia Military Institute, I entered at once two charming regions—Lexington with its romantic environment, and the heart of Margaret Junkin Preston.

When I spoke of the beautiful scenery Mrs. Preston asked me if I had read Professor Maury's description of it. I replied that I had not. "I am glad," she said, "because now that you have seen our Nature-pictures you will enjoy the description so much more."

Though the name and work of Margaret Preston had long been shrined in the hearts of a host of known friends and endeared to many unknown readers whose lives had been cheered by the buoyant hopefulness expressed in her writings, she was very modest in regard to her productions, yet held it a duty to continue writing for others the thoughts which had helped her. When we were at supper in the home of Professor Lyle, who was gifted with an unusually poetic mind, he repeated passages from favorite authors. On being asked if he did not sometimes write poetry, he replied that he had often written rhymes and loved to do it, but when he would afterward read Virgil and Shakespeare and Tennyson he would tear up his own verses, feeling that he ought not to make the effort.

"Then," replied Mrs. Preston, "the gardener should not plant the seeds that bring forth the little forget-me-nots and snowdrops. He should plant only the great multiflora roses and the Lady Bankshires and magnolias."

Mrs. Preston spent much of her time in knitting because the weakness of her eyes made reading and writing difficult. "Are you never tired of knitting?" I asked. She replied that it did not tire her, and told me that Mrs. Lee said she loved to knit because she did not have to put her mind on the work. She could think and talk as well when she was knitting for the reason that she did not have to keep her eyes nor her attention upon what she was doing. She knew perfectly well when she came to a seam. In a letter from a soldier to Mrs. Lee he thanked her for the socks she had sent him, and wrote; "I have fourteen pairs of socks knitted by my mother and my mother's sisters and the Church Sewing Society, and I have not a shirt to my back nor a pair of trousers to my legs nor a whole pair of shoes to my feet." "But," said Mrs. Lee as she concluded the story, "I continued to knit socks just the same."

The first open-end thimble I ever saw was one Mrs. Preston used when I was with her at the Springs. I remarked upon it and she said that when she used a thimble she always had that kind. "I feel about a thimble as I do about mitts, which I always wear instead of gloves, because I like to see my fingers come through. So I like to see my finger come through my thimble. It is a tailor's thimble. Tailors always use that kind. I do not know whether they like to see their fingers come through or not." I had heard it said that it takes nine tailors to make a man and now I reflected that it would take eighteen tailors to make a thimble. Upon presenting this mathematical problem to Mrs. Preston she told me about the origin of the old saying:

"It was not that kind of tailor at first. In old England the custom was to announce a death by tolling a bell. After the bell had ceased tolling, a number of strokes, called 'tailers,' indicated whether the death was of a child, a woman or a man; three for a child, nine for a man. People counting would say, 'Nine tailers, that's a man,' which in time became colloquially 'Nine tailers make a man.' When the custom became obsolete the saying remained, its application was forgotten, o was substituted for e and it was used in derogation of a most worthy and necessary member of the body politic."

Margaret Preston was very small, in explanation of which fact she told me there was a story that she had been tossed on the horns of a cow. There was Scotch blood in the Junkin family and with it had descended the superstition that this experience dwarfs a child's growth. When she sat upon an ordinary chair her little feet did not touch the floor. She had a way of smoothing the front of her dress with her hands as she talked.

Knowing her as she was then and remembering her devotion to the South and the sacrifices she had made for her home through the dark years, one might have thought that she was a native daughter of Virginia. In the village of Milton, Pennsylvania, where her father, Reverend George Junkin, was pastor of the Associate Reformed Church, Margaret Junkin was born on the 19th of May, 1820, in a small, plain, rented house, a centre of love and harmony, with simple surroundings, for the family finances did not purchase household luxuries, but were largely expended in assisting those less fortunately placed.

In this little home, where rigid economy was practised and high aspirations reigned, our future poet entered upon the severe intellectual training which caused her at twenty-one, when the door of scholastic learning was closed upon her by the partial failure of her sight, to be called a scholar, though she sorrowfully resented the title, asking, "How can you speak of one as a scholar whose studies were cut short at twenty-one?"

She received her first instruction from her mother, passing then under the tutorship of her father, who fed his own ambition by gratifying her scholarly tastes, teaching her the Greek alphabet when she was six years old and continuing her training in collegiate subjects until she was forced by failing sight to give up her reading.

When she was ten the family removed to Germantown, where her father had charge of the Manual Labor School, and Margaret enjoyed the advantages at that time afforded by the city of Philadelphia, gathering bright memories which irradiated her somewhat sombre life then and lightened her coming years.

In Lafayette, a new college in Easton, Pennsylvania, Dr. Junkin soon found opportunity to carry on his system of training for practical and religious life and here Margaret spent sixteen happy and busy years—happy but for the gray veil that fell between her and her loved studies before those years had passed. She was obliged to prepare her Greek lessons at night, and the only time her father had for hearing her recitations was in the early morning before breakfast, which in that household meant in the dim candlelight of the period; not a wholesome time for perusing Greek text. For Margaret Junkin it meant seven years of physical pain, a part of the time in a darkened room, and the lifelong regret of unavailing aspirations. It was in Easton that she began to write in any serious and purposeful fashion, the result of her semi-blindness, as, but for that, she would have devoted her life to painting, for which she had decided talent. In the beautiful environment of Easton the young soul had found the poetic glow that tinged its early dawn. Hills crowned with a wealth of forests, fields offering hospitality to the world, glimmering of the Delaware waters rippling silverly along their happy way, auroral dawns and glorious sunsets, all inspired the youthful poet's imagination to melodious effort. Of Margaret as she was in the Easton days in 1836, a Lafayette freshman thus writes:

A taste for literary pursuits soon drew us together and a warm friendship sprang up, which continued unbroken to the day of her death. Her remarkable poetic talent had even then won the admiration of her associates, and to have been admitted into the charmed circle of which she was the center, where literature and literary work were discussed, admired and appreciated, I have ever counted a high privilege.

Her next home, in Oxford, Ohio, where Dr. Junkin had been elected to the presidency of Miami University, was not a dream of delight to the poetic soul of the young girl, for Scotch Calvinism, perhaps more rigid than the Calvinism of Calvin himself, which did not admit of fitting square dogmatic nails into round theological holes, insured a succession of oft-recurrent tempests for the family, as well as for the good doctor. The one letter which remains from the correspondence of Margaret Junkin at that time, though indicating a buoyant nature on the part of the writer, gives a sad view of financial difficulties, her mother's fragility, uncongenial climate, and the persecution directed against her father. Some of these misfortunes were obviated by a return to Easton, Dr. Junkin having been recalled to the presidency of Lafayette College, from which he had withdrawn a few years before because of a disagreement with the trustees on a question of government.

Not long afterward the failing health of Margaret's young brother Joseph led Dr. Junkin to accept the presidency of Washington College, Lexington, Virginia, in the hope that change of climate might bring health to the invalid. Thus in the fall of 1848 the step was taken which made Margaret Junkin one of our Southern poets, devoted to her adopted State and a loved and honored daughter thereof.

On the arrival in Lexington a younger member of the family wrote:

My first memory of Lexington is of arriving, at midnight, in a December snowstorm, after a twelve hours' ride from Staunton in an old stage coach. This was before there was a turnpike or plank road, and the ups and downs we had that night made an impression on our bodies as well as our minds.

A later memory gives us a pretty glimpse of daily life as it went on in that charming little Virginia town:

From the time we went to Lexington we all used to take delightful, long rambles, rather to the surprise of Lexington people, who were not quite so energetic. We found the earliest spring flowers on the "Cliffs," and "Cave Spring" was a favorite spot to walk to (several miles from town) stopping always for a rest at the picturesque ruins of old "Liberty Hall."

"Liberty Hall" was the name of an old school building outside of Lexington.

Writing reproachfully to a friend for not coming to visit her, Margaret tells of the "sweet pure air of our Virginia mountains," of the morning "overture of the birds," "such as all the Parodis and Linds and Albonis in the world could never equal." She tantalizes her friend with a glowing picture of a gallop "over misty hills, down into little green shaded glens, under overhanging branches all sparkling with silvery dew." She tells her that they might take a walk "to 'The Cliffs,' to see the sun go down behind yon wavy horizon of mountains, if its setting promised to be fine, and saunter back in the gloaming, just in time to have coffee handed in the free and easy social Virginia style in the library."

In Lexington, Margaret's first sorrow came to her, the death of her brother Joseph, whose health had not improved with the change to Lexington and who had been sent to Florida, where he found a "far-off lonely grave."

A description of the young poet at this time is given by a girl admirer:

Miss Maggie was the object of my secret, enthusiastic worship. She was not exactly pretty, but her slight figure, fair complexion and beautiful auburn curls furnished a piquant setting for her refined, intelligent countenance which made up for the lack of mere beauty. I used to thrill with admiration as I watched her riding at a swift gallop, a little black velvet cap showing off her fairness, the long curls blowing about her face....

We wondered that a person who could write poetry, which seemed to our limited experience a sort of miraculous gift, should condescend to talk to us about our studies and games as if she were one of us.

It was in Lexington that her power reached its full development, and she even took prizes in magazines and newspapers for some stories with what her friends called "prim heroes and pasteboard heroines," classifications which she good-naturedly accepted, as she readily acknowledged that she had no gift for story-telling.

In Lexington, Margaret's sister, Eleanor, met the grave and dignified Major T.J. Jackson, Professor of Mathematics in the Virginia Military Institute, and in 1853 was married to him. Here the death of the sweet and gentle mother brought to the life of Margaret Junkin its crowning sorrow, and shortly afterward the lovely young wife of Major Jackson left the earthly home.

The Professor of Latin in the Virginia Military Institute was Major J.T.L. Preston, grandson of Edmund Randolph. He was a man of great dignity of character and manner and of unusual scholarship. Though Margaret Junkin had at times requested her nearest of kin to seclude her in an asylum for the insane should she ever manifest a tendency to marry a widower with children, she proceeded quite calmly and with reason apparently unclouded, to fall in love with and marry Professor Preston, notwithstanding his possession of seven charming and amiable sons and daughters left over from a former congenial marriage. She proved a most devoted mother to her large family, who returned her affection in full measure. A volume of her poetry is dedicated to her eldest stepdaughter who, after the death of Margaret, was her most loving and appreciative biographer. To her great sorrow, one of the sons was killed in battle.

The marriage was followed by a visit to "Oakland" on the James River, the home of Major Preston's sister, Mrs. William Armstead Cocke, where at first the ornately dignified style of living rather dazed the bride accustomed as she had been to the simplicity of a home in which the only luxury was in giving help to others. Colonel William C. Preston, the eloquent South Carolina orator, met the "little red-headed Yankee" with distinct aversion to her "want of style and presence," but was soon heard to declare with enthusiastic admiration that she was "an encyclopedia in small print." Here among ancestral trees she found inspiration and in the society of her new sister she enjoyed the most delightful soul companionship.

In the early years of her married life writing was laid aside while she devoted herself to the care of her family, the entertainment of the many visitors who came to the Preston house and the beautification of her new home, finding plenty of space in the attractive house and extensive grounds with their noble trees, orchard, garden and meadow for the outlet of all her imagination. In this ideal home she was living her peaceful and happy life when the bugle call destroyed the serenity of the country. She suffered one of her greatest sorrows in the difference of political opinion between her Northern father and her Southern husband. The latter, holding that while secession was unwise, coercion was tyranny, followed Virginia when she cast in her lot with the seceding States. Dr. Junkin and his widowed youngest daughter, Julia, returned to Philadelphia, while Colonel Preston joined Stonewall Jackson's army.

Margaret Preston's worship of the muses was woven in with her devotion to the household goddesses, and in her journal the receiving of the first copy of her new volume of poems is sandwiched in between the making of twenty-two gallons of blackberry wine and thirty-three bottles of ketchup. House-cleaning and "Tintoretto"; pickles and "Mona Lisa"; hearth-painting and "Bacharach wine" were all closely connected in her every-day experience. From a ride through the blue hills she would return with a poem singing in her heart, radiant with sun, shaded with the mists of the darkening heights, and when it had bubbled over in laughter and dreams and tears and was safe upon the written page, she would go into the kitchen and produce such marvels of cookery as made her a housewife of more than local fame.

One of her dearest friends was Commodore Matthew F. Maury, who was connected with the Military Institute in the early years after the war. On his death-bed his wife asked him if she might bury him in Hollywood near Richmond. "As you please, my dear," he said, "but do not carry me through the pass until the ivy and laurel are in bloom and you can cover my bier with their beauty." When the burial service was read over him lying in state in the Institute library, Mrs. Preston was not able to venture over the threshold, so she remained in the shelter of the porch, and when the family returned from the funeral she read them the lines she had composed in the hour that they had been gone:

THROUGH THE PASS

"Home, bear me home at last," he said, "And lay me where my dead are lying; But not while skies are overspread, And mournful wintry winds are sighing.

"Wait till the royal march of Spring Carpets your mountain fastness over,— Till chattering birds are on the wing, And buzzing bees are in the clover.

"Wait till the laurel bursts its buds, And creeping ivy flings its graces About the lichened rocks, and floods Of sunshine fill the shady places.

"Then, when the sky, the air, the grass, Sweet Nature all, is glad and tender, Then bear me through the Goshen Pass Amid its flush of May-day splendor."

So will we bear him! Human heart To the warm earth's drew never nearer, And never stooped she to impart Lessons to one who held them dearer.

Stars lit new pages for him; seas Revealed the depths their waves were screening; The ebbs gave up their masteries, The tidal flows confessed their meaning.

Of ocean paths the tangled clue He taught the nations to unravel; And mapped the track where safely through The lightning-footed thought might travel.

And yet unflattered by the store Of these supremer revelations, Who bowed more reverently before The lowliest of earth's fair creations?

What sage of all the ages past, Ambered in Plutarch's limpid story, Upon the age he served, has cast A radiance touched with worthier glory?

His noble living for the ends God set him (duty underlying Each thought, word, action) naught transcends In lustre, save his nobler dying.

Do homage, sky, and air, and grass, All things he cherished, sweet and tender, As through our gorgeous mountain pass We bear him in the May-day splendor!

The summer of 1884 Margaret Preston spent abroad in the places of which she had read with a loving enthusiasm which made them her own. "Don't show me; let me find it," she would say, and go straight to the object of her quest. Her reading had brought her into companionship with all the beautiful minds of the world, and all the places that had been dear to them were sacred to her heart. Windermere was "redolent all over with the memories of Wordsworth, Southey, Kit North, Hartley Coleridge, Harriet Martineau, Dr. Arnold." "Ambleside—Wordsworth's Ambleside—Southey's; and such hills, such greenery, I never expect to see again. Then we took carriage to Grasmere Lake, a lovely little gem."

"I walked to Wordsworth's grave without being directed, and on reading his name on his stone, and Mary Wordsworth's on his wife's, I am free to confess to a rush of tears, Dora Quillinan, his daughter's, and dear old Dorothy, whom Coleridge, you know, pronounced the grandest woman he had ever known. Suddenly turning I read the name of poor Hartley Coleridge and again I felt my eyes flow."

Perhaps few travellers have seen as much in a summer's wandering as did Margaret Preston, yet it was on her "blind slate" that she was forced to write of these things and of the "crowning delight of the summer," the tour through Switzerland. She said, "My picture gallery of memory is hung henceforth with glorious frescoes which blindness cannot blot or cause to fade."

Life in Preston House with all its enchantments came to an end for Margaret Preston with the passing of the noble and loving man who had made her the priestess of that home shrine. The first two years after his death she spent with her stepdaughter, Mrs. Allan, who lived near the old home. Then she went to the home of Dr. George J. Preston, of Baltimore, where she was the centre of the home and took great delight in his children with their pretty "curly red heads." She never walked again except to take a few steps with a crutch.

From 819 North Charles Street she wrote: "Here my large airy room faces brick walls and housetops and when I sit at the library windows I only see throngs of passers-by, all of whom are strangers to me." Her life was beautiful and content, but she must often have longed for the old friends and the "laureled avenues" and the "edges of the glorious Goshen Pass lit with the wavering flames of the July rhododendrons."

March 29, 1897, Margaret Preston died as she had wished when she expressed her desire in her poem "Euthanasia," written in memory of a friend who had passed away unconscious of illness or death:

With faces the dearest in sight, With a kiss on the lips I love best, To whisper a tender "Good-night" And pass to my pillow of rest.

To kneel, all my service complete, All duties accomplished—and then To finish my orisons sweet With a trustful and joyous "Amen."

And softly, when slumber was deep, Unwarned by a shadow before, On a halcyon billow of sleep To float to the Thitherward shore.

Without a farewell or a tear, A sob or a flutter of breath, Unharmed by the phantom of Fear, To glide through the darkness of death!

Just so would I choose to depart, Just so let the summons be given; A quiver—a pause of the heart— A vision of angels—then Heaven!



"THE 'MOTHER' OF 'ST. ELMO'"

AUGUSTA EVANS WILSON

Let me introduce to you Augusta Evans Wilson as I first met her when she was a bride, when her soul, like mine, was allied to love, faith and romance, when every day was made perfect with its own contentment and to-morrow's hope, when we were happy because we loved and were loved.

I do not know why, when she clasped my hand and said, "How young you are," I thought of the poem of Lucas, "The land where we lay dreaming," or why those lines should come back to me now when her feet are treading the path where silence is. It may have been because of her sweet voice, "Which did thrill until at eve the whip-poor-will and at noon the mocking-birds were mute and still," or because of the exchange of memories of those days of shot and shell and red meteors, of the camp, of the march, of the sick and wounded to whom she ministered, and of the realization that "All our glorious visions fled and left us nothing real but the dead, in the land where we lay dreaming."

When she remarked upon my youth the fancy drifted through my mind that she was rather old for a bride, or at least looked so, for I was accustomed to seeing very youthful brides, being only half her years when I was one, while she had passed through ageing experiences, had written many books, and looked older than she really was. I had not formed the habit of thinking of her as Mrs. Wilson, and in the confusion of the old name and the new could not recall either, so called her "Mrs. Macaria." She laughed and told me that she was accustomed to being called "Beulah," but this was the first time that she had been addressed as "Mrs. Macaria."

She told me of the many adventures of "Macaria" in its early days. Camp "Beulah," named in honor of her second book, which appeared not long before the opening of the war and brought her at once into prominence as a writer, was near Summerville, the girlhood home of Augusta Evans, and in that camp and its hospital, as well as in the many others which soon sprang up around the Evans residence, she took a Southern woman's share in the work, the darkness and the heartache of the time. Her friend, Mr. Thomas Cooper De Leon, of Mobile, gives a picture of her in those days:

The slim, willowy girl, with masses of brown hair coiled in the funnel depths of a poke bonnet, a long check apron and a pair of tin buckets, became the typical guardian angel of the nearby hospitals.

She was amanuensis, as well as nurse, cook and general purveyor of light and comfort, and she sent many a cheering letter to waiting hearts at home, and never was the power of her glowing pen used more nobly and helpfully than when, forced to write the last dread message of all, it wove into the sorrowful words a golden thread of love and faith and hope.

In the pauses of her work she wrote most of her war-novel, "Macaria," which, to a great extent, shared the uncertainties and excitements of the period. It was published in 1864 by West & Johnson, of Richmond, being printed on wrapping paper, and soon became a favorite with the Southern soldiers, who probably found in it more human nature and more of the logic of possible events than it revealed to the general reader, their own experience in those days having led them to grave doubts as to the accuracy of the philosophic theory that not all conceivable things are possible. At that time it stood to reason that the kind of literature popular in Southern camps would not appeal forcibly to the approval of the Northern army, and a Federal officer captured and burned all the copies of "Macaria" that he could find.

Miss Evans contrived to slip a copy of her new book across the lines to a publisher friend who, being unable at that time to bring out a new edition, took it to the J.B. Lippincott Company and arranged for its publication. Immediately afterward it was found that another publisher had come into possession of a copy and had an edition of five thousand ready to issue but, upon inquiry, expressed his intention of paying no royalty to the author. Through the efforts of Mr. Lippincott he was induced to allow a royalty. Miss Evans afterward wrote to her friend:

I have always felt profoundly grateful to Mr. Lippincott, but fate has never indulged me in an opportunity of adequately thanking him for his generous and chivalrous action in behalf of an unknown rebel, who at that period was nursing Confederate soldiers in a hospital established near "Camp Beulah."

In telling me of this she said that the kindness of Mr. Lippincott did not surprise her, as she remembered with gratitude the generosity of the Lippincott Company in regard to Southern obligations at the opening of the war.

With the beautiful voice which so enchanted me she once took captive General Bragg's army on Lookout Mountain. With her mother she had gone to visit her brother, Captain Howard Evans, just before the battle of Chickamauga. It chanced that he had been sent to the front before they arrived, but they were hospitably received and given a hut on the slope. At midnight they were awakened by steps and whispers and upon inquiry found that their unexpected visitors were soldiers who had crept through the lines to see Miss Evans and hear her sing. The mother was disposed to object to her appearing at a time and place not conventionally appropriate to artistic performances, but, wrapping her travelling coat and robe about her, she went out into the moonlight with her mass of hair streaming in the wind like a flying cloud, and sang that thrilling song written by her friend, Randall, "Maryland, my Maryland." As the melodious tones swelled out upon the night and came floating back in echoes from the rugged peaks and mountain walls, they filled the audience with rapt delight. When the song was finished the sobs and cheers that burst from the soldier-hearts formed an encore not to be denied, and again that battle-cry thrilled out upon the air. The moment of silence that followed was broken by the high, shrill, quavering, penetrating note of the rebel yell.

The singer has passed into the land of the higher music and most of those who thrilled to the sound of her battle-song on that war-crowned height have passed away from the melodies of earth, but somewhere in this wide land there may be hearts through which yet pulses the music of that midnight song.

Among the most valued possessions of Mrs. Wilson were the rings, bracelets and baskets fashioned from buttons and fruit-seeds by her soldiers in hospital, tokens of their grateful remembrance of her. I showed her a little cross cut from a button in a prison and given to me by my uncle, Colonel Phillips, of the Confederate Army, who had been a captive on Johnson's Island. The prisoners used the cross to certify to the validity of secret messages. It was sent with the message and returned with the answer, carrying conviction of the truthfulness of both.

I told her the story of another cross, connected with the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. Colonel Aylett, of the Fifty-Third Virginia, a very religious man, was talking with some friends when a letter came bringing the sad tidings. "I do not believe it," he said. "If it could be true I should not have faith in God or in prayer." As he talked he took from his pocket a letter folded in the way that was followed when we had no envelopes, and, cutting it, let it fall to the floor. One of his companions took it up, placing the pieces on the table to look for an address, and found that the fragments formed a crucifix, the cross at each side to which the thieves were nailed, the block supporting the crucifix, the block on which the dice were thrown, the sponge and the reed, as if in imitation of a celebrated painting of the Crucifixion.

"And this beautiful cross," said Mrs. Wilson, touching the one I wore, "it must have a story, too." I replied that it had been in my family for nearly three centuries, that General Pickett had worn it at the battle of Gettysburg, and that it had been blessed by the Pope three times. The last time, it was taken to Rome by Father Walter who, in his long service as Rector of Saint Patrick's Church in Washington, had by his sweet spirit of kindness and liberality endeared himself to the whole community, regardless of religious differences. Mrs. Wilson said that when she was in Washington she went to see Father Walter because of his great kindness to the people of the South. She spoke, too, of the most pathetic and tragic service of his life, his faithful attendance upon Mrs. Surratt to the last awful moment.

In 1868 Augusta Evans was married to Mr. Lorenze M. Wilson, President of the Mobile & Montana Railroad, and became mistress of the beautiful home on the Spring Hill shell road near the picturesque city of Mobile. The house looked toward the road through aisles of greenery across a yard filled with flowers diffusing a perfume blended of geraniums, roses, tropical plants and the blossoms of the North. A chorus of birds filled the air with music. Majestic old live-oaks with twilight veils of gray moss were like tall and stately nuns pausing suddenly to count their beads to the music of vesper bells. Magnolia trees in dense white blossom gave the impression that winter had aroused from his summer sleep and unfolded his blanket of snow to add his most beautiful touch to the charms of the golden days. A handsome driveway led across a lawn to a veranda, vine-wreathed and hidden in a crush of flowers. The house, divided by a wide hall, opened upon broad piazzas. Leading up to it through brilliant blossoming was a white path between sentinel lines of oak trees that reached out friendly hands to clasp each other above the broad footway. Amid such beauty one felt lost in a mystic world of which he had never dreamed and revelled in a vision from which he might hope that there would be no waking.

Augusta Jane Evans was born May 4, 1835, near Columbus, Georgia. "The Queen City of the Chattahoochee" is enthroned in a pine forest amid a range of hills that form a semi-circle about the city with its fine wide streets and magnificent shade trees. The St. Elmo Institute for girls, with its great oak grove and its beautiful lake, was the model for the school in the book, "St. Elmo." Sweet memories of the beautiful home in Columbus remained in the heart of Miss Evans and she said in after years that many of the happiest days of her girlhood were spent there. In later years she had here her "White Farm," on which all the animals and fowls were white.

In her childhood the family removed to Galveston, Texas, going afterward to San Antonio. In the two years spent here she studied under the tutorship of her mother, who never gave up her charge to the care of a professional teacher, though the responsibility of seven other children might have furnished her with an excuse for doing so.

In the most enchanting city of Texas the future novelist was surrounded by the romantic myths of Indian lore. On a day long past, the miracle of the San Antonio River and its valley had burst upon the enraptured eyes of Tremanos, the young Apache brave, from the hilltop to which he had climbed with weary footsteps, followed by the gaunt shadow of death, dazed by the phantoms on the distant horizon, lured on by mystic spirit music brought to him on the wings of the scorching winds; and he had gone with glad heart down into the rich and verdant plains of "Tejas, the Beautiful."

Not far from the picturesque old city of San Antonio was the Huisache, one of the three springs which join to form the San Antonio River. Along its banks the gray dove's sad note was heard. When the two Indian sisters, "Flower of Gladness" and "Flower of Pity," used to come down to drink from the Spring of the Huisache the song of the dove was all of joy. A youthful Indian brave of rare enchantment came into their lives and brought love and treachery, and the assassin's knife felled the Indian youth on the brink of the Huisache. "Flower of Pity," coming to the spring, found the lifeless form of the young warrior and snatched the knife from the wound and plunged it into her own heart. A little later "Flower of Gladness" found her sister and the Indian brave dead by the water's edge and straightway went mad. Manitou graciously allowed the poor lost soul to find a voice for its woes in the note of the dove and henceforth she was the mourning dove. The lives of the youth and maiden, floating out in white clouds of mist, descended into the earth and became two living springs which united with the Huisache to form the San Antonio River.

In her story of "Inez," founded upon the most tragic event in the history of the Lone Star State, the defence of the Alamo, Miss Evans thus described the scene from the viewpoint of the newly arrived immigrant:

The river wound around the town like an azure girdle, gliding along the surface and reflecting in its deep blue waters the rustling tule which fringed the margin. An occasional pecan or live-oak flung a majestic shadow athwart its azure bosom. Now and then a clump of willows sigh low in the evening breeze. Far away to the north stretched a mountain range, blue in the distance; to the south lay the luxuriant valley of the stream. The streets were narrow and laid out with a total disregard of the points of the compass.

By this river of romantic beauty and old-time myth Augusta Evans spent two of youth's impressionable years. On Main Plaza, near the Alamo, where the Frost National Bank now stands, was the Evans store, where she, the daughter of the store-keeper, lived. Almost under the shadow of the tragically historic old mission, by the park near which Santa Ana had his headquarters, she received the incentive and gathered the material for her first novel, "Inez," written in her own room at night as a gift with which to surprise her father and mother. The work of a girl of fifteen, it did not appeal to many readers, but it contained a vivid description of the inspired heroism and self-sacrifice of the men whose deeds crowned the history of Texas with the sanctity of the supreme glory of self-immolation upon the altar of patriotism. We have fallen upon commercial days now, and the traditions of the old Alamo circle around a warehouse. Alamo Plaza is now the scene of the annual "Battle of the Flowers," a joyous and beautiful occasion which throws a fragrant floral veil about the terrible memories that gloom over the place.

At the close of the two years spent in San Antonio, the family returned to Columbus and later found a home in Mobile, Alabama, the town of the "Maubila," Choctaw, Indians. It is a pleasant town of shaded streets, romantic drives and beautiful homes. Its history reaches back through the centuries to a time long before the United States had being, and it is the only American city that has seen five flags wave over it: French, English, Spanish, United States and Confederate.

While in this home Augusta Evans became widely known through the publication in 1859 of her second novel, "Beulah." Then came the war, bringing forth her one war-novel, "Macaria." "Vashti," "St. Elmo," "Infelice," "At the Mercy of Tiberius," the latter being her best, followed in quick succession, until her marriage put a close to her work, for Mr. Wilson was unwilling that she should tax her strength by close application. Life in the delightful home furnished interest enough to make resort to fiction unnecessary as an entertainment. In 1879 the death of Mr. Wilson ended the idyllic home life and she returned to her desk, writing "The Speckled Bird" and "Devota," with a pen that had lost much of its charm in the days of happy absorption.

Having no children of her own, Mrs. Wilson gave her devoted affection to the children and grandchildren of her husband, who was a widower at the time of their marriage.

It has been observed that the stories of Augusta Evans have no location. They happen in any place where the people chance to be and, given that kind of people, the story would evolve itself in the same way anywhere else. But for her there was always a place in which flowers grew and trees waved their branches to the breeze and made mystic aisles of purpled glooms, shot through with glimpses of sun amid silences broken happily by the songs of birds. There were always the wide sky and dim reaches of space and great walls of majestic mountains against the horizon. However gifted might be her maidens in roaming amid the stars or delving in philosophic depths, they, like herself, had always eyes for the beauties which Nature sets in place, and why should all these things be geographically bounded and designated by appellations to be recorded in the Postoffice Guide?

Being in Mobile some years ago, I called upon Mrs. Wilson after her husband had passed on and left her alone in the charming home. She was in her work-room, if a place so decoratively enchanting can be connected with a subject so stern and prosaic, so crowded with every-day commonplaceness, as work. It was a bower of beauty, with light, graceful furniture, and pots of plants making cheerful greenery at every available spot. Vases of flowers cut from her garden, tended by her own care and love, were on desk and table and in sunny alcoves, filling the room with a glory of color and a fragrance as of incense from jewelled censers swung in adoration of the goddess of the exquisite shrine.

Remembering that charming study as I saw it then, blossoming and redolent with the flowers beloved of the heart of its mistress, I wonder at times if all that beauty is still there and if some bright soul, as in the dead days, is sunning itself in that warmth and glow.

The old home has passed into stranger hands, as Mrs. Wilson was persuaded to sell it after the death of her husband and her removal to the city.

In Magnolia Cemetery in the home city so dear to her, Augusta Evans Wilson rests beside the brother whom she was seeking when her midnight song thrilled the hearts of the defenders of the Stars and Bars on Look-out Mountain. On her laurel-wreathed monument are the lines written by Mr. De Leon when the dawn of one May morning brought him the sad tidings that his friend of many years had passed from earth:

Dead, in her fulness of years and of fame, What has she left? High on the roll of fair Duty, a name: Love, friends devoted as few mortals claim: A Nation bereft!