In closing these reminiscences, I may be allowed to make a few remarks founded upon my actual personal knowledge of Poe, in at least the phase of character in which he appeared to me. What he may have been to his ordinary associates, or to the world at large, I do not know; and in the picture presented to us by Dr. Griswold,—half maniac, half demon,—I confess, I cannot recognize a trait of the gentle, grateful, warm-hearted man whom I saw amid his friends,—his careworn face all aglow with generous feeling in the kindness and appreciation to which he was so little accustomed. His faults were sufficiently apparent; but for these a more than ordinary allowance should be made, in consideration of the unfavorable influences surrounding him from his very birth. He was ever the sport of an adverse fortune. Born in penury, reared in affluence, treated at one time with pernicious indulgence and then literally turned into the streets, a beggar and an outcast, deserted by those who had formerly courted him, maliciously calumniated, smarting always under a sense of wrong and injustice,—what wonder that his bright, warm, and naturally generous and genial nature should have become embittered? What wonder that his keenly sensitive and susceptible poetic temperament should have become jarred, out of tune, and into harsh discord with himself and mankind? Let the just and the generous pause before they judge; and upon their lips the breath of condemnation will soften into a sigh of sympathy and regret.



LX

ARTEMUS WARD

Poor Artemus! says Haweis in his lecture on the American humorist, I shall not see his like again, as he appeared for a few short weeks before an English audience at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly.

Sometimes, as to looks, profoundly dejected, at others shy or reproachful; nervously anxious to please (apparently), yet with a certain twinkle at the back of his eye which convinced you of his perfect sang froid, and one thing always—full, unescapably full, of fun....

When Artemus arrived here in 1866 he was a dying man.

I can see him now, as he came on the narrow platform in front of his inferior panorama, and stole a glance at the densely packed room and then at his panorama.

His tall, gaunt, though slender figure, his curly light hair and large aquiline nose, which always reminded me of a macaw; his thin face flushed with consumption, his little cough, which seemed to shake him to pieces, and which he said "was wearing him out," at which we all laughed irresistibly, and then felt ashamed of ourselves, as well we might; but he himself seemed to enjoy his cough. It was all part of that odd, topsy-turvy mind in which everything appeared most natural upside down!

On first entering he would seem profoundly unconscious that anything was expected of him, but after looking at the audience, then at his own clothes, and then apologetically at his panorama, he began to explain its merits.

The fact is Artemus intended having the finest scenes that could be painted, but he gave that up on account of the expense, and then determined to get the worst as the next best thing for his purpose.

When anything very bad came up he would pause and gaze admiringly at the canvas, and then look round a little reproachfully at the company.

"This picture," he would say, "is a great work of art; it is an oil painting done in petroleum. It is by the Old Masters. It was the last thing they did before dying. They did this, and then they expired. I wish you were nearer to it so you could see it better. I wish I could take it to your residences and let you see it by daylight. Some of the greatest artists in London come here every morning before daylight with lanterns to look at it. They say they never saw anything like it before, and they hope they never shall again!"

Certain curious brown splotches appearing in the foreground, Artemus pointed gravely to them, and said:

"These are intended for horses; I know they are, because the artist told me so. After two years, he came to me one morning and said, 'Mr. Ward, I cannot conceal it from you any longer; they are horses.'"

Apropos of nothing he observed:

"I really don't care for money; I only travel around to show my clothes."

This was a favorite joke of his. He would look with a piteous expression of discomfort and almost misery at his black trousers and swallowtail coat, a costume in which he said he was always most wretched.

"These clothes I have on," he continued, "were a great success in America." And then quite irrelevantly and rather hastily, "How often do large fortunes ruin young men! I should like to be ruined, but I can get on very well as I am!"

So the lecture dribbled on with little fragments of impertinent biography, mere pegs for slender witticisms like this:

"When quite a child I used to draw on wood. I drew a small cartload of raw material over a wooden bridge, the people of the village noticed me, I drew their attention, they said I had a future before me; up to that time I had an idea it was behind me."

Or this:

"I became a man. I have always been mixed up with art. I have an uncle who takes photographs, and I have a servant who takes anything he can set his hands on."

With one more example from his life among the Mormons, which, perhaps, though brief, includes a greater variety of wit and humor than any single passage I could select, I must conclude my memorial glimpses of this incomparable and lamented humorist.

"I regret to say that efforts were made to make a Mormon of me while I was in Utah.

"It was leap year when I was there, and seventeen young widows—the wives of a deceased Mormon (he died by request)—offered me their hearts and hands. I called upon them one day, and taking their soft, white hands in mine—which made eighteen hands altogether—I found them in tears. And I said 'Why is this thus?—what is the reason of this thusness?'

"They hove a sigh—seventeen sighs of different size. They said—

"'Oh, soon thou wilt be gonested away!'

"I told them that when I got ready to leave a place I usually wentested. They said—'Doth not like us?'

"I said, 'I doth, I doth!' I also said, 'I hope your intentions are honorable, as I am a lone child and my parents are far, far away!'

"They then said, 'Wilt not marry us?'

"I said, 'Oh no, it cannot was.'

"Again they asked me to marry them, and again I declined. When they cried—

"'Oh, cruel man: this is too much—oh, too much!'

"I told them it was on account of the muchness that I declined."



LXI

EDMUND GOSSE VISITS WHITTIER

In December of 1884, Mr. Edmund Gosse, one of the most distinguished of English critics, visited Whittier at a house called Oak Knoll, in Massachusetts, where he was then staying with friends. We quote brief extracts from a report of that visit as published in Good Words, an English magazine:

"Doubtless in leafy season Oak Knoll may have its charms, but it was distinctly sinister that December morning. We rang, and after a long pause the front door opened slightly, and a very unprepossessing dog emerged, and shut the door (if I may say so) behind him. We were face to face with this animal, which presented none of the features identified in one's mind with the idea of Mr. Whittier. It sniffed unpleasantly, but we spoke to it most blandly and it became assured that we were not tramps. The dog sat down, and looked at us; we had nowhere to sit down, but we looked at the dog. Then, after many blandishments, but feeling very uncomfortable, I ventured to hold the dog in conversation while I rang again. After another pause the door was slightly opened, and a voice of no agreeable timbre asked what we wanted. We explained, across the dog, that we had come by appointment to see Mr. Whittier. The door was closed a second time, and, if our carriage had still been waiting, we should certainly have driven back to Danvers. But at length a hard-featured woman grudgingly admitted us, and showed us, growling as she did it, into a parlor.

"Our troubles were then over, for Mr. Whittier, himself appeared, with all that report had ever told of a gentle sweetness and dignified cordial courtesy. He was then seventy-seven years old, and, although he spoke of age and feebleness, he showed few signs of either; he was, in fact, to live eight years more. Perhaps because the room was low, he seemed surprisingly tall; he must, in fact, have been a little less than six feet high. The peculiarity of his face rested in the extraordinary large and luminous black eyes, set in black eyebrows, and fringed with thick black eye-lashes curiously curved inward....

"His generosity to those much younger and less gifted than himself is well known, and I shall not dwell on the good-natured things which he proceeded to say to his English visitor. He made no profession, at any time, of being a critic, and his formula was that such and such verse or prose had given him pleasure—'I am grateful to thee for all that enjoyment' was his charming way of being kind.... He spoke with great emotion of Emerson—'the noblest human being I have known,' and of Longfellow, 'perhaps the sweetest. But you will see Holmes,' he added. I said that it was my great privilege to be seeing Dr. Holmes every day, and that the night before he had sent all sorts of affectionate messages by me to Mr. Whittier. The latter expressed great curiosity to see Holmes's short Life of Emerson which, in fact, was published five or six days later.... Mr. Whittier greatly surprised me by confessing that he was quite color-blind. He exemplified his condition by saying that if I came to Amesbury I should be scandalized by one of his carpets. It appeared that he was never permitted, by the guardian goddess of his hearth, to go 'shopping' for himself, but that once, being in Boston, and needing a carpet, he had ventured to go to a store and buy what he thought to be a very nice, quiet article, precisely suited to adorn a Quaker home. When it arrived at Amesbury there was a universal shout of horror, for what had struck Mr. Whittier as a particularly soft combination of browns and grays proved, to normal eyes, to be a loud pattern of bright red roses on a field of the crudest cabbage-green."



LXII

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF WHITTIER

In the New England Magazine Charlotte Forten Grimke writes entertainingly of Whittier. From this article we are permitted to quote the following extracts:

"And so it happened that, one lovely summer day, my friend and I found ourselves on the train, rapidly whirling eastward, through the pleasant old town of Newburyport, across the 'shining Merrimac,' on our way to the poet's home in Amesbury. Arriving at the station, we found Mr. Whittier awaiting us, and a walk of a few minutes brought us to his house on Friend Street. Amesbury, a busy manufacturing town, pleasantly situated on the Merrimac, impressed me at first as hardly retired enough for a poet's home; for fresh in my recollection were Longfellow's historic house, guarded by stately poplars, standing back from the quiet Cambridge street, and Lowell's old mansion, completely buried in its noble elms; and each of these had quite realized my ideal of the home of a poet. But the little house looked very quiet and homelike; and when we entered it and received the warm welcome of the poet's sister, we felt, as all felt who entered that hospitable door, the very spirit of peace descending upon us. The house was then white (it was afterwards painted a pale yellow), with green blinds, and a little vine-wreathed piazza on one side, upon which opened the glass door of 'the garden room,' the poet's favorite sitting-room and study. The windows of this room looked out upon a pleasant, old-fashioned garden. The walls on both sides of the fireplace were covered with books. The other walls were hung with pictures, among which we noticed 'The Barefoot Boy,' a painting of Mr. Whittier's birthplace in Haverhill, a copy of that lovely picture, 'The Motherless,' under which were written some exquisite lines by Mrs. Stowe, and a beautiful little sea-view, painted by a friend of the poet. Vases of fresh, bright flowers stood upon the mantelpiece. After we had rested we went into the little parlor, where hung the portrait of the loved and cherished mother, who some years before had passed away to the 'Better Land.' Hers was one of those sweet, aged faces which one often sees among the Friends,—full of repose, breathing a benediction upon all around. There were other pictures and books, and upon a table in the corner stood Rogers' 'Wounded Scout.'



"At the head of the staircase hung a great cluster of pansies, purple and white and gold. Mr. Whittier called our attention to their wonderful resemblance to human faces,—a resemblance which we so often see in pansies, and which was brought out with really startling distinctness in this picture.

"In the cool, pleasant chamber assigned to us, pervaded by an air of Quaker serenity and purity, was a large painting of the poet in his youth. This was the realization of my girlish dreams. There were the clustering curls, the brilliant dark eyes, the firm, resolute mouth. He looked like a youthful Bayard, 'without fear and without reproach,' ready to throw himself unflinchingly into the most stirring scenes of the battle of life.

"We were at once greatly interested in Miss Whittier, and impressed by the simplicity and kindness of her manner. We saw the soul's beauty shining in her soft, dark eyes, and in the smile which, like her brother's, was very winning, and we felt it in the music, of her gentle voice and the warm pressure of her hand. There was a refreshing atmosphere of unworldliness about her. She had rarely been away from her home, and although her brother's fame obliged her to receive many strangers, she had never, as she told us, been able to overcome a shyness of disposition, except in the case of a very few friends. She was naturally witty and original, and when she did shake off her shyness, had a childlike way of saying bright things which was very charming. She and her brother had lived together, alone since their mother's death, and in their mutual devotion have been well compared to Charles Lamb and his sister.

"We spent a delightful evening in the garden-room in quiet, cheerful talk. In society Mr. Whittier had the reputation of being very shy, and he was so among strangers; but at times, in the companionship of his friends, no one could be more genial. He had even a boyish frankness of manner, a natural love of fun, a keen appreciation of the humorous, which the sorrows and poor health of many years failed to subdue. That night he talked to us freely of his childhood, of the life on the old farm in Haverhill, which he has so vividly described in Snow-Bound, and showed us a venerable book, Davideis, being a history of David written in rhyme, the quaintest and most amusing rhyme, by Thomas Ellwood, a friend of Milton. It was the first book of 'poetry,' he told us, that he read when a boy. He entertained us with stories of people who came to see him. He had many very interesting and charming visitors, of course, but there were also many exceedingly queer ones, and these, he said with a queer smile, generally 'brought their carpet bags!' He said he was thankful to live in such a place as Amesbury, where people did not speak to him about his poems, nor think of him as a poet. Sometimes he had amused himself by tracking the most persistent of the lion-hunters, and found that the same individuals went to Emerson and Longfellow and other authors, and made precisely the same speeches. Emerson was not much annoyed by them; he enjoyed studying character in all its phases.

"Begging letters and begging visits were also very frequent, and his sister told us that her brother had frequently been victimized in his desire to help those whose pitiful stories he believed. One day he received a letter from a man in a neighboring town, asking him for a loan of ten dollars, and assuring him that he should blow his brains out if Mr. Whittier did not send him the money. The tone of the letter made him doubt the sincerity of the writer, and he did not send the money, comforting himself, he said, with the thought that the man really had no brains to blow out. 'I must confess, however,' he added, 'I looked rather anxiously at the newspapers for the next few days, but seeing no news of a suicide in the neighboring town, I was relieved.'

"His sister once told us of an incident which occurred during the war, which pleased them very much. One night, at a late hour, the door-bell rang, and her brother, on answering it, found a young man in an officer's uniform standing at the door. 'Is this Mr. Whittier?' he asked. 'Yes.' 'Well, sir,' was the quick reply, 'I only wanted to have the pleasure of shaking hands with you.' And with that he seized the poet's hand, shook it warmly, and rushed away, before Mr. Whittier had recovered from his surprise.

"In subsequent visits to Mr. Whittier, he was sometimes induced to talk about his poems, although that was a subject on which he rarely spoke. On my friend's once warmly praising Maud Muller, he said decidedly that he did not like the poem, because it was too sad; it ministered to the spirit of unrest and dissatisfaction which was only too prevalent. With My Psalm he felt much better satisfied, because it was more hopeful. His favorite poets were Wordsworth and Burns. He once showed us an autograph letter of Burns, which he prized very highly, and a number of beautiful photographs of Scotch scenery, the gift of a sturdy old Scotchman, a neighbor of his and also an ardent, admirer of Burns.

"Our conversation occasionally touched on the subject of marriage, and I remember his asking us if we could imagine why there should be so much unhappiness among married people, even among those who seemed to have everything calculated to make them happy, and who really loved each other. He said he had pondered over the subject a good deal, and had finally concluded that it was because they saw too much of each other. He did not believe it was well for any two human beings to have too much of each other's society. We told him that, being a much-to-be-commiserated bachelor, he was not competent authority on that subject.

"Among the most intimate of his friends were Mr. and Mrs. James T. Fields, Colonel Higginson, Charles Sumner, and Bayard Taylor. To the two latter, and also to Emerson, he has alluded very beautifully in one of his most characteristic poems, The Last Walk in Autumn.

"On visiting the poet after my return from the South, for a vacation, I found a new inmate of the house, a gray and scarlet parrot, named Charlie, a great pet of the poet and his sister, and far-famed for his wit and wisdom. He could say many things with great distinctness, and although at first refusing rather spitefully to make my acquaintance, when I invited him to come into the kitchen and get his supper he at once hopped upon my hand and behaved in the most amicable manner. It was very comical to see him dance to a tune of Mr. Whittier's whistling. His master told us that he would climb toilsomely up the spout, pausing at every step or two to say, in a tone of the deepest self-pity, 'Poor Charlie!' and when he reached the roof screaming impertinently at the passers-by. The Irish children said that he called them 'Paddies,' and threatened him with dire vengeance. Mr. Whittier said he did not know; he 'could believe anything of that bird.' Charlie's favorite amusement was shaking the unripe pears from the trees in the garden; and when he saw Miss Whittier approaching, he would steal away with drooping head, like a child caught in a naughty action. This gifted bird afterwards died, and was much missed by the poet, who alluded to him in the poem entitled The Common Question.

"Mr. Whittier showed me a couple of stuffed birds which had been sent to him by the Emperor of Brazil, after reading his Cry of a Lost Soul, in allusion to the bird in South American forests which has so intensely mournful a note that the Indians give it a name which signifies a lost soul. The first birds which were sent did not reach him, and the Emperor on hearing it sent two more. The bird is larger than a mocking bird, and has sober gray plumage, very unlike the bright-hued creatures usually seen in tropical forests.

"The Emperor was a warm admirer of Mr. Whittier, and one of the first persons for whom he inquired on reaching Boston was the poet. There was some delay about their meeting and Dom Pedro became very impatient. At last they met in a house in Boston. Dom Pedro expressed great delight at meeting the poet, and talked with him a long time, paying very little attention to any one else. On leaving, he asked Mr. Whittier to accompany him downstairs, and before entering his carriage threw his arms around the astonished poet and embraced him warmly.

"Rare and beautiful were the qualities which met in Mr. Whittier: a singularly unworldly and sweet disposition, and unwavering love of truth and justice, a keen sense of humor, the highest type of courage, and a firm faith in God's goodness, which no amount of suffering ever shook. For years he was an invalid, a martyr to severe headaches. He once told me that he had not for a long time written anything without suffering. The nearest and dearest of his earthly ties had been severed by death. But he never rebelled. His life exemplified the spirit of resignation which is breathed throughout so many of his poems.

All as God wills, who wisely heeds To give or to withhold, And knoweth more of all my needs Than all my prayers have told.

"My husband and I made our last visit to him two years ago, at Oak Knoll. He gave us his customary warm greeting and, although in extremely feeble health, was as sweet and genial in spirit and as entertaining in conversation as ever. He took us into his cosey little library, and talked about his books and pictures and old friends, and promised to send us his latest photograph,—which he afterwards did. Fearing to weary him, we stayed but a short time. So frail he looked, that in parting from him our hearts were saddened by the thought that we might not look upon that dear face again. And so it proved. I shall ever remember him as I saw him then, in his beautiful country home, surrounded by devoted friends, awaiting calmly the summons to enter into rest—in that serene and lovely old age which comes only to those gifted ones whose lives are the embodiment of all that is noblest and best and sweetest in their poetry.

"Farewell, beloved, revered friend! Thou art gone to join the loved ones who beckoned to thee from those blessed shores of Peace. To thee, how great the gain! To us, how infinite the loss! But thy influence shall remain with us. Still shalt thou

... be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony, Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, Beget the smiles that have no cruelty— Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, And in diffusion ever more intense.



LXIII

HENRY WARD BEECHER

It would be no compliment to call Henry Ward Beecher the American Spurgeon. He may be that, but he is more. If we can imagine Mr. Spurgeon and Mr. John Bright with a cautious touch of Professor Maurice and a strong tincture of the late F.W. Robertson—if, I say, it is possible to imagine such a compound being brought up in New England and at last securely fixed in a New York pulpit, we shall get a product not unlike Henry Ward Beecher....

Mr. Beecher was brought up in the country. His novel, Norwood—not very readable, by the way, although full of charming passages—abounds in woods and streams, hills and dales, and flowers. "The willows," he tells us somewhere, "had thrown off their silky catkins, and were in leaf; the elm was covered with chocolate-colored blossoms, the soft maple drew bees to its crimson tassels." Would that all preachers and writers used no more offensive and superfluous flowers of speech than such as these....

When he wants to illustrate the comfort of a powerful, unseen, though protective love, he tells us how, as a boy, he woke up one midsummer night and listened, with a sense of half-uneasy awe, to the wild cry of the marsh birds, whilst the moonlight streamed full into his room; and then, as he grew more and more disturbed, he suddenly heard his father clear his throat "a-hem," in the next room, and instantly that familiar sound restored his equanimity. The illustration is simple, but it hits the mark and goes home. His affectionate tributes to his father and mother are constantly breaking forth in spite of himself. "I thank God," he says, "for two things. First, that I was born and bred in the country, of parents that gave me a sound constitution and a noble example. I never can pay back what I got from my parents. Next I am thankful that I was brought up in circumstances where I never became acquainted with wickedness." How delightful it is to think of a man who, without a taint of conscious insincerity, but simply out of the fulness of his heart, can get up before four thousand people, and say:

"I never was sullied in act, nor in thought when I was young. I grew up as pure as a woman. And I cannot express to God the thanks which I owe to my mother, and to my father, and to the great household of sisters and brothers among whom I lived. And the secondary knowledge of those wicked things which I have gained in later life in a professional way, I gained under such guards that it was not harmful to me." ...

He has a wonderful way of importing his leisure hours into the pulpit, and making the great cooped-up multitude feel something of the joy and freshness of his own exhilaration. One golden day above others seems to have dwelt in his mind. He refers to it again and again.

"When I walked one day on the top of Mt. Washington—glorious day of memory! Such another day I think I shall not experience till I stand on the battlements of the New Jerusalem—how I was discharged of all imperfections; the wide far-spreading country which lay beneath me in beauteous light, how heavenly it looked, and I communed with God. I had sweet tokens that he loved me. My very being rose right up into his nature. I walked with him, and the cities far and near of New York, and all the cities and villages which lay between it and me, with their thunder, the wrangling of human passions below me, were to me as if they were not."

Some of his sermons are full of vacation-rambles. He passes through woods and gardens and plucks flowers and fragrant leaves, which will all have to do service in Brooklyn Church; he watches the crowded flight of pigeons from the treetops, and thinks of men's riches that so make themselves wings and fly away. As he scales the mountains and sees the summer storms sweep through the valleys beneath him, he thinks of the storms in the human heart—"many, many storms there are that lie low and hug the ground, and the way to escape them is to go up the mountain sides and get higher than they are."

Mr. Beecher's travels in Europe were not thrown away upon his ardent and artistic temperament. He has stood before the great pictures to some purpose, and has not failed to read their open secret.

"Have you ever stood in Dresden to watch that matchless picture of Raphael's, the 'Madonna di San Siste'? Engravings of it are all through the world; but no engraving has ever reproduced the mother's face. The Infant Christ that she holds is far more nearly represented than the mother. In her face there is a mist. It is wonder, it is love, it is adoration, it is awe—it is all these mingled, as if she held in her hands her babe, and yet it was God! That picture means nothing to me as it does to the Roman Church; but it means everything to me, because I believe that every mother should love the God that is in her child, and that every mother's heart should be watching to discern and see in the child, which is more than flesh and blood, something that takes hold of immortality and glory."

—Selected from the Contemporary Review.



LXIV

THE LONDON "TIMES" ON LOWELL

The London Times, sometimes nicknamed the Thunderer, was for many years the most influential paper in the world. Emerson in his English Traits says, "No power in England is more felt, more feared, or more obeyed." In view of the high position of this paper it is a matter of interest to our American students of literature to read what this paper had to say on the death of Lowell.

Here follows the larger part of the editorial from the Times:

The death of Mr. Lowell will probably be more keenly and widely felt in England than would be that of any other American, or, indeed, of any other man who was not a fellow-countryman of our own. To very many in England it will be counted as a grave personal loss; and thousands more will miss in him one whom through his writings they had admired, felt with, laughed with, as with a friend. For a long time past, in fact ever since he quitted the Legation, his long annual visits to London have been regarded by a wide circle as one of the events of the year, and he himself as one of the most valued guests. We had hoped that this last June would again see him in his old London haunts, bright, genial, interesting as ever; but a cruel fate decided that this was not to be, and neither the Old World nor the New should know him more. Never a strong man, he has succumbed, at a ripe age, it is true, but prematurely, as all will think who knew how fresh his intelligence and his sympathies were to the last. With him there passes away one of the very few Americans who were the equals of any son of the Old World—of any Frenchman or any Englishman—in that indefinable mixture of qualities, which we sum up for want of a better word, under the name of culture. How did he arrive at it? The answer is, by natural gifts, by constant play of mind with mind in talk, and by reading. On those who casually met Mr. Lowell in society, he certainly did not make the impression of a book-worm, or of a man to whom books were indispensable; but none the less is it true that whenever official business was not too heavy, he invariably read for a minimum of four hours a day. This did not include the time that he gave to ephemeral literature; it was the time that he spent in the serious reading of books, generally old books. How many of us, not professed students, can show a record as good, or half as good? He read quickly, too, in various languages, his favorites being the English of the Elizabethans, Spanish, old French, and modern French. His excellent memory and wonderful assimilative power built up this reading into the mental endowments that all the world admired.

When Mr. Lowell came to England as the representative of the United States under the last Republican administration, London felt a sympathetic curiosity as to the author of the famous Biglow Papers and of so much excellent prose criticism. In a very short time the feeling warmed into admiration and friendship. The official world spoke well of the way in which the new minister performed his duties—generally not very heavy, but always demanding tact and prudence—of his position as minister. Menacing sounds, indeed, began to be heard from across the ocean, when the Irish Fenians, who control so much of the press of the United States, began to raise the cry that Mr. Lowell sacrificed the interests of their dynamitard friends to a brutal British government; but, as the Washington officials took no notice, nobody here paid much attention to the matter. In social life, the new minister began to be a power. He went everywhere—to the houses of the great, to the houses of the men of letters, and to places where such people most do congregate. His talk was excellent give-and-take. He was neither a professional anecdotist, like another famous American talker, Mr. Chauncey Depew, nor a man on the watch for something to disagree with, like Mr. Blaine, nor even, as was his admirable successor, Mr. Phelps, a man of long silences broken by flashes of humor. Mr. Lowell seemed to know everything and have his knowledge always to hand; he was quick in repartee; he mixed anecdote with reflection in the happiest manner; he laughed at others' jests, and they laughed at his. Still, one had to be a little careful with him, for there were points on which he was extremely sensitive. Nobody, for example, must talk in his presence of Americanisms, or hint that the standard of language and literature observed in America showed any deflection from the best standard of the race....

On one occasion Mr. Lowell was sorely tempted to make his permanent home here. Just about the time of his ceasing to be minister, he was seriously sounded as to his willingness to be nominated to the new post of professor of English language and literature at Oxford. Had he consented to stand, not even a board determined to sink literature in philology could have passed over his claims. But he declined, for two reasons. There were claims of family, over in Massachusetts, and, greatly as he loved the mental atmosphere of England, he thought it his duty not to accept a definitely English post. And the sense of duty is strong in that old Puritan stock from which he sprang.

... But the distinguishing feature of Mr. Lowell was his adding to these high literary gifts the strong practical side which made of him a social power and a diplomatist. Naturally, such a man made a mark by his speeches, and happy was the audience, at the unveiling of a monument or at a literary dinner, that had the privilege of listening to Mr. Lowell. Seldom in England, where this kind of speaking is not cultivated as an art, have we witnessed such a perfect union of self-possession, sense, and salt. The speech on Henry Fielding, the speech in which he compared the sound of London to "the roaring loom of time," the address on Democracy—to mention but a few—will not be easily forgotten. Nor will those who had the privilege of experiencing it, in however slight a degree, forget the sweet affectionateness which, in spite of an occasional irritability and over-sensitiveness, was at the root of Mr. Lowell's character. Corrupt politicians disliked him and feared the barbed arrows of his indignant wit; but he goes to the grave mourned by all that is best in America, and he takes with him the heart-felt regard as well as the admiration, of this elder branch of our common English race.



LXV

THE WRITING OF "AMERICA"

The Rev. Dr. Samuel F. Smith, author of America, died in Boston in 1895. On April 3, of the same year, he had received a grand public testimonial in Music Hall in recognition of his authorship of America. In the souvenir of that occasion Dr. Smith tells how he came to write the poem that made him famous.

"In the year 1831 William C. Woodbridge, of New York, a noted educator, was deputed to visit Germany and inspect the system of the public schools, that if he should find in them any features of interest unknown to our public schools here they might be adopted in the schools of the United States. He found that in the German schools much attention was given to music; he also found many books containing music and songs for children. Returning home, he brought several of these music-books, and placed them in the hands of Mr. Lowell Mason, then a noted composer, organist, and choir leader. Having himself no knowledge of the German language he brought them to me at Andover, where I was then studying theology, requesting me, as I should find time, to furnish him translations of the German words, or to write new hymns and songs adapted to the German music.

"On a dismal day in February, 1832, looking over one of these books, my attention was drawn to a tune which attracted me by its simple and natural movement and its fitness for children's choirs. Glancing at the German words at the foot of the page, I saw that they were patriotic, and I was instantly inspired to write a patriotic hymn of my own.

"Seizing a scrap of waste paper, I began to write, and in half an hour I think the words stood upon it substantially as they are sung to-day. I did not know at the time that the tune was the British God Save the King. I do not share the regrets of those who deem it an evil that the national tune of Britain and America is the same. On the contrary, I deem it a new and beautiful tie of union between the mother and the daughter, one furnishing the music (if, indeed, it is really English), and the other the words.

"I did not propose to write a national hymn. I did not think that I had done so. I laid the song aside, and nearly forgot that I had made it. Some weeks later I sent it to Mr. Mason, and on the following Fourth of July, much to my surprise, he brought it out at a children's celebration in the Park Street Church, in Boston, where it was first sung in public."



LXVI

ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS AND HER FIRST STORY

Some years ago the author of Gates Ajar told in an American magazine how she began her literary career. From this account we quote:

"The town of Lawrence was three miles and a half from Andover. Up to the year 1860 we had considered Lawrence chiefly in the light of a place to drive to.... Upon the map of our young fancy the great mills were sketched in lightly; we looked up from the restaurant ice-cream to see the hands pour out for dinner, a dark and restless, but a patient, throng, used in those days, to standing eleven hours and quarter—women and girls—at their looms, six days of the week, and making no audible complaints; for socialism had not reached Lawrence, and anarchy was content to bray in distant parts of the geography at which the factory people had not arrived when they left school....

"...One January evening, we were forced to think about the mills with curdling horror that no one living in that locality when the tragedy happened will forget.

"At five o'clock the Pemberton Mills, all hands being at the time on duty, without a tremor of warning, sank to the ground.

"At the erection of the factory a pillar with a defective core had passed careless inspectors. In technical language the core had 'floated' an eighth of an inch from its position. The weak spot in the too thin wall of the pillar had bided its time, and yielded. The roof, the walls, the machinery fell upon seven hundred and fifty living men and women, and buried them. Most of these were rescued, but eighty-eight were killed. As the night came on, those watchers on Andover Hill who could not join the rescuing parties, saw a strange and fearful light at the north.

"Where we were used to watching the beautiful belt of the lighted mills blaze—a zone of laughing fire from east to west, upon the horizon bar—a red and awful glare went up. The mill had taken fire. A lantern, overturned in the hands of a man who was groping to save an imprisoned life, had flashed to the cotton, or the wool, or the oil with which the ruins were saturated. One of the historic conflagrations of New England resulted.

"With blanching cheeks we listened to the whispers that told us how the mill-girls, caught in the ruins beyond hope of escape, began to sing. They were used to singing, poor things, at their looms—mill-girls always are—and their young souls took courage from the familiar sound of one another's voices. They sang the hymns and songs which they had learned in the schools and churches. No classical strains, no 'music for music's sake,' ascended from that furnace; no ditty of love or frolic, but the plain, religious outcries of the people: Heaven is my Home, Jesus, Lover of my Soul, and Shall we Gather at the River? Voice after voice dropped. The fire raced on. A few brave girls still sang:

Shall we gather at the river, There to walk and worship ever?

"But the startled Merrimac rolled by, red as blood beneath the glare of the burning mills, and it was left to the fire and the river to finish the chorus.

"At the time this tragedy occurred, I felt my share of its horror, like other people; but no more than that. My brother, being of the privileged sex, was sent over to see the scene, but I was not allowed to go.

"Years after, I cannot say just how many, the half-effaced negative came back to form under the chemical of some new perception of the significance of human tragedy.

"It occurred to me to use the event as the basis of a story. To this end I set forth to study the subject. I had heard nothing in those days about 'material,' and conscience in the use of it, and little enough about art. We did not talk about realism then. Of critical phraseology I knew nothing, and of critical standards only what I had observed by reading the best fiction. Poor novels and stories I did not read. I do not remember being forbidden them; but, by that parental art finer than denial, they were absent from my convenience.

"It needed no instruction in the canons of art, however, to teach me that to do a good thing, one must work hard for it. So I gave the best part of a month to the study of the Pemberton Mill tragedy, driving to Lawrence, and investigating every possible avenue of information left at that too long remove of time which might give the data. I visited the rebuilt mills, and studied the machinery. I consulted engineers and officials and physicians, newspaper men, and persons who had been in the mill at the time of its fall. I scoured the files of old local papers, and from these I took certain portions of names, actually involved in the catastrophe, though, of course, fictitiously used. When there was nothing left for me to learn on the subject, I came home and wrote a little story called "The Tenth of January,' and sent it to the Atlantic Monthly, where it appeared in due time.

"This story is of more interest to its author than it can possibly be now to any reader, because it distinctly marked for me the first recognition which I received from literary people."



LXVII

SIDNEY LANIER

Next to Poe, Sidney Lanier ranks as the foremost of the poets of the South. In character Lanier is one of the rarest and purest of souls. His life was so chaste, his ideals so high, his devotion to his art so unselfish that he has been called "the Sir Galahad among American poets." Dr. Gilman, who in his capacity as president of Johns Hopkins University had frequent opportunities to observe Lanier, who was an instructor in this institution, has made the following comment,—"The appearance of Lanier was striking. There was nothing eccentric or odd about him, but his words, manners, ways of speech, were distinguished. I have heard a lady say that if he took his place in a crowded horse-car, an exhilarating atmosphere seemed to be introduced by his breezy ways."

He was born in Georgia in 1842. After graduation from a small college in his native state and then serving as tutor for a short time, he entered the Confederate army. During his war experiences, whether in the field or in prison, he studied poetry and played the flute. These two arts were his passions for life. While yet in his college days he had acquired a fine reputation as a flute-player. At eighteen he was said to be the best flute-player in Georgia. One of his college friends at the time made record of his admiration in writing,—"Tutor Lanier is the finest flute-player you or I ever saw. It is perfectly splendid—his playing. He is far-famed for it. His flute cost fifty dollars, and he runs the notes as easily as any one on the piano."

The passionate love of his sensitive soul is revealed in this poetic description of a visit to the opera:

"I have just come in from the Tempest at the Grand Opera House ... and my heart is so full.... In one interlude between the scenes we had a violin solo, adagio, with soft accompaniment by orchestra. As the fair tender notes came, they opened like flower-buds expanding into flowers under the sweet rain of the accompaniment. Kind heavens! My head fell on the seat in front, I was weighed down with great loves and great ideas and divine inflowings and devout outflowings, and as each note grew and budded, and became a bud again and died into a fresh birth in the next bud tone, I also lived these flower-tone lives, and grew and expanded, and folded back and died and was born again, and partook of the unfathomable mysteries of flowers and tones." And at another time he writes in the same vein,—"'Twas opening night of Theodore Thomas' orchestra at Central Park Garden, and I could not resist the temptation to go and bathe in the sweet amber seas of this fine orchestra, and so I went, and tugged me through a vast crowd, and, after standing some while, found a seat, and the baton waved, and I plunged into the sea, and lay and floated. Ah! the dear flutes and oboes and horns drifted me hither and thither, and the great violins and small violins swayed me upon waves, and overflowed me with strong lavations, and sprinkled glistening foam in my face, and in among the clarinetti, as among waving water-lilies with plexile stems, pushed my easy way, and so, even lying in the music waters, I floated and flowed, my soul utterly bent and prostrate." Who has ever written more expressively of that ecstasy that lays hold of the sensuous soul of the lover of fine music?

Lanier is one of the heroic souls of song. Like Stevenson he was cheery enough to jest about his poverty. His contest with the demon of Want seems to have been fiercer even than was the warfare waged by the gay romancer. Lanier wishes to meet Charlotte Cushman, but he is not sure that he can; he must sell a poem or two to get the price of a suitable new dress coat. "Alas," he writes to the lady herself, in that gay spirit of humor which is the strong defense of some sensitive souls, "with what unspeakable care I would have brushed this present garment of mine in days gone by, if I had dreamed that the time would come when so great a thing as a visit to you might hang upon the little length of its nap! Behold, it is not only in man's breast that pathos lies, and the very coat lapel that covers it may be a tragedy."

The poetic temperament is commonly supposed to be at variance with domestic tranquillity. The domestic life of Lanier is a contradiction to that popular belief. He ends one of his letters to his wife with this petition,—"Let us lead them (the children) to love everything in the world, above the world, and under the world adequately; that is the sum and substance of a perfect life. And so God's divine rest be upon every head under the roof that covers thine this night, prayeth thy husband."

In his letter to Gibson Peacock, January 6, 1878, we have a charming picture of the delight of a man who has at last found a place to nest his family, after some years of forlorn wanderings and uncertainties:

"...I have also moved my family into our new home, have had a Christmas tree for the youngsters, have looked up a cheap school for Harry and Sidney, have discharged my daily duties as first flute of the Peabody Orchestra, have written a couple of poems and part of an essay on Beethoven and Bismarck, have accomplished at least a hundred thousand miscellaneous nothings.... We are in a state of supreme content with our new home; it really seems to me as incredible that myriads of people have been living in their own homes heretofore; as to the young couple with a first baby it seems impossible that a great many other couples have had similar prodigies. Good heavens! how I wish that the whole world had a home.

"I confess that I am a little nervous about the gas bills, which must come in, in the course of time; and there are the water rates, and several sorts of imposts and taxes; but then the dignity of being liable to such things is a very supporting consideration. No man is a Bohemian who has to pay a water tax and a street tax. Every day when I sit down in my dining-room—my dining-room! I find the wish growing stronger that each poor soul in Baltimore, whether saint or sinner, could come and dine with me. How I would carve out the merry-thoughts for the old hags! How I would stuff the big wan-eyed rascals till their rags ripped again! There was a knight of old times who built the dining-hall of his castle across the highway, so that every wayfarer must perforce pass through; there the traveler, rich or poor, found always a trencher and wherewithal to fill it. Three times a day in my own chair at my own table, do I envy that knight and wish that I might do as he did."



LXVIII

THE STORY OF MARK TWAIN'S DEBTS

The story of "Mark Twain's Debts" is told in The Bookman by Frederick A. King. We are permitted to tell the story in Mr. King's own words:

An anecdote is recorded of Mark Twain and General Grant, who, in company with William D. Howells, once sat together at luncheon, spread in the General's private office in the purlieus of Wall Street, in the days when war and statesmanship had been laid aside, and the hero of battles and civic life was endeavoring to retrieve his scattered fortunes by a trial of business.

"Why don't you write your memoirs?" asked Mark Twain, mindful of how much there was to record, and how eager would be the readers of such a work.

But the General with characteristic modesty demurred, and the point was not pressed. This was several years before the failure of the firm of Ward and Grant, which swept away the General's private fortune, leaving him an old man, broken in health, and filled with anxiety about the provision for his family after he should be gone.

When the evil days at last came, some memory of the suggestion dropped by his friend, the humorist—who could be immensely serious, too, when need be—may have led to the task that, in added contention with pain and suffering, constituted the last battle that the General should fight.

Whatever the influence moving General Grant to the final decision to compose his memoirs, it happened, to his great fortune, that Mark Twain again called, and found that the work he had long ago suggested was at last in progress; but also that the inexperienced writer, modestly underestimating the commercial value of his forthcoming work, was about to sign away the putative profits. Fifty thousand dollars offered for his copyright seemed a generous sum to the unliterary General Grant, and it took the vehement persuasion of one who was himself a publisher to convince him that his prospective publishers would not hesitate at quadrupling that sum rather than lose the chance of publishing the book.

When the conjecture was proven true, the General with characteristic generosity, withdrew the contract from his prospective publishers and placed it in the hands of the firm that Mark Twain headed. All the provisions were amply fulfilled; for when Mark Twain paid his last visit to the stricken author at the place of sojourn on Mount McGregor, he brought to the now speechless sufferer the smile of happiness and satisfaction by saying: "General, there is in the bank now royalties on advanced sales aggregating nearly $300,000. It is at Mrs. Grant's order."

The anecdote is given at this length because, taken in connection with subsequent events dealing with General Grant's benefactor, it points a forceful illustration of the irony of fortune. There came a day when the very instrument by which Mark Twain was enabled to provide a peaceful close to the life of a brave warrior, and to guarantee affluence for his family, delivered himself a stroke that dissipated his own fortune at a time when age is supposed to have absorbed the vigor for a new grapple with destinies.

In 1884 the publishing firm of C.L. Webster and Company was organized to publish the works of Mark Twain. Of this firm Mark Twain was president; but he took little active part in the management of its affairs. Able to conceive in broad outlines successful policies, he was singularly deficient in the power to handle the details of their execution. On April 18, 1894, the firm whose business enterprises had always figured in large sums through the immense popularity of the author-publisher's own works, the Memoirs of General Grant, and the Life of Pope Leo, made an assignment for the benefit of its creditors. The bankrupt firm acknowledged liabilities approximating $80,000. What in the ordinary view of commercial affairs would have furnished but one item in the list of failures which record the misfortunes of ninety per cent who engage in business, became in this instance a notable case through the eminence of the chief actor.

What might he have done?

The law could lay claim upon his personal assets. To surrender these possessions proved no act of self-sacrifice, considering his wife's fortune, upon which the law had no claim. His wife, however, joined him in the act of renunciation, and they stood together penniless. Beyond this point there could be no legal, and, to many minds, no moral responsibility for the debts of his firm. One can speculate upon the force of the temptation to take advantage of the position. Mark Twain was sixty years old, and ill at that. Having sacrificed all he possessed to meet the demands of his creditors, he might justly claim the benefit of what remained of capacity for wealth-producing labor. His own words in reply to a slander which insinuated that he had set to work again for his own benefit are splendid for inspiration and honesty:

"The law recognizes no mortgage on a man's brain, and a merchant who has given up all he has may take advantage of the laws of insolvency, and start free again for himself; but I am not a business man, and honor is a harder master than the law. It cannot compromise for less than a hundred cents on the dollar."

... The great parallel case to the one here under examination is that of Sir Walter Scott, who lost his all through the failure of his printers, the Ballantynes, and between January, 1826, and January, 1828, earned for his creditors nearly L40,000. In the early stages of this trial he suffered acutely from the attitude of his friends, and he records in his diary how some would smile as if to say: "Think nothing about it, my lad; it is quite out of our thoughts;" how others adopted an affected gravity "such as one sees and despises at a funeral," while the best bred "just shook hands and went on."

How the world treated Mark Twain we learn from the speech at the banquet given by the Lotus Club on his return from his arduous journey around the world: "There were ninety-six creditors in all, and not by a finger's weight did ninety-five out of the ninety-six add to the burden of that time."

"'Don't you worry, and don't you hurry,' was what they said." With the courage of a man buffeted, but not beaten, he gathered himself up for "one more last try for fortune and fair fame." In the latter part of 1895 he started out on a tour of the English-speaking countries of the world to give lectures and readings from his own works.

There were misgivings, of course, as to the success of the venture. Here was a field not absolutely untried, but not hitherto cultivated to the point of assured success. In 1873 he had made a lecture tour in England and in 1885 had given platform readings in company with George W. Cable. But age had sapped the zest for public appearance, and he was skeptical of his power to move people with interest in his books. Moreover, there was a further thing to be considered, a possible impediment to success among the English colonies which he proposed to visit. His popularity with Englishmen had never been great, owing to the liberties he had taken with that nation's people in Innocents Abroad.

The latter apprehension was the more remote, however, for, starting from New York, he had a continent to traverse before embarking for the shores that held for him an uncertain welcome. To test his ability to interest an audience, to "try it on the dog," as they say in theatrical parlance, he subjected himself to the severest test possible, crossed to Randall's Island and read before a company of boys. Unsophisticated by the lecturer's reputation as a humorist, the boys proved to be the organs of sincerest testimony to the permanence of the old power to amuse, and the first public appearance in Cleveland, Ohio, was undertaken with fewer misgivings.

From Vancouver, Mark Twain sailed for Sidney and gave readings before the English-speaking communities of Australia; then continued on to Tasmania, New Zealand, Ceylon, India and South Africa.

His fears as to his welcome among Englishmen were proved to be groundless. In Australia, great as was his success as a lecturer, his personal success outweighed even that, and the market on his books was exhausted. We cannot follow him on this trip of mingled arduous labor and personal satisfaction. The humorous reactions of his homely vision upon the quaint, the bizarre, the pretentious, aspects of life in remote parts of the world may be read in his own record of this journey, Following the Equator. There are few things to record of this great effort to pay his debts.

In India he was taken ill, but the disease was not severe. In June, 1897, when he had circled the globe and had settled for a time in London, cablegrams came from that city announcing his mental and physical collapse. The English-speaking world was stricken with sympathy, and the New York Herald at once began a subscription fund for his relief. The report was contradicted at once, but admiration for the author's strenuous effort seemed to grow, and the Herald fund was assuming generous proportions when the following characteristic message declining to accept the relief came from the proposed beneficiary:

I was glad when you instituted that movement, for I was tired of the fact and worry of debt, but I recognized that it is not permissible for a man whose case is not hopeless to shift his burden to other men's shoulders.

In November of the same year a report was circulated that he was out of debt, but from Vienna, whither he had gone to live, came a laconic cablegram nailing the optimistic impeachment:

Lie. Wrote no such letters. Still deeply in debt.

Nearly half of the original indebtedness needed to be paid, and here, with scarcely an opposing voice in judgment, he might have waived the claim upon himself for his firm's responsibilities, but he avowed that he would pay dollar for dollar.

The time of accomplishment was not long in coming. When the undertaking was begun, it was with the resolution to clear up the debt in three years. Allowing for the unexpected, it was feared it would take four, then at the age of sixty-four a new start in life would be open to the author, who might point to a considerable occupancy of space on library shelves and regard a life work accomplished. It took but two years and a half to pay the debt. He began the effort the latter part of 1895 and finished it in the early part of 1898.

His return to America and his home in 1900 was, in the unromantic procedure of our self-conscious days, of the nature of a triumph. He was formally welcomed by the Lotus Club, and, of course, as delicately as might be, he was praised for his honesty. His reply to compliment was a generous recognition of social virtue, which renders easier such an effort as he made.

Said he:

Your president has referred to certain burdens which I was weighted with. I am glad he did, as it gives me an opportunity which I wanted. To speak of those debts—you all knew what he meant when he referred to it, and to the poor bankrupt firm of C.L. Webster and Company. No one has said a word about those creditors. There were ninety-six creditors in all, and not by a finger's weight did ninety-five out of the ninety-six add to the burden of that time. They treated me well; they treated me handsomely. I never knew I owed them anything; not a sign came from them.

The story is one of simple elements, and suits the prosaic character of our age. It does not match Sir Walter's for romance. There was no such brain-racking work; no forcing of the phantasmal multitude of the poet's brain to dance to pay the expenses of the funeral; no mediaeval castle to sacrifice; no tragic failure of the ultimate goal. What there is of real romance seems obscured by the facts of more or less safe speculation upon assured futures. It was a safe business venture.

The hero was not unworthy of the praises which his peers at the Lotus dinner were glad to lavish. Said St. Clair McKelway:

"He has enough excess and versatility to be a genius. He has enough quality and quantity of virtues to be a saint. But he has honorably transmuted his genius into work, whereby it has been brought into relations with literature and with life. And he has preferred warm fellowship to cool perfection, so that sinners love him and saints are content to wait for him."



LXIX

HAMLIN GARLAND'S LITERARY BEGINNING

Hamlin Garland is one of the writers whose name suggests the great Northwest. He was born in Wisconsin in 1860, went to Iowa and later to Dakota, striving at an early age to wrest a living from the soil. At ten years of age he plowed seventy acres of land. His vivid descriptions of Western farm-life are not the results of reading and casual observation, supplemented by a vivid imagination; they are the products of actual experiences.

In a personal interview with Mr. Garland, Frank G. Carpenter gives us the following interesting particulars:

"The conversation here turned to Mr. Garland's literary work, and he told me how he was first led to write by reading Hawthorne's Mosses from an Old Manse. This book so delighted him that he wanted to write essays like it for a living, and he practised at this during the intervals of his school-teaching and studying for years. It was not until he was older that he attempted fiction or poetry. The story of his first published article is a curious one. Said he:

"'My first literary success was a poem which I wrote for Harper's Weekly, entitled 'Lost in the Norther.' It was a poem describing a blizzard and the feelings of a man lost in it. I received twenty-five dollars for it.'

"'That must have been a good deal of money to you then, Mr. Garland?'

"'It was,' was the reply. 'It was my first money in literature, and I spent it upon my father and mother. I paid five dollars for a copy of Grant's Memoirs, which I sent father, and with the remaining twenty dollars I bought a silk dress for my mother. It was the first silk dress she had ever had.'

"'When did you write your first fiction?'

"'My mother got half of the money I received for that,' replied Mr. Garland, 'as it was due to her that I wrote it. I had been studying in Boston for several years, when I went out to Dakota to visit my parents. The night after I arrived I was talking with mother about old times and old friends. She told me how one family had gone back to New York for a visit, and had returned very happy, in getting back to their Western home. As she told the story, the pathos of it struck me. I went into another room and began to write. The story was one of the best chapters of my book Main-Traveled Roads. I read it to mother, and she liked it, and upon telling her that I thought it was worth at least seventy-five dollars, she replied: "Well, if that is so, I think you ought to divvy with me, for I gave you the story." "I will," said I, and so, when I got my seventy-five dollars, I sent her a check for thirty-seven dollars and fifty cents. I got many other good suggestions during that trip to Dakota. I wrote poems and stories. Some of the stories were published in The Century, and I remember that I received six hundred dollars within two weeks from its editors. It was perhaps a year later before I published my first book. It had a good sale, and I have been writing from that day to this.'

"Hamlin Garland spends a part of every year in the West. He has bought the old home place where he was born in Wisconsin, and he has there a little farm of four acres, upon which he raises asparagus, strawberries, onions, and bushels of other things. His mother lives with him. During my talk with him the other night he said: 'I like the West and the Western people. I have been brought up with them, and I expect to devote my life to writing about them. I spend a portion of each summer on the Rocky Mountains, camping out. I like to go where I can sleep in the open air and have elbow-room away from the crowded city.'"



LXX

STEPHEN CRANE: A "WONDERFUL BOY"

In 1900, Stephen Crane, while yet barely thirty, died. His early passing away was widely regarded as a loss to American literature. In England he was especially admired as a vigorous writer. His The Red Badge of Courage won him wide recognition as a keen analyst. Old soldiers who read the story could not believe that it was written by a boy who was born after the war had ended. By many critics his stories of boyhood are considered the writings that shall be longest remembered. Shortly before his death Mr. Crane wrote the following letter to the editor of a Rochester daily:

"My father was a Methodist minister, author of numerous works of theology, and an editor of various periodicals of the church. He was a graduate of Princeton, and he was a great, fine, simple mind. As for myself, I went to Lafayette College, but did not graduate. I found mining-engineering not at all to my taste. I preferred base-ball. Later I attended Syracuse University, where I attempted to study literature, but found base-ball again much more to my taste. My first work in fiction was for the New York Tribune, when I was eighteen years old. During this time, one story of the series went into the Cosmopolitan. At the age of twenty I wrote my first novel—Maggie. It never really got on the market, but it made for me the friendship of William Dean Howells and Hamlin Garland, and since that time I have never been conscious for an instant that those friendships have at all diminished. After completing Maggie, I wrote mainly for the New York Press and for The Arena. In the latter part of my twenty-first year I began The Red Badge of Courage, and completed it early in my twenty-second year. The year following I wrote the poems contained in the volume known as The Black Riders. On the first day of last November I was precisely twenty-nine years old and had finished my fifth novel, Active Service. I have only one pride, and that is that the English edition of The Red Badge of Courage has been received with great praise by the English reviewers. I am proud of this simply because the remoter people would seem more just and harder to win."

In another letter to the same editor he writes about his literary sincerity:

"The one thing that deeply pleases me is the fact that men of sense invariably believe me to be sincere. I know that my work does not amount to a string of dried beans—I always calmly admit it—but I also know that I do the best that is in me without regard to praise or blame. When I was the mark for every humorist in the country, I went ahead; and now when I am the mark for only fifty per cent of the humorists of the country, I go ahead; for I understand that a man is born into the world with his own pair of eyes, and he is not at all responsible for his vision—he is merely responsible for his quality of personal honesty. To keep close to this personal honesty is my supreme ambition."



LXXI

EUGENE FIELD

The general public will always remember Eugene Field as the author of Little Boy Blue, the many friends of Field, in addition to their memory of him as the charming poet of childhood, will always think of him as the irrepressible prince of merry-makers. To perpetrate a joke Field spared neither labor nor his friends. Many of his pranks were mere whimsicalities, innocent pleasantries that hurt no one. He would spend three hours in illustrating a letter to a friend, filling the letter with gossipy trivialities and using six different kinds of ink to make it look grotesque.

During the last years of Field's too brief life he was importuned so frequently for the facts concerning his career that he printed a brief biography or Auto-Analysis, as he called it. This contains a generous portion of fiction mingled with some fact. He begins his autobiography with:

"I was born in St. Louis, Mo., September 3, 1850.... Upon the death of my mother (1856), I was put in the care of my (paternal) cousin, Miss Mary Field French, at Amherst, Mass.

"In 1865 I entered the private school of Rev. James Tufts, Monson, Mass., and there fitted for Williams College, which institution I entered as a freshman in 1868. Upon my father's death, in 1869, I entered the sophomore class of Knox College, Galesburg, Ill., my guardian, John W. Burgess, now of Columbia College, being then a professor in that institution. But in 1870 I went to Columbia, Mo., and entered the State University there, and completed my junior year with my brother. In 1872 I visited Europe, spending six months and my patrimony in France, Italy, Ireland, and Italy. In May, 1873, I became a reporter on the St. Louis Evening Journal. In October of that year I married Miss Julia Sutherland Comstock (born in Chenango Co., N.Y.), of St. Joseph, Mo., at that time a girl of sixteen. We have had eight children—three daughters and five sons."

This is not all of the autobiography. There are about a thousand words more. The reason Field attended three collegiate institutions is that his mischievous pranks made him persona non grata to the college authorities. In after years the old historian of Knox College wrote: "He was prolific of harmless pranks and his school life was a big joke."

The gay irresponsibility of Field is early illustrated in the reckless manner in which he spent "six months and his patrimony" in Europe. In 1872 Field received $8,000, the first portion of his patrimony. He proposed to a young friend, Comstock, the brother of Julia, whom he later married, that they go to Europe. Field offered to bear all the expenses of the trip. They went and for six months they had a glorious time. Soon the money was gone; he telegraphed for more; was obliged to sell the odd curios he had gathered to pay his way home. This expenditure of his money in a trip abroad is not so unprofitable a venture as it appears. The elder Field had left a fortune valued at $60,000; Eugene's share was to be about $25,000. In two years he spent about $20,000. His brother Roswell, more prudent, lived for several years on his share but finally, owing to the depreciation of real estate values, saw his fortune dwindle away. He is said to have envied the shrewdness of Eugene in spending his money when he had it.

Field had the highest respect for womankind. In his Auto-Analysis he writes: "I am fond of companionship of women, and I have no unconquerable prejudice against feminine beauty. I recall with pride that in twenty-two years of active journalism I have always written in reverential praise of womankind." This respect for womankind, however, did not prevent him from playing pranks upon his wife. On their wedding journey he delighted to tease his young Julia by ordering at Delmonico's "boiled pig's feet a la St. Jo." A few years later a quartet was accustomed to meet at Eugene's home. Field did not sing with the quartet but as a fifth member acted as reader or reciter in their little entertainments. Eugene delighted to tease his wife by walking into the parlor when the quartet was practicing at his home and saying: "Well, boys, let us take off our coats and take it easy; it's too hot." When this was done, Eugene would blaze forth in the brilliancy of a red flannel undershirt, with white cuffs and collar pinned to his shirt.

When Carl Schurz was making his senatorial campaign in Missouri, Field was sent with the party to report the meetings. Field, although greatly admiring Schurz, took great delight in misreporting Schurz, whose only comment would be: "Field, why will you lie so outrageously?" One evening when a group of German serenaders had assembled in front of the hotel to do honor to Schurz, Field rushed out and pretending to be Schurz, addressed them in broken English. At another time, at a political meeting, Field suddenly stepped out to the front and began:

"Ladies and Shentlemen: I haf such a pad colt dot et vas not bossible for me to make you a speedg to-night, but I haf die bleasure to introduce to you my brilliant chournalistic friendt Euchene Fielt, who will spoke you in my blace."

While in Denver Field worked upon the Tribune. Over his desk hung,—"This is my busy day," and on the wall,—"God bless our proofreader, He can't call for him too soon." In his office he kept an old bottomless black-walnut chair. Across its yawning chasm he would carelessly thrown old newspapers. As it was the only unoccupied chair in the room, the casual visitor would drop unsuspectingly into the trap. The angry subscriber who had come to wreak vengeance upon the writer of irritating personalities could not withstand the apparently sincere apologies which Field lavished upon his victim. It was so humiliating to a man of Field's sensibilities to be obliged to receive such important visitors in an office whose very furniture indicated the poverty of the newspaper.

In 1883 Field moved to Chicago, where the rest of his life was passed. Mr. Stone, one of the proprietors of The News, had gone to Denver to have a personal interview with Field, whose work had attracted attention in the newspaper world. Field stipulated that he was to have a column a day for his own use. The Chicago public soon was attracted by the brilliant versatility of the writer of "Sharps and Flats," the title of the column written by Field.

Some months after Field had moved to Chicago he concluded that the general public ought to know that he had arrived. It was a cold morning in December. "So he arrayed himself in a long linen duster, buttoned up from knees to collar, put an old straw hat on his head, and taking a shabby book under one arm and a palm-leaf fan in his hand, he marched all the way down Clark Street, past the City Hall, to the office. Everywhere along the route he was greeted with jeers or pitying words, as his appearance excited the mirth or commiseration of the passers-by. When he reached the entrance to the Daily News office he was followed by a motley crowd of noisy urchins whom he dismissed with a grimace and the cabalistic gesture with which Nicholas Koorn perplexed and repulsed Antony Van Corlear from the battlement of the fortress of Rensellaerstein. Then closing the door in their astonished faces, he mounted the two flights of stairs to the editorial rooms, where he recounted, with the glee of the boy he was in such things, the success of his joke."

Field had execrable taste in dress and he knew it. Consequently he enjoyed presenting neckties to his friends. His biographer, Slason Thompson, who worked in the same newspaper office, separated only by a low thin partition, relates that in the afternoon about two o'clock Field would stick his head above the partition and say,—"Come along, Nompy, and I'll buy you a new necktie," and when Thompson would decline the offer, Field would mildly respond, "Very well, if you won't let me buy you a necktie, you must buy me a lunch," and off to the coffee-house they would march, where the bill would be paid by Thompson, for Field was indeed through life the gay knight he styled himself, sans peur and sans monnaie.

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