AND SKETCHES 
 
 CHARLES FORSTER SMITH
 
 REMINISCENCES 
 AND SKETCHES 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES FORSTER SMITH 
 
 NASHVILLE, TENN.; DALLAS. TEX. 
 
 PUBLISHING HOUSE OF THE M. E. CHURCH. SOUTH 
 
 SMITH & LAMAR. AGENTS 
 
 1908
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1909, 
 
 BY 
 SMITH & LAMAR.
 
 TO 
 
 3amrn IS. (Carlialr 
 
 THE BEST MAN I HAVE EVER KNOWN AND MOST 
 POTENT HUMAN INFLUENCE IN MY LIFE
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 I. DR. GARLAND i 
 
 II. BlSHOP McTYEIRE 22 
 
 III. WILLIAM MALONE BASKERVILL 38 
 
 IV. PRESIDENT CHARLES KENDALL ADAMS 59 
 
 V. THE NATIONAL HERO 74 
 
 VI. THE SOUTH'S IDEAL HERO 96 
 
 VII. MAURICE THOMPSON 113 
 
 VIII. SIDNEY LANIER AS POET 136 
 
 IX. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 164 
 
 X. MATTHEW ARNOLD 189 
 
 XL STEPHEN PHILLIPS 242 
 
 XII. THE DISCIPLINE OF SUFFERING IN SOPHO- 
 CLES 263 
 
 XIII. THE MAKING OF A SCHOLAR 296 
 
 XIV. CHARACTER AND PERSONAL INFLUENCE 327 
 
 XV. OUR OLD COUNTRY SCHOOL 353 
 
 XVI. A UNIVERSITY FOR THE PEOPLE 362 
 
 XVII. FROM PROVINCIAL TO NATIONAL FEELING.. 374 
 XVIII. FROM HARVARD TO LEIPZIG UNIVERSITY.. 384 
 XIX. CHEYNE Row How Do LONDONERS PRO- 
 NOUNCE IT? 394 
 
 XX. THE PASTOR FOR ME 398 
 
 XXI. THE PLAIN PROSE OF LIFE IN THE SMOKY 
 
 MOUNTAINS 404 
 
 (v)
 
 vi Contents. 
 
 XXII. HOMERIC QUALITIES IN THE GREAT SMOKY 
 
 MOUNTAINS 4I , 
 
 XXIII. FROM ROAN TO MITCHELL 424 
 
 XXIV. CLINGMAN'S DOME
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 page 
 
 LANDON C. GARLAND i 
 
 BISHOP HOLLAND N. McTvEiRE 22 
 
 WILLIAM MALONE BASKERVILL 38 
 
 CHARLES KENDALL ADAMS 59 
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON 74 
 
 ROBERT EDWARD LEE 96 
 
 MAURICE THOMPSON 113 
 
 SIDNEY LANIER '. 136 
 
 RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 164 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 189 
 
 STEPHEN PHILLIPS 242 
 
 SOPHOCLES 263 
 
 (vii)
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 TiHE suggestion of this volume came from two 
 students of former years who have attained dis- 
 tinction in letters. If the approbation of old 
 friends in whose judgment and good taste one 
 has confidence is endorsed by acceptance on the 
 part of the first publisher to whom the material 
 is submitted, and a fair offer is made, it is ex- 
 cusable perhaps to yield to a secretly cherished 
 wish and bring old papers out again from their 
 dusty retirement. If the reception of the volume 
 should be as kindly as that of the individual pa- 
 pers, the author would have no reason to com- 
 plain. 
 
 Many thanks are hereby expressed to the jour- 
 nals whose kindness permits the reprinting of the 
 papers, namely: the Atlantic Monthly, Christian 
 Union, Independent, Methodist Review, Cumber- 
 land Presbyterian Review, Sewanee Review, 
 South Atlantic Quarterly, Transactions of the 
 Wisconsin Academy, Vanderbilt Quarterly, Chris- 
 tian Advocate, Southern Christian Advocate, and 
 Nashville American. 
 
 (be)
 
 LANDON C. GARLAND.
 
 REMINISCENCES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 I. 
 DOCTOR GARLAND. 
 
 Landon Cabell Garland, born in Nelson county, Vir- 
 ginia, March 21, 1810, was graduated from Hampden- 
 Sidney College, Virginia, in 1829, and was that year 
 elected Lecturer, later Professor of Chemistry, in Wash- 
 ington College, now Washington and Lee University. 
 In 1834 he accepted a professorship in Randolph-Macon 
 College, and in 1836 succeeded Stephen Olin as Presi- 
 dent. In 1846 he resigned to study law, but when just 
 ready to be admitted to the bar was offered the chair 
 of Physics and Astronomy in the University of Ala- 
 bama, which he accepted, entering upon its duties in 
 1847. In 1853-55 ne served as President of the North- 
 east and Southwest Alabama Railway, but returned to 
 the University of Alabama as President in 1855. He 
 held that position till the buildings were burned by the 
 Federal army during the Civil War, and after that was 
 retained as sole officer of the faculty to secure means 
 for rebuilding. Accepting a professorship in the Uni- 
 versity of Mississippi in 1867, he remained there till 
 elected Chancellor of the newly organized Vanderbilt 
 University in 1875. At Vanderbilt he was Chancellor 
 and Professor of Physics and Astronomy for eighteen 
 
 CO
 
 2 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 years ; then, his resignation of the former office, offered 
 in 1891, having been finally accepted (1893), when Dr. 
 Kirkland was elected Chancellor, he was continued on 
 full salary as Chancellor Emeritus and Professor of 
 Physics and Astronomy till his death, February 12, 
 1895- 
 
 IT was my habit, while at Vanderbilt Univer- 
 sity, occasionally to make notes of conversa- 
 tions with Dr. Garland. When he was in the 
 humor to talk freely of himself and his ex- 
 periences, it was a delight to listen to him, and 
 I used to feel that it was a pity this should all 
 be lost. He had had a longer educational career 
 than any man within my knowledge, and many 
 things he told properly belonged to educational 
 history. But I knew the Doctor's modesty was 
 such that he would positively forbid any public 
 use of facts given in private conversation. So I 
 would write afterwards in a notebook what had 
 especially impressed me, and as nearly as possi- 
 ble in his own words. Some of these conversa- 
 tions I shall now reproduce, following as close- 
 ly as may be the chronological order. If I 
 thought there was anything in these reminis- 
 cences that could rightly offend any one, I should 
 feel his prohibition still laid upon me and print 
 nothing. He was one of the simplest, most 
 guileless, sincerest. most unselfish men I ever
 
 Doctor Garland, 3 
 
 knew one of the two or three best men whom 
 it has been my good fortune to be intimately ac- 
 quainted with. I cannot remember the time 
 when his name was not a household word in 
 my family; for he had been the favorite in- 
 structor of my father and of my father-in-law, 
 and a brother of mine had been named for him 
 forty 1 years ago. I still recall the thrill with 
 which I first saw him on a railway train about 
 eighteen years ago, but could not summon cour- 
 age to address him. I owe him a debt of grati- 
 tude I can never repay, and I am sure he would 
 not have liked me to try to repay it with eulogy. 
 The best thing is to let him speak once more 
 for himself. 
 
 One of the most impressive scenes I ever wit- 
 nessed in the chapel at Vanderbilt was when Dr. 
 Garland, one Monday morning in 1885, referred 
 to the remark made by the pastor at church the 
 day before: "We have prayer meeting Friday 
 evenings at Wesley Hall, and the Chancellor will 
 not be there." He first commended the pastor for 
 his frankness and fidelity in not sparing him 
 when he felt it to be his duty to speak, and then 
 explained that he felt constrained to make a per- 
 sonal statement to the students. When he had 
 
 'Written in 1895.
 
 4 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 told of an infirmity that for years had rendered 
 it impossible for him to go out at night without 
 great loss of sleep, he turned to the students and 
 said : "But I appeal to you ; have I not made be- 
 fore you that loudest of all professions, a godly 
 life?" And I thought, "It is old Samuel again." 
 No one could dare to say that who had not a 
 blameless life behind him. About that time a 
 graduate of the university told me that he had 
 felt, and still felt, that Dr. Garland had misun- 
 derstood him and had done him an injustice 
 while he was a student, and yet that he rever- 
 enced him as he did no man living. It was a 
 pure tribute of respect to great and unselfish 
 character. 
 
 In October, 1885, Dr. Garland was telling me 
 one day about his early career. He was gradu- 
 ated from Hampden-Siclney College, Virginia 
 at that time "the second in age and first in rank 
 in Virginia" in September, 1829, and before his 
 graduation was elected Lecturer on Chemistry at 
 Washington College, now Washington and Lee 
 University. He was then in his twentieth year. 
 He had pursued the study of chemistry with en- 
 thusiasm in his junior year, and had taken it as 
 an extra in senior, reading a great deal parallel 
 of his own accord. Being a minor, he had to get 
 his father's permission to accept. He had been
 
 Doctor Garland. 5 
 
 expecting to study law, but his father told him 
 he might accept the position for three years, and 
 then return to the law. He filled the place so 
 acceptably that he was made full professor the 
 next year, but he modestly said he could never 
 have sustained himself at that age in a reputable 
 institution; the total absence, however, of any 
 previous instruction that deserved the name gave 
 him by way of contrast a reputation quite be- 
 yond his deserts. A wealthy farmer died, leav- 
 ing $25,000 to endow the chair of Chemistry, the 
 interest from which ($1,500), with fees, made 
 his salary $2,000. When he first entered upon 
 his duties, he found only one piece of apparatus, 
 a compound blowpipe. He induced the trustees 
 to purchase some apparatus, and when he began 
 to lecture on gases the townspeople flocked thith- 
 er to see the experiments. Once, when he was 
 using the compound blowpipe, some hydrogen 
 from a leaking joint became ignited, and the il- 
 lumination frightened his audience so that they 
 rushed pellmell from the room. 
 
 The Doctor gave an amusing account of morn- 
 ing prayers at Washington College. They were 
 held at 5 A.M., winter and summer. At 4:30 a 
 negro man went through the buildings with a 
 tobacco-horn, blowing up the sleepers. Dr. Mar- 
 shall, brother of the Chief Justice, used at the
 
 6 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 second blast, at five o'clock, to leap out of bed, 
 and, just as he was, without even his slippers, go 
 into chapel across the hall and hold prayers. 
 
 When Randolph-Macon College was organ- 
 ized (1832), Dr. Garland was elected Professor 
 of Chemistry and Physics, at a nominal salary 
 of $1,200. He was of Methodist parentage, 
 though not a member of the Church, and had 
 intense Church pride "more than he had after 
 he joined the Church." His Methodist friends 
 and his family persuaded him to accept; for 
 Methodism was looked down on, and people were 
 saying the Methodists could not get men of their 
 own denomination to fill the chairs in their new 
 college. His nominal salary of $1,200 was never 
 paid in full. While Professor of Physics and 
 Chemistry at Randolph-Macon, he acted for a 
 time also as Professor of Latin. Professor Sims 
 had been elected to the chair, but the trustees 
 
 of College refused to release him before 
 
 the end of the year. The Latin work was appor- 
 tioned among the faculty, Professor Garland 
 taking the highest class. There were only two 
 men in it, and they were reading the Annals, or 
 Histories, of Tacitus. The lesson was usually 
 eight pages, in a text without notes. Professor 
 Garland used to seat himself between the two 
 students, and all took turns in reading, each a
 
 Doctor Garland. 7 
 
 page at a time, the Professor pausing now and 
 then to elucidate some point. Dr. Garland said 
 that he had never had such literary enjoyment of 
 a Latin author as then. Can any one imagine 
 now teaching of Latin more likely to be inspiring 
 than that? I may as well mention, in this con- 
 nection, that a copy of "Cicero de Officiis" al- 
 ways lay upon Dr. Garland's desk in the Chan- 
 cellor's office at Vanderbilt, and the professors, 
 as they entered the room on Tuesday evenings, 
 rarely failed to find him reading it. He did 
 not know, he said, where moral sentiments were 
 more attractively expressed than there. One day 
 I found him asking the Latin professor the exact 
 shade of meaning of the Latin word honestum. 
 He used to say to the students that they could 
 read the British poets in the time they wasted in 
 idle talk, and such was the example of husband- 
 ing his time that he set to faculty and students. 
 
 But to return : when Dr. Garland became 
 President of Randolph-Macon College, his nom- 
 inal salary was $1,500, but this was not paid m 
 full. Agents had been in the field for fourteen 
 years, and people were weary of continual solici- 
 tations. So he agreed to take $1,200, and the 
 professors $1,000. But he had then six chil- 
 dren, and could not live on the salary. So at 
 the end of his thirteenth year at Randolph-Macon
 
 8 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 he resigned, with the purpose of studying law. 
 He studied at Nelson Courthouse, by correspond- 
 ence with Beverley Watkins Leigh, and after a 
 year's close application was ready for the bar, 
 and expecting to be admitted at the next session 
 of the Superior Court. He had already made ar- 
 rangements with a lawyer, who got plenty of 
 business, but who was a poor advocate, to go into 
 partnership on equal terms. He was then in 
 his thirty-seventh year. But before he was ad- 
 mitted to the bar, Dr. Manley, President of the 
 University of Alabama, offered him a chair with 
 $2,000 salary, and at almost the same time he 
 was tendered a professorship in William and 
 Alary College. He had no knowledge of the in- 
 tention to offer him either place. In his whole 
 life, he said, he had never turned his hand to 
 get any position. Everything had come unso- 
 licited, and this now gave him more satisfaction 
 than anything connected with his public career. 
 He could feel that the calls had been providen- 
 tial, especially as when called from Washington 
 College to Randolph-Macon, and again from the 
 University of Mississippi to Vanderbilt, his in- 
 clination to remain where he was had been dia- 
 metrically opposed to what seemed to be his 
 duty. He could not see, he said, how a preacher 
 who had ever stirred a finger to get office the
 
 Doctor Garland. 9 
 
 bishopric or anything else could claim that it 
 was a dispensation of Providence. 
 
 One day in the autumn of 1885 Dr. Garland 
 was telling me how he made the trip from Vir- 
 ginia to Alabama, when called to Tuscaloosa. 
 He had about three wagon-loads of negroes to 
 transport, and the way he had come by them was 
 this : when he was married both he and his wife 
 had the pick of the slaves of their respective 
 families for house servants. They had, as well 
 as I remember, three young women and a driver. 
 In due time these all married and had children. 
 The husbands of some or all of the women be- 
 longed to other men, and when he was going to 
 leave he told the women he would not separate 
 them from their husbands, but would sell them 
 and leave them with their husbands. But the 
 women refused to be sold, preferring to go with 
 "Master," even if they had to leave their hus- 
 bands ; so he had to buy the husbands ; for the 
 great blot on the institution of slavery, he 
 thought, was selling husbands away from their 
 wives, and lice versa. When he reached Ala- 
 bama he had to hire out all these negroes, as he 
 had nothing for them to do ; but they were a con- 
 tinual expense to him. Their employers would 
 treat them badly, and they would complain, so 
 that he would have to hire them to some one
 
 io 'Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 else, losing all benefit from the first contract. 
 Then, too, the employers, not owning them, 
 would clothe them ill, and when they came home 
 to spend Christmas he would have to clothe 
 them. Besides, he always instructed their em- 
 ployers, whenever they were ill, to send for his 
 family physician at his expense. He told me that 
 on this journey to Alabama a favorite nurse fell 
 ill with pneumonia at McMinnville, Tenn., and 
 he stopped ten days with her, hiring a man to 
 take the negroes on to their destination. At the 
 end of ten days, the woman being better, he got 
 the physician to take her to his house and care 
 for her till she was perfectly well, and then he 
 sent back for her. When the war began his 
 slaves had increased to sixty. 
 
 As I met Dr. Garland walking in the campus 
 one morning in January, 1887, he said: "Well, 
 we have lost one of our best citizens Colonel 
 Gale. He was not appreciated at his true worth, 
 as a gentleman of culture, as well of the highest 
 integrity.'' That led him then to talk about the 
 gentlemen of the olden time before the war. 
 "I'll venture to say," he remarked, "that there 
 never was a community equal in intelligence and 
 refinement and rational enjoyment of life to 
 what was known as 'the Fork of Green,' in Ala- 
 bama, a whole precinct owned by thirteen men."
 
 Doctor Garland. 11 
 
 Mr. , he said, was almost a perfect man, a 
 
 gentleman of high culture, wide reading no 
 man better acquainted with English literature a 
 beneficent influence in the whole neighborhood. 
 
 When questioned about Mrs. he answered : 
 
 "My experience is, you can never take as the 
 highest exponent of the domestic life and vir- 
 tues a woman that is childless. A home where 
 there have never been children, where the pat- 
 tering of little feet has never been heard, has 
 not felt the best influence of home." I said to 
 him : "Doctor, it seems to me the great thing to 
 be done is to put into literature such a man as 
 
 Mr. , the best our civilization could do. 
 
 Page's 'Colonel' in Tolly' is true to life, but the 
 'Colonel' is eccentric, not the normal man. What 
 we want is the rationally beneficent life of a 
 
 Mr. portrayed. But the trouble is we 
 
 younger people don't knoiv those old times." 
 "Yes," said the Doctor, "they will never come 
 back again." 
 
 It must have been some time in the autumn 
 of 1887 that the Doctor was denouncing, one 
 Wednesday morning in chapel, the wearing of 
 pistols. "Only cowards and bullies wear pis- 
 tols," said he. "When I was a boy we used to 
 get mad and fight ; but we fought fair ; we struck 
 straight from the shoulder, and one got the oth-
 
 12 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 er down and pummeled him till he said 'Enough !' 
 and a fellow would have been disgraced who 
 struck a blow after his prostrate foe cried 
 'Enough !' ' : "We fought," said the old gentle- 
 man, warming up with the recollection of his 
 boyhood days, "and I have yet to see that there 
 is any great harm in fighting that way." 
 
 February 22, 1888, I went to consult the Doc- 
 tor about the best books for Sunday reading, 
 some one having written me for my opinion. He 
 told me that the -Bible had always been his Sun- 
 day reading, even his Sunday study. He read 
 the commentaries also, especially those of the 
 Germans, which he praised very highly. Some- 
 body's Meletemata he was especially fond of, for, 
 besides other things, it helped him to keep up his 
 Latin. He read the Bible on other days the 
 first thing in the morning and last thing at night 
 did not feel comfortable unless he had done 
 this; it had become a habit, and his conscience 
 was as tender about it as the -little boy's who had 
 to get out of bed to say his prayers. But Sun- 
 days he studied the Bible. The only proper way 
 of studying it, he thought, was the comparative, 
 by subjects have a concordance and compare all 
 that is said everywhere about the subject. Speak- 
 ing of the Bible class that he had at Oxford, 
 Mississippi, for six years or more before going to
 
 Doctor Garland. 13 
 
 Vanderbilt, he said that he studied for this class 
 during the week harder than for any other duty. 
 There were sixty or more in the class, and men 
 had written him since that their religious lives 
 dated from those meetings. 
 
 One Wednesday, the next October, he was ad- 
 vising the students to read the Bible, and, after 
 begging pardon for a personal allusion, said that 
 his mother exacted a promise from him when he 
 started to college to read his Bible regularly. 
 "That promise saved me," said he ; "for I tried 
 to be an infidel. I formed a club to read Boling- 
 broke and Shaftesbury and Voltaire, and other 
 noted infidel writers, and I should have become 
 an infidel but for my promise to my mother to 
 read the Bible." 
 
 Happening to mention, one day that spring, 
 the way in which he got his insurance policy re- 
 newed after the war, he said it had always 
 seemed to him to be providential. "I may be 
 mistaken in my views of these things," said he, 
 "but they give me comfort." He went on to say 
 that he thought he had been providentially guid- 
 ed many times in his life. He had never sought 
 any office, position, or honor. All had come to 
 him unsought, and many times he had felt 
 obliged to obey calls which were contrary to his 
 wishes. It was a great comfort to him to feel
 
 14 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 that he was in the hands of the Lord, who would 
 do for him what was best. "I have no anxiety, 
 or concern," said he, "no fear of death. It 
 makes no difference whether it comes next month 
 or next year. I am never sad or lonely, but re- 
 signed to whatever may come. It is a great com- 
 fort to feel so." As far back as 1887 Mrs. Gar- 
 land said he talked every day as if that might 
 be his last. He begged her once the year before, 
 if ever she saw that he was failing mentally to 
 tell him plainly, that he might resign. He un- 
 derstood that if he began to fail he would be 
 less able than ever to recognize it, and could 
 not bear the thought of holding on after he had 
 become inefficient. 
 
 December 6, 1891, I found the Doctor study- 
 ing his Bible. He soon drifted into reminiscences 
 of Dr. Olin. He considered him the greatest and 
 best man he was ever intimately connected with, 
 one of the few men he could count all on the 
 fingers of one hand who did not seem smaller 
 as he got closer to them. He had never known 
 a man who had such power over an audience; 
 not even Clay, or Webster, or Prentiss, equaled 
 Dr. Olin in this respect. This power he thought 
 was the direct inspiration of the Holy Ghost, in 
 which the man Olin seemed absolutely lost. He 
 had none of the graces of oratory, was awkward
 
 Doctor Garland. 15 
 
 in person and gesture; but there was a felicity 
 and perspicuity of expression that Dr. Garland 
 had never known the like of. He had never 
 heard Dr. Olin quote from or refer to anybody's 
 view of a question in a sermon ; there was noth- 
 ing to indicate that any of his ideas came from 
 any other source than his own mind; but there 
 was a power which made Olin forget self, and 
 enthralled men. Bishop Pierce was more like 
 Prentiss, he thought ; more rhetorical. He could 
 take any ordinary thought and dress it up in a 
 style and language that made it appear beautiful. 
 But he did not strike so deep as Olin, nor was 
 he so original. He was handsome and gracious 
 and graceful, a consummate orator. Of living 
 Southern Methodist ministers, he considered 
 Bishop Wilson the greatest preacher. 
 
 On September 22, 1892, the second day of the 
 session, Dr. Garland, in making some remarks to 
 the students in chapel, said he was forcibly re- 
 minded of the time when he himself had entered 
 college at the age of sixteen. His mother on 
 parting with him, besides giving him a Bible 
 with the injunction to make it his counselor, had 
 urged him to be especially careful about the asso- 
 ciations he formed. His father, he remarked, 
 had been an example to him, but "his mother 
 was his teacher." In reply to his question, how
 
 1 6 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 was he to know who were worthy, his mother 
 replied : "Well, my son, there are many little 
 marks that indicate character. Notice whether 
 a young man avoids profanity and is clean- 
 mouthed. Then, too, remark whether one ob- 
 serves the little proprieties whether one cleans 
 his feet before entering a house, or removes his 
 hat before entering a room. These little things 
 show whether one is well bred or not. And be 
 polite and gentlemanly." The Doctor said he had 
 found these suggestions invaluable in forming 
 college associations. He could remember only 
 one occasion when he had knowingly broken a 
 rule in college. He looked back on his college 
 days as the happiest of his whole life. The next 
 day he remarked from the platform : "I have 
 been connected with colleges and universities all 
 my life, but I have never known such pleasant 
 relations to exist between students and professors 
 as exist here." 
 
 That same September Dr. Garland was talking 
 to me about his little granddaughter, a beauti- 
 ful child of three years, who had just died of 
 pneumonia. "It is better so," said he. "God 
 knows best. If we knew all, I am sure we should 
 say that it is better for the children who die in 
 infancy. If I had my choice, with my experience 
 in life, I would choose to have died in infan-
 
 Doctor Garland. 17 
 
 cy." That was the feeling of Demosthenes. The 
 trials of his later years forced from him the bit- 
 ter reflection that could he be offered again the 
 way to the bema or to the tomb, he would choose 
 the latter. 
 
 Dear, good, simple, sincere Dr. Garland! His 
 image comes back to me more than any other 
 man's from the old Vanderbilt days. There will 
 never be another college president like him in 
 America. There was plain living and honest 
 thinking. He had no office hours, except on 
 Wednesday mornings, the day after faculty 
 meetings. He received members of the faculty, 
 as well as students, usiially in his bedroom, 
 which was also his sitting-room ; and there he 
 might be found in cool weather before a coal 
 fire, in warmer weather at the window, looking 
 over a text-book, studying the Bible, or reading 
 a newspaper. In very pleasant weather his fa- 
 vorite place was the bench under a magnolia tree 
 at his front door. There passers-by might see 
 any fine afternoon the man who had been presi- 
 dent of three colleges or universities, who had 
 been professor over sixty years, quietly read- 
 ing his Nashville Banner. Go up and address 
 him anybody might always do that and you 
 would see raised to meet you the face of a 
 
 2
 
 i8 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 good man, a face that indicated a simple and 
 pure heart. 
 
 What made him a great old man ? He was to 
 the last a great teacher, his best students always 
 said though not abreast, perhaps, with all the 
 very latest advances in physics clear in exposi- 
 tion, concise and direct in statement, forcible in 
 presentation, having in the class-room, as on the 
 public platform, a ready command of idiomatic, 
 forceful, elegant English. But other teachers 
 there have been with such qualities who yet were 
 not great. Dr. Garland was not at Vanderbilt, 
 and probably never had been, a great executive 
 officer; and he was too little in touch and sym- 
 pathy with the energy and rush of American life 
 of to-day to keep his college, like a locomotive, 
 always going, or ready to go. He managed stu- 
 dents well, because he sympathized with and 
 trusted them, was gentle and kind, and because 
 his own example of unostentatious fidelity was 
 so powerful, though silent, a supporter of his ad- 
 monitions ; because they revered him, and so 
 obeyed him. But other college presidents have 
 governed students as well without being great. 
 
 As chairman of the faculty, he was superior to 
 any man I have ever known. He could sit quiet- 
 ly and allow the fullest expression in debate of 
 views with which he did not agree; and even
 
 Doctor Garland. 19 
 
 after he had expressed his preference, if, as often 
 happened, the faculty was against him, he al- 
 ways made faculty action his own, and carried 
 out that action as loyally as if he had supported 
 it. I never" knew him oppose faculty action be- 
 fore the trustees but once. This was on the 
 proposition to admit young women regularly to 
 the university ; and I doubt not this action of his 
 was due to the fact that the trustees asked him 
 for his private judgment in the matter. He was 
 too honest and sincere not to give it, under such 
 circumstances. Another great quality he had in 
 this connection: he never talked outside of fac- 
 ulty action not even to his wife, I have heard 
 him say. 
 
 After all, I cannot think of any single thing 
 that he said or did, of any mental quality or 
 course of action in office, that of itself alone 
 marked him as great. What, then, will explain 
 his power? Doubtless I have already uncon- 
 sciously told the secret. It was his character 
 the character of a simple, kindly, gentle, truth- 
 ful, noble man. In this generation we cannot 
 fully appreciate perhaps the value and influence 
 of such a character as Dr. Garland's on suscepti- 
 ble young men. Most parents who send boys to 
 college are far more concerned about a son's de- 
 velopment in virtue, manliness, fidelity, honesty,
 
 2O Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 than in mere technical scholarship; and it is a 
 matter of supreme importance that there should 
 be in a college faculty at least one model char- 
 acter to whom students can look up. For the 
 development of sound morals in a community of 
 students nothing equals this. I remember say- 
 ing once to Bishop Keener, referring to the peri- 
 odical complaint of preachers that we had no 
 "revivals" at Vanderbilt, that we had something 
 better in the godly life and unassailable probity 
 of Dr. Garland ; that in the long run it would be 
 found that young men had built upon the evi- 
 dence afforded by such an example of right liv- 
 ing, and would amid the storm and stress of aft- 
 er life find the memory of such a life a stronger 
 support to faith, a more potent weapon with 
 which to combat doubt, than almost anything 
 else could furnish. No wonder that Bishop Har- 
 ris, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, told Dr. 
 Tillett that the character and example of Dr. 
 Garland had been the most important influence 
 in his life. 
 
 Blessed are the men whose privilege it is to 
 look back over their college days and see rise up 
 before their minds the image of this guileless 
 man, this faithful teacher, this sincere Christian. 
 As colleges and the world get farther away from 
 the simplicity and serenity of such a nature and
 
 Doctor Garland. 21 
 
 such surroundings as his, as men get older and 
 busier and more honored and more prosperous, 
 the more will they appreciate this simple na- 
 ture's nobleman; and they will sometimes almost 
 wonder if it was not a beautiful dream, and their 
 Vanderbilt college days of the seventies or eight- 
 ies, or early nineties, an idyl of the imagination. 
 
 One might say that I have idealized Dr. Gar- 
 land; and so I have doubtless to some extent. 
 And yet I am sure I have given only feeble ex- 
 pression of what was noble and good in him. I 
 put doubtless a higher estimate upon him, now 
 that he is dead, than even while I was with him. 
 But the Doctor was entirely too simple for those 
 beside him to value his simplicity and goodness 
 at their true worth till one realized that both 
 were gone with him from earth. 
 
 Now thy brows are cold, 
 I see thee what thou art, and know 
 Thy likeness to the wise below, 
 
 Thy kindred with the great of old.
 
 II. 
 
 BISHOP McTYEIRE. 
 
 HOLLAND NIMMONS MCTYEIRE, D.D., Senior 
 Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 
 South, died at Vanderbilt University, February 
 15, 1889. He was born in Barnwell county, South 
 Carolina, in 1824, grew up on a farm, and at 
 fourteen entered the old Cokesbury Academy in 
 Abbeville county, S. C., to prepare for college. 
 While there he became a member of the Church, 
 but he could never name the day nor the place 
 of his conversion, and could not fail, of course, 
 at that time to be worried by the brethren who 
 claimed, "If you can't tell the place where and 
 the time when, you haven't got it." He was 
 graduated at twenty from Randolph-Macon Col- 
 lege, Virginia, then under the presidency of Dr. 
 L. C. Garland, afterwards first Chancellor of 
 Vanderbilt University. There is no tradition of 
 remarkable college promise in the young Mc- 
 Tyeire. He finished college in 1844, the year of 
 the division of the Methodist Church, and, feel- 
 ing called to preach, at once joined the Virginia 
 Conference and was appointed to the old town 
 of Williamsburg. He must have given early 
 
 (22)
 
 BISHOP HOLLAND N. M'TYEIRE.
 
 Bishop McTyeire. 23 
 
 promise of usefulness in the ministry, for two 
 years later he was transferred to the Alabama 
 Conference and stationed at Mobile, taking the 
 place made vacant by the election of Dr. Thomas 
 O. Summers to the associate editorship of the 
 Southern Christian Advocate. About three 
 years later he was transferred to New Orleans, 
 and with Dr. John C. Keener had a large share 
 in planting Methodism in that city. The yel- 
 low fever even did not drive him from his post, 
 and the physician who came to New Orleans to 
 see him die brought him through the dread 
 disease. In 1851 he started the New Orleans 
 Christian Advocate, which at once became a 
 power in the Church, although he had to divide 
 his time between editorial and pastoral duties. 
 During a great part of this period he served a 
 large colored congregation in New Orleans. At 
 thirty he was elected a member of the General 
 Conference, and four years later, 1858, was 
 made editor of the Nashville Christian Advo- 
 cate, the connectional organ of his Church. In 
 1862, when the Federal army entered Nashville, 
 he went to Alabama, and was stationed at Mont- 
 gomery. In May, 1866, at the New Orleans 
 General Conference,- he was elected bishop. 
 From his ordination he was considered the great 
 parliamentarian of the Church, and those best
 
 24 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 capable of judging considered him an ecclsias- 
 tical statesman. At his death he lacked a little 
 of having served twenty-three years as bishop. 
 
 Many able men regard him as the strongest 
 man whom the Southern Methodist Church has 
 produced, and there can be no question that as 
 a writer he had no equal among his brethren. 
 A great part of his best writing is scattered 
 about in the various Church papers; but his last 
 and greatest literary work, the "History of 
 Methodism," shows the style and power of the 
 man. His first literary effort, outside of news- 
 paper work, was a prize essay on the "Duties 
 of Christian Masters." He wrote also a "Cate- 
 chism on Church Government," and a "Manual 
 of the Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal 
 Church, South." Elected Bishop within a year 
 after the war ended, he could not but have much 
 to do with shaping the readjustment of his 
 Church to the new order of things in the South, 
 and many believe that his was the foremost part 
 in the great work. But his memory will doubt- 
 less live longest in connection with Vanderbilt 
 University. He and others had planned such 
 an institution, a prominent department of which 
 was to be a theological seminary, but it was 
 impossible to raise the money to endow it. 
 Finally, however, family connections brought
 
 Bishop McTyeire. 25 
 
 Bishop McTyeire into acquaintance with Com- 
 modore Vanderbilt, who was easily induced to 
 embrace the Bishop's project. The story of the 
 wealthy New Yorker's princely gift toward the 
 education of Southern youth is doubtless famil- 
 iar to all who care to know it, but it is not gen- 
 erally known that Mr. Vanderbilt asked the 
 Bishop to resign his office and accept the presi- 
 dency of the new university at a salary of ten 
 thousand dollars a year. When the loyal church- 
 man had declined this proposition, the Commo- 
 dore insisted that he accept the presidency of 
 the Board of Trustees, and invested him with 
 veto power, saying: "I want you to sustain the 
 same relation to the university that I do to the 
 New York Central." Commodore Vanderbilt 
 always expressed the conviction that he had 
 found the right man to manage the great trust. 
 The Commodore's gifts to Vanderbilt Univer- 
 sity reached $1,000,000 before his death; his son, 
 W. H. Vanderbilt, gave in all about $500,000; 
 and Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt added to the do- 
 nations of father and grandfather a handsome 
 gift to the library and an elegant new building. 1 
 
 1 Mr. W. K. Vanderbilt has made two notable gifts 
 to the university : Kissam Hall, in memory of his 
 mother, at a cost of about $138,000; and later a con- 
 tribution of $150,000 to the general building fund.
 
 26 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 This great trust Bishop McTyeire so managed 
 that some have disliked him, more have admired 
 him, most who were close to him have loved 
 him, and all have acknowledged that, though 
 some mistakes might have been made, each 
 year's increasing success was demonstrating how 
 wisely and broadly he had planned. He has 
 had the greatest opportunity ever offered fo a 
 Southern man ; and when the history of eduqa- 
 tion in the South is properly written, he will 
 stand first in this respect in his Church, and 
 perhaps in the section to which he belonged. 
 
 His was a constructive mind, and nothing so 
 delighted him as to help push forward some 
 great work, whether an enterprise of the 
 Church, or some great building intended at once 
 for ornament and usefulness. As he looked up- 
 on the beautiful university grounds, essentially 
 his work, he could intensely sympathize with 
 Faust, who, viewing in imagination his last 
 work complete, a wilderness reclaimed, 
 
 "Im Innern hier ein paradiesisch Land," 
 
 could not help exclaiming, "Verweile doch, du 
 bist so schon !" And the Bishop's joy in his 
 creation would be intensified by the thought 
 that the remains of the old Federal earthworks 
 by the side of his house were typical of the past
 
 Bishop McTyeire. 27 
 
 of his people, while the beautiful grounds all 
 around were a prophecy of the future in store 
 for them. 
 
 The yard in front of his house is ornamented 
 with beautiful flower beds, shrubbery of various 
 kinds, magnolia and several other varieties of 
 trees, and carpeted most of the year with blue 
 grass. It would be hard to find a handsomer 
 yard. The flowers were Mrs. McTyeire's, but 
 the trees were the Bishop's pets and pride. In- 
 deed, he was as fond of growing trees as Mr. 
 Gladstone of felling them. In the early spring 
 a not unusual sight on the campus was a stout, 
 strongly built gentleman, with closely cropped 
 gray hair and beard, and wearing a long, gray 
 study gown, with his long pruning chisel and 
 mallet, trimming up the trees that are scattered 
 over the seventy-six ..acres of ground in the 
 campus. 
 
 The Bishop's favorite tree was a beautiful 
 wide-spreading maple, just to the left of his 
 front door, and there he spent much of his 
 leisure time in warm weather. "How I'd like to 
 be sitting now under the maple with 'Spider' 
 [his dog] at my feet," he wrote once to his little 
 granddaughter from the far West. Those who 
 knew him well would not be inclined to suppose 
 that the time he spent under the maple was all
 
 28 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 leisure time. It is doubtless true that there he 
 did much of his thinking, there he planned for 
 the university, there he dwelt upon the care of 
 the churches, there came to him some of those 
 characteristic strong thoughts which serious 
 men came to expect in every sermon he 
 preached. He had always a bench or two un- 
 der that tree besides his own rustic seat, and 
 never showed any irritation at being interrupted 
 in his meditations by any one who desired to see 
 him. As he sat there in the afternoon with his 
 face to the east, his eye ran across the old com- 
 mon, which the proximity of the university is 
 fast changing into a handsome suburb, along 
 the line of the breastworks thrown up by the 
 Federals nearly a quarter of a century ago, un- 
 til it reached the old Federal fort, "Negley," so 
 boldly outlined against the sky. 
 
 The house is a large, two-story brick man- 
 sion, with every evidence of comfort, but none 
 of display. It was the abode of hospitality. The 
 Bishop had two work rooms. Much of his read- 
 ing was done in his dining-room, but his heavy 
 work was performed in the little study that looks 
 out toward Fort Negley and the east. He was 
 not, perhaps, a reader of many books he was 
 too busy for that and his collection of books 
 was not very large. But if you look through his
 
 Bishop McTyeire. 29 
 
 library you find every evidence of careful read- 
 ing. The pages of books consulted in making 
 the "History of Methodism" bear many index 
 fingers pointing to marked passages ; and the 
 margins of his books are often filled with obser- 
 vations made during his reading a habit much 
 to be commended in a thinking man. In this lit- 
 tle study, which is perhaps not larger than ten 
 by twelve feet, he wrote the "History of Meth- 
 odism." Here were his books, here he wrote his 
 letters, and here, doubtless, many a well-laid plan 
 for college or Church took definite form on paper. 
 He did not murmur that he was cut down 
 when every one was predicting for him at least 
 fifteen years of fruitful labor. His strong con- 
 stitution was slowly undermined by the insid- 
 ious disease. It was months before he was 
 brought to his bed, three months more before 
 the end came; but he lay there, taking the live- 
 liest interest in friends or matters of Church or 
 university, sure that he was sinking, but never 
 repining. He never even expressed a wish to 
 get well, except when he prayed that if consist- 
 ent with God's will the many prayers offered 
 for his recovery might be answered, in order 
 that his friends' faith in prayer might be 
 strengthened. He took the sacrament the after- 
 noon before his death, "not in anticipation of
 
 30 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 the end," he explained, "but for the comfort of 
 my soul." Then, after a night of horrible but 
 patient suffering, he greeted the light free from 
 pain, heard the first college bell of the day re- 
 marking that he himself had hung that bell 
 fifteen minutes later uttered the one word 
 "Peace!" and became unconscious. At 8:52 
 A.M., as faculty and students were assembled 
 in the university chapel for morning worship, 
 he fell asleep as softly as a child. 
 
 He had said one day to his wife: "I like Dr. 
 McFerrin's idea; don't buy me new clothes, but 
 bury me in something I've preached in." He 
 had also expressed the wish that only the burial 
 service of his Church be read over him ; that the 
 coffin be carried without a hearse the short dis- 
 tance to the grave on the grounds ; that the 
 negroes in the employ of the university be al- 
 lowed to dig his grave and the students to fill it 
 up. And his wish was strictly obeyed. Six of 
 his episcopal colleagues stood beside his grave, 
 and a great concourse of people witnessed the 
 last simple rites. 
 
 RESPONSE MADE AT THE VANDERBILT ALUMNI 
 BANQUET, JUNE 15, 1908. 
 
 I came here in the early days, twenty-six 
 years aeo. and two figures loom out of the
 
 Bishop McTyeire. 31 
 
 mists of the foretime. In the course of time 
 most of us who worked here will be completely 
 forgotten. But not the first President of the 
 Board of Trust, nor the first Chancellor. When 
 on February 15, 1889, just after chapel, word 
 was sent round to the various class-rooms by 
 the Chancellor that the President of the Board 
 had crossed the river, I said to my class that 
 the university could never again be called upon 
 to suffer such a loss as the Bishop's death. I 
 still think so. After nineteen years, during 
 which I have seen many men of great force, I 
 still consider Bishop McTyeire the strongest 
 man I ever lived close to. He was a born leader 
 of men. He and Col. William Preston Johnston 
 met once in a railway car. Neither knew the 
 other, and when they were introduced Colonel 
 Johnston said: "I took you for a general." 
 "And I took you for a clergyman," said Bishop 
 McTyeire. They were both right in their in- 
 stinct. The Bishop would have been a general 
 if he had gone to the front in the Civil War. 
 He was a great business man, too. "You have 
 missed your calling, sir," Commodore Vander- 
 bilt said to him when he met him ; "you ought 
 to have been a railroad man." It was perfectly 
 natural, then, that the Commodore, when he 
 had decided to give money to found an institu-
 
 32 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 tion of learning among his wife's people, should 
 have put the Bishop at the head of it. That was 
 wise prevision on the part of Commodore Van- 
 derbilt. He knew a good man when he saw him. 
 By his gift the Commodore became the ever-to- 
 be gratefully remembered founder of this uni- 
 versity. But its creator was the Bishop. He 
 not only secured the funds, but chose as the 
 seat of the university the city of Nashville, un- 
 questionably the fittest locality in all the South- 
 land for a great institution of learning which was 
 to be not only a center of culture but an ireni- 
 con or peace-bond between the two lately es- 
 tranged sections of the country. And it is a 
 queenly city in a beautiful land the spot that I 
 love best in all this world. "This is God's own 
 country!" exclaimed my friend Judge Woods, 
 in the spring of 1887, as he stood at a window 
 on the third floor of University Hall and looked 
 out east and north and west. This glorious 
 campus was his selection, too. The old oaks be- 
 tween Wesley Hall and Chancellor Garland's res- 
 idence were here then ; but most of the ground 
 was a cornfield, and it required a landscape 
 artist's instinct to see what could be made of it. 
 "Are you going to put the university in this 
 cornfield?" asked Mrs. McTveire in dismay the 
 first time she saw the grounds. "Never mind,
 
 Bishop McTyeire. 33 
 
 mother," said the Bishop ; "wait till you see what 
 can be made of it." He was a builder and plant- 
 er. He chose the sites of all the first buildings, 
 and saw them go up brick by brick. Under his 
 eye the drives and walks were laid out, flower 
 beds were made, and a hundred varieties of trees 
 were planted. It was supposed that many of the 
 young trees would die, and allowance was made 
 for that in the planting. But ninety-seven per 
 cent, of them lived, and so after a few years they 
 had to be thinned out. The planting had been 
 done under his direction, and even Mr. Douglas 
 did not dare to cut down a young tree without 
 the Bishop's permission. A friend from the city 
 came through the grounds one day when a clump 
 of fine young trees was being thinned out. 
 "Don't you hate to see those fine young trees go 
 down, Bishop?" he asked. "I don't see it, sir," 
 the Bishop replied. "I can't stand it; I have to 
 turn my back." He loved the trees and grass 
 and flowers ; and as he loved them, so he loved 
 the birds and the children that came and throve 
 on these grounds as naturally as birds and grass. 
 Older people were sometimes afraid of him. 
 He was the autocrat, some of the grown folks 
 said. But the little ones weren't afraid of him. 
 When he drove through the grounds with "Kitty 
 Clover," the children ran to meet him ; and he 
 3
 
 34 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 would stop and let them clamber up on the seat 
 beside him, in his lap, fill the foot of the buggy 
 and the seat behind ; and then he would drive 
 round and round, the little ones shouting and 
 screaming with delight. We missed our little 
 boy of two years one day in our first year, when 
 we lived in Wesley Hall, and after a frantic 
 search found him seated by the Bishop at the 
 dinner table. He had got tired of Wesley Hall 
 fare served in the room upstairs, and had run 
 off to the Bishop's to get something good to eat. 
 That same little boy, at eight years, represented 
 the children's feeling when he said, "I believe 
 next to papa I loved Bishop best." Oh, no ! chil- 
 dren were not afraid of him. They loved him 
 and knew he loved them. If older people could 
 always have seen as clearly ! 
 
 He was a strong man ; a natural fighter. It 
 has been said that the bench of bishops favored 
 his election to the episcopate to get him off the 
 floor; they were afraid of him. A portrait of 
 him painted when he was just elected bishop 
 shows the "Fighting Elder," as he used to be 
 called. That was all gone from his face when 
 I used to know him. I saw it just once. He 
 used to call some of us into council sometimes. 
 How well I remember it! He stopped on the 
 brick walk in front of the house and pounded
 
 Bishop McTyeire. 35 
 
 with his big stick, not ringing the doorbell. -I 
 went out the first time to see what it was, and 
 found the Bishop. After that I knew the Bish- 
 op's summons to council. On the occasion of 
 this summons he felt that advantage had been 
 taken of him and that the tactics employed were 
 not fair. As he stated the case he leaned back 
 on the bench and looked up at the sky, and I 
 was amazed to see a sudden transformation in 
 his visage. The "Fighting Elder" was unmistak- 
 ably there. The face of the portrait of the Elder 
 of forty had suddenly reappeared in the Bishop 
 of sixty. It was but for a moment; then the 
 calm, patient, prudent, wise look returned. 
 
 Let me say here a word with reference to his 
 relations with the faculty. I do not know how 
 it was during the first seven years, for I was not 
 here then ; but I do know all about it during the 
 remaining seven years of his life. The faculty 
 had cause not simply to respect and admire, but 
 to love him, and with reason. Natural leader 
 that he was, he knew the special aptitudes of 
 those about him, and gave any piece of honest 
 work hearty but judicious commendation. Per- 
 haps no professor felt so sure that any of his 
 colleagues would read what he wrote as that the 
 Bishop would read it. He used often to come, 
 especially in later years, to the Tuesday after-
 
 36 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 noon faculty meeting; never, however, to dic- 
 tate a policy, but simply to take counsel. It had 
 become his custom to get the faculty's advice 
 on all matters to be presented to the Board, and 
 his appearance at faculty meetings was invaria- 
 bly hailed with pleasure. His common formula 
 of introduction of a matter of business was, I 
 remember, "In multitude of counselors there is 
 safety." 
 
 He was not a hard man, but a gentle man. 
 "His heart was soft as a summer sea," said 
 Bishop Haygood after his death. It was the 
 truest thing ever said about him. On one of 
 the last days he had his bed rolled to the win- 
 dow and gazed out longingly on the campus, the 
 work of his hands and brain. He would like to 
 stay, he sighed; "but God's will be done." He 
 had strong local attachments, and liked to have 
 people and animals buried amid the scenes where 
 they had worked and enjoyed life. "Kitty 
 Clover," his beautiful mare, was buried in the 
 corner of her own stable lot. One night from 
 his sick bed he heard his dog "Spider" howl, 
 and said to the bedside watcher : "When 'Spider' 
 dies, open 'Kitty Clover's' grave and bury her 
 there, the faithful dog by the faithful horse." 
 He had Dr. Summers, the first Dean, buried on 
 the grounds in the plot set apart for Bishops
 
 Bishop McTyeire. 37 
 
 McKendree and Soule, and there a place was 
 provided for the old Chancellor when he should 
 follow. And there now, as was meet and right, 
 beside his wife "a silent but golden link in the 
 chain of Providence that led to Vanderbilt Uni- 
 versity" he is buried. As Chancellor Kirkland 
 beautifully said in his inaugural: "Under the. 
 magnolias planted with his own hand he sleepeth 
 well."
 
 III. 
 WILLIAM MALONE BASKERVILL. 
 
 Remembering all the golden hours 
 Now silent, and so many dead, 
 And him the last. 
 
 THE death of Professor Baskervill, September 
 6, 1899, cut short a career that had already ac- 
 complished much and promised more. His 
 technical scholarship was recognized by his 
 colleagues in English throughout the United 
 States; his teaching quality attested by students 
 who had been resorting to him in increasing 
 numbers for more than twenty years ; his power 
 to please as well as instruct the general public 
 evidenced by numerous calls to lecture at Chau- 
 tauqua, in Colorado, at Monteagle, and else- 
 where; and he \vas just finding his widest audi- 
 ence through his literary sketches and studies, 
 and aw r akening in good judges the conviction 
 that he was to be the historian of the intellectual 
 movement called Southern Literature. 
 
 William Malone Baskervill, son of Rev. John 
 Baskervill and his wife, Elizabeth Malone, was 
 born in Fayette county, Tennessee, April i, 1850. 
 
 (38)
 
 WILLIAM MALONE BASKERVILL.
 
 William Malone Baskervill. 39 
 
 His mother died when he was four years old, so 
 that his training devolved mainly upon his fa- 
 ther. The latter, a member' of an old Virginia 
 family, had removed in early life from Mecklen- 
 burg, Virginia, to Tennessee, and was first a 
 physician, afterwards a Methodist preacher and 
 planter. The son attended school almost uninter- 
 ruptedly till he was fifteen, getting, as he him- 
 self afterwards said, "a smattering of Latin and 
 Greek and of the usual English studies." He 
 was then sent to Indiana Asbury University 
 (now De Pauw), and this episode also he char- 
 acterized in terms of like directness: "But I did 
 nothing, and at sixteen I was again at home." 
 From this time he was more fortunate. "For 
 the next two years and a half," he wrote in his 
 Vita, "I went to school to Mr. Quarles, a grad- 
 uate of the University of Virginia, and from 
 him I learned more than I had learned all the 
 time before." 
 
 Before he reached manhood he met with an 
 accident the consequences of which much influ- 
 enced his future career. Being in his boyhood, 
 as indeed all through life, fond of hunting, on 
 one occasion, through the accidental discharge of 
 his gun, he was badly wounded in his left arm. 
 During the three months' confinement that fol- 
 lowed, the boy was wisely provided by his father
 
 4O Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 with the histories of Macaulay, Hume, Gibbon, 
 and Michelet, and the novels of Scott, Dickens, 
 and Thackeray. He had been a reader before, 
 but through this constant poring over the works 
 of great masters he acquired the taste and en- 
 thusiasm for the best literature which character- 
 ized him through life. One of the first things 
 I especially remarked about him, when I came to 
 know him in Leipzig in 1874, was the way he 
 would sometimes break oft", particularly when 
 he was not well, from our studies in Greek and 
 Latin to take a rest with Thackeray or some 
 other English classic. "It is the reading men in 
 college," as Mr. Mabie says, "who do the great 
 things in the world." 
 
 The most important epoch in his mental de- 
 velopment was when he went at twenty-two to 
 Randolph-Macon College. Dr. James A. Dun- 
 can was then President; Thomas R. Price, Pro- 
 fessor of English and Greek ; James A. Harri- 
 son, Professor of Latin and German ; and these 
 three men, especially the two latter, influenced 
 his subsequent life more than all others. "There 
 I was taught," he said, "in my favorite studies 
 by men who had studied in Germany, and by 
 their advice I was led to go to Leipzig in the 
 summer of 1874." When I came to know him 
 that fall the names of Price and Harrison were
 
 William M alone Baskervill. 41 
 
 constantly on his lips. Their ideals, their meth- 
 ods, their characters as scholars, were deter- 
 mining factors with him. Dr. Price, the accu- 
 rate scholar and inspiring teacher of English, 
 became his model, and the close friendship be- 
 gun at Randolph-Macon continued when the 
 former went later to the University of Virginia, 
 and afterwards to Columbia, indeed as long as 
 Baskervill lived; and his sense of obligation 
 was most delicately expressed when, on meeting 
 Dr. Price for the last time, in New York in 1897, 
 he introduced a former pupil, now a rising pro- 
 fessor of English, as Dr. Price's "literary grand- 
 son." The cordiality of the relation that existed 
 between Dr. Price and his old pupils may be 
 inferred from a remark which I have heard 
 Baskervill quote from the former, that a trustee 
 had told him he owed his election to the chair of 
 English at Columbia mainly to the enthusiastic 
 letters written by his former students. He al- 
 ways regarded Dr. Price as the pioneer and 
 founder of the new epoch of English studies in 
 the South ; and Price's teaching of English at 
 Randolph-Macon was not only his chief early 
 inspiration, but the model and basis on which 
 later he gradually built up his own department 
 of English at Vanderbilt. 
 
 With Professor Harrison, who afterwards in
 
 42 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 the English Chair at Washington and Lee so en- 
 hanced the reputation already acquired at Ran- 
 dolph-Macon that his call to his alma mater, the 
 University of Virginia, became inevitable, Bas- 
 kervill was always in close association, not only 
 consulting him about all his literary undertak- 
 ings, but collaborating with him on several 
 works. For Professor Harrison's "Library of 
 Anglo-Saxon Poetry" he edited the "Andreas," 
 his first piece of scholarly work after his doctor- 
 dissertation. The two edited together a "Stu- 
 dents' Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon," and shortly 
 before Baskervill's death their last joint work 
 appeared, an "Anglo-Saxon Reader" for begin- 
 ners. One other teacher of his should not be 
 overlooked: Professor Wuelker, of Leipzig L^ni- 
 versity, under whose supervision he wrote his 
 doctor-dissertation, to whom in after years he 
 sent some of his favorite pupils, and with whom 
 he continued in friendly relations to the end of 
 his life. 
 
 A characteristic of Baskervill's student life 
 should here be mentioned. When he went to 
 Randolph-Macon he found everything elective 
 and the way open to him to pursue his favorite 
 studies as he pleased. To do this, it is true, he 
 would have to renounce the hope of an academic 
 degree ; and so he either waived this completely,
 
 William Malonc Baskervill. 43 
 
 or at least put it off, to be determined later, when 
 he should have first had opportunity to work to 
 some results in his own lines. He was maturer 
 in years than most of his fellow-students, prob- 
 ably somewhat backward in mathematics, and 
 without any text-book acquaintance with the sci- 
 ences. He was for his age well read in English 
 literature and history, and had a fair knowledge 
 and great love of Latin and Greek. He devoted 
 himself, therefore, during his two years at Ran- 
 dolph-Macon almost entirely to work in lan- 
 guages English, Greek, Latin, German, and 
 French. I think Dr. Duncan's lectures on men- 
 tal and moral philosophy were his only departure 
 from literary lines. Such a course, if not best in 
 general, was perhaps not ill for him. He had 
 very strong predilections, studied enthusiastically 
 what he liked, but was not characterized strong- 
 ly by the spirit to "work doggedly" at what he 
 did not like. The atmosphere that prevailed just 
 then at Randolph-Macon was a very wholesome 
 one: the spirit of the faculty was scholarly; 
 among the students the sense of honor, the habit 
 of hard work, the respect for high scholastic 
 rank, were stimulating in the highest degree. So 
 Baskervill worked effectively, in most studies en- 
 thusiastically, and took high rank in his special 
 subjects; but he never applied for a Bachelor's
 
 44 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 degree, and in 1874 proceeded, on the advice of 
 Price and Harrison, to Leipzig University. 
 
 The freedom of choice of studies in which he 
 had indulged at Randolph-Macon characterizes 
 of course all German university work though 
 presupposing, and in case of German students 
 requiring, a basal course much more rigid than 
 any American college exacts so that Baskervill 
 found it easy to follow there his own bent. If 
 he showed any willfulness at Leipzig, it was in 
 this: that he did not take a wide range of lec- 
 tures in his own subjects I fear academic lec- 
 tures often bored him and he was not an enthu- 
 siastic worker in Seminar or Gesellschaft. The 
 lectures he took he attended, and he got some- 
 thing from personal contact with his instructors, 
 especially with Wuelker; but in the main he 
 worked, under direction, at his room and in the 
 library. I doubt if this was the best way to get 
 the most possible out of a German university 
 course ; but he was diligent, and was certainty 
 influenced for good in his whole subsequent ca- 
 reer. His Leipzig Ph.D. (1880) was a valuable 
 stamp set upon his work up to that point, 
 pledged him to scholarly effort for the future, 
 and proved an open sesame to a field of activity 
 that might otherwise have been closed to him. 
 
 Baskervill remained in Germany from the
 
 William Malone BaskervilL 45 
 
 summer of 1874 till the autumn of 1876. My 
 work at Wofford in Latin and German was be- 
 coming too heavy, and I persuaded the author- 
 ities to call Baskervill in December, 1876, the ar- 
 rangement being that he should take the Latin 
 while I gave myself more especially to Greek. 
 At Wofford Baskervill taught till June, 1878. 
 In the summer of 1877 ne was married to Miss 
 Florence Adams, of Amherst county, Virginia, 
 his beloved college president, Dr. James A. Dun- 
 can, performing the ceremony. In the summer 
 of 1878 he went again with his young wife to 
 Germany, to work for his degree. Old rela- 
 tions were resumed at Leipzig, English and 
 cognate studies were being pursued with zeal 
 and energy, and a subject for a thesis, which 
 had been assigned him by Professor Wuelker, 
 was yielding good results, when the sudden 
 death of his wife, following the birth of a little 
 boy, threw all into confusion. He tried to work 
 a few months longer, but, finding it impossible, 
 returned to America about February, 1879. 
 When I withdrew from Wofford, in June, 1879. 
 to resume my studies in Leipzig University, it 
 was natural, of course, that Baskervill should 
 take my place. I had had for the previous 
 year the chief work in Greek and Latin, with 
 James H. Kirkland, now Chancellor of Vander-
 
 46 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 bilt University, as assistant, and this work Bas- 
 kervill carried on as long as he remained at 
 Wofford. 
 
 The Wofford period was formative -for Bas- 
 kervill in man}- respects, though it offered little 
 opportunity in the branch that was to be his 
 specialty, since his time was mainly given to 
 teaching Latin and Greek. It brought him into 
 intimate contact with Dr. Carlisle, whom Pro- 
 fessor Henneman has aptly characterized as "a 
 man fashioned in the same teacher's mold as Dr. 
 Arnold of Rugby, and of whom every student 
 ever with him thinks reverently as of one of 
 the truly and simply great in his state and age." 
 Dr. Whitefoord Smith had not then given up 
 his chair of English, Professor Wallace Duncan, 
 later Bishop, was' teaching Mental and Moral 
 Philosophy, and Du Pre. Gamewell, and the 
 writer were younger associates. A fruitful epi- 
 sode of this period was his summer's run over to 
 Leipzig to stand his examination for Ph.D. It 
 was exhilarating to him and to me, for we were 
 daily together for a few weeks in Leipzig, and 
 spent together his last week on German soil hi 
 tramping over the Harz Mountains, with Trese- 
 burg as center of operations. 
 
 The next spring came the opportunity of his 
 life, his call to the chair of English in Vanderbilt
 
 William Malone Baskervill. 47 
 
 University. 1 He made there a fortunate and 
 congenial marriage, and found at once a wider 
 field where he could show his aptness to teach 
 and his talent for building up a department. He 
 exerted himself with success not only to teach 
 well, but also to please. His letters of that pe- 
 riod show that he believed the Vanderbilt to be 
 the best place in the country for a young scholar 
 to make a reputation in. The recognition he 
 met with from the faculty, the appreciation of 
 him shown by the students, the kindly consid- 
 eration with which he was generally received 
 in Nashville, were good for him. Mind and 
 soul expanded in such influences. It was, to use 
 Sidney Lanier's words, "a little of the wine of 
 success and praise without which no man ever 
 does the very best he might." 
 
 The teaching of English in the South is great- 
 ly indebted to Baskervill. Professor Price doubt- 
 less inaugurated the new era in English study 
 when Baskervill was his pupil at Randolph- 
 Macon, but the next most important stage in 
 the development was probably Baskervill's work 
 at Vanderbilt. His greatest results were his 
 
 *I have freely incorporated, with slight changes, in 
 the remaining pages extracts from a sketch of Basker- 
 vill which I printed in the Christian Advocate, October 
 25, 1900.
 
 48 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 best pupils. To mention only English scholars 
 in prominent positions, there occur to me at this 
 moment the names of Professors Henneman, 
 Snyder, Mims, Hulme, Webb, Weber, Burke, 
 Brown, Sewell, Reed, Drake, and Bourland, and 
 (adding- three who are well known in other 
 lines of duty) Deering, Ferrell. and Branham. 
 To these ^and to many others Mims's words ap- 
 ply: "His life is still being lived in us leading 
 us on to nobler and higher ideals." It may well 
 be doubted whether any other man in the South 
 will ever again before his fiftieth year be able 
 to see such fruits of his work, if for no other 
 reason, because Baskervill was a pioneer in the 
 new methods of teaching English. The impulse 
 his best pupils received from him in literary 
 taste and scholarly aspiration is doubtless the 
 best proof that he himself possessed scholarship 
 and literary taste. He made scholars not merely 
 by what and how he taught them, but by his 
 personal interest and sympathy in them and 
 their work. In June, 1899, though the doctor 
 had ordered him to go at once to East Brook 
 Springs, he could not be induced to be absent 
 from the last faculty meeting, because he had 
 promised to support some young men for fel- 
 lowships, and they were depending on him. 
 Baskervill's heart was in his teaching and his
 
 William Malone Baskervill. 49 
 
 literary work still more than in technical and 
 philological studies. Besides his doctor-disser- 
 tation, the Anglo-Saxon text of Alexander's 
 Epistle to Aristotle, and the books published in 
 collaboration with Professor Harrison, he pub- 
 lished, with a former pupil, Mr. J. W. Sewell, an 
 English grammar for the use of high school, 
 academy, and college classes, also leaving in 
 manuscript an elementary English grammar ; 
 and he did much etymological work on the Cen- 
 tury Dictionary, and planned other things of 
 similar nature ; but his heart was really in other 
 lines. In a letter of 1898, referring to his con- 
 templated revision of his "Andreas," he wrote, 
 in the words of Carlyle, "And now my poor 
 wife will have to pass through the valley and 
 the shadow of Andreas," meaning the allusion 
 to be jocose, it is true ; but if it had been purely 
 literary work, he would not even have thought 
 of "the valley and the shadow" in connection 
 with it. Indeed, the greatest thing about Bas- 
 kervill, I always thought, was his fine literary 
 taste, especially in great prose. His reading was 
 regularly on high lines, literature that was full 
 of high seriousness. The fact that almost be- 
 fore he was out of his teens he preferred Thack- 
 eray to Dickens, and that no other novelist 
 could ever displace Thackeray in his estimation, 
 4
 
 50 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 is significant of much. In the last few years I 
 had much desire and curiosity to have a full, 
 free talk with him about poetry, to learn how he 
 really felt it. But having reread recently his 
 papers on "Southern Writers," I have noted 
 again, as before, that the subtlest study, as it is 
 the longest, is of the greatest of our Southern 
 poets except Poe namely, Sidney Lanier; and 
 I understand the better his appreciation of 
 Lanier since I have recently become a devoted 
 adherent of that poet. I have realized, too, that 
 it was the poetic side of Maurice Thompson 
 which he most highly estimated and most dis- 
 cerningly and lovingly discussed. It seems to 
 have been, also, in large part the poetic gift of 
 Invin Russell which caused him to give that 
 pioneer a prominent place in his series of South- 
 ern writers. But more to the point is a para- 
 graph of a letter from Mrs. Baskervill, dated 
 October 30, 1900: 
 
 He had a growing admiration for Tennyson as a 
 teacher and upholder of great truths. He set a high 
 value on the originality and truth, the purity and no- 
 bility of Wordsworth. Reading aloud from one of 
 the "L}-rical Ballad?." it might be. he would say: "If 
 I know anything about it. this is poetry." He felt 
 the beauty and the force of it. Yet, realizing there 
 could be no link of sympathy between two such poets 
 as Wordsworth and Burns, how he enjoyed, I remem-
 
 William M alone Baskervill, 51 
 
 her, reading Hazlitt's trenchant criticism on Words- 
 worth, in his essay on Burns, or his attack on the 
 "intimations" of the famous ode, which I believe Mat- 
 thew Arnold also takes up. However sensible to the 
 charm, I think he felt after all that to study too close- 
 ly the poetry of Shelley, and even Keats, was like tak- 
 ing hold of a butterfly. I recall how his eye kindled, 
 his countenance lighted up, and his whole frame seemed 
 agitated, as he came upon some fine passage from Car- 
 lyle or Ruskin or Lowell one of those "electric light 
 flashes of truth," as he termed it. No matter how I 
 happened to be engaged, I must stop and share his 
 enthusiasm. He intended making a special study of 
 Browning the coming winter, had gathered books and 
 material with such a purpose in view. His best teach- 
 ing, he used to tell me, was done in Shakespeare. Yet 
 after all it was in Thackeray that he still found his 
 chief delight "that master of .characterization, the sub- 
 tlest analyst of his time." Like Mr. Page, he never 
 ceased to wonder at his knowledge of human nature. 
 Only the winter before his death he took up Thack- 
 eray again, with the aid of Mrs. Ritchie's introduction 
 to the volumes, intending to write an article for the 
 Review. 
 
 "How well I remember,'' adds Mrs. Basker- 
 vill, "the advent of the new school of Southern 
 writers. With what zest he read and reread, 
 feeling a kind of personal pride in each new dis- 
 covery ! His heart and soul were in that work." 
 He had for several years been telling me and 
 writing me about the wonderful new outcropping
 
 52 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 of Southern \vriters, especially about Cable and 
 Harris, whose names I saw constantly, of course, 
 in the magazines and papers, but whom I was 
 then "too busy" to read. I remember very dis- 
 tinctly the day I was inducted into the new cult. 
 I was ill and confined to my room, though able 
 to sit up. Baskervill came to see me, and 
 brought Cable's "Old Creole Days." I think I 
 read the whole volume without rising from my 
 chair, with increasing appreciation and delight 
 as I went from story to story ; and when I fin- 
 ished ''Madame Delphine" a glow passed over 
 me from head to foot and back from foot to 
 head, and I said to myself, with profound feel- 
 ing: "It has come at last!'' I meant the day of 
 the South's finding her expression in literature. 
 Such a moment of overwhelming conviction and 
 satisfaction can come only once. I know. I real- 
 ized then that the South had the material in her 
 old past, and that we had the writers with the 
 art to portray it. 
 
 As I reread now Baskervill's "Biographical 
 and Critical Studies of Southern Writers," I 
 find myself marking many passages, some of 
 them sentiments which I heard him express 
 many times years ago, others bits of critical ap- 
 preciation which impress me not only as having 
 come from his inmost conviction, but as reach-
 
 William Malone Baskervill. 53 
 
 ing the heart of the matter. Of this latter 
 character is the remark about Mr. Cable's 
 "Dr. Sevier": 
 
 And the hand that drew Ristofalo, with his quiet 
 manner, happy disregard of fortune's caprices and 1 real 
 force of character, Narcisse "dear, delicious, abomi- 
 nable Narcisse, more effective as a bit of coloring than 
 all the Grandissimes put together" and crowned him 
 with the death of a hero ; and gentle Mary, bright, 
 cheerful, brave, an ideal lover of her husband as he 
 was of her, is certainly that of a master, as the imagi- 
 nation that conceived them was that of a poet. There 
 are innumerable touches in the story equal to anything 
 that the author has ever done that is, as beautiful as 
 anything in contemporary fiction. 
 
 As good as that is a passage on "Bonaven- 
 ture" (p. 351), which, coming .immediately be- 
 fore his statement in a single paragraph of the 
 defects of "John March, Southerner," makes all 
 the weightier the severe condemnation there pro- 
 nounced on that unlucky book "one of the dis- 
 malest failures ever made by a man of genius." 
 The verdict against "John March, Southerner," 
 concludes with the assurance, based on "the 
 'Taxidermist' and one or two other gems of re- 
 cent years," that "the divine fire still burns," and 
 with the wish, "Would that it could be religious- 
 ly consecrated to pure art !" For, says he in his 
 study, as I have heard him remark often, "The
 
 54 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 man with a mission throttles the artist," and "An 
 artist out of his domain is not infrequently the 
 least clear-sighted of mortals." Indeed, the sum 
 and substance of all of Baskervill's criticism of 
 Mr. Cable is contained in this one line: "The 
 poet, if he is to be our only truth-teller, must 
 let politics alone." Baskervill was proud of Mr. 
 Cable's genius and fond of him personally, en- 
 tertained him in his home at Nashville for sev- 
 eral days, and used to correspond with him; and 
 the real explanation of all the criticism in his 
 sketch of Mr. Cable is not that Baskervill as a 
 Southerner so much resented criticism of the 
 Creoles and of other Southern people, but that 
 Mr. Cable was devoting to philanthropic notions, 
 especially to the negro question, genius that be- 
 longed to literature. "The domination of one 
 idea has vitiated," he said regretfully, "the most 
 exquisite literary and artistic gifts that any 
 American writer of fiction, with possibly one 
 exception, has been endowed with since Haw- 
 thorne." 
 
 I think still that the best of the "Studies" be- 
 cause the most sympathetic, the most pleasing 
 because it came without reserve right from the 
 heart as well as the brain, is that on Joel Chan- 
 dler Harris. I know his judgment is sincere be- 
 cause I have heard it from his lips many times.
 
 William Malone BaskervilL 55 
 
 He thought that Mr. Harris, of all the Southern 
 writers, had most effectively used his talents, 
 most completely fulfilled his mission. "The most 
 sympathetic, the most original, the truest delin- 
 eator of this larger life its manners, customs, 
 amusements, dialect, folklore, humor, pathos, 
 and character is Joel Chandler Harris." 
 "Humor and sympathy are his chief qualities," 
 he said, "and in everything he is simple and 
 natural." Uncle Remus he placed above all 
 that Southern authors have done "the most 
 valuable and, in this writer's opinion, the most 
 permanent contribution to American literature 
 in the last quarter of this century" "one of 
 the few creations of American writers worthy of 
 a place in the gallery of the immortals." 
 Baskervill still hoped from Mr. Harris 
 
 a work into which he will put the wealth of his mind and 
 heart, and expand and compress into one novel the com- 
 pletest expression of his whole being. But if he should 
 never give us a masterpiece of fiction like his beloved 
 "Vicar of Wakefield," "Ivanhoe," "Vanity Fair," or 
 "The Scarlet Letter," we shall still be forever grateful 
 for the fresh and beautiful stories, the delightful humor, 
 the genial, manly philosophy, and the wise and witty say- 
 ings in which his writings abound. His characters have 
 become world possessions; his words are in all our 
 mouths. By virtue of these gifts he will be enrolled in 
 that small but distinguished company of humorists, the 
 immortals of the heart and home, whose genius, wis-
 
 56 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 dom, and charity keep fresh and sweet the springs of 
 life, and Uncle Remus will live always. 
 
 His personal attitude toward his work on the 
 Southern authors seems to me worthy of all 
 praise. He used to write me in those days, 
 ''Keep on criticising my work: that is what I 
 need ; others will praise me." I did criticise him 
 more often and more freely than I have ever 
 criticised any one else, as I had a right to do, 
 since we were friends ; and I do not remember 
 that my criticism ever vexed him. It is pathetic 
 to me now to read again how he sought to 
 justify himself when I criticised his over- favor- 
 able or insufficiently appreciative estimate of one 
 or other of the Southern authors, and how he 
 tried to show that we were probably, after all, 
 not far apart in our judgments if only he could 
 have expressed himself in his sketch as frankly 
 and as freely as we did in our letters. As I re- 
 read these "Studies" in the light of his letters of 
 the period, I am almost surprised to note how 
 they grow upon me. His hand was steadily 
 learning cunning; he expressed himself, his own 
 ideas more, quoted less from others than for- 
 merly ; was gaining in felicity of expression, an- 
 alyzed more subtly and clearly. If he had gone 
 on, he would clearly have been thought worthy 
 to become the historian of Southern literature,
 
 William Malone Baskervill. 57 
 
 and might well have aspired to an even wider 
 field. "He improved," said Dr. Tigert, "more 
 rapidly during the last ten years than any other 
 man I ever knew at his age. He studied hard, 
 wrote and rewrote, so that I am confident his 
 best work has been left undone." 
 
 The insight and skill displayed in the "Stud- 
 ies" suggested to Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie also 
 the idea of Baskervill becoming the historian of 
 Southern literature. In a letter of March 30, 
 1897, he wrote: 
 
 I have been very much interested in your series of 
 "Southern Writers," and it has seemed to me that you 
 were getting together a large amount of valuable lit- 
 erary material. Have you had any thought of making 
 a book of the chapters when you have finished them? 
 This is not an idle question. If you have any such 
 thought, I should venture to make a suggestion to 
 you. I should think with some revision and with an 
 introductory and closing chapter you might make a his- 
 tory of the entire literary movement in the South 
 which would be of great interest and usefulness. Your 
 treatment of Lanier was capital. 
 
 The Southern writers themselves placed a 
 high estimate on his critical work. "I appre- 
 ciate your gifts as a critic," wrote. Mr. Harris ; 
 "rather I would say your gifts as a literary 
 essayist, which include conscience as well as the
 
 58 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 critical faculty." Mr. James Lane Allen wrote 
 him concerning the "Studies" : 
 
 I shall give them a slow, critical, absorptive read- 
 ing. They interest me greatly, and I think represent 
 an initial movement toward the recognition, toward the 
 appreciation of Southern writers, that would mean so 
 much if deeply fostered. We scribblers of little things, 
 but with fine intentions, owe you so much. I believe 
 you have stood almost alone in your early and hardy 
 advocacy of our cause and beyond our deserts of our 
 place also. Here's a New Year's blessing on you for 
 it from one of the lesser of them ! 
 
 The work which Baskervill so well began is 
 going on. The memorial volume, issued in 1903, 
 is the best tribute to his influence and his teach- 
 ing in the sphere of literary studies ; and I have 
 often thought how he would be touched could 
 he know that other Southern writers whom he 
 intended to commemorate were receiving sym- 
 pathetic and illuminating treatment from his old 
 pupils.
 
 CHARLES KEN'DALL ADAMS.
 
 IV. 
 
 PRESIDENT CHARLES KENDALL 
 ADAMS. 
 
 FOR the presidency of the University of Wis- 
 consin, which was doubtless the most impor- 
 tant work of his life, Dr. Charles Kendall Ad- 
 ams was peculiarly fitted by circumstances as 
 well as training. Born in Vermont, January 24, 
 1835, f a family that was old, but, like the typ- 
 ical New England farm, poor, he had in his boy- 
 hood meager opportunities for study : in summer 
 working on the farm, in winter first attending 
 and later teaching district schools. But he was 
 always eager to learn, and his brother used to tell 
 how with a book on his plow he sometimes let 
 his beast make a furrow at its will till aroused 
 from his preoccupation. Perhaps it was sig- 
 nificant that this youth, who was after a while 
 to become a torch-bearer of learning, started 
 West carrying in his hand a copy of Shakes- 
 peare which had been overlooked in -the packing 
 up. Having migrated to Iowa in 1855, he be- 
 gan to study Latin and Greek after his twenty- 
 first birthday, and entered the University of 
 Michigan in 1857. 
 
 (59)
 
 60 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 He entered from a private academy after hur- 
 ried preparation, and gave me long afterwards 
 the impression that only kindly leniency on the 
 part of his examiners let him into the univer- 
 sity. It was only necessary to get in "by the 
 skin of his teeth" ; ability, zeal", and industry did 
 the rest. I have heard him say that only the 
 helpful human sympathy of Professor Boise on 
 his first recitation encouraged him to hold up his 
 head after that first failure. Doubtless this en- 
 couragement, that never failed afterwards, made 
 the man ; and how grateful he always was to 
 Boise ! Perhaps even his lifelong partiality for 
 Greek studies was due to that. He worked his 
 way through college by manual labor and serv- 
 ice in the library, but found time to read as well 
 as to work and study, for in his freshman year 
 as he said once to the students of the Uni- 
 versity of Wisconsin he saved money enough 
 to buy a dozen good books in general literature, 
 and read them. 
 
 Graduated in 1861, he went on to the Master's 
 degree in 1862; was then appointed instructor in 
 Latin and History, assistant professor of Histo- 
 ry in 1863, and in 1867 full professor of History, 
 with the privilege of spending a year and a half 
 in German and French universities. The man he 
 succeeded in the chair of History was the then
 
 Charles Kendall Adams. 61 
 
 young Andrew D. White, who had perhaps chief- 
 ly influenced his student career, determined his 
 choice of a specialty, nominated him for his own 
 chair on leaving, suggested him, I think, as his 
 successor in the presidency of Cornell, and re- 
 mained all through life his closest friend. Con- 
 nected with the University of Michigan twenty- 
 eight years five as student, twenty-three as 
 member of the faculty he came to be regarded 
 perhaps as its most eminent professor, and was 
 Dean of the School of Political Science from its 
 establishment in 1881. First as non-resident 
 lecturer on History at Cornell (1881-5), and la- 
 ter as president (1885-92), he became thorough- 
 ly familiar with that Eastern institution, which 
 is doubtless most nearly of the style of the West- 
 ern state university. He had been chairman, too, 
 of the building committees of the great libraries 
 of the University of Michigan and of Cornell, 
 something significant in view of his later connec- 
 tion with that beautiful structure which will re- 
 main as his chief monument at Madison the His- 
 torical Library. At the age of fifty-seven, in the 
 maturity of his powers, learning, and experience 
 in affairs, he came in the autumn of 1892 to the 
 University of Wisconsin. 
 
 A paragraph from a paper which I prepared 
 for local use at the time of his resignation
 
 62 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 (1901) sums up some of the qualities of the man 
 as well as the striking results of his nine years' 
 administration : 
 
 Dr. Bascom's thirteen-year administration had put 
 the young institution on a sound basis of scholar- 
 ship, had filled the state with a fine body of alumni 
 loyal to their president and fond of their alma mater, 
 and had made inevitable and easy the transition from 
 a small college to a big university. Dr. Chamberlin's 
 five-year regime had been marked by greatly acceler- 
 ated growth in numbers and development of univer- 
 sity temper and spirit. The -latter found Science Hall 
 built, and lie began and all but finished the Dairy 
 Building, Law Building, and Gymnasium. The legis- 
 latures of 1889 and 1891 had made notable and noble 
 appropriations. In 1893, $140,000 was added, making 
 possible the adequate completion and outfit of the edi- 
 fices already under construction. In 1895 catne the 
 phenomenal appropriation one-fifth of a mill tax addi- 
 tional (z. e., interest on $2,cco,ooo) for two years, and 
 $180,000 for the Historical Library. 
 
 In 1897 the one-fifth mill tax was made permanent, 
 and the amount for the Historical Library was in- 
 creased to $420.000; in 1889 $135,000 was appropriated 
 for a new Engineering Building, and for the agricul- 
 tural heating plant and to complete and equip the His- 
 torical Library $200.000 more. In 1901 about $200,000 
 was appropriated, of which $150.000 was to go to the 
 construction of Agricultural Hall, the remainder to 
 the general university fund and to engineering im- 
 provements. From 1890 to 1900 was the building era 
 of the university. . . . The increase of the students
 
 Charles Kendall Adams. 63 
 
 and faculty has been quite commensurate with the 
 improvements in building. In 1892 the number of stu- 
 dents was 1,092 now 2;8oo; of instructors and other 
 officers in 1892, 73 now, 168. . . . He is a man of 
 fine presence and distinguished bearing, affable, a good 
 conversationalist, has for many years been given to en- 
 tertaining notable people; and so, while utterly unas- 
 suming, has the air of one who is at home in the best 
 company. People who do not know him well have 
 sometimes called him an aristocrat. On the platform 
 he never makes a poor speech, and sometimes a great 
 one. As presiding officer at a banquet he has few 
 equals within my knowledge. In social matters his 
 administration has been a pronounced success. . . . 
 But he is also a great executive officer. I have heard 
 him say that the American people do big things better 
 than they do little ones. Lesser men can turn off 
 routine business quite as well as he; his preeminence 
 is in planning and accomplishing large things. 
 
 The best evidence of this outwardly is the great 
 Historical Library; the best proof of it inwardly is 
 the vast extension of facilities, not simply to meet the 
 great increase in the number of students, but to make 
 possible the most advanced work, and to cause the 
 ablest men to feel that Wisconsin is the best place to 
 stay and labor in. Some of the newspapers have crit- 
 icised sharply at times, and some legislators have come 
 from the people to make a fight ; but in the end the 
 majority of the legislature and of the people have 
 come over to his ideas and his ideals, and civic pride 
 in the university has enormously increased. The fric- 
 tion which a few years ago existed between the au- 
 thorities of the lower schools and the university seems
 
 64 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 now to have disappeared entirely, and a cordial and 
 helpful relation has taken its place. 
 
 President Adams was passionately loyal to, 
 and enthusiastically confident of, the great fu- 
 ture of the University of Wisconsin. He showed 
 remarkable capacity in choosing members of the 
 faculty as well as in uniting and harmonizing 
 them in the common work, fostered and stimula- 
 ted the spirit of research among the instructors, 
 and yet would remind them that "the university 
 is for the students," whose instruction should not 
 be sacrificed to investigation. His zeal for ath- 
 letics came mainly from the conviction that a 
 maximum of clear and sane thinking, as well as 
 the most moral living, is not to be expected from 
 men in poor health. His manifest and well- 
 known sympathy with all that made for real re- 
 ligion in the university was but the outward ex- 
 pression of inward belief and consistent home 
 living. 
 
 An estimate of the service rendered by Presi- 
 dent Adams to the university and to the cause of 
 higher education, made by Dean Birge at the time 
 of his resignation, pleased President Adams 
 above all appreciations then made public. It is 
 as follows: 
 
 President Adams was one of the first men in this 
 country to catch the spirit and temper of true uni-
 
 Charles Kendall Adams. 65 
 
 versity study and administration. This spirit he em- 
 bodied, first, in his own teaching; and this temper, as 
 larger opportunities were afforded him, he carried into 
 the institutions of which he has been the head. The 
 university temper expresses itself, when it is present, 
 in every department of university work, from the fresh- 
 man classes to the graduate courses. It was by no 
 means absent from our university in the years before 
 1892, yet it has received a mighty impulse and stimulus 
 from the example and teachings of President Adams. 
 This internal growth, this development of a higher 
 standard of scholarship in the university, has been 
 President Adams's great contribution to the intellectual 
 life of the state. By a higher standard of scholarship 
 I do not mean the exaction of more work from the 
 student or the mere 'raising of the standard' in the 
 technical sense, but a lifting of the institution to a 
 truer and higher intellectual position. This is the 
 greatest service that a president can render to his uni- 
 versity, and this President Adams has fully rendered 
 to us. To this end all his measures have tended. In 
 carrying out this main purpose, President Adams has 
 shown great breadth and largeness of view. He has 
 been able to conceive large plans for the university, 
 which he has boldly executed. Yet he has never striven 
 to enforce his own ideas upon the various departments, 
 aiming rather to inspire unity and harmony of spirit 
 and purpose than to secure a similarity in method. 
 Thus he has been able to win and hold the sympathy 
 of the faculty for his plans and their cooperation in 
 working them out and applying them in the admin- 
 istration and the teaching of the university. 
 
 President Adams was stricken down about
 
 66 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 February i, 1900, and was never at the helm 
 for more than a day or two at a time after that. 
 After weeks of suffering at home, he was sent 
 by his physicians, first to Virginia, then to Battle 
 Creek, Michigan, and finally for a year to Italy 
 and Germany. During all that period I was in 
 constant correspondence with him, and some ex- 
 tracts from his letters may be used to illustrate 
 his absorbing devotion to the university, and to 
 indicate some of his plans and ideals in educa- 
 tional work. He was trying to get well for the 
 sake of the work he felt he had still to do at 
 Madison, and every movement for a year and 
 a half was determined by that. He abandoned 
 a contemplated trip from Italy to Egypt, "for 
 the reasons," he wrote, "of the twofold fact of 
 my continued improvement and the opinion of 
 the doctor that I should probably not return 
 from Egypt as well as I might be on going. I 
 hope that in the spring we may go to Athens 
 and, perhaps, to Sicily." 
 
 By January I, 1901, he had reached his nor- 
 mal weight again, and the physician who had 
 accompanied him from Battle Creek returned 
 home, saying that it was "absurd for him to re- 
 main longer." "I should call myself entirely 
 well," he wrote, "but for a little nervous weak- 
 ness, which, I suppose, is the last remnant of the
 
 Charles Kendall Adams. 67 
 
 illness." Nature just then was in sympathy with 
 their returning health. "The climate here is 
 charming," he wrote. "Roses, heliotropes, and 
 oleanders seem not to know any such thing as 
 winter. Their blossoms are now. upon every wall 
 and along every roadside. To-day we sat with 
 our windows wide open to the floor, and many 
 have sat among the flowers in the garden." 
 "What a country it is !" he wrote again in Feb- 
 ruary. 
 
 As I write at midday we are having the third con- 
 cert under the window ; not the hand-organ which 
 seems to be good enough only for America but by 
 a violin and a singer, both fit for the stage. There are 
 tears and laughter and exultation, all expressed with 
 the fire of an operatic training. Of such concerts we 
 must have about five a day, and, strangely enough, do 
 not quite tire of them. There is a picturesqueness 
 about the whole matter that is almost bewitching. 
 
 Some extracts from letters of that period il- 
 lustrate one of President Adams' abiding inter- 
 ests in matters of higher education i. e., clas- 
 sical studies. When urging me to come to Madi- 
 son in 1894, he said that in a college course one 
 language at least was especially deserving of 
 favor as embodying and representing pure cul- 
 ture of the highest kind, and that language to 
 his mind had always been the Greek. "I invite
 
 68 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 you to a larger field, and it is your duty to 
 come," he said with great emphasis; and I was 
 practically won at once. Some time later, Dr. 
 B. I. Wheeler wrote me : ''President Adams will 
 give the most earnest support. You will find 
 him a loyal, sound, wise man." During the eight 
 years that followed, I found his zeal for classical 
 studies always unabated. The last thing he did 
 for the university was to organize the School of 
 Commerce; and it might have seemed that he, 
 too, was swamped by the wave of commercialism 
 that was sweeping over the country. But he sent 
 Dean Johnson of the College of Engineering, 
 his chief agent in the new venture, to consult 
 with me, and called me to his sick bed to say 
 that "he did not want some of us who stood for 
 ideal things to think that the university was to 
 be wholly given over to the material and prac- 
 tical." And a year later he wrote me from Italy 
 (March 22, 1901) : 
 
 I note all you say in regard to its being a technical 
 year. But I want the university not to be swamped 
 by a spirit of commercialism. Every interest should be 
 encouraged. What men have accomplished is quite as 
 important as what they are accomplishing. 
 
 In 1894 he had led me to hope that we might 
 have some day at the University of Wisconsin 
 a classical museum : and this matter was much
 
 Charles Kendall Adams. 69 
 
 on his mind when he was abroad without any 
 urging from me, it may be said, for I never 
 found it necessary to remind him of promises. 
 February 7, 1901, he said in a postscript to a 
 letter : 
 
 I came within an inch of forgetting one of my er- 
 rancls in writing. Before I left Madison I asked the 
 Regents to allow me to use the balance of my salary 
 i. e., what was really saved by my absence in the 
 purchase of plaster casts for a classical museum in the 
 new library building. The answer was that I must 
 not trouble myself with anything of the kind till I 
 was really well. In so far as this was prompted by 
 a consideration for me, I appreciated it, and of course 
 there was no answer to give. But the time has come 
 when no such answer suffices. All the manufactories 
 in the world are glad to decorate Johnson's building 
 [Engineering Hall] ; but Socrates and Demosthenes 
 can't send their photographs, nor can Phidias send his 
 architectural designs. Consequently such things either 
 have to be bought, or we are in danger of being snowed 
 completely under by a spirit of commercialism. Car- 
 negie and Rockefeller will perish, but there are some 
 
 others that will remain. I recently wrote that 
 
 I should be greatly disappointed if I were not permitted 
 to make the expenditures. If I could spend, say, $i,- 
 ooo for photographs and $2,500, or such a matter, for 
 statuary, my illness will not have been without ad- 
 vantage. 
 
 Meanwhile a change had taken place. Winter 
 came suddenly; Mrs. Adams was stricken down
 
 70 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 with asthma; her illness was long and his sym- 
 pathy intense, so that he was never quite so well 
 again. Still he maintained the struggle for 
 health. Seven months later, when, under the 
 impression that his health was far better than it 
 was, I had urged his being here to meet the 
 Board of Regents in September, he replied : 
 
 Ever since January 5 we have been fighting the bat- 
 tle to get into condition to resume work at the be- 
 ginning of the year. In the case of my wife the battle 
 cannot be said to have been successful at least the 
 improvement has been so capricious and slow that up 
 to the arrival of your letter it seemed uncertain what 
 the true course should be. I have been confronted 
 with the dilemma of either going back without her or 
 delaying the voyage in the hope of further improve- 
 ment. I have too much dread of an avenging Nemesis 
 to undertake the former course. 
 
 They decided to come home together, and that 
 last letter from Germany concluded thus: 
 
 Of one thing I wish to assure you. Every move- 
 ment, except my shortest possible journey to Glasgow, 
 has been dictated by considerations of health. . . . 
 It has, beyond all question, been the most anxious and 
 disappointing year of my life. In spite of all these 
 facts, I shall attempt to be present at the meeting of 
 the Board. 
 
 The provision in his last will and testament 
 directing that five of the fifteen five-hundred-
 
 Charles Kendall Adams. Jl 
 
 dollar fellowships, to the establishment of which 
 he devoted his entire estate, should go to the 
 department of Greek, is the final proof of his 
 belief in the value of Greek culture. 
 
 He and Mrs. Adams reached Madison in Sep- 
 tember in time for the meeting of the Board. 
 Dean Johnson, Mr. Hiestand, and I met them at 
 the station. Waiting by the car for them to get 
 off, I said to Mr. Hiestand, as I heard the Presi- 
 dent's voice : "It has the old ring !" But when 
 his face appeared, I was shocked to see how he 
 had aged in a single year. That was Saturday 
 night. The next morning he telephoned me to 
 come and dine with him and Mrs. Adams. 
 When I went at noon, I found he had already 
 been conferring with Dean Henry about Pro- 
 fessor F. H. King's call to Washington. With 
 such vigor he instantly resumed his duties. He 
 felt equal to, and eager for, the accustomed bur- 
 dens. "I could run two universities !" he said 
 to Mr. Stevens. But he was apprehensive about 
 Mrs. Adams. 
 
 The first severe test of his powers came short- 
 ly the opening Convocation Address to the stu- 
 dents, an occasion to which he had been looking 
 forward for months. The meeting was held in 
 the Armory, and he spoke for forty-five minutes 
 connectedly, clearly, and logically. It was a
 
 72 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 good speech, but it seems he came through by 
 sheer force of will. He looked somewhat dazed 
 at the conclusion, but I felt no uneasiness at the 
 moment. But his wife's womanly instinct di- 
 vined instantly what had happened, for as he ap- 
 proached the house she said she knew it was all 
 over. Under the first severe strain he had bro- 
 ken down. Serious illness followed, and the old 
 trouble returned. As soon as the Regents could 
 be got together, he resigned. The night before 
 the resignation was formally laid before the 
 Board he telephoned for me to come, and told 
 me what he had done. Tears fell as he spoke, 
 and he looked a gray and aged and broken man. 
 It was very hard. He had hoped to serve the 
 University till he was seventy-five, nine years 
 longer, and he had great plans for it. Now it 
 was all over. I knew his heart was broken, but 
 he did not murmur. When a few weeks later 
 his train had started for California, and Dr. 
 Birge and I turned homeward, I said : "We shall 
 see his face no more !" 
 
 His last letter to me is pathetic, in view of 
 what happened so shortly after. 
 
 We are beginning to get ready to move into the 
 new house [he wrote, June 21]. Probably in two 
 weeks we shall be in our own home. My wife looks 
 forward with great pleasure to the new life, and I
 
 Charles Kendall Adams. 73 
 
 hope it will be in every way beneficial. . . . Neither 
 of us is in the best condition. 
 
 Early in July they moved into the new house 
 they had built, and on the 26th he passed away. 
 
 In one of his later letters there is a reference 
 to the book of resolutions with signatures of 
 all the faculty prepared in consequence of his 
 resignation, and with that I may close : 
 
 The Cardinal book touched me so deeply I have 
 hardly dared to venture on a formal acknowledgment ; 
 but I must do so without much delay. Especially grat- 
 ifying was the note preceding the signatures them- 
 selves. As a whole I believe the work to be unique. 
 Surely our dear old Patrick [janitor] would have 
 called it a "wonderful char-ac-ter from me last place !" 
 God bless you all !
 
 V. 
 THE NATIONAL HERO. 
 
 "WE must have a revival of patriotism," more 
 than one thoughtful man has been heard to 
 say. If this be true, what is the best method 
 of cultivating love of and pride in the father- 
 land? The old Greeks had the good habit of 
 telling over and over again the heroic deeds of 
 their ancestors in order to kindle and nourish 
 the sacred flame of patriotism, and since then all 
 nations that have had a past have done the same. 
 We are too close to the Civil War period to see 
 things calmly, to judge impartially, to forget all 
 the trial and stress and suffering. Southern men, 
 it is true, are beginning to recognize that Lincoln 
 was second only to Washington, and Northern 
 men to acknowledge that the nation's greatest 
 soldier was Lee. But only the unprejudiced on 
 either side see thus clearly. The w r hole nation 
 can, however,, join in admiration of its founders, 
 and the unusual attention now bestowed on 
 American history is sure to produce good fruits. 
 The volumes of the "American Statesmen" se- 
 ries, especially, are not only giving us correct his- 
 (74) '
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON.
 
 The National Hero. 75 
 
 tory, but they are proving a fine school for 
 patriotism. It is to one of the bipgraphies of this 
 series that I am indebted for the suggestion of 
 writing, as well as for most of the facts in this 
 paper, 1 namely, "George Washington," by Henry 
 Cabot Lodge. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone is reported to have said : 
 
 It is no extravagance to say that although there were 
 only two millions of people in the thirteen states at the 
 time of the Revolution, the group of statesmen that 
 proceeded from them were a match for any in the whole 
 history of the world, and were superior to those of any 
 one epoch. 
 
 It might be difficult for any one except a Vir- 
 ginian to give the reason why, but it is at any 
 rate a fact, that Virginia furnished far more than 
 her quota of the remarkable group of Revolution- 
 ary statesmen. Mr. Roosevelt (in his "Gouver- 
 neur Morris," page 325) goes further, and says: 
 
 Virginia stands easily first among all our common- 
 wealths for the statesmen and warriors she has brought 
 forth ; and it is noteworthy that during the long con- 
 test between the nationalists and separatists, which 
 forms the central fact in our history for the first three- 
 quarters of a century of our national life, she gave 
 leaders to both sides at the two great crises Washing- 
 ton and Marshall to the one, and Jefferson to the other 
 
 1 Published January, 1890.
 
 76 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 when the question was one of opinion as to whether 
 the Union should be built up, and when the appeal to 
 arms was made to tear it down, Farragut 1 and Thomas 
 to the North, Lee and Jackson to the South. 
 
 It is furthermore remarkable that so many of 
 Virginia's early great men came from the single 
 county of Westmoreland, "the prolific soil that 
 grows Presidents," as Governor Barbour, of Vir- 
 ginia, used to say, in allusion to the fact that 
 Westmoreland county furnished three of the first 
 five Presidents. 
 
 What Boston was to Massachusetts [says Magruder 
 in his "John Marshall"] Westmoreland was to the other 
 counties of Virginia; the birthplace and home of the 
 Washingtons, the Lees, the Masons, the Taliaferros, 
 the Marshalls, the Madisons, the Monroes, the Gray- 
 sons, the Roanes, the Beverlys, the Bankheads, the 
 Balls, the McCartys, the Elands, and the Carters, it 
 became a sentinel on the watchtower of liberty the 
 herald to announce the appproach of danger. 
 
 It was not so remarkable, perhaps, that Vir- 
 ginia's statesmen belonged, as a rule, to what is 
 called the gentleman class. That had been true 
 of most of the great statesmen of all the leading 
 countries of the world. It was eminently true 
 even of democratic Athens ; not less true, of 
 
 'Mistake; Farragut was a Tennes-sean by birth.
 
 The National Hero. 77 
 
 course, of aristocratic and imperial Rome. It 
 had been true of France and Austria and Prussia 
 and England. It was certainly true in the Revo- 
 lutionary period of New York and South Caro- 
 lina, as well as of Virginia, and doubtless of 
 other states. 
 
 From the slaveholding aristocracy of Virginia came 
 [,says Mr. Lodge], with the exception of Patrick Henry, 
 all the great men of that state who did so much for 
 American freedom, and who rendered such imperish- 
 able service to the republic in law, in politics, and in 
 war. From this aristocracy came Marshall and Mason 
 and Madison, the Lees, the Randolphs, the Harrisons, 
 and the rest. From it came al-so Thomas Jefferson, the 
 hero of American democracy ; and to it was added 
 Patrick Henry, not by lineage, or slaveholding, but by 
 virtue of his brilliant abilities, and because he, too, was 
 an aristocrat, by the immutable division of race. 
 
 It would be an interesting question, now, to 
 consider why the so-called upper classes have 
 produced most of the great statesmen of the 
 world. Genius has shown itself in other respects 
 no respecter of persons. From Homer to Burns, 
 and from Burns to Joel Chandler Harris, the 
 Muse has touched the lips of the humble quite as 
 often as of the highborn infant. The humbler 
 class has furnished, too, not a few of the world's 
 great generals: Marius, Murat, Jackson, Grant, 
 Forrest, and many others. The main reason is,
 
 78 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 doubtless, that in most countries the career in 
 statecraft has been practically closed against all 
 but aristocrats, or at least has been hedged about 
 with greater hindrances than other careers. In 
 those states at the time of the Revolution where 
 there was a powerful aristocracy, as in Virginia, 
 South Carolina, and New York, this class nat- 
 urally put forward the public men. Even in that 
 day it was different in democratic New England ; 
 and as democracy has spread over the rest of the 
 states we find that birth has had little to do with 
 the making of statesmen. Witness Webster from 
 Massachusetts, Clay from Kentucky, Calhoun 
 from South Carolina, Andrew Jackson from Ten- 
 nessee, Lincoln from Illinois, Stephens from 
 Georgia, and Garfield from Ohio. 
 
 Another characteristic of the Revolutionary 
 statesmen was their high culture. Washington 
 attained his preeminent position amid a group 
 of men distinguished above all the statesmen of 
 this country, not only by their mental endowment, 
 but in the fact that a large majority were college- 
 bred men. There were a few striking exceptions, 
 it is true, like Roger Sherman ; but of all the 
 group the greatest had the smallest educational 
 opportunities. 
 
 One other group of great men, limited neither 
 by age nor clime, Washington belonged to. It
 
 The National Hero. 79 
 
 has been often remarked that the greatest states- 
 men and generals of the world, the doers par ex- 
 cellence, have been generally silent men. "Car- 
 lyle," says Mr. Lodge, "crying out through hun- 
 dreds of pages and myriads of words for the 
 'silent man,' passed by with a sneer the most ab- 
 solutely silent great man that history can show." 
 Conspicuous in that august list of mighty men of 
 war and statecraft are, besides Washington, our 
 own Lee and Jackson, as well as Grant; Crom- 
 well and Wellington in England; Napoleon in 
 France ; Frederick the Great and Moltke and Bis- 
 marck in Germany ; Julius Caesar in Rome ; Han- 
 nibal in Carthage; Pericles in Athens; Moses 
 among the Hebrews. 
 
 Mr. Lodge, like all the later biographers of 
 Washington, is hard upon Weems. If there was 
 anything left before of the Weems myths, Mr. 
 Lodge demolishes it. He has studied Washing- 
 ton's career very minutely for years, and he tells 
 us there is no evidence not only for the plant-bed 
 episode, for the cherry tree and little hatchet, for 
 Washington's refusal to fight at school, but even 
 for the colt-breaking. In the first place, Weems 
 was "mendacious," if not a regular liar. He 
 published himself as rector of Mount Vernon 
 parish, though there was no such parish. He 
 may have preached once, possibly oftener, to a
 
 80 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 congregation when George Washington was 
 present, but that is all. Hence we must receive 
 what the scribbling parson says cum grano salts. 
 Furthermore, the story of the initials in the plant- 
 bed, by which Washington's father inculcated in 
 the little George a profound belief in God, is 
 taken bodily from Dr. Beattie's sketch of his son, 
 published in England in 1799. The only author- 
 ities for Weems' stories of the cherry tree and 
 the refusal to fight at school are "a lady" and "a 
 good old gentleman," who remembered the inci- 
 dents ; but, with the light thrown by "Mount 
 Yernon parish" and the plant-bed episode on 
 Weems' character for historical fidelity, the 
 lady" and "good old gentleman" can hardly be 
 accepted as competent witnesses. Then the colt 
 story, which Mr. Curtis tells, was a century 
 old when he told it, and there is not even a 
 "lady" or a "good old gentleman" to vouch for 
 it. The episodes of the cherry tree and the colt- 
 breaking might have happened, of course, only 
 there is no evidence that they did. As to the 
 story of the refusal to fight and lecturing his 
 playmates on the sin of fighting, we can be quite 
 sure. Washington was a most unfortunate se- 
 lection for the hero of such a goody-goody story. 
 This same Washington, son of an "imperious 
 woman, of strong will," the Washington in whose
 
 The National Hero. 8l 
 
 compression of the mouth and indentations of 
 the brow the actor Bernard read, in 1798, the 
 evidence of an "habitual conflict with and mas- 
 tery over passion," is said not only to have re- 
 fused to fight a boy at school, but to have allowed 
 himself to be knocked down in the presence of 
 his soldiers in 1754, and thereupon to have 
 begged his assailant's pardon ! This mild Wash- 
 ington of Mr. Weems is the same man who 
 some years later wrote to the major of his old 
 regiment, who had been excluded from the pub- 
 lic thanks on account of cowardice at the Great 
 Meadows : 
 
 Your impertinent letter was delivered to me yester- 
 day. As I am .not accustomed to receive such from any 
 man, nor would have taken the same language from you 
 personally without letting you feel some marks of my 
 resentment, I would advise you to be cautious in writ- 
 ing me a second of the same tenor. 
 
 Some years later still, this patient Washington, 
 when covered by the gun of a poacher, "dashed 
 his horse headlong into the water, seized the gun, 
 grasped the canoe, and, dragging it ashore, 
 pulled the man out of the boat and beat him 
 soundly." 
 
 This self-contained Washington once during 
 the war, as Judge Marshall used to tell, sent an 
 officer to cross a river in quest of information 
 6
 
 82 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 about the enemy by which the morrow's action 
 was to be guided. When the man some time later 
 brought word to the General, who was meanwhile 
 impatiently pacing his tent, that the dark and 
 stormy night and the ice in the river had pre- 
 vented his crossing, "Washington glared at him 
 a moment, seized a large leaden inkstand from 
 the table, hurled it at the offender's head, and 
 said, with a fierce oath, 'Be off, and send me a 
 man !' }> It is needless to add that the officer 
 crossed the river and got the information. 
 
 Another anecdote of the same character is told 
 by Colonel Reese, of Nashville, to whom it came 
 by oral tradition from a senatorial ancestor of 
 his. Washington, it seems, was one day after 
 dinner, at which several ladies and gentlemen 
 were present, reading some attacks of the op- 
 position newspapers on him, when, losing his 
 temper, he struck the table a terrible blow with 
 his hand, so that the glasses rattled and the ladies 
 started up in alarm, and swore that he would not 
 stand it any longer. After pacing the floor for 
 a few moments, he became calm and excused 
 himself. Such a man could hardly develop out 
 of Weems' good, cool-blooded prig of a boy. 
 
 Chancellor Garland, whose recollection covered 
 half the period since Washington was a boy, 
 gave a description of Virginia schoolboys of
 
 The National Hero. 83 
 
 his day, which is doubtless equally true of those 
 of the period seventy-five years earlier. Advising 
 the students one morning never to wear pistols, 
 on the ground that it was a practice worthy only 
 of cowards and bullies, and liable to lead to seri- 
 ous results when the blood was hot, he said : 
 
 When I was a boy, we used to get mad and fight, 
 but we fought fair. We struck straight from the shoul- 
 der, and one got the other down and pommeled him till 
 he cried, "Enough !" And a fellow would have been 
 disgraced who struck his prostrate foe after he said 
 "Enough." We used to fight in that way [said the old 
 gentleman, warming up with reminiscences of the first 
 quarter of the century], and I have yet to see that there 
 was any great harm in settling difficulties after that 
 fashion. 
 
 Not only was Washington high-tempered, but 
 he was a thorough boy in at least one other re- 
 spect; he fell in love early and often. One of 
 his schoolmates, who was wont to speak of him 
 as unusually studious and industrious, recalled 
 one occasion when he surprised his playmates by 
 "romping with one of the largest girls." It is 
 quite certain that by the time he was fourteen 
 he was deeply in love with Mary Bland, his "low- 
 land beauty," as he called her, and even wrote 
 verses to her. Old tradition identified the "low- 
 land beauty" with a Miss Grimes, also of West-
 
 84 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 moreland, and there are some "dear Sally" let- 
 ters extant, so that possibly he changed the des- 
 ignation with the girl. Here is the style in 
 which the sixteen-year-old lover wrote to a 
 friend : 
 
 My place of residence at present is at his Lord- 
 ship's, where I might, were my heart disengaged, pass 
 my time very pleasantly, as there is a very agreeable 
 young lady in the same house, Colonel George Fairfax's 
 wife's sister. But that only adds fuel to the fire, as being 
 often and unavoidably in company with her revives my 
 former passion for your Lowland Beauty; 2 whereas, 
 were I to live more retired from young women, I might 
 in -some measure alleviate my sorrow by burying that 
 chaste and troublesome passion in oblivion; I am very 
 well assured that this will be the only antidote or 
 remedy. 
 
 But the heart of our melancholy young gen- 
 tleman was already unfaithful to his "lowland 
 beauty," whether he knew it or not, and for a 
 time it was this same sister-in-law of George 
 Fairfax, Miss Mary Carey, whose image occu- 
 pied his mind. This affair continued, off and 
 
 2 "The 'Lowland Beauty,' Mary Bland," says Mr. 
 Lodge, "married Henry Lee, and became the mother of 
 'Legion Harry,' a favorite officer and friend of Wash- 
 ington, and the grandmother of Robert E. Lee, the 
 great soldier of the Confederacy."
 
 The National Hero. 85 
 
 on, for some years. But certainly not later than 
 his twentieth year he had found another girl to 
 his taste, for he wrote to William Fauntleroy, at 
 Richmond, that he hoped for a revocation of the 
 cruel sentence inflicted by his sister, Miss Betsy. 
 In 1756, at twenty- four, when he made, as Colo- 
 nel Washington, his first trip to Boston, he fell 
 in love at short notice with a New York heiress, 
 Mary Philipse. On his way home he again tar- 
 ried in New York for the sake of this fair lady, 
 but the women evidently had at that time no 
 idea of the brilliant future in store for the young 
 Virginian, and we are left to infer that the New 
 York heiress rejected the future first President. 
 It is two years before we hear of another lovv. 
 affair, but this time he was to meet his fate. 
 In the spring of 1758, as he was on his way 
 with dispatches to Williamsburg, he stopped one 
 day to dine with a friend, and met there Martha 
 Custis, a widow, "young, pretty, intelligent, and 
 an heiress." Of course this was too much even 
 for an Indian fighter. The horses were brought 
 out in the afternoon, but the young people talked 
 on, and the horses finally went back to the sta- 
 ble. The next morning he rode away, but on 
 his return called at the White House and plight- 
 ed his troth with the fair widow. He had been 
 a fickle lover, perhaps, but the stately lady whom
 
 86 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 he married January 6, 1759. found him constant 
 in his devotion to the end. 
 
 As to Washington's generalship, Mr. Roose- 
 velt, in his life of Gouverneur Morris (page 52), 
 contrasting the soldiers of the Revolution with 
 those of the Civil War, says : 
 
 As a mere military man, Washington himself cannot 
 rank with the wonderful war-chief who for four years 
 ied the Army of Northern Virginia, and the names of 
 Washington and Greene fill up the short list of really 
 good Revolutionary generals. Against these the Civil 
 War shows a roll that contains not only Lee, but also 
 Grant and Sherman, Jackson and Johnston, Thomas, 
 Sheridan, and Farragut, leaders whose volunteer sol- 
 diers and sailors, at the end of four years' service, were 
 ready and more than able to match themselves against 
 the best regular forces of Europe. 
 
 Mr. Roosevelt is, doubtless, right in his com- 
 parison, and yet Washington was a great gen- 
 eral. Like William the Silent, he lost most of 
 the battles he fought. Raw militia, such as he 
 had in great part, could not be expected, espe- 
 cially when inferior in numbers, to hold their 
 own with disciplined British regulars. But the 
 wonder is that his army did not go to pieces 
 after the battle on Long Island, or amid the suf- 
 ferings of Valley Forge. There were some bril- 
 liant feats of generalship. Of the Boston cam- 
 paign it is rightly said:
 
 The National Hero. 87 
 
 To maintain a post within musket-shot of the enemy 
 for six months together, without powder, and at the 
 same time to disband an army and recruit another within 
 that distance of twenty odd British regiments, is more, 
 probably, than ever was attempted. 
 
 And yet he accomplished it, and drove the 
 enemy from the city. Frederick the Great is 
 reported to have called the Trenton cam- 
 paign the most brilliant of the century. Of the 
 Monmouth campaign Frederick said : "Clinton 
 gained no advantage, except to reach New York 
 with the wreck of his army. America is proba- 
 bly lost for England." But it is neither Boston 
 nor Trenton nor Monmouth, nor even York- 
 town, that stamps Washington as the great gen- 
 eral. It was holding that army together after 
 defeat and amid the most terrible destitution and 
 sufferings. "His cardinal doctrine was that the 
 Revolution depended upon the existence of the 
 army, and not on the possession of any partic- 
 ular spot of ground, and his masterly adherence 
 to this theory brought victory, slowly but surely." 
 His greatest feat of generalship, as of states- 
 manship, was holding the army together, keep- 
 ing the superior British forces confined to a lim- 
 ited area; teaching Congress by endless letters 
 what to do ; begging, entreating, threatening this 
 body, as well as the state governments, as the
 
 88 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 need of money and supplies became more and 
 more urgent; striking a blow now and then to 
 keep up the courage and patriotism of his coun- 
 trymen. Nobody has, perhaps, ever seriously 
 doubted that the fate of the Revolution was all 
 the time in the hands of this one man, and its 
 success is his work, in a measure that can rarely 
 be said of one man. Nothing could daunt the 
 heaven-sent deliverer not defeat, not lack of 
 supplies, of money, of munitions of war, not dis- 
 banding troops, nor plots against himself, nor 
 treason. 
 
 It will probably never be accurately known 
 just how great a part Washington had in the 
 framing of the Constitution. We know perfect- 
 ly well that he knew that the salvation of the 
 country depended on the adoption of some form 
 of government stronger than the Articles of 
 Confederation. We know from a remark of his 
 reported by Gouverneur Morris, and made prob- 
 ably just before the convention opened, how he 
 felt: 
 
 It is too probable that no plan we propose will be 
 adopted. Perhaps another dreadful conflict is to be sus- 
 tained. If, to plea-se the people, we offer what we our- 
 selves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our 
 work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and 
 honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God.
 
 The National Hero. 89 
 
 But Washington was not a talker. He had 
 sat silent for fifty-one days in the convention 
 which declared war and made him commander 
 of the Revolutionary forces, and yet Patrick 
 Henry had said of him then: "If you speak of 
 solid information and sound judgment, Colonel 
 Washington is unquestionably the greatest man 
 on the floor." Now, he presided over the Con- 
 stitutional Convention, and from May 25 to Sep- 
 tember 17 spoke but once (in behalf of Gor- 
 ham's amendment). And yet Air. Lodge, after 
 thoroughly investigating the whole subject, 
 thinks an opinion shared by Mr. Bancroft in 
 his History of the Constitution that, "without 
 the influence and the labors of Washington the 
 Convention of 1787, in all probability, would 
 have failed of success." 
 
 As first President of the United States, Wash- 
 ington had, of course, greater difficulties than 
 could ever beset any of his successors. Every- 
 thing had to be settled. There were no prece- 
 dents. All depended on the good sense of the 
 Chief Executive and his advisers. He began by 
 choosing the ablest Cabinet that ever assembled 
 around any President at the national capital. 
 Good sense and patriotism and the loftiest and 
 most unselfish motives characterized all his pub- 
 lic acts. He did not escape criticism, of course.
 
 90 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 Only a weak man with a weak policy ever does 
 that. A bitter opposition soon developed, but he 
 never swerved from what he conceived to be the 
 path of duty. "He judges well," said Pericles, 
 "who accepts unpopularity in a great cause." 
 Washington had accepted unpopularity in the 
 Revolution, and he accepted it with the like 
 equanimity during his administration. But time 
 always brings his revenge to the really great 
 and honest man, and most men have long ago 
 acknowledged what Mr. Lodge so well says with 
 regard to the administration of our first Presi- 
 dent: 
 
 When Washington went out of office, the way was 
 open to the Western movement; the dangers of disinte- 
 gration by reason of foreign intrigues on the frontier 
 were removed ; peace had been maintained, and the 
 national sentiment had had opportunity for rapid 
 growth. France had discovered that, although she had 
 been our ally, we were not her dependent ; other nations 
 had been brought to perceive that the United States 
 meant to have a foreign policy all their own ; and the 
 American people were taught that their first duty was 
 to be Americans and nothing else. 
 
 He might have added that Washington, in his 
 appointments, set the highest example for the 
 proper conduct of the civil service. 
 
 How did the great man look? His pictures
 
 The National Hero. 91 
 
 / 
 
 do not, as a rule, it seems, exhibit the strong- 
 man we expect to see. Here is the description 
 Mr. Lodge gives of him from contemporary tes- 
 timony : 
 
 Over six feet high, powerfully built, and of uncom- 
 mon muscular strength, he had the force that always 
 comes from great physical power. He had a fine head, 
 a strong face, with blue eyes set wide apart in deep 
 orbits, and beneath, a square jaw and firm-set mouth 
 which told of a relentless will. Houdon, the sculptor, 
 no bad judge, said he had no conception of the majesty 
 and grandeur of Washington's form and features until 
 he studied him as a subject for a statue. 
 
 Mrs. John Adams thus describes to her hus- 
 band the appearance of Washington when he as- 
 sumed command at Cambridge: 
 
 Dignity, ease, and complacency, the gentleman and 
 the soldier, look agreeably blended in him. Modesty 
 marks every line and feature of his face. Those lines 
 of Dryden instantly occurred to me : 
 
 "Mark his majestic fabric! He's a temple 
 Sacred by birth, and built by hands divine ; 
 His soul's the deity that lodges there ; 
 Nor is the pile unworthy of the God." 
 
 Captain David Ackerson, of Alexandria, Vir- 
 ginia, thus describes, in 1811, Washington's ap- 
 pearance, as he saw him three days before the 
 crossing of the Delaware:
 
 92 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 Washington had a large, thick nose, and it was very 
 red that day, giving me the impression that he was not 
 so moderate in the use of liquors as he was supposed 
 to be. I found afterwards that this was a peculiarity. 
 His nose was apt to turn scarlet in a cold wind. He 
 was standing near a camp-fire, evidently lost in thought 
 and making no effort to keep warm. He seemed six 
 feet and a half in height, was as erect as an Indian, 
 and did not for a moment relax from a military attitude. 
 Washington's exact height was six feet two inches in 
 his boots. He was then a little lame from striking his 
 knee against a tree. His eye was so gray that it looked 
 almost white, and he had a troubled look on his color- 
 less face. He had a piece of woolen tied around his 
 throat, and was quite hoarse. Perhaps the throat trou- 
 ble from which he finally died had its origin about then. 
 Washington's boots were enormous. They were number 
 thirteen. His ordinary walking shoes were number 
 eleven. His hands were large in proportion, and he 
 could not buy a glove to fit him, and had to have his 
 gloves made to order. His mouth was his strong fea- 
 ture, the lips being always tightly compressed. That 
 day they were compressed so tightly as to be painful 
 to look at. At that time he weighed two hundred 
 pounds, and there was no surplus flesh about him. He 
 was tremendously mu-scled, and the fame of his great 
 strength was everywhere. His large tent when wrapped 
 up with the poles was so heavy that it required two 
 men to place it in the camp-wagon. Washington would 
 lift it with one hand and throw it in the wagon as 
 easily as if it were a pair of saddlebags. He could hold 
 a musket with one hand and shoot with precision as 
 easily as other men did with a horse-pistol. His lungs
 
 The National Hero. 93 
 
 were his weak point, and his voice was never strong. 
 He was at that time in the prime of life. His hair was 
 a chestnut brown, his cheeks were prominent, and his 
 head was not large in contrast to every other part of 
 his body, which seemed large and bony at all points. 
 His finger-joints and wrists were so large as to be 
 genuine curiosities. As to his habits at that period I 
 found out much that might be interesting. He was an 
 enormous eater, but was content with bread and meat 
 if he had plenty of it. But hunger seemed 1 to put him 
 in a rage. It was his custom to take a drink of rum or 
 whisky on awakening in the morning. Of course all 
 this was changed when he grew old. I saw him at 
 Alexandria a year before he died. His hair was very 
 g'ray, and his form was slightly bent. His chest was 
 very thin. He had false teeth which did not fit, and 
 pushed his under lip outward. 
 
 This was evidently meant to be a faithful de- 
 scription, notwithstanding minor inaccuracies, as, 
 for example, the color of the eyes. 
 
 Washington's fatal illness was, as is well 
 known, sudden and short. He took cold from 
 riding in the snow and rain December 12, 1799, 
 and died two days later from ccdematous laryn- 
 gitis (then called quinsy} that is, he was slowly 
 strangled to death by the closing of the throat. 
 The principal remedy tried was bleeding, which 
 did no good, of course. He was seriously ill 
 only twenty-four hours, and realized at once
 
 94 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 that the end was near. 3 He gave his will into the 
 keeping of his wife, gave minute directions about 
 the disposition of his papers, and,, when nothing 
 more was to be done, calmly awaited the end. 
 "I die hard," he said to Dr. Craik, "but I am not 
 afraid to go." He died as he was in the very act 
 of counting his own pulse. 
 
 As to his religious faith, Mr. Lodge says: 
 
 3 Dr. F. H. Hooper gives (in a footnote, Vol. II., 
 page 296, of Lodge's "Washington") the following in- 
 teresting statement as to the disease : "Washington's 
 physicians are not to be criticised for their treatment, 
 for they acted according to their best light and knowl- 
 edge. To treat such a case in such a manner in the year 
 1889 would be little short of criminal. At the present 
 time the physicians would use the laryngoscope and 
 look and see what the trouble was. (The laryngoscope 
 has been used only since 1857.) In this disease the 
 function most interfered with is breathing. The one 
 thing which saves a patient in this disease is a timely 
 tracheotomy. (I doubt if tracheotomy had ever been 
 performed in Virginia in Washington's time.) Wash- 
 ington ought to have been tracheotomized, or, rather, 
 that is the way cases are saved to-day. No one would 
 think of antimony, calomel, or bleeding now. The 
 point is to let in the air, and not to let out the blood. 
 After tracheotomy has been performed, the oedema and 
 swelling of the larynx subside in three to six days. The 
 tracheotomy tube is then removed, and respiration goes 
 on through the natural channels."
 
 The National Hero. 95 
 
 He had been brought up in the Protestant Episcopal 
 Church, and to that Church he always adhered; for its 
 splendid liturgy and stately forms appealed to him and 
 satisfied him. He loved it, too, as the Church of his 
 home and his childhood, and yet he was as far as pos- 
 sible from being sectarian, and there is not a word of 
 his which shows anything but the most entire liberality 
 and toleration. He made no parade of his religion, for 
 in this as in other things he was perfectly simple and 
 sincere. He was tortured by no doubts or questionings, 
 but believed always in an overruling Providence and in 
 a merciful God, to whom he knelt and prayed in the 
 day of darkness or in the hour of triumph with a su- 
 preme and childlike confidence.
 
 VI. 
 
 THE SOUTH'S IDEAL HERO. 
 
 PERHAPS it was because I was homesick that I 
 took to reading last winter about the noblest 
 character whom my native Southland has yet 
 produced. I am conscious that I have per- 
 haps idealized Southern character in the course 
 of the fourteen years that I have been away from 
 home, and I wanted to refresh and confirm my 
 convictions by reading the story of that supreme 
 crisis when men's souls were tried and General 
 Robert E. Lee was our foremost man. I was cu- 
 rious, too, to see whether the General Lee of my 
 boyish enthusiasm would seem the same under 
 the quieter and closer scrutiny of middle life. I 
 read eagerly book after book on the Civil War. 
 Incidentally I have recovered some of my lost 
 youth, and have recalled the moments when I 
 saw with my own eyes one or other of the Con- 
 federate heroes whose deeds of glory I have 
 found recorded on the printed page. How it 
 quickens your interest if you have seen in the 
 flesh the hero you read about ! I have been fully 
 repaid for my reading. General Lee is a greater 
 (96)
 
 ROI5EKT EDWARD LEE.
 
 The South' s Ideal Hero. 97 
 
 man, a more stainless character, than I had ever 
 dreamed. There is absolutely no littleness about 
 that majestic man. He was worthy of the un- 
 paralleled devotion of his army and his people 
 during the war, and the best thing we can still 
 do for the formation of the highest ideals of 
 manhood in our Southern youth is to call and re- 
 call their attention to our stainless hero. I nev- 
 er saw General Lee, but it is perhaps pardonable 
 if under the impulse of my present enthusiasm I 
 group together some of the most striking facts 
 in the life of the great soldier who is probably to 
 be forever the South's ideal of manhood. 
 
 Robert E. Lee was always good : a model boy, 
 an exemplary youth, a man of stainless life. No 
 one was ever heard to censure his conduct or his 
 character. At school preparing for West Point 
 he was "never behind at his studies, never failed 
 in a single recitation." At West Point he never 
 received a demerit ; was adjutant of the corps, 
 the post of honor in his senior year, and grad- 
 uated second in his class. "He was the most 
 punctual man I ever knew," said his son. "He 
 was always ready for family prayers, and at all 
 meal times, and met every engagement, business 
 or social, on the moment." From him was heard 
 "never a word that might not have been uttered 
 in the presence of the most refined woman." He 
 7
 
 98 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 never drank liquor. A bottle of fine old whisky 
 which a Virginia lady persuaded him to take to 
 the Mexican War he brought back unopened. 
 In 1861 a friend from Norfolk forced upon him 
 two bottles of good old "London Dock" brandy, 
 but these he kept untouched all through the war 
 until compelled to use them during a severe ill- 
 ness of one of his daughters after the war. 
 Alexander Stephens, who was greatly impressed 
 with the manly soldier on his first interview, 
 when seeking to win him to the service of the 
 newly formed Confederate States government, 
 says: 
 
 I did not know then that he used no stimulants, was 
 free even from the use of tobacco, and that he was ab- 
 solutely stainless in his private life. I did not know, 
 as I do now, that he had been a model youth and young 
 man ; but I had before me the most manly and entire 
 gentleman T ever saw. 
 
 General Lee was five feet and eleven inches in 
 height and weighed usually about one hundred 
 and seventy-five pounds. In the Mexican cam- 
 paign, when about forty years of age, "he was," 
 says General Wilcox, "in full manly vigor, and 
 the handsomest man in the army." Fifteen years 
 later (1863) Stonewall Jackson said of him: 
 "General Lee is the most perfect animal form I
 
 The South's Ideal Hero. 99 
 
 ever saw." Dr. J. William Jones says of him in 
 1862: 
 
 At this time General Lee was certainly one of the 
 most superb-looking soldiers the world ever saw. I had 
 first seen him on the day when he came to offer his 
 sword to the state that gave him birth the home of his 
 love. Then he had a smooth face, save a moustache, 
 and his hair had only a few silver threads in it. Now 
 he had a full beard, and that and his hair were as white 
 as the driven snow ; but his graceful, knightly bearing, 
 and his eagle eye, and the very expression of his coun- 
 tenance, all betokened mingled firmness and gentleness 
 and showed him the true soldier. But when mounted 
 he sat his horse with easy grace, seemed indeed a part 
 of the horse, and was the finest horseman I ever saw. 
 
 "Traveler," said Captain W. Gordon McCabe, 
 "always stepped as if conscious that he bore a 
 king upon his back." 
 
 In the Mexican War he made a great impres- 
 sion upon the whole army and especially upon 
 General Scott. He received repeatedly honor- 
 able mention in the commanding general's re- 
 ports and was three times promoted. When a 
 public reception was tendered General Scott by 
 the city of Richmond after the Mexican War, 
 he wrote: "Captain R. E. Lee is the Virginian 
 who deserves the credit of that brilliant cam- 
 paign." In 1857 General Scott, in writing to 
 the Secretary of War to ask a second lieuten-
 
 ioo Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 ancy for young W. H. Fitzhugh Lee, then a stu- 
 dent at Harvard, said: "I make this application 
 mainly on the extraordinary merits of the father, 
 the very best soldier I ever saw in the field/' 
 To General Preston, General Scott said on one 
 occasion, long before the Civil War : 
 
 I tell you that if I were on my deathbed to-morrow, 
 and the President of the United States should tell me 
 that a great battle was to be fought for the liberty or 
 slavery of the country, and he asked my judgment as 
 to the ability of a commander, I would say with my 
 dying breath, "Let it be Robert E. Lee." 
 
 To a New York banker General Scott said be- 
 fore the war: 
 
 Col. Robert E. Lee is not only the greatest soldier 
 of America, but the greatest now living in the world. 
 . . . And if he ever gets the opportunity he will prove 
 himself the greatest captain of history. 
 
 The position that General Scott deemed him 
 worthy of Commander of the United States 
 Army was offered him by President Lincoln in 
 the spring of 1861, and declined. General Long 
 quotes from a letter this account of the offer 
 made through Mr. Francis Preston Blair: 
 
 Mr. Blair : "I come to you on the part of President 
 Lincoln to ask whether any inducement that he can 
 offer will prevail on you to take command of the Union 
 Army."
 
 The Sonth's Ideal Hero. 101 
 
 Colonel Lee : "If I owned the four millions of slaves, 
 I would cheerfully sacrifice them to the preservation of 
 the Union, but to lift my hand against my own state 
 and people is impossible." 
 
 The best confirmation of the truth of this re- 
 port of the offer is General Lee's letter to Hon. 
 Reverdy Johnson, February 25, 1868: 
 
 After listening to his remarks, I declined the offer 
 he made me of the command of the army that was to be 
 brought into the field, stating as candidly and conscien- 
 tiously as I could that, though opposed to secession and 
 deprecating war, I could take no part in the invasion 
 of the Southern states. 
 
 It is needless now to say that the campaigns 
 in Virginia fulfilled all General Scott's predic- 
 tions. The following estimate of the command- 
 er in chief of the armies of Great Britain, Gen- 
 eral Sir Garnet Wolseley, will more and more 
 come to be recognized everywhere as not over- 
 drawn : 
 
 I have met many of the great men of my time, but 
 Lee alone impressed me with the feeling that I was in 
 the presence of a man who was cast in a grander mold 
 and made of different and finer metal than all other 
 men. He is stamped upon my memory as being apart 
 and superior to all others in every way, a man with 
 whom none I ever knew and few of whom I have read 
 are worthy to be classed. When all the angry feelings
 
 IO2 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 aroused by secession are buried with those that existed 
 when the Declaration of Independence was written ; 
 when Americans can review the history of this last 
 great war with calm impartiality, I believe all will ad- 
 mit that General Lee towered far above all men on 
 either side in that struggle. I believe he will be re- 
 garded not only as the most prominent figure of the 
 Confederacy, but as the greatest American of the nine- 
 teenth century, whose statue is well worthy to stand on 
 an equal pedestal with that of Washington, and whose 
 memory is equally worthy to be enshrined in the hearts 
 of all his countrymen. 
 
 The spirit of the chivalrous soldier and hu- 
 mane man characterized all his conduct in war, 
 and he was wholly free from malice or vindic- 
 tiveness. "We make war only upon armed men," 
 he said in his general orders to his army on first 
 invading Pennsylvania ; he "earnestly exhorted 
 the troops to abstain with most scrupulous care 
 from unnecessary or wanton injury of private 
 property," and "enjoined upon all officers to ar- 
 rest and bring to summary punishment all who 
 should in any way offend against the orders on 
 the subject." On one occasion he was seen to 
 dismount from his horse and put up a farmer's 
 fence, to set a good example to his soldiers. 
 Soon after the war, when he had been indicted 
 for treason by a Federal grand jury, a party of 
 gentlemen were spending an evening at his house
 
 The South' s Ideal Hero. 103 
 
 in Richmond, and Rev. Dr. - - led in the ex- 
 pression of bitterness felt by the South at this 
 indictment. General Lee followed him to the 
 door when he left, and said : 
 
 Doctor, there is a good old book, which I read and 
 you preach from, which says, "Love your enemies, bless 
 them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, 
 and pray for them which despitefully use you and per- 
 secute you." Do you think your remarks this evening 
 were quite in the spirit of that teaching? 
 
 Then General Lee added : 
 
 I have fought against the people of the North be- 
 cause I believed they were seeking to wrest from the 
 South her dearest rights. But I have never cherished 
 toward them bitter or vindictive feeling, and have never 
 seen the day when I did not pray for them. 
 
 One day in the autumn of 1869 Dr. Jones 
 found General Lee standing at his gate, from 
 which a humbly clad man was moving away. 
 "That is one of our soldiers who is in necessitous 
 circumstances," remarked the General. On be- 
 ing asked to what command he belonged, Gen- 
 eral Lee replied: "He fought on the other side, 
 but we must not remember that against him 
 now." This poor Union soldier said to Dr. 
 Jones afterwards: "He is the noblest man that 
 ever lived. He not only had a kind word for me,
 
 IO4 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 but he gave me some money to help me on my 
 way." 
 
 To control one's self is greater than to con- 
 quer enemies, and "self-restraint is the highest 
 form of self-assertion." "I never in my life saw 
 in him the slightest tendency to self-seeking," 
 said Jefferson Davis. After the Mexican War, 
 Robert E. Lee said: "Such [favors] as he [the 
 President] can conscientiously bestow I shall 
 gratefully receive, and have no doubts that these 
 will exceed my deserts." Concerning the promo- 
 tion of Joseph E. Johnston to be brigadier gen- 
 eral in 1860, Lee, who had previously ranked 
 Johnston, said: 
 
 I rejoice in the good fortune of my old friend Joe 
 Johnston, for while I should not like, of course, that 
 this should be taken as a precedent in the service, yet, 
 so far as he is concerned, he is in every way worthy of 
 the promotion, and I am glad that he received it. 
 
 When General Joseph E. Johnston was claim- 
 ing that he should rank first among the five full 
 generals in 1862, General Lee used to say: "Oh, 
 I care nothing about rank. I am willing to serve 
 anywhere that I can be most useful." He had 
 proved that by his acceptance of an inferior 
 command in West Virginia in the summer of 
 1861. When that campaign proved unsuccess- 
 ful, he showed President Davis that but for the
 
 The South's Ideal Hero. 105 
 
 failure of subordinates victory would have been 
 won; but he begged the President not to speak 
 of it, saying: "I would rather rest under unjust 
 censure myself than injure those who are doing 
 what they can for the cause." The same spirit 
 characterized him in the fall of 1861 when sent 
 to look after the coast defenses of Georgia and 
 South Carolina. 
 
 General Lee scrupulously refrained from using 
 his position to advance the fortunes of his kin- 
 dred. His son, R. E. Lee, Jr., though he had 
 been captain of a company of students at the 
 University of Virginia, enlisted as a private in 
 the artillery in 1862, and remained so until ap- 
 pointed to a lieutenancy on the staff of his broth- 
 er, W. H. Fitzhugh Lee, when the latter was 
 promoted to be brigadier general. Late in the 
 war President Davis wished to appoint another 
 son, G. W. Custis Lee, to the command of the 
 army in southwest Virginia, making him major 
 general, or lieutenant general, or even full gen- 
 eral, that he might rank any other officer eligible 
 to that position. All that was necessary was 
 that General Lee should order his son to that 
 command ; but this he declined to do. "I cannot 
 pass my tried officers," he said, "and take for 
 that important position a comparatively new 
 man, especially when that man is my own son."
 
 io6 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 Consideration for, and sympathy with, others 
 was as characteristic of General Lee as was his 
 lack of self-seeking. This was evident already 
 in the boy's conduct toward his invalid mother. 
 Dr. J. William Jones says of him at this period: 
 
 So Robert was the housekeeper, carried the keys, 
 attended to the marketing, managed all of the outdoor 
 business, and took care of his mother's horses. At the 
 hour when the other schoolboys went to play, he hur- 
 ried home to order his mother's drive, and would then 
 be seen carrying her in his arms to the carriage and 
 arranging her cushions with the gentleness of an ex- 
 perienced nurse. 
 
 When he went to West Point, his mother was 
 heard to say: "How can I live without Robert? 
 He is both son and daughter to me." On one 
 vacation from West Point, finding his mother's 
 old coachman "Xat" threatened with consump- 
 tion, he took him to the milder climate of Geor- 
 gia and secured for him the best medical advice 
 and attention. The following incident is told by 
 a Federal soldier whose leg was shattered on the 
 last day of the battle at Gettysburg. Seeing 
 General Lee pass near, the wounded man defi- 
 antly shouted, "Hurrah for the Union !" Gen- 
 eral Lee dismounted and came toward him. "I 
 confess," said the Federal soldier, "at first I 
 thought he meant to kill me." But General Lee
 
 The South's Ideal Hero. 107 
 
 took his hand, looked kindly into his eyes, and 
 said: "My son, I hope you will soon be well." 
 "If I live a thousand years," added the soldier, 
 "I shall never forget the expression on General 
 Lee's face. ... I cried myself to sleep on 
 the bloody ground." 
 
 The love and devotion of his soldiers for Gen- 
 eral Lee was beautiful ; and no wonder. "It was 
 his constant habit," said Senator Withers, "to 
 turn over to the sick and wounded soldiers in the 
 hospital such delicate viands as the partiality of 
 friends furnished for his personal consumption." 
 His wife, who was an invalid confined to a roll- 
 ing-chair, spent her time knitting socks for the 
 soldiers, inducing others around her to do the 
 same; and his letters to her are full of evidence 
 that he found time amid all his duties and cares 
 to distribute them to the soldiers. In June, 1864, 
 a lady sent him a fine peach the first he had 
 seen for two years and he sent it to an invalid 
 lady in whose yard his tents were pitched. On 
 the final retreat from Petersburg to Appomattox, 
 he turned aside for a few minutes to call upon 
 the widow of one of his officers who had fallen 
 in battle. Intimately connected with this consid- 
 eration of others was his invariable courtesy. At 
 Lexington after the war, "even amid his pressing 
 duties at the college he found time to be the most
 
 io8 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 thoroughly polite gentleman in the community. 
 He seemed 'to think himself called on to visit all 
 strangers who came to Lexington, and frequent- 
 ly surprised and delighted them by an unex- 
 pected courtesy." 
 
 Dr. Joynes, who was a member of General 
 Lee's faculty, says r 1 
 
 General Lee's treatment of his faculty was not only 
 courteous, but kind and affectionate. My wife reminds 
 me that once, when I was detained at home by sickness, 
 General Lee came every day, through a deep Lexing- 
 ton snow, and climbed the high stairs to inquire about 
 me and comfort her. 
 
 With all his great qualities 2 General Lee was 
 a sincere and humble Christian. Nearly every 
 letter from the front in war, as well as those in 
 times of peace, contains an expression of his 
 trust in God and his submission to the heavenly 
 will. He fostered the religious spirit among the 
 soldiers in his army ; and his anxiety for the spir- 
 itual welfare of the students under his charge at 
 Washington College was expressed in his remark 
 to a clergyman. "O, Doctor, if I could only know 
 
 'Footnote to address made at the Lee Centennial 
 Celebration held under the auspices of the University 
 of South Carolina, January 19, 1907. 
 
 2 For proof that General Lee was above money and 
 beyond price, see Chapter XIV., pp. 349-351.
 
 The South' s Ideal Hero. 109 
 
 that all of the young men in the college were 
 good Christians, I should have nothing more to 
 desire." His very last act, at the meeting of the 
 vestry of his church the evening he was stricken 
 down, was to subscribe the amount necessary to 
 cover the deficit in his pastor's salary. 
 
 Is it not absolutely clear from the foregoing 
 incidents and illustrations not only that General 
 Lee was in war "a phenomenon," as Stonewall 
 Jackson said "the only man I would be willing 
 to follow blindfolded" but also the purest and 
 best of men? He was our first gentleman, a 
 Christian hero, without self-seeking, without av- 
 arice, without malice or vindictiveness, without 
 vice, kind and considerate, tender and forgiving, 
 a knightly man without fear and without re- 
 proach. As Major Daniel said in his great me- 
 morial address, "To him who thus stood by us 
 we owe a debt immeasurable, and as long as our 
 race is upon earth, let our children and our chil- 
 dren's children hold that debt sacred." If we 
 teach them to do that, we are providing them 
 with the greatest safeguard in the struggles and 
 temptations of life. To know and revere and 
 look up to a character like General Lee's is the 
 best thing that can be taught the youth of our 
 land. "On God and godlike men we build our 
 trust."
 
 no Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 There are a few scenes in the life of General 
 Lee I should like especially to have witnessed ; 
 for example, that described by Major John W. 
 Daniel just after Gettysburg. General Lee had 
 said, on the failure of Pickett's glorious charge, 
 "It was all my fault" ; but his men knew better. 
 
 We saw him standing by the roadside with his bridle- 
 rein over his arm, on the second day afterwards, as the . 
 army was withdrawing. Pickett's division filed past 
 him; every general of brigade had fallen, and every 
 field officer of its regiments; a few tattered battle flags 
 and a few hundreds of men were all that was left of 
 the magnificent body, five thousand strong, who had 
 made the famous charge. He stood with uncovered 
 head, as if he reviewed a conquering host, and with the 
 conqueror's look upon him. With proud step the men 
 marched by, and as they raised their hats and cheered 
 him there was the tenderness of devoted love, mingled 
 with the fire of battle in their eyes. 
 
 Again I should like to have seen Gregg's 
 Texas brigade moving forward to the charge to 
 restore the broken lines, cheering the General as 
 they passed him, and Lee so moved by their 
 greeting and their gallant bearing that he spurred 
 his horse through an opening in the trenches and 
 followed, while the whole line shouted as it 
 rushed forward, "Go back, General Lee, go 
 back!" Again I should like to have been a wit- 
 ness at Spottsylvania six days later May 12
 
 The South' s Ideal Hero. in 
 
 when the Federals were pouring through the 
 broken lines threatening disaster, and General 
 Lee had ridden forward to the head of Gordon's 
 column. General Gordon, perceiving his inten- 
 tion to lead the charge, spurred to his side and 
 seizing his reins exclaimed : "General Lee, this is 
 no place for you ! Do go to the rear. These men 
 behind you are Georgians, Virginians, and Car- 
 olinians. They have never failed you on any 
 field. They will not fail you here. Will you, 
 boys?" "No, no, we will not fail him." Then 
 turning his horse and urging him back, they 
 shouted, "General Lee to the rear ! General Lee 
 to the rear !" Then General Gordon led them on 
 with the ringing words, "Forward, charge! and 
 remember your promise to General Lee." 3 
 
 Those were scenes of his triumph, but he was 
 greater still in the hour of humiliation. When 
 he had arranged terms with General Grant and 
 surrendered his army and was returning to his 
 quarters, this is what happened : 
 
 s The intensity of the musketry fire in this battle of 
 May 12, it may be remarked, was perhaps never ex- 
 ceeded in warfare. A hickory tree, eighteen inches in 
 diameter, between the opposing lines, was so chipped 
 away by the hail of bullets that the first gust of wind 
 blew it down. It is now preserved as a memento at 
 Washington.
 
 112 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 As he rode slowly along the lines, hundreds of his 
 devoted veterans pressed around the noble chief, trying 
 to take his hand, touch his person, or even lay a hand 
 upon his horse, thus exhibiting for him their great af- 
 fection. The General then, with head bare and tears 
 flowing freely down his manly cheeks, bade adieu to 
 the army. "Men, we have fought through the war to- 
 gether. I have done my best for you ; my heart is too 
 full to say more." 
 
 It was a farewell scene worthy of the peerless 
 General and his heroic army. He had hoped to 
 return home unobserved ; but as he rode through 
 the streets of Richmond, a body of Federal sol- 
 diers recognized him, lifted their hats and 
 cheered. His own people, too, did him homage. 
 "Men, women, and children crowded around him, 
 cheering and waving hats and handkerchiefs. It 
 was more like a welcome to a conqueror than to 
 a defeated prisoner on parole." 
 
 Such scenes show the marvelous affection and 
 admiration which soldiers and citizens had for 
 the great leader of armies, but I have heard of 
 another which touches my heart not less. He 
 was presiding in faculty meeting at college one 
 day after his health had become frail, and in the 
 midst of the discussion dropped off to sleep ; in- 
 stantly every voice was hushed in reverential 
 silence for fear of awaking him.
 
 MAl.'KIC'K THOMl'SON.
 
 VII. 
 MAURICE THOMPSON. 
 
 IN the production of men of great talent there 
 are often extraordinary years and especially fa- 
 vored localities. Maurice Thompson is classed 
 with that coterie of literary people from the 
 neighborhood of Brookville, Indiana, to which 
 belonged Lew Wallace, John Hay, and others; 
 and it is interesting to know that General Wal- 
 lace, who was afterwards his fellow-townsman, 
 spent part of his childhood with Maurice Thomp- 
 son's parents. 
 
 Maurice Thompson was born at Fairfield, 
 Indiana, September 9, 1844. His father and 
 grandfather were Primitive Baptist preachers ; 
 both wrote doctrinal books, and both were ef- 
 fective public speakers. The great-great-grand- 
 father was a companion of Daniel Boone, and 
 the forefathers had come "by a straggling route 
 from the highlands of Scotland and from Coun- 
 ty Kerry, Ireland, by way of Virginia, North 
 Carolina, and Tennessee, into the 'Dark and 
 Bloody Ground.' " Paternal and maternal an- 
 cestors fought under Lafayette or Marion in 
 8 (H3)
 
 114 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 the Revolution. Hence Maurice Thompson 
 came naturally by his patriotic Americanism as 
 well as his love of nature and of hunting and 
 fishing. His mother, who came of Dutch stock, 
 was "well educated, and a lover of the best 
 books." "From childhood to manhood," he said, 
 "she was my boon companion, my playmate, my 
 adviser, my teacher, my loving and encouraging 
 critic, my everything my mother!" 
 
 After his birth the family drifted to south- 
 east Missouri, back to Indiana, then to Ken- 
 tucky, and finally, when Maurice Thompson was 
 nine or ten, settled in north Georgia. Here he 
 led, as he says, "a swet wild life, hard enough 
 in many respects, almost savage in some a 
 sweet wild life, as I remember it, however, de- 
 voted to books, manual labor, wildwood roam- 
 ing, shooting, and fishing." A little later he 
 began to make those trips, by canoe or on foot, 
 in rivers, lakes, and swamps, or over mountains, 
 along the Gulf coast and into Florida, which 
 still later covered the region from the Great 
 Lakes to the Gulf. "I was impelled," he said, 
 "to go into the wilds of nature, and went." He 
 had little regular schooling, and never went to 
 college, but from his mother and from tutors 
 he received instruction in Latin, Greek, French, 
 German, Hebrew, and mathematics. Among
 
 Maurice Thompson. 115 
 
 the authors that especially delighted him in the 
 earlier period, he mentions Poe and Victor 
 Hugo and Audubon, Cicero (S 'omnium Scipi- 
 onis and De Senectute}, and Theocritus; and in 
 camp during the Civil War he was reading Car- 
 lyle, De Quincey, and the like. His companion 
 in studies and roaming, as later in the war, was 
 a younger brother ("Will"), also an enthusiast 
 over bow and arrows and an incipient naturalist. 
 Joining the Confederate army in 1862, he fought 
 till he was honorably surrendered at Kingston, 
 Georgia, in May, 1865. 
 
 His attitude during and since the war was well 
 expressed in one of his poems "An address by 
 an ex-Confederate soldier to the Grand Army 
 of the Republic": 
 
 I was a rebel, if you please, 
 
 A reckless fighter to the last, 
 Nor do I fall upon my knees 
 
 And ask forgiveness for the past. 
 
 A traitor? I a traitor? No! 
 
 I was a patriot to the core; 
 The South was mine, I loved her so, 
 
 I gave her all I could no more. 
 
 I stemmed the level flames of hell, 
 O'er bayonet bars of death I broke. 
 
 I was so near when Cleburne fell, 
 I heard the muffled bullet stroke.
 
 n6 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 I clasp the hand that made my scars, 
 I cheer the flag my foemen bore, 
 
 I shout for joy to see the stars 
 All on our common shield once more. 
 
 I stand and say that you were right, 
 I greet you with uncovered head, 
 
 Remembering many a thundering fight, 
 Where whistling death between us sped. 
 
 -In one of his novels Maurice Thompson de- 
 scribes a Confederate officer who, having come 
 to the conviction that the national cause was 
 that of human progress, did not desert, but rode 
 out boldly before the host, so that he might be 
 captured could he be overtaken, and away to 
 the enemy. Maurice Thompson's heart was with 
 the South, and he "stayed with her till the fight 
 closed,'' but his judgment went the other way. 
 He was a brave and daring soldier always for 
 proof see the incident quoted by Raskervill 
 ("Maurice Thompson," p. 103) and after the 
 war he never cringed nor apologized; but time 
 only strengthened the conviction to which he 
 had come while still fighting, that we were es- 
 saying the impossible in behalf of human slav- 
 ery that was not worth it. So he could write 
 from his heart : 
 
 I am a Southerner. 
 I love the South; I dared for her
 
 Maurice Thompson. 117 
 
 To fight from Lookout to the sea, 
 With her proud banner over me : 
 But from my lips thanksgiving broke, 
 As God in battle thunder spoke, 
 And that Black Idol, breeding drouth 
 
 And dearth of human sympathy 
 .Throughout the sweet and sensuous South, 
 
 Was, with its chains and human yoke, 
 Blown hellward from the cannon's mouth, 
 
 While freedom cheered behind the smoke! 
 
 After~the war he worked in the field, studying 
 the while engineering and some Greek buying 
 some of his books with squirrels sold at ten 
 cents then devoted himself to the law. In 
 1868 reconstruction troubles in Georgia caused 
 him to turn his face northward, and he drifted 
 to Crawfordsville, Indiana. His brother was 
 with him, and they found employment as civil 
 engineers on a line of railway then building 
 through the county. He soon married a Miss 
 Lee, of Crawfordsville, the courtship beginning 
 in this wise. He called on business at the house 
 of Mr. John Lee, and Miss Lee answered the 
 doorbell. His choice was made instantly, and 
 the marriage which followed proved the happiest 
 of the happy. Mrs. Thompson became his in- 
 separable companion, and always went with him 
 on his journeys, which now became less and less 
 frequent, except the annual winter hegira to the
 
 n8 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 South for the sake of his lungs. She, a son, 
 and two daughters survive him. His brother, 
 inseparable still in all things, married a sister 
 of Miss Lee, drifted also into letters and law, 
 and the two practiced together at the bar till 
 ihe younger removed to the far West. The law 
 did not hold Maurice Thompson's undivided 
 fealty. In boyhood he was an amateur scientist, 
 and after a while he became State Geologist of 
 Indiana. He was for a time, too, a member of 
 the legislature and figured in politics, being in 
 1888 a delegate to the National Democratic 
 Convention. As a gold Democrat he forsook his 
 party in 1896. 
 
 But in all that engineering, law, science, pol- 
 itics he did not find the career for which he 
 was intended. Already as a youth he had felt 
 all the "myriad scraps of knowledge, snatched 
 here from books and there from nature, fusing 
 in the heat of his imagination and running to- 
 gether in a strong current toward the outlet of 
 literary expression." He had been printing from 
 time to time sketches and stories and poems, and 
 it may have been an incident from his own ex- 
 perience which he tells in "A Banker of Bank- 
 ersville." A farmer says to his lawyer, whom he 
 greatly admires : "Colonel, you're a mighty smart 
 man. You could go to Congress if you'd stop
 
 Maurice Thompson. 119 
 
 writin' them durn little pomes!" His first little 
 book, "Hoosier Mosaics" (1875), while only a 
 promise of the charming essays and nature 
 studies that were to come in later years, made 
 him at least a local reputation, and he began to 
 be pointed out by his fellow-townsmen. His 
 next book, "Witchery of Archery," was widely 
 read and won him considerable literary fame; 
 for thirty years ago there was a furore for arch- 
 ery, for which he and his brother were chiefly 
 responsible. Not only did he write magazine 
 articles and poems about the delights of this 
 sport, but the two brothers took prizes at the 
 tournaments, and their sport became the "fad" 
 of the time. About 1884 he abandoned law for 
 literature and science, and from 1889 letters 
 claimed all his fealty. In that year he became, 
 as he continued till his death, literary editor of 
 The Independent. These are the main facts in 
 his career. One may read them in several places, 
 but they are best given, along with delightful 
 critical estimates, in Baskervill's sketch "Mau- 
 rice Thompson" in his "Southern Writers." If 
 by this reference I invite comparison with Bas- 
 kervill's paper, I shall feel compensated for the 
 inevitable verdict should I direct or redirect any 
 one to that charming study. 
 
 It had been several years since I had read
 
 I2O Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 much from Maurice Thompson, and I was a 
 little fearsome when I took him up again. 
 Would I find that my taste had changed? I 
 read first his "Alice of Old Vincennes," and was 
 glad I could like his popular novel. It is a bet- 
 ter book than his other novels. Still I come 
 back to my old impression : Maurice Thompson 
 is at his best, in prose, in his nature sketches. 
 "This is Mr. Thompson's chosen field," said a 
 writer shortly before his death, "and there is 
 now no living nature-writer who has such grace 
 and charm as he." That is what he really knew 
 best the hills and valleys, lakes and streams, 
 creeks and bayous of Indiana and Georgia and 
 Florida, with the flying, swimming, creeping, 
 walking things that frequent those regions. 
 He writes best seemingly out-of-doors about out- 
 of-doors things, and he loves to test his favorite 
 authors in an out-of-doors atmosphere. Thus 
 he keeps his taste wholesome and fresh and 
 pure, or rather he does this with his books be- 
 cause his taste is simple and sound. "I some- 
 times read French novels out-of-doors," says he, 
 "merely for the antiseptic effect that the sun 
 and air have on the offensive passages; but at 
 best I often find myself glad that American birds 
 and flowers do not understand French." 
 
 One thing I especially like in Maurice Thomp-
 
 Maurice Thompson. 121 
 
 son is the way in which he mixes up authors 
 with things in his out-of-doors sketches. In 
 the "Tangle-Leaf Papers," for instance, we are 
 reading about birds or fishes, or following Mau- 
 rice Thompson on his wheel, and have dropped 
 upon us unawares Theocritus or Virgil, Chau- 
 cer or Izaak Walton, Emerson or Walt Whit- 
 man a sentence quoted from one or the other, 
 with a telling bit of criticism, which is sure to 
 send the reader to those authors. It is not just 
 a medley that Maurice Thompson is giving us; 
 not always strictly consequent, it is true, but dis- 
 cursive rather than rambling, like good talk, at 
 once delightful and stimulating. It is like the 
 out-of-doors, where we cannot always think log- 
 ically and in order long enough to solve a prop- 
 osition or a problem. But such papers are easy 
 to read and interesting, and in reading them 
 one's mind gets wholesome distraction and tonic, 
 as the body becomes hungry from being in the 
 fresh air. 
 
 "The Threshold of the Gods" I think Maurice 
 Thompson would have considered his best piece 
 of prose if indeed it be not a poem, lacking 
 merely verse form. Here is his very best style. 
 The first time I read it was in 1886, when we 
 were getting ready for his coming to Nashville 
 to lecture, and I liked it so much that I asked
 
 122 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 our new Professor of Elocution to read it to the 
 Literary Club. But he did not have time to 
 prepare the piece, and evidently did not catch 
 its spirit. He struck a false note, the club felt 
 the discord, and the result was confusion. 
 Members sneered at me, and the meeting- was 
 not a success. It all came back to me as I read 
 it one beautiful Sabbath afternoon fifteen years 
 later; but I do not understand how the spirit of 
 the piece could have been so completely missed. 
 I handed the same piece, two years later, to 
 a young friend on the top of Chilhowee Moun- 
 tain. He read it with the Smoky Mountains in 
 full view far away and the tinkle of cowbells 
 coming up from the valley below, and as he 
 returned it said with beaming eyes, "Maurice 
 Thompson is a poet!" Mrs. Thompson once 
 told me of the fate of the piece with the maga- 
 zine editors. Mr. Thompson sent it to several. 
 Mr. Alden said, "It is beautiful, but out of reach 
 of my readers !" In similar language they all 
 rejected it in turn. 
 
 Through Maurice Thompson's nature studies 
 I came to know and admire and love him. I 
 was something of a hero-worshiper, and was 
 nattered by the friendship of the man of letters ; 
 and the combination of fondness for his writings 
 and for him did much for me in those earlv davs.
 
 Maurice Thompson. 123 
 
 He helped me to a keener sense of the beauties 
 of nature, confirmed in me a natural love of 
 deep woods and running water and wide stretch- 
 es of country. Perhaps he had something to do 
 with the development of my love of mountain 
 tramping, with all the delights that go there- 
 with drinking cool water from ever-flowing 
 springs, eating wild berries, the luxury of 
 abounding health and of being always hungry. 
 I recall one spring morning at Vanderbilt in the 
 latter eighties when I happened to be awake at 
 five A.M. for one of the children was ill and 
 became an enforced listener at a concert of birds 
 held in the trees about the house. There was a 
 host of birds on that beautiful campus for 
 Bishop McTyeire was as hospitable to birds as 
 he was fond of trees but I was never in the 
 habit of getting awake for the early bird-con- 
 certs. That morning all the spring air was 
 vocal, and even the woodpecker that could not 
 sing seemed to catch the spirit of the occasion 
 and mounting to the tin-covered turret pecked 
 away, beating the drum, as it were, as an ac- 
 companiment. As I lay there and listened, I 
 felt grateful to Maurice Thompson for opening 
 my ears to such delights as these. 
 
 The first thing I remember reading from 
 Maurice Thompson was "Genesis of Bird-
 
 124 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 Song," in the Atlantic; and the reading of that 
 article was perhaps the cause of my suggesting 
 him as the first lecturer in the series given for 
 several successive years at Vanderbilt. The idea 
 of the promoters of that series was to bring 
 before the students and the Nashville public 
 writers of repute. Somebody asked, when the 
 choice of Maurice Thompson as first lecturer 
 had been announced, "Is he a good lecturer?" 
 "I don't know, and I don't care !" was my re- 
 ply. "He is a good writer, and I want our stu- 
 dents to see in the flesh a man that is making 
 literature, and thus get to reading his books, and 
 then other people's books, simply for literature's 
 sake." He proved to be a good lecturer sim- 
 ple, natural, totally unaffected, interesting; his 
 voice not powerful, rather gentle and soft, but 
 clear and carrying far. The people flocked to 
 hear him, and speaker and people were mutually 
 pleased. I remember his saying that the great 
 audience at Watkins Institute one evening was 
 the handsomest he had ever faced. And since 
 that time Southern authors have been much 
 read at Vanderbilt. He simply lectured, but the 
 general sentiment was, what editor Peck ex- 
 pressed, "Maurice Thompson is a poet !" And 
 this brings us naturally to his poems. 
 
 Above all that Maurice Thompson wrote, I
 
 Maurice Thompson. 125 
 
 find that his poems keep their old charm for me. 
 That would have pleased him, I am sure; for 
 doubtless he thought his poems his best work, 
 and hoped and dreamed they would last. Why 
 should he not have been pleased? Who would 
 not be a poet above all things? It is especially 
 the earlier and shorter poems that I like best. 
 The mocking-bird poems are his most ambitious 
 efforts; they are fresh and strong, full of the 
 note of liberty everywhere, genuinely American, 
 with something, too, of the American spirit that 
 challenges the world. But they are not his best 
 work, and there is not as much song in them as 
 in some of the rest. It is of the earlier simpler 
 poems that Mr. Howells said, "The odor of the 
 woods, pure and keen and clean, seems to strike 
 up from this verse as directly as from the mold 
 in the heart of the primeval forest." I was not 
 surprised to find that the mocking-bird poems 
 impressed Baskervill much as they do me; but 
 how delicately he makes his criticism ! "But to 
 some extent one feels," says he, "that the songs 
 of the mocking-bird are 'translated carefully.' 
 and that it is impossible to reproduce the 'gold- 
 en note by golden word,' even though 
 
 Heard in the dewy dawn-lit ways 
 
 Of Freedom's solitudes 
 Down by the sea in the springtime woods."
 
 126 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 On a fresh August morning, after nature 
 had had her "bath of storm," I took up the 
 "Poems" to re-read my favorites, turning first 
 to "At the Window," partly because it is per- 
 haps my prime favorite, partly because a little 
 mark in the table of contents shows that it 
 pleased a dear friend of mine, partly because the 
 poem has a history. Mr. Howells, the editor of 
 the Atlantic, opening his mail one day in his 
 office in 1873, read this to him first poem from 
 a new poet. He was surprised and delighted, 
 and showed it to Mr. Longfellow, who hap- 
 pened to be in at the time. He too was charmed 
 with its simple fresh beauty, and they agreed 
 that if the author would change the word "sap- 
 sucker" Mr. Howells would print the poem in 
 the Atlantic. The change was made, the poem 
 appeared in the Atlantic, and with it began Mau- 
 rice Thompson's literary career. It is said, by 
 the way, that both editor and elder poet after- 
 wards agreed that "sapsucker" should have 
 stayed as Maurice Thompson wrote it. But to 
 my story. I turned next to "Between the Poppy 
 and the Rose," because the 
 
 Two rare young faces, lit with love, 
 Between the poppy and the rose 
 
 are Maurice Thompson's wife and little girl.
 
 Maurice Thompson. 127 
 
 Knowing him and her, I know how sincere are 
 these words : 
 
 Oh, life is sweet, they make it so; 
 
 Its work is lighter than repose: 
 Come anything, so they bloom on 
 
 Between the poppy and the rose. 
 
 Next I turned to "Atalanta," which seems to me 
 the truest and sweetest of his lyrics, and as I 
 read the first two lines, 
 
 When spring grows old, and sleepy winds 
 Set from the South with odors sweet, 
 
 my pulse beat time to the old ryhthmic charm as 
 fifteen years before. I did not omit "A Pre- 
 lude,'' of course, and found myself lingering es- 
 pecially over .the last stanza : 
 
 And when I fall, like some old tree, 
 And subtile change makes mold of me, 
 There let earth show a fertile line 
 Whence perfect wild flowers leap and shine. 
 
 Perhaps it was because I could see him again 
 as he once recited these lines so effectively at 
 Vanderbilt, and knew he liked them himself. 
 Then I read, perhaps because it is about Theoc- 
 ritus, of whom Maurice Thompson was as fond 
 as Tennyson was, 
 
 Those were good times, in olden days, 
 Of which the poet has his dreams,
 
 128 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 When gods beset the woodland ways, 
 And lay in wait by all the streams; 
 
 and immediately I was thinking once more of 
 that favorite prose piece, "The Threshold of the 
 Gods." By this time it was easy to understand 
 why Longfellow welcomed him as a "new and 
 original singer, fresh, joyous, and true." 
 
 What strikes us is not his extraordinary power 
 and fruitfulness, but the trueness of his note and 
 the finish of his verse "a finish equal to Aid- 
 rich's," said Mr. James Whitcomb Riley to me 
 once in the small volume of poems that he 
 himself was willing to preserve. He was a se- 
 vere critic of his own verse evidently ; for while 
 most poets bring out from time to time a fresh 
 volume of their fugitive pieces, Maurice Thomp- 
 son allowed his poems to appear only twice in 
 book form, first as "Songs of Fair Weather," 
 and lastly in 1892 as "Poems/' only a compara- 
 tively small number of newer poems being print- 
 ed in the later volume with those of the earlier. 
 He published in journals poems that were in- 
 ferior, but his own taste rejected these when 
 it came to preserving them in a volume. He 
 did for himself what Matthew Arnold thought 
 necessary for Wordsworth ; and while even his 
 best may not live forever like Wordsworth's, yet 
 they now have their chance for perpetuity.
 
 Maurice Thompson. 129 
 
 The scenes of most of Maurice Thompson's 
 longer stories are laid in the South, and they 
 are the fruit doubtless of his annual Southern 
 sojourns. The old Southern civilization always 
 had a fascination for him. Writing, not long 
 before the end, about Tuscaloosa, Alabama, he 
 says: 
 
 Were I an artist, I could revel here for a month 
 or two, making studies of these lofty-pillared and tree- 
 shaded mansions ; were I a poet, what more could I 
 want of inspiration to song than the dreamy, fading 
 lines and shadowy figures of this great bygone civili- 
 zation, which somehow will not disappear from these 
 brown hills and dilapidated mansions. 
 
 Southern women always attract him. For 
 example, he says : 
 
 Tuscaloosa is a town of beautiful women. Wher- 
 ever I walked I met them, and could not keep off the 
 wonder of their striking forms and faces. . . . Tus- 
 caloosa women are certainly Southern in their style. 
 They have the unmistakable impress of Southern 
 breeding, and they are beautiful. A stranger with 
 alert eyes in his head, and a love of feminine gentle- 
 ness, sweetness, and symmetry of the colonial type in 
 his heart, can see and feel this while walking in the 
 streets of this staid and picturesque old town. 
 
 Of his characters, those that survive from the 
 old South, like Judge La Rue, are treated most 
 9
 
 130 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 respectfully, but they are conventional; and the 
 Southern matrons are rather vague and shad- 
 owy. His Southern girls are always well-bred 
 and charming. Lucie La Rue, in "A Tallahas- 
 see Girl," is the best of them; and "Sweetheart 
 Manette" who unfolds in an old Southern man- 
 sion at Bay St. Louis as fresh and pure as a 
 magnolia blossom in the garden is of Lucie's 
 type, if not quite her equal. The younger men, 
 however, representing old South traditions, but 
 living in a new order of things, like Garcin and 
 Charles cle Vaudreuil, seem almost unintentional 
 caricatures of an order of society with which 
 Maurice Thompson was not in sympathy. In- 
 deed, I do not recall a single character of his 
 Southern msn that took hold on me strongly. 
 The truth is. Maurice Thompson \vas a South-~ 
 westerner: Kentucky, Missouri, and Indiana 
 were the habitat of his race, and Indiana had 
 been his home since 1868; Georgia was only the 
 sojourn of his youth, and Bay St. Louis his win- 
 ter resort. He knew and loved the South, but 
 he was not really of it. He was full of buoyant 
 Americanism, and much more in sympathy with 
 the bluff, hearty man of the prairie than with 
 the Virginian, the Carolinian, or the Mississip- 
 pian, the descendant of the Cavalier or the Cre-
 
 Maurice Thompson. 131 
 
 ole. He does not intentionally caricature, but 
 his creations betray his sympathy. 
 
 Readers of his stories, as well as of his oc- 
 casional articles on realism, know what he liked 
 in a story. 
 
 Give me [he says] almost any leisurely tale of by- 
 gone days, with the blue of romantic distance in it, 
 a reasonable amount of heroism thrown in, some gen- 
 uine love, a trifle of mystery, plenty of well-set inci- 
 dents, and a triumphant ending. 
 
 That was reading for a hot day, but it describes 
 his own most successful novel, "Alice of Old 
 Vincennes." Happy man ! At the time of his 
 death he was rejoicing in the romantic revival 
 "historical romances selling as Zola's worst 
 novels never sold" and his own story was the 
 most popular of the year. "It is first and fore- 
 most a tale of love and war, with a bright-eyed 
 girl, Indian warfare, a Catholic priest with a 
 mysterious, worldly past, a young Virginian 
 who fights for his country, and a couple of Brit- 
 ish villains." The scene is Yincennes, Indiana, 
 a region every foot of which Maurice Thomp- 
 son knew like his own lawn ; most of the char- 
 acters are historical, and the period is an im- 
 portant one of American history, for Colonel 
 George Rogers Clark's recapture of old Vin- 
 cennes was the winning of the Northwestern
 
 132 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 Territory for American arms ; but the purpose 
 is not didactic, and the romantic element pre- 
 dominates. 
 
 "Is 'Alice of Old Vincennes' a great novel? 
 No, it is not!" We are letting Maurice Thomp- 
 son's own paper, The Independent, ask and an- 
 swer: 
 
 As a tale it reminds us of Cooper's works, and there- 
 fore it will never satisfy those who crave character 
 development and human nature analysis as exempli- 
 fied in the writings of Thackeray and George Eliot. 
 It is a clever, good, and interesting story, but, meas- 
 ured by classical tests, it is not great. 
 
 Just here a word may be said on Maurice 
 Thompson's attitude toward realism in fiction. 
 It \vas war to the knife with him. He was in 
 the fight against it in his earliest critical work, 
 and he was at it when he died. He had his 
 flings at it in his stories and in the magazines, 
 but his main attacks were made through The In- 
 dependent. Along with his war upon realism 
 went his hostility to everything that posed un- 
 der the name of "art for art's sake," especially 
 the freedom of handling sexual questions that 
 characterizes so much of French and Russian 
 literature. He was sometimes extreme, as for 
 instance in practically classing Tolstoi's "Anna 
 Karenina" and Hardy's "Tess" w T ith Zola's worst.
 
 Maurice Thompson. 133 
 
 4 
 
 But he was far more right than wrong in his at- 
 titude, and there can be no question of his thor- 
 ough sincerity. It might be more legitimately 
 questioned whether he is as nearly right on real- 
 ism as represented by James and Howells. But 
 there can be no doubt about his opposing micro- 
 scopic analysis as sincerely as "psychological" 
 novels; for though Mr. Howells was his per- 
 sonal friend, and he admired him as perhaps no 
 other man living, he never failed to attack Mr. 
 Howells' theories of art in fiction. His views 
 on these questions are best stated in "Ethics of 
 Literary Art" ; and, even if they are sometimes 
 extreme, they are good and wholesome reading. 
 
 There was an unmistakable freshness about 
 Maurice Thompson's poetry and nature studies, 
 which he would have been glad to have traced 
 back to his reading of the Greek poets. He con- 
 stantly uses Homer's name, though he probably 
 read him less than he read Pindar and ^Eschy- 
 lus. But Theocritus and Sappho he loved. The 
 latter he put, as other people do, above all other 
 women poets ; and the former he considered not 
 only the greatest of bucolic poets, but one of the 
 greatest literary geniuses of the world. He 
 wrote articles about both, and was constantly 
 using them for quotation or illustration in his 
 essays, bird studies, poems, lectures every-
 
 134 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 where. Greek was a passion with him. He 
 translated lyric fragments, and put the Seventh 
 Idyll of Theocritus into a beautiful English 
 dress ; but he knew that ''translation is impossi- 
 ble" his own phrase and he was constantly 
 urging young people, especially would-be writ- 
 ers, to learn Greek. 
 
 The most striking characteristic of lyric art [says he 
 in "The Pierian Freshness" Independent, January 19. 
 fSo-j] is the pressing together of pregnant words with 
 such force that the quintessence of blended melody is 
 forced out. It is like the crushing of ripe grapes ; you 
 hear the bubble of wine and catch the musty aroma 
 at the same time. The masters of Greek song had this 
 power of condensed expression in the highest degree. 
 Pindar made phrases which suggest absolute control 
 of language. They open vistas of beaut}-; yet when 
 turned into the best English paraphrase, they are noth- 
 ing but crude bombast. There are lyrical snatches in 
 the Idylls of Theocritus so enchantingly beautiful that 
 they startle one with an added surprise at each read- 
 ing. The thrill does not come from an unexpected 
 source, and yet it connects itself in some way directly 
 with one's receptivity, and so perfectly that it is like 
 drinking wine whose flavor and bouquet one has never 
 before dreamed of ; but whose touch slakes a great 
 thirst which until now has consumed one unawares. 
 This novelty, this dew-dashed freshness, this absolutely 
 alien quality of surprise, and this directness of appeal, 
 give to the reading of Greek poetry a fecundating 
 power which serves genius a precious turn.
 
 Maurice Thompson. 135 
 
 Some of the great English poets, like Tenny- 
 son and Swinburne, have appropriated even more 
 of the Greek spirit and have done more for the 
 Greek cause; but I do not know any American 
 poet who has been so Greek in spirit and has 
 drunk as deep of Greek lyric poetry. Like Mr. 
 Gilder, who said to the students of Vanderbilt 
 University, "The eternal canons of style are in 
 the Greek," Maurice Thompson had not aca- 
 demic training; but he read Greek all his life, 
 and never so much apparently as toward the 
 end. 
 
 I meant to write a careful, critical paper on 
 Maurice Thompson's writings ; but it is impres- 
 sionistic rather than critical reminiscential, 
 personal. How could I help it? Some of the 
 very books I have been rereading he gave me 
 himself, and on the fly leaf is inscribed in his 
 own hand, "With affectionate friendship of Mau- 
 rice Thompson." When the new volume of 
 "Poems" was coming out, he wrote me : "The 
 first copy is for my wife, the next for you and 
 Baskervill." He was my friend, and his face 
 and voice kept obtruding themselves from the 
 books that he gave me ; and so the paper is not 
 critical. But, at any rate, it tells what I think 
 of his literary work and of him as author and 
 friend.
 
 VIII. 
 SIDNEY LANIER AS POET. 
 
 "LANIER did not live to sing his song!" I 
 had been saying that to myself all summer. And 
 yet "The Marshes of Glynn" and "Sunrise," his 
 best poem and his last, are great songs. They 
 are parts of the poem that he lived and of the 
 message of song he came into the world to de- 
 liver, but only parts, just two of his projected 
 "Hymns of the Marshes," specimen blocks from 
 the great temple of song he had planned and was 
 building in his soul. He did not sing his song, 
 because when he came to himself and found his 
 voice, the time was so short and he was so hin- 
 dered. But how can this be? He died in his 
 fortieth year, having "lived fourteen years longer 
 than Keats and ten years longer than Shelley, 
 and yet the amount of his printed remains is 
 probably smaller than that which each of them 
 left behind." 1 Surely he had time enough ! But 
 no, he had not, as the facts of his life will make 
 evident. 
 
 ^tedman's letter in the Lanier "Memorial." 
 (136)
 
 SIDNEY LANIER.
 
 Sidney Lanier as Poet. 137 
 
 Sidney Lanier was a precocious boy, and his 
 earliest passion was for music, where probably 
 his really greatest talent lay. Musical talent 
 was hereditary in his family, for three of his 
 Huguenot ancestors were in successive genera- 
 tions in high favor as musical composers or di- 
 rectors of music at the courts of Elizabeth, 
 James I., Charles I., and Charles II., and his 
 Scotch-descended maternal ancestors had been, 
 in more than one generation, ''gifted in poetry, 
 music, and oratory." He says in a letter to Paul 
 Hayne: "I could play passably well on several 
 instruments before I could write legibly, and 
 since then the very deepest of my life has been 
 filled with music." Though he was, as a fellow- 
 student writes, "a persistent student, an omniv- 
 orous reader of books, and in his college classes 
 was easily first in mathematics, as well as in his 
 other studies," yet his bent was to music. "I 
 have seen him walk up and down the room," 
 says this same college chum, "and with his flute 
 extemporize the sweetest music ever vouchsafed 
 to mortal ear. At such times i* *vould seem as 
 if his soul were in a trance, and could only find 
 existence, expression, in the ecstasy of tone, that 
 would catch our souls with his into the seventh 
 heaven of harmony." This trance state seems 
 to have been not infrequent at this period. "Ap-
 
 138 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 patently unconscious, he would seem to hear the 
 richest music ; or again he would awake from a 
 deep trance, alone, on the floor of his room, and 
 the nervous strain would leave him sadly shaken 
 in nerves." It was of this musical gift that he 
 himself first became aware. 
 
 I am [he writes in his college notebook] more than 
 all perplexed by this fact, that the prime inclination, 
 that is, natural bent (which I have checked, though), 
 of my nature is to music; and for that I have the 
 greatest talent; indeed, not boasting, for God gave it 
 me, I have an extraordinary musical talent, and feel 
 it within me plainly that I could rise as high as any 
 composer. But [he addsl I cannot bring myself to be- 
 lieve that I was intended for a musician, because it 
 seems so small a business in comparison with other 
 things which, it seems to me, I might do. 
 
 This feeling, too, was shared by his parents, 
 and was the dominant one of the people among 
 whom he was born and lived. Still the passion 
 for musical expression was imperious. "Is it 
 genius? he asks all atremble, and begins a mem- 
 orable twenty-year struggle with earnest, hum- 
 ble questionings as to God's will concerning the 
 use of it." 
 
 But though he might not then think of mak- 
 ing music his life work, he might solace himself 
 with it. "It was the violin-voice that above all 
 things commanded his soul/' but in deference
 
 Sidney Lanier as Poet. 139 
 
 to his father's wish he gave himself to the flute. 
 He slipped his flute, hidden in his sleeve, into 
 Point Lookout prison with him in' 1864; with it 
 he solaced himself in his captivity and softened 
 the hearts of his captors ; with it he left prison 
 when exchanged, and when on the voyage home 
 he was at death's door, with illness induced by 
 thin clothing in cold weather, the first thing he 
 asked for as he began to revive was his flute. 
 
 We got him into clean blankets [writes the good 
 lady who saved his life], but at first he could not en- 
 dure the pain from the fire, he was so nearly frozen. 
 We gave him some hot soup and more brandy, and 
 he lay quiet till after midnight. Then he asked for his 
 flute and began playing. As he played the first few 
 notes, you should have heard the yell of joy that came 
 up from the shivering wretches down below, who knew 
 that their comrade was alive. And there we sat en- 
 tranced about him, the colonel and his wife, Lilla and 
 I, weeping at the tender music, as the tones of new 
 warmth and color and hope came like liquid melody 
 from his magic flute. 
 
 Lanier recovered from this desperate illness 
 that followed his prison experience, then for 
 several years was successively clerk in Mont- 
 gomery, schoolmaster in Prattville, Alabama, and 
 practicing lawyer, with his father, in Macon, 
 till December, 1872, when renewed ill-health 
 drove him for his lungs to San Antonio, where
 
 140 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 he remained till April, 1873. During the last 
 five years there had been strengthening in Lanier 
 "the conviction that special talents had been giv- 
 en him, and that the time might be short." He 
 did not find himself drawn to the law, but he 
 did feel called to music and literature, and, de- 
 termined now to pursue them so long as he 
 could keep death at bay, went northward in the 
 fall of 1873 "armed only with a silver Boehm 
 flute and some dozen of steel pens." He found 
 an engagement as first flute for the Peabody 
 Symphony Concerts in Baltimore, but this alone 
 did not afford sufficient bread for his wife and 
 babes, and his father urged him to return to 
 Macon to the law. His spirit was ripe for the 
 great work he had undertaken. Before finally 
 breaking with the law and launching on the sea 
 of music and poetry, he had written his wife 
 from Texas: 
 
 Were it not for some circumstances which make 
 such a proposition seem absurd in the highest degree, 
 I would think that I am shortly to die, and that my 
 spirit hath been singing its swan-song before dissolu- 
 tion. All day my soul hath been cutting swiftly into 
 the great space of the subtle, unspeakable deep, driven 
 by wind after wind of heavenly melody. The very 
 inner spirit and essence of all wind-songs, bird-songs, 
 passion-songs, folk-songs, country-songs, sex-songs, 
 soul-songs, and body-songs hath blown upon me in
 
 Sidney Lanier as Poet. 141 
 
 quick gusts like the breath of passion, and sailed me 
 into a sea of vast dreams, whereof each wave is at 
 once a vision and a melody. 
 
 Again, soon after going to Baltimore, he 
 wrote to his wife: 
 
 So many great ideas for art are born to me each 
 day, I am swept away into the land of All-Delight by 
 their strenuous sweet whirlwind, and I find within my- 
 self such entire yet humble confidence of possessing 
 every single element of power to carry them all out, 
 save the little paltry sum of money that would suffice 
 to keep us clothed and fed in the meantime. 
 
 His confidence in his powers was expressed, 
 about this time, still more fully in a letter to 
 his wife, whom he doubtless felt it necessary to 
 encourage and sustain. He was just then prob- 
 ably having the experience of seeing his first 
 great poem, "Corn," rejected by all the New 
 York editors. 
 
 Know then [he writes] that disappointments were 
 inevitable and will still come until I have fought the 
 battle which every great artist has had to fight since 
 time began. This dimly felt while I was doubtful of 
 my own vocation and powers is clear as the sun to 
 me now that I know, through the fiercest tests of life, 
 that I am in soul, and shall be in life and utterance, 
 a great poet. 
 
 Sure now what his life work was to be music 
 and poetry he began "as brave and sad a strug-
 
 142 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 gle as the history of genius records." He had 
 first of all two things to do: make a living for 
 wife and children, and get ready by much study 
 and wide reading for his vocation as a poet. 
 For music he did not need to get ready; that 
 came by intuition. Perhaps his first great per- 
 formance before men who could really judge 
 was at a practice of the Maennerchor in San 
 Antonio, Texas. When he played in September 
 of that year for Asgar Hamerik a composition 
 of his own, the latter "declared the composition 
 to be that of an artist and the playing to be 
 almost perfect," concluding with an offer to 
 Lanier of the position of first flute in the Pea- 
 body Orchestra which he was planning. After 
 he had played on a great bass-flute at Badger's 
 establishment in New York, Badger wrote to 
 some one : "Lanier is astonishing. . . . But 
 you ought to hear him play the bass-flute. You 
 would then say, 'Let me pass from the earth 
 with the tones sounding in my ears !' ' : The 
 next year he played for the great Dr. Damrosch. 
 
 I sang the wind-song to him [writes Lanier]. 
 When I finished, he came and shook my hand, and 
 said it was wonderful in view of my education; and 
 that he was greatly astonished and pleased with the 
 poetry of the piece and the enthusiasm of its ren- 
 dering.
 
 Sidney Lanier as Poet. 143 
 
 Lanier needed, then, no special preparation 
 for music, but for his theory of the science of 
 English verse, already developing in his mind, 
 and for the poetry with which his soul was 
 travailing, study was necessary. He threw him- 
 self with unbounded enthusiasm and success into 
 the study of English literature, mastered Anglo- 
 Saxon and early English texts, and made vari- 
 ous and wide excursions into the fields of phi- 
 losophy, history, and science, as well as art and 
 music. He realized that a poet must have 
 knowledge of things as well as of men, that his 
 studies should be comprehensive and his schol- 
 arship accurate. He had patience to wait, "not 
 taking thought of being late, so it give advan- 
 tage to be more fit." "The trouble with Poe 
 was," he said, "he did not know enough. He 
 needed to know a good many more things in 
 order to be a great poet." 
 
 This spirit of study, this laying of deep and 
 broad foundations for the superstructure he was 
 to build, was doubtless in great part the natural 
 adaptation of his genius to the requirements of 
 the times; but it is significant of much that this 
 new epoch of development on his part coincided 
 with his removal to Baltimore where the first 
 real university in America was about to open. 
 The founding of Johns Hopkins University was
 
 144 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 the greatest event in the history of the higher 
 education in America. It was to be a university 
 dominated by a spirit of research, not a college 
 for teaching merely. It brought together the 
 ablest faculty ever assembled up to that time in 
 America, chosen simply for their eminence in 
 their specialties. Sylvester, Gildersleeve, Row- 
 land, Remsen, Martin, and a little later Warren, 
 Brooks, Herbert Adams, Ely, Bloomfield, and 
 Elliott, form a galaxy of productive scholars 
 such as no other institution has ever got to- 
 gether at one time, and the gathering of such a 
 group was of itself enough to give President 
 Gilman a foremost place among great university 
 presidents. Great scholars attract clever students, 
 and soon the pick of the young talent of America 
 was doing graduate work at Johns Hopkins, 
 such an array of young men of high talent and 
 earnest purpose as no other American institu- 
 tion has ever had or will ever have at one time 
 within its walls. Germany had been drawing the 
 best of these to her various universities, but the 
 Johns Hopkins faculty now demonstrated that 
 Germany's best advantages might be had at 
 home. Happy the American students who were 
 there in that first great period! The buildings 
 were unsightly, but the atmosphere was unmis- 
 takable. Said President Adams after a visit to
 
 Sidney Lanier as Poet. 145 
 
 Johns Hopkins: "The atmosphere of a univer- 
 sity, of graduate work, of research, pervaded the 
 place. You could feel it before you entered a 
 building." 
 
 I like to think that Lanier's spirit of study, 
 wide special reading, research in the science of 
 English verse and in the development of per- 
 sonality, were due in large measure to his Balti- 
 more residence and the atmosphere of Johns 
 Hopkins University, and that in this respect 
 Baltimore was better for him just then than 
 Philadelphia, or New York, or even Boston 
 might have been. 
 
 Lanier had been writing poems since his boy- 
 hood, and publishing occasionally, and a num- 
 ber of these are preserved now printed as "un- 
 revised early poems," in the volume edited by 
 his wife; but, clever as some of these are, none 
 gives promise of his best mature work "Corn," 
 "Clover," "Sunrise." There is nothing unless 
 it be "Betrayal" (1868) that needed to live, had 
 he not sung greater songs afterwards; nothing 
 approaching the promise of Milton's hymn on 
 the "Nativity," nor like any of Keats' best, nor 
 like Tennyson's "Oenone" or "The Lotus-Eat- 
 ers," nor Rossetti's "Blessed Damozel," nor Bry- 
 ant's "Thanatopsis." He is, in the lateness of 
 his development, more like Stephen Phillips, 
 10
 
 146 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 whose "Primavera" and "Eremus" would be for- 
 gotten but for the "Christ in Hades" and "Mar- 
 pessa," "Paolo and Francesca," and "Herod." 
 Only in his twenty-seventh year did Stephen 
 Phillips attract the attention of the world. 
 "Corn," written when Lanier was thirty-two, 
 was the first fruit of his new stage of progress 
 and of his new environment. "In 'Corn' I have 
 aimed at popularity," he wrote Paul Hayne; 
 "I mean the higher popularity given to artistic 
 work." And Paul Hayne could recall twelve 
 years afterwards "the impression which that 
 fine lyric made upon him." But the New 
 York editors unanimously declined it. When 
 it did appear in Lippincott's in February, 1875, 
 its merit was at once recognized by Mr. Gibson 
 Peacock, editor of the Philadelphia Evening 
 Bulletin, a journalist of the old school, a col- 
 lege man, widely read in English literature, 
 familiar with the modern languages, traveled 
 both in America and Europe, cultivated in music 
 and dramatic criticism. He wrote an enthusias- 
 tic notice of "Corn" for his own paper, and that 
 was the first authoritative voice that called hail, 
 the first hand outstretched to welcome Lanier. 
 It was like Mr. Howells and Longfellow reading 
 together the manuscript of Maurice Thompson's 
 "At the Window" and deciding to publish it in
 
 Sidney Lanier as Poet. 147 
 
 the Atlantic. No wonder that Maurice Thomp- 
 son, though he always disliked and opposed Mr. 
 Howells's theory of fiction, loved him better 
 than any other man ; no wonder that Lanier felt 
 toward his first discoverer like Mahomet toward 
 the old Cadi j ah. "You love me better than you 
 did her?" asked the young and brilliant Ayesha. 
 "No, by Allah !" answered Mahomet. "She be- 
 lieved in me when none else would believe." It 
 seems strange now that the New York editors 
 failed unanimously to recognize the merit of 
 "Corn"; for it is a great poem fresh, original, 
 sent straight from the heart and soul of a man 
 of genius, conceived on a large plan, strong in 
 its sweep and swing, two hundred lines in length, 
 and yet with scarcely a weak verse. But its first 
 rejection by the editors did not dismay him. 
 
 I remember that it has always been so [he wrote], 
 that the new man has always to work his way over 
 these Alps of stupidity, much as that ancient general 
 crossed the actual Alps splitting the rocks with vine- 
 gar and fire that is, by bitterness and suffering. 
 D. V. I will split them. 
 
 "The Symphony" was his next great poem. 
 A letter of his to Mr. Peacock graphically de- 
 scribes the birth and growth of it. He writes, 
 March 24, 1875 : 
 
 I am much better, and, though in daily fight against
 
 148 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 severe pain, am hard at work. About four days ago, 
 a certain poem, which I had vaguely ruminated for a 
 week before, took hold of me like a real James River 
 ague, and I have been in a mortal shake with the 
 same, day and night, ever since. I call it "The Sym- 
 phony" : I personify each instrument in the orchestra, 
 and make them discuss various deep social questions 
 of the times, in the progress of the music. It is now 
 nearly finished; and I shall be rejoiced thereat, for it 
 verily racks all the bones of my spirit. 
 
 Of this poem Mr. Peacock wrote a notice, 
 which was extensively copied in Southern pa- 
 pers ; but it had larger results still. Mr. Peacock 
 sent the poem to Bayard Taylor (then at the 
 height of his fame), and Taylor promptly wrote 
 his warm appreciation to Mr. Peacock, which he 
 in turn forwarded to Lanier. Lanier sent his 
 thanks to Bayard Taylor, and this acquaintance, 
 which speedily became friendship, was an un- 
 speakable boon to Sidney Lanier. The latter 
 was, as the world now knows, a genius, an orig- 
 inal poet ; but his soul was starving. How sin- 
 cerely jubilant was the opening sentence of his 
 first letter: 
 
 When a man, determined to know as well what is 
 under as what is above, has made bis plunge down to 
 the bottom of the great Sea Doubtful of poetic en- 
 deavor, and has looked not only upon the enchanted 
 caverns there, but upon the dead bodies also, there
 
 Sidney Lanier as Poet. 149 
 
 comes a moment as his head reemerges above the sur- 
 face, when his eyes are ablink with salt water, when 
 the horizon is a round blur, and when he wastes 
 strength that might be applied to swimming in reso- 
 lutely defying what seems to be the gray sky overhead. 
 In such a moment a friendly word and all the more 
 if it be a friendly word from a strong swimmer whom 
 one perceives far ahead advancing calmly and swiftly 
 brings with it a pleasure so large and grave that, 
 as voluble thanks are impossible, so a simple and sin- 
 cere acknowledgment is inevitable. 
 
 It should be borne in mind that at this time 
 Bayard Taylor had reached the height of his 
 fame and popularity. He had been for a quarter 
 of a century a prominent figure before the public 
 as traveler, lecturer, and diplomatist, was the 
 author of perhaps twenty-five volumes, and had 
 already four years previously crowned all his 
 literary achievements with his monumental trans- 
 lation of Goethe's "Faust." Bayard Taylor's let- 
 ter about "The Symphony" was speedily fol- 
 lowed by another (August 17, 1875), which 
 said: "I can only repeat how much joy the evi- 
 dence of a new, true poet always gives me such 
 a poet as I believe you to be. I am heartily 
 glad to welcome you to the fellowship of au- 
 thors." That was like Goethe's call to Carlyle 
 across the German Ocean, hailing "the advent 
 of a new moral force, the effects of which it was
 
 150 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 impossible to predict" ; and Bayard Taylor's com- 
 mendation heartened Lanier as nothing had ever 
 done. It was "a little of the wine of success 
 and praise" his words to Paul Hayne "with- 
 out which no man ever does the very best he 
 might." "When we meet," Taylor added in that 
 same second letter, "I hope to be able to show 
 you more satisfactorily than by these written 
 words the genuineness of the interest which each 
 author always feels in all others ; and perhaps I 
 may be also able to extend your own acquaint- 
 ance among those whom you have a right to 
 know." Two weeks later (September 2, 1875), 
 Bayard Taylor sends another gracious word: 
 "I can't tell you how rejoiced I am to find in 
 you the genuine poetic nature, temperament, 
 and morale.'' Then begins a series of repeated 
 kindnesses on Taylor's part which continued till 
 his death three years later. He sends Lanier 
 tickets to the Goethe celebration, gives him when 
 he visits Boston letters to Longfellow and Low- 
 ell, commends him to Whittier and Aldrich, 
 takes him to the Century Club to meet Bryant, 
 Stoddard, and Stedman, and acts as interme- 
 diary for Lanier in bringing numerous poems to 
 the magazine editors. Shortly after, when Gen- 
 eral Hawley, President of the United States 
 Centennial Commission, asked Bayard Taylor to
 
 Sidney Lanier as Poet. 151 
 
 suggest a poet not of New England for the 
 "Centennial Cantata," Taylor named Lanier, 
 which appointment brought Lanier's name for 
 the first time very prominently before the public. 
 
 Don't overvalue my friendly good will [wrote in 
 this connection the generous-souled Bayard Taylor], 
 nor ever let it impose the least sense of obligation. 
 I am very glad when I can be of some encouragement 
 to a man in whom I have faith. 
 
 Lanier wrote once (November 24, 1876) : 
 
 I have to send you my thanks very often: I hope 
 they don't become monotonous to you. Your praise 
 has really given me a great deal of genuine and fruit- 
 ful pleasure. The truth is that, as for censure, I am 
 overloaded with my own; but as for commendation, 
 I am mainly in a state of famine ; so that while I can- 
 not, for very surfeit, profitably digest the former, I 
 have such a stomach for the latter as would astonish 
 gods and men. 
 
 After some such expression of gratitude, Tay- 
 lor wrote : 
 
 You must not think, my dear friend, that simply 
 because I recognize your genius and character, and 
 the purity of the aims of both, I confer any obliga- 
 tion on you ! From you, and all like you, few as they 
 are, I draw my own encouragement for that work of 
 mine which I think may possibly live. 
 
 Bayard Taylor's faith in Lanier was shown
 
 152 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 in his friendly criticisms and suggestions- on 
 Lanier's "Cantata" (witness especially the long 
 letter of January 12, 1876), and on all his other 
 poetical work after this. For I find at least 
 a score of letters between the two poets where 
 the younger asks and the elder gives criticism 
 on poems or suggests magazines to try. Indeed, 
 after reading in one hundred pages of letters 
 repeated evidence of Bayard Taylor's unfailing 
 kindness, sympathy, good judgment, and faith 
 in Lanier, one feels how peculiarly appropriate 
 was Lanier's line characterizing his distinguished 
 friend : 
 
 In soul and stature larger than thy kind. 
 
 And now it is worth while to note the effect 
 of the recognition and encouragement of people 
 like Mr. Peacock, Bayard Taylor, and Charlotte 
 Cushman for she, Mr. Peacock, Bayard Tay- 
 lor, and Paul Hayne were the four friends who, 
 with his wife, most influenced Lanier's life 
 and the stimulus of his new environment upon 
 the sensitive and susceptible nature of the poet. 
 In July, 1876, Lanier wrote to Bayard Taylor: 
 
 I can't tell you with what ravishing freedom and 
 calmness I find myself writing in these days, nor how 
 supreme and sunny the poetic region seems to lie in 
 front, like broad upland fields and slopes. I write all
 
 Sidney Lanier as Poet. 153 
 
 the time, and sit down to the paper with poems already 
 done. I hope to have out another volume soon of 
 work which will show a much quieter technique than 
 this one. A modern French writer has spoken of the 
 works of the great artists of the world as being like 
 the high white clouds which sail calmly over a green 
 valley on a summer day. This seems to me very 
 beautiful. 
 
 Not even grave illness can shake the superb 
 confidence with which he is now inspired. He 
 writes, December 6, 1876, to Bayard Taylor : 
 
 My physician has become alarmed at the gravity and 
 persistence of my illness, and orders me immediately to 
 Florida, denouncing death unless a warm climate is 
 speedily reached. He might as well talk to the stars 
 whose light hasn't yet reached us, as try to persuade 
 me to die before I've written my five additional vol- 
 umes of poems. 
 
 Five weeks later he writes from Florida: 
 
 I see no reason to doubt that I shall be soon at 
 work again. In truth, I "bubble song" continually 
 during these heavenly days, and it is as hard to keep 
 me from the pen as the toper from his tipple. 
 
 And as he is once more turning northward, 
 in improving health, he writes (from Bruns- 
 wick, Georgia, April 26, 1877) : 
 
 The whole air seems full of fecundity : as I ride 
 I'm like one of those insects that are fertilized on the
 
 154 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 wing every leaf that I brush against breeds a poem. 
 God help the world when this now hatching brood of 
 my ephemerae shall take flight and darken the air! 
 
 On his birthday, February 3, 1879, Lanier re- 
 ceived his appointment as lecturer in English lit- 
 erature in Johns Hopkins University, which for 
 the first time in his life brought him an assured, 
 though small, income. The last two years had 
 been more fruitful in poems than any before, and 
 these had maintained the high level of "Corn" 
 and "The Symphony." Fate seemed to smile at 
 last, and he was clearly ready to write great po- 
 etry. "The Marshes of Glynn" proves it. But 
 fate had smiled almost too late ; his resolute hold 
 upon life was about to fail. When he received 
 his appointment to the lectureship, he was just 
 up from hemorrhage and a severe illness, and in 
 the two and a half years that still remained to 
 him of life, besides his almost continual illness he 
 was to be much hindered by the necessity of 
 earning bread for wife and children, of whom a 
 fourth was born to him in August, 1880. In his 
 letters the dreadful chronicle of illness runs like 
 this: September, 1879, "severe illness"; Janua- 
 ry, 1880, "a most menacing illness" ; May, 1880, 
 "the final consuming fever opened" ; December, 
 
 1880, "came to the very door of death" ; April, 
 
 1881, aggravated illness in New York, wife sum-
 
 Sidney Lanier as Poet. 155 
 
 moned, and tent life in a high and dry climate 
 prescribed as the last hope. After that there were 
 to be no more rallies, only a steady burning out 
 till the end. Death came September 7, 1881. 
 
 We are left alone with one another [writes Mrs. 
 Lanier]. On the last night of the summer comes a 
 change. His love and immortal will hold off the de- 
 stroyer of our summer yet one more week until the 
 forenoon of September 7, and then falls the frost, and 
 that unfaltering will renders its supreme submission to 
 the adored will of God. 
 
 Let us see how the sick man had to work dur- 
 ing that final period. In the summer of 1879, 
 while sojourning for his health at Rockingham 
 Springs, Virginia, he wrote in six weeks "The 
 Science of English Verse" ; in October, 1879, ne 
 gave three courses of lectures in girls' schools ; 
 a little later there were the continuous rehearsals 
 and concerts with the Peabody Orchestra ; then, 
 beginning in January, 1880, ten weekly lectures 
 on English literature (two public at the univer- 
 sity, two to university classes, six at private 
 schools). Dr. Ward can best describe for us the 
 last stage of the struggle : 
 
 The winter of 1880-81 brought a hand-to-hand bat- 
 tle for life. In December he came to the very door 
 of death. Before February he had essayed the open 
 air to test himself for his second university lecture
 
 156 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 course. His improvement ceased on that first day of 
 exposure. Nevertheless, by April he had gone through 
 the twelve lectures (there were to have been twenty), 
 which were later published under the title, "The 
 English Novel." A few of the earlier lectures he 
 penned himself; the rest he was obliged to dictate to 
 his wife. With the utmost care of himself, going in 
 a closed carriage and sitting during his lecture, his 
 strength was so exhausted that the struggle for breath 
 in the carriage on his return seemed each time to 
 threaten the end. Those who heard him listened with 
 a sort of fascinated terror, as in doubt whether the 
 hoarded breath would suffice to the end of the hour. 
 It was in December of this winter when too feeble to 
 raise food to his mouth, with a fever temperature of 
 104 degrees, that he penciled his last and greatest 
 poem, "Sunrise," one of his projected series of 
 "Hymns of the Marshes." It seemed as if he were 
 in fear that he would die with it unuttered. 
 
 In the summer of 1881, while being consumed 
 by the final fever in the mountains of North Car- 
 olina, he was gathering materials for a book on 
 that region, which he had been commissioned to 
 write in a railway interest, and the monthly ad- 
 vance payments on which were to defray ex- 
 penses. The materials were gathered and the 
 book was shaped in his mind by the end of July, 
 but he was in too much anguish to dictate, often 
 for hours even to speak; and so the book was 
 not written.
 
 Sidney Lanier as Poet. 157 
 
 Our poet has greatly puzzled the critics. 
 
 Lanier has been likened [Baskervill says] in moral 
 earnestness and loftiness of purpose to Milton, in in- 
 tellectuality to Emerson, in spirituality to Ruskin, in 
 love of nature to Wordsworth, in taste, sensibility, and 
 exquisite sense of beauty to Shelley and Keats, in 
 technique to Tennyson, in the astonishing manipula- 
 tion of his meter and cadence and involution to Swin- 
 burne. 
 
 Again Baskervill says: 
 
 In these later poems we may, it is true, still chance 
 upon a line fashioned after Poe and observe a man- 
 ner imitated from Browning, for not even "dearest 
 Keats," it would seem, exercised such an influence 
 upon him as these. 
 
 But it is Keats that I feel in Lanier more than 
 any poet, except of course Shakespeare. When 
 Lanier says in "Clover/' 
 
 Oh, 
 
 In arms' reach here be Dante, Keats, Chopin, 
 Raphael, Lucretius, Omar, Angelo, 
 Beethoven, Chaucer, Schubert, Shakespeare, Bach, 
 And Buddha (sweetest masters! let me lay 
 These arms this once, this humble once, about 
 Your reverend necks the most containing clasp, 
 For all in all, this world e'er saw!), 
 
 he names, I think, with the possible exception of 
 Chaucer and Schumann, his poets and musicians
 
 158 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 and artists. Keats is in that list. Keats' name 
 occurs oftener in his poems than any other ex- 
 cept Shakespeare's ; and the almost perfect poem 
 "Clover" is "inscribed to the memory of John 
 Keats." In his love of nature and his profound- 
 ly religious spirit Lanier reminds me of Words- 
 worth ; but his attitude toward nature is not 
 Wordsworth's, nor does the latter seem especially 
 to appeal to him. The nature-note of Lanier 
 seems to me that of Keats and Shelley. But it 
 is the truest and sweetest nature-note that I 
 know in American poetry. Only Bryant's very 
 best nature poems seem to me comparable, and 
 Bryant's passion for nature is not so keen as 
 Lanier's. And there is a sense of closeness to, 
 a sort of childlike trustful dependence on, nature 
 that I find nowhere else so marked as in "A 
 Ballad of Trees and the Master," and in the 
 "Hymns of the Marshes." But while one may 
 detect the subtle influence of this or that poet 
 in Lanier's best poems, it is at most a suggestion 
 or an inspiration ; for Lanier is an original poet, 
 and in such poems as "Corn," "The Marshes of 
 Glynn," and "Sunrise," he has borrowed largely 
 from no man. 
 
 It is interesting to note how Lanier charac- 
 terizes the poets that especially appeal to him, 
 e. g.: "Master Will"; "O sweetest Shakespeare
 
 Sidney Lanier as Poet. 159 
 
 sole"; "Chaucer bright and Shakespeare for a 
 king's delight"; "old godlike JSschylus" ; "large 
 Lucretius"; "Lucretius mine (for oh, what heart 
 hath loved thee like to this that's now complain- 
 ing?)"; "Beethoven, sole hymner of the whole 
 of life" ; "broad Beethoven, deaf no more, and 
 Keats midst of much talk uplift their shining 
 eyes" ; "tense Keats, with angels' nerves where 
 men's were better"; "Tennyson, largest voice 
 since Milton"; "Emerson, most wise"; Wagner 
 with "power to say the times in terms of tone." 
 
 Religious aspiration and art were Lanier's 
 higher life. The beauty of holiness was to him 
 equally true when reversed the holiness of 
 beauty. The latter was the spirit of music and 
 poetry becoming dominant within him. But he 
 always found God in everything, and his artistic 
 development did not supplant or shake his reli- 
 gious faith ; he simply admitted music and poetry 
 as copartners with, or rather constituents of, re- 
 ligion. "Who has not come to that stage of 
 quiet and eternal frenzy in which the beauty of 
 holiness and the holiness of beauty mean one 
 thing, burn as one fire, shine as one light within 
 him, he is not yet the great artist." So, starting 
 a Hebrew, he came out a Greek ; but he did not 
 lose the Hebrew in the Greek. 
 
 As art became part of his religion, so to him
 
 160 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 the moral law was as binding in art as in re- 
 ligion. Time's judgments are "inexorably mor- 
 al," he maintained. 
 
 Cannot one say with authority to the young artist 
 [he says], whether working in stone, in color, in tones, 
 or in character-forms of the novel : So far from dread- 
 ing that your moral purpose will interfere with your 
 beautiful creation, go forv/ard in the clear convictiop 
 that unless you are suffused soul and body, one might 
 say with that moral purpose which finds its largest 
 expression in love, do not dare to meddle with beauty; 
 unless you are suffused with beauty, do not dare to 
 meddle with truth ; unless you are suffused with truth, 
 do not dare to meddle with goodness? In a word, un- 
 less you are suffused with truth, wisdom, goodness, 
 and love, abandon the hope that the ages will accept 
 you as an artist. 
 
 "I am in soul, and shall be in life and utter- 
 ance, a great poet," wrote Lanier to his wife 
 soon after he had launched in the sea of litera- 
 ture. He was a poet, and his life was a poem ; 
 but his utterance was not yet that of the great 
 poets. I would not be misunderstood. "Sun- 
 rise" has the authentic note of the great poet, 
 "The Marshes of Glynn" even more so, but 
 the body of his good work is not large enough 
 and not quite great enough, I think, to entitle 
 him to admission to the inner circle of the 
 supremely great. Keats' remains do entitle
 
 Sidney Lanier as Poet. 161 
 
 him to that rank; Lanier's do not. But Dr. 
 Ward is doubtless right in predicting that he 
 will "take his final rank with the first princes of 
 American song." 
 
 Some of his poetic work [says Mr. Gilder] was ex- 
 perimental, not fully and restfully accomplished, though 
 always with gleams here and there from the very 
 "Heaven of Song." As his methods and ideas ma- 
 tured, there was reason to expect a more rounded, 
 sustained, and satisfying art. And every now and then 
 there crystallized in his intense and musical mind a 
 lyric of such diamond-like strength and luster that it 
 can no more be lost from the diadem of English song 
 than can the lyrics of Sidney or of Herbert. 
 
 What lyrics of Lanier's would Mr. Gilder 
 have mentioned had he named them? I think 
 most, perhaps all, of the following: "Corn" 
 (1874), "The Waving of the Corn" (1876), 
 "Clover," most of it (1876), "Evening Song" 
 (1876), "The Bee" (1877), "The Song of the 
 Chattahoochee" (1877), "Tampa Robins" 
 (1877), "The Stirrup-cup" (1877), "A Song of 
 the Future" (1878), "The Marshes of Glynn" 
 (1878), "A Ballad of Trees and the Master" 
 (1880), "Sunrise" (1880). 
 
 The concluding words of Mr. Stedman's let- 
 ter written for the Lanier Memorial Meeting, 
 in 1888, supplement Mr. Gilder's as an explana- 
 ii
 
 1 62 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 tion of any inadequacy in Lanier's accomplish- 
 ment: 
 
 He conceived of a method, and of compositions, 
 which could only be achieved by the effort of a life 
 extended to man's full term of years. The little that 
 he was able to do belonged to the very outset of a 
 large synthetic work; he did little more than to sound 
 a few important bars of his overture. In this sense he 
 died early, but did not die without leaving his idea 
 behind him out of which something may yet grow. 
 He staked his purpose on the hope and chance of time 
 for its execution, but Dis aliter visum! 
 
 One may admit in Lanier "over-luxuriance of 
 imagination" at times ; that sometimes his love 
 of music led him, as Mr. Stedman said, "to es- 
 say in language effects that only the gamut can 
 render possible" ; but not even the powerful au- 
 thority of Edmund Gosse can convince one who 
 has read and reread Lanier's best poems till he 
 loves them, that there is "a painful effort, a 
 strain and a rage," that even "Corn," "Sunrise," 
 and "The Marshes of Glynn," "simulate poetic 
 expression with extraordinary skill. But of the 
 genuine traditional article, not a trace !" In the 
 face of criticism from so great a source, I hum- 
 bly venture to say that the more I read Lanier, 
 the longer and more sympathetically I study 
 him, the more I realize not only that, as musi-
 
 Sidney Lanier as Poet. 163 
 
 cians tell me, his heavenly gift of music and his 
 technical knowledge of it "form the foundation 
 and framework of his poetry," but that his 
 poems are "essentially musical, tuneful, and 
 melodious." Lanier is not always simple, and 
 his greatest poems are not easy reading, till one 
 has been caught up into complete sympathy with 
 his mood ; then one feels with the poet "wonder 
 unutterable," which leaves no room for a sense 
 of want of simplicity. Through frequent read- 
 ing of his best poems Lanier has become one 
 of my poets, and I rise sometimes in the morn- 
 ing, after refreshing sleep, with one of these 
 poems singing in my heart and calling me to 
 read it, just as do some poems of Wordsworth 
 or Keats or Tennyson or Arnold. He might 
 have accomplished so much more, had the time 
 not been so short, and had he not been so hin- 
 dered by disease and the struggle for bread. 
 "Yet short as was his literary life, and hindered 
 though it were, its fruit will fill a large space 
 in the garnering of the poetic art of our coun- 
 try."
 
 IX. 
 RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON. 
 
 "GEORGIA is the greatest state in the South. 
 You know enough of Georgians, however, to 
 expect me to say this." So wrote a prominent 
 native of Middle Georgia ; and though we might 
 not all admit this, we are bound to allow that 
 the Georgian has some reason for his partiality 
 and his pride. The writer said, a few years ago, 1 
 "It is certain that in the period since the war 
 Georgia has had twice as many men of national 
 reputation as any other Southern state" ; and 
 there still seems no good reason to change the 
 sentence. 
 
 The Georgian mentioned above sends, from 
 memory, a list of seventy-one names of Geor- 
 gians who have been more or less prominent 
 as writers. These include some of Georgia's 
 great jurists, statesmen, and orators, as well as 
 several who, perhaps, like Paul H. Hayne, real- 
 ly belong to other states. There are some, too, 
 whom doubtless only Georgia partiality would 
 
 Written in 1892. 
 (T6 4 )
 
 RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON.
 
 Richard Malcolm Johnston. 165 
 
 consider eminent; but, after all allowances are 
 made, the list is a very respectable one. It con- 
 tains such names as the story writers and humor- 
 ists, Judge Longstreet, W. T. Thompson ("Ma- 
 jor Jones' Courtship"), Richard Malcolm John- 
 ston, Joel Chandler Harris, Maurice Thompson, 
 H. S. Edwards, Will N. Harben, F. R. Gould- 
 ing ("Young Marooners") ; the poets, Richard 
 Henry Wilde ("My Life Is Like the Summer 
 Rose"), F. C. Ticknor, Sidney Lanier, Maurice 
 Thompson (already mentioned), Will H. Hayne, 
 and Frank L. Stanton; the historian, Charles C. 
 Jones, Jr. ; the political writers and statesmen, 
 A. H. Stephens, Robert Toombs, B. H. Hill, 
 James C. Brown; religious writers and pulpit 
 orators, Bishops Pierce and Haygood, and Dr. 
 A. A. Lipscomb ; journalists and orators, H. W. 
 Grady and John Temple Graves ; humorist, "Bill 
 Arp." 
 
 Georgia is the only Sbuthern state that we 
 speak of as having a literature of its own. Sev- 
 eral other states have furnished a respectable 
 number of writers, but we do not speak of Vir- 
 ginia literature or Tennessee literature as we 
 do of "Georgia literature." Various attempts 
 have been made to explain this phenomenon. 
 Colonel Richard Malcolm Johnston seems to con- 
 sider one great secret of it the fact that, in Mid-
 
 166 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 die Georgia, the richer and the poorer classes 
 come closer together than elsewhere. In the 
 "Preface" to "Mr. Absalom Billingslea and Other 
 Georgia Folks," he says : 
 
 In this region, very fertile and almost universally 
 salubrious, perhaps there was as little social distinction 
 among its inhabitants as among those of any other in 
 the South. The men of culture and those of wealth, 
 as a general thing, were neighbors of the uncultured 
 and those with small property around them, and all 
 were friends with one another ; not only trusting and 
 trusted, but helpful, fond, often affectionate. Among 
 such a people every one conscious of the freedom of 
 his manhood whatever was original or individual must 
 find unhindered development that will be multifold, 
 according to particular gifts, circumstances, and op- 
 portunities. 
 
 Such a state of society ought to produce, as it 
 did, an unusual number of men eminent both in 
 Church and State ; but why did it produce a lit- 
 erature? "Because the material was here," says 
 Mrs. Sophia Bledsoe Herrick, "and the writers 
 were an integral part of the life they undertook 
 to depict, in a sense true of perhaps no other re- 
 gion of the South." Perhaps this explanation 
 does not fully account for the rise of such a 
 school of literature ; but it does explain why the 
 attempt to depict this phase of life, once made, 
 should succeed.
 
 Richard Malcolm Johnston. 167 
 
 About 1840, or soon after, there was a prom- 
 ise of a growth of humorous literature in several 
 Southern states North Carolina, Alabama, and 
 Tennessee, as well as Georgia; but an arrest of 
 development occurred in all the rest, whereas 
 Richard Malcolm Johnston, at seventy years of 
 age, wrote Georgia sketches that were lineal de- 
 scendants of, though more finished than, "Geor- 
 gia Scenes." 
 
 Richard Malcolm Johnston was born in Han- 
 cock county, Ga., March 8, 1822. His great- 
 grandfather was an Episcopal clergyman in Vir- 
 ginia, but emigrated to Georgia. Hence our au- 
 thor is a Georgian, of the third generation. The 
 ancestors of his mother, Catherine Davenport, 
 came also from Virginia ; indeed, that part of 
 Middle Georgia where Mr. Johnston was born 
 and brought up was settled largely by Virgin- 
 ians. It is a belt about one hundred miles long, 
 from east to west, and sixty miles broad, with 
 Augusta as the metropolis. 
 
 Richard Malcolm attended, first, "the old field 
 school" of his neighborhood ; and every one who 
 has read "The Goose Pond School," or "How Mr. 
 Bill Williams Took the Responsibility," will feel 
 sure that he has been allowed to witness some of 
 the scenes of this primitive educational establish- 
 ment. In 1830 his father moved, first to Craw-
 
 168 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 fordville, and then to Powelton, the scene of the 
 "Dukesborough Tales." Powelton, though a 
 place of not more than one hundred and fifty 
 inhabitants, had a flourishing school, evidently 
 the original of that described as taught by Mr. 
 George Overton in "Old Friends and New," 
 and that of Lucius Woodbridge in "Old Mark 
 Langston." Here young Richard Malcolm was 
 prepared for college. He had his first love 
 scrape while at this school, having fallen, at the 
 age of thirteen, madly in love with a young lady 
 of twenty-six, one of his teachers. He ought 
 not to be blamed for this, for if a good, im- 
 pressible little boy has a good-looking lady 
 teacher, twice his own age, she is bound to be 
 his first flame. This episode gave him the sug- 
 gestion for his story, the "Early Majority of 
 Mr. Thomas Watts." His second love affair is 
 important only from the fact that this time his 
 sweetheart was a girl of fifteen, which shows 
 that he was getting to be a normal kind of boy. 
 He went from the Powelton Academy to Mercer 
 University, where he was graduated in 1841. 
 He taught two years, and we have, doubtless, 
 some of his own experience, not only in the ac- 
 count of George Overtoil's and Lucius Wood- 
 bridge's schools, mentioned above, but also in 
 "New Discipline at Rock Spring." At the end
 
 Richard Malcolm Johnston. 169 
 
 of this time he began the practice of law with 
 Linton Stephens, a younger brother of Alexander 
 Stephens. 
 
 In 1844, when Mr. Johnston was twenty-two, 
 he was married to Miss Frances Mansfield, of 
 Hancock county, then a young lady of fifteen, 
 who for more than fifty years continued to help 
 and cheer him. The fine old lady, whom I met 
 in her own home, might very well have been the 
 original of the Lucy Parkinson whom George 
 Overton marries in "Old Friends and New." 
 For some years Colonel Johnston practiced at 
 the bar, and we have every right to suppose 
 that in the various stories, in which lawyers are 
 prominent characters, we have bits of his own 
 experience in the courts. Mr. Elam Sandidge, 
 whom we first meet in "Judge Mike's Court," 
 of the "Dukesborough Tales," then again in '"Old 
 Friends and New/' and finally in "Moll and Vir- 
 gil," bears every mark of being a genuine type. 
 Just such a man Mr. Johnston must have known 
 the shrewd, hard lawyer, to whom both the 
 judge and the sheriff owed their elevation, and 
 who consequently owned them both. In 1857 
 he was unanimously elected president of his 
 alma mater, but declined, and one week later 
 accepted the professorship of belles-lettres in 
 the University of Georgia. According to Mrs.
 
 170 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 S. B. Herrick's sketch, in the Century, June, 
 1888, he was offered, almost at the same time, 
 the judgeship of the northern circuit. The 
 professorship he held till 1862, and then re- 
 signed, and opened a boys' school, at his plan- 
 tation, near Sparta. There he was a close neigh- 
 bor of Bishop George F. Pierce, to whom he 
 dedicates his "Ogeechee Cross Firings." This 
 school was very flourishing, but in 1867 a daugh- 
 ter, just grown up, died, and the tender-hearted 
 man found the place no longer endurable ; so 
 giving, up a school of sixty boys, of whom for- 
 ty followed him, he removed to the neighbor- 
 hood of Baltimore, where he taught for some 
 years. 
 
 Mr. Charles W. Coleman, Jr., in his article 
 on "The Recent Movement in Southern Litera- 
 ture," Harper's, May, 1887, says : 
 
 During his career as a lawyer, practicing in five or 
 six adjoining counties, much of his time was passed 
 at county-seat taverns, where numbers of lawyers 
 would gather together and relate their observations of 
 cracker life, their personal experiences among the coun- 
 trymen of Middle Georgia, courthouse scenes, and the 
 like. These tavern stories, together with his own in- 
 timate acquaintance with the people in the old-field 
 schools, and as a lawyer, supplied a rich mine of mat- 
 ter for literary work, which, as yet, it did not occur 
 to him to use. Indeed, it was after the war, when he
 
 Richard Malcolm Johnston. 171 
 
 was forty-five years old, that he first became aware of 
 the power to make literature a career. 
 
 According- to Mrs. Herrick, his first story ap- 
 peared under the nom de plume, "Philemon 
 Perch," in the Southern Magazine, a periodical, 
 largely eclectic, which was published in Balti- 
 more. The merit of his work received almost 
 immediate recognition. No one was so surprised 
 as its author at 'the success of this, his first lit- 
 erary venture. Other stories followed, but it 
 did not seem to occur to Colonel Johnston to 
 seek a wider field for his work, or to think of 
 his writing as a source of income, for he had 
 contributed the early stories without asking re- 
 muneration. In 1879, however, his dear and 
 valued friend, Sidney Lanier, persuaded him to 
 submit a story to Scribner's Magazine, now the 
 Century. When this was accepted, Mr. Lanier's 
 delight was unbounded, both because the writer 
 was his friend, and because the life so vividly 
 depicted was sweet in his memory. 
 
 This story, "Mr. Neelus Peeler's Conditions," 
 forms the point from which Colonel Johnston 
 dated his literary career. It is a remarkable fact 
 that an author who has obtained such wide rec- 
 ognition for the freshness, broadness, and humor 
 of his work should have been over fifty years of
 
 172 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 age before he attempted it, and that he should 
 date his literary life from his fifty-ninth year. 
 
 Colonel Johnston, as he appeared on his visit 
 to Nashville, in 1889, and as the writer saw him 
 in his own home three years later, was a man 
 whom one likes, instinctively, at first sight. He 
 was about six feet in height, of good figure, 
 with no stoop at all, though then in his seven- 
 tieth year ; hair white as snow, but thick and 
 close cut ; florid face, and the kindliest blue eye 
 to be found in or outside of the state of Georgia. 
 Xo one who has read his stories, or ever looked 
 into that gentle eye, could help feeling that any 
 tale of distress would surely bring a tear to his 
 eyes and send his hand into his pocket. There 
 may be a man easier to get acquainted with, but 
 nobody who knew him would believe it. The 
 old man, who loved so ardently the scenes and 
 people of his boyhood and young manhood, 
 loved his friends, of course, and not least those 
 whom his writings had won for him. The kind 
 treatment accorded him on his visit to Nash- 
 ville won his heart. He never failed to send 
 messages in his letters to those who showed him 
 attention ; and that hospitable city hospitable 
 especially to authors received from him the 
 same unstinted praise that Maurice Thompson 
 and Thomas Nelson Page alwavs gave it.
 
 Richard Malcolm Johnston. 173 
 
 He led a simple, quiet life not in affluence 
 -nor in poverty devoting himself to his writing, 
 while his two youngest daughters taught, assist- 
 ed and encouraged in everything by his faithful 
 and devoted wife. This was the household then ; 
 but there was one married daughter living in 
 New Jersey, and one son in Rome, preparing to 
 become a Catholic priest. One, at least, of his 
 daughters inherited her father's literary facul- 
 ty, and has contributed poems, and, perhaps, 
 other work to the magazines. 
 
 The first story of Colonel Johnston's was "The 
 Goose Pond School," which introduces the series 
 of "Dukesborough Tales," and is a better story 
 than "Mr. Neelus Peeler's Conditions," with 
 which he gained an introduction to the Century 
 Magazine. This, and the other stories which he 
 contributed to the Southern Magazine, formed 
 the first series of the "Dukesborough Tales," 
 and, when published in book form, won the ap- 
 proval of a New York editor, as well as the 
 enthusiastic appreciation of Sidney Lanier. The 
 remaining stories of the series, which now form 
 part of the volume, published by Harper and 
 Brothers, in their Franklin Square Library, ap- 
 peared first in Northern magazines. Of the three 
 volumes of short stories which he published, 
 the first, the "Dukesborough Tales," is the best.
 
 174 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 The field was then new, which is an important 
 consideration where the range of character is 
 necessarily limited. These stories impress one, 
 not as written for pay or for reputation, but as 
 spontaneous written simply because the author 
 felt that the life they depicted was worth de- 
 scribing. Individual stories, in the other collec- 
 tions, are as good ; two are, perhaps, the best of 
 all his stories "Mr. Absalom Billingslea," and 
 ''Moll and Virgil." Indeed, "Moll and Virgil" 
 must be ranked with "Free Joe and the Rest of 
 the "World," which is certainly Joel Chandler 
 Harris's best story. But. as a collection, "The 
 Dukesborough Tales" are the richest in humor 
 and incident, and will be the longest lived. 
 
 All the short stories /. e., "The Dukesbor- 
 ough Tales," "Mr. Absalom Billingslea and Oth- 
 er Georgia Folks," "The Primes and Their 
 Neighbors," and "Ogeechee Cross Firings" are 
 of the same general character, describe the same 
 Middle Georgia ante-bellum life, .and impress the 
 reader as being essentially reminiscences ; hence 
 these may all be discussed together. In these 
 stories every class is faithfully described, with 
 some caricature here and there, of course, but of 
 an innocent kind, rather a laughing with than 
 a laughing at. It is the same kind of caricature 
 that is found in the "Georgia Scenes" and
 
 Richard Malcolm Johnston. -175 
 
 "Major Jones' Courtship" ; and Georgia people 
 of the time described would probably not have 
 distinctly recognized or acknowledged their own 
 portraits, but would, as it were, have taken the 
 author to be "just in fun." But all the same, 
 under this cover, he described Georgia country 
 and village life, and no one doubts the essential 
 truth of it. A Middle Georgia village or _neigh- 
 borhood, fifty years ago, furnished only a few 
 types of character, but we have them all here, 
 sketched to the life. There's Mr. Bill Williams, 
 best sustained of all the characters, the garru- 
 lous country youth, whose ambition is a career, 
 as clerk, in the village store ; the old field school- 
 masters, Meadows and Lorriby, as well as the 
 village teachers, Overton and Woodbridge; the 
 country parson, represented by Brother Bulling- 
 ton (Baptist), or Brother Swinger (Methodist) ; 
 the good old sisters, Catlin, of the Methodist 
 Church, and Tolliver, of the Baptist, who love 
 and respect each other, and differ only on the 
 doctrines of election and free grace: various 
 types of deacons ; the pompous militia colonel, 
 Moses Grice; the neighborhood oracle, as Mr. 
 Archie Kittrell ; the neighborhood gossip, Miss 
 Priscilla Mattox ; the shrewd and unscrupulous 
 lawyer like Sandidge ; or the young, ambitious, 
 high-minded opponent of Sandidge, Mr. Mobly;
 
 176 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 the close-fisted, note-shaving, grasping, mean 
 country capitalist, the chief man of the village, 
 president of the school board, whom everybody 
 fears and everybody hates, Mr. Duke; and last- 
 ly, the comely widows, like Mrs. Ashby, Mrs. 
 Malvina Hodge, or Mrs. Brinkley; the old 
 maids, Miss Georgiana Pea or Miss Angelina 
 Spouter ; or those blooming, peach-cheeked, hap- 
 py, healthy Georgia maidens, like Lucy Parkin- 
 son or Betsey Ann Aery. These might be a 
 very staicl and uninteresting set, seen by other 
 eyes than those of a humorist, like Colonel 
 Johnston, but it is very certain that, as de- 
 scribed by him, they have a perennial interest. 
 
 Of course courting and marrying occupy a 
 considerable share of attention in these sketches, 
 and Colonel Johnston does not confine himself 
 to the romance of young love. Widowers and 
 widows come in, as is right and natural, for 
 their fair share, and for a humorist, widowers, 
 if not widows, offer finer subjects than those 
 young men and maidens who love and marry for 
 the first time. 
 
 Mr. Singleton Hooks had been a great dancer 
 in his youth, and could surpass the best in "sling- 
 ing a foot in a quintillion, when his dander were 
 up. the fiddle chuned accordin* to the scale, and 
 his pardner ekal to her business." But he had
 
 Richard Malcolm Johnston. 177 
 
 seen "they were a jumpin'-ofr" place to sech as 
 that, and had the jedgment to git out o' the way 
 o' the wrath to come." He was now in middle 
 life, with iron-gray hair and solemn port, a jus- 
 tice of the peace, a deacon in the church, and 
 even an occasional exhorter. But his. wife died ! 
 And wonderful are the ways of widowers. He 
 turned, after a brief while, his back upon the 
 graveyard, and tried to present, first, a resigned, 
 soon a cheerful, face to the world outside of it. 
 It began to be remarked that his conversation, 
 general carriage, even his person, were brighter 
 than for years. For now he dressed and brushed 
 himself with much care ; and before long, instead 
 of bestowing monitory looks on jests and other 
 frivolities of the young and the gay, he not only 
 smiled forgivingly, but occasionally, with his 
 own mouth, put forth a harmless anecdote, at 
 which he laughed as cordially as he knew how, 
 and seemed gratified when others enjoyed it. 
 He got more Sunday clothes and wore them 
 oftener, a new hat and a new cane, and found 
 most consolation in the society of ladies, espe- 
 cially those under twenty. "I feel," he said, to 
 one of them, "a'most a right young man jes' 
 grown, sech is my health, and my strength, and 
 my sperrits." But that was not all. Miss Sally 
 Cash, an elderly unmarried maiden, of fair prop- 
 
 12
 
 178 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 erty, who, on the re-advent into society of two 
 marrying men, the widowers Hooks and Tuggle, 
 had come to the conclusion that "may be it were 
 His will for her not to git old, thes by herself," 
 and had made her appearance* at meeting, in a 
 new red frock and green calash, and new pink 
 parasol, and new white crane-tail fan, and new 
 striped ribbons, and new cheeks that just blazed 
 like a peach Miss Sally Cash gave a party and 
 invited Mr. Hooks, among others. Lively and 
 jokey as Mr. Hooks had become, no one could 
 have anticipated what happened. He purchased 
 the shiniest silk stockings and the sleekest pair 
 of pumps, and the longest, widest, stripedest silk 
 cravat, which was to be tied in the most ap- 
 proved Augusta style. "Them feet and them 
 legs," he remarked to some gentlemen and ladies 
 at the party, "them legs and them feet 'pear like 
 they forgot, till here lately, what they was made 
 for, but my intentions is, before they git much 
 older, to convince 'em o' their ric'lection." And 
 when the call, "Choose pardners," rang out, Mr. 
 Hooks seized the hand of Miss Susan Ann Tug- 
 gle and led her out. And such dancing! His 
 legs made up for all the years of repression. 
 Susan Ann whispered to him, "You are the best 
 partner I ever danced with" ; and afterwards 
 married him. Now it was the marrying spirit
 
 Richard Malcolm Johnston. 179 
 
 in him that did all that; for, after he got Susan 
 Ann, everything "swayed down peaceable," and 
 the brethren forgave him for dancing, when 
 Susan Ann gave in her beautiful experience at 
 meeting, and it was given out that he would not 
 dance any more. 
 
 A life so simple and narrow does not offer 
 much variety of course, especially in the way of 
 amusements or recreations, but the interest of 
 an event depends largely upon whose eyes see it, 
 and Colonel Johnston reviews the scenes of his 
 boyhood and young manhood with glasses that 
 are delightfully colored, both with the enthusi- 
 asm and large patriotism of youth, and the ideal- 
 ism of long absence. Add to this his unfailing 
 humor, and we have a sufficient guarantee that 
 the life described will not seem either barren or 
 dry. First among the rustic recreations de- 
 scribed is the monthly meeting at the neighbor- 
 hood church or the annual camp meeting. Now, 
 though religious meetings may not be intended 
 to be recreations, as they were among the ancient 
 Greeks, there is no denying the fact that they 
 do form one of the chief recreations of country 
 people, especially of young men and maidens. 
 And, of course, our author doesn't forget to 
 touch upon the chief intellectual stimulus of a 
 country neighborhood, in quiet times, the per-
 
 180 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 petual controversy over the doctrines of bap- 
 tism, by immersion or by sprinkling, over elec- 
 tion and free grace. But it would be a mistake 
 to suppose that Colonel Johnston describes all 
 this irreverently, as the following reflection will 
 prove : 
 
 When a man, far away from such scenes, both in 
 space and in years, begins to talk about them, he is 
 prone to indulge too fondly. He cannot at least but 
 love to muse, amid other recollections, on those long, 
 so long, ago camp-meeting nights. Religiously in- 
 clined, earnestly so indeed, but not taking part in the 
 exciting scenes which so many, with varying purposes, 
 gathered there to witness, when the bugle would sound 
 the call for silence and repose, when even all mourn- 
 ers' wailings would be hushed, it was a pleasant thing 
 to take a rustic chair, and, leaning against a post of 
 the tent, sit and listen to the night music then rising 
 in the woods, and dream and dream and dream of 
 hopes and destinies for this life and the life eternal. 
 
 The discipline and exercises in the respective 
 schools of Mr. Meadows and Mr. Lorriby were 
 doubtless not funny to the boys and girls at 
 the time, but. as described in "The Goose Pond 
 School," and "How Mr. Bill Williams Took the 
 Responsibility,'' they are the most mirth-provok- 
 ing of comedies, however often read. Then, 
 there is the muster day of the battalion, with its 
 invariable finish in the way of fights /. e., en-
 
 Richard Malcolm Johnston. 181 
 
 counters meant generally not to wipe out a 
 grudge or an affront, but as a trial of superior 
 strength, agility, or endurance. Who does not 
 remember the contest between Bob Durham and 
 Bill Stalling, in the "Georgia Scenes," which 
 proved the crowning delight of Ransy Sniffle's 
 life? Such encounters we have described in 
 "The Various Languages of Billy Moon," the 
 famous struggle in which Mr. Bill Williams vin- 
 dicated his manhood against Colonel Mose Grice 
 ("King William and His Armies"), and the 
 fifth combat between Bob Hackett and Bill Giles, 
 as described in "The Humors of Jacky Bundle," 
 the outcome of which was thus related by a wit- 
 ness: 
 
 Never see a pootier fight ; but Bob had to give in 
 this time. That set Bill two in five, and as he ris off'n 
 Bob, he told him the next turn would fetch him even 
 'ith him. Bob laughed, he did, bunged up, as he were, 
 and he said : "All right, Bill, we'll see." Then they 
 went to Jim Simmon's kyart, to take a drink, which 
 Bill, he 'sisted on payin' the expense. 
 
 The circus was a very rare occurrence in a 
 Georgia village fifty years ago, of course, but it 
 did appear, even there, sometimes, and furnished 
 our author with material for one of his best 
 sketches, in which two of our old friends, Colo- 
 nel Grice and Mr. Bill Williams, materially as-
 
 182 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 sist the clown in his efforts to amuse the crowd. 
 Trials in court are, in rural districts, a chief 
 source both of recreation and of instruction, 
 and one of the best sketches in the "Dukesbor- 
 ough Tales" is that describing Judge Mike's 
 Court, where old Sandidge and young Mobly 
 have their first regular legal encounter, and the 
 incompetent Judge Mike, pushed to the wall by 
 Mobly 's bold and clever management, takes out 
 his rage and spite on the innocent and unoffend- 
 ing Allen Thigpen. The sketch is permanently 
 valuable as describing an important and now, 
 happily, obsolete phase of the judicial economy 
 of Georgia. 
 
 One of the shorter stories, now published as 
 a separate novelette, "Ogeechee Cross Firings," 
 is dedicated "To the memory of Right Rev. 
 George Foster Pierce, who, during many years, 
 was the author's close neighbor and friend, 
 whose love of the humorous, both as a hearer 
 and a rehearser, whose marvelous personal 
 beauty, whose devout, innocent life, and whose 
 unrivaled eloquence made him, of all men, in his 
 native state, during his time, the one most ad- 
 mired, loved, and revered." And that reminds 
 me of Colonel Johnston's remark one summer, 
 in Baltimore: 'The grandest man I ever knew, 
 as a man and as a Christian, was George Pierce."
 
 Richard Malcolm Johnston. 183 
 
 To the question as to whether Bishop Pierce 
 was not the original of Henry Doster, in this 
 sketch, he replied: 
 
 Yes, I had George Pierce in my mind when I was 
 sketching "Henry Doster." All the other characters 
 are imaginary, although, of course, I have seen the 
 elements out of which I constructed my concrete, here 
 and there, among various old-time originals. 
 
 Colonel Johnston was a humorist of recog- 
 nized power, but he could never have succeeded 
 in sketching Georgia provincial life as he did 
 if he had not loved the old times so well. "The 
 Dukesborough Tales" are dedicated "To mem- 
 ories of the old times the grim and rude, but 
 hearty, old times in Georgia" ; and "The Primes 
 and Their Neighbors" inscribed "To memories of 
 Powelton, my native village." That is the secret 
 of it all. All his stories and novels are essentially 
 reminiscences of this old Georgia provincial life, 
 which he has both idealized and caricatured, but 
 out of which he has wrought, with a hand of 
 love, a picture that is of permanent value and in- 
 terest, and made, doubtless, the truest history of 
 Middle Georgia yet written. He has cultivated 
 his field more assiduously than the rest of the 
 Southern writers, except Miss Murfree, and, big 
 or little, it is his field. The dialect could hardly 
 be more faithfully rendered. The best of these
 
 184 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 stories will never lose their value. They may be 
 more read or less read, as time passes, but they 
 have permanent worth as describing with essen- 
 tial accuracy, a state of society, humble though 
 it be, that has passed away. Some of them, I 
 verily believe, have enough genuine humor to 
 float them for some time yet down the great 
 tide of time, in which most books sink. These 
 bear, as well as the very best sketches of the 
 "Georgia Scenes," the test of repeated rereading. 
 It might be well, some day, to have the very best 
 of them collected into a single volume; and such 
 a collection would, in all likelihood, long retain 
 its popularity. Different persons would make 
 somewhat different selections, but most of the 
 following would certainly be in any collection : 
 From "The Dukesborough Tales," the series in 
 which Mr. Bill Williams figures prominently, 
 viz., "How Mr. Bill Williams Took the Re- 
 sponsibility," "The Pursuit of Mr. Adiel Slack," 
 "Investigations of Mr. Jonas Lively," "Old 
 Friends and New," "The Expensive Treat of 
 Colonel Moses Grice," and "King William and 
 His Armies," also "The Goose Pond School," 
 "The Various Languages of Billy Moon," and 
 "Judge Mike's Court"; from "Mr. Absalom 
 Billingslea and Other Georgia Folks," "Mr. Ab- 
 salom Billingslea," "The Brief Embarrassment
 
 Richard Malcolm Johnston. 185 
 
 of Mr. Iverson Blount," "The Meditations of Mr. 
 Archie Kittrell," "The Wimpy Adoptions," and 
 "Moll and Virgil" ; from "The Primes and Their 
 Neighbors," "The Experiment of Miss Sally 
 Cash," and "The Pursuits of the Martyns." 
 
 Perhaps one of the best proofs of the merit 
 of the novel, "Old Mark Langston," is that it 
 reads better, on the whole, the second time than 
 the first. I was about to pronounce it equal to 
 the promise of some of the short stories, but the 
 denouement prevented. It is not possible that a 
 Georgia village could have been the scene of the 
 unraveling of such a plot of avarice, meanness, 
 cruelty, deceit, hypocrisy, lying, desertion, vil- 
 lainy involving so many people in so many 
 places, and extending over so long a period. 
 But one character, at least, is sketched with a 
 touch that will make most judicious readers 
 overlook or forget what they did not like in oth- 
 ers. This is old Jesse Lines. There is nothing 
 to admire in him, and, doubtless, he was not 
 meant to be the strong point of the work, but 
 he will be remembered when all else in the book 
 is forgotten, though his daughter, Doolana, is a 
 noble girl, and Mr. Duke stands out strongly in 
 all his meanness. Jesse Lines' objection to the 
 Bible as an "onfriendly book" will give a good 
 idea of the man and his talk :
 
 i86 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 It may not be onfriendly to you; but to me well, 
 as fur as I can go to say about that book, it ain't what 
 I call friendly not to me it ain't. I've tuck her up, 
 time and time ag'in, and tried to read her as fur as 
 I can understan' her, and which they's a heap in her 
 I can't understan', ner make heads ner tails of but 
 which, somehow, she always seems onfriendly to me 
 and ag'in me. I ain't no great reader, nohow, as you 
 know, 'special sence my 'fliction. But when I does 
 read, I wants to read in a book which, ef she can't 
 be 'special friendly, and pinted friendly, ain't, at least, 
 ow-friendly; or, ef it actilly ain't a-meanin' o' me by 
 name, and abusein' of me, yit is constant a-hintin' 
 round me and which I were never a man that had to 
 be kicked down-stars befo' I could take a bint. Now 
 you jes' read out loud, whar you is, a while, and less 
 see how she goes. 
 
 "A righteous man hateth lying ; but a wicked man is 
 loathsome and cometh to shame." 
 
 Thar! [cried he, in undisguised resentment]. Didn't 
 I tell you so? Shet her up. For God-a-mighty's sake, 
 Doolana, shet her up ! 
 
 Mrs. Herrick says Colonel Johnston, speaking 
 of Doolana Lines, remarked : 
 
 I meant to make her mean, like her father, but be- 
 fore I had written fifty lines about her, she just turned 
 herself out of my hands, and there she was before me. 
 She seemed to say : "Don't make me mean. I am a 
 woman. You never knew a woman mean like that." 
 And I had to stop. I just could not do it. I cannot, 
 somehow, be rough with any woman ; they always seem
 
 Richard Malcolm Johnston. 187 
 
 to reproach me. I cannot forget the reverence due 
 their femininity. 
 
 That is doubtless the reason why the Widow 
 Guthrie, who gives her name to Colonel John- 
 ston's second complete novel, did not turn out 
 to be a female edition of Kinsey Duke, as she 
 seemed, at first, to promise to become. This 
 book, which is intended to describe the life of 
 the upper class in a Middle Georgia village, has 
 experienced the fate of other books of this kind, 
 written by authors who had won success with 
 short stories and sketches of mountaineers, 
 crackers, etc. ; as, e. g., Miss Murfree's "Where 
 the Battle Was Fought" and Mr. Page's "On 
 New Found River." The characters, lacking 
 the quaintness and originality of pioneer and 
 backwoodsman, fail to enlist our full sympathy. 
 Even Colonel Johnston's humor seems handi- 
 capped, and while little or no fault is to be 
 found with some of the characters as, e. g., 
 Duncan Guthrie's wife we never get very well 
 acquainted with her or them. The book will 
 hardly live as long as "Old Mark Langston." 
 
 Colonel Johnston was the author, in conjunc- 
 tion with William Hand Browne, of a "Biog- 
 raphy of Alexander Stephens" and a "History 
 of English Literature." He also prepared for 
 the press "Studies, Literary and Social," which
 
 i88 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 were issued in three small volumes. Much of 
 Colonel Johnston's time was spent in the study 
 of English and European literature. On the 
 former he delivered as many as sixty lectures 
 before the Peabody Institute, Baltimore, and a 
 considerable number elsewhere.
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD.
 
 X. 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 IF a reason must be given for a study of 
 Matthew Arnold's works at this time (1898), one 
 might say, perhaps first of all, that the "Letters" 
 have not only thrown new light upon Arnold's 
 personality, but have made clearer than ever be- 
 fore the task he had set himself, and especially the 
 spirit in which he gave himself to that task. Ar- 
 nold knew himself better, of course, than any- 
 body else knew him ; and in his familiar letters, 
 especially those to his mother and sisters letters 
 meant only for the family circle, and free from 
 a shadow of suspicion that a wider audience was 
 ever in mind we have his own estimate of the 
 worth of his work, and his own statement of the 
 hindrances that hampered his literary effort. 
 
 In this paper the object has been, so far as 
 possible, to let Arnold, by means of his "Let- 
 ters," state his own case ; and the same purpose 
 has determined the extensive quotations made 
 from his works. Those who would get the most 
 out of the "Letters" must consider them in the 
 light of a self-revelation, not as a collection 
 
 (189)
 
 190 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 from which Arnold's opinions of other men and 
 other men's works may be learned. In bulk 
 Arnold's twenty-one volumes constitute a suffi- 
 ciently large output ; and in prose, at least, we 
 all feel, perhaps, that he found adequate expres- 
 sion of himself. He was a great literary critic, 
 doubtless the greatest and safest that the Eng- 
 lish-speaking race has yet produced, and though 
 hindered much by outward circumstances, he 
 yet found opportunity to deliver his message. 
 If things had been different, we should doubt- 
 less have had more of those incomparable intro- 
 ductions to the poets ; and we shall always re- 
 gret that he did not leave the evidently intend- 
 ed further essay on Shelley. Still we have his 
 ''secret" and his "method" of literary criticism 
 in the collected edition of his critical works pre- 
 pared with his own hand. He was greatly hin- 
 dered, it is true, by the fact that he had to give 
 his main effort during his whole life to the ex- 
 acting duties of a school inspectorship, in order 
 to win bread for his family. 
 
 Qualified by nature and training for the highest 
 honors and successes which the world can give, he 
 spent his life in a long round of unremunerative 
 drudgery, working even beyond the limits of his 
 strength for those whom he loved, and never, by word 
 or sign, betraying even a consciousness of that dull
 
 Matthew Arnold. 191 
 
 indifference to his gifts and services which stirred the 
 fruitless indignation of his friends. 1 
 
 He rose superior to these hindrances, I think, 
 in the matter of the prose expression of himself ; 
 but it was his poetic faculty that suffered, and 
 it is there that the world has cause chiefly to 
 regret that he was so hampered. He himself 
 told F. W. H. Myers that "his official work, 
 though it did not check his prose writing, 
 checked his poetry." If any one, considering 
 what his great contemporaries, Tennyson and 
 Browning, achieved, be inclined to criticise Ar- 
 nold, let him blame if he can after reading the 
 following : 
 
 Indeed, if the opinion of the general public about 
 my poems were the same as that of the leading literary 
 men, I should make more money by them than I do. 
 But, more than this, I should gain the stimulus nec- 
 essary to enable me to produce my best all that I 
 have in me, whatever that may be to produce which 
 is no light matter with an existence so hampered as 
 mine is. People do not understand what a temptation 
 there is, if you cannot bear anything not very good, to 
 transfer your operations to a region where form is 
 everything. Perfection of a certain kind may there 
 be attained, or at least approached, without knocking 
 yourself to pieces, but to attain or approach perfection 
 in the region of thought and feeling, and to unite this 
 
 1 Preface to "Letters," by G. W. E. Russell.
 
 192 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 with perfection of form, demands not merely an effort 
 and a labor, but an actual tearing of one's self to 
 pieces, which one does not readily consent to (although 
 one is sometimes forced to it), unless one can devote 
 one's whole life to poetry. Wordsworth could give his 
 whole life to it; Shelley and Byron both could, and 
 were, besides, driven by their demon to do it. Tenny- 
 son, a far inferior natural power to either of the three, 
 can ; but of the moderns Goethe is the only one, I be- 
 lieve, of those who had an existence assujettie who 
 has thrown himself with a great result into poetry. 
 And even he felt what I say, for he could no doubt 
 have done more poetically had he been freer; but it 
 is not so light a matter, when you have other grave 
 claims on your powers, to submit voluntarily to the 
 exhaustion of the best poetical production in a time 
 like this. Goethe speaks somewhere of the endless mat- 
 ters on which he had employed himself, and says that 
 with the labor he had given to them he might have 
 produced half a dozen more good tragedies ; "but to 
 produce these," he says, "I must have been sehr ser- 
 rissen." It is only in the best poetical epochs (such 
 as the Elizabethan) that you can descend into yourself 
 and produce the best of your thought and feeling nat- 
 urally and without an overwhelming, and in some de- 
 gree morbid, effort ; for then all the people around 
 you are more or less doing the same thing. It is nat- 
 ural, it is the bent of the time, to do it; its being the 
 bent of the time, indeed, is what makes the time a 
 poetical one. 2 
 
 I have quoted this passage at length, because 
 "Tetters," I., 72 f.
 
 Matthew Arnold. 193 
 
 it is the most important reference in the "Let- 
 ters" to the hindrances which clogged Arnold's 
 poetic effort, and because it is an admirable gen- 
 eral statement, to be supported by the passages 
 which follow here. 
 
 I am now at the work [he writes at forty-one] I 
 dislike most in the world : looking over and marking 
 examination papers. I was stopped last week by my 
 eyes, and the last year or two these sixty papers a 
 day of close handwriting to read have, I am sorry to 
 say, much tried my eyes for the time. They soon re- 
 cover, however, and no reading ever seems to hurt 
 them. At present I can do nothing after my papers 
 are done but write the indispensable letters for that 
 day's post. 3 
 
 The next year he writes to Lady de Rothschild 
 as follows: 
 
 I must go back to my charming occupation of hear- 
 ing students give lessons. Here is my programme for 
 this afternoon : Avalanches The Steam Engine The 
 Thames India Rubber Bricks The Battle of Poic- 
 tiers Subtraction The Reindeer The Gunpowder 
 Plot The Jordan. Alluring, is it not? Twenty min- 
 utes each, and the days of one's life are only three- 
 score years and ten.* 
 
 Three months later he writes : 
 
 I am being driven furious by seven hundred closely 
 
 3 "Letters," I., 207. *Ibid., I., 281. 
 13
 
 194 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 written grammar papers which I have to look over, 
 and an obstinate cold in the head at the same time. 5 
 
 Again, to Lady de Rothschild, still two vears 
 later : 
 
 I have [he says] in the next two months, besides 
 my usual school work, to look over thirty sacred 
 poems, the same number of Newdigates (the Oxford 
 prize poem), ten Latin poems, and several English es- 
 says ; to give a lecture on Celtic poetry, of which, as 
 the Saturday Review truly says, I know nothing; to 
 write a Latin speech, and to report on the secondary 
 instruction of the continent of Europe. 6 
 
 The everlasting grind of examination papers 
 becomes exceedingly pathetic on one occasion. 
 He writes thus to his sister, Mrs. Forster, Janu- 
 ary 4, 1868: 
 
 Poor little Basil [his infant son] died this afternoon, 
 a few minutes before one o'clock. I sat up with him 
 till four this morning, looking over my papers, that 
 Flu and Mrs. Tuffin might get some sleep ; and at the 
 end of every second paper I went to him, stroked his 
 poor twitching hand and kissed his soft warm cheek; 
 and though he never slept, he seemed easy, and hardly 
 moaned at all. This morning about six, after I had 
 gone to bed, he became more restless ; about eleven he 
 had another convulsion; from that time he sank. 7 
 
 5 "Letters," L, 285. 'Ibid., I., 381. 'Ibid., I., 443.
 
 Matthew Arnold. 195 
 
 On his birthday, that same year (December 24, 
 1868), Arnold writes to his mother: 
 
 Tell Edward I divide my papers (second-year gram- 
 mar) through every day, taking in Christmas day, Sat- 
 urdays, and Sundays. In this way I bring them down 
 to twenty-five a day, which I can do without the strain 
 on my head and eyes which forty a day, or as I used 
 often to make it in old times by delaying at first 
 eighty or ninety a day, would be. I am up at six, and 
 work at the preface to my "Culture and Anarchy'' 
 essays ; work again at this, and read, between breakfast 
 and luncheon. Play racquets and walk between lunch- 
 eon and four ; from four to seven look over my twenty- 
 five papers, and then after dinner write my letters and 
 read a little. 8 
 
 Passages of similar tenor might be multiplied 
 almost indefinitely from the "Letters" ; but these 
 will suffice, perhaps, to indicate not only how he 
 was hampered in his literary effort, but also how 
 conscientious he was in the performance of his 
 drudgery tasks, how industrious in reading as 
 well as in writing. 
 
 In such a paper, it is necessary to ignore al- 
 most entirely a large part of Arnold's work, and 
 to restrict attention to what is of universal and 
 permanent value. As to what is of permanent 
 value, doubtless everybody will agree. If Ar- 
 
 8 "Letters," I., 467.
 
 196 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 nold lives, it will be as a critic of literature and 
 as a poet. His school reports were, and are, ex- 
 ceedingly valuable; but such things are not lit- 
 erature, even when written by an Arnold. As 
 the world rolls on and times change, old ques- 
 tions lose interest, and new problems present 
 themselves in religion, in social life, in politics; 
 the treatment of such questions, except in their 
 permanent aspects, cannot be literature, and, in 
 the long run, only literature survives, except for 
 the specialist. This remark does not apply, how- 
 ever, to "Culture and Anarchy" ; at least so 
 much of it as treats of the distinction between 
 "Hebraism" and "Hellenism." Arnold himself 
 rightly felt that the distinction thus drawn was 
 of more than transient value. "The chapters on 
 'Hellenism' and 'Hebraism,' " he wrote to his 
 mother, "are, in the main, I am convinced, so 
 true that they will form a kind of center for 
 English thought and speculation on the matters 
 treated in them." One is tempted to make an 
 exception again in favor of "Literature and 
 Dogma," if only for the great aphorism, "Con- 
 duct is three-fourths of life," so beautifully illus- 
 trated there. But that aphorism is everywhere 
 in Arnold's works, and, better still, is on its 
 winged way among men.
 
 Matthew Arnold. 197 
 
 THE CRITIC. 
 
 An enthusiastic student of English literature 
 remarked to me once that Matthew Arnold will 
 live by his poetry; that the ideas and ideals for 
 which he stood in his criticism will pass into the 
 general atmosphere of culture, and it will be for- 
 gotten by most that we owe them to Arnold. 
 The remark was made with the highest appre- 
 ciation of Arnold's influence as a critic, and 
 my friend did not know, I am sure, that he was 
 almost quoting Frederic Harrison. "We can 
 have little doubt now," says Harrison, "when so 
 much of Arnold's prose work in criticism has 
 been accepted as standard opinion, and so much 
 of his prose work in controversy has lost its 
 savor, that it is his poetry which will be longest 
 remembered, and there his finest vein was 
 reached." 9 Many were doubtless long before 
 agreed with Andrew Lang in the general prop- 
 osition that his poems were "by far his most 
 important and most permanent contribution to 
 literature." To have one's ideas become a part 
 of the literary atmosphere is to have accom- 
 plished a great work, even if one's self be for- 
 gotten ; and Arnold himself would, I am sure, 
 have been satisfied to believe that this would be 
 
 ^Nineteenth Century, March, 1896.
 
 198 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 the fate of his criticism. Writing to one of his 
 sisters about his article on "The Burials Bill," 
 he said: "It is a seed sown in the thoughts of 
 the young and fair-minded, the effect of which 
 will be gradual but persistent. In all I write this 
 is the sort of effect I aim at." 1 And to his 
 mother he wrote : "To be less and less personal 
 in one's desires and working is the great matter, 
 and this, too, I feel, I am glad to say, more 
 deeply than I did." 1 Again to the same: "One 
 can only get one's self really accepted by men 
 by making one's self forgotten in the people and 
 doctrines one recommends." 
 
 Men may cease to read the essays on Words- 
 worth, Milton, Keats, and Byron ; but we shall 
 read these and other great poets more, and ap- 
 preciate them better, because of Arnold's essays. 
 For one of these Wordsworth Arnold, more 
 than any other person, vindicated his rightful 
 position in English letters, and with that little 
 volume of superb selections made it easy for the 
 elect to come under Wordsworth's spell. And for 
 Keats, who does not feel that Arnold has said 
 the supreme word ? Shelley had written of Keats : 
 
 Till the Future dares 
 
 Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be 
 An echo and a light unto eternity. 
 
 ""Letters," II., 155. "Ibid., I, 400.
 
 Matthew Arnold. 199 
 
 Tennyson had said, "Keats, with his high spir- 
 itual vision, would have been, if he had lived, 
 the greatest of us all"; but Arnold wrote, "He 
 is with Shakespeare!" When a critic like Ar- 
 nold says that, he compels us to read Keats; 
 and when we read Keats, if we have any poetry 
 in our souls, we are Keats' forever. 
 
 I say the thoughts of the essays may pass into 
 the general literary atmosphere, and it may be- 
 come no longer necessary to read them, but I 
 cannot imagine this of the essay on "The Study 
 of Poetry." I can hardly imagine even the cul- 
 tivated public not needing to read and reread 
 this masterly, simple treatise. It ought to be 
 read by young people once a year. Frederic 
 Harrison says of it: 
 
 Arnold's piece on "The Study of Poetry," written 
 as an introduction to the collected "English Poets," 
 should be preserved in our literature as the norma, or 
 canon, of right opinion about poetry, as we preserve 
 the standard coins in the Pyx, or the standard yard 
 measure in the old Jewel-house at Westminster. 12 
 
 12 Ibid. In a footnote Harrison adds : "This does 
 not include obiter dicta in his familiar letters. A great 
 critic, like the Pope, is infallible only when he is 
 speaking ex cathedra, on matters of faith." One thinks 
 at once of Tennyson, to whom Arnold never was quite 
 just in the "Letters" e. g., I., 278: "I do not think
 
 2OO Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 "Every critic/' says Arnold, in the essay on 
 "The Function of Criticism," "should try and 
 possess one great literature at least besides his 
 own, and the more unlike his own, the better." 
 That was the minimum requirement. Very sim- 
 ilar is his answer to the objection to studying 
 other languages on the ground that we have 
 enough to do to know our own: "It is true, as 
 Goethe said, that no man who knows only his 
 own language knows even that." Of Scherer, 
 Arnold said : "He knows thoroughly the lan- 
 guage and literature of England, Italy, Ger- 
 many, as well as France." His own outfit was 
 perhaps even more complete. He possessed, as 
 
 Tennyson a great and powerful spirit in any line." 
 (Compare also I., 72, 147, 280.) Such obiter dicta 
 must be offset by Arnold's remark to Hallam Tenny- 
 son : "Your father has been our most popular poet for 
 forty years, and, on the whole, he has deserved it." 
 One is even more startled, perhaps, at this epistolary 
 verdict on Thackeray : ''He is not, to my thinking, a 
 great writer." ("Letters," I., 247.) These judgments 
 would certainly have been modified if given ex cathe- 
 dra; and when one remembers the concluding para- 
 graph of the essay on '"Joubert," one cannot but hope 
 that Arnold would have qualified this remark concern- 
 ing the great Whig historian : "Macaulay is to me un- 
 interesting, mainly, I think, from a dash of intellectual 
 vulgarity which I find in all his performance." ("Let- 
 ters," II., I55-)
 
 Matthew Arnold. 201 
 
 the basis of his culture, an extraordinarily thor- 
 ough knowledge and an exquisite appreciation 
 of Greek literature, especially Greek poetry, 
 knowing as few men have done Homer, Soph- 
 ocles, yEschylus, and Pindar, besides Plato, 
 Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. In Latin he 
 was well versed, and familiar especially with 
 Lucretius and Virgil. In Hebrew he had some 
 knowledge of the original, and was steeped in 
 the literature of the Old and New Testaments, 
 including the Septuagint, the Vulgate (for which 
 as literature he had the profoundest sympathy 
 and admiration), and the best literature of me- 
 diaeval Christianity. Of modern literatures he 
 knew best, of course, the French. Indeed, it 
 might be said, with a large measure of truth, 
 that he learned his art of criticism from the 
 French. Next to French he knew best the Ger- 
 man literature, and was familiar with the re- 
 sults of German scholarship, at least in biblical 
 lines. With Italian there are indications that he 
 was at least fairly well acquainted, and he knew 
 Dante well. In English literature he was, of 
 course, widely and deeply read more so in the 
 older literature than the contemporary and 
 in all the greatest poetry a master without a 
 rival. 
 
 With Arnold, "culture is reading." From his
 
 2O2 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 writings we may learn his "doctrine," and from 
 his "Letters" we may gather his "method" as to 
 reading. "Desultory reading," he writes to one 
 of his sisters, 13 "is a mere anodyne ; regular 
 reading, well chosen, is restoring and edifying." 
 "My great desire in education," he says in one 
 of his letters, 14 "is to get a few good books uni- 
 versally taught and read. Twenty, I think, is 
 about all I would have in the direct teaching of 
 the young, and to be learned as text-books. 
 Young people may read for themselves collater- 
 ally as much as they like." Again, in his six- 
 tieth year, he writes: 15 
 
 The importance of reading not slight stuff to get 
 through the time, but the best that has been written 
 forces itself upon me more and more every year I 
 live ; it is living in good company, the best company, 
 and people are generally quite keen enough, or too 
 keen, about doing that ; yet they will not do it in the 
 simplest and most innocent manner by reading. How- 
 ever, if I live to be eighty, I shall probably be the 
 only person left in England who reads anything but 
 newspapers and scientific publications. 
 
 He advises his sister, Mrs. Forster, 16 "to read 
 something of Burke's every year," because 
 Burke "treats politics with his thought and imag- 
 
 13 "Letters," II., 127. 14 Ibid., II., 164. Ibid., II., 227. 
 "Ibid., L, 249.
 
 Matthew Arnold. 203 
 
 ination" ; because he is "our greatest English 
 prose writer." 
 
 Arnold's own "method," or practice, in read- 
 ing is easy to discover. Of Gray he said: "He 
 lived with the great poets ; he lived, above all, 
 with the Greeks, through perpetually studying 
 and enjoying them." And Arnold himself lived 
 constantly, from youth to age, with the great 
 Greeks. In the second sonnet, in reply to the 
 question, "Who prop, thou ask'st, in these bad 
 days, my mind ?" he says that he is occupied with 
 Homer, "clearest-souled of men" ; with Epicte- 
 tus, "whose friendship I not long since won"; 
 and especially with Sophocles, 
 
 Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole. 
 
 In 1849 ne writes : "I have within this year 
 gone through all Homer's works and all those 
 ascribed to him." And he is reading, at the 
 same time, biographies of Byron, Scott, Napo- 
 leon, Goethe, Burns. The next year he is read- 
 ing "Goethe's letters, Bacon, Pindar, Sophocles, 
 Milton, Thomas a Kempis, and 'Ecclesiasticus.' '' 
 In 1857 he writes: "What I learn in studying 
 Sophocles for my present purpose is, or seems 
 to me, wonderful." In 1860 he is "reading a 
 great deal in the 'Iliad' again." In 1861 he gives 
 his three lectures on "Translating Homer," say-
 
 2O4 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 ing at the outset that "for one or two years the 
 works of Homer were seldom out of his hands." 
 In his fortieth year we find him at night, after 
 inspecting schools, reading "about a hundred 
 lines of 'Odyssey' to keep himself from putre- 
 faction" ; and in his sixty-third year he uses the 
 "Odyssey" to take the taste of Daudet's "Sapho" 
 out of his mouth. The very last reference in the 
 "Letters" to Greek literature represents him as 
 "reading five pages of Greek anthology every 
 day." 
 
 As to other literature besides the classical, the 
 "Letters" confirm the impression that he kept 
 in his general reading largely to the great au- 
 thors. His first youthful enthusiasm in French 
 was George Sand, "the greatest spirit in our 
 European world from the time that Goethe de- 
 parted." 1 Later his favorite French authors 
 were Sainte-Beuve, Voltaire, Joubert, Senan- 
 cour, Maurice de Guerin, Renan, Scherer. His 
 friend and master in criticism was Sainte- 
 Beuve, "the first critic of our time." The circle 
 of French writers at Paris, to which Sainte- 
 Beuve and Scherer belonged, he thought "per- 
 haps the most truly cultivated in the world." 
 The three Germans whom he knew r best were 
 
 ""Letters," II., 152.
 
 Matthew Arnold. 205 
 
 doubtless Lessing, Heine, and Goethe. The last 
 was to him "the greatest poet of modern times, 
 the greatest critic of all times." Goethe and 
 Wordsworth, he says in a letter, "are the two 
 moderns I most care for." Heine was "the most 
 important successor and continuator of Goethe 
 in Goethe's most important line of activity" 
 namely, as "a soldier in the war of liberation of 
 humanity"; and so he was "in the European 
 poetry of that quarter of a century which fol- 
 lows the death of Goethe incomparably the most 
 important figure." 
 
 In English prose, Arnold's favorite authors 
 seem to have been Burke, Newman, and possibly 
 Emerson. For Newman's great qualities he had 
 the profoundest admiration, as of "a man who 
 alone in Oxford of his generation, alone of many 
 generations, conveyed to us in his genius that 
 same charm, that same ineffable sentiment, which 
 this exquisite place itself conveys." Of English 
 poets it were but necessary to name all the great- 
 est ; with all these Arnold "lived." But it would 
 be safe, I think, to say that the works and au- 
 thors which he loved most, studied longest, and 
 absorbed most completely were the Bible, Ho- 
 mer, Sophocles, Goethe, Wordsworth, and Sainte- 
 Beuve. 
 
 Arnold's "doctrine of studies" is contained,
 
 206 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 he himself said, 18 in his lecture on "Literature 
 and Science." His "doctrine of criticism" is 
 found perhaps most succinctly stated in his es- 
 say on "The Function of Criticism at the Present 
 Time," which serves as a general introduction 
 to his two volumes of "Essays in Criticism." His 
 "doctrine of style" is best given in the essay on 
 ''The Influence of Academies." 
 
 The business of the critical power is, he says 
 in the essay on "The Function of Criticism at 
 the Present Time," "in all branches of knowl- 
 edge, theology, philosophy, history, art, science, 
 to see the object as in itself it really is." True 
 criticism "tends to make the best ideas prevail." 
 "Its business is simply to know the best that is 
 known and thought in the world, and by in its 
 turn making this known to create a current of 
 new and fresh ideas." "Presently these new 
 ideas reach society, the touch of truth is the 
 touch of life, and there is a stir and growth 
 everywhere ; out of this stir and growth come 
 the creative epochs of literature." 
 
 Criticism's best spiritual work is "to keep mai. 
 from a self-satisfaction which is retarding and 
 vulgarizing, to lead him toward perfection by 
 making his mind dwell upon what is excellent in 
 
 ""Letters," II., 253.
 
 Matthew Arnold. . 207 
 
 itself, and the absolute beauty and fitness of 
 things." Why has it so little accomplished this 
 in England? Because it has not kept in the 
 purely intellectual sphere, has been so practical, 
 polemical, controversial. "Without a disinter- 
 ested treatment of things, truth and the highest 
 culture are out of the question." The duty of 
 criticism is "to be perpetually dissatisfied" with 
 everything which falls short of "a high and per- 
 fect ideal." Criticism "must maintain its inde- 
 pendence of the practical spirit and its aims." 
 "Let us betake ourselves more," says Arnold, "to 
 the serener life of the mind and spirit." 
 
 The critic is to help us enlarge and complete 
 ourselves by bringing in the elements in which 
 we are deficient, not as Carlyle, by "preaching 
 earnestness to a nation which has plenty of it by 
 nature." 1 The English-speaking race is distin- 
 guished by energy and honesty, and has a sense 
 for conduct; the French by a sense for social 
 life and manners ; the Germans by a sense for 
 knowledge; the Greeks had a sense for beauty, 
 for social life and manners, for knowledge, but 
 not, in the highest degree, for conduct. By 
 studying the points wherein we are weak and the 
 elements wherein other peoples are strong, and 
 
 ""Letters," II., 222.
 
 2o8 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 bringing in those qualities in which we are not 
 strong, we shall complete and develop ourselves. 
 
 The great business of the critic is the spread 
 of culture. What Arnold meant by culture 
 may be understood, perhaps, from the following 
 extracts from "Sweetness and Light": Culture 
 is "a desire after the things of the mind simply 
 for their own sakes and for the pleasure of see- 
 ing them as they are." "Culture is an harmoni- 
 ous expansion of all the powers which make the 
 beauty and worth of human nature." "It is in 
 endless additions to itself, in the endless expan- 
 sion of its powers, in endless growth in wisdom 
 and beauty, that the spirit of the human race 
 finds its ideal." Culture is "the study and pur- 
 suit of perfection." Culture "places human per- 
 fection in an internal condition, in the growth 
 and predominance of our humanity proper, as dis- 
 tinguished from our animality." "Culture seeks 
 to make the best that has been thought and 
 known in the world current everywhere." Cul- 
 ture's aim is "to make reason and the will of God 
 prevail." 
 
 "Culture is reading," said Arnold; and he 
 "looked to literature for gradually opening and 
 softening men's minds." He looked to literature 
 even to interpret the Bible afresh, and to put 
 religion on a sounder basis. He considered Lord
 
 Matthew Arnold. 209 
 
 Salisbury a dangerous man, "chiefly from his 
 want of any true sense and experience of liter- 
 ature and its beneficent function. Religion he 
 knows and physical science he knows, but the 
 immense work between the two, which is for lit- 
 erature to accomplish, he knows nothing of." 2 
 
 The critic's chief function, then, is to be a 
 guide to the best literature. He is to cultivate 
 in himself, and stimulate in others, a conscience 
 in letters, to induce the attitude which Sainte- 
 Beuve claims for France. "In France the first 
 consideration for us is not whether we are 
 amused and pleased by a work of art or mind, 
 nor is it whether we are touched by it. What 
 we seek above all to learn is whether- ^ve are 
 right in being amused with it, and in applauding 
 it, and in being moved by it." To be such a 
 guide as Arnold demands, the critic must be, as 
 Sainte-Beuve was, "a man of extraordinary deli- 
 cacy of tact and judgment in literature"; and 
 "perfect, so far as a poor mortal critic can be 
 perfect, in knowledge of his subject, in judg- 
 ment, in tact and tone." He must be, further, 
 "a man of genius, with the ctincelle and the in- 
 stinctive good sense and moderation which make 
 a guide really attaching and useful." 2 
 
 20 "Letters," II., 41. Ibid., I., 173.
 
 2io Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 The course of literary criticism "is determined 
 for it by the idea which is the law of its being ; 
 the idea of a disinterested endeavor to learn and 
 propagate the best that has been known and 
 thought in the world,, and thus to establish a 
 current of fresh and true ideas." And since 
 much of the best that has been known and 
 thought in the world must necessarily be for- 
 eign, "the English critic of literature must dwell 
 much on foreign thought, and with particular 
 heed on any part of it, which, while significant 
 and fruitful in itself, is for any reason specially 
 likely to escape him." For "the criticism which 
 alone can help us for the future ... is a 
 criticism which regards Europe as being, for in- 
 tellectual and spiritual purposes, one great con- 
 federation, bound to a joint action and working 
 to a common result; and whose members have, 
 for their proper outfit, a knowledge of Greek, 
 Roman, and Eastern antiquity, and of one an- 
 other." "I hate," he says in a letter, 22 "all over- 
 preponderance of single elements, and all my 
 efforts are directed to enlarge and complete us 
 by bringing in as much as possible of Greek, 
 Latin, and Celtic authors." Every one, there- 
 fore, with any turn for literature will do well 
 
 22 "Letters," I., 287.
 
 Matthew Arnold. 211 
 
 steadily to widen his culture, severely to check 
 in himself the provincial spirit; and to keep in 
 mind "that all mere glorification by ourselves of 
 ourselves or our literature ... is both vul- 
 gar and, besides being vulgar, retarding." "In- 
 stead of always fixing our thoughts upon the 
 points in which our literature and our intel- 
 lectual life generally are strong, we should from 
 time to time fix them upon those in which they 
 are weak, and so learn to perceive what we have 
 to amend." 
 
 As to pronouncing judgment on literature, 
 which is often regarded as the critic's one busi- 
 ness, Arnold, in stating what he conceives to 
 be the true principle, impliedly explains his own 
 method : 
 
 The judgment which almost insensibly forms itself 
 in a fair and clear mind, along with fresh knowledge, 
 is the valuable one ; and thus knowledge, and ever fresh 
 knowledge, must be the critic's great concern for him- 
 self. And it is by communicating fresh knowledge, 
 and letting his own judgment pass along with it but 
 insensibly, and in the second place, not the first, as 
 a sort of companion and clue, not as an abstract law- 
 giver that the critic will generally do most good to 
 readers. 
 
 Following his own principle "to learn and 
 propagate the best that has been known and
 
 212 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 thought in the world" Arnold concerned him- 
 self little with the mass of current English lit- 
 erature ; partly because so little of it came un- 
 der that definition, more because the personal 
 bias was so liable to influence the critic's judg- 
 ment of contemporary authors. But to those 
 who must deal with current English literature 
 he suggested to try it, so far as they could, by 
 the standard of the best that is known and 
 thought in the world ; and that, "to get any- 
 where near this standard, every critic should try 
 and possess one 'great literature at least, besides 
 his own, and the more unlike his own the bet- 
 ter." 
 
 The great function of criticism is to prepare 
 the way for creative epochs of literature. To 
 have the sense of creative activity "the great 
 happiness and the great proof of being alive"- 
 is not denied to criticism : "but then criticism 
 must be sincere, simple, flexible, ardent, ever 
 widening its knowledge." 
 
 Still, in full measure, the sense of creative activity 
 belongs only to genuine creation ; in literature we must 
 never forget that. It is no such common matter for a 
 gifted nature to come into possession of a current of 
 true and living ideas, and to produce amidst the in- 
 spiration of them, that we are likely to underrate it. 
 The epochs of /Eschylus and Shakespeare make us
 
 Matthew Arnold. 213 
 
 feel their preeminence. In an epoch like those is, no 
 doubt, the true life of literature; there is the promised 
 land, toward which criticism can only beckon. That 
 promised land it will not be ours to enter, and we 
 shall die in the wilderness; but to have desired to 
 enter it, to have saluted it from afar, is already perhaps 
 the best distinction among contemporaries ; it will cer- 
 tainly be the best title to esteem with posterity. 
 
 As compared with our own chief critic, Low- 
 ell, Arnold educates more, though he dazzles less. 
 "Lowell's address at Birmingham," said Arnold 
 in a letter, 28 "is full of good things, and the 
 Times is loud in its praise. But here again I 
 feel the want of body and current in the dis- 
 course as a whole, and am not satisfied with a 
 host of shrewd and well-wrought and even bril- 
 liant sayings." That is not an unjust criticism. 
 The great merit of both critics was to have led 
 men to appreciate more fully, to love more pro- 
 foundly, the great poets. But Arnold is more 
 constructive, more educative, than Lowell. He 
 can tell us simply, but at the same time almost 
 unerringly, wherein and why a poet is great. He 
 lays bare the secret of his power. Above all, he 
 helps us to feel that the great poets are not only 
 necessary but delightful reading. His doctrine 
 on poetry, or any particular poet, seems often, 
 
 23 "Letters," II., 313.
 
 214 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 on first reading, so simple as hardly to be a body 
 of doctrine at all. But after reading his two vol- 
 umes of "Essays in Criticism," you realize that 
 the doctrine has been a leavening, an enriching 
 influence ; that he has educated yott in good taste. 
 
 When a young man, after reading the "Count 
 of Monte Christo," read the sixth book of the 
 '' Odyssey" and said, "I could have shouted for 
 joy ; I knew that was literature," I said to myself, 
 "That is just the way Arnold works." Arnold's 
 essays on "The Study of Poetry" and on Words- 
 worth made me a Wordsworthian. I had read 
 Lowell's essay on Wordsworth years before, and 
 had been scarcely more attracted to than re- 
 pelled from Wordsworth, so much does Lowell 
 lay stress on the dullness and prosiness of so 
 large a part of Wordsworth's poetry. Arnold, 
 too, "marks the longueurs of Wordsworth, his 
 flatness, his mass of inferior work," as Frederic 
 Harrison says. But he made a volume of superb 
 selections of Wordsworth's masterpieces. His 
 essay sent me to that volume, and that volume 
 made me a Wordsworthian forever. 
 
 When Lady Airlie told Disraeli that she 
 thought Arnold's aptness at coining and estab- 
 lishing current phrase-s was a disadvantage, since 
 people got hold of the phrases and then thought 
 that thev knew all about his work, Disraeli re-
 
 Matthew Arnold. 215 
 
 plied: "Never mind; it is a great achievement." 
 And it was. 
 
 This is a very rare power [says Frederic Harri- 
 son], and one peculiarly rare amongst Englishmen. 
 Carlyle had it, Disraeli had it ; but how few others 
 amongst our contemporaries ! Arnold's current phrases 
 still in circulation are more numerous than those of 
 Disraeli, and are more simple and apt than Carlyle's. 
 These ITTEC Trrepdevra fly through the speech of culti- 
 vated men, pass current in the market place ; they are 
 generative, efficient, and issue into act. They may be 
 right or wrong, but at any rate they do their work. 
 They teach, they guide, possibly may mislead, but they 
 are alive. 
 
 When Arnold speaks of Homer's poetry as 
 "rapid, direct, simple, and noble" ; of "the inspir- 
 ing and intoxicating effect" of the power and 
 style of Pindar; of Chaucer's "liquid diction, 
 fluid movement"; of Spenser's "fluidity and 
 sweet ease" ; of Shakespearian "largeness and 
 indulgence" ; of Milton's "sure and flawless per- 
 fection of rhythm and diction" ; of Gray as "the 
 scantiest and frailest of classics in our poetry, 
 but still a classic" ; of Burns' "spring, bounding 
 swiftness"; of Wordsworth's "high seriousness" 
 and his "healing power" ; of the "magic of 
 style," the "fascinating felicity" of Keats; of 
 Byron that "our soul had felt him like the thun- 
 der's roll"; of Shelley as "beautiful and inef-
 
 216 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 factual angel, beating in the void his luminous 
 wings in vain" we feel all the truth and force 
 of a fairly adequate definition. Only a great 
 critic could so hit off things. Such criticism 
 "illuminates and rejoices us." 
 
 What Philistine even is there who cannot 
 count off a long roll of Arnold's apt designations 
 and phrases ? "Philistine," "Barbarian," "saving 
 remnant," "young lions of the press," "urban- 
 ity," "balance," "high seriousness," "sweet rea- 
 sonableness," "sweetness and light," "stream of 
 tendency," "lucidity of soul/' "liquid diction," 
 "fluid movement," "the grand style," "magic of 
 style," "note of provinciality," "note of distinc- 
 tion," "sense" for conduct, for knowledge, for 
 beauty, for social life and manners. How many, 
 too, of Arnold's definitions and aphoristic say- 
 ings lodge in the mind, and work like leaven to 
 clarify and purify one's ideas ! "The Eternal Pow- 
 er not ourselves, that makes for righteousness"; 
 "Israel's master feeling, the feeling for right- 
 eousness" ; "religion is morality touched by emo- 
 tion" ; "conduct is three-fourths of life" ; "poetry 
 is a criticism of life" ; "culture is reading" ; 
 "genius, the ruling divinity of poetry" ; "intel- 
 ligence, the ruling divinity of prose" ; "politics, 
 that 'wild and dreamlike trade' of insincerity" ; 
 "excellence is not common or abundant" ; "the
 
 Matthew Arnold. 217 
 
 ideal, the saving ideal, of a high and rare excel- 
 lence"; "the discipline of respect for a high and 
 flawless work"; "the severe discipline necessary 
 for all real culture." 
 
 THE POET. 
 
 Goethe's task was, the inevitable task for the modern 
 poet henceforth is as it was for the Greek poet in the 
 days of Pericles not to preach a sublime sermon on 
 a given text, like Dante; not to exhibit all the king- 
 doms of human life, and the. glory of them, like Shakes- 
 peare; but to interpret human life afresh, and to sup- 
 ply a new spiritual basis to it. 
 
 So writes Arnold, in "Letters on Celtic Lit- 
 erature," and impliedly defines the task which 
 he had set himself in his own poetry. "To in- 
 terpret human life afresh, to supply a new spir- 
 itual basis to it," was indeed Arnold's chief ef- 
 fort in the majority of his prose works "Liter- 
 ature and Dogma," "God and the Bible," "St. 
 Paul and Protestantism," "Culture and Anar- 
 chy" as well as in his poetry. Indeed, Arnold's 
 chief concern in life was religion. In this he 
 was his father's son. Dean Stanley and Thomas 
 Hughes seem, in active religious and social life, 
 the natural outcome of Dr. Arnold's vigorous 
 liberalism in religion ; perhaps as inevitable, 
 though a remoter, outcome in letters were Mat-
 
 2i8 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 thew Arnold, Arthur Clough, and Mrs. Hum- 
 phry Ward. Certainly Arnold always thought 
 that he was doing- his father's work, and he al- 
 ways claimed that his critical studies touching 
 the Bible were religious. "I never touch," says 
 he, 24 "on considerations about the State without 
 feeling myself on his ground." He was delight- 
 ed when Dean Stanley told him that the ideas 
 of the preface to "Culture and Anarchy" were 
 exactly what his father would have approved. 
 In a letter to his sister, Miss Arnold, he says: 
 "It will more and more become evident how re- 
 ligious is the work I have done in 'Literature 
 and Dogma.' " And he concludes the preface 
 to "God and the Bible" with the claim that "a 
 calmer and more gradual judgment" will recog- 
 nize his work "to have been an attempt con- 
 servative, and an attempt religious." 
 
 "Not to break with one's connection with the 
 past in one's religion is one of the strongest in- 
 stincts in human nature," said Arnold with re- 
 gard to Catholicism; 25 and his whole life was 
 an effort not to break entirely with the past in 
 religion. One finds, according to Arnold, one's 
 truest expression in poetry, and here we may 
 look for the deepest religious note in Arnold. 
 
 ""Letters," I., 400. s *Ibid., II., 151.
 
 Mattheiv Arnold. 219 
 
 What was the dominant note of his poetry? It 
 was "the eternal note of sadness," "a brooding 
 over man's destiny," the Weltschmcrz. 
 
 A longing to inquire 
 
 Into the mystery of this heart which beats 
 So wild, so deep in us to know 
 Whence our lives come and where they go. 23 
 
 His poetry was an attempt to express "the 
 world's deep, inarticulate craving for spiritual 
 peace." There was in Arnold a combination of 
 the Greek strain and the Oriental. He would 
 have the joy of the Greek ; he has the resigned 
 sadness of the Oriental. Deep down even in the 
 Greek there is an undertone of melancholy, and 
 this undertone was strong in Arnold. The source 
 of his sadness was primarily the change from the 
 simple religious views which characterized the 
 home of his childhood, and the sense of "the cen- 
 tury's eclipse of faith." His was the anguish of 
 Stagirius, 
 
 When the soul, growing clearer, 
 Sees God no nearer, 
 When the soul, mounting higher, 
 To God comes no nigher. 
 
 Perhaps "The Grande Chartreuse," best of all 
 Arnold's poems, expresses the change that had 
 
 26 "The Buried Life."
 
 22O Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 taken place in him, the void left in his heart, 
 
 the "nameless sadness" that resulted. 
 
 For rigorous teachers seized my youth, 
 And purged its faith, and trimmed its fire, 
 
 Showed me the high white star of Truth, 
 There bade me gaze and there aspire. 
 
 In the "Carthusian Monastery" he feels 
 
 As on some far northern strand, 
 Thinking of his own gods, a Greek 
 
 In pity and mournful awe might stand 
 Before some fallen Runic stone 
 For both were faiths, and both are gone. 
 
 Wandering between two worlds, one dead, 
 The other powerless to be born, 
 
 With nowhere yet to rest my head, 
 Like these on earth I wait forlorn. 
 
 Their faith, my tears, the world deride, 
 
 I come to shed them at their side. 
 
 This is the real cry of Arnold's heart, and it 
 is a note we get only in his poems. And we 
 cannot help wondering sometimes, Are the only 
 alternatives the course of Huxley or the course 
 of Newman? Are all other resting places tem- 
 porary? Arnold spent his whole life in trying to 
 persuade himself and others that neither alter- 
 native was necessary or right ; but the sadness 
 remained, and a half-despairing resignation is 
 the dominant note of his most characteristic
 
 Matthew Arnold. 221 
 
 poetry. Already in 1848 life seemed to him a 
 "long heart-wasting show" ; and though his later 
 view was more cheerful, it was never joyful. 
 Man's life is 
 
 . . . the hot race 
 
 Wherein he doth forever chase 
 
 That flying and elusive shadow, rest. 27 
 
 In the "Scholar-Gipsy" he complains of 
 
 This strange disease of modern life, 
 With its sick hurry, its divided aims, 
 Its heads o'ertaxed, its palsied hearts. 
 
 Happy, in comparison, is the "Scholar-Gipsy": 
 
 Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt, 
 
 Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings. 
 
 "Men have such need of joy," he said, that 
 "joy in widest commonalty spread," which 
 Wordsworth found. But already in "Empedo- 
 cles" he confessed, 
 
 The world hath failed to impart 
 The joy our youth forebodes ; 
 
 and long afterwards, in "Dover Beach," the note 
 is the same, "the eternal note of sadness" : 
 
 . . . The world which seems 
 
 To lie before us like a land of dreams, 
 
 27 "The Buried Life."
 
 222 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 So various, so beautiful, so new, 
 
 Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, 
 
 Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain ; 
 
 And we are here as on a darkling plain 
 
 Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, 
 
 Where ignorant armies clash by night. 
 
 From his "Poems" and his "Letters" alike we 
 learn how intimate and wholesome, how almost 
 Wordsworthian, was Arnold's communion with 
 nature ; and yet even 
 
 . . . through the hum of torrent lone 
 
 And brooding mountain bee 
 There sobs I know not what ground-tone 
 
 Of human agony. 28 
 
 Even of ''that general life which does not 
 cease," the secret is "not joy, but peace" : 
 
 . . . The mute turf we tread 
 
 The solemn hills around us spread, 
 
 This stream which falls incessantly, 
 
 The strange scrawled rocks, the lonely sky, 
 
 If I might lend their life a voice, 
 
 Seem to bear rather than rejoice. 29 
 
 Not joy, then, but self-renunciation,, he found 
 to be the higher rule, as George Eliot did, as 
 Goethe did : 
 
 28 "Obermann." ae "Resignation."
 
 Matthew Arnold. 223 
 
 He only lives with the world's life 
 Who hath renounced his own. 
 
 "Sick for calm," like Balder, he prayed: 
 
 Calm soul of all things ! make it mine 
 
 To feel, amid the city's jar, 
 That there abides a peace of thine, 
 
 Man did not make and cannot mar. 30 
 
 This calm, or peace, Arnold, like his favorite 
 Hebrew prophet, is fond of figuring as a river. 
 "Then had thy peace been as a river, and thy 
 righteousness as the waves of the sea." (Isaiah 
 xlviii. 18.) "I will extend peace to her like a 
 river, and the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing 
 stream." (Isaiah Ixvi. 12.) Compare the con- 
 cluding lines of "The Future" : 
 
 But what was before us we know not, 
 And we know not what shall succeed. 
 
 Haply the river of Time 
 
 As it grows, as the towns on its marge 
 
 Fling their wavering lights 
 
 On a wider, statelier stream 
 
 May acquire, if not the calm 
 
 Of its early mountainous shore, 
 
 Yet a solemn peace of its own. 
 
 And the width of the waters, the hush 
 Of the gray expanse where he floats, 
 
 30 "In Kensington Gardens."
 
 224 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 Freshening its current and spotted with foam 
 
 As it draws to the ocean, may strike 
 
 Peace to the soul of the man on its breast 
 
 As the pale waste widens around him, 
 
 As the banks fade dimmer away, 
 
 As the stars come out, and the night wind 
 
 Brings up the stream 
 
 Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea. 
 
 So, too, I am sure, at the close of "Sohrab 
 and Rustum," where the old warrior has unwit- 
 tingly slain his own son, the same beautiful fig- 
 ure typifies the rest that is now Sohrab's, and 
 promises peace to Rustum's remorse : 
 
 . . . and from his limbs 
 
 Unwillingly the spirit fled away, 
 
 Regretting the warm mansion which it left, 
 
 And youth, and bloom, and this delightful world. 
 
 So, on the bloody sand, Sohrab lay dead, 
 
 And the great Rustum drew his horseman's cloak 
 
 Down o'er his face, and sate by his dead son. 
 
 As those black granite pillars, once high reared 
 
 By Jemshid in Persepolis, to bear 
 
 His house, now 'mid their broken flights of steps 
 
 Lie prone, enormous, down the mountain side 
 
 So in the sand lay Rustum by his son. 
 
 And night came down over the solemn waste, 
 
 And the two gazing hosts, and that sole pair, 
 
 And darkened all; and a cold fog, with night, 
 
 Crept from the Oxus. . . . 
 
 But the majestic river floated on, 
 
 Out of the mist and hum of that low land,
 
 'Matthew Arnold. 225 
 
 Into the frosty starlight, and there moved, 
 
 Rejoicing, through the hushed Chorasmian waste, 
 
 Under the solitary moon; he flowed 
 
 Right for the polar star, past Orgunje 
 
 Brimming, and bright, and large ; then sands begin 
 
 To hem his watery march, and dam his streams, 
 
 And split his currents; that for many a league 
 
 The shorn and parceled Oxus strains along 
 
 Through beds of sand and matted, rushy isles 
 
 Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had 
 
 In his high mountain cradle in Pamere, 
 
 A foiled, circuitous wanderer till at last 
 
 The longed-for dash of waves is heard, and wide 
 
 His luminous home of waters opens, bright 
 
 And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars 
 
 Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea. 
 
 But if Arnold does not bring a message of 
 hope, as Tennyson did, or joy, as Browning did ; 
 if to him the hereafter is simply 
 
 The future and its viewless things, 
 That undiscovered mystery; 81 
 
 if of his lost friend, Arthur Clough, he could 
 say only, 
 
 For there thine earth-forgetting eyelids keep 
 The morningless and unawakening sleep 
 Under the flowery oleanders pale ; s2 
 
 31 A Wish." 32 "Thyrsis." 
 15
 
 226 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 if he does conclude, 
 
 Unduped of fancy, henceforth man 
 
 Must labor ! must resign 
 His all too human creeds, and scan 
 
 Simply the way divine ; Z3 
 
 he does not, for all that, say, "Let us eat and 
 drink, for to-morrow we die." Arnold's essen- 
 tial doctrine, preached at length in several prose 
 volumes, is contained in a single line of the 
 poem, "Worldly Place" : 
 
 The aids to noble life are all within. 
 And in the "Better Part" he says : 
 
 Hast thou no second life ? Pitch this one high ! 
 
 Sits there no judge in Heaven our sin to see? 
 
 More strictly, then, the inward judge obey! 
 Was Christ a man like us ? Ah, let us try 
 
 If we then, too, can be such men as he. 
 
 Amid all doubts and uncertainties, one must still 
 pursue "whatsoever things are lovely, whatso- 
 ever things are pure, whatsoever things are of 
 good report" ; must strive to he one of 
 
 . . . that small transfigured band, 
 
 Whom many a different way 
 Conducted to their common land 
 
 3S "Obermann Once More."
 
 Matthew Arnold. 227 
 
 Whose one bond is that all have been 
 Unspotted by the world. 34 
 
 He did seem, moreover, to believe, at least at 
 times, in some sort of eternal life. Of the 
 Brontes, who lie buried in Haworth Churchyard, 
 he says: 
 
 Unquiet souls ! 
 
 In the dark fermentation of earth, 
 In the never idle workshop of nature, 
 In the eternal movement, 
 Ye shall find yourselves again. 85 
 
 And he suggests how and by whom eternal life 
 may be attained : 
 
 The energy of life may be 
 Kept on after the grave, but not begun; 
 And he who flagged not in the earthly strife, 
 From strength to strength advancing only he 
 His soul well knit, and all his battles won, 
 Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life. 36 
 
 And so for his father his faith rings out above 
 
 doubt : 
 
 Somewhere, surely, afar 
 In the sounding labor house vast 
 Of being, is practiced that strength, 
 Zealous, beneficent, firm ! 
 
 ""Obermann." 36 "Epilogue" (Haworth Churchyard). 
 """Immortality."
 
 228 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 Yes, in some far-shining sphere, 
 Conscious or not of the past, 
 Still thou performest the word 
 Of the Spirit in whom thou dost live- 
 Prompt, unwearied as here ! " 
 
 Those who know how completely the "eternal 
 note of sadness" dominates Arnold's poetry, and 
 so must have been the real note 'of his inner be- 
 ing, are glad to know from the "Letters" how 
 happy was his wedded life ; how he loved and 
 was loved by his children and relatives and 
 friends ; how fond he was of brooks and rivers 
 and lakes, of the sea and of the mountains, of 
 flowers and animals ; how cheerful and brave 
 and kindly he was to everybody ; that it was the 
 "Weltschmer^' alone that made him sad. 
 
 It has been suggested that as Arnold's char- 
 acteristic note is the cry of the mal dn siecle, if 
 the world should ever be healed of this, and an 
 era of faith return, then Arnold's day would be 
 done ; the age of spiritual discomfort having 
 passed, we should heed no longer the song which 
 voiced that age. There is something in this 
 suggestion ; but I cannot admit its full force. 
 Even in poems whose dominant note is "the eter- 
 nal note of sadness," there are strains of high 
 
 3T "Rugby Chapel."
 
 Matthew Arnold. 229 
 
 seriousness and austere beauty which will live on 
 in spite of all changes of thought and feeling, no 
 matter whether faith dies or revives. Such are 
 "Dover Beach," "The Future," "Resignation," 
 "The Youth of Nature," and "Obermann." But 
 there are to be found also in Arnold passages of 
 pure poetry which sing themselves into our souls 
 simply by reason of their sunny atmosphere and 
 smiling landscape, because of their classic repose 
 or their calm pathos. Such, for instance, are 
 "Thyrsis," stanzas 6-14 and 16-20; the "Scholar- 
 Gipsy," 8-13 and 21-25 j tne Cadmus and Har- 
 monia and the Apollo and Marsyas choruses in 
 "Empedocles" ; "The Forsaken Merman"; "The 
 Church of Brou," III. ; "Tristram and Iseult," 
 III. ; and, crowning achievement of all, the close 
 of "Sohrab and Rustum." I will allow myself 
 to quote, in further illustration, only two short 
 passages from poems on which any lover of Ar- 
 nold might safely rest his claim to be a true poet. 
 The one is from "The Forsaken Merman" : 
 
 We went up the beach, by the sandy down 
 
 Where the sea stocks bloom, to the white-walled town; 
 
 Through the narrow paved streets, where all was still, 
 
 To the little gray church on a windy hill. 
 
 From the church came a murmur of folk at their 
 
 prayers, 
 But we stood without in the cold blowing airs.
 
 230 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 We climbed on the graves, on the stones worn with 
 
 rains, 
 And we gazed up the aisle through the small leaded 
 
 panes. 
 
 The other passage is from the Apollo and Mar- 
 syas chorus in "Empedocles" : 
 
 Many a morning had they gone 
 
 To the glimmering mountain lakes, 
 
 And had torn up by the roots 
 
 The tall crested water-reeds 
 
 With long plumes and soft brown seeds, 
 
 And had carved them into flutes, 
 
 Sitting on a tabled stone 
 
 Where the shoreward ripple breaks. 
 
 Of this passage Andrew Lang says : ''The land- 
 scape of these lines seems to me almost unap- 
 proached for felicity in English poetry." 
 
 A stronger claim still might be made for Ar- 
 nold. Not single poems only, nor single strik- 
 ing passages, but single great lines prove him 
 to be a poet. Commenting on such lines as 
 
 Where Orpheus and where Homer are, 
 and 
 
 Hungry, and sharp, and barren as the sea, 
 
 Lang says: "If no more than fragments like 
 these were left of Arnold's poems (and as evil
 
 Matthew Arnold. 231 
 
 a fate has befallen some of the Greeks), a com- 
 petent critic of the far-off future would be able 
 to say that the author of them was in the truest 
 sense a poet." How easy it would be to mul- 
 tiply the number of such great lines ! 
 
 Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole ; 
 And that sweet city with her dreaming spires; 
 
 And Egremont sleeps by the sea ; 
 
 The far-off sound of a silver bell ; 
 
 All the live murmur of a summer's day; 
 
 Not daily labor's dull Lethean spring, 
 
 Oblivion in lost angels can infuse 
 Of the soiled glory, and the trailing wing. 
 
 Perhaps the human character which most at- 
 tracted Arnold was the Emperor Marcus Aure- 
 lius. The greatest of his essays, except those 
 introductory to the poets, was about this "im- 
 perial sage, purest of men." It was with the 
 "Meditations" of Marcus Aurelius that the be- 
 reaved father, on the morning after his first 
 great sorrow (the death of his oldest son), was 
 trying to console himself. 
 
 Readers of the "Essays in Criticism" [says the ed- 
 itor of the "Letters"] will remember the beautiful 
 eulogy on that great seeker after God, and will per-
 
 232 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 haps feel that in describing him the friend who speaks 
 to us in the following pages half unconsciously de- 
 scribed himself. "We see him wise, just, self-gov- 
 erned, tender, thankful, blameless, yet, with all this, 
 agitated, stretching out his arms for something beyond, 
 tendentemque manus ripce ulterioris amove." 
 
 This was indeed Arnold ; and his poetry, be- 
 ing the truest expression of himself, was full of 
 this Aurelian note. "His graver pieces sound," 
 says Frederic Harrison, "like some echo of the 
 imperial 'Meditations' cast into the form of a 
 Sophoclean chorus." His constant "brooding 
 over man's destiny," his "pensive philosophy of 
 life," his gnomic vein, naturally fitted him for 
 elegy, and it is perhaps generally agreed that 
 here he is at his best. This was clearly Tenny- 
 son's feeling. "Tell Matt. Arnold," he said, "to 
 write more poetry like 'Thyrsis' and the 'Scholar- 
 Gipsy,' and let such subjects as 'Culture and 
 Anarchy' alone." 
 
 This undertone of thought and austerity gives [says 
 Frederic Harrison 3 *] a uniform and somewhat melan- 
 choly color to every line of his verse, not despairing, 
 not pessimist, not querulous, but with a resolute and 
 pensive insight into the mystery of life and of things, 
 reminding one of those lovely tombs in the Cerameicus 
 at Athens, of Hegeso and the rest, who in immortal 
 
 s * Nineteenth Century, March, 1896.
 
 Matthew Arnold. 233 
 
 calm and grace stand, ever bidding to this fair earth 
 a long and sweet farewell. 
 
 "Every one is more sensitive about his poetry 
 than about his other writings," said Arnold in a 
 letter; and we are curious to know what he had 
 to say about his own poems. He mentions them 
 in the "Letters" far less frequently than his prose 
 articles, doubtless because, as compared with the 
 reception of his critical work, the poems were 
 less talked about. 
 
 I always feel [he wrote about the poem on Stanley 
 in 1882] that the public is not disposed to take me 
 cordially; it receives my things as Gray says it re- 
 ceived all his except the "Elegy" : with more aston- 
 ishment than pleasure at first, and does not quite make 
 out what I would be at ; however, that the things 
 should wear well, and be found to give pleasure as they 
 come to be better known, is the great matter. 
 
 He intimates, in referring to commendations 
 from Kjngsley and Froucle, that the leading liter- 
 ary men had welcomed his poems. Disraeli told him 
 that he was "the only man whom he ever knew 
 who had become a classic in his own lifetime" ; S9 
 though he referred, doubtless, to Arnold's crit- 
 ical work. "No one can deny that he is a poet," 
 said Tennyson. George Eliot said that "of all 
 
 ^Nineteenth Century, March, 1896.
 
 234 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 modern poetry, his was that which kept constant- 
 ly growing- upon her"; and the Bishop of Derry 
 told him that his poems "were the center of his 
 mental life, and that he had read many of them 
 hundreds of times/' But with the general pub- 
 lic it was different. 
 
 It is curious [he wrote in 1878] how the public is 
 beginning to take them [his poems] to its bosom after 
 long years of apparent neglect. The wave of thought 
 and change has rolled on until people begin to find a 
 significance and an attraction in what had none for 
 them formerly. . . . The writers of poetry have 
 been better friends to me always than the mass of 
 readers of poetry. 
 
 Notwithstanding the infrequent reference, we 
 can gather from the "Letters" Arnold's own es- 
 timate of the worth of his poetry, and what he 
 thought of its future. And no truer judgment 
 has been given on his poems than that by him- 
 self in a letter to his mother in 1869: 
 
 My poems represent, on the whole, the main move- 
 ment of mind of the last quarter of a century, and 
 thus they will probably have their day as people be- 
 come conscious to themselves of what that movement 
 of mind is, and interested in the literary productions 
 which reflect it. It might be fairly urged that I have 
 less poetical sentiment than Tennyson, and less intel- 
 lectual vigor and abundance than Browning; yet be- 
 cause I have more of a fusion of the two than either
 
 Matthew Arnold. 235 
 
 of them, and have more regularly applied that fusion 
 to the main line of modern development, I am likely 
 enough to have my turn as they have had theirs. 40 
 
 That the fusion of poetical sentiment and in- 
 tellectual vigor was his ideal in poetry he had 
 already stated six years earlier. 
 
 I do not at present [he v/rote his mother in 1863] 
 very much care for poetry unless it can give me true 
 thought as well as true feeling. It is the alliance of 
 these two that makes great poetry, the only poetry 
 really worth very much. 
 
 He intended, then, his poetry to be "a hidden 
 ground of thought and austerity within," and few 
 things would have pleased him so much could 
 he have read his sometime opponent Frederic 
 Harrison's frank recognition of his "intellectual 
 vigor and abundance." 
 
 He has [says Harrison] more general insight into 
 the intellectual world of our age, and he sees into it 
 more deeply and more surely, than any contemporary 
 poet. ... It must be conceded that Arnold in 
 his poetry dwells in a higher philosophic ether than 
 any contemporary poet. He has a wider learning, a 
 cooler brain, and a more masculine logic. 41 
 
 And we can imagine him after a while in the 
 
 ""Letters," IT., 10. ^Nineteenth Century, March, 1896.
 
 236 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 Elysian fields, shaking hands gratefully with the 
 Positivist for this verdict: 
 
 But those who thirst for the pure Castalian spring, 
 inspired by sustained and lofty thoughts, who care for 
 that <jTrov6a.i6Tw } that "high seriousness" of which he 
 spoke so much as the very essence of the best poetry, 
 have long known that they find it in Matthew Arnold 
 more than in any of his even greater contemporaries. 
 
 I have for some time considered Arnold our 
 most stimulating and illuminating helper to an 
 appreciation of the worth of the ancient classics. 
 His most elaborate statement of his views on the 
 classics is to be found, of course, in what he 
 called his "doctrine of studies," the lecture on 
 "Literature and Science." But all through his 
 works there are remarks, comparisons, sugges- 
 tions, which illuminate and rejoice the spirit of 
 the classicist. But, best of all, his best work has 
 the true spirit of the classics. 
 
 He had been sprinkled [says Frederic Harrison] 
 with some of the Attic salt of Lucian ; was imbued 
 with the classical genius and never so much as in his 
 poems. ... It may be said that no poet in the 
 roll of our literature, unless it be Milton, has been so 
 essentially saturated to the very bone with the classical 
 genius. Arnold is "classical" [Harrison adds] in the 
 serene self-command, the harmony of tone, the meas- 
 ured fitness, the sweet reasonableness of his verse.
 
 Matthew Arnold. 237 
 
 That is high praise, and richly deserved. Like 
 Gray, he "lived with the great poets, above all 
 with the Greeks," and he makes grateful ac- 
 knowledgment of his indebtedness to his ancient 
 masters : 
 
 I say [said he in "Preface to Poems," 1853], that in 
 the sincere endeavor to learn and practice, amid the 
 bewildering confusion of our times, what is sound and 
 true in poetical art, I seemed to myself to find the only 
 sure guidance, the only solid footing, among the an- 
 cients. . . . Let us study them [said Arnold in con- 
 cluding his second "Preface"]. They can help to cure 
 us of what is, it seems to me, the great vice of our in- 
 tellect, manifesting itself in our incredible vagaries in 
 literature, in art, in religion, in morals namely, that 
 it is fantastic and wants sanity. 
 
 Of especially Greek qualities we may claim 
 for Arnold's poetry "severe and scrupulous self- 
 restraint" ; "clearness of arrangement, vigor of 
 development, simplicity of style," as well as 
 "lucidity of thought" and "purity of method." 
 It is characterized, besides, not only by high se- 
 riousness and austerity, but by urbanity of form 
 and by charm, by exquisite polish and refined 
 modulation. When we concede, with Frederic 
 Harrison, that it lacks passion, dramatic power, 
 dithyrambic glow, we have admitted that Arnold 
 does not belong to the small number of the very
 
 238 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 greatest poets; but we may claim for him, with 
 Harriet Waters Preston, an "assured place in 
 the innermost circle of those who surround the 
 very greatest." 
 
 How are we to account for Arnold's small 
 poetical product? Doubtless the chief reason is 
 given in the paragraph quoted above from one 
 of his letters, his existence assttj'ettie in other 
 words, his school inspecting. But there is surely 
 an additional reason. Perhaps Tennyson realized 
 the danger to Arnold's poetical productivity 
 when he sent word: "Tell Matt. Arnold to write 
 more poetry like 'Thyrsis' and the 'Scholar- 
 Gipsy,' and let 'Culture and Anarchy' alone." 
 Situated as he was, he could devote only part 
 of his energy to literature. There must be a 
 sacrifice somewhere. One who considered him 
 the greatest of English critics would hardly sug- 
 gest that he, like Tennyson, should have given 
 himself exclusively to poetry. His literary crit- 
 icism will abide, at least as a permanent influence 
 on English literature ; his poetry will live. It is 
 his social, political, and religious essays that in 
 the very nature of the case must be shortest 
 lived; and if he made a mistake in his literary 
 work, it was there. He spent in controversy 
 energy which belonged to poetry and to literary 
 criticism. He "gave to sermons what was meant
 
 Matthew Arnold. 239 
 
 for song." But, being his father's son, and feel- 
 ing religious and political questions so strongly, 
 this was probably inevitable. His father used 
 to say, "I must write a pamphlet or burst" ; and 
 Matthew Arnold was too much his father's son 
 not to be drawn into the discussion of religious 
 and political questions. He himself realized the 
 danger early, for he wrote in his thirty-ninth 
 year to his mother : 
 
 I must finish off for the present my critical writings 
 between this and forty, and give the next ten years 
 earnestly to poetry. It is my last chance. It is not a 
 bad ten years of one life's for poetry if one resolutely 
 uses it; but it is a time in which, if one does not use 
 it, one dries up and becomes prosaic altogether.* 2 
 
 Again, three years later, in a letter to Grant 
 Duff, he expresses this feeling still more strong- 
 ly: 
 
 One is from time to time seized and irresistibly car- 
 ried along by a temptation to treat political or religious 
 or social matters directly; but after yielding to such 
 a temptation I always feel myself recoiling again, and 
 disposed to touch them only so far as they can be 
 touched through poetry. 43 
 
 But he kept yielding to the temptation. And 
 how could he be expected to resist, when this 
 
 '""Letters," I., 165. "Ibid., I., 267.
 
 240 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 sort of thing gave him great and immediate pop- 
 ularity ? 
 
 I am struck [he writes to his mother in 1868] to 
 find what hold among these younger men what I write 
 has taken. I should think I heard the word "Philis- 
 tines" used at least a hundred times during dinner, 
 and "Barbarians" very often. 44 
 
 After all, must it not be admitted that Arnold 
 was not "driven by his demon to poetry," as 
 Shelley and Byron were? 
 
 Arnold thought, as has been said above, that 
 lie was likely enough to have his turn, as Ten- 
 nyson and Browning had had theirs. And Fred- 
 eric Harrison thinks that, because of its appeal 
 to the best and most serious modern thought, his 
 poetry "is almost certain to gain a wider audi- 
 ence, and to grow in popularity and influence." 
 Has Arnold's turn come? Mr. Stead has re- 
 cently made an interesting experiment in En- 
 gland. He sent forth a selection from Arnold's 
 poems as No. 26 of his "Penny Poets." Nearly 
 two hundred thousand copies were sold within 
 six months, and Mr. Stead received cordial let- 
 ters from common people who had not before 
 heard of Arnold. Pastors, too, are surprised to 
 find workingmen full of interest in Matthew 
 
 ""Letters," I., 457.
 
 Matthew Arnold. 241 
 
 Arnold; and public libraries report a new de- 
 mand for his poems. But all this proves too 
 much. This popularity is fictitious. So, the year 
 after Carlyle's death, seventy-two thousand 
 copies of the six-penny edition of "Sartor Re- 
 sartus" were sold in Great Britain alone. But, 
 all the same, "Sartor Resartus" can never be a 
 popular book with the common people. Doubt- 
 less Arnold's day will come, and is already com- 
 ing; but his appeal will always be to a select 
 though steadily growing audience; it can never 
 be to the mass of ordinary readers. 
 16
 
 XL 
 STEPHEN PHILLIPS. 
 
 IN the year 1897 a new star appeared in the 
 firmament of English poetry, and was greeted 
 with an applause perhaps as universal as, certain- 
 ly more unanimous than, was that which hailed 
 Tennyson. This was natural, since Tennyson 
 had prepared the world for the new poet, and 
 the new poet is Tennyson's legitimate successor 
 in his own line. My own adhesion to the new 
 poet was not due to this general acclaim, for I 
 was unaware of the applause for some time, ex- 
 cept doubtless to know that the Academy's prize 
 of one hundred guineas had been awarded to a 
 new poet. I am slow to read the much-talked-of 
 new novels, still slower with new poets. A lady, 
 who had been urging me to read Stephen Phil- 
 lips, on returning to town after a year's absence, 
 handed me the volume. That night I read the 
 poem that had been crowned, "Christ in Hades," 
 and was struck at once by the opening verses : 
 
 Keen as a blind man, at dawn awake, 
 Smells in the dark the cold odor of earth. 
 (242)
 
 STEPHEN PHILLIPS.
 
 Stephen Phillips. 243 
 
 I thought the poem strong; but I was not com- 
 pletely captured, and no wonder, for it was late 
 at night, and a man in the forties needs the vigor 
 and freshness of morning in his frame fully to 
 appreciate poetry of a high order. I think it 
 was the next morning I read "Marpessa." and 
 my surrender was immediate and unconditional. 
 I remember saying to some one then : "Outside 
 of the admittedly great poets, this is the best 
 poetry I know." 
 
 It is my way, perhaps everybody's way, to try 
 favorite poems on my friends. I was very care- 
 ful, for only a few really love poetry. So far I 
 have read "Marpessa" at different times to per- 
 haps a dozen people, and the poem has captured 
 its auditor every time. It was not till months 
 afterwards that I knew that Mr. William Wat- 
 son, whom I greatly revere as poet and true dis- 
 ciple of Wordsworth, had been doing the same 
 thing with "Christ in Hades." "Even a literary 
 life," he says, "has its pleasures, and I have 
 known no greater pleasure during recent years 
 than my first reading of Mr. Stephen Phillips' 
 'Christ in Hades' except, indeed, my second 
 reading of that poem, and perhaps my third." 
 He goes on to tell how, on one occasion, he and 
 Mr. Churton Collins "sat talking about their be- 
 loved poets until far into the waning night," and
 
 244 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 how at length he chanced to discover that Mr. 
 Collins, though he knew everything else under 
 the sun, was ignorant of the name and work of 
 Mr. Stephen Phillips. Reading passages from 
 the "Christ in Hades" "to fastidiously attentive 
 ears," he had the satisfaction of knowing that he 
 had won the appreciation of the critic. 
 
 Very soon I began to feel [continues Mr. Watson] 
 that if Mr. Phillips did not quickly do something to 
 sustain the position which this one noble poem had 
 earned for him, I should have a personal grievance to 
 ventilate. I was deeply committed as a prophet, and 
 my credit was at stake. And so it befell that in due 
 sea-son he kept his promise and was even better than 
 his word. In "Marpessa" he has demonstrated what I 
 should hardly have thought demonstrable : that an- 
 other poem can be even finer than "Christ in Hades." 
 
 Mr. Stephen Phillips was born July 28, 1868. 
 His mother was a descendant of Wordsworth, 
 and to her he attributes his love of verse, which, 
 though innate, was dormant, for he had a boy's 
 contempt for all things metrical. But at fifteen, 
 when he was ill. his mother read to him "Christa- 
 bel." This proved to be the touch that awakened 
 his spirit, and he rose from his illness determined 
 to be a poet. For years he wrote a great deal, 
 gaining at least a useful readiness of speech. He 
 entered Queen's College, Cambridge, in 1886, but
 
 Stephen Phillips. 245 
 
 had only one term; for Mr. Benson's troupe of 
 Shakespeare players came to Cambridge at that 
 time, and so inflamed him that he got himself 
 taken on probation and went upon the stage. So 
 one term is his sole basis for being counted with 
 the Cambridge poets, Spenser, Milton, Gray, Ten- 
 nyson, and others. He continued with the troupe 
 six years ; but, while the experience must have been 
 of the greatest value to him as a playwright, there 
 is no evidence that he was extraordinarily suc- 
 cessful as an actor, though it is mentioned espe- 
 cially that he played the ghost in Hamlet so well 
 that he was called before the curtain, a role in 
 which Shakespeare himself is said to have done 
 excellently well. Coming once with the troupe 
 to Oxford, he was led by conversation with a 
 cousin and an East Indian student to devote him- 
 self again to poetry. The result was "Primave- 
 ra," a pamphlet of verse, which seems to have no 
 value now in Mr. Phillips' eyes, and is only a 
 find for collectors. 
 
 Leaving Mr. Benson's troupe in 1892, he gave 
 himself especially to the study of the Greeks and 
 Milton, determined to restore blank verse to its 
 old dignity and variety. It will some time be re- 
 membered, doubtless, that this new epoch in his 
 life coincides with the death of Tennyson. When 
 his "Eremus" appeared, in 1894, he was congrat-
 
 246 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 ulated as the first to take advantage of Mr. 
 Bridges' studies in Milton's prosody, but at that 
 time he had not seen Mr. Bridges' work. Mr. 
 Phillips now regards "Eremus" merely as an ex- 
 ercise in versification, and would suppress it if 
 he could. It shows, according to Mr. Gosse, 
 ''that the secret of that marvelous lyrical move- 
 ment of unrhymed iambics, which is Mr. Phil- 
 lips' particular glory, had not, in 1894, been re- 
 vealed to him." "The Apparition" is said to be 
 the only verse that Mr. Phillips would preserve 
 from the period before 1895. ft was n t ^11 1897, 
 when the volume of poems containing the repub- 
 lished "Christ in Hades" and "Marpessa" ap- 
 peared, that the advent of a new poet was gener- 
 ally hailed. The recognition was instantaneous 
 and cordial. "He can never provide us again," 
 says Mr. Gosse. "with the thrill which a mature 
 new voice in poetry gives when it is heard for 
 the first time." 
 
 Mr. Phillips' first play, Paolo and Francesco, 
 came out in 1899; the second, Herod, in 1900. 
 Occasional poems appear now and then in the 
 magazines. The Academy regards the "Christ 
 in Hades" as superior even to "Marpessa," as 
 did the appreciative lover of good poetry who 
 introduced me to Stephen Phillips. The Bible 
 text, "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell [Ha-
 
 Stephen Phillips. 247 
 
 des]," suggested the poem, and the Nekyia (book 
 xi.) of the ''Odyssey/' doubtless also the sixth 
 book of the "^neid," were in the poet's mind, 
 but the details, the treatment, are completely his 
 own. The poem is in unrhymed iambics, and 
 shows that he had completely achieved the task 
 he set himself in 1892, when he devoted himself 
 to the study of Milton to restore blank verse 
 to its old dignity and variety. He is complete 
 master of this great verse form, and- it is un- 
 questionably the fittest in which his especial gen- 
 ius can express itself. If his blank verse shall 
 ever seem greater, it will be because it is more 
 heavily freighted with richer, deeper, broader 
 ideas, the fruit of profounder observation, wider 
 knowledge of men and things. The form is now 
 perfect. To be fully appreciated, the poem must 
 be read as a whole, and not once but often. I 
 liked it at first ; but not till the third reading did 
 its great power really dawn upon me, and at ev- 
 ery re-reading it seems greater still. There are 
 plenty of characteristic passages which may be 
 quoted with the certainty that their charm will 
 be recognized even when thus detached. Perse- 
 phone's speech shows his best qualities : 
 
 It is the time of tender opening things. 
 Above my head the fields murmur and wave, 
 And breezes are just moving the clear heat.
 
 248 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 O the midnoon is trembling on the corn, 
 On cattle calm and trees in perfect sleep. 
 
 How touching is the cry of the Athenian spirit 
 to Christ! 
 
 O pity us ; 
 
 For I would ask of thee only to look 
 Upon the wonderful sunlight, and to smell 
 Earth in the rain. 
 
 All the emptiness of death is in the cry of the 
 woman : 
 
 Whom, then, dost thou seek? 
 
 For see, we are so changed : thou wouldst not know 
 The busy form that moved about thy fire. 
 She has no occupation and no care, 
 No little tasks. 
 
 In the words of the Roman are "the Virgilian 
 stateliness and simplicity": 
 
 Around thee is the scent 
 Of over-beautiful quick-fading things : 
 The pang, the gap, the briefness, all the dew, 
 Tremble, and suddenness of earth : I must 
 Remember young men dead in their hot bloom, 
 The sweetness of the world edged like a sword, 
 The melancholy knocking of those waves, 
 The deep unhappiness of winds, the light 
 That comes on things we nevermore shall see. 
 Yet I am thrilled: thou seemest like the bourne 
 Of all our music, of the hinting night, 
 Of souls under the moonlight opening.
 
 Stephen Phillips. 249 
 
 In this strong and beautiful poem we recognize 
 the qualities claimed for Mr. Phillips by the 
 Academy: "Seriousness of purpose," "interpre- 
 tative sympathy," "singular instinct for the right 
 word," "a. heart attuned to the beauty and the 
 meaning of things," "the perfect fusion of mat- 
 ter into form which is that indefinable, inimitable, 
 undeniable thing style." It is classic in its set- 
 ting. Not only is the general indebtedness to 
 Homer and Virgil evident, and the atmosphere of 
 classic mythology about it from the parts played 
 in it by Persephone, Hermes, Prometheus, the 
 Athenian ghost, the Roman, the Furies; but in- 
 dividual allusions make us feel that it is a Greek 
 Hades. When the Athenian ghost says, 
 
 Is not the laborer, 
 
 Returning heavy through the August sheaves 
 Against the setting sun, who gladly smells 
 His supper from the opening door is he 
 Not happier than these melancholy kings? 
 
 we know that the poet had in mind the famous 
 reply of Achilles' shade to Odysseus in the elev- 
 enth book of the "Odyssey": "Rather would I 
 live upon the earth as the hireling of another, 
 with a landless man, than bear sway among all 
 the dead that be departed." In these lines, also 
 from the Athenian's address,
 
 250 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 Just as a widower, that dreaming holds 
 His dead wife in his arms, not wondering, 
 So natural it appears, 
 
 the poet certainly was inspired by a glorious pas- 
 sage in Tennyson's "Guinevere"- 
 
 Tears of the widower when he sees 
 A late lost form that sleep reveals ; 
 
 but he might have had in mind also, as Tennyson 
 undoubtedly had in mind, the similar passage in 
 the great chorus of ^Eschylus ("Agamemnon," 
 429 ff.). So when the spirit of the woman says, 
 
 Thou canst not fetch 
 Thy drooping, listless woman to the air, 
 
 one thinks, as the poet thought, of Orpheus and 
 Eurydice. One is tempted to call especial atten- 
 tion to Ixion, or to the "softly feeding vulture" 
 of Prometheus, or to the reminiscences from the 
 Greek poets evoked by the line, 
 
 The beautiful ease of the untroubled gods, 
 
 and to other points where one feels Greek influ- 
 ence, if space allowed. 
 
 It is a great poem, but "another poem can be 
 even finer than 'Christ in Hades,' " as Mr. Wat- 
 son said. "A poet's writing should be sweet to
 
 Stephen Phillips. 251 
 
 the mouth and ear," said Tennyson ; and, if not 
 stronger, certainly sweeter, more beautiful is 
 "Marpessa" than "Christ in Hades." Mr. Phil- 
 lips' two lines of introduction give the gist of 
 the classic legend on which the poem is based: 
 "Marpessa, being given by Zeus her choice be- 
 tween the god Apollo and Idas a mortal, chose 
 Idas." The legend may be found in the "Iliad," 
 ix. 557 ff., in Ovid, "Metamorphoses," viii. 305, 
 and elsewhere. The scene of the choice is thus 
 brought before us : 
 
 When the long day that glideth without cloud, 
 
 The summer day, was at her blue deep hour 
 
 Of lilies musical with busy bliss, 
 
 When very light trembled as with excess, 
 
 And heat was frail, and every bush and flower 
 
 Was drooping in the glory overcome ; 
 
 They three together met ; on the one side, 
 
 Fresh from diffusing light on all the world, 
 
 Apollo ; on the other, without sleep, 
 
 Idas ; and in the midst Marpessa stood. 
 
 Just as a flower after drenching rain, 
 
 So from the falling of felicity 
 
 Her human beauty glowed, and it was new ; 
 
 The bee too near her bosom drowsed and dropped. 
 
 But as the god sprang to embrace her, they 
 
 Heard thunder, and a little afterward 
 
 The far Paternal voice, "Let her decide." 
 
 The rest of the dramatic idyl, three hundred 
 and thirty-five lines in all, consists of the address-
 
 252 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 es of the god and the mortal, each preferring 
 his suit, and Marpessa's reply. Some think the 
 speech of Apollo the finest poetry. The god says 
 to the maiden : 
 
 Thy life has been 
 The history of a flower in the air, 
 Liable but to breezes and to time, 
 As rich and purposeless as is the rose; 
 Thy simple doom is to be beautiful. 
 Thee God created but to grow, not strive, 
 And not to suffer, merely to be sweet, 
 The favorite of his rains. 
 
 But he warns : 
 
 Slowly shalt thou cool to all things great, 
 
 And wisely smile at love; and thou shalt see 
 
 Beautiful Faith surrendering to Time, 
 
 The fierce ingratitude of children loved, 
 
 Ah, sting of stings ! A mourner shalt thou stand 
 
 At Passion's funeral in decent garb. 
 
 The greenly silent and cool-growing night 
 
 Shall be the time when most thou art awake, 
 
 With dreary eyes of all illusion cured, 
 
 Beside that stranger that thy husband is. 
 
 But if thou'lt live with me, then will I kiss 
 Warm immortality into thy lips; 
 And I will carry thee above the world, 
 To share my ecstasy of flinging beams, 
 And scattering without intermission joy; 
 And thou shalt know that first leap of the sea 
 Toward me ; the grateful upward look of earth, 
 Emerging roseate from her bath of dew.
 
 Stephen Phillips. 253 
 
 Since she is a woman, Apollo promises her 
 
 More tender tasks ; to steal upon the sea, 
 A long-expected bliss to tossing men 
 
 To lure into the air a face long sick, 
 
 To gild the brow that from its dead looks up, 
 
 To shine on the unforgiven of this world. 
 
 Idas, in a speech which a noted writer consid- 
 ers the most impassioned poetic address in the 
 language, tells Marpessa he loves her, not for her 
 "body packed with sweet of all this world," 
 
 Nor for that face that might indeed provoke 
 Invasion of old cities. 
 
 Thou meanest what the sea has striven to say 
 So long, and yearned up the cliffs to tell; 
 Thou art what all the winds have uttered not, 
 What the still night suggesteth to the heart. 
 Thy voice is like to music heard ere birth, 
 Some spirit lute touched on a spirit sea ; 
 Thy face remembered is from other worlds, 
 It has been died for, though I know not when, 
 It has been sung of, though I know not where. 
 It has the strangeness of the luring West, 
 And of sad sea-horizons. 
 
 Marpessa recognizes the bliss of immortality 
 offered her and all the power to do good and 
 soothe pain, but she says:
 
 254 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 Yet should I 
 
 Linger beside thee in felicity, 
 Sliding with open eyes through liquid bliss 
 Forever; still I must grow old. Ah, I 
 Should ail beside thee, Apollo, and should note, 
 With eyes that would not be, but yet are dim, 
 Ever so slight a change from day to day 
 In thee my husband; watch thee nudge thyself 
 To little offices that once were sweet : 
 Slow where thou once wert swift, remembering 
 To kiss those lips which once thou couldst not leave. 
 I should expect thee by the Western bay, 
 Faded, not sure of thee, with desperate smiles, 
 And pitiful devices of my dress 
 Or fashion of my hair : thou wouldst grow kind ; 
 Most bitter to a woman that was loved. 
 
 But with Idas the mortal, when the first sweet 
 sting of love is past, 
 
 There shall succeed a faithful peace; 
 Beautiful friendship tried by sun and wind, 
 Durable from the daily dust of life. 
 
 Then though we must grow old, we shall grow old 
 Together, and he shall not greatly miss 
 My bloom faded, and waning light of eyes, 
 Too deeply gazed in ever to seem dim. 
 
 Are not the above, as the Blackwood's critic 
 said, "passages that march with the footfalls of 
 the immortals"? Surely they are "stately lines 
 with all the music and the meaning of the highest
 
 Stephen Phillips. 255 
 
 poetry." In the "Christ in Hades" and "Marpes- 
 sa" Mr. Phillips has demonstrated afresh the pos- 
 sibilities of classic legends as a source of poetry. 
 It had been supposed that poets like William Mor- 
 ris, Swinburne, and the rest, had exhausted that 
 vein, but the genius makes all poetic material his 
 own. For the style of treatment, quite as much 
 as for his subject and his allusions, Mr. Phillips 
 is indebted to the Greeks. "The simplicity of 
 structure is antique," says Mr. Watson, "and the 
 proportion, the symmetry, the poise these are 
 classic." 
 
 I have been asked : "Is Mr. Phillips true to life 
 in making Marpessa talk as she does? Was she 
 not too young, too inexperienced to know some 
 of the things she says to Apollo?" And I an- 
 swered: "How did Keats know at twenty-five 
 some of the things he said ?" Euripides was crit- 
 icised for putting sentiments into the mouths of 
 some of his women that would better have suited 
 sages. Indeed, it was a philosopher, the poet 
 Euripides, thus expressing himself through the 
 mouth of a woman. But after all, the essential 
 thing, both with Euripides' nurse and with the 
 maiden Marpessa, is whether the sentiment is 
 true to human nature, not whether a maiden or 
 an old nurse might say it. Some complain of 
 "over-voluptuousness" in the verse ; that the Ian-
 
 256 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 guorous sweetness cloys the taste. If there be 
 this defect, it is a fault almost sure to be cured, 
 at least ameliorated, as in Tennyson's case, by 
 added years and experience. 
 
 The drama Paolo and Francesca is the old story 
 of Guinevere and Lancelot, but as delicately han- 
 dled as in Tennyson's idyl : 
 
 To-day I take to wife Ravenna's child. 
 Deep in affairs my brother I dispatched 
 To bring her on the road to Rimini. 
 
 Already we see the trouble begin, just as in the 
 Guinevere story, and we know how it must end. 
 Duke Giovanni, warrior and statesman, already 
 deaf with war, languishes for calm. "I ask," he 
 says, 
 
 "Henceforth a Quiet breathing, that this child, 
 Hither all dewy from her convent fetched, 
 Shall lead me gently down the slope of life." 
 
 But he is already "on the slant of life." and "hath 
 a limp," and "youth goes toward youth." Fran- 
 cesca is very innocent as yet of this great life ; 
 
 She hath but wondered up at the white clouds. 
 
 She asks : 
 
 What is it to be sad? 
 
 Nothing hath grieved me but ancient woes,
 
 Stephen Phillips. 257 
 
 Sea perils, or some long-ago farewell, 
 Or the last sunset cry of wounded kings. 
 I have wept but on the pages of a book. 
 
 I am still a child. 
 
 I feel that to my husband I could go, 
 
 Kiss him good-night, or sing him to his sleep, 
 
 And there an end. 
 
 A week later the cloud of fate has drawn per- 
 ceptibly nearer. Francesca says to Paolo : 
 
 All here are kind to me, all grave and kind, 
 But O, I have a fluttering up toward joy, 
 Lightness and laughter and a need of singing. 
 You are more near my age, you understand. 
 
 The plot thickens fast. Francesca is too young 
 and innocent to know ; Giovanni would keep Pao- 
 lo- about himself and Francesca ; but Paolo knows 
 the danger. He tries to fly, but comes straight 
 back to see Francesca, then will take poison and 
 die. The rest of the story is as Francesca told 
 it to Dante in the "Inferno." Paolo and Fran- 
 cesca were reading Galahaut's story of Lancelot: 
 
 Many times that reading made us lift our eyes and 
 took the color from our faces, but only one point was 
 that which overcame us. When we read of the longed- 
 for smile being kissed by such a lover, this one who 
 never from me shall be divided kissed my mouth all 
 trembling. 
 
 17
 
 258 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 It is all told more fully, but not so beautifully, in 
 "Boccaccio." At last it was as old Angela, the 
 half-seer nurse, foretold : 
 
 I see two lying dead upon a bier 
 Slain suddenly, and in each other's arms. 
 
 Is it a great drama? I do not know; I am 
 only sure that it is a beautiful poem. "Poetry 
 beautiful as any that has been given us since 
 Tennyson was in his prime," says Professor 
 Trent. The striking characteristics shown in 
 "Marpessa" are all here almost perfect diction, 
 melodious verse, lyric sweetness, single lines and 
 passages that thrill and linger with us. It, too, 
 is "sweet to the mouth and ear." But has Mr. 
 Phillips the requisite intellectual power and moral 
 greatness? It is perhaps premature to say, and 
 the bewildering sweetness of the verse makes it 
 hard to be an unbiased judge. There is a Greek 
 felicity of phrase and a general air of restraint, 
 especially in the limited number of characters. 
 Only Paolo and Francesca, Giovanni and his 
 cousin Lucrezia, are important, the last being 
 perhaps the distinctest dramatic creation of the 
 poet. But while the drama is restrained, it is not 
 austere like the best Greek dramas. It has bor- 
 rowed from the Greek drama what might be best 
 appropriated by modern poetry; but it is not
 
 Stephen Phillips. 259 
 
 Greek like Sophocles ; it is rather Greek as Keats 
 was Greek restrained like the Greek, but with a 
 sweetness that is rather romantic than classic. 
 
 The play Herod is based on authentic history, 
 which may be read in Josephus. The two chief 
 characters, and the only ones of prime impor- 
 tance, are Herod, king of Judea, and Mariamne, 
 his queen, of the old Maccabean line. Herod is 
 a masterful man, and bears a love nigh madness 
 for Mariamne. These are qualities that fit him 
 for tragedy. Mariamne's young brother, Aristo- 
 bulus, because of his Maccabean lineage the popu- 
 lar idol, and so a menace to the throne, is drowned 
 by Herod's order; but in slaying her brother, 
 Herod killed Mariamne's love, and finally, goaded 
 to desperation by suspicion, he condemned her, 
 thus fulfilling an oracle : "He shall kill that thing 
 which most he loves." Then after a spell of mad- 
 ness passed by the Dead Sea's shore, he returns to 
 the palace under the delusion that Mariamne is 
 still alive. At sight of Mariamne's embalmed 
 body, which has been brought before him, he 
 stands in a cataleptic trance. 
 
 As a drama Herod is stronger than Paolo and 
 Francesco, but here, as there, "the merit of the 
 play lies in the love passages and in the truly 
 poetic feeling and diction which form the most 
 important part of Mr. Phillips' equipment." It
 
 260 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 too is Greek in the limited number of characters, 
 for there are really only two that profoundly in- 
 terest us, Herod and Mariamne; though the lat- 
 ter's brother, Aristobulus, and Sohemus, Herod's 
 faithful retainer, contribute greatly to the effect- 
 iveness of the plot and to the clearness with 
 which the protagonist and deuteragonist stand 
 out. But the love passion of the play is mod- 
 ern, not Greek. The two greatest scenes in the 
 play are doubtless in act ii., when Herod returns 
 from winning over Octavius Caesar and is taxed 
 by Mariamne with the murder of her brother, and 
 again when Mariamne says finally : "Herod, I can- 
 not change; my love is dead." For stage pur- 
 poses more effective still may be the final scene 
 where Herod, only half recovered from his mad- 
 ness, sends for Mariamne, whom he believes alive. 
 Purely as literature the most beautiful single pas- 
 sage in the play has always seemed to me that 
 where Herod, to> his mother's and sister's urging 
 to condemn Mariamne, replies : 
 
 Would you commit such beauty to the earth? 
 Those eyes that bring upon us endless thoughts ! 
 That face that seems as it had come to pass 
 Like a thing prophesied! To kill her! 
 And I, if she were dead, I too would die, 
 Or linger in the sunlight without life.
 
 Stephen Phillips. 261 
 
 Oh, terrible to live but in remembering, 
 To call her name down the long corridors; 
 To come on jewels that she wore laid by; 
 Or open suddenly some chest, and see 
 Some favorite robe she wore on such a day ! 
 I dare not bring upon myself such woe. 
 
 So far as my knowledge goes, the critic is 
 right who lately said, "It is the best work of its 
 kind since the death of Browning" ; and, as Mr. 
 Brownell thinks, there is "unlikely to be an Eng- 
 lish dramatic poem of equal interest published 
 until the author of Herod writes another." 
 
 In Mr. Phillips' poetical work two defects are 
 most apparent. The first is a lack of lyric power. 
 His lyrics do not sing. It is blank verse where 
 he is strongest, and there is to be found "the lyric 
 sweetness of his unrhymed iambics," of which 
 Mr. Gosse speaks. His lyric power is by no means 
 that of Tennyson or Browning, Keats or Shelley, 
 and doubtless he will never sing in such pure 
 lyric strains as any of these. The second defect 
 is lack of humor. Even Shakespeare wrote only 
 one play without humor, and Mr. Phillips has 
 written two. Unless he can remedy this defect, 
 he will hardly as a dramtist be ranked with the 
 greatest. But in the sphere of the dramatic idyl 
 his defective humor is not necessarily a fatal lack. 
 Wordsworth had no humor; his best poetry is
 
 262 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 characterized by high seriousness unrelieved by 
 humor, and yet Wordsworth is third in the royal 
 line of British poets. At any rate, here is real 
 poetic achievement. 
 
 Since the foregoing paper was printed, some seven 
 years ago, several other poetical dramas by Mr. Phillip:? 
 have appeared : "Ulysses," "The Sin of David," "Nero," 
 and "Faust." They are splendid spectacles especially 
 the first and two last and as such have been successful 
 upon the stage. Perhaps a judgment now upon their 
 merit as dramas would be premature ; but I cannot be- 
 lieve that they will live as literature as long as "Mar- 
 pessa" and "Christ in Hades." One who knows and 
 loves Homer's Odyssey and Goethe's Faust will hardly 
 care to read often Mr. Phillips' "Ulysses" and "Faust." 
 The regret cannot be repressed that Mr. Phillips devotes 
 to the stage of the day genius that might make poetry 
 for posterity.
 
 SOPHOCLES. 
 Statue in the Lateral) Museum. Home.
 
 XII. 
 
 THE DISCIPLINE OF SUFFERING IN 
 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 "If a poet have a soul as high as Sophocles, his in- 
 fluence will always be moral, let him do what he will." 
 Goethe. 
 
 "Who prop, thou askest, in these bad days, my mind? 
 
 Be his 
 
 My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul, 
 
 From first youth tested up to extreme old age, 
 
 Business could not make dull, nor passion wild ; 
 
 Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole; 
 
 The mellow glory of the Attic stage, 
 
 Singer of sweet Colonus, and its child." M. Arnold. 
 
 SOPHOCLES, son of Sophillus, a wealthy, or at 
 least well-to-do, armorer, was born at Colonus, 
 a suburb of Athens, 495 B.C., i. e., thirty years 
 after ^Eschylus and fifteen before Euripides. 
 His wise father gave him the best education, 
 intellectual and physical, that Athens could af- 
 ford, and he won public prizes in both music 
 and gymnastics. On account of his beauty of 
 person, physical grace, and skill in dancing, he 
 was chosen, in his sixteenth year, to lead the 
 choir in celebration of the victory at Salamis. 
 At the age of twenty-seven he made his first 
 appearance as a tragic poet, in competition with 
 
 (263)
 
 264 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 the mighty ^Eschylus. In the persons of the 
 two poets, the old and the new were represent- 
 ed; two rival policies were in some sense on 
 trial ; two stages of tragedy were in competition. 
 Party feeling ran high, and the archon seized 
 upon the general Cimon and his colleagues, who 
 had just returned from Scyros with the bones 
 of the Attic hero Theseus, to act as judges of 
 the contest. They awarded the prize to Sopho- 
 cles, and thus this favorite of the Muses became 
 with his first effort the prince of the Athenian 
 stage, and remained so till his death, sixty-three 
 years later, or, rather, for all time. 
 
 He composed, according to the best authori- 
 ties, perhaps, one hundred and thirteen plays, 
 and won the first prize twenty times, i. e., as 
 he contended with tetralogies, with eighty out 
 of one hundred and thirteen dramas. He never 
 got lower than second prize. In 440, the year 
 after the phenomenal success of his greatest 
 play, Antigone, he was elected one of the ten 
 generals of Athens, an experience about which 
 he pleasantly remarked : "Pericles says I am a 
 better poet than general." Some authorities also 
 make him a colleague in the generalship with 
 Nicias during the Peloponnesian war. In 435 
 B.C. he was one of the steward? of the confed- 
 erate treasury. In the year 413. after the Syra-
 
 The Discipline of Suffering. 265 
 
 cusan disaster, he was elected one of the irpo/3ouAoi, 
 or commissioners of public safety, and in this 
 capacity gave his assent, two years later, to the 
 establishment of the Four Hundred, that is, if 
 the poet be the Sophocles who was Trpd/SovAos, 
 which is doubtful. 
 
 In his old age, according to tradition, his son 
 lophon, fearing that he might alienate his prop- 
 erty to his namesake and favorite, a child of his 
 natural son Ariston, accused him of senile in- 
 capacity. The aged poet replied to the accusa- 
 tion by reading to the court a chorus from the 
 play he was then composing, the famous ode on 
 his birthplace, Colonus, whereupon the judges 
 rose in a body and reverentially escorted him in 
 triumph to his home. 
 
 Supplanting 2Eschylus at the age of twenty- 
 seven, it was twenty-eight years before he lost 
 a first prize to Euripides, and he lived to put on 
 mourning at ninety for his younger rival. Be- 
 ing, like Goethe, beautiful in person and mind, he 
 was also genial and gentle in disposition, so that 
 the satirist Aristophanes represented him thus 
 even in Hades cuKoAos p.\v ev0aS', ei/KoAos S'e/ceu 
 Devoted to his native city ^lAa^yatoraTo? they 
 called him he, like Socrates, refused all invi- 
 tations to tyrants' courts, never quitted Athens 
 except on military service, and died full of years,
 
 266 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 the best beloved citizen of Athens, and "dear to 
 the gods as no one else was" ; for tradition has 
 it that Dionysus twice appeared to Lysander and 
 bade the besieger allow the poet's body to pass 
 through the hostile lines to Deceleia for burial. 
 His best and truest epitaph was that by Phryn- 
 ichus : 
 
 Thrice happy Sophocles ! in good old age, 
 Blessed as a man, and as a craftsman blessed, 
 He died: his many tragedies were fair, 
 And fair his end, nor knew he any sorrow. 
 
 After-slander did not completely spare him, 
 accusing him of a love of sexual pleasures a 
 charge that finds no support in his extant works 
 or fragments and of over-fondness for money. 
 Both charges are unsupported by evidence. 
 
 He followed ^Eschylus in exhibiting trilogies, 
 but broke these up into independent plays ; im- 
 proved the scenery of the stage and the costumes 
 of the actors ; added a third actor ; increased the 
 number of the chorus from twelve to fifteen, but 
 lessened its importance while enhancing the func- 
 tion of the dialogue. As to his own artistic de- 
 velopment, Sophocles used to say, according to 
 Plutarch, "that when he had put aside the tragic 
 pomp of ^Eschylus, and then the harsh and arti- 
 ficial manner of his own elaborate style, he ar- 
 rived in the third place at a form of speech which
 
 The Discipline of Suffering. 267 
 
 is best suited to portray the characters of men, 
 and is the most excellent." All his extant plays 
 belong to his third style. One criticism, at least, 
 he made upon the work of his great predecessor 
 and rival. "yEschylus," said he, "did what he 
 ought to do, but did it without knowing." A 
 criticism upon Euripides too has been handed 
 down. He said ^Eschylus represented men as 
 greater than they are, he as they ought to be, 
 Euripides as they are. He wrote also elegies, 
 pasans, epigrams, and a prose work on the chorus, 
 and he is said to have founded a society for the 
 promotion and cultivation of music and dancing 
 and poetry. 
 
 This is about all that w r e know, perhaps more 
 than we know certainly, about Sophocles' out- 
 ward life. All the rest is implicit in his works. 
 He was the greatest tragedian of antiquity. Im- 
 mediate posterity worshiped him as a hero. The 
 later ancients called him the "Homer of Trag- 
 edy," and even Homer the "Epic Sophocles." 
 Homer was 6 TTOI^T^S, Pindar 6 Aupucos, Aris- 
 tophanes o KCD/AIKOS, Sophocles 6 rpaytKos. Virgil 
 was his greatest Latin imitator, and Ovid said 
 with prophetic instinct, Niilla Sophodeo veniet 
 iactura cothurno. Shelley calls him the Greek 
 Shakespeare, and both Shelley and Tennyson, 
 "whether consciously or not, reproduce with ex-
 
 268 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 quisite effect the suggestive poetical coloring of 
 Sophocles." 
 
 The great poets have always been the great 
 teachers, never so consciously this as the great 
 Greek poets. "The poet," says Rohde, "was to 
 be the teacher of the people, to whom, in the 
 conditions of Greek life, there was no other 
 teacher to speak. He was in the highest sense 
 to instruct where his speech, in sublime poetry, 
 dealt with the questions and verities of religion, 
 and with the relation of morality to religion." 
 Aristophanes recognized this when he said 
 (Frogs, 1054 ff.) : "The poet ought to hide what 
 is base, for the instructor of boys is the teacher, 
 but of men the poets." 
 
 As a great tragic poet, then, Sophocles was 
 also an ethical teacher. And what was his 
 cathedra; who were his audience? He taught 
 from the Attic stage, at once temple and the- 
 ater, and his immediate audience was twenty 
 thousand people, more or less. From the mere 
 reading of the ddipus Tyrannns, the (Edipiis 
 Colon ens, or the Antigone, we can imagine only 
 in some faint degree the effect on Athenians 
 when acted as part of a religious ceremony, the 
 audience being not assembled Attica only, but 
 representative Hellas. Never before had Greek 
 poet had such an opportunity. Homer's poems
 
 The Discipline of Suffering. 269 
 
 were recited at festivals and taught in schools 
 all over the Greek world ; Simonides' epitaphs 
 passed from mouth to mouth throughout Hellas ; 
 Pindar's choral odes were sung in great assem- 
 blies. But no poets before the Attic tragedians 
 had ever addressed such vast and such cultivated 
 audiences at one time, and no poet, no orator, 
 no man has ever done so since, or will ever do 
 so again. And after the great Dionysiac festival 
 was over, the great thoughts of the great tragic 
 poets too, like those of Homer and Pindar and 
 Simonides, were repeated from mouth to mouth, 
 and became part of the ethical storehouse of the 
 Greek race. 
 
 Though Sophocles was not conspicuous for 
 "the sententious philosophy of life that endeared 
 Euripides to the compilers of commonplace 
 books," yet the numerous fragments, which 
 doubtless owe their preservation largely to their 
 ethical significance, would furnish a striking col- 
 lection of gnomic utterances. The Greeks, from 
 the Homeric period down, are supposed to have 
 regarded truth-telling less seriously than the 
 English or the Germans; but for this they got 
 no countenance from Sophocles, who used to 
 speak on this wise :* 
 
 *The quotations are from the "Fragments," and the
 
 270 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 "Truth evermore surpasseth words in might." 1 
 
 "A righteous tongue hath with it mightiest strength." 8 
 
 "Be sure no lie can ever reach old age." 8 
 
 "Words that are false bring forth no fruit at all." 4 
 
 "Deceit is base, unfit for noble souls." 5 
 
 "No oath weighs aught on one of scoundrel soul." 6 
 
 Of a piece with such reflections on truth are 
 admonitions as to virtue and righteousness: 
 
 "What virtue gains alone abides with us." 7 
 "The noblest life is that of righteousness." 8 
 "'Tis better not to be than vilely live." 9 
 
 "Hast thou done fearful evil? Thou must bear 
 Evil as fearful : and the holy light 
 Of righteousness shines clearly." 10 
 
 "Then does men's life become one vast disease, 
 When once they seek their ills by ills to cure." 11 
 
 These quotations may fitly be concluded with 
 one of beautiful content and import, and of uni- 
 versal application : 
 
 "Each day we need to take some forward step, 
 Till we gain power to study nobler things." 1: 
 
 numerals refer to Dindorf's edition ( 1 6gi, 2 ioi, 8 SQ, 
 "717, B ioo, "671, 7 202, 8 326, "436, 10 n, "98, "779); the 
 translations are Plumptre's.
 
 The Discipline of Suffering. 271 
 
 But the poet had also a strictly religious func- 
 tion to perform. 
 
 The work of Sophocles [says Plumptre], following, 
 though with calmer tread and clearer vision and se- 
 rener speech, in the steps of ^Eschylus, was the task, 
 finding the mythology of Homer in possession of the 
 mind of the people, to turn it, as far as it could be 
 turned, into an instrument of moral education, and to 
 lead men upward to the eternal laws of God, and the 
 thought of his righteous order. 
 
 In several particulars the popular theology 
 had already been greatly purified and elevated 
 by ^Ischylus. 1 The deep-seated notion of <>0ovos, 
 or divine jealousy of human eminence, so con- 
 stantly reflected in Herodotus, is displaced in 
 ^Eschylus by Nc/u,e<ris, or divine justice ; mere 
 prosperity does not produce calamity. "Each 
 man fares according to his deserving." The 
 popular doctrine, "The sufferer is guilty," is cor- 
 rected by /Eschylus into "The guilty suffers" 
 (Bpdo-avTi TraOcLv), which saves the justice of the 
 gods sometimes at man's expense. The popular 
 belief in the potency of a father's curse is puri- 
 fied, in that it is represented only as pronounced 
 on hardened offenders. Still another tenet of 
 
 1 For the matter of this paragraph especial indebt- 
 edness to Professor Butcher's chapter on Sophocles is 
 acknowledged.
 
 272 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 the popular theology was that of the curse be- 
 queathed "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, 
 and the children's teeth are set on edge." ^s- 
 chylus, like Ezekiel, asserted the responsibility 
 of the individual : "The soul that sinneth, it shall 
 die." He taught that not guilt, but the tendency 
 to guilt was inherited; and this tendency might 
 be fostered or resisted. Nor does this tendency 
 to guilt annihilate free will ; it is an act of free 
 will that rouses the latent tendency, and sets in 
 operation "ATT;, or the infatuation which makes 
 evil appear good and good evil to the man who 
 is hasting on to ruin, "Any being thus both pen- 
 alty and parent of crime. So far Sophocles fol- 
 lowed in the footsteps of JEschylus in most 
 points ; but in some important respects he made 
 a great advance, ^-Eschylus had discarded the 
 doctrine of vicarious punishment, but still con- 
 sidered suffering penal. Sophocles was the first 
 of the Greeks to recognize that suffering may be 
 vicarious, but is not necessarily penal. Unde- 
 served suffering "always appears as part of the 
 permitted evil which is a condition of a just and 
 harmoniously ordered universe," in the Antigone 
 vindicating the higher laws, in the (Edipiis Co- 
 loneus educating character. 
 
 In Sophocles [says Verrall] the struggle lies be- 
 tween the free will of man and the law of necessity;
 
 The Discipline of Suffering. 273 
 
 pity and terror are aroused by the unequal strife be- 
 tween human weakness and the higher powers. The 
 purification consists in the inspiring thought that when 
 once the fault of mortal weakness is expiated the 
 original harmony between man's free will and the di- 
 vine law of necessity is reestablished, and the hero's 
 suffering is but the cleansing fire through which he 
 passes on to godhead." 2 
 
 We shall consider, then, in this paper espe- 
 cially the mystery of suffering as part of a di- 
 vine discipline ordering men's lives aright, as 
 it wrought upon the characters of CEdipus and 
 his daughter Antigone in the CEdipus Tyrannus, 
 the (Edipns Coloneiis, and the Antigone. Here 
 again it is a Greek proverb, 3 -rraOu /u,a#os (Tra^/xara 
 /ta^/Aara), wisdom through suffering, which ^3Es- 
 chylus and Sophocles interpreted afresh, and dis- 
 covered new and deeper meanings in. 
 
 The conviction grows upon me with added 
 years and repeated readings that, while each 
 play is dramatically complete in itself, in a wider 
 view of God's dealings with men the CEdipus 
 Colon ens was, and Sophocles meant it to be, a 
 sequel to the CEdipus Tyrannus. "Such a trag- 
 edy as the first CEdipus demanded such another 
 as the second." As Goethe in part second of 
 
 2 "The Student's Greek Tragedy," p. 118. "JEschylus, 
 Agamemnon 187 ; Herodotus, i. 207. 
 
 18
 
 274 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 Faust, so Sophocles in the (Edipus Coloneus 
 took up again an old theme, and in his last years, 
 with a mind still clear, with a faith more serene, 
 ripened and sweetened, even if saddened by ex- 
 perience, composed and left as his greatest leg- 
 acy to his people and to the world the story of 
 CEdipus' purification by suffering, and of the rep- 
 aration made by the gods for all that he had 
 endured. The object of Sophocles in the two 
 plays is to 
 
 assert eternal Providence, 
 And justify the ways of God to men. 
 
 "And this," says Professor Packard, "he does 
 in the CEdipus at Colonus in a way which makes 
 us wonder at the depth and tenderness and truth 
 of Greek theology in his hands." 
 
 The story of (Edipus is, briefly, this : The 
 childless Laius, King of Thebes, on consulting 
 the Delphic oracle, was promised a son, but 
 warned that he should die by that son's hand. 
 When the child was born, Jocasta, his wife, sent 
 it to Mount Cithaeron to be exposed to death, but 
 the kindly shepherd gave it instead to a herdman 
 of Polybus, King of Corinth, and he in turn pre- 
 sented it to his royal master and mistress, who 
 were childless. The boy CEdipus ("Swell-foot," 
 so called because his father had pierced his feet
 
 The Discipline of Suffering. 275 
 
 and tied them together with cords) grew to the 
 age of early manhood, still reputed to be the son 
 of the King and Queen of Corinth ; but taunted 
 one day by a comrade with being a suppositi- 
 tious child, and receiving no satisfaction from his 
 parents, he went to Delphi to consult the oracle. 
 And there learning to his horror that he was 
 fated to kill his father and wed his mother, he 
 sought to avoid the pollution by returning no 
 more to Corinth. On his flight he met in a nar- 
 row way, unbeknown, his father, Laius, w r ho 
 was journeying to Delphi, got into an alterca- 
 tion with an attendant, was struck by the king, 
 and in his fury slew all but one man, who ran 
 away to Thebes and reported that the king had 
 been murdered by robbers. Reaching Thebes, 
 he found the sphinx making havoc of the people 
 because no one could answer her riddle. He 
 solved it, the sphinx slew herself, and the people 
 rewarded their deliverer with the widowed queen 
 and the throne. So (Edipus prospered, and had 
 two sons and two daughters. 
 
 Just here the (Edipus Tyrannns opens. This 
 masterly play represents the working out of the 
 prophecy to its fulfillment, when (Edipus stood 
 before the world convicted of being his father's 
 murderer, his mother's husband, his children's 
 brother. His wife-mother hanged herself in
 
 276 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 shame, and the impetuous king, loathing himself 
 as god-accursed and polluted, tore the buckles 
 from her robe as her body swung in air, and 
 dug out his own eyeballs, that he might not see 
 men see his shame, begging piteously the while 
 that he might be cast forth once more out of 
 human society, as father and mother had ex- 
 posed him, an innocent babe, on wild Cithaeron. 
 
 O marriage rites 
 
 That gave me birth, and, having borne me, gave 
 To me in turn an offspring, and ye showed 
 Fathers, and sons, and brothers, all in one, 
 Mothers, and wives, and daughters, hateful names, 
 All foulest deeds that men have ever done. 
 But, since, where deeds are evil, speech is wrong, 
 With utmost speed, by all the gods, or slay me, . 
 Or drive me forth, or hide me in the sea, 
 Where never more your eyes may look on me. 4 
 
 So the CEdipns Tyranmts ended amid horrors 
 upon horrors. Surely (Edipus was right, and 
 for him there was naught to be prayed for but 
 obscurity and oblivion. Yet even for this god- 
 accursed wretch Sophocles was in later years to 
 show that the gods could work out a great re- 
 demption. 
 
 '(Edipus Tyranmts 1403 ff. All the metrical render- 
 ings in this paper are taken from Plumptre's transla- 
 tion.
 
 The Discipline of Suffering, 277 
 
 In time the storm of passion had subsided, and 
 CEdipus, recognizing that he had been more 
 sinned against than sinning, had grown calmer 
 and content to abide in Thebes; but his sons, 
 now grown up, and Creon had thrust him forth 
 a wanderer on the earth, lest he should bring 
 trouble to the city. Fate had still to lesson him 
 to wisdom, and so he wandered from place to 
 place, sustained alone by the love of Antigone, 
 who was eyes and hands to him. The CEdipus 
 Coloneus opens thus : 
 
 Child of a blind old man, Antigone, 
 
 What country reach we? Whose the city near? 
 
 Who will receive the wanderer, CEdipus, 
 
 And give him day by day his scanty needs? 
 
 He asks but little, than that little, less 
 
 Most times receiving, finding that enough. 
 
 For I have learnt contentment ; chance and change 
 
 Have taught me this, and the long course of time, 
 
 And the stout heart within me. 5 
 
 The wanderer, not old in years, but by sor- 
 rows and sufferings aged, "of all mankind the 
 most enslaved to ills," has brought his "wasted, 
 spectral form, that once was OEdipus," to the goal 
 of life. 
 
 We hardly recognize him now [says Butcher] as the 
 man from whom we parted in the CEdipus Tyrannus 
 
 *CEdipus Coloneus i ff.
 
 278 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 in the first transport of horror and remorse. His old 
 fiery temper is indeed still ready to blaze forth. But 
 suffering has wrought on him far otherwise than on 
 Lear, whose weak and passionate nature it unhinged, 
 and with whom the thought that he himself was main- 
 ly to blame embittered his anger and turned grief into 
 despair. CEdipus has disencumbered himself of a past 
 which is not truly a part of himself. In the school of 
 suffering his inborn nobleness of character has come 
 out. The long years have taught him resignation. In 
 spite of troubled memories, he is at peace with himself 
 and reconciled to heaven. He has read the facts of 
 his past life in another light. He has pondered the 
 ancient oracles of Apollo, which predicted to him at 
 once his doom and his final rest. His inward eye has 
 been purged, and with newly won spiritual insight he 
 thinks of himself as a man set apart by the gods for 
 their own mysterious purposes. He bears himself with 
 the calm and dignity of one who knows that he is 
 obej'ing their express summons, and has a high destiny 
 to fulfill. The unconscious sin is expiated, and he 
 who was the victim of divine anger, the accursed thing 
 that polluted the city, is now the vehicle of blessing to 
 the land that receives him. A sufferer, not a sinner, 
 restored to the favor of the gods, he finds in that 
 favor and in the honors that await him an ample 
 recompense for all that he has endured. 6 
 
 In his young manhood, when Apollo had pre- 
 dicted the calamities that were before him, the 
 god had also promised him rest when he should 
 
 e "Some Aspects of the Greek Genius," p. 127 f.
 
 The Discipline of Suffering. 279 
 
 reach "a seat of the Awful Goddesses." (Edipus 
 has had abundant experience of Apollo's oracles, 
 and knows that the god speaks the truth. He 
 has reached the grove of the Awful Goddesses, 
 but the terrible Erinyes have become the Eu- 
 menides, or Gentle Ones. The place was fair 
 too, and all was peace and solemn stillness 
 round about. Happy was it that tradition had 
 led the woe-worn CEdipus to Sophocles' own 
 birthplace ; for the aged poet, as he described 
 the spot, was doubtless in some measure voicing 
 his own heart's wish as to the place where death 
 should come upon himself. Most men, perhaps, 
 who have any sentiment, naturally long to end 
 life where they began. It is no wonder, then, 
 that in his description of the burial-place and the 
 death-scene of the discrowned King of Thebes 
 at his own Colonus, Sophocles reached the loft- 
 iest height of his sublimest poetry. It was, in- 
 deed, a lovely spot, and about it, ever since his 
 immortal chorus sang its praises, there has rest- 
 ed the halo of an unearthly beauty and sanctity. 
 
 Of all the land far famed for goodly steeds, 
 Thou com'st, O stranger, to the noblest spot, 
 
 Colonos, glistening bright, 
 Where evermore, in thickets freshly green, 
 
 The clear-voiced nightingale 
 
 Still haunts and pours her song, 
 
 By purpling ivy hid,
 
 280 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 And the thick leafage sacred to the God, 
 
 With all its myriad fruits, 
 
 By mortal foot untouched, 
 
 By sun's hot ray unscathed, 
 
 Sheltered from every blast; 
 There wanders Dionysos evermore, 
 
 In full, wild revelry, 
 And waits upon the Nymphs who nursed his youth. 
 
 And there, beneath the gentle dews of heaven, 
 The fair narcissus with its clustered bells 
 
 Blooms ever, day by day, 
 Of old the wreath of mightiest Goddesses ; 
 
 And the crocus golden-eyed ; 
 
 And still unslumbering flow 
 
 Kephisos' wandering streams ; 
 They fail not from their spring, but evermore, 
 
 Swift-rushing into birth, 
 
 Over the plain they sweep, 
 
 The land of broad, full breast, 
 
 With clear and stainless wave ; 
 Nor do the Muses in their minstrel choirs, 
 
 Hold it in slight esteem, 
 Nor Aphrodite with her golden reins. 7 
 
 (Edipus had not long- to wait for the promised 
 sign from the sky, a thunder-peal from Zeus. 
 It was not death that befell him, but translation. 
 As we read, we are reminded of the end of 
 Enoch, who "was not, for God took him"; of 
 
 Coloncus 668 ff.
 
 The Discipline of Suffering. 281 
 
 Moses, whom the Lord buried; of Elijah, who 
 ascended with "the chariot of Israel and the 
 horsemen thereof." A messenger tells the story : 
 
 Yea, these are things we well may wonder at ; 
 
 For how he went from hence, thou knowest well, 
 
 (Thyself being present) no friend guiding him, 
 
 But he himself still led the way for all; 
 
 And when he neared the threshold's broken slope, 
 
 With steps of bronze fast rooted in the soil, 
 
 He stopped on one of paths that intersect, 
 
 Close to the hollow urn where still are kept 
 
 The pledges true of Perithos and Theseus ; 
 
 And stopping at mid distance between it, 
 
 And the Thorikian rock, and hollow pear, 
 
 And the stone sepulcher, he sat him down, 
 
 And then put off his garments travel-stained, 
 
 And then he called his girls, and bade them fetch 
 
 Clear water from the stream, and bring to him 
 
 For cleansing and libation. And they went, 
 
 Both of them, to yon hill we look upon, 
 
 Owned by Demeter of the fair green corn, 
 
 And quickly did his bidding, bathed his limbs, 
 
 And clothed him in the garment that is meet. 
 
 And when he had his will in all they did, 
 
 And not one wish continued unfulfilled, 
 
 Zeus from the dark depths thundered, and the girls 
 
 Heard it, and shuddering, at their father's knees 
 
 Falling they wept : nor did they then fdrbear 
 
 Smiting their breasts, nor groanings lengthened out; 
 
 And when he heard their bitter cry, forthwith 
 
 Folding his arms around them, thus he spake : 
 
 "My children ! on this day ye cease to have
 
 282 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 A father. All my days are spent and gone; 
 And ye no more shall lead your wretched life, 
 Caring for me. Hard it was, that I know, 
 My children ! yet one word is strong to loose, 
 Although alone, the burden of these toils, 
 For love in larger store ye could not have 
 From any than from him who standeth here, 
 Of w T hom bereaved ye now shall live your life." 
 So intertwined, all wept and sobbed : and when 
 They ended all their wailing, and the cry 
 No longer rose, there came a silence. Then 
 A voice from some one cried aloud to him, 
 And filled them all with fear, that made each hair 
 To stand on end. For, many a time, the God 
 From many a quarter calls to him. "Ho there ! 
 Come, come, thou CEdipus, why stay we yet? 
 Long time thy footsteps linger on the way." 
 And he, when he perceived the God had called, 
 Bade Theseus come, the ruler of the land ; 
 And when he came, he said, "Ah, dearest friend, 
 Give me thy hand's old pledge to these my girls ; 
 And ye, give yours to him. And do thou swear, 
 Of thy free will never to give them up, 
 But ever to fulfill what thou shalt judge, 
 With clearest insight, best." And he, as one 
 Of noble nature, wept not, but did vow 
 With solemn oath to do his friend's behest. 
 And this being done, then straightway CEdipus 
 Clasping his children with his sightless hands, 
 Spake thus : "My children ! Now ye need to show 
 Your tempers true and noble, and withdraw 
 From where ye stand, nor think it right to look 
 On things that best are hidden, nor to list 
 To those that speak; but ye, with utmost speed
 
 The Discipline of Suffering. 283 
 
 Go forth. But Theseus, who may claim the right, 
 Let him remain, to learn the things that come." 
 So much we all together heard him speak, 
 And then, with tears fast flowing, groaning still 
 We followed with the maidens. Going on 
 A little space we turned. And lo ! we saw 
 The man no more; but he, the king, was there, 
 Holding his hand to shade his eyes, as one 
 To whom there comes a vision drear and dread 
 He may not bear to look on. Yet a while, 
 But little, and we see him bowed to earth, 
 Adoring it, and in the self-same prayer 
 Olympos, home of gods. What form of death 
 He died, knows no man, but our Theseus only. 
 For neither was it thunderbolt from Zeus 
 With flashing fire that slew him, nor the blast 
 Of whirlwind sweeping o'er the sea that hour, 
 But either some one whom the gods had sent, 
 To guide his steps, or else the abyss of earth 
 In friendly mood had opened wide its jaws 
 Without one pang. And so the man was led 
 With naught to mourn for did not leave the world 
 As worn with pain and sickness; but his end, 
 If any ever was, was wonderful. 8 
 
 Butcher's view, as given above, of the purpose 
 and the effect of the gods' dealings with (Edipus 
 is not fully shared by some able critics. Jebb 
 thinks the attitude of the gods toward (Edipus 
 is "not that of a providence which chastens men 
 
 s CEdipus Coloneus 1586 ff.
 
 284 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 in lo/e for their good. ... If such har- 
 mony as they concede to him at the last is in- 
 deed the completion of a kindly purpose, it is 
 announced only as the end of an arbitrary doom. 
 If it is the crown of a salutary though bitter 
 education, it appears only as the final justice 
 (1567) prescribed by a divine sense of meas- 
 ure." 8 
 
 It would be a mistake [says Jebb, further] to aim at 
 bringing the play more into harmony with modern 
 sentiment by suffusing it in a mild and almost Chris- 
 tian radiance, as though GEdipus had been softened, 
 chastened, morally purified by suffering. Suffering has, 
 indeed, taught him endurance (arepysiv) and some de- 
 gree of caution ; he is also exalted in mind by a 
 new sense of power ; but he has not been softened. 10 
 Rohde, 11 too, protests against "the glorification of the 
 pious sufferer of traditional literary exegesis." 
 
 These are weighty names ; but the view of 
 Butcher and of Symonds is that which the whole 
 play always makes upon me, especially when 
 read as a sequel to the CEdipus Tyrannus. Jebb 
 is doubtless right in saying that "the total im- 
 pression made by the play as a work of art de- 
 pends essentially on the manner in which the 
 scene of sacred peace at Colonus is brought into 
 
 "Introduction to Gldipus Coloneus, p. xxiv. Ibid., 
 p. xxiii. ^Psyche, ii. p.
 
 The Discipline of Suffering. 285 
 
 relief against the dark fortunes of Polynices and 
 Eteocles." 1 But the total impression made by 
 a consecutive reading of the two CEdipuses de- 
 pends on the manner in which the scene of sacred 
 peace at Colonns is brought into relief against 
 the dark fortunes of CEdipus in the first play. 
 
 The great art of the poet is displayed, the re- 
 ligious significance of the poem consists in this 
 especially, that the glorious end of CEdipus seems 
 the outcome of his long education through suf- 
 fering; that it embodies "a final justice pre- 
 scribed by a divine sense of measure," which 
 seems wholly adequate, which reconciles us to 
 the previous seeming injustice of fate toward 
 the unwittingly, unwillingly sinning CEdipus. 
 The final impression on us is satisfying, sooth- 
 ing, softening, and fills us with a sense of re- 
 ligious awe and peace. "The sanctity of tone 
 throughout harmonizes with the pious, unassum- 
 ing faith in a divine control. Elevation and 
 serene calmness are united to tenderness and 
 warmth of feeling. The sorrows and melancholy 
 of the first part disappear at the end in a peace 
 that comes from the gods." If the great lesson 
 of the CEdipus Tyranmis is v/*.eo-ts, that the vio- 
 lation of eternal laws brings a penalty even upon 
 
 "Introduction to CEdipus Coloncus, p. xxiv.
 
 286 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 the unconsciously guilty, the lesson of the two 
 plays is certainly irdOu //.a#os, -wisdom through 
 suffering. 
 
 Sophocles deepens [says Butcher] the meaning of 
 the Greek proverb, "Man learns by suffering" (Trady/taTa 
 fiaOrjuaTa). He raises it from a prudential or a moral 
 maxim into a religious mystery. He anticipates the 
 faith of Plato, that when a man is beloved of the gods, 
 even poverty, sickness, and other sufferings can turn 
 out only for his good. The Gldipus Coloneus is the 
 most perfect instance of the man whom adversity has 
 sorely tried, and on whom it has had not, indeed, a 
 softening, but a chastening and enlightening influence. 13 
 
 But for one point in the (Edipus Coloneus, 
 perhaps all critics would agree that (Edipus had 
 been softened, as well as chastened, by his suf- 
 ferings. The sons of (Edipus were as unfilial 
 as Lear's (laughters, but modern imitators have 
 felt it necessary to make (Edipus less unrelent- 
 ing in his curse. But in the (Edipus Coloneus 
 he is no longer simply the man (Edipus. He has 
 become a seer and a prophet, with the gift to 
 foretell and the power to curse. He is no longer 
 the father Oedipus, but the personification of out- 
 raged paternal rights ; and thus, as the repre- 
 sentative of the will of the gods, he curses his 
 
 13 "Some Aspects of the Greek Genius," p. 125.
 
 The Discipline of Suffering. 287 
 
 sons for their filial ingratitude. "The Erinys 
 has no mercy for sins against kindred; the man 
 cannot pardon because the Erinys acts through 
 him." 14 Then, too, his sons, like Creon, were both 
 unrepentant and hypocritical, and no sympathy 
 would have been expected for them had they not 
 been sons. (Edipus is like Lear only in that he 
 met with the foulest filial ingratitude, and pro- 
 nounced a terrible curse thereon ; in all other re- 
 spects his spiritual greatness widely separates 
 him from Lear. 
 
 The (Edipus is, in part, a Greek treatment of 
 the Job problem. (Edipus, like Job, is a man 
 overwhelmed by calamities which he has not 
 deserved. Job's friends doubtless expressed the 
 current view of their age, a notion still prevalent 
 in Christ's time, that suffering implied guilt and 
 pain meant punishment. The Greeks of Soph- 
 ocles' day were not wiser. Job protested his 
 innocence, and God approved. (Edipus was an 
 object lesson of the same sort. His deeds were 
 involuntary errors rather than crimes. He was 
 not, like Job, a perfect man ; he was more like 
 Lear, but he was sinned against rather than sin- 
 ning. "When eternal laws are broken by man," 
 says Jebb, "the gods punish the breach, whether 
 
 14 Jehb, Introduction to Oedipus Coloneus, p. xxiii.
 
 288 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 willful or involuntary; but their ultimate judg- 
 ment depends on the intent."* (Edipus, with 
 advancing years and reflection, came more and 
 more to the conviction wherein Job rested from 
 the beginning, that suffering did not prove guilt. 
 "The unwitting sin makes no man bad." 1 Job 
 was proved, CEdipus was disciplined, by suffer- 
 ing. Job, according to early Oriental ideas, was 
 compensated for his trials by renewed and in- 
 creased prosperity and happiness in this life; 
 Sophocles more wisely and truly points, mys- 
 tically and mysteriously, by CEdipus' holy death, 
 to bliss beyond the grave. 
 
 Sophocles is touched with the melancholy of 
 human life. This favorite of the gods and of 
 the graces knew how vain was human happi- 
 ness. But he was no pessimist, did not teach 
 despair. His noblest characters find their way 
 through suffering, by suffering, to light and life. 
 The road was steep and hard, but it led to 
 Elysium at last. 
 
 As the CEdipus Coloncus is, in the devel- 
 opment of Gidipus' character, a sequel to the 
 CEdipus Tyrannus, so is, in the unfolding of 
 Antigone's character, the CEdipus Coloncus the 
 
 15 Jebb, Introduction to CEdipus Coloncus, p. xxii. 
 "Sophocles' "Fragments," 582.
 
 The Discipline of Suffering. 289 
 
 necessary forerunner of the Antigone. No mat- 
 ter that the Antigone came out long before, an- 
 tedating even the CEdipus Tyrannus; we have, 
 all the same, in the CEdipus Coloneus the process 
 of development which explains Antigone's con- 
 duct in the play of the same name. "The eth- 
 ical interest of the play, so far as it is not ab- 
 sorbed by CEdipus himself, centers principally 
 in Antigone, whereby we are prepared for^ her 
 emergence into fullest prominence in the tragedy 
 which bears her name." While still a little girl, 
 she had seen her mother commit suicide, and her 
 father blind himself because his unwitting sins 
 had found him out. Later she had guided and 
 begged for and fed him in all his pariah wander- 
 ings, and stood by him at his mysterious end. 
 Born to sorrow and acquainted with grief, this 
 woman had got used to making sacrifices. Hard- 
 ly had her aged father been taken, Moses-fashion, 
 from her sight before her erring brother's body, 
 condemned to lie unburied, a prey to dogs and 
 birds, appealed not merely to sisterly affection and 
 pity, but to religious scruples and obligation, and 
 promptly she made the sacrifice of hope and 
 love and life upon the altar of duty. Polynices 
 had been a partner to her father's expulsion 
 
 from Thebes, and consequently to her own ex- 
 19
 
 290 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 ile ; but it was her "nature not to join in hating, 
 but in loving" ; 17 so she granted the boon that 
 he asked. The brothers fell in fratricidal strife, 
 and Creon, the new king, forbade to bury Poly- 
 nices, who had fallen in arms against his native 
 city. It was a conflict between divine and hu- 
 man authority, and the noble Antigone hesitated 
 not. 
 
 He is my brother. . . . 
 
 . . . I go to bury him, 
 
 And good it were in doing this to die. 
 
 Loved I shall be with him whom I have loved, 
 
 Guilty of holiest crime. 18 
 
 She was detected, and brought before Creon 
 to answer for the violation of his edict. 
 
 Creon. And didst thou dare to disobey these laws? 
 
 Antig. Yea, for it was not Zeus who gave them forth, 
 Nor justice, dwelling with the gods below, 
 Who traced these laws for all the sons of men ; 
 Nor did I deem thy edicts strong enough, 
 That thou, a mortal man, shouldst overpass 
 The unwritten laws of God that know not 
 
 change. 
 
 They are not of to-day nor yesterday, 
 But live forever, nor can man assign 
 When first they sprang to being. Not through 
 
 fear 
 Of any man's resolve was I prepared 
 
 17 Antigone 523, 18 Antigone 45 and 71 ff.
 
 The Discipline of Suffering. 291 
 
 Before the gods to bear the penalty 
 Of sinning against these. 19 
 
 "Nowhere," says Plumptre, "even in the ethics 
 of Christian writers, are there nobler assertions 
 of a morality divine, universal, unchangeable, of 
 laws whose dwelling is on high, 'in which our 
 God is great and changeth not.' " 
 
 Sophocles' art has made Antigone's isolation 
 complete. Her sister, Ismene, sympathizes and 
 admires, but Antigone's deed, lofty and self- 
 forgetful as it is, seems to her the rashest folly. 
 The people secretly praise her, as one 
 
 Who of all women most unjustly, 
 
 For noblest deed must die the foulest death ; 20 
 
 but fear seals their lips before Creon. Even the 
 guard who had hunted her down pities and sym- 
 pathizes ; but his own safety is paramount to all 
 other considerations. Hsemon, her betrothed, is 
 alone ready to lend practical aid ; but he can do 
 nothing. Meanwhile, Antigone is like a being 
 from another sphere. She belongs wholly to the 
 dead, and her thoughts are with father and 
 brother only. Even in the presence of her be- 
 trothed she never once utters his name. Com- 
 
 18 'Antigone 449 ff. ; cf. CEdipus Tyrannus 863-873. 
 20 Ibid. 694 f.
 
 292 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 pletely isolated, she becomes only more stubborn 
 in her sense of right, and seems even hard and 
 harsh in her refusal of Ismene's request to be 
 allowed to share her doom. Or was this hard- 
 ness really tenderness, assumed in order to save 
 Ismene ? 
 
 Indeed if I mock, 'tis with pain that I mock thee. 21 
 
 At any rate, the holiness of her cause and her 
 complete isolation command our undivided sym- 
 pathy, and "her act rises to a moral sublimity 
 that finds its parallel only in the annals of mar- 
 tyrdom." "She falls," savs Symonds, "an inno- 
 cent victim. . . . She perished in the cause 
 of divine charity. . . . She is technically dis- 
 obedient, morally most duteous." When the or- 
 deal is past, she, who has never weakened be- 
 fore Creon, becomes a simple woman again, and 
 bewails her unhappy lot. 
 
 O tomb, my bridal chamber, vaulted home, 
 Guarded right well forever, where I go 
 To join mine own, of whom the greater part 
 Among the dead doth Persephassa hold ; 
 And I, of all the last and saddest, wend 
 My way below, life's little span unfilled. 22 
 
 The pathos of her unhappy lot brings tears 
 from the Theban elders. "I can no more keep 
 
 - l Antigone 551. "Ibid. 891 ff.
 
 The Discipline of Suffering. 293 
 
 back the streaming tears when I see Antigone 
 thus passing to the bridal chamber where all are 
 laid at rest." 23 
 
 What is the compensation for all this woe? 
 Antigone, the innocent scion of a family ac- 
 cursed, the purest flower of Greek womanhood, 
 suffers all the wrongs that could be heaped upon 
 her in life and in death. Does the supreme artist 
 of the Greeks simply content himself, as Herod- 
 otus might have clone, with the working of 
 Ne/xeo-is and "Ar^? Ne/Aeo-ts operates in the case 
 of Creon, and to the chorus of Theban elders 
 Antigone seems a typical example of the opera- 
 tion of *A.rr] or the family curse. 
 
 Ah ! happy are the souls that know not ill ; 
 
 For they whose house is struck by wrath divine 
 Find that no sorrow faileth, creeping still 
 
 Through long descent of old ancestral line. 24 
 
 But of Antigone, Sophocles has wrought the 
 hopelessly perfect ideal of Greek female hero- 
 ism, filial devotion, and supreme self-sacrifice. 
 And who can estimate the worth of her noble 
 deed in uplifting humanity's ideals? What 
 makes us noble, anyway? To see a man or 
 woman of heroic mold stand up in a supreme 
 crisis and do the right, utterly regardless of 
 
 ^Antigone 803 ff. 2i lbid. 583 ff.
 
 294 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 self. People that do such things become the 
 teachers of the human race to school men to 
 morality and virtue. Such an act lifts itself out 
 of the realm of morality into that of religion. 
 She lost her life ; but in her case death was "the 
 price paid for undying honor. Life is not the 
 highest good. It is virtue's greatest triumph to 
 sacrifice it to reverence to the gods, and joyfully 
 to lay it down in the cause of sacred justice and 
 love of those near and dear to one: a glorious 
 fate that raises the mortal to the divine." 21 "He 
 that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." 
 
 This is the great lesson of the drama. Sopho- 
 cles has felt his way into the serene atmosphere 
 that is above self, where the supreme right and 
 the highest duty are their own reward. And 
 when we think of it, Sophocles, who is "the 
 only poet of antiquity who adequately grasped 
 the nobility of woman's nature," was unerring 
 in selecting a woman to furnish the extreme ex- 
 ample of self-sacrifice. In the contemplation of 
 her deed, De Quincey's apostrophe does not seem 
 exaggerated : 
 
 Holy heathen, daughter of God, before God was 
 known, flower of Paradise after Paradise was closed ; 
 that quitting all things for which flesh languishes, 
 
 2B Verrall, "The Student's Greek Tragedy," p. 212.
 
 The Discipline of Suffering. 295 
 
 safety and honor, a palace and a home, didst make thy- 
 self a houseless pariah, lest the poor pariah king, thy 
 outcast father, should want a hand to lead him in his 
 darkness, or a voice to whisper comfort in his misery; 
 angel, that badst depart forever the glories of thy own 
 bridal day, lest he that had shared thy nursery in child- 
 hood should want the honors of a funeral; idolatrous 
 yet Christian lady, that in the spirit of martyrdom 
 trodst alone the yawning billows of the grave, flying 
 from earthly hopes, lest everlasting despair should set- 
 tle upon the grave of thy brother. 26 
 
 Many a woman does deeds just as heroic to- 
 day. But they have the example of Antigone ; 
 they have the example of Alcestis, of Iphige- 
 nia, of Macaria, of all the Christian martyrs, of 
 many a heroine of pagan as well as Christian 
 romance and story. But who taught Antigone 
 such self-sacrifice? Only 'her woman's heart 
 and the long discipline of suffering. Many a 
 woman has done the like, lately as well as of 
 old; but only Antigone found a Sophocles to 
 immortalize her deed, to embalm her memory in 
 verse simply and austerely beautiful, in perfect 
 verse, which, as we read it, produces the same 
 impression as does some Niobe or Iphigenia 
 carved in Parian marble by the hand of a Gre- 
 cian master. 
 
 26 "The Antigone of Sophocles."
 
 XIII. 
 THE MAKING OF A SCHOLAR. 1 
 
 THE first stage is finding the "lad o' pairts." 
 One must have the gift one's self to detect it in 
 another, and few pleasures in life are equal to 
 this of finding the divine spark of talent or genius 
 in a young human soul. Auld Domsie of Drum- 
 tochty "had an unerring scent for 'pairts' in his 
 laddies. He could detect a scholar in the egg, 
 and prophesied Latinity from a boy that seemed 
 fit only to be a cowherd. ... It was Latin 
 that Domsie hunted for as for fine gold, and 
 when he found the smack of it in a lad he re- 
 joiced openly. He counted it a day in his life 
 when he knew certainly that he had hit on an- 
 other scholar, and the whole school saw the iden- 
 tification of George Howe. . . . Domsie sur- 
 veyed George from above his spectacles with a 
 hope that grew every day in assurance, and came 
 to its height over a bit of Latin prose. Domsie 
 tasted it visibly, and read it again in the shadow 
 of the fire at meal-time, slapping his leg twice. 
 
 'Literary Address given at the Jubilee of Wofford 
 College, June 12, 1904. 
 (2 9 6)
 
 The Making of a Scholar. 297 
 
 'He'll dae ! He'll dae !' cried Domsie aloud, ladling 
 in the snuff. 'George, ma mannie, tell yir father 
 that I am comin' up to Whinnie Knowe the nicht 
 on a bit o' business.' "' . . . "He's been playin' 
 truant maybe," said the father when the message 
 came. But the mother's heart divined at once 
 the truth, and she said, "It's naither the ae thing 
 nor the ither, but something I've been prayin' 
 for since Geordie was a wee bairn." Bless the 
 mothers ! If a bright boy longs to go to college, 
 let him confide his ambition to his mother, for 
 the sure and easy way to the father's purse is 
 through the mother's love and pride and hope. 
 It is easy to see why Scotland has so many men 
 of mark in all the walks of learning and litera- 
 ture. "Education is a passion in Scotland," says 
 Froude. "It is the pride of every honorable 
 peasant, if he has a son of any promise, to give 
 him a chance of rising as a scholar." "There 
 was just a single ambition in those humble 
 homes," says McLaren, "to have one of its mem- 
 bers at college, and if Domsie approved a lad, 
 then his brothers would give their wages, and the 
 family would live on skim milk and oat cake, to 
 let him have his chance." Happily such things 
 may occur in Spartanburg, S. C., as well as in 
 Drnmtochty, Scotland. Nothing within recent 
 years has touched my heart more than to know
 
 298 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 that a bright and ambitious Spartanburg boy, 
 who wanted to go to college, renounced all his 
 hopes and measured goods behind a counter for 
 a dozen years, that a younger brother and sister 
 might have the blessing which he denied him- 
 self for their sake. Ah ! there is no way like 
 auld Domsie's, because his heart and soul were 
 in the work. His teaching was a sacred calling, 
 a priesthood indeed, and the "lads o' pairts" that 
 he found were God's anointed. "Anither scholar 
 in the land," said Domsie, "and a'm thinking wid 
 auld John Knox that ilka scholar is something 
 added to the riches of the commonwealth. . . . 
 Na, na, the grass'll no grow on the road between 
 the college and the schoolhouse o' Drumtochty 
 till they lay me in the auld kirkyard." 
 
 I think in all the grades of teaching, from the 
 kindergarten to Harvard or Berlin University, 
 no lot is quite so happy as auld Domsie's, the 
 man who fits boys for college. I am thinking 
 this moment of another Dominie, himself a 
 Scotchman, with gray eyes and sandy hair, who 
 prepared my father for college, and thirty-four 
 years later got me ready, too. He was the only 
 teacher in the school, heard classes innumerable 
 in every subject from fractions to geometry and 
 Virgil and Homer, and taught all those subjects 
 more inspiringly and successfully than any com-
 
 The Making of a Scholar. 299 
 
 bination of a half dozen teachers, each with his 
 specialty, that I ever knew in any public school. 
 And I think, too, of another great teacher in 
 Tennessee, who used to send me pupils at Van- 
 derbilt, of whom I would say, "My hardest task 
 is keeping students up to such love of Greek as 
 they bring with them to college from John 
 Webb." And he has taught for years geometry 
 and mythology, elementary German, and higher 
 English, the ^Eneid and the Anabasis and the 
 Iliad. 
 
 The second stage is going to college. The 
 "auld Domsie" teacher will be greatly aided in 
 his search for the fit boy to send to college, if 
 some former pupil who is winning distinction in 
 college happen to visit the school. Edward Ir- 
 ving, who was then winning honors at Edinburgh 
 University, visited one day the school at Annan 
 and was taken from room to room by the teach- 
 ers. Among the boys was the little eleven-year- 
 old Thomas Carlyle, whose imagination was fired 
 and ambition aroused. Is there any happier mo- 
 ment even in a long life than when the "lad o' 
 pairts," approved by an auld Domsie, goes up 
 to college ? To his imagination, it is a land of 
 dreams, peopled by bright and ambitious youths, 
 where the atmosphere is charged with the spirit 
 and the memory of the achievements of genera-
 
 300 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 tions of clever fellows that he has seen or heard 
 of, where young men read the great old books, 
 and think again and discuss the great thoughts 
 in literature and science that have marked the 
 epochs in the world's progress. Others may 
 think of college as the place where they will see 
 and know the famous pitcher or quarterback 
 whose names and pictures they have seen so often 
 in the papers ; but the embryo scholar goes to 
 college as to a place where one has been known 
 to read several books of Homer or a Greek play 
 in a clay, to read Demosthenes on the Crown in 
 a week, or to sit up all night in order to be pres- 
 ent at the catastrophe of the seventh book of 
 Thucydides. 
 
 One thing the auld Domsie, who has discov- 
 ered the "lad o' pairts" and fitted him for col- 
 lege, must still do for him : he must see that the 
 boy is sent to a college that has an atmosphere 
 of study and a tradition of scholarship. Ah! 
 the joy of the work there amid such surround- 
 ings ! It is a select society of choice spirits he 
 has joined and holy ground whereon he now 
 treads. That at least is what college ought to 
 mean. To me the ideal college is one like Bal- 
 liol, at Oxford, where every man works for hon- 
 ors. I have no patience with those fellows who 
 go to college because they are sent by their fa-
 
 The Making of a Scholar. 301 
 
 thers, to whom it comes simply as a matter of 
 course, just as a new suit of clothes in the 
 spring or fall, who have not dreamed it and 
 planned and finally mustered courage to ask fa- 
 ther if they might hope to go to college. If I 
 had my way, all such would be dropped soon to 
 make room for the earnest fellows. 
 
 But college is the place for the earnest worker. 
 Contact with other ambitious fellows stimulates 
 him. He soon becomes aware, too, of the silent 
 influence of the example and habits of work of 
 some professor to whom he is drawn, he knows 
 not why, and whom he looks up to for sympathy 
 and inspiration. Happily the attraction is sure 
 to be mutual, and the crowning moment comes 
 when this instructor takes him aside and says to 
 him : "God Almighty has done his part ; it re- 
 mains with you to do the rest; you can be a 
 scholar if you will." He goes out from that 
 interview with wings on his feet and his thoughts 
 among the stars; whether he walks or flies he 
 knows not. 
 
 I love to plan for such fellows and watch their 
 development, to suggest a course which gives 
 full scope to a high and laudable ambition, and 
 see the outcome. Within recent years, three of 
 my "lads o' pairts" have gone to Harvard. I 
 believed in their capacity, and said to them : "This
 
 302 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 is what I want you to do : you enter on a schol- 
 arship, let it be next a fellowship, later Ph.D., 
 with a traveling fellowship to go to Europe 
 on. I think you will do it!" Two out of 
 the three have done it. And what is my re- 
 ward for this kind of interest? In the first place, 
 to have discovered the talent and to watch its 
 development and triumphs is satisfaction enough. 
 Then, as Jowett said, "Any one who labors 
 amongst the young men will reap his reward in 
 an affection far beyond his deserts." There is 
 nothing so sweet, so satisfying to the college pro- 
 fessor as this homage from the old fellows to 
 whom he has pointed the way. Besides, one can 
 turn this affection to account. My Harvard 
 "traveling fellow" has written me letters the past 
 year from Christiania, Berlin, Halle, Munich, 
 Rome, Athens : these I have read to my students, 
 and they have done more than anything I could 
 say to stir other kindred young spirits to follow 
 in his footsteps. 
 
 But there is another class almost as interesting 
 as the "lads o' pairts," slow perhaps, but willing 
 to make up by persistence and industry what is 
 wanting in quickness, ready to give two hours 
 where the quicker man gives one; and that of 
 itself is a kind of genius. What such a one needs 
 is not scolding, but encouragement. "Why do
 
 The Making of a Scholar. 303 
 
 you speak angrily, sir? Indeed, I am doing the 
 best that I can," said a boy to Dr. Arnold. The 
 Doctor was ashamed, and remarked afterwards, 
 "I would stand to that man hat in hand." 
 Wordsworth speaks of 
 
 That best portion of a good man's life, 
 Those little nameless, unremembered acts 
 Of kindness and of love ; 
 
 and certainly the best part of a man's teaching 
 is done when he is not consciously in the profess- 
 or's chair. It is when he is simply conversing 
 with his pupil, both off guard and soul commun- 
 ing with soul, that virtue goes out of him and 
 takes up its abode in a younger human soul, 
 there, like good seed in good soil, to germinate 
 and grow and bear fruit a hundred-fold. Above 
 all, it is the force of example that is potent. It 
 is what the master does, how he lives and works, 
 what he publishes of the fruits of his scholarship, 
 more than what he teaches from lecture or text- 
 book, that impresses clever young men. I have 
 never known greater devotion to the interests of 
 their pupils than Wofford's first faculty dis- 
 played ; and yet it would have been better had 
 they made public, not simply in sermons and 
 speeches, but in print, more of the fruits of their 
 scholarship. There was a tradition in my day
 
 304 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 that Professor David Duncan had once prepared 
 for the press the manuscript of a Greek reader, 
 but was anticipated by the appearance of Jacobs' 
 Greek Reader. That tradition was something for 
 my imagination to feed upon; but surely that 
 single unpublished manuscript was not all of val- 
 ue that so long and studious a life might have 
 given to a wider public than Wofford students. 
 Compare what is coming from the press from the 
 present professors notably the younger men 
 with what the "old guard" used to produce. The 
 new men are hardly better teachers than those of 
 the first quarter century; as gentlemen and men- 
 makers we students of the former days can hard- 
 ly believe the epigoni equal to their predecessors ; 
 but they teach as well, are making a name for 
 Wofford in print as \vell as on the platform, and 
 they are giving their students an example of 
 productive scholarship such as the faculty of our 
 day did not give us. The result will be that 
 Wofford will in the future have a still larger pro- 
 portion of her sons in university courses. It is 
 easy to predict this when we see that fifty out 
 of a total of ninety-three who have pursued uni- 
 versity studies belong to the past twelve years 
 (1892-1904). 
 
 The college course is mainly a time of getting 
 ready, a period of acquisition, of the study of
 
 The Making of a Scholar. 305 
 
 books, of performing tasks and standing tests in 
 the way of examinations. It is a glorious sea- 
 son when progress can be measured week by 
 week. It is not the time for specialization, but 
 for laying the foundation of broad and liberal 
 culture. Just fifty years ago Macaulay said in 
 a report: "We believe that men who have been 
 engaged up to one or two and twenty in studies 
 which have no connection with the business of 
 any profession, and of which the effect is merely 
 to open, to invigorate, and to enrich the mind, 
 will generally be found, in the business of every 
 profession, superior to men who have at eighteen 
 or nineteen devoted themselves to the special 
 studies of their calling." We are going the other 
 way now, tending to special and technical rather 
 than to liberal studies, and the result is to be, I 
 fear, specialists, experts, inventors, more than 
 scholars. The college course, I insist, is the time 
 for liberal studies and wide reading. If I had to 
 do it over again, I should not study less, but I 
 should read far more. It is the reading men of 
 college, as Mr. Mabie said, who do the big things 
 in the world. When I taught at Williams, Mr. 
 Mabie's college, I was struck with nothing so 
 much as with the extensive general reading done 
 there ; and college statistics show that, in propor- 
 tion to numbers, Williams has more men of dis- 
 
 20
 
 306 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 tinction in letters and in public life than any oth- 
 er institution of learning in the country. 
 
 This reminds me of the chief need of Wofford 
 College. I felicitate the college on the new 
 Cleveland Science Hall, and I congratulate the 
 donor, and my sometime colleague and friend, 
 Professor DuPre, on that noble edifice. But the 
 greatest need of the college still remains. Your 
 neighbor Trinity has recently received as a 
 gift perhaps the handsomest college library in the 
 South, with a noble endowment to maintain it. 
 President Snyder, here is to be your next work. 
 Some friend of Wofford, alumnus or other, must 
 put here a beautiful and well-filled library. 2 Wof- 
 ford's traditions of scholarship demand it. Her 
 bright youth will not, should not, continue to 
 come and stay unless you give them books; for 
 to a college no equipment of laboratories and 
 apparatus is so important as a good library. 
 
 I repeat, then, if I could do it all over again, I 
 would read much and study hard while in college. 
 Does some one object, once more, that the hard 
 workers, the "honor men," rarely do anything in 
 after life? There never was a greater fallacy. 
 
 2 The friend has been found in the daughter of Dr. 
 Whitefoord Smith, for nearly forty years Professor of 
 English Literature in Wofford, and Mr. Carnegie has 
 augmented her gift.
 
 The Making of a Scholar. 307 
 
 Macaulay was right when he said that usually 
 "those who are first in the competitions of the 
 schools are first in the competitions of the world." 
 "Men who distinguish themselves in their youth 
 above their contemporaries," says Macaulay, "al- 
 most always keep to the end of their lives the 
 start which they have gained. . . . Take down 
 in any library the Cambridge calendar. There 
 you have the list of honors for a hundred years. 
 Look at the list of wranglers and of junior 
 optimes; and I will venture to say that, for one 
 man who has in after life distinguished himself 
 among the junior optimes, you will find twenty 
 among the wranglers. Take the Oxford calen- 
 dar and compare the list of first-class men with 
 an equal number of men in the third class." 
 Goldwin Smith said recently that England has 
 been governed for fifty years by Oxford "honor 
 men." Sir Robert Peel, Lord Derby, and Mr. 
 Gladstone were all double first class men at the 
 university. 
 
 Recently two notable articles have appeared 
 (E. G. Dexter in Popular Science and A. Law- 
 rence Lowell in the Atlantic) showing by college 
 statistics that the honors of life come to those 
 who study hard at college. Of the Phi Beta 
 Kappa graduates of twenty-two colleges, as 
 against ordinary graduates, the proportion of
 
 308 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 men who have gained the distinction of a place in 
 "Who's Who in America" is 3.1. In two large 
 New England colleges, of all living graduates, 
 2.2 had achieved "Who's Who" success, whereas 
 of the first tenth the proportion was 5.4. At Har- 
 vard, from 1869 to 1887, the proportions are : 
 of total graduates, I in 14.46; of first seventh, 
 I in 7.05 ; of first scholars, I in 2.71 ; of first four 
 scholars, I in 4.75 ; of Bowdoin prize men, I in 
 4.94; of special honors men, I in 5.28; of highest 
 special honors men, I in 2.89. 
 
 But the athlete is a far more prominent figure 
 in college nowadays than the scholar, and great 
 claims are made as to the advantage his healthy 
 body and his training will give him in the com- 
 petitions of after life. Well, what do the figures 
 say? We have Harvard statistics. Of the crews. 
 1861-1898, none won a Bowdoin prize or stood 
 in first seventh, and only one took special honors 
 in any subject. For the crew, the "Who's Who" 
 proportion is i in 13.66, i. e., about the chance of 
 the average student. For crew captains, the 
 proportion is i in 5.66, i. e., about the chance of 
 high scholars. Of baseball men, 1872-1898, no 
 one won a Bowdoin, one was in first seventh, one 
 gained special honors ; proportion in "Who's 
 Who," i in 14.50. But this proportion is due to 
 the fact that six out of the nine "Who's Who"
 
 The Making of a Scholar. 309 
 
 men belonged to the classes from 1866-1869. 
 Since 1872, "the scholars have ceased to play ball 
 or the nine have ceased to study." Of football 
 men, 1874-1898, out of one hundred and forty- 
 eight men, two took special honors, two a Bow- 
 doin, two were in first seventh ; but it was two 
 men that took all three honors. The proportion 
 in "Who's Who" was i in 31. The statistics, then, 
 tend to show that the chance of distinction for 
 the crew man is about equal to that of the aver- 
 age graduate, of the crew captain far greater, 
 but for the baseball or football men it is far less 
 than for the average graduate. 
 
 The next stage is the university course. I had 
 to be a sort of pioneer at Wofford thirty years 
 ago in the matter of going on to graduate work. 
 To you it is all easy now, for there is a university 
 tradition. Every member of your younger facul- 
 ty has studied for a longer or shorter period at 
 some American or foreign university, and many 
 men who once studied here have won high hon- 
 ors elsewhere. When I was getting ready to 
 go to Harvard, Dr. Whitefoord Smith told me of 
 McLeod, the one-armed ex-Confederate soldier, 
 who had studied privately at Wofford just be- 
 fore it reopened after the war. At Harvard I 
 found that everybody knew about McLeod. He 
 had graduated there some four years before and
 
 310 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 was then in Europe, but his memory was fresh. 
 He had entered with all the conditions the law 
 allows, but had gone to the head of the class in 
 his first year and had graduated with the high- 
 est marks ever made there first in the long line 
 of graduates for two hundred and sixty-eight 
 years. Some years later, young Begg, who once 
 lived with his widowed mother by the railway 
 bridge on Church street, found his way to Yale 
 and graduated with the highest marks ever won 
 there first in two hundred years. So there 
 have gone directly from Spartanburg, if not from 
 Wofford, the two men who stand first in rank 
 in the long lines of graduates of Harvard and 
 Yale, respectively. That is now part of your 
 scholarly tradition. Still more definitely part of 
 it are your own fellows who have gone on to uni- 
 versity work. Dr. Kirkland tells of an occasion 
 during his college clays, when news had just been 
 received of some success won by a Wofford stu- 
 dent at Vanderbilt, "Dr. Carlisle, in mentioning 
 the fact to the students, added that such an- 
 nouncements would not be made in the future, 
 but that it would be taken for granted that Wof- 
 ford boys would take all the prizes they chose to 
 compete for at other institutions." That is the 
 way traditions of scholarship are made. Dr. 
 Kirkland himself is now the most brilliant point
 
 The Making of a Scholar. 311 
 
 in that line of tradition. He got his inspiration 
 here, planned it all out here, worked here four 
 or five years, saving money to go to Germany. 
 How well I remember his first letter from Leip- 
 zig! "It is glorious!" he said. "It is what I 
 have been longing for all these years." And 
 there are others that followed Henneman, 
 Wightman, Perrin Smith, Few, Muckenfuss, 
 Rembert, Wallace, Waller, Hollis, Wolf, and so 
 on. These have made it easy for you to follow, 
 for it is now a well-blazed path fast getting to 
 be a highway, that leads from Wofford to Van- 
 derbilt and the University of Virginia, to Har- 
 vard and Johns Hopkins, to Leipzig and Berlin. 
 
 How I came to take the great first step, to de- 
 termine upon a university course, I cannot quite 
 say. There were no university traditions here 
 then ; no Wofford man of my acquaintance had 
 done it. When I finished college, I knew that I 
 did not know anything; dread of the monotony 
 and drudgery of merely teaching school did the 
 rest. My choice of a university fell not unnatu- 
 rally upon Harvard. It was the oldest American 
 seat of learning and ranked perhaps as the best. 
 I went, and found there all that was advertised, 
 and something that was not in the catalogue. I 
 found what I had not especially thought of, that 
 it was perhaps the chief gathering place of the
 
 312 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 best young talent from all over the country. 
 Two or three years later, Johns Hopkins, starting 
 as the first real American university, had at once 
 unprecedented and phenomenal success in becom- 
 ing a center for the best talent, both in faculty 
 and students; but I was before Johns Hopkins' 
 day. I went to Harvard, and all the rest fol- 
 lowed. Many there had studied abroad; there 
 were many scholars of national, some of interna- 
 tional, reputation, and I studied under some of 
 these. Professor Goodwin was away in Italy; 
 but Frederick D. Allen was there "the most 
 German of them all," as one of his colleagues 
 called him and I had courses under him, as un- 
 der Child in English, and Lane in Latin. The 
 man who taught me most at the time was an in- 
 structor in German, George A. Bartlett; but the 
 one who influenced me above all was F. D. Allen. 
 Meeting me one day on the Harvard grounds, 
 he said abruptly : "You must go to Germany ; if 
 you want to be a scholar, you must go to Ger- 
 many !" That had been the dream of my youth, 
 but how was I to do it ? The remark stuck, and 
 I brooded over it till one night when, walking 
 with Patton, a senior from North Carolina, who 
 had spent a year in Europe, working his way 
 over there as he had worked his way at Harvard, 
 he said to me : "You can go to Germany if you
 
 The Making of a Scholar. 313 
 
 want to ; it will not cost you any more there than 
 here." That practically settled it. I spent at 
 Harvard only six months ; but it was the epoch of 
 my life. The intellectual atmosphere was a tonic 
 to me ; the presence of real scholars inspired me ; 
 association with some able and aspiring fellow- 
 students helped me ; I seemed to be charged with 
 some sort of electrical influence which kept me 
 alert and enabled me to work at high pressure. 
 I went to bed every night as the clock of the 
 Unitarian Church on Harvard Square struck 
 twelve, and rose at seven, spurred on by keen 
 ambition, and full of joy in my work. I was 
 there again last July for the first time in twenty- 
 nine years. I stayed in Quincy street, just oppo- 
 site President Eliot's, and that first night I walked 
 round Harvard Square, feeling more than seeing 
 the old places, calling back the old scenes. 
 
 I went in the summer of 1874 to Leipzig, and 
 there all sorts of influences drew me toward schol- 
 arship. Germany is the land of Wissenschaft. I 
 heard lecture at Leipzig and Berlin some world- 
 renowned scholars the Curtius brothers, Ritschl, 
 Kirchhoff, Hermann Grimm, and once I saw 
 Mommsen. But what I got out of my first trip 
 abroad, as I now look back at it, was chiefly the 
 acquisition of the German language and the gen- 
 eral expansion of my intellectual and spiritual
 
 314 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 horizon what I saw and experienced in Leipzig, 
 in Berlin, in Switzerland, in Italy. For that pe- 
 riod, I think I got more out of contact with aspir- 
 ing young men of my own age than from great 
 professors, for I was not yet ready for the best 
 the latter could do for me. At Wofford, I stood 
 for Spartanburg and knew only South Carolin- 
 ians, though many of these were the old war fel- 
 lows; at Harvard I stood for South Carolina 
 and met men from all parts of the country, my 
 especial friends being from Massachusetts, North 
 Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Louisiana, New 
 York, Mississippi ; in Germany I represented 
 North America and met some picked young men 
 from many countries the United States, Ger- 
 many, England, Greece, Italy. At George Cur- 
 tius' first lecture, Baskervill and I sat together 
 near the front. The room was crowded. Just 
 before the great scholar appeared, a man at my 
 right said to me. by way of introduction, "I am 
 Lovell, from Wisconsin." "And I am Smith, 
 from South Carolina," I replied. "Then let me 
 introduce you to Professor Walter, of the Uni- 
 versity of Michigan," said he. "And let me in- 
 troduce you," I replied, "to Mr. Baskervill, of 
 Tennessee." You may guess that was a cosmo- 
 politan asemblage. What such association might 
 mean to me vou realize when I tell YOU that then,
 
 The Making of a Scholar. 315 
 
 and still more in my second university period five 
 years later, I was thrown with Baskervill, of Van- 
 derbilt; Caspar Rene Gregory, for many years 
 now professor in Leipzig University; Samuel 
 Ives Curtiss, of Chicago Theological Seminary; 
 Sihler, of New York University ; Primer, of Tex- 
 as University; Paul Cauer, the Homeric scholar 
 of Germany ; Bloomfield, of John Hopkins ; Carl 
 Roethe, the Germanist of Gottingen ; Lyon, of 
 Harvard ; Green, of William-Jewell College ; 
 Hopkins, of Yale ; Smyth, of Harvard ; Birge, of 
 Wisconsin ; Genung, of Amherst ; Latimer, of 
 Davidson; Kerfoot, of Louisville Theological 
 Seminary. 
 
 The university stadium is the time when the 
 young man has complete Lernfreiheit that is, 
 he studies what he likes ; and he specializes now 
 because he has found his vocation and is prepar- 
 ing for it. The personal relation between pupil 
 and master is here even more important than be- 
 fore. The young man does not need now to be 
 led, but to have opportunity to form himself, per- 
 haps unconsciously, on a good model. To inspire 
 your student with the desire to become a scholar 
 is to do him a great service; to show him how 
 to do it unconsciously by your own habits of work 
 is to do him a boundless favor. The great Ger- 
 man university professor has two things always
 
 316 Reminiscences and Sketches, 
 
 in mind: one is his Wissenschaft, his science or 
 special field of work; the other is finding among 
 his pupils some men of extraordinary talent who 
 shall hand on the torch of learning. He may lec- 
 ture to a large number, but he lets only a select 
 few into his inner circle, his Seminar or Gesell- 
 schaft, and of these he consecrates a very few to 
 carry on his special work. "Ritschl hat drei von 
 seinen Schuelern in seine Methode eingeweiht," 
 said Lange, one day in a lecture. (He has con- 
 secrated three of his pupils to his method.) Con- 
 secrate is a fitting term for one who is to under- 
 take a great work of scholarship. It is like set- 
 ting a man apart for a priesthood. Now is the 
 time the master shows his power. I remember 
 hearing two men at different times give very di- 
 verse estimates of Professor Whitney, as a 
 teacher. "He was a poor instructor," said one, 
 who had been a sophomore saying "required" les- 
 sons in German to Whitney. "He was the great- 
 est teacher, the most inspiring influence I ever 
 came under," said the other, who had gone as a 
 graduate student to Yale to study Sanskrit and 
 Comparative Philology under one of the world's 
 great masters. 
 
 The last stage of the evolution. Our young 
 scholar has now got his impulse, received his 
 training, has won his Ph.D., has found a place
 
 The Making of a Scholar. 317 
 
 to teach and earn his bread ; what more ? He 
 must mix with other and older scholars, attend 
 the linguistic or scientific or historical associa- 
 tions, for the sake of contact with and impulse 
 from other w r orkers. He will find this the most 
 helpful and stimulating thing in the world, not 
 necessarily the papers he hears there, but the men 
 he meets. The bearing of some of the masters of 
 his science may furnish him a good lesson. For 
 instance, I remember that at the first meeting of 
 the Philological Association I ever attended, the 
 only two men who sat out every session and 
 heard every paper were the Nestors of the Asso- 
 ciation, W. D. Whitney and F. A. March. And 
 while he is getting so much himself, the young- 
 scholar may possibly have the good luck to win 
 recognition from some great authority. Freder- 
 ick Allen went up from Knoxville, Tenn., to 
 read a paper at New Haven in 1889, and James 
 lladley predicted of him, "The coming philologist 
 of America." To Frederick Allen that was like 
 Goethe's recognition of Carlyle across the Ger- 
 man Ocean as a "new moral force the outcome 
 of which it is impossible to predict." What a 
 privilege it is to have made such a discovery of 
 a scholar or a writer, and what a boon is such 
 recognition to the man discovered ! The aspir- 
 ing young soul needs nothing so much as the
 
 318 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 assurance from some greater man "I believe in 
 you !" 
 
 Having a place in which to earn his bread 
 and it is important not so much that the first 
 place be a big one as that he fill it well he must 
 contrive to be at once an efficient teacher and a 
 productive worker. Fortunately, there is no con- 
 tradiction here. His pupils need not be defrauded 
 if he makes investigations and publishes papers, 
 for usually the most productive worker is also the 
 most inspiring teacher. 
 
 But not only must there be productive work ; 
 some large work must be undertaken. The new 
 president of the University of Wisconsin, himself 
 one of our foremost scientific investigators, ex- 
 pressed the idea recently in a talk to the faculty : 
 
 A scholar should plan early some large work. One 
 may take up a subject and produce a doctor's thesis, 
 then another doctor's thesis, and another, for a dozen 
 years. That is spasmodic work, and men who do only 
 spasmodic work rarely do great work. Such men cross 
 the dead line beyond which it is impossible to do great 
 work without knowing it, some at forty, some at fifty. 
 But men who do a great piece of work generally have 
 it planned early, some at forty, some at thirty-five, some 
 at thirty. When the great work is undertaken, a work 
 of years, less may be published for a time, but the final 
 results tell. 
 
 President Van Hise never studied in Germany,
 
 The Making of a Scholar. 319 
 
 but that is precisely the German university idea. 
 Germany is the land of monographs and learned 
 papers, and there are more technical periodicals 
 in that country than in all the rest of the world 
 perhaps; but every university scholar has his 
 Hauptwerk, on which his reputation mainly rests, 
 and his chief course, for which students resort to 
 him not only from other German universities, but 
 from foreign lands. 
 
 Large scholarly tasks need time and patience; 
 the biggest are the work of a lifetime. I remem- 
 ber how I was impressed twelve years ago by a 
 remark of the young scholar Gonzalez Lodge, 
 made at Charlottesville. "It is refreshing to see 
 a man pursuing a large subject like a German," 
 said he, referring to some studies in Thucydides 
 that had begun to appear at the annual meetings 
 of the Philological Association. The remark 
 characterized more Lodge himself than the other. 
 Nothing large has yet come from the Thucydides 
 studies, but the first installment of a great Plau- 
 tus-Lexicon was issued by Professor Lodge a 
 year or so ago, and the classical scholars of New 
 York expressed their appreciation of this earnest 
 of an epoch-making work by giving the author a 
 public dinner. It will take a lifetime to complete, 
 but it is exhaustive in scope and will be the en- 
 during monument of its author.
 
 320 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 What America most needs is genuine scholars. 
 men of scholarly spirit, of such enthusiasm for 
 the discovery of truth as to be willing to make 
 any sacrifice for it, who form large plans and 
 live up to them. Such scholarly work may be, 
 and generally is, a sort of forty years in the wil- 
 derness, during which there is no popular ap- 
 plause, with only one's plan of work as a pillar 
 of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night to 
 lead on to the promised land. But all else is in- 
 significant in view of the goal. In every insti- 
 tution of any size in the country there are three 
 classes of scholars. Some are merely masquerad- 
 ing as such, deceiving others and possibly them- 
 selves avoid these as you would the plague ! 
 Others there are, and possibly a majority, who 
 are filled with scholarly ideals, but live and die 
 without attaining them. Of this second class 
 perhaps I may claim to be. But I sing with 
 Browning, 
 
 What I aspired to be, 
 And was not, comforts me. 
 
 But there are still others, and the smallest class. 
 who have scholarly ambitions and ideals, live up 
 to them, and reach their goal : they are God's 
 anointed, and happy are young men who come 
 under the influence of these. And what are the
 
 The Making of a Scholar. 321 
 
 rewards of such scholars? Not generally large 
 in money values, but something better. First 
 there is the satisfaction of knowing, second of 
 having contributed to human knowledge, thirdly 
 the homage of old pupils, especially those who 
 have succeeded in the world and who believe in 
 one the most human and the deepest of joys; 
 and lastly, popular recognition, though this often 
 comes after the scholar is gone. 
 
 What are the things that work against scholar- 
 ship in America? Lack of adequate reward? 
 Small salaries? Partly; but still more the lack 
 of true scholarly spirit in the man, and of a 
 scholarly atmosphere to work in. The real God- 
 endowed scholar hankers not after the flesh-pots 
 of Egypt ; he wants merely enough to sustain him 
 and the means to work out his plans. The hin- 
 drances to him are greater from within than from 
 without. He may be led astray by desire for 
 popular applause, a craving for appreciation of 
 his work as he goes along; he may be a good 
 speaker and have executive talent, and for all 
 such college presidencies are pitfalls hard to 
 avoid. There is danger again that the scholar 
 who might be a thinker and discoverer, who is 
 loyal to his calling and not tempted overmuch 
 by desire for popular applause or college presi- 
 dencies, may expend himself completely on his 
 21
 
 322 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 pupils. He may have eager, clever pupils God's 
 best gift to him and may find so much satisfac- 
 tion in becoming a stimulating, helpful influence 
 to them that he sacrifices before he knows it all 
 his scholarly ambitions on the altar of their ad- 
 vancement, doing them an incalculable service, 
 it is true, but still a dis-service to the cause of 
 scholarship. If any one is to be excused for not 
 reaching the highest goal of scholarship, surely 
 it is such a one. 
 
 A few words in conclusion about the position of 
 the ripened scholar. His is a happy lot. His pu- 
 pils look up to him with reverence as well as af- 
 fection. The world honors him for his plain liv- 
 ing and high thinking and calls him a sage. An 
 unconscious but perpetual protest against the sor- 
 did money-making spirit, he draws out all the 
 highest impulses of his students while they are 
 with him, and remains always as the embodiment 
 of their souls' aspirations, an idealized memory 
 which prompts to noble effort, or, like an angel 
 with flaming sword, stands in the way of him 
 who would go wrong. It is well for the young 
 men that they sit at the feet of such men to learn, 
 not to criticise. Andrew D. White describes the 
 impression made upon him at twenty-four by the 
 great historian von Ranke at sixty :
 
 The Making of a Scholar. 323 
 
 He had a habit of becoming so absorbed in his sub- 
 ject as to slip down in his chair, hold his finger up 
 toward the ceiling, and then with his eye fastened upon 
 the top of it go mumbling through a kind of rhapsody, 
 which most of my German fellow-students confessed 
 they could not understand. It was a comical sight : half 
 a dozen students crowding around his desk listening to 
 the professor, as priests might listen to the sibyl on her 
 tripod, the other students being scattered through the 
 room in various stages of discouragement. 
 
 Perhaps the intention was to reveal only Mr. 
 White's disappointment; and yet the picture of 
 those reverential and enthusiastic young Germans 
 for their great master is all that remains in my 
 mind, after twenty years, of Minister White's ac- 
 count of how he was educated. Another lecture 
 scene comes to my mind in connection with the 
 last. Professor Gildersleeve describes it: 
 
 Some years ago I attended a lecture by a great mas- 
 ter. The theme was the vanishing of weak vowels in 
 Latin. Candor compels me to state that although I 
 pride myself on being interested in the most uninter- 
 esting things I should have chosen another subject for 
 a specimen lecture. Candor compels me to state also 
 that I very much question whether the illustrious teach- 
 er would accept all his own teachings to-day, such 
 progress do grammarians make in devouring themselves 
 as well as one another. I was much struck with the 
 tone in which he announced his subject. It was the 
 tone of a man who had seen the elements melt with
 
 324 . Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 fervent heat, and the weak vowels vanish at the sound 
 of the last trump. The tone, indeed, seemed entirely too 
 pathetic for the occasion ; but as he went on and mar- 
 shaled the facts, and set in order the long lines that 
 connected the disappearance of the vowel with the 
 downfall of a great nationality, and great linguistic, 
 great moral, great historical laws marched in stately 
 procession before the vision of the student, the airy 
 vowels that had flitted into the Nowhere seemed to be 
 the lost soul of Roman life, and the Latin language, 
 Roman literature, and Roman history were clothed with 
 a new meaning. 
 
 It is indeed well with young men who pass out 
 from any great presence saying to one another, 
 "Did not our hearts burn within us while he 
 talked with us ?" Of all the great teachers I have 
 known who had the power thus to draw and 
 warm young men's souls, I should mention espe- 
 cially four : Dr. Hopkins, of Williams, whom I 
 knew at eighty "Mark the perfect man," his 
 students called him ; Dr. Garland, the clearest of 
 teachers, whose daily life was better than a reviv- 
 al ; Dr. Bascom, sometime president of the Uni- 
 versity of Wisconsin, the impression of whose 
 visit to Madison some years ago was as if one of 
 the prophets of old had passed by; the fourth the 
 single survivor of the old guard of Wofford's 
 faculty, the chief of all the beneficent influences 
 that ever operated here to produce scholars, still
 
 The Making of a Scholar. 325 
 
 more to make men. This semi-centennial of the 
 college is his jubilee, and we are back here above 
 all to do honor to him., because, in a truer, fuller 
 sense than I have ever known in the case of any 
 other man, he is the college. Dr. Carlisle, you 
 wrote me last year, "The gratitude of men makes 
 me mourn." I think I know what you meant; 
 but your modesty will have to bear with us at 
 this commencement. This is our- day. It is good, 
 too, for us to feel gratitude and express it, and it 
 can do you no harm. When I pay homage to you' 
 as the best man I have ever known and the most 
 potent human influence in my life, I am but voic- 
 ing the sentiment of the great host of Wofford's 
 sons and paying the college the highest tribute. 
 
 But thou wouldst not alone 
 Be saved, my father ! alone 
 Conquer and come to the goal, 
 Leaving the rest in the wild. 
 We were weary, and we 
 Fearful, and we in our march 
 Fain to drop down and to die. 
 Still thou turnedst, and still 
 Beckonedst the trembler, and still 
 Gavest the weary thy hand. 
 
 If, in the paths of the world, 
 Stones might have wounded thy feet, 
 Toil or dejection have tried 
 Thy spirit, of that we saw
 
 326 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 Nothing to us thou wast still 
 Cheerful, and helpful, and firm! 
 Therefore to thee it was given 
 Many to save with thyself; 
 And, at the end of thy day, 
 O faithful shepherd ! to come, 
 Bringing thy sheep in thy hand. 
 
 And through thee I believe 
 
 In the noble and great who are gone ; 
 
 Pure souls honor'd and blest 
 
 By former ages, who else 
 
 Such, so soulless, so poor, 
 
 Is the race of men whom I see 
 
 Seem'd but a dream of the heart, 
 
 Seem'd but a cry of desire. 
 
 Yes! I believe. that there lived 
 
 Others like thee in the past, 
 
 Not like the men of the crowd 
 
 Who all round me to-day 
 
 Bluster or cringe, and make life 
 
 Hideous, and arid, and vile ; 
 
 But souls tempered with fire, 
 
 Fervent, heroic, and good, 
 
 Helpers and friends of mankind.
 
 XIV. 
 
 CHARACTER AND PERSONAL IN- 
 FLUENCE. 1 
 
 I CARRIED away with me from here fourteen 
 years ago a feeling about Southern, and espe- 
 cially Vanderbilt University, students which has 
 doubtless through time and distance become 
 somewhat idealized. I was greatly impressed 
 during my first year here (1882-83) with the 
 spirit of the students at examinations. The time 
 limit was then five hours it had already been 
 cut down from six to five hours and when 
 spread over two weeks it was little short of cruel- 
 ty to animals. But the students did not hold muti- 
 nous class meetings or rebel. They simply went 
 in with a sort of Balaklava spirit 
 
 Theirs not to reason why, 
 Theirs but to do or die; 
 
 and they took the consequences often a fail- 
 ure if not cheerfully, at least stoically. I great- 
 ly admired this fighting spirit of the Vanderbilt 
 
 1 Commencement Address at Vanderbilt University, 
 June 1 6, 1908. 
 
 (327)
 
 328 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 students from the start; and my respect for the 
 student attitude here grew during the following 
 eleven years. Nothing in my life can ever so 
 impress and touch me as my experience here dur- 
 ing my last year. I had suffered in the spring 
 of 1893 the crudest blow that can befall a man; 
 and in trying to right myself after that catastro- 
 phe, I had felt, "Now I must stop writing and 
 put my life into young human souls." I needed 
 comfort and sympathy, and I taught that last 
 year (1893-94) as I had never taught before; I 
 gave myself up to my students, and they re- 
 sponded ; they lifted me out of the slough of 
 brooding by cheerfully meeting every demand, 
 or even wish, of mine. I shall never forget the 
 impression made on President Adams, when he 
 came in March, 1894. to entice me away, on 
 finding that all the members of my highest 
 elective came every Monday night to my study to 
 read Sophocles' CEdipus Re.r, as an optional and 
 without credit. Perhaps they were unusual stu- 
 dents even in Vanderbilt, for Miss Annie Pas- 
 chall and Bates were in the class. I have always 
 maintained that the estimate of a professor given 
 by his best students was worth far more than 
 that of the president or of all one's colleagues, 
 for the students know what their teacher knows 
 and can do ; one's colleagues have only a general
 
 Character and Personal Influence. 329 
 
 opinion. At any rate, I think my students set- 
 tled my fate in 1894, and President Adams made 
 the trade he came to see about. I remember 
 sending for a graduate of the University of Wis- 
 consin, who held a fellowship here at the time 
 (now a professor in the University of Iowa), to 
 ask him about the habits of studiousness at the 
 University of Wisconsin. He said : "You will 
 find a great many hard-working students at Mad- 
 ison; the majority do study. But I never saw 
 anything like this place ; everybody studies here ; 
 it is bad form at Vanderbilt not to work hard." 
 
 And in my fourteen years of absence how my 
 old Vanderbilters have helped me ! Letters have 
 come to me from college and university presi- 
 dents, from editors and lawyers, from students 
 in Germany, and missionaries in far-away China 
 and Japan, that have stayed up my weary hands 
 and kept me from losing all faith in myself. And 
 now at the end of fourteen years in a far country 
 I have come home on a visit, feeling much as I 
 have seen East-Tennesseans coming back from 
 the prairies of Texas and catching from the car 
 window the first sight of the mountains of Ten- 
 nessee, the home of their childhood. 
 
 I have idealized everything here, no doubt ; 
 but I do not want to be disillusioned, at least 
 not yet. I have not asked Dr. Kirkland or Dr.
 
 330 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 Dudley how far I am still right about Vanderbilt 
 men and women ; I am going to keep my illusion, 
 if it be such, at least till I have got through this 
 speech. With such sentiments toward Vander- 
 bilters, I have wanted to bring you a message. 
 If I have not idealized out of all reason Southern 
 youth as represented here, then it is natural that 
 the question has kept recurring ever since I was 
 invited to perform this honorable duty, What sort 
 of men are fit to work with and mold and influ- 
 ence Southern youth? 
 
 My experience at Yanderbilt, after studying 
 at Harvard and teaching at Williams, convinced 
 me that Southern youth are more susceptible to 
 personal influence, as Southern men are, I think, 
 more ready to accept personal leadership, than 
 is the case anywhere else. They are willing to 
 work themselves half to death for a teacher, if 
 they like him. and their loyalty to the man is apt 
 to be transmuted into love of his subject. This 
 is quite as it should be the- best and safest thing. 
 There is, of course, a difference in the value 
 of studies : but any of the leading ones will serve 
 the purposes of discipline and culture. "It makes 
 very little difference what you study," said Em- 
 erson ; "but it is in the highest degree important 
 with whom you study." The man is the thing 
 of supreme importance. Most young people are
 
 Character and Personal Influence. 331 
 
 naturally hero-worshipers, and this soul-longing 
 is apt, when it reaches outside of the family cir- 
 cle, to fix first upon some older comrade, then 
 upon some teacher. Such enthusiasms are natu- 
 ral and wholesome, and I think a youth has 
 missed the best that period of life has to offer 
 who has not felt his soul go out thus to some 
 teacher. Such a soul-yearning is at once a stim- 
 ulus and a safeguard ; it bids him work to please 
 his mentor; it safeguards him in temptation with 
 
 the thought, "What will think of me if 
 
 I do that?" "Cherish the natural sentiment 
 of personal devotion to the teacher who calls 
 out your better powers," says President El- 
 iot. "It is a great delight to serve an intellec- 
 tual master. ... If ever in after years you 
 come to smile at the youthful reverence you 
 paid, believe me, it will be with tears in your 
 eyes." 
 
 There is another quality close akin to loyalty 
 which is, I think, inherent in the Southern tem- 
 perament namely, a spirit of reverence. "There 
 is one thing," says Carlyle, "which no child 
 brings into this world with him, and without 
 which all other things are of no use : 
 Reverence, the soul of all religion that has ever 
 been among men, or ever will be." The man- 
 ners of the people are a sort of outward evidence
 
 332 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 of this spirit. Southerners are, I believe, uni- 
 versally conceded to be the politest people in the 
 country ; and I like the habit that obtains univer- 
 sally in South Carolina, and in many Southern 
 colleges, of students lifting their hats to their 
 superiors or elders. It is a beautiful custom; it 
 is at least good for the youth who thus shows re- 
 spect; and it doesn't hurt anybody else. I con- 
 fess that I like, too. the Southern way of saying 
 "Yes, sir," and "No, sir." There is such a thing 
 as being too democratic. I went once into the 
 city of Charleston on a train loaded with North- 
 ern teachers, and I shall never forget the im- 
 pression made upon those teachers by the polite- 
 ness of the young men of Charleston. Among 
 a people in whose blood there is so large a strain 
 of the Cavalier or the Huguenot, it is not hard 
 to cultivate this spirit. 
 
 Along with and close akin to loyalty and rev- 
 erence, I think there is in the nature of the 
 Southerner another quality essential in training 
 for life's duties namely, the sentiment of honor. 
 It might be too much to claim that the Southern- 
 er pays his debts better than other people ; but he 
 has always prided himself on keeping his word, 
 and you dare not call him a liar; if you impugn 
 what he esteems his honor, he has always been 
 prone to shoot, either in a duel or otherwise.
 
 Character and Personal Influence. 333 
 
 One thing is certain: you can trust to students' 
 honor in Southern colleges not to cheat on exami- 
 nation. The thing has been tested and proved 
 too many times and in too many colleges to be 
 doubted. There have been exceptions at Van- 
 derbilt, at the University of Virginia, and per- 
 haps at all our colleges; but these have been 
 sporadic, and only proved the rule. I came to 
 Vanderbilt in 1882 rather skeptical as to the 
 "honor system" ; but that year or the next I 
 saw the members of a fraternity appear before 
 the faculty with the charge and the proof of 
 dishonesty in examination against one of their 
 own number, and asking that he be expelled. 
 Then I knew the "honor system" would work; 
 and the longer I stayed here and the more I ob- 
 served, the more I was sure of it. The most im- 
 pressive scene I ever witnessed here was when 
 the venerable Chancellor Garland one Wednes- 
 day morning announced from this platform that 
 a certain graduate, whose name he withheld, had 
 sent back his diploma. It had been returned with 
 the confession that in a single examination the 
 student had used forbidden help ; and though he 
 had never been suspected, and years had passed, 
 he had never had any peace of mind. He there- 
 fore returned his diploma, and asked that his 
 name be stricken from the roll of alumni and
 
 334 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 announcement made of his confession, prefer- 
 ring public disgrace rather than to bear longer 
 the intolerable memory of a single secret sinful 
 act. The Chancellor said that he had, after much 
 consideration, decided that the young man's re- 
 pentance and suffering had been a sufficient 
 atonement for his error, and insisted on his re- 
 taining his diploma. But the young man would 
 not consent. "Here is the diploma," said Dr. 
 Garland, holding out the mutilated parchment; 
 "but I have cut out the name, and the secret shall 
 die with me." This hall was as still as death. 
 The Chancellor had conveyed his lesson in morali- 
 ty. No one who heard that short impressive 
 statement and saw the effect upon the students 
 could believe such a thing likely to occur again 
 as long as that tradition remained at the univer- 
 sity. Since I have seen a whole student body, gen- 
 erations of them, so filled with this sentiment of 
 keeping a pledge the very atmosphere of the 
 institution charged with it I have felt that men 
 who had breathed such an atmosphere ought to 
 be able to withstand the bribes offered in city 
 council or legislature or Congress, the tempta- 
 tions in banks or railway offices. I believe the 
 statistics of Vanclerbilt alumni in such matters 
 would, on the whole, prove that the "honor sys- 
 tem" works with them in life. I do not think
 
 Character and Personal Influence. 335 
 
 it is altogether accident that the man who has 
 made the greatest reputation in the whole coun- 
 try as prosecutor of boodlers is an old Vander- 
 bilter. 
 
 If the characteristics of the typical Southern 
 youth are such as I have defined, then it is a 
 mere commonplace to say that teaching is a glo- 
 rious business. Of course it is, here or any- 
 where. "To be young is very heaven" ; and the 
 youth are the hope of any country. Jowett, the 
 great master of Balliol College, used to speak 
 of the "unspeakable importance of the four crit- 
 ical years between about eighteen and twenty- 
 two" ; and a few months before his death he 
 wrote: "I think that the best and happiest part 
 of my life has been spent with them [under- 
 graduates] and with Plato." When John Bright 
 went to Oxford to receive his D.C.L. degree, 
 they took him to a point whence he could look 
 down on "that sweet city with her dreaming 
 spires." Rousing himself at length from the 
 spell which the scene seemed to cast over him, he 
 remarked : "How glorious it would be to be 
 eighteen years old again and to be coming here !" 
 In the winter preceding the Republican Conven- 
 tion of 1888, when all men expected John Sher- 
 man to be the next presidential nominee of his 
 party, I heard him say from this platform in a
 
 336 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 tone of absolute sincerity : "Young men, I would 
 give all that I have accomplished in the world, 
 all that I hope to accomplish, my fondest dreams 
 and ambitions, for the privilege of sitting on 
 these benches and doing it all over again." Pres- 
 ident Eliot said in his inaugural address, forty 
 years ago save one : "Whoever wishes to do some 
 perpetual good in the world, whoever hopes to 
 win that finest luxury, must exert his influence 
 upon the young, the healthy, the promising." 
 And only last January I heard him say in an 
 address to a vast audience of students at Madi- 
 son : "I am an optimist, because I have been all 
 my life in the stream of young men flowing into 
 and out of college doors." To be congratulated 
 above all others is the youth who is just entering 
 college. Such a circle he will never again find 
 among men. There are gathered the hope of the 
 country, the youths of ambition, of high aspira- 
 tions, of still unlowered, untarnished ideals. Soc- 
 rates, the greatest of all Athenians, knew all 
 that. For him to live, even in fathomless poverty, 
 at Athens, where he could talk with young men 
 like Plato and Phasdo and Simmias and Cebes, 
 was better than to be a courtier, in ease and 
 luxury, in the palace of the King of Macedon ; 
 so \vhen Archelaus invited him to come, he re- 
 plied: "At Athens one can buy a gallon of flour
 
 Character and Personal Influence. 337 
 
 for a drachma, and one can drink water for noth- 
 ing ; I will stay in Athens." He was wise to stay 
 there. It was men he was interested in, and 
 human conduct he was chiefly concerned about; 
 and only at Athens could be found young men 
 like Plato and Phsedo, Alcibiades and Xeno- 
 phon. 
 
 What are the chief requisites, we may now 
 ask, in those to whom are to be intrusted the 
 all-important work of instructing young men and 
 women and molding their characters? First, 
 and absolutely indispensable, of course, are abili- 
 ty and scholarship ; and in the higher forms there 
 must be enthusiasm for research, insatiable love 
 of scientific truth and zeal to impart it. But 
 further and quite as important are other quali- 
 ties, if education means, as Jowett understood it, 
 "the training of character as well as mere in- 
 struction." The professor must be a gentleman 
 as well as a scholar. There must be a clean life, 
 sound morals, love of and sympathy with youth, 
 winning personality, the zeal of a pastor, unself- 
 ishness all that we sum up under the term 
 "character." 
 
 I am more and more inclined, as I grow older, 
 to lay stress upon unselfishness as the chief ele- 
 ment in character, and to feel that solicitude for 
 the religious well-being of the pupil is a nec- 
 
 22
 
 338 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 essary constituent of unselfishness. Dr. Arnold 
 always felt that he must be pastor as well as in- 
 structor of his pupils. If the teacher inspires 
 admiration by his scholarship, if he makes his 
 subject interesting and attractive, if he wins con- 
 fidence by his character and personal devotion 
 by his lovableness, he is a treasure beyond price. 
 "That is all commonplace," some one may ob- 
 ject; "everybody admits that. But how are you 
 going to get such teachers?" "Buy them at a 
 great price," some say; "pay big salaries; the 
 best talent is going, not into scholarship and 
 teaching, but into business, because the money 
 rewards are greater there. Universities must go 
 into the markets and bid against the railroads and 
 manufacturing corporations ; the university pro- 
 fessor must get his ten thousand or twenty thou- 
 sand a year, as the great banker or stockbroker." 
 I don't think that will solve the problem. You 
 can buy talent in the market : but those other and 
 more necessary additional things scientific zeal, 
 wholesome and winsome personality, character 
 never are for sale in the market, and cannot be 
 bought with money. Besides, the universities 
 cannot compete with steel trusts, mammoth rail- 
 way syndicates, great insurance companies ; these 
 can always outbid them. But the universities 
 can console themselves ; not so much is lost after
 
 Character and Personal Influence. 339 
 
 all. The men that are bought off into business 
 only follow their bent; they are not called to 
 teach or pursue research in science or philoso- 
 phy or literature. They might have done part of 
 the work of a President Eliot run the business 
 side of the university but that is all. Who ever 
 thought of Faraday or Darwin or Huxley, Agas- 
 siz or Whitney or Gildersleeve, being invited to 
 become the head of a bank or railway? It is 
 absurd to think of, and at any time in their ca- 
 reers they would have made answer to such 
 temptations in Agassiz's words : "I have no time 
 to make money." And most of them would not 
 succeed if they tried. The late President Harper 
 might, I believe, have become a great captain of 
 industry as easily as he was a great university 
 president ; but he could never have been enticed 
 away into business. His heart was really in his 
 study and teaching, not in his presidency; he 
 used to say if he had to give up the presidency 
 of the university or the professorship of Semitic 
 languages, it would be the former he would re- 
 sign, not the latter. 
 
 I think the really great teachers have a call 
 to teach, as the preachers feel a call to preach, 
 Their services will never be adequately rewarded 
 in money ; and that is not the prime object with 
 them. Fair salaries they should have, because
 
 34 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 they have a right to live comfortably, to go into 
 good society, to buy books, to have the means 
 to pursue research, to travel some, and to bring 
 up a family. But beyond that I doubt if it is 
 well to go. There is a danger of commercializ- 
 ing education in putting salaries on a strictly 
 money basis, as well as in teaching bookkeeping 
 in college instead of Latin and Greek. We 
 teachers must get our reward in something 
 better than money in the dignity and prestige 
 belonging to the position ; in research ; in the 
 pursuit of high ideals ; in the discovery of God- 
 given talent, and stimulating, developing, molding 
 this ; in the homage that comes after a while 
 from one's disciples. "Did not our hearts burn 
 within us as he talked to us?" said the two disci- 
 ples when the now recognized Jesus suddenly 
 vanished from their sight after that wonderful 
 talk by the way and at Emmaus. We have all 
 had something like that experience at some epoch 
 in our lives. "There come moments when some 
 intimate experience is confided to us, and then 
 in the pause of talk we become aware that we 
 are in the presence of a human soul behind the 
 familiar face of our friend, and that we are on 
 holy ground." It is at such moments that the 
 best teaching is done. Neither master nor dis- 
 ciple is aware that it is a lesson ; it is not instruc-
 
 Character and Personal Influence. 34 r 
 
 tion, but communion. Both sides are off guard, 
 all barriers are down, and nothing hinders the 
 influence of spirit upon spirit. 
 
 It is the personality, then, of the teacher that 
 is all-important. "When a man recalls his edu- 
 cational experience," says Mr. Mabie, "he finds 
 that many of his richest opportunities were not 
 identified with subjects or systems or apparatus, 
 but with teachers." As we look back after twen- 
 ty years, we find that most of the men who lec- 
 tured to us have faded away with the lessons we 
 learned from them; but here and there a per- 
 sonality is still distinct, as in the mountains at 
 sunrise a high peak stands out here and there, 
 like an ^Egean island, in the sea of fog that has 
 settled down upon all the rest. Those were the 
 teachers who had the happy faculty to "impart 
 the breath of life by giving- us inspiration and 
 impulse." They were the ones that revealed 
 to us the rich personalities of the past, mediated 
 between us and the great books in which is stored 
 up the wisdom of the ages. Real teaching must 
 be, as Edward Thring used to say, transmission 
 "from the living, through the living, into the liv- 
 ing." These middle men through whom the liv- 
 ing stream is to come to young men and women 
 in the critical period of their college days ought 
 to be rich and strong and winning personalities.
 
 342 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 Most men who do much in the world point back 
 to some teacher who opened their eyes to a new 
 world about them, and the chief element in the 
 transformation is always sympathy. By means 
 of that the soul of the disciple opens to the influ- 
 ence of the master as the flower to the radiance 
 of the sun. So Bishop McTyeire pointed to 
 Landon C. Garland, Bishop Galloway to L. Q. C. 
 Lamar, Dr. Baskervill and Dr. Tillett to Thomas 
 R. Price, Dr. Alexander to Dr. Broadus, Presi- 
 dent Adams to Andrew D. White, President Gar- 
 field to Mark Hopkins. 
 
 Shall I name one or two of these great teach- 
 ers whom I have known? I came in my college 
 clays under the influence of one of these strong 
 personalities. He has lived his whole life of 
 eighty-three years in the state where he was born, 
 and that whole state has been more influenced 
 for good by him in that long period than by any 
 other man. He has taught fifty-four years in 
 the same small college, and has given impulse 
 and inspiration to many generations of college 
 boys one of the ablest and the very best man 
 I have ever known, the most potent human influ- 
 ence in my life. 
 
 To thee it was given 
 Many to save with thyself; 
 And at the end of thy day,
 
 Character and Personal Influence, 343 
 
 O faithful shepherd, to come, 
 Bringing thy sheep in thy hand. 
 
 When I speak of Dr. Carlisle, I am sure to think 
 also of dear, good, simple, sincere Dr. Garland. 
 There will never be another college president 
 like him in America. ''The beauty of declining 
 years, the nobility of race and of high-bred ap- 
 pearance, the sunlit eyes, the fine mouth and 
 frank, kindly countenance a type, in short, of 
 one who has lived an honest, well-filled life, 
 whose conscience is easy and whose soul is pure." 
 The words were written about an ideal French 
 old gentleman, but surely they describe Chancel- 
 lor Garland. I see him now in his favorite seat 
 toward evening the bench under the magnolia 
 at his front door a frail, thin old man, much 
 bent, his white hair covered with a velvet cap, his 
 dress simple, his features strongly marked, and 
 strikingly like Henry Clay's. Over sixty years 
 professor, and president at different times of 
 three colleges or universities, he had had many 
 honors; but they had sought him, not he them. 
 He had worn his honors as he would a garment ; 
 they were not a part of him, and he could lay 
 them aside as he put off a garment. But his 
 honor, his honesty, his sincerity, his fidelity, his 
 truthfulness, his trust in God, his serenity of dis- 
 position, his love of birds and trees and flowers
 
 344 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 and children, were part of his nature, and he 
 could not lay them off. What made bad students 
 respect him, good students revere him, alumni 
 venerate him, the faculty and their wives and 
 children look up to him as to one of the old 
 Hebrew patriarchs? It was his character the 
 character of a simple, austere, kindly, gentle, 
 sweet, truthful, sincere, righteous, noble man. 
 He was greater than anything he did ; like Na- 
 thanael of old, a man in whom was no guile, and 
 free from all selfishness. While he lived here his 
 daily walk was better for the students than a 
 religious revival, and his memory is one of the 
 chief assets of an institution in whose service 
 have died men like Summers, McTyeire, Dodd, 
 Reese, Briggs, Morgan, Malone, Menees, Mad- 
 din, Merrill, Safford, Baskervill, and Tigert. 
 
 "The noble desire to honor those whom you 
 think worthy of honor," Thomas Carlyle com- 
 mended to the students of Edinburgh University. 
 Reverence is a priceless quality in young people, 
 and it seems such a natural and easy thing when 
 a man like Dr. Carlisle or Dr. Garland is on a 
 college campus ; and problems of discipline and 
 diligence are so much easier in the atmosphere of 
 such teachers. Be glad, young men and women 
 of Vanderbilt, that you still have with you a fig- 
 ure worthy of such reverence, a professor modest
 
 Character and Personal Influence. 345 
 
 as he is learned, the best-read man that ever was 
 here the -senior member of the present faculty. 
 His presence on these grounds is a benediction. 
 
 William James, the great Harvard psycholo- 
 gist, made recently a very wise speech to the 
 students of Radcliffe College. 
 
 The higher education [he said] should enable us to 
 know a good man when we see him. . . . The feel- 
 ing for a good human job anywhere, the admiration for 
 the really admirable, the disesteem of what is cheap 
 and trashy and impermanent this is what we call the 
 critical sense, the sense for ideal values; it is the better 
 part of what men know as wisdom. . . . The sense 
 for human superiority ought then to be our line. . . . 
 Our colleges ought to have lit up in us a lasting relish 
 for the better kind of man, a loss of appetite for 
 mediocrities and a disgust for cheap-jacks. We ought 
 to smell, as it were, the difference in quality in men 
 and their proposals when we enter the world of affairs 
 about us. 
 
 But in talking of the chief business of the 
 higher education, to "enable us to know a good 
 man when we see him," Professor James had in 
 mind a safeguard against a possible danger to 
 democracy. He is talking of a European's view 
 when he says: "Vulgarity enthroned and insti- 
 tutionalized, elbowing everything from the high- 
 way this they tell us is our irremediable desti- 
 ny." But I think it is easy to see that he fears
 
 346 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 the European view of us may prove to be right. 
 "The privileged aristocracies of the foretimes, 
 with all their iniquities," he says, "did at least 
 preserve some taste for higher human quality 
 and honor certain forms of refinement by their 
 enduring traditions." And one readily recalls 
 that this was just the view of Dr. Arnold of 
 Rugby. 
 
 I share the feeling of danger threatening de- 
 mocracy to which Professor James refers, and 
 I believe in his remedy. Young people in college 
 and university must be taught to know a good 
 man when they see him. And it seems to me we 
 Southern people have had in our own time as 
 remarkable an object lesson of this sort as the 
 world ever saw a good and great man, idolized 
 by a whole people, tried by the severest tests un- 
 der the blaze of the search-lights of the whole civ- 
 ilized world. Some of us know, and the rest have 
 heard and read, of what happened in this country 
 from 1860 to 1870. There was offered then, un- 
 consciously, what might be called a university 
 course in ethics to form or test the character of a 
 whole people. General Robert E. Lee was the 
 instructor, and his immediate scholars were, from 
 1861 to 1865. the Army of Northern Virginia, 
 from 1865 to 1870 the students and faculty of 
 Washington College ; but back of these, and look-
 
 Character and Personal Influence. 347 
 
 ing on as a vast audience at a great trial scene, 
 stood the whole Southern people; back of these, 
 a still wider outer circle, the whole American 
 nation; and back of these we see now already 
 coming into view the circle of the whole civilized 
 world. To their honor be it said they stood the 
 test ; the army and the whole people of the South 
 responded as the needle to the magnet. They 
 had a supremely great and good man among 
 them, peerless, I think, in the whole history of 
 the American people, I say this with a full ap- 
 preciation of Washington and Lincoln, and 
 they knew the good man when they saw him. 
 The best proof was the unparalleled confidence 
 and devotion of the whole Southern army, the 
 trust and homage of his whole people. This 
 confidence and trust, born of an unprecedented 
 series of victories in 1862, grew into devotion 
 and loyalty such as, it seems to me, no man, even 
 a military hero, has ever before aroused and so 
 completely retained, an allegiance as unwavering 
 and unquestioned in defeat as in victory. Get- 
 tysburg was a crucial test ; Appomattox was the 
 supreme proof. The army, the people, accepted 
 the final result without criticism or blame of their 
 great leader. They felt, they knew, that "Marse 
 Robert" had done all that human agency could 
 accomplish, that defeat was unavoidable because
 
 348 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 he could not for fend it. Because they were able 
 to recognize the worth of such a man and submit 
 unquestioningly to his guidance, they were able 
 as a people to endure the terrible strain of recon- 
 struction days with a heroism almost equal to 
 that of war times. When a whole people looks 
 up with pride and complete devotion to a su- 
 premely great and good man, the whole mass is 
 uplifted and purified. Ah, my friends, I do not 
 see how the people that produced and appreciated 
 General Lee can ever become degenerate while 
 that memory lasts! 
 
 And now, finally, what is the lesson of the 
 moment for us as a people to learn from our 
 hero? It seems to me to be this: As I read the 
 daily papers, I cannot help feeling that grave 
 dangers are ahead of our democracy. Can we 
 stand our prosperity? Will not the worship of 
 the almighty dollar carry us as a people to per- 
 dition? I am afraid that what the Europeans 
 say of us as a nation is true. As a people, we 
 love the dollar better than anything else in the 
 universe. If that be true, with the old checks of 
 religion so largely gone and ethical standards so 
 changed, what will save us ? The men who have 
 sold their souls for wealth are beyond redemp- 
 tion; we must appeal to the young. And what 
 is so likely to be potent with them as the proof
 
 Character and Personal Influence. 349 
 
 that their ideal hero was above money and be- 
 yond price, his whole life an unconscious protest 
 against the worship of wealth? Here is the 
 proof. He was our finest gentleman, sprung 
 from a line of noble ancestors reaching back 
 through Robert Bruce of Scotland, to the Nor- 
 man Conquest, the son of "Light-horse Harry" 
 Lee and husband of the great-granddaughter of 
 Martha Washington, owner of the baronial man- 
 or of Arlington and possessor otherwise of a 
 princely fortune. He had lost all in the cata- 
 clysm of civil war ; and when he was thus impov- 
 erished, this is what happened. In the autumn 
 of 1863 the city council of Richmond voted him 
 a house for his family, but he declined it, sug- 
 gesting "that whatever means the city council 
 may have to spare for this purpose may be de- 
 voted to the relief of the families of our soldiers 
 in the field." After the war an English nobleman 
 offered him a country estate with an annuity of 
 3,000; but he declined, saying: "I must abide 
 the fortunes and share the fate of my people." 
 In 1865 he accepted the presidency of Washing- 
 ton College at a salary of $1,500 a year; but 
 when General Ewell, in 1868, gave $500 to the 
 college on condition that it be added to General 
 Lee's salary, the latter declined it, writing Gen- 
 eral Ewell: "I already receive from the college
 
 350 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 a larger amount than my poor services are 
 worth." He was invited to become the head of 
 a firm in New York to represent Southern com- 
 merce, with a salary of $50,000 ; but this, too, he 
 declined, saying: "I am grateful, but I have a 
 self-imposed task which I must accomplish; I 
 have led the young men of the South in battle ; 
 I have seen many of them die on the field; I 
 shall devote my remaining energies to training 
 young men to do their duty in life." The presi- 
 dency of the Southern Insurance Company, in 
 which Hampton, Gordon. B. H. Hill, and other 
 distinguished ex-Confederates were directors, 
 was offered him at a salary of $10,000; but this 
 also he declined, saying: "I feel that I ought not 
 to abandon the position I hold at Washington 
 College at this time or as long as I can be of 
 service to it." The distinguished ex-Confederate 
 officer sent to make him the offer said: "We do 
 not wish you to give up your present position, 
 General, or to discharge any duties in connection 
 with our company. The truth is, we only want 
 your name connected with the company. That 
 would amply compensate us for the salary we 
 offer you." General Lee's face flushed, and he 
 replied: 'T am sorry, sir, that you are so little 
 acquainted with my character as to suppose that 
 my name is for sale at any price." "I found,"
 
 Character and Personal Influence. 351 
 
 says Dr. J. William Jones, "his letter-book filled 
 with replies to offers of this character." In May, 
 1870, when General Lee was away seeking health, 
 the board of trustees of the college deeded the 
 president's house, which had been built under 
 General Lee's supervision, to Mrs. Lee, with an 
 annuity of $3.500. But he declined, saying: "I 
 am unwilling that my family should become a tax 
 to the college, but desire all its funds should be 
 devoted to the purposes of education. I know 
 that my wishes on this subject are equally shared 
 by my wife." After the General's death the trus- 
 tees sent Mrs. Lee a check for the first quarter 
 of the annuity ; but she promptly returned it, with 
 a beautiful letter of thanks, saying that she could 
 not accept the annuity, and was ready to give up 
 the house to the new president whom they should 
 elect. The new president elected was her own 
 son, and she died in the president's house. 
 
 My chief motive in introducing here the charac- 
 ter of Robert E. Lee is a recent personal experi- 
 ence. I read last winter nine volumes several 
 thousand pages for light on his character. Per- 
 haps I was homesick for my own people, and so 
 drawn to their ideal hero ; certainly I was curious 
 to see whether an idol of my boyhood could bear 
 the test of the scrutiny of disillusioned middle 
 age. Few of the heroes of my youth have stood
 
 352 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 such a test. I had tried it with Nelson ; and I still 
 regard him the "greatest sailor since the world 
 began" ; but his character did not stand the per- 
 sonal test. Self was too prominent. But in Gen- 
 eral Lee I was not disappointed. He was greater 
 than I had ever dreamed. There is absolutely 
 no littleness in that majestic man. "In God and 
 godlike men we put our trust." Surely to our 
 hero Tennyson's words are as appropriate as to 
 the great Duke : 
 
 The statesman-warrior, moderate, resolute, 
 
 Whole in himself, a common good. 
 
 . . . man of amplest influence, 
 
 Yet clearest of ambitious crime, 
 
 Our greatest, yet with least pretense, 
 
 Great in council and great in war, 
 
 Foremost captain of his time, 
 
 Rich in saving common sense, 
 
 And, as the greatest only are, 
 
 In his simplicity sublime. 
 
 O good gray head which all men knew, 
 
 O voice from which their omens all men drew, 
 
 O iron nerve to true occasion true, 
 
 O fall'n at length that tower of strength 
 
 Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew !
 
 XV. 
 OUR OLD COUNTRY SCHOOL. 
 
 IT was before the days of the public school 
 system, and ours was a private neighborhood 
 school where everybody was expected to pay 
 tuition. It was a well-to-do neighborhood, and 
 all the children went to school. The attendance 
 was generally large, sometimes reaching perhaps 
 a total of seventy-five. Everything was taught 
 in the school, from A B C to the Latin and 
 Greek required for college, and all the subjects 
 by the single teacher, the daily school period cov- 
 ering four hours in the forenoon and three to 
 four in the afternoon. Perhaps 1860 was the 
 banner year in the history of the school ; for we 
 had that year a graduate of the South Carolina 
 College, about twenty- four years old, tall (six 
 feet, two), handsome a genial, sympathetic, 
 magnetic, born teacher, like "Auld Domsie." He 
 was a good scholar (I think he had been second- 
 honor man), loved boys and girls, and was the 
 pride and honor of the school and of the neigh- 
 borhood. A chance visitor would have guessed 
 his popularity in midsummer from the long row 
 23 (353)
 
 354 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 of mellow apples and luscious peaches on his desk, 
 daily presented to him by his girls and boys. 
 
 The "three R's" formed naturally the great 
 bulk of the work of the school, and the pupils' 
 chief attention was given to spelling, penman- 
 ship, ciphering, geography, and parsing. Doubt- 
 less the most successful form of mental discipline 
 in that school was spelling. It was perhaps a 
 tradition, handed down from teacher to teacher, 
 to close the day with a spelling match of the 
 whole school. The book spelled from was the 
 Abridged Webster's Dictionary, the lesson at 
 least a page, and the line of spellers extended 
 along the whole side of the schoolroom and 
 doubled back at the end. The great honor was 
 to stand "head," and this post was held until the 
 occupant missed a word and was turned down. 
 Our best speller was a girl named Mary, called 
 "Puss" for short. She had never distinguished 
 herself in any way until her ambition to stand 
 at the head of the spelling class took possession 
 of her. She studied the dictionary all day at 
 school, perhaps dreamed it at home at night. At 
 any rate, her position was usually "head," and 
 in her hands it was almost impregnable. I re- 
 member standing once for three whole weeks 
 second, eager and alert, hoping and praying that 
 "Puss" would miss ; but she did not. Now, a
 
 Our Old Country School. 355 
 
 great change took place in "Puss" as she grew 
 toward womanhood. She had been a small, sal- 
 low, sandy-haired, unattractive girl ; but after her 
 most successful season in the dictionary spelling 
 class, she suddenly blossomed out into a hand- 
 some, winsome maiden. Later she wore a stylish 
 beaver, dressed fashionably (so my mother and 
 sister said), and had her brother drive her to the 
 village church when there was no service at the 
 ''chapel." In due time she made the best match 
 of the neighborhood. I suppose it was only na- 
 ture at work on "Puss," but somehow I have al- 
 ways believed it was the spelling class that started 
 "Puss" toward the top in beauty as well as in 
 matrimonial success. We hear a good deal these 
 days about the advantages our children have in 
 present school methods over the old, even in 
 spelling. My boy certainly has an easier time 
 spelling than I ever had. The process of learning 
 to spell the English language has been simplified 
 so that ten or twenty written words at a lesson, 
 perhaps a day, are supposed to suffice for him. 
 All very good only he does not learn to spell. 
 And when I was called on to speak on the sub- 
 ject at a meeting of the State Teachers' Associa- 
 tion, I promptly angered everybody by saying 
 that the process in the public schools was a 
 premium on dawdling; that I knew it from
 
 356 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 a boy who had been studying for three years at 
 the rate of ten written words a lesson, and my 
 estimate was that if he spelled all his life up to 
 threescore and ten, then went to heaven, it would 
 take him at that rate at least a thousand years 
 in the land of the blessed to get a mastery of 
 English spelling. 
 
 Since I began to write more than forty years 
 have slipped away from me ; and I see once more 
 the clear old schoolhouse within a stone's throw 
 of the Methodist church (Andrew Chapel), the 
 neighborhood gravestones visible from its front 
 windows. It was a frame building, weather- 
 boarded and unceiled, about forty feet by fifteen. 
 There was a chimney at each end of the single 
 room, and a great writing-desk clear across 
 the center which made practically two compart- 
 ments, the north side for the girls, the south 
 side for the boys. At recitation there was no 
 distinction of sex. On Asbury Townsend in 
 1859, whom all the pupils feared, and Alpheus 
 Watson in 1860, whom all loved, probably no 
 tricks were played. The former believed in Sol- 
 omon's precept, "Spare the rod and spoil the 
 child," and I doubt if any boy could have boasted 
 that Mr. Townsend had never whipped him. My 
 oldest brother, I remember, went to the war in 
 1861 with the avowed intention, if he should ever
 
 Our Old Country School. 357 
 
 be engaged in the same battle with him, to shoot 
 his old teacher in return for all the floggings 
 he had got. But, of course, that was only a boy's 
 talk. He was an excellent teacher, who believed 
 whipping good for us physically and morally, and 
 we respected while we feared him. But Rever- 
 end Henry Bass (1863), who was somewhat ec- 
 centric as well as very near-sighted, was so good 
 a mark that it would not have been boy and girl 
 human nature not to take advantage of him. It 
 was great fun to see his face sometimes when 
 he went to the front door in the morning with 
 the big hand-bell and produced, as he swung it, 
 not clear bronze notes, but only dull thuds from 
 the paper-wrapped clapper. Sometimes, too, as 
 he took his chair he would leap up abruptly and 
 find a pin stuck up through the split-bottom. The 
 best fun of the girls was to engage in the for- 
 bidden cracking of nuts on the hearth, just to see 
 Mr. Bass rush at the stone left behind by the cul- 
 prit. Sometimes the real stone was gone and a 
 hot one left in its place, which he grabbed up 
 and dropped precipitately. Of course everybody 
 tittered, but no girl ever acknowledged her fault. 
 Still better fun for the school was a trick often 
 played upon him at evening prayers. He stood 
 at the end of the long writing-desk, but while 
 he was reading the lesson from the Bible not
 
 358 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 seldom a mischievous boy or girl would pull up 
 the tail of his long coat and fill his pocket with 
 peach stones. Ah, if grown people could only 
 continue to find fun in such simple tricks as 
 school children enjoy, how full of laughter life 
 would be ! But the greatest fun that ever hap- 
 pened was when some luckless man rode by the 
 schoolhouse and called out, "School butter !" In- 
 stantly every boy, without waiting for leave, 
 leaped out of the door and gave chase. If the 
 offender was caught, he was sure to pay dearly 
 for his folly by a mud-balling, a beating, or a 
 ducking. 
 
 But could I go back now to the old school- 
 house, I would seek first the names of the big 
 boys of 1860 rudely cut or scrawled on the 
 walls, each name generally bracketed with that 
 of his sweetheart. I have often thought it a pity 
 that the old schoolhouse was not built of stone ; 
 for our big boys all volunteered early in the war, 
 and of several of them the rude scrawl on the 
 schoolhouse wall is the only epitaph in the world : 
 for example, of Lewis Carter, who died at the 
 front in Arkansas ; of Vint Carter, who died in 
 Virginia ; of Jeff McCants, who was shot through 
 the neck in one of the early battles ; of Bob 
 Rampy, who died ; and of Moon Jones and Hart 
 Rothrock and Tom Franklin, who were killed.
 
 Our Old Country School. 359 
 
 Bob Smith and Wister Watson and our beloved 
 teacher, Alpheus Watson, came home from the 
 war to die of typhoid fever, and a marble slab 
 commemorates each; but the bones of the rest 
 fill somewhere nameless trenches. How well I 
 remember Tom Franklin's return on furlough, 
 wounded in the big toe, in 1863, and the trium- 
 phant rounds he made in the neighborhood, ac- 
 companied by Mr. Carter, the best friend of all 
 the young fellows. His whole stay was an ova- 
 tion ; and not without its pathos, for he returned 
 to the war, and some time afterwards fell at the 
 Wilderness. That name brings up, too, the im- 
 age of another soldier, young Moore, from Tex- 
 as, a kinsman of my mother's, who had been 
 shot in the thigh at the Wilderness, and when 
 he got out of the field hospital came to us in 
 South Carolina to recruit. He used to tell, I 
 remember, how General Lee tried to lead his 
 brigade (Gregg's) to the charge at the Wilder- 
 ness, and how at the sight men shed tears "who 
 had not wept since their mothers whipped them 
 last." We children went round with him, as Mr. 
 Carter had gone with Tom Franklin, and it 
 seemed as good as the "Odyssey" to hear his war 
 stories. But when he was quite well he returned 
 to the war, and some time afterwards we learned 
 that a more fatal bullet had found him.
 
 360 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 None of our young heroes was conscripted. 
 They were all in the army before the first con- 
 script act was passed. My oldest brother was 
 seventeen and expecting to enter college in Oc- 
 tober, 1 86 1 ; and our mother never let him at- 
 tend a "muster" in the summer except in the 
 company of our neighbor, Mr. Carter, who was 
 to keep him from volunteering. He got off to 
 college; but early in November, when his eight- 
 eenth birthday came, he volunteered with most 
 of the rest of the Wofford students. As the 
 younger fellows gradually attained military age, 
 they too went ; and when the last call came, in 
 1864 (from sixteen to sixty), it seemed to verify 
 General B. F. Butler's characterization of it 
 "robbing both the cradle and the grave." It 
 looked pitiable in the case of some boys who were 
 small for sixteen, as was the case with my broth- 
 er Frank ; but none of them shirked. This call 
 broke up even the village school ; for Principal 
 Watson went out with his larger boys, and the 
 little ones had holiday till the war ended. 
 
 Passing some months ago through Chicago, 
 where there are over two million people, just 
 after I had been reading of General Lee holding 
 all the winter of 1864-65 a line over thirty miles 
 long with only thirty-five thousand men. I began 
 to wonder if it was possible that the fighting
 
 Our Old Country School. 361 
 
 force of a dozen states was so reduced. Then 
 I thought of our own neighborhood the only 
 district in the world with which I was thoroughly 
 acquainted and I could recall in a radius of 
 three miles only one young fellow who shirked. 
 He was small of stature, and did not grow any 
 older for three years; but at last even he got in, 
 I think. There were two cases in the outlying 
 region where an old hurt to a limb brought a 
 healthy-looking man again to his crutches, and 
 where an arm became paralyzed; but outside of 
 these three cases in the range of my knowledge, 
 even gossip found no room for charges ; the fight- 
 ing men were all at the front. 
 
 I mentioned above that my brother's college, 
 Wofford, was almost depopulated in 1861, and 
 the following comparison of the University of 
 Virginia and Harvard illustrates the point: In 
 1861 Harvard had 896 students; the University 
 of Virginia, 604. From Harvard 73 students 
 joined the first army of invasion; from the Uni- 
 versity of Virginia one-half volunteered at that 
 time. Harvard had a total of 1,040 in the ar- 
 mies and navies of the United States; the Uni- 
 versity of Virginia, over 2,000 in the Confeder- 
 ate service. Of Harvard's 1,040, only 155 lost 
 their lives ; of the University of Virginia stu- 
 dents, over 400.
 
 XVI. 
 A UNIVERSITY FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 "How long do you expect to stay here ?" asked 
 President Eliot the day I reached Harvard. "As 
 long as my money lasts," I answered. "Make it 
 last!" he said. "Make up your mind to stay as 
 long as you want to stay. Our boys go out into 
 the hayfields in summer; they do anything to 
 earn money to go on with their studies." He 
 advised me to go for my coaching in German to 
 a young North Carolinian of the senior class 
 who was tutoring his way through college, say- 
 ing, "He is coaching my son Charles in Ger- 
 man." That remark of President Eliot's and 
 my association with Patton gave me a new view 
 of the opportunities and possibilities open to 
 young Americans of getting an education. I 
 had never seen any one working his way through 
 college ; since then I have found much interest 
 and pleasure in watching the careers of unmon- 
 eyed but ambitious students. College doors are 
 portals that open upon the fairest realms of 
 life, and in America these are never sealed to 
 youth who are determined to have an education. 
 (362)
 
 A University for the People. 363 
 
 Let me tell of some careers at this institution 
 a university for the people. 1 
 
 When my house was building, some years 
 ago, a Norwegian carpenter told me of his son, 
 a bright boy and fond of books. The boy was 
 in the high school, and the father said: "I am 
 going to put him just as far as I can." What 
 puts such ideas of higher education for their 
 children into the heads of workingmen? Our 
 system of public education. The carpenter has 
 little money and pays small taxes, but the state 
 gives his boy as good an opportunity as the rich 
 man's son. The high school will cost him noth- 
 ing, and the whole university course is open to 
 him for ten dollars a semester. Just herein lies 
 the greatest advantage that the Wisconsin work- 
 ingman has over the Tennessean. Good public 
 schools are universal in this state; their advan- 
 tages are more generally utilized ; it is more com- 
 mon to find sons and daughters of workingmen 
 getting a university education. But concrete ex- 
 amples prove more than generalizations. 
 
 Another laborer, who helped in laying the sod 
 when my house was finished, interested me be- 
 cause he was the hardest worker I ever saw, and 
 because of his ambition for his children's edu- 
 
 J Written at the University of Wisconsin, August, 10x17.
 
 364 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 cation. He got a janitorship soon afterwards, 
 and soon his son and daughter were in the uni- 
 versity. But the son was more given to fiddling 
 his father came from Ole Bull's country than 
 to studying, and his case came before the fac- 
 ulty. Unfortunately the faculty as a body hears 
 much more of the students that need discipline 
 than of those that deserve praise. Knowing the 
 hard-working father, it pained me to see the boy 
 put on probation and finally drop out to go into 
 business. Still, even that boy's meager education 
 enables him now to earn in a clerkship consid- 
 erably more than his diligent father gets. An- 
 other janitor died a few years ago after seven- 
 teen years' service. He was a faithful man, and 
 got a good janitor's wage, with much praise. He 
 had been thrifty, and had made fortunate invest- 
 ments and it is quite as easy for a janitor out 
 of his smaller salary to save something to invest 
 as for the professor. Certainly the German shep- 
 herd of the Agricultural Department owns more 
 valuable property than most university profess- 
 ors ; and he has earned it, for he knows more 
 about sheep than I do about Greek. Well, it be- 
 hooved our janitor to make investments, for he 
 had the Irishman's usual family luck a dozen 
 children. Several of these attended the univer- 
 sity for a longer or shorter period, and two of
 
 A University for the People. 365 
 
 them now run one of the leading Madison gro- 
 ceries (not a euphemism here for saloon), an- 
 other is a dentist, and others are doing well in 
 other lines. 
 
 From the platform on last commencement day 
 I noticed in the audience the janitor of our build- 
 ing with his wife ; and reading the programme, I 
 found the name of his daughter. So I hurried 
 down after the exercises to congratulate them. 
 The subject of the senior thesis of this janitor's 
 daughter was "The Diction of Apuleius in the 
 Psyche and Cupido." Latin has always been her 
 favorite study, and at her graduation it was her 
 ambition to teach Latin in a high school. But 
 she did something even better she was soon 
 happily married. The janitor wished to give his 
 son also a university course, but the boy would 
 not take it. He was stage-struck. The father 
 preferred some regular business, but what could 
 he do? Desire to do out-of-the-way things is 
 often a sign of genius ; oftener still, it is true, an 
 indication of unbalanced brain. Two of my ac- 
 quaintances have been troubled about the stage 
 the janitor, whose son wants to act, and the judge, 
 whose son wants to write plays. The stage fever 
 is somewhat in the air here. Robert La Follette 
 wanted to go upon the stage nearly thirty years- 
 ago, but an actor told him that the chances of
 
 366 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 supreme success were against a man only five feet 
 six in height. So Mr. La Follette went into the 
 law, but his daughter is on the stage. When the 
 Senate is not in session, he shows on Chautauqua 
 platforms how some other public men act, and 
 his daughter is before the footlights. Five feet 
 six may keep a man from reaching the top in 
 stage-acting, but not from eminence in all lines. 
 Witness Bonaparte, Nelson, John Wesley, Keats. 
 Mr. La Follette has made his mark Congress- 
 man, Governor, Senator, and presidential candi- 
 date. 
 
 Mr. La Follette is a conspicuous example of a 
 man who worked his way through college by 
 teaching school at intervals and did big things 
 afterwards. His classmate, President Van Hise, 
 is another. He entered the university in 1875, 
 with advanced standing sufficient to enable him 
 to get his diploma in three years; but he had 
 never had access to a library before, and wisely 
 determined to read more and graduate in four 
 years. From the end of his sophomore year he 
 worked his way in the university, leaving the 
 family resources to help the younger children to 
 an education. And that reminds me of his pred- 
 ecessor. In his opening address to the students 
 .just after I came here. President Adams said: "I 
 worked my way through college, and was poorer
 
 A University for the People. 367 
 
 than any of you; but I saved money enough in 
 my freshman year to buy a dozen good books 
 in general literature, and I read them. And I 
 am prouder of that than of anything else I ever 
 did." My venerable colleague, the Emeritus 
 Professor of Greek, delights to tell me how he 
 used to employ, twenty years ago, a blue-eyed, 
 sunny-faced lad to run the lawn-mower over his 
 grass. Now the young man is head of the great- 
 est state library in the country. About that same 
 time a tall young German, one of a numerous 
 family of boys and girls, was alternately attend- 
 ing a normal college (afterwards the university) 
 and teaching country schools ; now he is full 
 Professor of Economics in the university and a 
 member of the Rate Commission of the state. 
 Near the time of President Van Hise and Sena- 
 tor La Follette a young man applied for entrance 
 to the engineering department, very poor and de- 
 ficient in preparation; but the faculty voted to 
 give him a trial. Four years afterwards he pre- 
 sented an epoch-making senior thesis, and some 
 years later invented a new cotton tie ; he is now 
 perhaps the wealthiest man in Madison and a 
 member of the board of regents of the univer- 
 sity. 
 
 Four out of the five conspicuously successful 
 men already alluded to bear names that show for-
 
 368 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 eign origin another proof that America is a 
 haven of opportunity for the whole world. And 
 all the rest came at least their fathers did from 
 Northern Europe. When we came to Madison, 
 in 1894, my son met in Sunday school a boy 
 whose father had charge of the hogs on the uni- 
 versity farm. That does not sound as poetic and 
 dignified as Eumaeus, the swineherd, in Homer's 
 ''Odyssey" ; but the calling is the same, and the 
 swineherd's son was remarkable. While attend- 
 ing the high school he was earning his living 
 as stable-boy for a doctor, and he kept this up 
 through the science course in the university. The 
 two boys used to take long walks Sunday after- 
 noons, the son of the swineherd repeating long 
 passages from "In Mernoriam" or "Hamlet" or 
 the whole of Gray's "Elegy." My son always 
 said that he found more enthusiasm for poetry 
 in this chum than in any other student. Well, 
 that boy is doubtless now trying to be a poet, 
 some reader has probably guessed. No; he fin- 
 ished his science and medical courses, and is now 
 a rising physician in a suburb of Milwaukee. 
 
 Axel Johnson was a Swede and a blacksmith 
 in the car shops at Waukesha. He was grown, 
 had an old mother to support, and was almost 
 illiterate ; but he longed for an education, for he 
 felt it his duty to preach the gospel. Entering
 
 A University for the People. 369 
 
 Carroll College Academy in the little boys' class 
 none of the rest much above his knees he fin- 
 ished the whole course in three years and became 
 an assistant teacher in the academy. He used in 
 those days to wheel the long distance from Wau- 
 kesha to Madison sixty miles to be examined 
 in the Greek he was reading under my direction. 
 But just before his graduation from the univer- 
 sity disease cut short a career of unusual promise. 
 In the fall of 1896 the Assistant Professor of 
 Greek told me of a freshman who read his Greek 
 with a sonorous swing which indicated that it 
 was sweet to his mouth and his ear. He was a 
 Norwegian, and was supporting himself in col- 
 lege. I taught him a while, and one day asked 
 him to stop after class. "Mr. A.," said I, "God 
 Almighty has done his part ; you can do the rest 
 you can be a Greek scholar, if you will." He 
 was a stalwart youth, and was asked to go on 
 the boat crew in his freshman year. When he 
 came to me about it, I said: "Well, you know 
 what generally happens ; when a man gets on one 
 of the varsity teams, it usually means good-by 
 to the highest scholarship." "I understand the 
 risk/' he said; "and I give you my word, if I 
 find my rowing interferes with my class stand- 
 ing, I will give it up." "If you can live up to 
 that resolution," I said, "you are safe; you can 
 24
 
 370 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 stay on the crew, and it will be a good thing for 
 you." He rowed all four years, was captain in 
 his senior year, and missed winning the race that 
 year only because of a floating berry-crate. He 
 was the best combination I have ever known of 
 high scholarship and athletic prowess, and his 
 health was superb. He made his way at the uni- 
 versity by tutoring and winning prizes and schol- 
 arships, took his Ph.D. at Harvard in 1903, was 
 sent to Europe on a traveling fellowship, and is 
 now in the faculty of Princeton University. 
 
 One September I w r ent on a tramp with three 
 members of the German department, the trio 
 furnishing further conspicuous proof that Amer- 
 ica is a haven of opportunity for foreigners. One 
 was a Saxon and head of the German depart- 
 ment the largest department of German in the 
 United States ; another a Bohemian and of re- 
 markable promise in comparative philology; the 
 third was a young Russian. The last was a 
 member of the senior class and making his way 
 by teaching German. He had never been in Ger- 
 many, but had learned the language in Milwau- 
 kee but who does not know that Milwaukee is 
 one of the most German cities of the world? 
 and is a proverb in the German department for 
 his accurate knowledge of the language. He 
 took Greek with me one year, and led all the
 
 A University for the People. 371 
 
 rest. Now he has charge of the German depart- 
 ment in the East Division High School, Milwau- 
 kee. He wants to earn money to enable him to 
 take a graduate course, and after a while he will 
 be, I predict, a professor in the university. 
 
 The examples cited above, if they may be ac- 
 cepted as typical, prove sufficiently that our State 
 University offers golden opportunities to young 
 men who have talent and diligence, and lack only 
 money; but how about young women? Not far 
 from Madison is a Norwegian rural community 
 that supports a good high school for farmers' 
 children, and there is always a strong delegation 
 from that community in the university. Two 
 girls from there in 1901 were cook and house- 
 maid, respectively, in the family of a law pro- 
 fessor. The year previous their brother had 
 graduated from the College of Law and, as pres- 
 ident of his class, had the duty of introducing 
 to the audience the orator of the day, Justice 
 Brewer, of the United States Supreme Court. 
 
 Mrs. said the two girls were out that day 
 
 in their best clothes, in a flutter of excitement at 
 the idea of seeing their brother (whom their 
 wages had helped through the university) intro- 
 duce to a university audience the great Wash- 
 ington jurist. It was indeed a unique situation, 
 such an event as could happen probably only in
 
 37 2 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 a western state university. One of these two 
 girls was the next year an applicant to the loan 
 fund committee, of which I was chairman, for 
 the scholarship which good Mrs. Doyon, of Madi- 
 son, when she went to heaven a few years ago, 
 left to help poor girls get a university education. 
 Her chief competitor was a young woman of 
 French name who was supporting herself by 
 manicuring among the girls. Both had good 
 class records, but were heavily handicapped by 
 having to devote so much time to self-support. 
 It was hard to decide between them, and both 
 got help. Later I was much pleased when I 
 met the young lady of French name doing ex- 
 cellent work as a teacher of history in a Wis- 
 consin high school. The same energy and buoy- 
 ancy that sustained her in her hard course of 
 study and self-support in the university makes 
 her now an attractive and successful high-school 
 teacher. 
 
 It was in 1900, I think, that I offered a motion 
 in faculty meeting just to get appointed on the 
 loan fund committee ; for I wanted to help one 
 of my pupils. She was a bright, good-looking 
 girl of German name, who had been earning her 
 way; that was honorable and did not discount 
 her in the university, but it took much valuable 
 time. She got the Doyon scholarship, graduated
 
 A University for the People. 373 
 
 a year or two later, and soon married, making the 
 most brilliant match that any university girl has 
 made in my time. It was a love match, too ; and 
 who will say that her success is less than that of 
 the young men who became professors and presi- 
 dents, governors and senators? 
 
 The conclusion of the whole matter is this: 
 Any boy or girl of brains and ambition can win 
 a college education these days. Alexander Ste- 
 phens helped fifty maybe it was a hundred and 
 fifty boys get an education, and that gave him 
 a clearer title to a kingdom in the skies than even 
 having been Vice President of the Confederacy 
 or the "Great Commoner" ; but it is still better 
 for boys and girls to help themselves. Williams 
 College had a big loan fund when I was there, 
 which \vas wisely administered for one had 
 to attain a certain class rank to be eligible for 
 help. But the men we have heard most about of 
 Williams students are such as James A. Garfield, 
 who drove a canal boat before going to Williams 
 College and drove other things at college. What 
 a satisfaction it must be to his spirit in the Ely- 
 sian fields, now that his son, Professor H. A. 
 Garfield, is called from a professorship in Prince- 
 ton to the presidency of Williams ! And his son, 
 Hon. James R. Garfield, is sure some day to be 
 talked of for the presidency of the nation.
 
 XVII. 
 
 FROM PROVINCIAL TO NATIONAL 
 FEELING. 
 
 ON January I, 1874, I reached Cambridge to 
 enter upon an advanced course in Harvard Uni- 
 versity. I had already received my first diploma 
 from Wofford College, and had earned the 
 money for the Harvard venture by teaching my 
 first and only school. The undertaking was a 
 considerable one for a youth of twenty-one who 
 had never been out of his own state. The selec- 
 tion of Harvard was due to the belief that it was 
 perhaps the foremost American institution of 
 learning, and to the fact that it was in the neigh- 
 borhood of Boston. 
 
 At a Southern college in those days a new 
 student generally sought first the president. 
 That was not the thing to do at Harvard ; but I 
 have always been glad 'that I did not know any 
 more than to call upon President Eliot, so kindly 
 did he receive me. I had been told when I first 
 sought him that he would be in at six o'clock, 
 but not that he would have company for dinner. 
 But he excused himself to his guests, received 
 me kindly, and gave me just the advice I needed 
 (374)
 
 From Provincial to National Feeling. 375 
 
 e. g., he sent me for my Greek to the young- 
 Frederic Allen, Professor Goodwin being then in 
 Italy. "What brought you to Harvard?" he 
 asked me. When I had given him some reasons, 
 he said : "I did not know but that the literary 
 reputation of the college might have drawn you. 
 Did you know that three-fourths of the foremost 
 authors of the country are graduates of Har- 
 vard?" 
 
 Some two weeks later President Eliot met me 
 in the street, recognized me immediately, and 
 asked how I was getting on ; then, "What stu- 
 dents have you met ?" I named Patton, of North 
 Carolina ; Primer, of New York ; Ivy, of Mis- 
 sissippi ; Savage, of New Hampshire ; etc. "I 
 congratulate you," said he, looking kindly down 
 upon me. "You have fallen in with some of the 
 best men we have." I have long since realized 
 that my student acquaintance select young men 
 from all quarters of the United States were al- 
 most as important a part of my development as 
 the men under whom I studied, though these 
 were Child, Lane, Allen, Everett, Anderson, 
 Bartlett. The general environment was not 
 without strong- influence upon me for instance, 
 that I saw daily, as I went from University Hall 
 to my room on Cambridge street, the house that 
 was birthplace and residence of Oliver Wendell
 
 376 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 Holmes; that I saw often the Washington elm, 
 the fine old colonial house that was then Long- 
 fellow's residence and had been General Wash- 
 ington's headquarters, and the Lowell elms. 
 
 It was not long before my chums, Kimber, of 
 Pennsylvania, and Warder, of Ohio, took me, 
 one Sunday evening, to hear John B. Gough in 
 Tremont Temple. I can still see and hear Gough 
 as he said on that occasion : "My father used to 
 drink his pint of Scotch whisky every day, and 
 he lived to be ninety-four; but his son could no 
 more drink moderately than he could shoot off 
 a powder magazine a little at a time." Sundays 
 were largely given by us three to hearing noted 
 men in Cambridge or Boston, and it was not 
 long before I heard in Tremont Temple another 
 temperance speech by a greater orator than 
 Gough. One of the first sentences of Wendell 
 Phillips on this second occasion was : "The 
 South would have whipped the North in one 
 year, if her generals hadn't been drunk; the 
 North would have whipped the South in two 
 years, if her generals hadn't been drunker." I 
 could still reproduce much of this speech. But 
 what impressed me most then and especially lin- 
 gers with me was the wonderful quality of Wen- 
 dell Phillips' voice ; it rang as clear and sounded 
 as sweet as the tone of a silver bell.
 
 From Provincial to National Feeling. 377 
 
 It was in that same Tremont Temple that I 
 heard that winter Charles Kingsley. I had 
 bought my ticket three weeks before, thinking 
 that all Boston would want to hear Kingsley, and 
 was somewhat surprised to find at the lecture 
 that perhaps a fourth of the seats had not been 
 taken. Presently one of the gentlemen on the 
 platform with Kingsley rose a spare man, with 
 thin face, clean-shaven except for the mustache, 
 and abundant hair. He came to the edge of the 
 platform and stood for several moments quietly 
 looking at the audience. I had never seen any- 
 thing quite so deliberate. "When I wrote 'The 
 Innocents Abroad,' " he finally said, "I rather ex- 
 pected to find favor with the clergy; but I have 
 never been called on before to perform for a 
 clergyman even so insignificant and unnecessary 
 a service as introducing Charles Kingsley." 
 
 Still another Tremont Temple incident stands 
 out in my memory not for what I heard, but 
 for what I did. It was, perhaps, on a Sunday 
 morning when Dr. Lorimer was to preach that 
 a negro man took a seat by me in the gallery. 
 He was as well dressed and doubtless as good a 
 man as I ; but he was black, and I rose instinct- 
 ively, as if shot up by springs in the cushion, and 
 landed in another place where white men were 
 already seated on each side. That incident re-
 
 378 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 calls another which happened a little before. I 
 had gone to inquire about room and board in 
 Divinity Hall. Information given by the matron 
 was satisfactory, but I thought I would make 
 further inquiries of a Mr. Grimke, whose name 
 I found registered in the hall from my native 
 state. That name belonged to one of the first 
 families in South Carolina, and the circle he 
 moved in ought to be an attractive one. I 
 knocked at his door; Mr. G. opened it, and he 
 was a mulatto. I felt like falling through the 
 floor, though I did not betray myself; but as I 
 went downstairs I called by the matron's office 
 to say that I would not take board at Divinity 
 Hall. Nowadays I should keep my seat, of 
 course, if a decent-looking black man sat down 
 by me in church ; but under the same circum- 
 stances I should probably still avoid Divinity 
 Hall. 
 
 Another one of the great occasions of that 
 winter was the Sunday evening when I first 
 heard Phillips Brooks, who used to preach once 
 a month for the Episcopal Divinity School in 
 Cambridge. I had never heard any human be- 
 ing speak so rapidly, and my first feeling was a 
 protest that such fine things should be poured 
 out in such a stream that his audience could not 
 possibly take all in. But the next moment I
 
 From Provincial to National Feeling. 379 
 
 was swept away by the torrent of his eloquence 
 and found it exhilarating, when once in full sym- 
 pathy with him, to ride on that rapid current. 
 The text was : "Hid with Christ in God." "They 
 tied him to a post," said the preacher, "and 
 scourged him, and imagined they were hurting 
 him. But it was as if men stood and flung water 
 at the stars. He was hid in God." 
 
 Another Sunday it was a female speaker that 
 impressed me Mrs. Livermore, the first woman 
 I ever heard preach. I marveled, as I sat in the 
 rear seat in a large church, that, though she 
 spoke in a conversational tone, every syllable 
 reached me with perfect distinctness. How sim- 
 ply and powerfully she drew a kindly lesson of 
 sympathy from the little hunchback she had seen 
 that morning, apparently sensitively aware that 
 every eye in the street car observed his de- 
 formity ! 
 
 But the most potent factor in my transition 
 from provincial to national feeling was the death 
 of Charles Sumner and the ceremonies attendant 
 thereon in Boston. "Now the slavery question 
 will be resurrected," I thought, "and I am going 
 to hear the other side." First there was a pre- 
 liminary meeting in Faneuil Hall before the dead 
 statesman's body reached Boston ; and among the 
 speakers were the Governor, General Banks,
 
 380 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 Phillips Brooks, and Edward Everett Hale. Sun- 
 day afternoon I heard Colonel Higginson give 
 a eulogy in Music Hall, and afterwards was car- 
 ried rather than walked in the great throng that 
 crowded into the statehouse to see the great 
 abolitionist, whose body lay in state, guarded by 
 negro soldiers. 
 
 Kimber and I went over to Boston to try to 
 hear Carl Schurz in the first formal official eulo- 
 gy. We knew that the tickets had all been long 
 exhausted, but Kimber suggested that the chief 
 of police might be able to help us. Captain Sav- 
 age received us as kindly as if that had been part 
 of his duty. "Mr. S.," said he, on hearing that 
 I was a South Carolinian, "you are the very man 
 that ought to hear this speech ; and if I could 
 get you in by working an hour, I'd do it. But 
 I can't do any more than anybody else. It's a 
 rainy day, however, and many who have received 
 tickets will not brave the weather. If you can 
 wait near the building till the audience is seated, 
 the doors will be thrown open and you will find 
 seats." But I had got out of bed with a bad 
 sore throat, and did not dare stand in the damp 
 so long, so I went home; but Kimber stayed and 
 found a good seat. 
 
 For the eulogy before the Legislature by 
 George William Curtis I was more fortunate.
 
 From Provincial to National Feeling. 381 
 
 Mr. Longfellow met my friend Kimber in the 
 street one day, and asked, "Do you think Mr. 
 S. would like to hear George William Curtis' 
 eulogy?" "Why, Mr. Longfellow," replied Kim- 
 ber, "S. would rather hear a good speech than 
 to eat." It should be stated, perhaps, that I had 
 come to know the poet without obtruding myself 
 on him. One day Kimber and I were reading 
 together in his room the "Medea" of Euripides, 
 when the servant brought up a card, saying that 
 the gentleman was waiting downstairs. "Would 
 you like to see Mr. Longfellow?" asked Kimber 
 in some excitement. "Of course," I replied. 
 "Then I'll ask him to come up here." Kimber 
 was impulsive and probably thought only of the 
 pleasure he would give me, not of the consider- 
 ation due the poet ; for the room was at once sit- 
 ting-room and bedroom, and there were only two 
 chairs. But Mr. Longfellow, who had stopped 
 on his walk to leave a note of introduction to 
 Whittier which he had promised to Kimber, came 
 up to the room and soon made us feel almost as 
 much at ease as if he had been still a student and 
 not America's most popular poet. The bed 
 served one of us two for a chair, and all embar- 
 rassment was quickly forgotten. When I ex- 
 pressed my pleasure at meeting him, saying, "I 
 was told not to come back to South Carolina un-
 
 382 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 less I had seen Mr. Longfellow," he kindly an- 
 swered, "Then you must come to see me"; and, 
 turning to Kimber at parting, he added, "You 
 know the way to my house; you must bring 
 Mr. S." 
 
 So Mr. Longfellow gave Kimber tickets for 
 himself and me, two of his three daughters (for 
 whom he had received them) being absent from 
 the city. We sat in the front gallery in Music 
 Hall, directly opposite the stage, and the young- 
 est Miss Longfellow pointed out to us the no- 
 tabilities, among them her father, Whittier, 
 Holmes, and Emerson seated together. I re- 
 member still a great part of the eulogy, but 
 nothing was more dramatic and effective than 
 the way in which the orator repeated : " 'But, 
 Mr. Sumner, remember there are two sides to 
 every question,' said the chairman of the dele- 
 gation. 'Gentlemen, to this slavery question 
 there can be no other side/ indignantly retorted 
 the Senator as he drew himself up to his great 
 height." 
 
 In all that I heard in connection with Sum- 
 ner's death there was less bitterness toward the 
 South than I had anticipated. I think nothing in 
 my whole experience ever did more to liberalize 
 me than the attempt to hear the other side of the 
 slavery question. Personally I was always treat-
 
 From Provincial to. National Feeling. 383 
 
 ed at least as well as if I had been a New Yorker 
 instead of a South Carolinian. A remark of Mr. 
 Longfellow's "The South should come to see 
 the North, the North go to see the South ; then 
 the war would be over" I realized to be not 
 only kindly, but true. I found my Appomattox 
 in Cambridge ; I had seen the enemy at home and 
 surrendered to kindness. I left Harvard still a 
 Southerner in feeling, yet more an American.
 
 XVIII. 
 
 FROM HARVARD TO LEIPZIG UNI- 
 VERSITY. 
 
 MY first definite impulse to go to Germany 
 was due to a remark made to me by Professor 
 Frederic D. Allen. Meeting me one morning 
 on the Harvard campus, he said : "Mr. Smith, 
 you must go to Germany ; if you want to be a 
 scholar, you must go to Germany." That was 
 all, but the idea lodged in my soul. The thought 
 had been the dream of my life ; now it rankled, 
 and I had no rest till it was settled that I was 
 to go to Germany. The possibility of it began 
 to take form when my friend Patton, one Sun- 
 day evening when we were going to take supper 
 with Professor and Mrs. Gurney, said to me: 
 "You can go to Germany just as well as you 
 can stay here ; it will not cost any more." He 
 had spent the period of his junior year in Eu- 
 rope, earning his way as he went, and I was so 
 much impressed by what he said that I wrote to 
 my father about it. His assurance soon came 
 that he would help me financially, and of course 
 I determined to go. 
 (384)
 
 From Harvard to Leipzig University. 385 
 
 It was the 27th of June, 1874, that Primer 
 and I steamed out of Boston harbor. We were 
 both bound for Leipzig, he to study modern lan- 
 guages, I ancient ; and after a very short stay in 
 London, we reached Leipzig July 13. There we 
 spent the summer studying German, so as to be 
 able to understand the lectures in the autumn. 
 The first exercise I attended in October was the 
 opening lecture by Professor Georg Curtius. The 
 large lecture room was full of students, and Bas- 
 kervill and I sat together. 
 
 That little incident indicates that I had en- 
 tered upon a larger life than even that at Har- 
 vard. Four young men from four different 
 states of the American Union happened to sit 
 side by side at the introductory lecture of a great 
 German professor. Each had crossed the ocean, 
 after a college course in America, to study in 
 the Fatherland. Thirst for knowledge and schol- 
 arly ambition were the guiding motives of all 
 four, and each was bound to be stimulated and 
 quickened by the presence and acquaintance of 
 the rest. It proved to be so. With Baskervill 
 whose acquaintance I had made that summer 
 I became more intimate than with anybody 
 else. We read daily in his room Greek and 
 Latin alternately all winter, and cemented a 
 friendship that lasted till his death, twenty-five 
 25
 
 386 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 years afterwards. A few days before his end his 
 wife read to him the newspaper announcement 
 of my almost fatal fall from a bicycle. "Write 
 to him at once/' he said. "It is the friendship 
 of a lifetime. Such things must not be neglect- 
 ed." The first letter I wrote after my recovery 
 was to express my sympathy for him in his ill- 
 ness ; but he died a few hours before it reached 
 him. He was right: "Such things must not be 
 neglected !" Our friendship had meant much to 
 both of us. Indeed, the whole course of both 
 lives might have been very different had we 
 never met. 
 
 Some of the Americans who had studied at 
 Leipzig before my day had left traditions behind 
 them. Some one told me that Frederic D. Allen 
 a month after his arrival in Germany could con- 
 verse with considerable ease in German. He was 
 remembered in the university as a young man 
 of great promise. It gave me, his sometime 
 pupil, a thrill of delight to hear an article of his 
 on the origin of the hexameter commended in 
 two different lecture rooms about the same time ; 
 and naturally he was glad to hear through me 
 that he had been referred to as an authority in 
 lecture rooms of the great university where he 
 had so recently sat as a student. Humphreys' 
 room was pointed out to me, and wonderful
 
 From Harvard to Leipzig University. 387 
 
 stories were told of his enormous diligence and 
 his scholarly acquirements. He had at this time 
 just been called to Vanderbilt University to be 
 its first Professor of Greek. It seems ridiculous 
 now to those who for more than thirty years 
 have admired Dr. Humphreys' wide and accu- 
 rate scholarship that he should have feared that 
 his thesis might be rejected, or he might be 
 "plucked" on his examination. But so it was. 
 When he had handed in the thesis he was in an 
 agony of suspense till one day, at the lecture of a 
 distinguished professor I think it w r as Ritschl 
 incidental reference was made to a dissertation 
 recently submitted for the doctor's degree which 
 contained a discussion of certain linguistic or 
 metrical phenomena that had impressed the pro- 
 fessor as new and highly important ; this, coupled 
 with the assurance that the dissertation would 
 undoubtedly soon be published. Humphreys al- 
 most fell out of his chair. The facts referred to 
 were in his own thesis, and this was the first he 
 had heard from it. When the lecture was over, 
 he walked about the city in great excitement; 
 and no wonder, for praise from Ritschl in a lec- 
 ture was praise indeed. Still he feared the final 
 oral examination, and did not let any of his 
 friends know that it was impending, but slipped 
 off one clay in full dress, one stands the Doctor-
 
 388 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 Examen in swallow-tail and white kids, and 
 only when it was over announced that he was 
 Doctor. That dissertation, by the way, was 
 epoche-machend, and, appearing partly as the 
 formal thesis, partly later in the form of metrical 
 papers in the "Transactions of the American 
 Philological Association," gave him at once un- 
 disputed rank as one of the foremost metricians 
 of America. Only last January (1907), at Wash- 
 ington, I heard a distinguished New York schol- 
 ar refer to Humphreys' metrical papers of the 
 later '/o's as showing profounder scholarship 
 than that of the great English scholar Monro. 
 
 Some little incidents connected with my own 
 examination for the doctorate are still fresh in 
 my memory. I too was afraid, even after my 
 thesis had been accepted, that I might be 
 "plucked" on examination ; and I too slipped 
 out of the house one afternoon, without telling 
 any of my fellow-boarders, to stand the ordeal 
 at Ritterstrasse 10. Between the acceptance of 
 the dissertation and the examination I had a 
 dream one night. I thought I was in the ex- 
 amination room, and the Prokanzellar was there 
 to preside; but the three examiners did not ap- 
 pear. The Prokanzellar talked pleasantly with 
 me, as he always did when I called at his office, 
 and a whole hour went by. I was nervous, but
 
 From Harvard to Leipzig University. 389 
 
 the Prokanzellar chatted kindly on. Finally, he 
 said : "Well, Mr. S., it is evident your examiners 
 have forgotten the appointment, and I shall have 
 to give you a written examination." I took pen 
 and paper, and he began : "First, discuss kohlen- 
 sanres Gas (carbonic acid gas) ; secondly, write 
 a history of the city of New York; thirdly" I 
 have forgotten what that was. I looked up in 
 despair; for my three subjects were to have been 
 history, Greek, and Latin. "I might write some- 
 thing," I said to him, "about the city of New 
 York ; but I do not know anything about carbon- 
 ic acid gas, and the third subject is new to me. 
 Besides, what could one write in an hour and a 
 quarter?" "I am sorry, sorry for you," said the 
 kind-hearted Prokanzellar ; "but those are my in- 
 structions." Then I awoke from a nightmare. 
 The next time I called on the Prokanzellar I told 
 him my dream; and he enjoyed it so much that 
 he told it to some of his colleagues in the Profcs- 
 soren-zimmer , causing much merriment. I still 
 have the formal official note of invitation to the 
 doctor-examination, with an unofficial postscript 
 from the genial Prokanzellar, saying: "And we 
 will hope that it will not come to carbonic acid 
 gas, after all." The day before the examination I 
 called upon my three examiners, as etiquette re- 
 quired. I had heard Hopkins' story of the ques-
 
 390 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 tion put to him about the locality of a certain 
 Greek MS. Professor Curtius had asked him: 
 "Where is the chief MS. of ^Eschylus and Soph- 
 ocles?" H. had paid no attention to that sort of 
 tb.ing ; but he remembered the Codex Venetus A 
 of the Iliad, and ventured the answer: "St. 
 Mark's/' "Why, no! Can't you recall it?" 
 risked the surprised Professor. Then H. calmly 
 replied : "Ich habe keine Ahmmg." Remembering 
 chat experience of H/s, I determined to throw 
 myself on Professor Lange's mercy. After I 
 had left him, I turned back from the antecham- 
 ber ancl said: "Herr Professor. I forgot to men- 
 Lion one thing that is on my mind." "What is 
 that?" he asked kindly. "I want to let you know 
 in advance that I do not know where the Latin 
 MSS. are; but I have Teuffel's 'History of Latin 
 Literature/ and I can turn to any MS. in a 
 moment. .So I didn't think it worth while to 
 stow them away in my brain." "Never mind, 
 Mr. S./' said the genial, blue-eyed old Professor, 
 slapping me kindly on the shoulder; "I don't 
 know where they are myself." Next I went to 
 Professor Georg Curtius. He had sent me 
 word by his famulus that he must see me that 
 clay ; so I was a little anxious. "Ah, it is noth- 
 ing," he said, "except that I have noticed lately 
 at the lectures that you seem pale and anxious.
 
 From Harvard to Leipzig University. 391 
 
 I just wanted to encourage you, and say there 
 is no need to be nervous about your examination. 
 It will be all over to-morrow night, anyway." 
 After that I don't know whether I walked home 
 or flew. I was excited, for I hit both sides of 
 the door as the servant let me out. 
 
 Of all the American successors of Allen and 
 Humphreys in my time, Bloomfield was general- 
 ly considered the ablest ; and his career at Johns 
 Hopkins the past twenty-five years has justified 
 all our anticipations. It was my privilege to sit 
 at the table with him for sixteen months, and I 
 have never known a man who could strike fire 
 on me quicker than he could. I sat at our host's 
 right, he diagonally across from me at our host- 
 ess' right; and generally at dinner he would 
 begin conversation by asking me: "Well, what 
 did Curtius say to-day?" I would begin to tell 
 him, often doubtless rather listlessly; for I was 
 usually fagged after two or more lectures. Pres- 
 ently he would object to some position Curtius 
 had taken, and before we were aware the debate 
 had waxed warm. Dinner would pass, dishes 
 would be removed, coffee would be brought in, 
 all would go ; and still Bloomfield and I talked 
 at each other across the table. Students have 
 told me in recent years of the great power of the 
 man, of his marvelous command of pure, choice,
 
 392 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 vigorous English, of the clearness of his ideas 
 and his forceful expression of them. I met him 
 last January in Washington for the first time 
 since the old Leipzig days. Twenty-five years 
 had passed since we met. He is now gray, and 
 I am bald ; but we were young again that night. 
 He was the same brilliant, genial fellow I had 
 known in '80- '8 1, and that wonderful eye has its 
 old power and charm. 
 
 In my two periods of study at Leipzig (1874- 
 75 and 18/9-81) I was thrown with such men 
 as the following: Baskervill, of Vanderbilt; 
 Phelan, shortly afterwards member of Con- 
 gress from Memphis ; N. C. Schaefer, recently 
 President of the National Educational Associa- 
 tion ; Samuel Ives Curtiss and Scott, of Chicago 
 Theological Seminary ; Casper Rene Gregory, 
 for many years now professor in Leipzig Uni- 
 versity ; Sihler, of Xew York University ; 
 Primer, of Texas University; Paul Cauer, the 
 Homeric scholar of Germany; Bloomfield, of 
 Johns Hopkins ; Carl Roethe, of Goettingen Uni- 
 versity ; Bristol, of Cornell ; Lyon, of Harvard ; 
 Green, of William-Jewell : Hopkins, of Yale ; 
 Smyth, of Harvard ; Birge, of Wisconsin 
 Genung, of Amherst: Latimer. of Davidson 
 Kerfoot, of the Louisville Theological Seminary 
 Ilberg and Wagner, whose names I run across
 
 From Harvard to Leipzig University. 393 
 
 often in German publications. It is association 
 with such men that makes potent influences for 
 development, and one should seek in his graduate 
 or university work the centers where such choice 
 spirits most congregate. They make the atmos- 
 phere that quickens the germ of scholarship, in 
 which it grows most vigorously and comes quick- 
 est to maturity.
 
 XIX. 
 
 CHEYNE ROW HOW DO LONDONERS 
 PRONOUNCE IT? 
 
 I AM an admirer of Thomas Carlyle, and on 
 my last visit to London made a pilgrimage to 
 Cheyne Row. It was a long distance from my 
 room in the neighborhood of the British Mu- 
 seum ; but who minds riding on the top of a 
 'bus through London streets, where "every step 
 is history"? and who doesn't like to ask direc- 
 tions of a London policeman ? The policeman 
 at Trafalgar Square, whom I asked for a 'bus 
 to Cheyne (SJulyuc) Row, was at a loss for a 
 moment, but when I mentioned "Carlyle's 
 house," he said, "Oh, you mean Chine Row." I 
 was a bit surprised, for I had my pronunciation 
 from one who had got his in London, he said. 
 He, too, was a Carlylean, and had read "Sartor" 
 seventeen times, carrying it around with him, 
 when a young Methodist circuit-rider, in the 
 breast-pocket of his coat, doubtless to keep it 
 safe from the eyes of his presiding elder. Any- 
 how the policeman put me on the right 'bus. 
 The rest was simple : I needed now r only to 
 (394)
 
 Cheyne Row Hotv to Pronounce It. 395 
 
 ask to be set down at the nearest point to Chine 
 Row. But the guard was puzzled till I said I 
 was seeking Carlyle's house, then he said: "Oh, 
 Chi-ne Row !" He let me off at the right place, 
 and I was soon at my goal. The matron gave 
 me full freedom of house and garden, for I 
 seemed to be the only visitor that rainy August 
 afternoon, and I could inspect at my leisure the 
 interesting relics and mementos of the Carlyles, 
 and read most interesting authentic documents, 
 such as Disraeli's autograph letter offering Car- 
 lyle the Grand Cross of the Bath, and the lat- 
 ter's dignified but grateful answer declining it. 
 The room of chief interest to me was, of course, 
 the sound-proof study at the top of the house, 
 where Carlyle could be at peace from the noise 
 of London, and whence he would descend when 
 he had read himself full, seat himself on the 
 floor in the sitting-room with his back against 
 the chimney-jamb, light his pipe, and pour out, 
 as it were molten lava from a volcano in erup- 
 tion, a flood of ideas upon Mrs. Carlyle. It was 
 a great afternoon but my story was about the 
 street-name, and I had still other experiences 
 with that. 
 
 Cheyne Row opens into Cheyne Walk, and 
 happily just as I entered the latter street a post- 
 man passed, whom I asked about the house
 
 396 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 where George Eliot died. He pointed it out 
 (No. 4), and went on to tell me of other historic 
 houses that I wanted to see, the sometime abode 
 of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (No. 16) and the 
 house where Turner died (No. 119). Indeed, 
 this postman's brain was a veritable storehouse 
 of information about Chelsean antiquities and 
 historic associations, and he was as ready to tell 
 it all as the Ancient Mariner. He was pleased 
 that I had just come from Carlyle's house, but 
 most kindly corrected my pronunciation of the 
 street-name. "We call it Chay-ne Row, sir." "You 
 would be interested, sir," he added, "to see Scots 
 come there sometimes and sit on the stoop and 
 shed tears about Carlyle." I should indeed have 
 been interested to see that, and I wondered what 
 Carlyle's ghost thought about it. But there were 
 other places to see ; so inventing some polite 
 excuse I moved on, and soon met with another 
 delightful bit of London courtesy. A man who 
 seemed to be a common laborer had pointed out 
 across the street the locality of Turner's house, 
 but I could not find either the number or the 
 memorial tablet. Observing my puzzled move- 
 ments, he crossed the wide muddy street and 
 pointed out the tablet hidden under the over- 
 hanging ivy. 
 
 But I was not yet through with the name
 
 Cheyne Row How to Pronounce It. 397 
 
 Cheyne Row. At the dinner table I was telling 
 rny experience with the policeman, the 'bus man, 
 and the postman, and asked: "How do you call 
 it, Mr. Hamilton?" He was a retired Indian 
 civil-service official, whom we all found most 
 agreeable and well informed. "Why, I should 
 say Chdne Row," he answered. The maid, who 
 was waiting at the table, was evidently disturbed 
 and uneasy, which was all explained when she 
 knocked at my door after dinner, to say: "Mr. 
 Hamilton doesn't know, sir; he's just back from 
 India; we call it Cheene Row." 
 
 Mr. Hamilton's pronunciation is the one given 
 of the name (though not of this particular 
 street) in the Century Dictionary, and the post- 
 man's is that given by Carlyle, "pronounced 
 Chainie Row," he writes to Mrs. Carlyle (see 
 Froude's "Life," ii. p. 249) ; but certainly Lon- 
 don is not agreed on the way to call it.
 
 XX. 
 
 THE PASTOR FOR ME. 
 
 ONE Sunday in the summer of 1893 I attend- 
 ed preaching with my host at a little "meeting- 
 house" in . Dr. , a superannuated 
 
 Methodist preacher, was in the pulpit. My rec- 
 ollection is that the sermon was good, but I espe- 
 cially remember the reading of the Scripture les- 
 son, the one hundred and fourth Psalm, which 
 had never seemed to me so beautiful as then. I 
 could think of only one other Methodist preacher 
 who could have read the lesson so well. The 
 whole service was edifying. When we were at 
 home again, I asked my host why such a preacher 
 had no regular charge. The reply was that he 
 was probably not equal any longer to the man- 
 agement of all the interests of an appointment, 
 the collection of money, the direction of all the 
 varied interests of a charge. But I thought then, 
 and I have thought ever since, that he was proba- 
 bly just about ripe and mellow enough, had had 
 just about experience enough of life to perform 
 the most essential part of a pastor's duty, the 
 caring for the souls of his people. He was old 
 (398)
 
 The Pastor for Me. 399 
 
 enough to know by experience the vanity of most 
 things, and there was in his voice a trace of the 
 joys and sorrows and disappointed hopes of the 
 past, of the consciousness that he belonged now 
 to the other world as much as to this, of a con- 
 stant making ready for the departure, of the 
 sweetness and sadness of "going home." And 
 that would make him truly a "shepherd of the 
 people." What is the management of all the 
 varied church machinery, the choir, the finances, 
 what is even the lengthening of the church roll, 
 compared with this? 
 
 I would choose for my pastor, then, rather an 
 old man than a young one ; indeed, I have now 
 fixed the ideal age at not less than sixty. I some- 
 what prefer that he should be of a grave and 
 dignified air, and at sixty he may wear this with- 
 out seeming consciously to have assumed it. I 
 still like to feel a reverence for my pastor, and 
 I have always found it easy to reverence gray- 
 haired dignity. The unselfishness that is apt to 
 go with gray-haired wisdom I should wish to 
 see combined with liberality of thought, with 
 sympathy for honest thinking, even for honest 
 doubt. I should want my pastor to have had wide 
 experience of men and of things ; to have had sor- 
 row as well as joy ; to have become enriched and 
 ripened and mellowed and sweetened by time and
 
 4OO Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 experience of God's dealing with men ; to 6e be- 
 yond the age when offices (bishoprics and such) 
 could appeal to his ambition ; to be old enough to 
 have religion, and to know that religion is not 
 statistics, so that he would hesitate even to count 
 up the conversions he had been instrumental in 
 making. ''Pure religion and undefiled before 
 God and the Father is this, To visit the father- 
 less and the widows in their affliction, and to keep 
 himself unspotted from the world." 
 
 "My dear sir, such sermons feed me !" Dr. Gar- 
 land used to say but not often after he had 
 heard a good gospel sermon spoken with power, 
 simplicity, and absence of thought of self. But 
 I never heard him say that of a very young man's 
 sermon. Since writing that last sentence, some 
 months ago, I have tried to recall the sermons 
 that made an abiding impression on me. I re- 
 member that I was pleased at the time with this 
 or that young man's sermon,, but nothing has 
 stuck in my mind. It is the sermons of older 
 men that wrote themselves on the tablets of my 
 heart, and this. I am sure, because they were 
 parts of the authentic experience of a human soul. 
 They grew up in another soul, were transplanted 
 into my soul, and lived. The thoughts they em- 
 bodied were not cuttings or blossoms like the 
 vases or flowerpots which for a Sunday adorn
 
 The Pastor for Me. 401 
 
 the chancel, but they were roots torn from the 
 heart of a man. Good sermons are growths, as 
 other good things are apt to be, and if I am wise 
 I shall not expect too many of them from my 
 pastor in a year ; for most men cannot grow many 
 good sermons in a single year. 
 
 But it is fair to insist that, though my pastor 
 may not preach a good sermon every Sunday, he 
 shall be able to read well the Scripture lessons 
 every Sunday. What I want is not elocution in 
 the pulpit ; all I ask is that he feel profoundly the 
 great passages of Scripture, and by his voice in- 
 terpret to me what he sees and feels therein. 
 Ought not the man who has not only borne his 
 own burdens and sorrows, but has shared those 
 of whole congregations for many years, to be 
 able to interpret God's promises and consolations 
 in that way? 
 
 In the Sunday morning responsive reading not 
 long ago two voices near by drew my attention. 
 The one was the voice of a young, strong, healthy 
 man, a good singer, and it had a clear, metallic 
 ring about it, indicating perhaps a degree of sat- 
 isfaction with the reading. This voice did not 
 dwell on any particular words in a way that would 
 hint at a soul-experience. But the man who held 
 the book with me surprised me. I would not 
 have guessed from his looks that he would read 
 26
 
 4O2 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 well. It was the thirty-fourth Psalm, and when 
 the word "troubles" was reached his voice un- 
 consciously betrayed that he had suffered and 
 been made sweet by sorrow. "O taste and see 
 that the Lord is good," the young man read with 
 a sort of bugle-call utterance ; but the older man's 
 tones unconsciously revealed that when sorrow 
 had compassed him about, the Lord had deliv- 
 ered him out of all his troubles. 
 
 But it is not my pastor's preaching or reading 
 that I am chiefly concerned about. I want him, 
 above all things, to have religion, and to live it. 
 "Have I not made before you for fifteen years 
 that loudest of all professions, a godly life?" said 
 Dr. Garland, just once, in a Samuel-like strain 
 to the students ; and the effect \vas overwhelming, 
 because no one could gainsay it. What the world 
 wants, above all things, is to see religion lived. 
 The preacher without religion may fill the pews 
 and even the aisles for a while ; but they will not 
 stay filled, certainly not with the same people. 
 Religion, according to my theory, must be main- 
 ly a gradual experience and a growth, and this 
 again is a reason why I want my pastor to be 
 sixty or more years of age. 
 
 Dr. Garland, though a layman, seemed to have 
 as many of the qualities I would have in my pas- 
 tor as any man I have ever known well. He was
 
 The Pastor for Me. 403 
 
 unselfish ; he did not seek honors, though they 
 sought him ; he seemed not to be moved by men's 
 applause, though their sympathy was precious to 
 him. Rectitude was a habit with him; his faith 
 in God was simple as a child's, and his daily 
 conduct was directed by this sincere and simple 
 faith. 
 
 I met a few years ago, just for a day, a man 
 who interested me much. He was an Episcopal 
 clergyman, growing old, frail of body, and with a 
 spiritual face. I inferred from casual remarks 
 for he said nothing directly about his past life 
 that he had held important pastorates ; but now 
 he had no church, was simply acting as chaplain 
 at a boys' school, and teaching odd classes in Lat- 
 in and English. It was evident that he was being 
 "laid on the shelf." But the remarkable thing 
 was that, though his heart seemed to open to me, 
 as mine did to him, and we became friends in 
 an evening, he never once complained. It is per- 
 haps the hardest thing in the world to be "laid 
 on the shelf" before one's time, and yet not to 
 murmur, not to be soured, but sweetened by it. 
 How the gentle Jesus must love to dwell in the 
 heart of a man like that ! What a pastor was 
 there, what a shepherd for weary, hungry souls, 
 if men could only have seen it !
 
 XXI. 
 
 THE PLAIN PROSE OF LIFE IN THE 
 SMOKY MOUNTAINS. 
 
 IF one wishes to know how the people of these 
 mountains live, he must take a light knapsack 
 and set out on foot among them, prepared to 
 take things as they come in the most literal 
 sense to "rough it." "Cade's Cove," which 
 stretches along by the side of the Great Smoky 
 Mountains from the foot of "the Bald" where 
 "Pa'son" Kelsey used to pray, almost to "Thun- 
 der Head/' around which were enacted the 
 scenes of "In the Clouds," is said to contain the 
 most original people those who have been least 
 influenced by the civilization beyond the moun- 
 tains. And my first tramp to the Great Smokies, 
 in July, 1885, was devoted to just this section. 
 
 Readers of "The Harnt that Walks Chilhow- 
 ee" are surprised to find that the long moun- 
 tain ridge of Chilhowee is covered with a dense 
 growth of timber from one end to the other, and 
 totally uninhabited, so that Peter Giles' farm is 
 as pure a myth as is the stream near his house 
 which "outstripped the wind" on its way to the 
 (404)
 
 Life in the Smoky Mountains. 405 
 
 valley, or the possibility of red apples on the 
 summit in June. The mountaineers in all this 
 region dwell in the valleys or "coves," only 
 herders staying from spring until fall, with their 
 cattle on the heights. Now and then a herder 
 takes his family to live with him on the Smokies, 
 and, being too poor to come down, spends the 
 winter there. But usually the herder is unen- 
 cumbered by family, and lives during the herd- 
 ing season in the utmost pastoral simplicity. A 
 rude log cabin, with chimney of sticks and mud, 
 no window, and only one door which but for 
 the cold would never be shut, as it is never 
 locked suffices to house him at night and in 
 storms. He literally keeps open house, and the 
 traveler or tramp soon learns that he may with 
 perfect impunity take possession of the castle in 
 the absence of the lord, and cook, eat, sleep there 
 without fear of being considered an intruder. If 
 the tramp has not brought provisions of his own, 
 the herder generously invites him to share his 
 board, as he does his bed (the floor), and can 
 rarely be induced to take any pay. Especially is 
 this the case in the region of Cade's Cove, where 
 the tradition prevails that it is mean to charge 
 for hospitality. I well remember the self-con- 
 demnatory look of a big, barefoot mountaineer, 
 who, having been persuaded to take in payment
 
 406 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 for lodging (on the floor, it is true), three meals, 
 and an extra pone of bread for lunch, a quarter 
 of a dollar, called after us, as if compounding 
 with his conscience : "Boys, ef you-uns cross the 
 mountain 'bout dinner-time, you better come by 
 an' git yer dinner ; you-uns hain't got the wuth 
 o' yer quarter yit." 
 
 Cross a mountain from Cade's Cove and you 
 are in Tuckaleechee, the valley immortalized by 
 "Mis' Purvine" and her steer "Buck," well re- 
 membered by all as two of the chief characters 
 of "In the Clouds." Follow that same "Little 
 River" in which Mink Lorey was drowned at 
 last, deep into the spurs of the Smoky Moun- 
 tains, and there, several miles from anywhere, 
 you will find the cabin of "Black" Bill Walker. 
 Rather we should call it a "settlement," for there 
 are four cabins and a little corn-mill. We were 
 guided to "Black" Bill's by "Devil" Sam Walker, 
 a distant relative of his ; and it may be mentioned 
 that such complimentary nicknames are not un- 
 common in that region, especially among the 
 numerous Walker family, whose great ancestor 
 "had fit with Gin'ral Jackson at New Orleans," 
 and was known as " 'Sassy' Jack Walker, the In- 
 dian fighter." Only a half-grown boy was vis- 
 ible as we crossed the foot-log which spanned 
 the noisv mountain stream before the house and
 
 Life in the Smoky Mountains. 407 
 
 approached the cabin. "H'y're, Mose, are you 
 stout?" saluted "Devil" Sam. "Yes, I'm stout," 
 said Mose; "are you stout?" "Whar's 'Black' 
 Bill?" "He's huntin' bees." Sam went to the 
 door of the house and spoke to a pale, thin, 
 sad-visaged woman, who seemed never to have 
 smiled, and was too timid to give us a greeting. 
 
 Soon "Black" Bill came, the most striking- 
 looking man in the mountains. He is a white 
 man of pure blood, but hair and beard are jet 
 black, his complexion swarthy of course, and 
 hence his nickname. He stood at least six feet 
 in height, weighed over two hundred pounds, 
 and had that free, independent, commanding air 
 that might have made him in troublous times a 
 mountain chief. A tall, fleet-footed, and not un- 
 handsome young mountaineer had met us not far 
 from the house. There was a trace of melan- 
 choly in his face, and he was more demon- 
 strative than mountaineers usually are to the 
 little child that presently climbed into his lap. 
 Directly a young, dark-haired woman, evidently 
 "Black" Bill's daughter, emerged from the house 
 with a pail in her hand, and we had seen the 
 chief figures in a recent domestic tragedy. The 
 young woman had recently played the role of 
 Helen of old ; her Paris had been killed within 
 a few weeks at a log-rolling in another county,
 
 408 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 and she and her Menelaus were both again under 
 her father's roof. In a day or two they went 
 back together to their own cabin. Nor was that 
 all. The boy Mose bore the relation of Meges 
 to the sad-visaged Theano in the house, his own 
 mother occupying a cabin a hundred yards away. 
 Thus much we learned afterwards of the morals 
 of this isolated mountain family. 
 
 Amid such surroundings the boy Mose was 
 not likely to worry much over his birth, but fate 
 seemed to have been harsh toward him other- 
 wise, for he was too weakly ever to become a 
 huntsman, and too far from civilization to learn 
 to read. "I wish you'd read some," he said, as 
 he saw a book in my hand. I read to him "The 
 Dancing Party at Harrison's Cove," and his 
 eager, hungry eyes haunt me still. But his only 
 comment was: "I wish you had a United States 
 history; I'd git you to read me some 'bout the 
 war." 
 
 As we followed, the next day, "Black" Bill 
 and "Devil" Sam still farther into the wilderness, 
 we could not help admiring the alert sense and 
 acute observation of these famous huntsmen. 
 Not a medicinal shrub seemed to escape their 
 notice, their ears caught every sound, and they 
 were on the alert for the deadly rattlesnake with 
 eyes, ears, and nose ; for, they say, they can smell
 
 Life in the Smoky Mountains. 409 
 
 a rattlesnake when he is mad. But . for their 
 nicely trained senses it would seem that bare- 
 footed mountaineers would be often bitten by 
 rattlesnakes, even though they are sluggish rep- 
 tiles. Surely, these swift, sure-footed, keen- 
 eyed mountaineers were wonderful scouts dur- 
 ing the war, one would think. But no. As 
 we lay that night on the ground in the still- 
 ness of the primeval forest, under cover of a 
 rude shelter of bark, they told their experience 
 "endurin' the war." They had sympathized 
 with the Union side, they had fed and guided 
 "Parson" Brownlow when he took refuge in 
 the mountains, and they had aided deserters 
 from the Confederate army. But though "Black" 
 Bill "didn't vally his life more'n five cents in the 
 times o' the w T ar," so much so that he had once, 
 Putnam-like, crawled into a bear's den and shot 
 the bear, he had hid out rather than fight on 
 either side. "I thought I could take keer o' my- 
 se'f," said he ; and so the majority of the men in 
 the mountains thought. 
 
 Our guide on this trip, "Devil" Sam, was 
 something of a character and apt to be amusing 
 when he was not posing. For instance, when 
 "Uncle Bob McCampbell," the late local Her- 
 cules, was mentioned, Sam said, "He could 'a' 
 fit Samson ef he'd 'a' jes' give up the jawbone
 
 4io Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 o' the ass." And he didn't mean to be funny 
 when, apropos of a woman's statement that "the 
 baby was bad with a bealin' on its neck," he said, 
 "Bealin's never does come jest at the right place. 
 You could pick a better place jest half a' inch 
 f'om wher they comes ev'y time." But it was 
 evident when he visited the hotel that he was try- 
 ing always to say smart things, especially in the 
 presence of a New Orleans lady, who he fan- 
 cied was going to write a book ; and, indeed, he 
 naively remarked to her one day, after telling 
 her that some Cincinnati ladies had painted his 
 picture and placed it on exhibition at the Cin- 
 cinnati Exposition, that he "would like ter be in- 
 terjuced to New Orleans/' But, of course, it 
 was only when he was off his guard and most 
 serious that he began to be really amusing. 
 "Niggers has giv' a power o' interruption sence 
 the war," said he as we trudged along ; "it would 
 be better ef they was all in Africa. But I tell 
 you I don't let none of 'em sass me ; ef they 
 bothers me I jes' tips with a rock an' knocks 
 'em down." "Are there many negroes about 
 here, Mr. Walker?" "No, thar's only one in 
 Tuckaleechee. He was brung f'om way down at 
 Atlanta, an' he's stayed hyer an' larned to go 
 slow. Our boys wouldn't take nuthin' offen a 
 nigger. They'd kill him in a minit." It was a
 
 Life in the Smoky Mountains. 411 
 
 relief to know that practically there were no ne- 
 groes for the boys to kill ; but Sam was doubtless 
 correct about the sentiment of the cove. And 
 yet these men had mostly sympathized with the 
 Northern side in the war. 
 
 In the mountain air one soon learns how it was 
 the Homeric heroes could eat so much and so 
 often ; but even an atmosphere that is in itself a 
 tonic cannot brace a man always against the ever- 
 lasting sameness of diet and ill-cooking that pre- 
 vail ; so that the mountaineer complains much of 
 his liver, and in the summer fever is common. 
 But the lot of the women is hardest. Born in 
 a hut, living in a hut, rarely going five miles 
 from the hut, their life is monotony itself an 
 endless round of cooking, washing, weaving, 
 spinning, as well as field work. And besides 
 constant toil and no recreation, they have the 
 usual poor folks' blessing "children an heepe." 
 I stayed one night at a house where twelve chil- 
 dren blessed the seventeen-year union of the 
 heads of the house ; and heard of four women in 
 the adjoining cove the sum of whose bairns was 
 sixty-one ! No wonder they become prematurely 
 aged, as Miss Murfree so truly described them. 
 Then there is the "dipping" habit, so common 
 that one rarely sees a woman, young or old, 
 without the "dip-stick" in her mouth, to say
 
 412 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 nothing of smoking and even chewing tobacco, 
 which are not uncommon. There may be such 
 quick-witted, sharp-tongued women in the moun- 
 tains as Mrs. Ware or Mrs. Purvine, but we 
 found them generally as slow of speech as they 
 are barren of ideas. 
 
 Times are better than they used to be with the 
 mountaineers,, for the days of "moonshine whis- 
 ky" are over, and the men are temperate, be- 
 cause they can't get anything to drink. In all 
 my tramps during two summers I never saw a 
 drunken man. "It is hard to get four miles from 
 a schoolhouse now, even in the mountains," as 
 a mountaineer remarked; and the four-mile law 
 is in force all through that section. 
 
 In religious matters, too, there is progress. 
 The primitive or "foot-washing" Baptists still 
 have their churches in the mountain coves, where 
 their shepherds feed their flocks on sound and 
 fury and nonsense; but the missionary Baptist 
 and the circuit-rider follow steadily in the wake 
 of the schoolmaster, and the sect that believes in 
 ignorance is already doomed.
 
 XXII. 
 
 HOMERIC QUALITIES IN THE GREAT 
 SMOKY MOUNTAINS. 
 
 "WHO art thou of the sons of men, and 
 whence?" That was the inevitable and natural 
 question asked of a stranger in Homer. It is 
 the way with primitive folk everywhere, doubt- 
 less, and the men of the Great Smoky Mountains 
 are no exception. If you meet a mountaineer 
 in the big road, he says: "Good mornin'. What 
 mought your name be?" One day, as I and 
 my fellow-tramps were trudging along the road 
 to Thunderhead, I saw a mountaineer coming, 
 and said: "When that man asks my name, I am 
 going to answer, 'Smith' nothing more and 
 see what he will do." It was the wittiest thing 
 I ever did or said. Sure enough, the lank, 
 barefoot covite greeted me and asked : "What 
 mought your name be?" "Smith," I answered, 
 and looked as if I had told all there was to be 
 told. The man looked puzzled. He stopped and 
 stood a while, marked with his big toe in the 
 sand, sat down by the roadside and thought over 
 it. then arose and walked on. I had evidently 
 
 (413)
 
 414 Homeric Qualities in the Mountains. 
 
 hurt his feelings; but he couldn't resent it, for 
 with a cheerful face I had told him all he asked. 
 That is the way when you meet a man in the 
 big road ; but when you call at the mountaineer's 
 house, the Homeric parallel is still more striking. 
 When Telemachus and Mentor arrived at sandy 
 Pylos, they found old Nestor and his son and 
 around him his company, making a feast; and 
 the old man made them welcome. After they had 
 eaten, he said : "Now is the better time to inquire 
 of the strangers who they are, now that they have 
 had their delight of food. Strangers, who are 
 ye?" So it was with Odysseus at the palace of 
 Alcinous; with Telemachus and Pisistratus at 
 the palace of Menelaus, in Sparta ; with Odys- 
 seus at the hut of Eumseus, the swineherd; and 
 everywhere else in Homer. The guest was never 
 questioned till he had eaten. That was Homeric 
 etiquette. Just so it was when I visited "Black" 
 Bill Walker, who lived in a cove in the inner- 
 most recesses of the Smoky Mountains a little 
 valley occupied by just four families and accessi- 
 ble only on foot or horseback or with a wooden 
 "slide." "Devil" Sam Walker, a connection of 
 "Black" Bill's, accompanied me; and supposing 
 that he had told our host all about me, I said 
 nothing about my name or my business. We 
 were "hospitably entreated," and after dinner
 
 Homeric Qualities in the Mountains. 415 
 
 "Black" Bill took us trout-fishing. On the 
 way he had to address me by name, and said 
 apologetically: "You know you hain't told me 
 your name yit." I quickly excused my breach 
 of etiquette, and thought of old Homer's way. 
 
 I found other Homeric traditions prevailing in 
 this mountain cove. There was a deserted cabin, 
 and "Devil" Sam told us the story. "Black" 
 Bill's daughter was the mistress of it, but this 
 Helen had deserted her Menelaus and run off 
 with a backwoods Paris. The latter had lost his 
 life at a log-rolling in a neighboring county so 
 report said, but "Devil" Sam intimated that Men- 
 elaus probably knew better how this Paris came 
 to his death and the mountain Helen was back 
 under her father's roof. So was her Menelaus. 
 They never spoke to each other ; but no resent- 
 ment was apparent in his manner, and, as 
 "Devil" Sam predicted, the pair were soon to- 
 gether again in the little cabin, just as Telema- 
 chus, in the fourth book of the "Odyssey," found 
 Menelaus and Helen in the palace at Sparta. 
 
 Nor yet is Homeric parallel exhausted in 
 "Black" Bill's little domain. Menelaus had a .son 
 "strong Megapenthes, born of a slave wom- 
 an ; for the gods no longer showed seed to 
 Helen from the day that she bare a lovely child, 
 Hermione, fair as golden Aphrodite." And in
 
 4i 6 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 "Black" Bill's house we found a boy of fifteen, 
 son of Bill's "other woman" "Devil" Sam told 
 us who lived in a cabin across the creek, two 
 hundred yards away. The situation was as quiet- 
 ly accepted by "Black" Bill's wife as in the fami- 
 ly of a Homeric hero or Hebrew patriarch. 
 
 It was part of the religious duty of the Ho- 
 meric man to show hospitality to inoffensive and 
 helpless strangers, and it was the function of 
 Zeus Xenios to see that the wayfarer was "kindly 
 entreated." Natural primitive human instinct 
 insures hospitality for the stranger among the 
 mountaineers. We found it so on many occa- 
 sions. For example, on the "Little Bald" there 
 was a single herder's cabin. The herder was the 
 poorest man I ever saw. His house was a one- 
 room log hut, occupied by himself, his wife, three 
 little children the baby in a dugout cradle and 
 a mother-in-law. The wife was in the kitchen 
 in the yard, cooking something for us to eat, and 
 the herder and his mother-in-law sat in the cabin 
 and heard us talk. Two of the three chairs were 
 occupied by my companion and myself, the moth- 
 er-in-law sat in the third, and the herder on the 
 floor. Two wretched frames covered with ragged 
 bedclothes were the only other furniture. But 
 what listeners they were! They had Homeric 
 ears, and were as glad to hear our news from
 
 Homeric Qualities in the Mountains. 417 
 
 the great world outside their mountains as Eu- 
 mseus, the swineherd, hung upon the tale of his 
 unrecognized master, Odysseus, who had "wan- 
 dered far and wide and seen the towns and 
 learnt the mind of many men." "Even as when 
 a man gazes on a singer whom the gods have 
 taught to sing words of yearning joy to mortals, 
 and they have ceaseless desire to hear him so 
 long as he will sing, even so he charmed me sit- 
 ting by me in the halls." This was the effect 
 upon Eumaeus. We had not the gift of speech 
 of the Homeric hero; but nearly all that was 
 happening in the world was absolutely new to the 
 herder and his mother-in-law, and they sat and 
 listened and chewed tobacco and spat through 
 a crack in the floor. We did not need to in- 
 vent any marvelous stories. It was July 29, 
 1885, and our host had not heard who had been 
 inaugurated President in the preceding March. 
 He had voted in November, and knew that Gro- 
 ver Cleveland was said to have won, but "had 
 hyeard that Elaine was a fightin' kind o' feller, 
 an' thought he mought not have giv' up." The 
 food set before us was only potatoes, bacon, 
 beans, and buttermilk all their scanty store 
 but the herder kept saying: "Boys, hit's mighty 
 rough ; but ef you-uns kin stan' it, you're 
 mighty welcome." And when we offered pay, 
 27
 
 418 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 he was hurt. "I've hyeard my daddy say," he 
 remarked, "he never tuk nuthin' in his life for 
 no vittles, an' I'm not gwine to take none no- 
 ther. Hit's mighty rough, but you're mighty 
 welcome." The last thing we heard as we dis- 
 appeared up the mountain side was: "Boys, ef 
 you don't find t'other cabin, come back here an* 
 spen' the night. Hit's mighty rough, but ef you- 
 uns kin stan' it, you're mighty welcome." It 
 was "mighty rough," but the simple, sincere hos- 
 pitality was Homeric. If I could have such at- 
 tention from my students of Homer, I might talk 
 myself to death. 
 
 Two days later, in Tuckaleechee Cove, we 
 called at Squire Lawson's for dinner on Sunday. 
 He was postmaster and chief of the Republican 
 faction. Squire Sparks, with whom we had 
 spent the night before, was chief of the Demo- 
 cratic faction. His fare was not up to the repu- 
 tation of his house, and he had charged us fifty 
 cents. After dinner at Squire Lawson's, which 
 was abundant and toothsome and wholesome, I 
 remarked: "Squire, if you are willing, I believe 
 we'll stay till morning." "I wish you would stay 
 a week," he answered. The next morning, when 
 I offered to pay, he quickly made me feel guilty 
 of bad manners in trying to pay for hospitality 
 so freely bestowed. At the Democratic Squire
 
 Homeric Qualities in the Mountains. 419 
 
 Sparks' we had not enjoyed the food, and had 
 slept in a feather bed in a long room, lined its 
 whole length with other beds full of occupants. 
 At Squire Lawson's, besides the well-cooked 
 food, we had a small shed-room all to ourselves. 
 As we shook hands at parting, the Squire said: 
 "I wish you would come again and stay three 
 weeks." "Men should lovingly entreat the pres- 
 ent guest and speed the parting," says Homer. 
 Squire Lawson, who had never heard of us till 
 the day before, had acted exactly in that spirit. 
 Is it strange that the South Carolinian and the 
 Texan who trudged away felt that they would 
 vote the Republican ticket if they lived in Tuck- 
 aleechee Cove ? 
 
 In August, 1892, we had tramped from Thun- 
 derhead to Clingman's Dome, and had come at 
 evening to the last ascent of the peak and found 
 another party who hospitably invited us to share 
 the wild turkey they were eating for supper and 
 the shack they had constructed for the night. 
 Next morning their guide, Mat Massey, used 
 his large pocketknife to turn the bacon frying for 
 breakfast, which naturally suggested the Homeric 
 hero using the same machaira or dirk to carve 
 bread or meat in camp which he had worn in 
 battle for use against his enemy when it came to 
 close quarters. And when Mat Massey told us
 
 420 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 afterwards that the blade of this very knife was 
 the same with which his brother had killed a 
 man, we realized that the parallel with the Ho- 
 meric dirk was closer still, though we had a grue- 
 some feeling about the bacon turned with this 
 murderous blade. 
 
 The following Sunday morning, as we were 
 going under Mat Massey's guidance from the 
 Smokies to the Balsams, we came upon a little 
 farmhouse in a clearing. In front of the corn- 
 crib sat a youth and a maiden, evidently court- 
 ing. "Well, human nature is the thing!" 
 
 sententiously observed Mat. He was as innocent 
 of any intention to utter any Homeric sentiment 
 as his knife was of doing the work of a Homeric 
 dirk. But Homer meant the same thing when, 
 in a famous simile, he said: "Like youth with 
 maiden, as youth and maiden hold dalliance one 
 with another from oak tree or from rock." 
 
 We learned that one of Mat's brothers was 
 somewhere in hiding from the law, having killed 
 a man who had stolen his wife's affections. In 
 most parts of the civilized world there would 
 have been a divorce, but in the Smoky Mountains 
 it was as it would have been in Homeric Greece. 
 A day or two later, as we began the ascent of 
 the Caney Fork Balsam, the guide pointed out 
 to us the spot in the road where Grant Massey
 
 Homeric Qualities in the Mountains. 421 
 
 had shot on the first Sunday in July the despoiler 
 of his home; and a little later we saw seated be- 
 fore her cabin the wife ''Helen of the Balsams," 
 we might call her whose faithlessness had 
 brought death to her lover and outlawry to her 
 husband. A glance at that simple mountain wom- 
 an's plain face could detect neither a sense of the 
 enormity of her crime nor any incentive for con- 
 duct like that of the Trojan Paris. 
 
 These Smoky Mountains people have never 
 heard of Homer, but they have Homeric that 
 is, simple, primitive ways. The women still 
 wash their clothes at the spring or in the brook, 
 like Nausicaa, and card and spin and weave 
 did twenty years ago, at least like Penelope and 
 Helen, and just as the Greek peasant women do 
 at Argos or Olympia to-day. Even in the dia- 
 lect of the people one is often reminded of Ho- 
 meric speech. For example, the mountaineers 
 say not simply "doctor" or "widow," but "doctor- 
 man," "widow-woman," "cow-brute," "apple- 
 fruit," just 'as the Homeric man three thousand 
 years ago spoke of a "healer-man," a "widow- 
 woman," a "lady-mistress," a "master-lord." 
 
 The Homeric parallels are not yet exhausted, 
 but perhaps the reader's patience is. When I 
 was at Vanderbilt, in my golden age, I used in 
 the summer vacations to be overcome with a
 
 422 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 longing to get back to nature, to go to the Smoky 
 Mountains, and in the exhilarating atmosphere 
 of the high peaks and among the mountaineers 
 become hungry and healthy and happy again. 
 "The hills from whence cometh my help" had a 
 new meaning for me at such times. I felt the 
 spirit of Homer and the Old Testament best un- 
 der such conditions. Matthew Arnold, in his 
 poem, "The Future," asks : 
 
 Who can see the green earth any more 
 
 As she was by the sources of Time? 
 
 Who imagines her fields as they lay 
 
 In the sunshine, unworn by the plough ? 
 
 Who thinks as they thought, 
 
 The tribes who then roamed on her breast, 
 
 Her vigorous, primitive sons? 
 
 My heart always answers: "The Great Smoky 
 Mountains is the place, and the mountaineers 
 are earth's vigorous, primitive sons." "I am a 
 brother to dragons and a companion to owls," 
 groaned Job in his misery. Tom Husky felt 
 well and happy when he said : "There ain't no 
 danger in a painter or a bear less'n they've got 
 young. I was raised among 'em, an' I know." 
 And "Devil" Sam, who could smell a live rattle- 
 snake if it was mad, indicated a still closer sym- 
 pathy with animals in his remark : ''Rattlesnakes 
 ain't half as bad as thev're recomminded to be."
 
 Homeric Qualities in the Mountains. 423 
 
 At their best and at their worst these people are 
 close to nature. 
 
 But all that happened twenty years ago, and 
 I am too far from the Smokies or any other 
 mountains to get there easily now ; and perhaps 
 I have unconsciously idealized even the Smoky 
 Mountains and see it all in a golden haze, as I 
 see Vanderbilt and Nashville, with the winding 
 river and the rolling hills.
 
 XXIII. 
 FROM ROAN TO MITCHELL. 
 
 ROAX is an easy climb to "one well girt," prce- 
 cinctus, as Horace puts it, and in good time the 
 greater part of the ten miles lay behind us, and 
 the character of the timber indicated that the 
 summit of the ridge was near. But just then a 
 cloud swept down upon us, "and the floods came 
 and the winds blew," and the darkness was so 
 great that one could not see thirty steps ahead. 
 But at last the great white hotel "Cloudland" 
 loomed up only fifty yards away. The mercury 
 stood at fifty-four degrees at 4:30 P.M., and the 
 big fire in the broad fireplace was comfortable 
 even to those who were not as wet as we. 
 
 Here was a bright prospect for a tramp. It 
 looked as if it might be raining all over the 
 world, and there seemed no hope of its ending. 
 The proprietor and the guests told us of the 
 storm of the night before, "the worst ever known 
 on the mountain," the velocity of the wind being 
 not far from one hundred miles an hour. We 
 should have to turn back on the morrow; that 
 seemed certain. 
 (424)
 
 From Roan to Mitchell. 425 
 
 Those readers who have been at "Cloudland" 
 will believe the statement that, though we warmed 
 our feet before withdrawing to our room, it was 
 at least half an hour before we felt comfortable 
 in bed. With such prospects at 10 P.M., who 
 could have been prepared for the dawn that fol- 
 lowed? Postera lux oritur multo gratissima. 
 "Just look out there!" I heard some one say at 
 4:30, and springing to the window saw a vast 
 ocean of cloud below, a clear sky above, and the 
 whole east glowing with the promise of a gor- 
 geous sunrise. The vast seas and lakes of clouds, 
 with dark peaks projecting above like islands, the 
 wonderful play of colors purple, violet, crimson, 
 gold and the awful silence of the great moun- 
 tain, made a scene never to be forgotten. One 
 moment more and the chariot of the sun-god 
 would appear, and just then some one said rever- 
 entially : "It looks like the very gates of Heaven !" 
 At such a moment one almost feels sympathy 
 with those five and twenty men mentioned by the 
 prophet, who, with their backs toward the temple 
 of the Lord, "worshiped the sun toward the 
 east." Even on Roan there could hardly be more 
 than one such sunrise in a summer. 
 
 After climbing many mountains, after a night 
 passed on the august summit of Mitchell itself, 
 I have no hesitation in saying that Roan offers
 
 426 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 the finest views to be had in all our mountain 
 section. No other mountain presents such an 
 extensive "bald" surface; nowhere else can one 
 take such extensive walks and rides. But the 
 weather is treacherous on Roan. In the bright- 
 est sunshine go prepared for rain. We started 
 in company with my father and mother to "the 
 Bluff," one mile distant, where the old people 
 were to say good-by and turn back; but before 
 the half-mile point was reached a heavy fog was 
 upon us; and then the parting, which had been 
 postponed as long as possible farewells become 
 more painful as the years pass by took place. 
 
 The little town of Bakersville, ten miles distant, 
 was to furnish us dinner. We found it just re- 
 covering from the excitement of a campaign riot. 
 The Democrats, who are in a majority in the 
 town, had erected a Cleveland banner, and the 
 Rocky Creek Cove Republicans came down, sixty 
 strong, and shot the flag to pieces. In the night 
 some one took the banner down, and excitement 
 ran high. One man, so report said, was shot in 
 the ear, and a number got bullet holes in their 
 clothes. But after much speech-making, it was 
 agreed that neither side should erect a flag in 
 town, and the mountaineers went home. As we 
 cleared the skirts of the town some boys on a 
 hillside shouted "Hurrah for Harrison!" "Hur-
 
 From Roan to Mitchell. 427 
 
 rah for Cleveland !" was the reply ; and then those 
 boys swore, reviling us in worse terms than those 
 sent after the prophet of old. And it was thirty 
 miles to the place where the bears live. 
 
 It was still twenty-four miles to the foot of 
 Mitchell, but with the help of a mule and buggy 
 for half the distance we were there at noon the 
 next day ready, for the climb. We had already 
 passed one dead rattlesnake hanging on a bush, 
 and a mountaineer told us he had just shot one 
 in the path above. The river, south prong of the 
 Toe, was alive with fishermen, among them three 
 preachers from St. Louis, who had been camping 
 for several weeks in this region and had won the 
 good will of the natives to such a 'degree, in- 
 deed, that one old woman sent them the only 
 knives and forks she had. "There's a power o' 
 people comin' in here ev'y summer," said old 
 Burt Chrisson, the hunter; "furriners f'om ev'y- 
 wher'. They comes f'om as fur as Richmond, 
 Virginia." 
 
 The prospect for a successful ascent was fine, 
 for there was not a cloud in the heavens, and 
 Italy herself might have envied the deep blue of 
 the sky. "Hit'll frost on the peak to-night, ef 
 the wind don't blow it off," remarked a hunter. 
 The east side of Mitchell is said to offer the 
 easiest and shortest ascent, but even here it is
 
 428 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 between three and four miles to the top and a 
 hard climb from the start. One mile from the 
 summit all trace of the path disappeared, except 
 to the practiced eyes of our guide, and even he 
 said that in fifty trips to the top he thought he 
 had never been able to go twice in exactly the 
 same track over this part of the mountain. Voices 
 were now heard in a dense thicket away to the 
 left, and we soon found that it was the three 
 preachers, who had attempted to ascend the 
 mountain without a guide and had strayed from 
 the trail. Well for them that there were no fogs 
 on Mitchell that day; otherwise there might eas- 
 ily have been more graves on the Peak. Direct- 
 ing them to the trail, we hurried on, for the sun 
 was getting low. Blackberries were abundant, 
 sweeter than any ever tasted in the valley-coun- 
 try, and there were no thorns on the bushes; or 
 rather the thorns were only in embryo ; they nev- 
 er mature on these loftiest summits. Huckleber- 
 ries grow here on bushes six to eight feet in 
 height, and wild gooseberries, the most delicious 
 we ever tasted, also on bushes quite as large. 
 As we toiled up through grass, and weeds waist 
 high, the guide said: "Here's a snake!" We ap- 
 proached cautiously, stepping "delicately," ex- 
 pecting to see a huge rattler, but it was only a 
 big toad. Pressing on. now clambering over hid-
 
 From Roan to Mitchell. 429 
 
 den rocks, now climbing under fallen balsam 
 trees, the sun hidden entirely from us, we at last 
 reached the bluff where people camp, and in one 
 minute more stood beside Mitchell's grave. It 
 is worth going a long distance to feel the sensa- 
 tion one experiences when first one stands on the 
 highest point east of the Rocky Mountains. The 
 balsam trees have been cut away, so that the view 
 in every direction is unobstructed. Close at 
 hand are several other peaks of the Black that 
 seem to be as high as Mitchell, and in truth they 
 all measure over six thousand feet. Twenty-five 
 or thirty miles distant, in a bee-line toward the 
 north, is Roan, with "Cloudland" Hotel visible 
 to the naked eye ; to the east "Grandfather" and 
 Table Rock ; to the southwest Pisgah and the Bal- 
 sam range; and away off on the South Carolina 
 line Tryon and Hogback. It is said that one can 
 see into seven states, but while the heavens were 
 clear the atmosphere was murky, and the view 
 not as ex-tensive as it might possibly have been. 
 
 The cairn of stones that used to cover Pro- 
 fessor Mitchell's grave had been replaced by a 
 monument, or as one of the mountaineers called 
 it an "ornament." It is of the usual pyramidal 
 shape, about twelve feet high, and seemed to be 
 built of gray stone. Wondering how it had been 
 carried up the mountain, and supposing that it
 
 430 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 had been divided into sections, I tapped it with 
 my knuckles, when lo ! there came forth' the sound 
 of hollow metal. To think of "the loneliest, the 
 most august tomb on earth," covered by an imi- 
 tation stone monument ! The frauds of the val- 
 ley-country have invaded our highest mountain 
 peak and polluted a sacred grave. One would 
 think that the winds which have for thirty years 
 been howling the requiem of the dead scientist 
 would indignantly sweep this unworthy memo- 
 rial from his resting place. Better the rude cairn 
 of stones which stranger hands had gradually 
 heaped up. It would have taken more time and 
 cost a little more money, but the stone for a 
 suitable monument could have been quarried close 
 by, and nothing less was worthy of the dead man's 
 fame. On the eastern side is the following in- 
 scription : 
 
 Here Lies, in the Hope of a Blessed 
 Resurrection, the Body of the 
 
 Rev. Elisha Mitchell, D.D., 
 Who, After Being for 39 Years 
 
 A Professor 
 In the University of 
 
 North Carolina, 
 
 Lost His Life in the Scientific 
 
 Exploration of This Mountain, 
 
 In the 64th Year of His Age, 
 
 June 27, 1857.
 
 From Roan to Mitchell. 431 
 
 The sunset was not especially fine, but the 
 shadow of Mitchell projected upon the eastern 
 sky, and looking in the gathering darkness like 
 another high peak, was something to be remem- 
 bered. There was not a sound to break the 
 stillness except the twittering of many snowbirds 
 and the strokes of an ax with which one of our 
 party was cutting firewood for the night. It 
 seemed already certain that it would "frost on 
 the peak" that night. Just then a voice was heard 
 down the other side of the mountain ; a second 
 later it was discovered to be a woman's, directly 
 other women's voices were heard, and we knew 
 there was no hope for sleep that night. Alto- 
 gether there were thirteen in this second party, 
 eight of them women, and the two companies had 
 to share the shelter of "the Bluff." It was a 
 lively crowd. The wind blew the balsam smoke 
 into our eyes and supper was dispatched amid 
 many tears and much laughter. The women 
 talked, by wholes and by sections, all night. They 
 had not got fairly settled before they called for 
 a show of hands on the Presidential question 
 it was August, 1888 which revealed a preference 
 of three men for Harrison, while all the women, 
 Northern as well as Southern, and the rest of 
 the men were for Cleveland. Later in the night 
 some of the ladies began to question their guide
 
 432 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 about his army experiences. He had been under 
 Stuart "at first." "Well, where were you at 
 last?" "I left the army." "You don't mean you 
 deserted !" they exclaimed. "Yes, and I'm proud 
 of it." "Oh, no, no, no !" came in a chorus from 
 the New York as well as the Kentucky women. 
 They were harder upon the traitor than would 
 have been our quiet guide, who had stuck to his 
 colors till the bitter end came. "Gid," the devoted 
 negro servant of our guide, explained to me in 
 a whisper. of contempt for the deserter: "You see 
 
 we was f'om Yancey, and he was f'om ; 
 
 that make the defter 'nee." For the deserter it is 
 ever as Tacitus said: Transfugce nomen exse- 
 crabile veteribus sociis, novis suspectum. 
 
 The moon rose in cloudless splendor, and there 
 was nothing to mar the beauty of a perfect night 
 except that it was so cold. It did not "frost on 
 the peak," but only because of the breeze. On 
 Linnville River, twenty miles away, there was 
 frost that night or the next.
 
 XXIV. 
 CLINGMAN'S DOME. 
 
 ON Oconaluftee we could hear of no one who 
 knew the whole range of the Smoky Mountains 
 from the Gap to Thunder Head. But Tom Husky 
 was said to be the best woodsman in the cove. 
 "He war borned and raised over thar in the Smo- 
 kies," one said, "and he'd ruther be in the moun- 
 tains than anywhar else. He'll pilot you." We 
 found Tom in the humblest of log cabins, and he 
 readily agreed to go with us, though he had nev- 
 er been over more than two miles of the twenty- 
 five of our route. 
 
 Tom is something of a character. Tall and 
 spare to absolute leanness, hard living in the 
 mountains makes him seem, at forty-three, to be 
 almost sixty. "His grandfather," he said, "was 
 a German and his mother an Irishman," and he 
 had the good qualities of both races, though he 
 looked like neither. He has a wife and half a 
 dozen children, two yokes of steers and a few 
 "cow-brutes," but not much else, for he has sold 
 out with a view to moving across the Smokies 
 again. He has "followed herdin' an' trappin' for 
 28 (433)
 
 434 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 the past four or five years," and is, by common 
 report as well as by his own confession, the best 
 hunter in that part of the mountains. He told 
 us in a modest way of some of his exploits. I 
 do not vouch for all the details, but we found him 
 so reliable in other matters that I admit my belief 
 in most of the stories, and think that he meant 
 to tell the strict truth ; but the imagination is in- 
 clined, perhaps unconsciously, to multiply rattle- 
 snakes especially. 
 
 "There ain't no game here to what there used 
 to be," said Husky; "some bear, some wolves, 
 but not many; some deer, but they is sca'ce." 
 In the past five years Husky has killed twenty- 
 seven bears (seven of these last year), seven 
 wolves, one hundred and six wild turkeys, and 
 'coons without number. During his first year on 
 the North Carolina side of the Smokies he killed 
 three hundred rattlesnakes. Those are the fig- 
 ures, and though I broke out laughing when I 
 asked him to repeat the number of rattlesnakes, 
 he assured me with a serious air that he was 
 telling the literal truth. He killed on two differ- 
 ent days twenty-six rattlesnakes each, having 
 come upon a den of them. Husky was evidently 
 of the opinion of "Devil" Sam Walker, who said, 
 "Rattlesnakes ain't half as bad as they're ricom- 
 mended to be." Tom was bitten by one that he
 
 Clingman's Dome. 435 
 
 was pestering when he was "jest a chunk of a 
 boy," and did nothing but apply some tar to draw 
 out the poison. When he was only ten years old 
 he shot a bear that "neated" three hundred and 
 seventy-five pounds. We heard a man telling a 
 tale of an Indian and panther that killed each 
 other somewhere in the Smokies evidently the 
 original of the story in Craddock's "Despot of 
 Broomsedge Cove," or else set going by some 
 one who has read that book but Tom says the 
 story is impossible. "There ain't no danger," 
 said he, "in a painter or a bear, less'n they've got 
 young. I was raised among 'em, an' I know." 
 
 Fifteen or sixteen years ago panthers were 
 plentiful, but there came then a snow four feet 
 nine inches in depth that killed them out, as well 
 as most of the deer. The deer were found dead 
 "in piles" that winter. Husky thinks wolves are 
 a comparatively late importation into the Smokies, 
 for he never saw or heard of them when a boy. 
 There is no danger in them, though they are 
 "mighty sassy about their meat when they get 
 it." 
 
 Thus far it had been, as Husky said, "cooler'n 
 common, plumb cool for the season o' the year." 
 The evening before we had observed clouds gath- 
 ering about the tops of the Smokies, still eight 
 miles off, but a mountaineer consoled us by say-
 
 436 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 ing, "Clouds use round thar eve'y day." Monday 
 morning broke sensibly warmer, but Husky said, 
 "I guess hit's plumb cool on the Smokies"; so 
 we started a little after sunrise. We had in our 
 haversacks hard beaten biscuit, deviled ham, cof- 
 fee, sugar, salt, and pepper, and Husky persuaded 
 the woman at the last house on the road to sell 
 us her very last gallon of meal and some fat 
 bacon. He brought a coffee-pot from home and 
 borrowed a frying-pan from a neighbor, and then 
 we had all the implements we wanted or needed. 
 
 Everybody said there were plenty of mountain 
 trout in the beautiful left prong of the Oconaluf- 
 tee we were then ascending, as well as in the oth- 
 er headwaters of the river of the Cherokees, but 
 the very last sign of civilization on the road was 
 the following : "Notis. This farm is posted. No 
 fishen or hunten or trespas in aney Way." The 
 writer of the "Xotis" was said to be an infidel, 
 and one could easily believe anything hard about 
 one so selfish in these remote regions. But an- 
 glers need not worry. It is not more than fifteen 
 miles from the Ducktown railroad to the head- 
 waters of half a dozen streams flowing down 
 from the Smokies, and abounding in the 
 "speckled beauties/' 
 
 We were making for "the Gap," by an ascent 
 that was easy and gradual, with no fine views,
 
 Cllngman's Dome. 437 
 
 but with the beauty of the primeval forest all 
 around us, the brook babbling at our side, the 
 breath of the mountains health itself. Does water 
 ever taste so good as when you kneel at a trick- 
 ling brooklet and get strength for the further 
 climb? Husky pointed out a spot where he had 
 once skinned a "main big bear," having caught 
 him in a trap and then "snaked" (dragged) him 
 down the mountain. He was "a master big one," 
 and if he had been "big fat" he would have 
 weighed five hundred pounds. Husky was on the 
 watch for bear signs, and presently when he came 
 to a "fire-scald" (spot where the forest had once 
 been burned) he stopped, raised his hand warn- 
 ingly, and peered intently into the blackberry 
 thicket. We saw the tall briers shake and heard 
 the crackling of sticks under the bear's feet, but 
 only Husky had actually caught a glimpse of 
 him. We had to content ourselves with the black- 
 berries the bear had left. They were quite sweet, 
 and as the briers had few "stickers" we had no 
 trouble' in gathering them. Maurice Thompson 
 rightly says, in "Nibbling and Browsing," that 
 wild fruits never taste their best except in the 
 wilds. 
 
 At ten o'clock we lay down in "the Gap" on the 
 state line 5,271 feet above sea level. There was 
 little view, but the breath of the balsams was
 
 438 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 like a tonic. Coats, waterproofs, haversacks, 
 were now arranged so as to impede us as little 
 as possible, for from this on for ten or twelve 
 miles we were to be in an unbroken wilderness 
 without a trail, with possibly only "blazes" here 
 and there to guide us. Husky did not know the 
 way, but we felt sure he could recognize "blazes" 
 where we should see none. General Clingman 
 and Professor Guyot had "blazed" the route be- 
 fore the war, and I had a letter in my pocket 
 written by Professor Alexander, of the Universi- 
 ty of North Carolina, in 1888, after a tramp along 
 this very ridge. We hoped we could find the 
 trail. Husky told us of a basin near the Gap over- 
 grown with laurel, in which he had once got lost ; 
 but he was sure he could now "surround" it. But 
 alas ! we were in it before we knew it, the blazes 
 disappeared, and we were lost. Husky told us 
 to sit down and eat something while he beat about 
 for the "signs." He got back to us in time by 
 calling to us and following the sound of our 
 yells. He said he had found the way, and pointed 
 straight in the direction we had come. We told 
 him we would follow him if he persisted, but 
 we should surely come out just where we started 
 in. "Why, men, you're plumb bewildered," he 
 said. But he concluded to take our course, and 
 again we plunged into the laurel thicket. Reader,
 
 Clingman's Dome. 439 
 
 did you ever crawl and climb through a laurel 
 "rough"? If not, don't say you ever did any- 
 thing difficult. Once I fell backward over a log, 
 with both feet hung under laurel roots on the 
 
 other side, but K was just behind to lend a 
 
 helping hand ; and though my ankle felt the strain 
 for some days, it did not fail me. 
 
 At last we reached the balsam again, and found 
 
 that K and I had been right, for the blazes 
 
 reappeared, leading southwestward. Henceforth 
 we dared not go fifty yards without seeing a 
 "blaze," for some high ridge might at any time 
 lead us astray. At one point we lost the blazes 
 again, the mountain descended rapidly in front, 
 and, though we could see Clingman proper in the 
 distance, a great gulf seemed to yawn between. 
 Once more Husky lost his head, and insisted that 
 our road lay directly behind us. Much hunting at 
 last discovered the "divide" connecting the two 
 ridges, and with the help of frequent "blazes," 
 and still more frequent bear "signs," we plunged 
 On. 
 
 Henceforth we kept the course, but the diffi- 
 culty of the way beggars description tearing our 
 way through briers that would have torn us to 
 pieces if there had been "stickers," climbing over 
 fallen timber, crawling through all manner of 
 small growth. Our thirst soon became intense,
 
 44O Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 and we gladly drank from a "bear-wallow," the 
 only water for many awful miles. Trembling in 
 every limb, with hands scratched, wet for it had 
 rained on us -we reached the top at last. We 
 were standing 6,600 feet above the sea; but it 
 was cloudy and the scrubby growth hid most of 
 the view we might have had. We remembered 
 Sam Walker's exclamation concerning the same 
 point: "Ef I'd jist had a spyglass long enough, I 
 could a' seen Jerusalem !" 
 
 Even as it was we dared not tarry. Night was 
 coming on apace. We knew the light would not 
 last long enough to follow the "blazes" clear out 
 from the balsam. We must find water before it 
 was pitch dark. It looked as if we might roll to 
 eternity down either steep side of the mountain. 
 Still, after consultation, we plunged down the 
 North Carolina side seeking water. We slipped 
 on rocks, we fell over logs, we stumbled through 
 the bushes for nearly a mile, and then it was 
 dark, and no trace of water. Husky vowed he 
 must have water ; . but we knew to go farther 
 meant a broken leg, if not a broken neck, and re- 
 fused to follow. Cutting dry balsam wood with 
 a hatchet by the dim light of a clouded moon, we 
 kindled a fire at last and opened our haversacks, 
 but our mouths were dry and we could not swal- 
 low. The ground under us was soaked., and,
 
 Clingman's Dome. 441 
 
 though balsam boughs protected us from this, 
 the incline was so steep that we were in danger 
 of slipping into the fire if we slept. Imagine us, 
 
 then, K lodged against a dead balsam stump, 
 
 the writer with an arm around a little balsam, 
 Husky propped against two slabs he had driven 
 down, all thinking or dreaming fitfully of water, 
 and the rain beginning to fall. It was "plumb 
 cool on the Smokies." 
 
 It was only half-past seven when we got finally 
 settled for the night. In some respects the situ- 
 ation would have been improved could we have 
 reached the top again after abandoning the search 
 for water. The ridge, though narrow, was level, 
 and the grass and moss, though wet, soft and 
 tempting to weary limbs. But it was impossible 
 to grope our way in the darkness, through all the 
 obstructions that beset the course. Besides, our 
 only chance for water was below us, and we in- 
 tended to renew the search as soon as it became 
 light again. Then, too, the guide, hearing the 
 muttering of thunder in the north, said it was 
 sure to rain, and was afraid of the lightning, 
 which strikes often on the highest ridges. We 
 could hardly help hoping that it would rain, for 
 we could soon catch in our waterproofs enough 
 water to drink. On the other hand, there was 
 the certainty that a hard rain would put out our
 
 442 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 fire, for balsam wood burns ill. It would be nine 
 hours, at least, before we could see to move, and 
 even when dawn came a fog might settle down 
 upon us so thick as to turn day into night. Soon 
 the rain began to patter on the leaves, and we 
 spread our waterproofs to catch the precious 
 drops ; but it was only a drizzling shower. It got 
 colder and colder, and Husky, who had not even 
 a coat with him, vowed it would snow before 
 
 morning. K , firmly propped against his 
 
 stump, forgot his weariness and want of water 
 after a while in sleep; and I, after waiting an 
 interminable while, looked at my watch and 
 found it only nine o'clock. 
 
 So the hours dragged. There was nothing to 
 do but push up the fire from time to time, look 
 at the watch every half hour, and wait. The still- 
 ness of a great mountain is impressive in the day- 
 time ; at night it is awful. The whole night long 
 there was not the buzz of an insect, the chirp of 
 a bird, the note of any wild thing; only the occa- 
 sional patter of raindrops and the sighing of the 
 winds in the balsams. But, in the course of time, 
 the cool night air and the dampness had rendered 
 our thirst endurable. Now and then the darkness 
 thickened until it was Egyptian, and we knew 
 the fog had settled upon us ; but it always merci- 
 fully lifted again.
 
 Clingman's Dome. 443 
 
 At last about 4:30 came unheralded "a day of 
 darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and 
 of thick darkness, as the morning spread over the 
 mountains." It was the only time I had ever wit- 
 nessed a dawning greeted by no gladsome note 
 from any creature. As soon as he dared, the 
 guide started down the mountain, and had not 
 gone more than fifty yards before he shouted 
 "Water !" In a moment we were at his side drink- 
 ing eagerly. 
 
 At once all things became bright again, except 
 the sky. Coffee was soon made, meat fried, bread 
 baked, and we ate with appetites that had had but 
 little to stay them for twenty- four hours. Once 
 more we started upward, thinking in three-quar- 
 ters of an hour we could reach the ridge we had 
 left the night before ; but just then "the heavens 
 dropped, the clouds also dropped water." In fact, 
 it rained hard. Waterproofs were of no" service, 
 for they would have impeded us in climbing and, 
 besides, would have been torn to shreds in the 
 undergrowth. Feeling, however, that rain was 
 a mercy compared with a thick fog, we pressed 
 on and reached the blazed trail, which was now 
 sufficiently distinct to be followed without great 
 difficulty. 
 
 We had now good hope of getting safely out 
 of the balsams, and so were comparatively out
 
 444 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 of danger of getting lost. Wet to the skin, shoes 
 half filled with water, it was a trying march, but 
 we could keep warm as long as we walked brisk- 
 ly. The trail soon developed into a path, and 
 signs of balsam-gatherers began to appear; for 
 men come long distances to gather balsam juice 
 or resin. We had reached once more the range 
 of cattle, and presently came upon a rude bark 
 shelter. But the nearest herder's cabin was still 
 at least five, perhaps eight or nine, miles away; 
 and so we hurried on. In due time we were in 
 the open, on "Siler's Bald," as we supposed it 
 was. The mountain culminated at many points 
 in a sharp comb, along which the trail ran, and 
 though the fog was again dense we had no fear 
 of missing the course. If it had only been clear, 
 what glorious views we should have had from 
 those high, sharp, grass-covered ridges, where 
 now we looked only into the impenetrable mist! 
 
 As the morning wore on the fog lifted, the sun 
 came out, the valley appeared below, and as far 
 as the eye could reach to right and left stretched 
 the everlasting forest-clad mountains. It was the 
 primeval forest. For hours not a trace of a clear- 
 ing, not a sign of human habitation appeared. 
 We passed herds of fine, fat cattle, that ran 
 when they saw us, to the salting places, and 
 looked with mildly wondering eyes when we
 
 CHngman's Dome. 445 
 
 passed by without salting them. Our course lay 
 along a high ridge, which, though sometimes it 
 widened out and was heavily timbered, was gen- 
 erally very narrow with sloping sides. Now and 
 then the ridge seemed to be going to end abruptly 
 just a little ahead, but there would be only a sud- 
 den descent of two hundred or three hundred 
 feet; the trail would cross over a "divide," or 
 connecting ridge, and climb another lofty ascent. 
 The sun and brisk walking had dried our clothes, 
 and for three hours or more the way had been 
 so good, the views so fine, that one of the party 
 exclaimed, "I don't believe there can be a finer 
 ten-mile walk on earth !" 
 
 But where was Thunderhead? We had aver- 
 aged about three miles an hour; it was after 2 
 P.M., and the rocky point made famous in Miss 
 Murfree's "In the Clouds" ought to be in sight. 
 We began to be a little uneasy. Farms began to 
 appear in the Tennessee direction, where only the 
 wilderness should have been visible. Presently 
 the Little Tennessee's yellow waters gleamed off 
 to our left in the right direction, but too near. 
 Some two miles farther on through a clear space 
 we caught a glimpse of the waters of a consider- 
 able stream in a cultivated valley on the right of 
 our ridge, and we knew then that somewhere in 
 the fog of the forenoon we had left the main
 
 446 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 Smoky range and were now lost. Presently there 
 was an abrupt descent for hundreds of feet, a 
 trail crossed at right angles, and we guessed we 
 were on the "divide," between Hazel Creek and 
 the Little Tennessee. 
 
 Turning square to the left, we were soon in an 
 apple orchard and presently at a mountaineer's 
 cabin. It was as we suspected. The main Smoky 
 ridge was away off to the right, and we should 
 have to go twelve or fourteen miles across to 
 reach Thunderhead. We had got off the main 
 ridge in the fog and come down what the moun- 
 taineers call the Bald Ridge. We had walked 
 twenty-four or twenty-five miles, they said. 
 
 If all my readers had stood even once on any 
 high peak of the Smokies, I should hardly need 
 to explain why I love so to tramp in the wildest 
 and most beautiful of Southern mountains. I 
 have loved the mountains ever since the dark line 
 of the Blue Ridge was first pointed out to me 
 from my Middle South Carolina home. I have 
 spent hours of supreme content on Caesar's Head, 
 Table Rock, and Hogback, in South Carolina; 
 on Tryon, The Bald, and Mount Mitchell, in 
 North Carolina ; on Roan, Clingman's Dome, 
 Thunderhead, and Gregory's Bald, in the Smok- 
 ies ; on White Top and Mount Pleasant, in Vir- 
 ginia ; on Graylock, in Massachusetts ; on the
 
 Clingman's Dome. 447 
 
 Rigi, Vesuvius, and many others. "The moun- 
 tains shall bring peace to the people," sang the 
 Psalmist. There is nothing like the mountains 
 to bring rest to a tired brain, quiet to over- 
 wrought nerves. There are two supreme things 
 in the earth sublime beyond all others the sea 
 and the mountains. The sea has often enticed 
 men's thoughts to gain, but the mountains have 
 from time immemorial awakened his religious 
 aspirations. The Greeks thought their gods lived 
 on Mount Olympus, and they built their temples 
 by preference on mountains and hills, whither 
 they went out to worship in joyful procession 
 with music and dancing, clad in bright robes and 
 wreaths of flowers. The ancient Hebrews met 
 Jehovah oftenest on mountain tops. Moses met 
 God on Mount Sinai; from Nebo God showed 
 him the promised land, and on Nebo God buried 
 his servant. On Mount Hor God took Aaron. 
 Horeb was the "mount of God," and Mount Zion 
 "the city of our God." On Mount Carmel Eli- 
 jah met, in the name of the Lord, the priests of 
 Baal. From a mountain top the second great 
 temptation was offered Christ; it was into a 
 mountain apart that he went up to pray; on a 
 mountain he preached the greatest sermon that 
 ever was preached; on a mountain he ordained 
 the Twelve ; on a mountain he was transfigured ;
 
 448 Reminiscences and Sketches. 
 
 from a mountain he ascended. In the Hebrew 
 conception the mountains were as old as the 
 hoary sea: "Before the mountains were brought 
 forth . . . thou art God," sang the Psalmist. 
 "Before the mountains were settled, before the 
 hills was I brought forth," exclaimed Wisdom. 
 "Which by his strength setteth fast the moun- 
 tains," said the Psalmist, when he would describe 
 the Almighty's power. Isaiah testified of his 
 strength by saying, "He weighed the mountains 
 in scales"; and Job represented Jehovah's awful 
 wrath by saying, "He overturneth the mountains 
 in his anger."
 
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