::* I IV OF : A CRUZ LITTLE PILGRIMAGES Among the Men Who Have Written FAMOUS BOOKS SECOND SERIES Little Pilgrimages Series Among the Men Who Have Written Famous Books. First Series $1.50 By E. F. HARKINS Among the Men Who Have Written Famous Books. Second Series $1.50 By E. F. HARKINS Among the Women Who Have Written Famous Books $1.50 By E. F. HARKINS and C. H. L. JOHN- STON Literary Boston of To-day $f.50 By HELEN M. WINSLOW The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees $J.50 By MARY C. CRAWFORD The Romance of Old New England Churches $J.50 By MARY C. CRAWFORD Among English Inns net $J.60 (Postage extra} By JOSEPHINE TOZIER Jl L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY New England Building, Boston, Mass. GEORGE ADE. LITTLE PILGRIMAGES Among the Men Who Have Written FAMOUS BOOKS SECOND SERIES by E. F. HARKINS Illustrated BOSTON L. C. PAGE & COMPANY MDCCCCIII Copyright, 1903, by L. C. Page Sf Company (Incorporated) All rights reserved Published September, 1903 Colonial Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. Boston, Mass., U. S. A. CONTENTS Page George Ade 11 Irving Bacheller 25 John D. Barry 43 Arlo Bates 61 Cyrus Townsend Brady 79 Robert William Chambers 97 Thomas Dixon, Jr. 113 Finley Peter Dunne 133 George Gary Eggleston 147 Elliott Flower 165 John Fox, Jr. 185 Henry Harknd 201 Arthur Sherburne Hardy 219 Jack London 235 George Horace Lorimer 253 Charles Major 269 George Barr McCutcheon 287 F. Hopkinson Smith 305 Booth Tarkington 323 Owen Wister 341 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page George Ade Frontispiece Irving Bacheller 25 John D. Barry 43 Arlo Bates 61 Cyrus Townsend Brady 79 Eobert William Chambers 97 Thomas Dixon, Jr. 113 Finley Peter Dunne 133 George Gary Eggleston 147 Elliott Flower 165 John Fox, Jr. 185 Henry Harland 201 Arthur Sherburne Hardy 219 Jack London 235 George Horace Lorimer 253 Charles Major 269 George Barr McCutcheon 287 F. Hopkinson Smith 305 Booth Tarkington 323 Owen Wister 341 GEOEGE ADE /N Book VII. of the fourth part of " Les Miserables," Victor Hugo calls slang the language of misery. We doubt that George Ade would accept this definition. The slang which Mr. Ade writes is the language of informality. Perhaps some would define it as the lan- guage of democracy. It is an instinctive rebellion against Goold Brown and Shake;- speare and the tiresome poets whose lines seem to be especially beloved of the com- mon school educators. It is the street opposed to the academy. In some cases it is the wild growth of an uncultivated mind ; and in other cases it shows a mind indulging in comfortable negligence. It may be natural it may be the best a 11 LITTLE PILGBIMAGES person can do ; and it may be the affecta- tion resulting from an intellectual relapse. In spoken form it often presents many happy expressions, but in written form it is generally the merchandise of stupid clowns. Mr. Ade is a master of slang. He makes of it something more than mere light entertainment. Mr. Ade, it might be said, humanizes slang vitalizes it gives it suggestions of humour and of pathos uses certain words to represent certain ranks of the human family. He demonstrates that slang is the language of the majority, for by means of slang he instantly puts aver- age minds and by that we mean minds with a liking for holidays and strolls along with the crowd in sympathy with his characters. It is at once more amusing and more reasonable to point a moral by means of slang than by means of solemp 12 GEOEGE ADE language drawn from the mouths of beasts and of birds. Yet, of course, no one would think of substituting Ade for ^Esop in the kindergarten. Slang, like knowledge, is not to be inculcated. It is something that grows with the years. Per- sonally we enjoy one of the chapters in "Doc' Home" "The Loss of ' The Little Lady ' " it is called more than any one of the modern fables; but such enjoyment is a matter of individual taste. The only time Mr. Ade need blush is when he hears some of the lyrics in one of his musical comedies. The subject of this sketch was born in Kentland, Indiana, February 9, 1866; and it is worth noting that his father was an English immigrant engaged in the banking business. George was graduated from Purdue University, Lafayette, In- diana, in 1887. Immediately afterward 13 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES he found a place as reporter on the Lafay- ette Morning News, a paper which had been started to boom General Harrison for the Presidency. But the paper died before achieving its purpose, and the young man went to work for an evening paper in the same town. " The salary/' he has said, "was so small that I don't care to mention it. It was paid partly in meal-tickets on a cheap restaurant which was a heavy advertiser." After a few months of this hard plowing he got employment with a patent medicine firm. One of the articles he sold was a cure for the tobacco habit. The preparation of the Lafayette City Directory was also part of the work which Ade did for this firm. " In 1890 " to refer again to his own few words " having risen to a weekly income of fifteen dollars, I lit out for 14 GEOEGE ADE Chicago, where I got a job on the Morn- ing News, later the Record, as a reporter. The following year I had pretty good as- signments, and in 1893 I did special World's Fair stories. When the fair closed up I became the father of a depart- ment in the paper called ' Stories of the Street. 7 I had to fill two columns every day, which, with a cut or two, meant from twelve hundred to two thousand words. My stuff was next to Eugene Field's ' Sharps and Flats.' When Field died I got his desk. I used to get desperate for ideas sometimes. One lucky day I wrote a story on a church entertainment, in which Artie was the spokesman. That was in 1895. I heard from that story so much that Artie was given a show once a week. In 1898 I ran up against the fable of the old serio-comic form. I had learned from writing my department that all peo- 15 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES pie, and especially women, are more or less fond of parlour slang. In cold blood I began writing the fables to make my de- partment go, but I had no idea that those fantastic things would catch on as they have. My first one was entitled ' The Blond Girl Who Married a Bucket-Shop Man.' Soon other papers asked permission to copy the fables, and then to share them with the Record, and by and by a publisher collected them and made up a copyrighted book. There you have the whole thing in a nutshell." The fables are now syndicated among a number of Sunday papers one paper in each of a dozen large cities. At the end of a certain period Mr. Ade's publisher, E. H. Eussell, of JSTew York (Herbert S. Stone, of Chicago, was his first publisher), gathers them, adds a few new ones, and issues them in book form. They are al- 16 GEORGE ADE ways sure of a profitable sale. Mr. Stone is to be credited with the discovery of the excellence of Artie Blanchard, and, conse- quently, with the publication of " Artie/' " Pink Marsh," " Doc' Home," " Fables in Slang," and " More Fables," the au- thor's first books. Mr. Russell is the pub- lisher of his latest book, " People You Know." There is more than slang in Mr. Ade's books ; there is keen satire and there is sound philosophy. As one critic re- marked of "Fables in Slang": "So vividly has Mr. Ade portrayed human nature that in reading these fables you see pictures of many people you know, and frequently a dim reflection of your- self; but, as is natural, your own re- flection is only suggested, while other pic- tures stand out in bold relief." " The hardest part of the fable busi- ness," says Mr. Ade, "is the grubbing 17 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES round for ideas. It's enough to drive a man to drink Jx) think up something new. Sometimes I don't begin on the fable till twenty-four hours before the copy is due." Yet he has been credited with this recipe for a modern fable : " Take one portion of Homely Truth, one portion of Story, a pinch of Satire, and a teacupful of Capital Letters, spice with Up-to-date Slang, if you can get it fresh; garnish with wood- cut Drawings and serve hot." In the last few years Mr. Ade has given part of his time to musical comedy. The words of " The Sultan of Sulu " and of " Peggy from Paris " are his work. Ex- cursions to Europe and to the Philippines have helped him to introduce what is known as local colour into the two bur- lesques. He has been described as a "man of the most retiring nature, undervaluing his 18 GEOKGE ADE work and underestimating his ability," as a man who " has been brought into prom- inence almost like an unwilling school- boy, being urged and encouraged and al- most pushed to make his first bow before an audience. It would seem from per- sonal knowledge of his nature that if he could possibly place the credit of his work on another person he would feel happier and more contented seeing the success of the other man than he is now while re- ceiving congratulations from far and near on his own success." In acknowledging a few words of praise sent to him by a friend, he wrote: " I am just as proud and happy as if I deserved all that I get." In conclusion we shall quote, by per- mission of H. S. Stone & Co., owners of the copyright, " The Fable of the Corpora- tion and the Mislaid Ambition," 1 which i i Copyright, 1900, by H. S. Stone & Co. 19 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES is a truer reflection of human nature than all the words that have been, or, perhaps, that ever will be, penned by ironmasters and by socialists: " One of the Most Promising Boys in a Graded School had a Burning Ambition to be a Congressman. He loved Politics and Oratory. When there was a Rally in the Town he would carry a Torch and listen to the Spellbinder with his Mouth wide open. " The Boy wanted to grow up and wear a Black String Tie and a Bill Cody Hat and walk stiff-legged, with his vest un- buttoned at the Top, and be Distinguished. " On Friday Afternoons he would go to School with his Face scrubbed to a shiny pink and his Hair reached up on one side ; he would recite the Speeches of Patrick Henry and Daniel Webster and make Gestures. 20 GEOKGE ADE " When he Graduated from the High School he delivered an Oration on * The Duty of the Hour/ calling on all young Patriots to leap into the Arena and with the Shield of Virtue quench the rising Flood of Corruption. He said that the curse of Our Times was the Greed for Wealth, and he pleaded for Unselfish Patriotism among those in High Places. " He boarded at Home awhile without seeing a chance to jump into the Arena, and finally his father worked a Pull and got him a Job with a Steel Company. He proved to be a Handy Young Man, and the Manager sent him out with Contracts. He stopped roaching his Hair; and he didn't give the Arena of Politics any se- rious Consideration except when the Tariff on Steel was in Danger. " In a little while he owned a few Shares, and after that he became a Di- 21 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES rector. He joined several Clubs and began to enjoy his Food. He drank a Small Bottle with his Luncheon each Day, and he couldn't talk Business unless he held a Scotch High Ball in his right Hand. " With the return of Prosperity and the Formation of the Trusts and the Whoop in all Stocks he made so much Money that he was afraid to tell the Amount. " His Girth increased he became puffy under the Eyes you could see the little blue Veins in his Nose. " He kept his name out of the Papers as much as possible and he never gave Congress a Thought except when he talked to his Lawyer of the probable Manner in which they would evade any Legislation against Trusts. He took two Turkish Baths every week and wore Silk Under- wear. When an Eminent Politician would 22 GEOKGE ADE come to his Office to shake him down he would send out word by the Boy in But- tons that he had gone to Europe. That's what he thought of Politics. " One day, rummaging in a lower Drawer in his Library, looking for a box of Poker Chips, he came upon a roll of Manuscript and wondered what it was. He opened it and read how it was the Duty of all True Americans to hop into the Arena and struggle unselfishly for the General Good. It came to him in a flash this was his High School Oration ! " Then he suddenly remembered that for several Years of his life his consum- ing Ambition had been to go to Congress ! " With a demoniacal Shriek he threw himself at full length on a Leather Couch and began to laugh. " He rolled off the Sofa and tossed about on a $1,200 rug in a Paroxysm of Merri- ment. 23 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES " His man came into the Library and found the Master in Convulsions. The poor Trust Magnate was purple in the Face. "They sent for a Great Specialist, who said that his Dear Friend had ruptured one of the smaller Arteries and also nar- rowly escaped Death by Apoplexy. " He advised rest and quiet and the avoidance of any Great Shock. " So they took the High School Oration and put it on Ice, and the Magnate slowly recovered and returned to his nine-course Dinners. " Moral: Of all Sad Words of Tongue or Pen, the Saddest are these, ' It might Have Been.' " Mr. Ade is unmarried, and he divides his time and residence between Chicago and New York. 24 IRVING BACHELLER. IRVING BACHELLER /N" his youth Irving Bacheller played many parts. He has said himself that after leaving home for the first time, at the age of thirteen, he was, for a few years, " a telegraph operator, a post- office clerk, a salesman, a scrubwoman, a bookkeeper, and a delivery wagon." But at last he seems to have found the part for which he is particularly well fitted. The stars of the literary world and of the theatrical world are much alike; they all must have climbed long and hard and passed through many changes of role to reach the top. Mr. Bacheller was born in Pierpont, New York State, September 26, 1859. The house in which he was born stands 25 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES on what is locally called Waterman Hill, which overlooks Paradise Valley, a spot familiar to those who have read " Eben Holden." His first books he carried to the Howard School. There he made the acquaintance of rural wit and strength. There he met Mose Tupper, Jed Leary, and Elder Whitmarsh. Horace Greeley, who is one of the interesting figures in " Eben Holden/' is made to mention the athletic prowess of Jed. When he was thirteen years old he started out to find Dame Fortune; and though he did not find her then, though he found much trouble but little gold, he gathered the moss that all rolling stones gather the rich evergreen moss of worldly wisdom. Of this wisdom are the squat, corrugated stove and the open cracker barrel of the country store the centres. It is in these stores, far from the madding crowd, that 26 IRVING BACHELLER you hear some of the best humour and some of the soundest philosophy. But rare humour and true philosophy are not for boys. Young Bacheller soon tired of his independence, and he turned his steps to Canton, to which his father had moved and where his brothers were being schooled. However, after a short term at school he left home again. Through Vermont he went selling farmers' tools. But still he was unsuccessful ; and at the age of nineteen he disposed of his mer- chandise and entered St. Lawrence Uni- versity, from which he was graduated in 1882, when he was twenty-three. While at St. Lawrence, by the way, he estab- lished the Alpha Omicron Chapter of the Alpha Tau Omega, which, they say, is to-day one of the most flourishing chapters of that fraternity; and there he also be- 27 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES came a member of the select Phi Beta Kappa. A few months after graduation, Bachel- ler arrived in New York City determined to do or die. For a year he was connected with a little paper called the Daily Hotel Reporter, and then he got a place on the staff of the Brooklyn Times. That same year, 1883, in Brooklyn, he married Anna Detmar Schultz. It is said that nothing in the career of a literary man really goes to waste. Thus, in 1884, while reporting the great political campaign then waging, he met the expe- rience which William Brower meets in one of the last chapters in " Eben Holden." He was mistaken for General Batcheller, and unwillingly received the honours de- signed for the noted campaigner. With Bacheller on the staff of the Times were men who have since come more or less 28 IE VI 1ST G BACHELLEB to the front Charles M. Skinner, Alex- ander Black, Elbridge S. Brooks, and John L. Heaton. They all have shared the in- spiration provided by the desk at which Walt Whitman used to sit. Late in 1884 Bacheller left the Times and founded the Bacheller Syndicate, an institution which served the best interests of literature and at one time was very prosperous. As the head of it Bacheller gave Stephen Crane his first encourage- ment ; and then the two young men became hearty friends. The syndicate also intro- duced Anthony Hope and Conan Doyle to the reading public of America. Crane and Bacheller and a few kindred spirits erected " The Sign o' the Lan- thorn," as they ornately called it, at a house on Monkey Hill, one of the quaint, decrepit corners of old New York. In the 29 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES book of this club is this page in Bacheller's own handwriting: " Once a number of young men, being jolly fellows of excellent credit with each other, had a steady habit of dining at the same table. And one of them, having in- vention and the love of good fellowship, proposed a club where each might show his art in the writing of verses, tales, plays, and the like, and where sharp criticism might go without offence. So ' The Sign o' the Lanthorn ' was hung over the door of an ancient inn, at one time the resort of Captain Kidd, according to the old histories. Here often they met together and read things they had written, each trusting bravely in the work of his own hand and getting roundly damned for its imperfections. Great men came to eat and drink with them and sit around the broad chimney of the club and hear the 30 IRVING BACHELLER tales of these young men that prospered, some the better for the flicker of the fire- light and the tossing shadows and the crackle of the burning logs." For about fourteen years Bacheller was a broker in literary material for news- papers and periodicals. Then, through a trick of the little devil of overconfidence, the syndicate struck the rocks; and John Brisben Walker, of the Cosmopolitan Mag- azine, bought what remained of it. Three months later the founder of the syndicate resigned from Mr. Walker's employ and looked about him for something /to do. That event was the turning-point in his career. " I hadn't very much capital when I left Mr. Walker's employ," he related some years afterward. " I had put a little money aside, and my wife and I decided that instead of looking for work, it would 31 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES not be a bad idea for me to see if I could produce something in a literary way. " The extent of my worldly possessions you may judge by the fact that I thought fifteen dollars a month as much rent as I could afford while engaged in this literary work. We lived at Irvington-on-the-Hud- son. I was a literary man for just thirty days, and in that time I produced thirty thousand words. " That was the first part of ' Eben Hoi- den ' as it now stands. I mean ' Eben Holden ' is the original story that I wrote then, with sixty thousand words more tacked on. " I sent my story, which I then called ' Uncle EV to Harper's Round Table, to the Youth's Companion, and to St. Nicholas. They all rejected it with cheer- less unanimity. " While my manuscript was starting on 32 IEVIKG BACHELLEE its rounds, I received an offer from the proprietor of a New York newspaper which I thought I could not afford to decline. So for a year or more I engaged in my old business of journalism. " Finally, a friend of mine, who was once on the staff of a Brooklyn paper, and who was afterward connected with my Boston publishers, wrote to me and told me that the firm was looking for a good novel. He said he thought I was the man to write it, for he had always believed that I had literary talent concealed about me somewhere. In reply, I said to him that I might prepare a book, but that I didn't feel very much disposed to give up the work I was then doing to go into any speculative venture. I suggested that if the firm would c grub stake ' me, I might consider the suggestion. " To my surprise, they called my bluff. 33 LITTLE PILGRIMAGES They made a proposition to me, and I ac- cepted it. Then I dug down in my trunk and took up ' Uncle Eb,' which had been so unanimously sat upon, sneered at, and rejected by three other publishing houses. I added about sixty thousand words to it, and there you are. " It so happened that business kept me travelling a good deal while I was doing this, and much of the story was written on telegraph-blanks in Pullman cars, for the ' grub stakes ? I got from Boston were suffi- cient to enable me to travel in proper style." What Mr. Bacheller omitted to say, or the reporter failed to catch, was that " Uncle Eb " was submitted to the firm's readers and found acceptable. This much may be said to preclude the impression that any firm eagerly, and with chuckles, accepts what other firms have rejected. 34 IRVING BACHELLER The Boston firm, it is said, paid Mr. Bacheller fifty dollars a week while he was weaving " Eben Holden " out of " Uncle Eb." It was a lucky gamble; for there was no certainty that the story would be a mighty success. The firm had said " a good novel," not " a literary sensa- tion." " Eben Holden " was a literary sensa- tion from the start. Such sensations are not wholly to be accounted for; but there is much good reading in the book. Ed- mund Clarence Stedman, who is the kind and yet critical patron of young men of / letters, has remarked : " It is a forest- scented, fresh-aired, bracing and wholly American story of country and town life." He has also said : " If in the far f uture our successors wish to know what were the real life and atmosphere in which the country folk that saved this nation grew, 35 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES loved, wrought, and had their being, they must go back to such true and zestful and poetic tales of fiction as ' Snowbound ' and 'Eben Holden.' " Mr. Howells has termed it " as pure as water and as good as bread." It is worthy of note that this first of Mr. Bacheller's successes is near the four hundred thousand mark. Truly a phenom- enal success. Close in the wake of " Eben Holden " followed " D'ri and I," a tale of love and adventure harking back to the times of Perry and his braves. The wind created by " Eben Holden " served to carry " D'ri and I " through many editions, but the people did not take to D'ri as they had taken to Uncle Eb. Curiously enough, the London Times said, in the course of its re- view of the book : " NOT does anything in Crane's ' Red Badge of Courage ' bring 36 IEVIKG BACHELLER home to us more forcibly the horrors of war than the between-decks and the cockpit of a crippled ship swept from stem to stern by the British broadsides in an action brought a I'outrance on Lake Erie." Curious it was, since we have seen how brotherly Crane and Bacheller once were. Evidently they not only ate at the same table but studied the same models. Now may we revert to " Eben Holden " long enough to take a look behind the scenes with the author himself explain- ing: " The characters in the book are not por- traits," he has declared, " although I con- sider myself to a great extent more of a copyist than a novelist. Uncle Eben is a composite, with my father's hired man as the basis, and some members of my own family blended into it. The scene of the story is laid in Pierpont, my old birth- 37 LITTLE PILGRIMAGES place. The people up there are real Amer- icans. They have the quaint philosophy that can be developed only among folks who have time to think. In E"ew York (where the conversation took place) few of us ever have that." And now for a fine domestic touch : " I attribute much of my success to the help of my wife. She and I wrote c Eben Holden ' together especially the love scenes. I would always read these to her and ask her opinion. Usually her opinion of them as they stood when I first turned them out was very poor. In fact, she made me rewrite most of them. There is really no one whose criticism is so valuable as your wife's. There can be no question of her disinterestedness. A mere friend may feel timid about treading on your feelings. He may offend you, and he often sacrifices 38 IRVING BACHELLER frankness to friendship. The beauty of a wife is that she doesn't." " Darrell of the Blessed Isles " (a sin- gularly attractive title !) is Mr. Bacheller's latest book. We must pass over " The Master of Silence," which he produced in 1890, and " The Still House of O'Dar- row," which came four years later, and " Candle-light," a collection of " sundry- tales and fancies in verse." Darrell bids fair to be as beloved of the reading public as Eben Holden himself. He is at once amusing and arousing; his odd sayings turn a smile and the shadows behind him pique curiosity. The charac- ter sketches in the book show the author at his best ; and at his best Mr. Bacheller is very entertaining and very powerful. (l Darrell of the Blessed Isles " is as whole- some as the air of Paradise Valley. It abounds in bright spots like the follow- 39 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES ing sketches sketches interspersed with some rare humourous phrases. " There were two kinds of people in Far- away, those that Exra Tower spoke to and those he didn't. The latter were of the majority. As a foreswearer of com- munication he was unrivalled. His imag- ination was a very slaughter-house, in which all who crossed him were slain. If they were passing, he looked the other way and never even saw them again. Since the prohate of his father's will both sisters were of the number never spoken to. He was a thin, tall, sullen, dry, and dusty man. Dressed for church of a Sunday, he looked as if he had been stored a year in some neglected cellar. His broadcloth had a dingy aspect, his hair and beard and eye- brows the hue of a cobweb. He had a voice slow and rusty, a look arid and unfruitful. 40 IKVING BACHELLEE Indeed, it seemed as if the fires of hate and envy had burned him out." . . . " The two old maids, feeling the dis- grace of it and fearing more, ceased to visit their neighbours or even to pass their own gate. Poor Miss S'mantha fell into the deadly mire of hypochondria. She often thought herself very ill and sent abroad for every medicine advertised in the county paper. She had ever a faint look and a thin, sickly voice. She had the man-fear a deep distrust of men, never ceasing to be on her guard. . . . Miss , Letitia was more amiable. She had a play- ful, cheery heart in her, a mincing and pre- cise manner, and a sweet voice. What with the cleaning, dusting, and preserving they were ever busy. A fly, driven hither and thither, fell of exhaustion if not disabled with a broom. They were two weeks get- ting ready for the teacher. When, at last, 41 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES he came that afternoon, supper was ready and they were nearly worn out." Mr. Bacheller is a good-sized man, with a blond complexion and a genial coun- tenance. He is reputed to be a charming entertainer. Most of his hard work is done at his residence in New York, while most of his loafing and soul-inviting is done at his summer house in Connecticut, by the waters of Long Island Sound. 42 JOHN D. HARRY. JOHN D. BARRY ^ylNCE last spring John D. Barry has i j been a writer of fiction, and nothing else. That is to say, he has aban- doned the pleasant and popular path of dramatic criticism, which leads to " first nights," and such like advantages, and given over his energy wholly to the pro- duction of imaginative literature. When a man deliberately chooses to leave one fascinating and profitable employment/ it is natural to assume that he has found another equally fascinating and profitable. The assumption fits Mr. Barry's case, at least. "I wrote dramatic criticisms for Col- lier's Weekly last winter, and I have writ- ten some miscellaneous articles on stage 43 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES matters since," he said to us a short time ago, " but from now on I shall devote my pen to stories and plays. My first novel, { A Daughter of Thespis,' has just ap- peared in book form, and ' The Congress- man's Wife,' which won the two-thousand dollar Smart Set prize a few years ago, will, I expect, be in book form next sea- son. A play of mine on the same subject and bearing the same title as this prize story will probably be produced on the stage before long. I am hard at work and hope to be kept hard at work for a good long time to come." His reference to the Smart Set prize story reminded us of a literary sensation in which Mr. Barry played the leading role of which he was both hero and victim. He sent " The Congressman's Wife " to the Smart Set office under an assumed 44 JOHN D. BAREY name, as is the custom in competitions of that kind; and with the story he sent a note in which he said that, if the story should be successful, he wished to reserve the hook rights. The Smart Set people seemed to think highly of the tale at first reading, and they sought Mr. Barry with the proposition that he would get the prize provided he agreed to let them share the royalties of the book with him, or pro- vided he was willing to buy back his story for five hundred dollars. Well, he wanted the two thousand dollars and the adver- tising, and he agreed either to share or to buy back. When he received the proofs of the story, however, he was of a mind to with- draw his agreement, in fact, to withdraw the story from the competition, for he found that it had been altered by some one not exactly in sympathy with his own 45 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES nice taste in words. Of course, though he protested, he got no satisfaction, so he forthwith wrote to two of the prominent literary newspapers of New York explain- ing the matter. That was the only adver- tisement he received, for the Smart Set published the story without his name. Besides the two thousand dollars and the publicity caused by his protest, he received congratulatory letters from sympathizing authors. Mr. Barry was born in Boston on the last day of December, 1866. He attended a very popular grammar school in South Boston, the Lawrence School, named after the father of the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Massachusetts. He prepared for college at the famous Boston Latin School, and he was graduated from Har- vard in the class of 1888. For a year afterward he taught school in Milton, a 46 JOHN D. BARRY suburb of Boston, and incidentally he contributed articles on literature and the drama to some of the Boston papers. From his boyhood he has been deeply interested in the stage. " When I was a boy," he said to us, " it was a habit of mine to attend the Boston Museum (the celebrated playhouse which is now giving way to an up-to-date sky- scraper). Boys under fifteen years of age could enter for fifteen cents, and I slyly took advantage of the rule until I was almost a grown-up man. If one ticket- seller refused to be hoodwinked, I went to the other; but, finally, with a reluc- tance bordering on acute distress, I entered the thirty-five-cent class. That rise cost me bitter pangs as well as money." Naturally this passion for the drama was fostered at college, and, indeed, there it seemed to point out his goal for the 47 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES futura At the end of a year's teaching he secured a modest position on the Boston Post, and there, under Mr. Fuller, now of the Providence Journal, and Mr. Cope- land, now a popular professor of the Eng- lish literature at Harvard, he had oppor- tunities to write the minor notices of plays. In a short time he went to the Boston Traveller as literary and dramatic critic; but as this double-headed position involved more hard work than anything else, the young aspirant for literary hon- ours ventured to go to E"ew York. There he worked for a few months as a substitute reader on the Cosmopolitan; and then he was assistant editor of the Forum. While working on the Forum it occurred to him to try his hand at novel writing, and so he settled down in a quiet place on Long Island and let his imagination and 48 JOHN D. BARRY observation play with pen and ink. It was a courageous step for a young man to take, but, as it turned out, the courage must have risen from an innate conviction that he could succeed. The product of this interesting test was " A Daughter of Thespis," which the author submitted to the New York Trib- une. The Tribune accepted it ; even paid him generously for it; and with this money, and the little left from his savings, he went abroad. The next fifteen months, Mr. Barry says, were perhaps the most delightful in all his experience. First he spent a few weeks in London, then he spent a few more in Paris, then he travelled slowly through the south of Europe, and by and by he drifted back to London, where he joined Will "N. Harben, the charming Southern story- writer ; and together they spent the winter 49 LITTLE PILGRIMAGES in Paris. Then, alone, Mr. Barry travelled to Normandy, where he wrote a story, " Mademoiselle Blanche," and where he learned to appreciate the perfect realism of Claude Monet's pictures. Mr. Barry always speaks of Normandy as though he wished he were about to revisit it. While abroad he also wrote " The Intriguers." This tour lasted fifteen months. Shortly after his return he became dra- matic critic of Harper s Weekly } and from Harper's he later went to Collier's. " Don't you regret giving up your criti- cal work ? " was asked him. " Yes, I do," he replied, " but, on the other hand, I look forward to this very interesting work of another kind. I en- joyed my work as a critic very much. The fact is, my duty as a critic gave a zest to my interest in every play that I attended. It also trained my powers of observation. 50 JOHN D. BARKY I have obser-ved, for instance, that the pub- lic is very whimsical, and that some critics are curiously narrow. After all, when a critic shows narrowness we must say that he is unreliable. " Undoubtedly the stage has degener- ated intellectually, I mean. Most of the plays are mere trash, and many of the players are altogether lacking in artistic sensibilities. Yet poor plays and poor actors are successful. To some extent our novelists are responsible for this degenera- tion, for some silly popular books have been transformed into equally silly and popular plays." Mr. Barry has a fondness for literary company; yet, at the same time, he has a natural liking for outdoor sports. One might tell this by his vigorous appearance, his healthy healthful complexion. He spent a part of last winter at Pine- 51 LITTLE PILGBIMAGES hurst, in the South, and there he met an- other young man who, after awhile, came to him and said : " When I heard that you were a writer, I rather wanted to keep away from you, but now that I see you're a good rider it's all right." He believes in athletic recreations. His method is to work in the morning, say, from nine until noon, and then in the after- noon go out riding. He writes with re- markable speed, for he can write twenty- five hundred words in the course of a few hours. At the end of this task he is com- pletely exhausted. It seems that in writ- ing he expends a large amount of nervous energy. Though not nervous in manner, he has to control a constant tendency toward nervousness. He is a restless student of human nature, as may be gathered from the lifelikeness of his characters, and, though his sensibilities 52 JOH1ST D. BAEEY are uncommonly artistic, yet he has a shrewd side that offers safe anchorage for his ambition. Metropolitan life has a weak hold upon him, and, apparently, so have feminine charms, for he is a bachelor. While working in New York he lived in a suburb called Englewood, and now he lives in Brighton, a suburb of Boston. While at Englewood, by the way, he indulged his passion for the stage to the extent of taking part in the performance of one of his own plays. This is a list of Mr. Barry's works up to date : " The Princess Margarethe," a so-called child's story, but suited quite as much to adult as to juvenile tastes ; " A Daughter of Thespis," " The Intriguers," " Mademoiselle Blanche," " The Leading Woman," and " The Congressman's Wife." The last two stories appeared in the Smart Set. 53 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES " A Daughter of Thespis " is a remark- ably interesting story and when we say u remarkably interesting/' we mean it. In the first place, it deals with the ever fas- cinating subject of the stage ; and, further- more, it has a very attractive plot and a very satisfying style. To exemplify these facile, lifelike touches, we may quote the scene on the stage the night the heroine, Evelyn John- son, made her first appearance in " Decep- tion," the work of the hero, Leonard Thayer. " Several of the actors began to gather on the stage and in the wings. In the glare of the light, with their faces covered with paint and powder, and their heads enshrouded in thick wigs, they were gro- tesque figures. Leonard Thayer looked at them with curiosity. Evelyn could see 54 JOHN D. BAKRY from the expression on his face that he was amused. " Presently the orchestra began to play. ' I feel a kind of sinking/ said Thayer, putting his hand to his heart. f I wonder if playwrights have stage fright.' " ' I should think they would/ Evelyn replied. " i In a few moments the agony will begin/ he said, with an expression of bur- lesque misery upon his face. " ' You aren't very complimentary/ said Evelyn, reproachfully. " ' Oh, I beg your pardon. I didn't mean you. I'm not afraid of you. I'm afraid of myself, my work, of the audience, and Davidson.' " ' Davidson is very popular, you know.' " ' But he'll spoil my piece,' said Thayer, with a touch of sincerity in his tone. 55 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES " The stage-manager came rushing on the stage. ' How is everything ? All right ? ' he asked, excitedly, turning here and there to make sure that the scene had been properly set. No one replied, and he disappeared again. In a few moments he returned. ' Are you all right, Miss John- son ? ' Evelyn bowed, and walked over and sat in the seat by the table, where, on the rise of the curtain, she was to be dis- covered with a letter in her hand. ' Oh, Thayer, how are you ? Great night ! Nerv- ous ? Why aren't you in front ? Can't have authors on the stage, you know.' " ' Oh, don't mind me,' Thayer laughed, walking into the wings. ' I'm going to get out, anyway.' " As she sat in the chair, Evelyn felt a tremor, which speedily developed into terror. She thought of all that the even- ing might mean to her : the success or f ail- 56 JOHN D. BARRY ure of her whole career. But she must gather courage ; she must go on. She had a fantastic impulse to rush out into the wings, and to escape from the theatre by the stage-door. But when the orchestra ceased playing and the hush of expectancy followed, her nervousness passed suddenly away. For a moment the chatter was hushed ; then a bell rang. The great cur- tain rose slowly. Evelyn felt herself in a flood of light confronted by a mass of dark- ness. She heard a little applause, that seemed to come from a distance, and she waited till it ceased. Then she thought that her power of speech had left her ; but, when she made an effort, the words came easily enough, and, with a sudden sense of elation, she spoke the opening lines." While Mr. Barry, personally, thinks at least as well of some of his other works notably " Mademoiselle Blanche " as he 57 LITTLE PILGBIMAGES does of " A Daughter of Thespis," he has good reason to feel pleased with the notices which the story of Evelyn Johnson has received. William Dean Howells, for ex- ample, has written : " I should say that ' A Daughter of Thespis ' seemed so honest about actors and acting that it made you feel as if the stage had never been truly written about before. ... I simply couldn't put it down; I couldn't miss a word. . . . But why does Mr. John D. Barry write so much of the stage ? " Because, I believe, he had some train- ing for it> and probably loves it as much as he seems to hate it. At any rate, he loves to write of it, to ascertain it, to declare it, as it rarely has been ascertained and declared before. Doesn't he do all these different histrionic types with aston- ishing vividness ? That plain style of his which one may call bare or bald, for 58 JOHN D. BAKKY all I care; it's so much better than any- thing florid renders them all alive; it gives them to you characters, persons, ac- quaintances ; you associate and suffer and enjoy with them. I know the book of old, for I read it when it came out a serial, and now that it has got into a book I should not be greatly surprised if it won the high place which belongs to it, though good luck doesn't always attend good books. The author is a man of unquestionable talent, and he cannot rest from following it with other novels of the same honesty, the same quality. " Well, he will have me for a reader of whatever he writes. Why, I never ~knew a more naturally right-minded and wrong- minded girl than that Evelyn Johnson heroine of his, who is too good for her art, and not great enough; and if all actors were like those in his book, even when they 59 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES were bad, even when they were women, I should just love them. But do you think that a novel ought to be written with such perfect common sense? It almost scared me. I suppose I didn't expect it. You don't often get it, whether you expect it or not Perhaps it may yet be the fashion, though." Making due allowance for the encourage- ment which Mr. Howells puts into most of his criticisms, this is one of the most complimentary notices ever received by a young author. 60 ARLO BATES AKLO BATES TT TOW Arlo Bates, whose latest novel t~1 is " The Diary of a Saint," en- tered literature has been told on two separate occasions to the writer of these sketches by the novelist himself. Mr. Bates has always been a cordial host to journalists, for he has had more or less to do with journalism himself. On one of these occasions, in his con- fessions to a brother- journalist, Mr. Bates said: " Well, my literary career literally be- gan before I could write, for I used to dictate stories before I had mastered one essential qualification for the life of letters. I also improvised plays, which I played with my brothers and sisters. 61 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES " I was brought up in a literary atmos- phere, for my home in childhood and boy- hood was in one of the old New England academy towns, then virtually the centre of the intellectual life of the country. My father was a country doctor, whose whole leisure was devoted to books, and I have never yet met a man of keener and sounder critical instincts. One of my earliest and most vivid recollections is of sitting upon a footstool between my father's knees, be- fore the fire, while he read Shakespeare to me and explained passage after passage. " I always wrote enormously, volumi- nously, and I made my first appearance in print while I was in Bowdoin College, when I was about nineteen years old. I remember the thing very well. It made its appearance in the Portland Transcript, and the first money I earned by my pen was a cheque for three dollars. Some- 62 AELO BATES how, those old dollars seemed quite unlike any dollars I had ever seen before, and, to be frank, they still occupy quite a distinct place in the currency of the United States. While at Bowdoin I also began to write for the 8t. Nicholas Magazine." The caller inquired whether while at col- lege Mr. Bates had really made up his mind to adopt literature as a profession. " I don't think I ever weighed the mat- ter very carefully," Mr. Bates replied. " Literature was always an absorbing pas- sion with me, and I do not believe I ever reflected much about the material prospects it offered in our industrial community. I knew very little of the world, and in enter- ing upon my life-work I drifted into what had always claimed my whole interest and sympathy, without making any deliberate choice, but after duly considering the pro- fessions open to me. 63 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES " I graduated from Bowdoin at the age of twenty-five, and then I came to Boston and lived in an attic and wrote copiously and industriously day and night. But the greater part of my manuscript was re- turned to me by the discriminating editors to whom it was submitted." " And did you really go through the pri- vations of Chatterton, Goldsmith, or Doctor Johnson here in Boston ? " the visitor asked. " That is not at all impossible for any man who tries to live by pure literature," Mr. Bates answered. "It is accepting very great hazards for any man to attempt to support himself by his pen without any regular journalistic or other employment. I did not actually starve, for I had occa- sional assistance from sources upon which I could put more dependence than upon the productions of my pen. My great 64 AELO BATES difficulty in the beginning was that I had lived almost my whole life in a library, and the habit of my mind was so largely intro- spective that my writings were not in tune. I lacked experience of the world, and so I made a great many blunders from which an earlier contact with men would have saved me. For a year my literary returns were so small that I had to support myself by teaching and by painting on china." After a year of this kind of discipline, Mr. Bates got an appointment as secretary of a Republican organization in Boston, but_ before he had been long in this work the members of the organization began to drift toward Mugwumpery, and at times to Democracy. While in this secretaryship Mr. Bates edited a political paper, The Broadside. At the end of two years and a half he became a clerk in the office of a firm dealing in metals. This was in 1879. 65 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES " During this time, in my odd hours/' says Mr. Bates, " I wrote my first novel, which was published the same year in which I became editor of the Boston Courier and that was in 1880. The book was called ' Patty's Perversities,' and it was published in the Round Robin series then controlled by the old Boston firm of Osgood and Co. I remember dis- tinctly the difficulties under which the story was written in the scrappy leisure of a man of business and I cannot help thinking what a supply of energy I had in those days. " I served the Courier for thirteen years, from August, 1880, to August, 1893. Those years are chiefly memorable to me for the enormous amount of work of all sorts that I did for the Courier, and for other people. I never did like journal- istic work ; it is too hurried, and it leaves 66 AELO BATES a man no strength for well-considered and carefully wrought literary work. A man who is in journalism can do nothing else, unless he pays a terrible price in ruined health for his temerity; and, besides, T have always had a passion for pure litera- ture, For this one needs not only leisure, but all the strength of one's faculties." The interviewer ventured the opinion that Professor Bates had led a bustling life for one with quiet tastes. " Yes, I have been busy," the professor replied. " Needs must, when the devil drives, you know. While I was on the Courier I not only wrote the most impor- tant book criticisms, and the editorials, and the department called ' Opposite the Old South,' which I originated and for which no one but myself ever wrote a line, but I corresponded for the Providence Journal, the Chicago Tribune, and the Book Buyer. 67 LITTLE PILGRIMAGES I have now given up all these, and am devoting all my time to my English lectures at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- nology, to my literary work, and to my own studies." Professor Bates's second novel, " The Ties of Blood," lies buried in the files of the Boston Courier,, in which it was printed serially. The story turns on the shocking situation of a girl believing that she has married her own brother. Even- tually her doubt is removed by the proof that her husband is not her brother. The manuscript was first submitted to the pub- lishers of the Atlantic Monthly, Messrs. Ticknor and Fields, and Mr. William Dean Howells, who was then one of the editors of the Atlantic, so vehemently op- posed its publication that the young author decided to make no further attempts to have it published in book form. 68 AELO BATES However, it is interesting at this point to say that but for Mr. Howells, Professor Bates's "Wheel of Fire," still regarded by some as his best work, might not have appeared. The story, it will be recalled, has to do with hereditary insanity. The climax is the sudden madness of a girl on her wedding-day. Professor Bates had this story in mind for a long time, but, thinking it too sombre, he could not prevail upon himself to write it. He had mentioned the matter to Mr. Howells, and the veteran novelist, meeting his younger friend one day, inquired whether the story was written. " No," said Bates. " I think I sha'n't write it at all." "You can't afford to let a good idea like that go by," was Howells's comment. 69 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES " I should advise you to go home and write.it." Mr. Bates at one time regarded " The Puritans " as the best of his novels ; but an author's highest opinion is likely to be bestowed upon his latest work. At the same time, the delightful author of " Oriental Tales " has well expressed an author's publication-day sentiments: u After a man has written a book and then read the manuscript to find fault, and then read the galley proofs for the same purpose, he has very little conceit of the thing left. He has seen nothing but faults; and the disparity between his first conception and his final impression of the completed book makes a man very melancholy." Professor Bates was born at East Ma- chias, Maine, December 16, 1850. He was graduated from Bowdoin College in 1876. In his senior year he edited the college 70 AELO BATES paper, the Bowdoin Orient. A few months after his graduation he went to Boston to make a name for himself with, at first, the result aforementioned. For a year, beginning in 1878, he edited The Broad- side, a politico-eclectic sheet, and wrote for the magazines. In 1880 he took the edi- torial chair of the Boston Sunday Courier, a Boston weekly. In 1882 he married Miss Harriet L. Vose, a daughter of a well-known school- master, who wrote a little under the pseu- donym of Eleanor Putnam. She died in * 1886, leaving a son. "Patty's Perversities," Bates's first book, appeared in 1881. Two years later came " Mr. Jacobs," a popular parody of the day. After that, in irregular and lei- surely succession, came "The Pagans," "A Wheel of Fire," " Berries of the Brier," " Sonnets in Shadow," " A Lad's Love," 71 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES "-The Philistines," " Albrecht," "The Poet and His Self," " A Book o' Nine Tales," "Told in the Gate," "In the Bundle of Time," " The Torch Bearers," " Talks on Writing English," " Talks on the Study of English Literature," " The Puritans," "Under the Beech Tree," " Love in a Cloud," and " The Diary of a Saint." In 1886 he paused in his own work to edit a book left unfinished by his wife, " Old Salem," which has been spoken of as " a fragment of great promise." With his wife, too, he wrote " Prince Vance," a fairy story, dedicated to " the boy Oric," For the last ten years Mr. Bates has been professor of English literature at the Mas- sachusetts Institute of Technology, the fore- most technical school in the United States, if not in the world. He has also delivered lectures on English literature in the Lowell 72 AKLO BATES Institute courses, which are a rare feature of the intellectual life of Boston. Speaking of his verse, which is justly praised for its grace of style and piquancy of expression, Mr. Bates has said that his favourite poem is " The Beginning and Ending," which may be found at the end of the volume entitled " The Poet and His Self." Mr. Bates produces striking effects with the utmost simplicity. He is enabled so to do by reason of his acute sense of dramatic values, which reduces the strongest situa- tion to a few important actions, and of his strong command of effective phrases. Take this scene from " The Diary of a Saint : " " February 1. I wonder sometimes if human pride is not stronger than human affection. Certainly it seems sometimes that we feel the wound to vanity more than the blow to love. I suppose that the truth 73 LITTLE PILGRIMAGES is that the little prick stings where the blow numbs. For the moment it seemed to me to-night as if I felt more the sudden knowledge that the village knows of my broken engagement than I did the suffer- ing of the fact ; but I shall have forgotten this to-morrow, and the real grief will be left. "Miss Charlotte, tall and gaunt, came in just at twilight. She brought a lovely moss-rose bud. " * Why, Miss Charlotte,' I said, ' you have never cut the one bud off your moss- rose ! I thought that was as dear to you as the apple of your eye.' " c It was/ she answered, with her gay- est air. ' That's why I brought it.' "' Mother will be delighted,' I said; ' that is, if she can forgive you for picking it.' " ' It isn't for your mother,' Miss Char- 74 AELO BATES lotte said, with a sudden softening of her voice ; ' it is for you. I'm an old woman, you know, and I've whims. It's my whim for you to have the bud because I've watched it growing, and loved it almost as if it were my own baby.' " Then I knew that she had heard of the broken engagement. The sense of the vil- lage gossip, the idea of being talked over at the sewing-circle, came to me so vividly and so dreadfully that for a moment I could hardly get my breath. Then I re- membered the sweetness of Miss Charlotte's act, and I went to her and kissed her. The poor old dear had tears in her eyes, but she said nothing. She understood, I am sure, that I could not talk, but that I had seen what she meant me to see, her sympathy and her love. We sat down be- fore the fire in the gathering dusk, and talked of indifferent things. She praised 75 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES Peter's beauty, although the ungrateful Peter refused to stay in her lap, and would not be gracious under her caresses. She did not remain long, and she was gay after her fashion. Miss Charlotte is apt to cover real feeling with a decent veil of facetious- ness. " ' Now I must go home and get my party ready,' she said, rising with char- acteristic suddenness. " ( Are you going to have a party ? ' I asked, in some surprise. " ' I have one every night, my dear,' she returned, with her explosive laugh. ' All the Kendall ghosts come. It isn't very gay, but it's very select.' " She hurried away, and left me more touched than I should have wished her to see." The scene could hardly be simpler, or more human, or more affecting. 76 AKLO BATES Mr. Bates is a tall, rugged man, bearded and goggled, with a brisk manner and a ready flow of words. He is very busy from early fall until the end of spring; but all the summer he rambles, more often at home, but sometimes abroad. While on these rambles his eyes and ears are ever alert for striking scenes and sayings; and he returns to Boston with his note-book well filled. He is a member of Boston's two artistic clubs, the Tavern and the St. Botolph ; and his home in Otis Place, at the foot of Beacon Hill, overlooking the Charles River, is within hailing distance of the homes of Sarah Orne Jewett, and Mrs. Deland, and Thomas Bailey Aldrich. 77 CYRUS TOWN8END BRADY. CYKUS TOWNSEND BEADY rHIS is the Keverend Cyrus Town- send Brady's own account of his entrance into the literary field : " When I was a preacher, and a pretty green preacher at that, I practised extem- poraneous speaking, with more or less dis- astrous consequences, both to myself and to the congregation. But, as a result, the extemporaneous habit became fixed upon ma " When I remarked, one day in 1898, to Bishop Whitaker, while we were riding in a trolley-car, that I believed I'd write a book, he laughed. That laugh put me on my mettle. I determined to write a book. But I couldn't do it, for, you see, I had 79 LITTLE PILGRIMAGES never cultivated the pen habit. I was and am too lazy. " Here was a pretty mess ; and the good bishop's laugh was constantly in my ears. In this extremity I thought of my extem- poraneous sermons and exclaimed: " ' Oh, if I could only talk the book! ' " I put aside the idea of a stenographer after a cursory glance at my pocketbook. I had about given up hope when I thought of the phonograph. Into one I straight- way talked ' For Love of Country.' The phonograph got even. It persisted in run- ning down at the most exciting parts. When I'd stop to think about a sentence or a word it would keep right on grinding, and I nearly worried myself sick over the thought that the good cylinders were going to waste. I had a strenuous time of it. " To cap the climax, when I read a por- tion of the transcription to Mrs. Brady, she 80 CYKUS TOWNSEND BEADY said: ' You'd better stick to preaching/ My reward came, however, when a pub- lisher's letter a few weeks later assured me that he had formed a different opinion of the book. As a result I have been preach- ing and writing ever since, and I'm glad to say I've yet to experience the sensation of having a manuscript rejected." The visitor waited for Mr. Brady to cor- rect himself. Nor did he wait in vain, for, with a laugh, the romancer said: " That's hardly true, on second thought. I wrote four short stories when I was twenty-one, just after I left the Naval Academy. They were rejected all over the United States. Two of them were stored in an old trunk. One has been lost. The fourth I used for the foundation of 'Woven with the Ship.' Well, anyhow, after these four stories had travelled to every corner of the land in unavailing 81 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES search for a publisher, I quit trying to be an author. Then I went out into the world and gathered experience as a preacher, railroad man, farmer, soldier, what not. But I didn't try writing again until 1898. Then I naturally turned to history for inspiration, for ever since my days at the Naval Academy I have read all the history, American and foreign, that I could lay hands on. Perhaps I seem to turn out books fast because I have a good deal of untouched experience and many years of historical reading to draw on." Doctor Holmes called his friend Doctor Hale " the human dynamo." The term would not adequately express Mr. Brady's capacity for work. It is related that in nine months of the year 1902 Mr. Brady wrote " Woven with the Ship," a forty thousand word story ; " The Southerners," a one hundred thousand word novel ; " Bor- 82 CYRUS TOWNSEISTD BRADY der Eights and Fighters/' another work of the same length ; " In the Wasp's Nest," an eighty thousand word juvenile; several short tales aggregating forty thou- sand words; eighteen book reviews (two each month), containing in all thirty-six thousand words ; thirty sermons, averaging 1,250 words each, for a Sunday paper; and, besides all this, he revised " Hohenzol- lern," a forty thousand word historical ro- mance, and carried that story and " The Quilberon Touch " and " Colonial Fights and Fighters " through the press. ~Nor is that all. In odd hours he attended person- ally to a large correspondence, kept his cash-book in order (a common employment among successful authors, who, on the whole, are a thrifty and far-reaching lot), and preached twice every Sunday. Perhaps the only thing to say is that Mr. Brady is the Andrew Lang of America. 83 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES Marian Crawford is wont to sit down at his desk day after day and write with his own hand five thousand words ; but Mr. Craw- ford is content to give out two novels a year. Indeed, as a mere producer of words, Mr. Brady exemplifies the old sign : "I lead. Let those who can follow." Perhaps it would be safe to call him a literary som- nambulist. Mr. Brady is a disciple of the strenuous life. He was born in Allegheny, Pennsyl- vania, December 20, 1861, the year of the beginning of the most strenuous time the country has ever had. Astrologists, no doubt, would be able to make some interest- ing deductions from that fact. When he was ten years old he went to Kansas to live. Toward the end of his regular schooling he developed what seemed a strong taste for sea life, and he was fortunate enough, while seeking to gratify this taste, to win 84 CYKUS TOWNSEND BRADY an appointment to the Naval Academy (September, 1879), from which practical and patriotic institution he was graduated when he was twenty-one. It is a rather odd circumstance that two of the most popular novelists of the day in America should be graduates of the Naval Academy. The other novelist is Winston Churchill. Four months after graduation Mr. Brady found that his passion for the sea had somewhat abated ; and about the time of this important discovery came the ambi- tion to shine in literature. The story of the early smothering of this ambition has been told by the author him- self in the first part of this sketch; but the story invites the comment that Mr. Brady would probably have shone in liter- ature much sooner than he did if only he had shut the door in the face of discour- agement. He quit trying to be an author 85 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES perhaps on the very eve of success. It took him fifteen years to make the single step, and all for the reason, apparently, of the proper stimulant. Men like Bishop Whit- aker unconsciously serve great purposes. For several years Brady knocked about the West, in the employ of the Missouri Pacific and the Union Pacific railroads; and his next step was the study of theology under Bishop Worthington of Nebraska. He was ordained a deacon in 1889 and a priest in the following year. Being sturdy and enthusiastic by nature, he quickly went into prominence. Between the years 1890 and 1895 he was rector of churches (Protestant Episcopal) in Mis- souri and Colorado, and archdeacon of Kansas. In 1895 he returned to his na- tive state as archdeacon, and four years afterward he took the rectorship of St. Paul's Church, Overbrook, Philadelphia, 86 CYKUS TOWNSEND BEADY from which he not long ago resigned in order to save himself from overwork. It was, then, during his service as arch- deacon of the Episcopal Church in Penn- sylvania that he first thought of writing a book. This book, " For Love of Country," was a story of the American Eevolution, spir- ited, romantic, and patriotic. There was just about enough of good things in it of pictures of society, and of descriptions of war afield and afloat. That story is typical of every one of Mr. Brady's stories, inasmuch as it has sweet sentiment and fine action and sufficient fidelity to the facts of history. "For Love of Honour," which was fairly successful, had prompt successors in " For the Freedom of the Sea," and " The Grip of Honour," the first a romance of the War of 1812 and the second a romance culmi- 87 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES nating in the immortal victory of John Paul Jones and his Bon Homme Rich- ard. " The Grip of Honour " was published in 1899. In the following year Mr. Brady's fertility, or industry, as you please, began to attract the notice of book lovers. In 1900 five books of his were sent to the market, " Stephen Decatur," " Recollec- tions of a Missionary in the Great West," '' American Fights and Fighters," " Com- modore Paul Jones," and " Reuben James, a Hero of the Forecastle." The next year brought five books by him, " When Blades Are Out and Love's Afield," "Under Tops'ls and Tents," " An Apostle of the Plains," " Colonial Fights and Fighters," and " Under the Ban of the Red-Beard." The chief part of the work which the cler- ical romancist and biographer did last year has already been noted. His latest novel, 88 CYKUS TOWNSEND BKADY " The Southerners/' is by no means an extraordinary volume in the great Civil War library. For one thing, it shows signs of the author's mental fatigue. " Under Tops'ls and Tents " is one of the works of Mr. Brady which has been scantily appreciated. As a chronicle of days spent at the Naval Academy it is ex- traordinarily interesting, falling as it does into the happy medium between frivolities and technicalities. As a mirror of life in camp during the Spanish War it is small, but vividly true. Although all the works of Mr. Brady are more or less reflective of his personality, still " Under Tops'ls and Tents " is so striking a reflection that it deserves to be classified by itself. It shows us a man with well-trained faculties of ob- servation, with a wholesome, light-hearted manner, with sympathetic impulses, and with an ample, fluent power of expression. 89 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES There are no frills, obviously, about the man; and there are none, surely, about the writer. He is no word-painter, no sleight-of-hand artist. To use a figure which has already been introduced, he sim- ply holds the mirror up to nature. His art is simplicity itself; and the effect is all the more thrilling when the mirror reveals the drama in its barest details. So barely and simply was Shakespeare presented originally, and previous to the domination of the stage-manager. There is a good example of this in that very book, "Under Tops'ls and Tents." Two young officers, one engaged to a young lady who regards him indifferently, and the other in love with her and gradually winning her love, are assigned to a ship which goes ashore off Hatteras in a gale. The ship breaks up, and the two rivals, one now doubting the young lady's loyalty 90 CYKUS TOWNSEND BRADY (for he had seen a letter in her handwrit- ing addressed to his fellow officer), and the other now sure of her affection, find them- selves clinging to the forecastle. We read : "... Toward morning Powell (the one who was engaged to the young lady), endeavouring to move to a higher portion of the forecastle, slipped and fell into the sea. He seemed to have hit a piece of the wreck as he reached the water, for, al- though he was a fine swimmer, he struck out but feebly. Throwing aside the blanket in which he was wrapped, Tyler (the one who had received the loving letter) in- stantly leaped into the sea after him. " He was by his side in a moment and caught him by the arm to support him. A small life-buoy, by happy chance, was floating close at hand, and Tyler, guiding his companion toward it, placed his hand upon it. The water had revived Powell, 91 LITTLE PILGBIMAGES and presently he came to himself. As he did so, he realized what had happened. His friend had saved him. Tyler was swimming alongside of him, and the cur- rent was apparently carrying them out to sea. He was desperately injured and un- able to swim. They were already far away from the wreck. " ' Thank you, old man/ he whispered. "'It's all right,' answered Tyler, briefly, both men saving their breath for the strug- gle before them. They drifted on in the gray darkness for awhile, until Powell broke the silence again. " ' We are going out to sea.' " ' Yes.' " e You are nearly used up,' he added, looking at his friend swimming at his side. " ' Oh, I'm all right,' answered Tyler, shortly. 92 CYEUS TOWNSEKD BRADY " ' Take hold of this life-buoy,' said Powell, presently. " ' It won't hold two, you keep it. I can swim. 7 There was another pause. Tyler was striving with fast-waning strength to keep afloat and to resist the horrible temp- tation to clutch the life-buoy at all haz- ards. "'George/ said Powell, at last, * it seems to me that we are both done for. Tell me, in the presence of death and for God's sake, tell me true, that letter Mabel she loves you ? ' " Tyler hesitated. He was very faint and exhausted from the continued exertion of his long swim, after the heart-breaking experiences of the night. He would have given the world not to tell, but he lacked strength to refuse, and in that hour when both looked death in the face there was room for nothing but the truth. 93 LITTLE PILGBIMAGES " ' Tell me the truth, if you love me, old man,' continued Powell. " ' Yes,' panted Tyler, white-faced and struggling, ' she loves me. My fault I could not help it. Forgive her.' " ' It's all right,' answered Powell. ' She could not help it, either. I forgive you both. She's got the better man. Tell her I loved her to the end.' " ' What are you doing ? ' cried Tyler, excitement and wonder supplementing his failing strength. " ' One must go. I'm done for, anyway. Good-bye. Take the buoy.' Powell gave it a gentle shove toward his exhausted companion. He threw up his hands, smil- ing gently, and sank beneath the sea. "With the instinct of the drowning, Tyler clung to the buoy, peering down into the blackness with straining eyes as if to pierce the very depths of the water for 94 CYBUS TOWNSEND BKADY another sight of his lost companion. Pow- ell did not rise to the surface. " An hour after a turn of the current washed Tyler to the shore. He crawled up on the sand and lay there panting and exhausted. When morning broke he started down the beach seeking assistance and looking for his comrades. There were but four officers and a few men saved from the wreck. These he gathered up as he walked along. As near as he could judge, opposite the place where Powell had given him the life-buoy, he found his body lying face downward in the sand, cast there by the tide or the current. When they turned him over, Tyler saw that his lips were set in the same smile that they had worn when he had sunk into the sea." As a critic remarked some years ago, there is an honest manliness about Mr. Brady's work that compels admiration. 95 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES Brady the man and Brady the writer are inseparable. In 1898 he was appointed captain and chaplain in the First Pennsyl- vania regiment of volunteers ; and though he saw no fighting, he served his country faithfully. ~Not all the patriots reach the front in any war. However, his service gave him the opportunity to be one of the few men who have served the nation in both the army and navy. Adding this service to what he has done as a railroad man, as a churchman, and as an author, it must be admitted that in his forty- one years Mr. Brady has well exemplified the best side of the strenuous life. 96 ROBERT WILLIAM CHAMBERS. ROBERT WILLIAM CHAMBERS a little New York town, lying between the Mohawk Valley and the Adirondacks, is the ancestral home of the Chambers family. There, for the last five years, Robert Will- iam Chambers, author, has fished and hunted and written. There, afar from the madding crowd, indulging himself with such fine but simple pleasures as the coun- try affords, he lives his modest, fruitful, remarkable life. It is a remarkable life, considering only what he has done; for he was born in Brooklyn only thirty-eight years ago on May 26, 1865. Some youths have done much more than he, but few have done so well. 97 LITTLE PILGEI MAGES His father was William P. Chambers, who won considerable distinction as a law- yer and as a jurist; who was one of the founders of the Century Club, and who for years was the intimate friend of President Arthur. Robert was born a year before Walter Boughton, his brother, a well- known New York architect. In his childhood Robert formed the out- door habit. It is a habit that all children lean to, but in Robert it was wisely per- mitted to develop. In fact, he spent so much of his boyhood time in wood and field, on lake and river, that at one period he had the desire to be a naturalist. To be particular, he was drawn by entomology. Readers who remember the entomological chapter in " The Cambric Mask " will readily believe this. "He confesses," says one of his biog- raphers, "that even to this day he can't 98 KOBEET WILLIAM CHAMBEES see a collection of butterflies and moths without an indefinable ache. Ask him about his books and he will tell you about a rare swallow-tailed butterfly he discov- ered down South last month, a butterfly not recorded by American entomologists. Ask him about his methods of working and he'll talk about trout-fishing. Ask him about himself and you'll get information about army uniforms." We have put our head out of the wiridow and looked up the track, but no harm has been done, for Mr. Chambers is more versa- tile than you dream of even now. However, when he grew up he discov- ered a fondness for art, and to satisfy it he went to Paris in 1886, after having, as he puts it, " fooled around a year at the Art League." He studied at the ficole des Beaux Arts, at Julien's Academy, with Benjamin Constant, the celebrated portrait 99 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES painter, and with other noted teachers. He was represented in the salon of 1889 by a " black-and-white picture of three bulldogs, and and something else " so he says. During the salon he had a re- lapse into his old habits, and instead of standing near his pictures with ears eager for praise, as we have been told is the prac- tice of young artists, he went off fishing for trout. But while abroad he did more than paint and fish. We have his early stories some of his best stories to prove that he became pretty familiar with foreign history and foreign tradition and foreign life. He was always, we must believe, wide-awake and imaginative. He returned to America in 1893 still unsettled in mind. He had learned some- thing of art, and he was prepared to earn his living by it; so he did some illustrat- 100 EOBEKT WILLIAM CHAMBEKS ing for the popular periodicals. But he also had begun to try his pen with stories. That same year of his return, 1893, saw the publication of " In the Quarter " and of " The King in Yellow." " In the Quarter " he had written in 1887, " just for fun and without any- thought of publication." It made no especial stir; and he has been quoted as saying that he thought little of it himself. But it was different with " The King in Yellow." The fact is, this book of short stories was one of the literary phenomenons of ten years ago. In an article published some years later in The Overland Monthly, Mr. Duffield Osborne said of these first short stories that " nothing more weirdly imaginative, nothing finer in sentiment, nothing more finished in execution, and nothing more absorbing in interest " could be found. 101 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES " At times," he declared, " it has seemed to me as if Poe had come back to life ; but Poe with an added lightness of touch and shading, Poe with a newly developed sense of humour." If this had been said in 1893 it might fairly have been regarded as extravagant ; but it was a judgment passed in the cool of after years. Moreover, Mr. William Sharp, a none too friendly, or rather a char- acteristically insular English critic, took very nearly the same position in an article published in 18 97 in the London Academy. " When ' The King in Yellow ' appeared," he said, " critics and readers were puzzled. Here was a new writer with an imagina- tion in fantasy as strange and vivid as that of Stevenson in his new c New Arabian Nights/ though more sombre in quality; so touched, indeed, with the contagion of horror akin to madness that one instinc- 102 EOBEET WILLIAM CHAMBEKS tively wondered if the author of ' The Fall of the House of Usher' were reincarnate in this new discoverer of ' The Grotesque and the Arabesque. 7 In ' The King in Yellow ' the three most distinctive stories are those which, collectively, might bear that title: ' The Repairer of Reputations/ ' The Court of the Dragon/ and ' The Yel- low Sign.' The first is most remarkable. To use a commonplace, no one who has read this wild fantasy is likely ever to forget it. True, it is, after all, merely the uncontrolled imaginings of a madman, one Hildred Castaigne, but there is method with a vengeance. ' The Repairer of Reputations ' is, in its opening pages, as in its title, eminently Stevensonian. Later, as also in ' The Yellow Sign/ one is re- minded more of Poe in his most morbid tales of horror. In one and all, however, Mr. Chambers is no imitator. Here he 103 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES is akin to the two great writers alluded to, and not merely a self -trained follower." Small wonder that since 1893 the author of " The King in Yellow " has made liter- ature his business and left art behind. To have it said of one that he has written some of the best short stories in the English language must seem to be sufficient excuse to turn from doubtful pictures to certain letters. After " The King in Yellow " came in quick succession " The Eed Kepublic " and "A King and a Few Dukes" (1894); " The Maker of Moons " and " With the Band" (1895); "Oliver Locke; the Mystery of Choice " and " Lorraine " (1896); "Ashes of Empire" (1897); "The Haunts of Men" (1898); "The Cambric Mask" (1899); and "Out- siders " (1899) ; " The Conspirators " (1900); "Cardigan" (1901); and 104 EOBEKT WILLIAM CHAMBEKS " The Maid-at-Arms " (1902). Another event besides the publication of " The Haunts of Men " marked the year 1898 for him, and that was his marriage to Elsa Vaughan Moler. " Cardigan " and " The Maid-at-Arms " are two parts of a series of novels deal- ing with the American Revolution. These first novels are of the country in which the author lives New York, the bloodiest stage of the Revolutionary drama. " Mr. Chambers," says a sketch that ap- peared in Harper's Weekly two years ago, " knows every stream and every bit of covert in the vicinity of Broadalbin, and it was perfectly natural that, in laying the plans for a series of novels which should constitute the history of the American Revolution, he should turn to the history close at hand and begin with the fine figure of Sir William Johnson and the events that 105 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES led up to tne outbreak of hostilities in 1775. Thus there is something interesting and intimate in finding in the first chapters of ' Cardigan ' the author laying before the reader Sir William Johnson's home at Johnstown ; in following young Cardigan and ' Silver Heels/ the hero and heroine of the story children being educated by Sir William going a-fishing on the Ken- nyetto, in recognizing spots on the stream where fishing bouts between Sir William and the young people took place, and in realizing that the author of ( Cardigan ' himself, one hundred and fifty years later, has fished in every pool of the same stream. It is interesting to find in Johnstown the house where the fight that was one of the most interesting episodes of ' Cardigan ' took place." Then, too, no one but an intimate friend and tender lover of nature, no one but a 106 ROBEET WILLIAM CHAMBEES student of the glades and woods of the country of the Mohawks and of " calm and imperturbable " Schuyler, could have produced this fragrant, refreshing scene, in which the hero of " The Maid-at-Arms " is the chief figure: " I remember it was the last day of May before I saw my cousin Dorothy again. " Late that afternoon I had taken a fishing-rod and a book, ' The Poems of Pansard,' and had set out for the grist-mill on the stream below the log-bridge; but did not go by road, as the dust was deep, so instead crossed the meadow and entered the cool thicket, making a shorter route to the stream. " Through the woodland, as I passed, I saw violets in hollows and blue innocence starring moist glades with its heavenly colour, and in the drier woods those 107 LITTLE PILGRIMAGES slender-stemmed blue bell-flowers which some call the Venus's looking-glass. " In my saddened and rebellious heart a more innocent passion stirred and awoke the tender pleasure I have always found in seeking out those shy people of the for- est, the wild blossoms a harmless pleas- ure, for it is ever my habit to leave them undisturbed upon their stalks. " Deeper in the forest pink mocassin- flowers bloomed among the rocks, and the air was tinctured with a honeyed smell from the spiked orchis cradled in its shel- tering leaf under the hemlock shade. " Once, as I crossed a marshy place, about me floated a violet perfume^ and I was at loss to find its source until I espied a single purple blossom of the Arethusa bedded in sturdy thickets of rose-azalea, faintly spicy, and all humming with the wings of plundering bees. 108 ROBERT WILLIAM CHAMBERS " Underfoot my shoes brushed through spikenard, and fell silently on carpets of moss-pinks, and once I saw a matted bed of late Mayflower, and the forest dusk grew sweeter and sweeter, saturating all the woodland, until each breath I drew seemed to intoxicate. " Spring languor was in earth and sky, and in my bones, too; yet, through this Northern forest ever and anon came faint reminders of receding snows, melting beyond the Canadas delicate zephyrs, tinctured with the far scent of frost, fla- vouring the sun's balm at moments with a sharper essence. " Now, traversing a ferny space edged in with sweetbrier, a breeze accompanied me, caressing neck and hair, stirring a sudden warmth upon my cheek like a breathless maid close beside me, whispering." Whatever be the comparative merits of 109 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES the various kinds of fiction, these later his- torical romances by Mr. Chambers are by all means worthy of longevity. The author has written with a clear vision of Revolu- tionary times; he sees the things as they were; he instinctively seems to have felt the very motives that tugged at the hearts of the leading figures on both sides of the short but furious struggle. No romancist has ever drawn more vivid pictures of the hatred and the glory of battle; no his- torian has paid stricter attention to de- tails. Besides, no one has written more frankly, with such dispassionate fidelity to truth and at the same time with such spir- ited appreciation of grand and loving deeds, as this retiring young man of Broadalbin. " No, there is no illusion for us," he remarks ; " no splendid armies, banner-laden, passing through unbroken triumphs across the sunset's glory; no 110 ROBERT WILLIAM CHAMBERS winged victory, with smooth, brow laurelled to teach us to forget the holocaust. Neither can we veil our history, nor soften our legends. Romance alone can justify ar theme inspired by truth; for romance is more vital than history, which, after all, is but the fleshless skeleton of romance." Mr. Chambers's love for outdoor life fur- nishes him with recreation from the drudg- ery of the writing-table. He and his dogs are a familiar sight around Broadalbin. He does most of his writing at night. " Those who know Robert W. Chambers intimately," says one writer, " testify with a good deal of enthusiasm to his solid char- acter. . . . Doubtless he didn't know it, but he drew what seems to be in its main lines a first-rate picture of himself in Stephen Steen, who was the chief character in f A King and a Few Dukes.' He might easily be set down at first acquaintance as 111 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES a dilettante, who did not take himself or his work seriously." So much for appearances. Assuredly Mr. Chambers should take himself and his work seriously, and we believe that he does; for the books bearing his name are a distinct credit to American literature. 112 THOMAS DIXON, JR. THOMAS DIXON, JE. LEOPAKD'S SPOTS," by Thomas Dixon, Jr., which Doubleday, Page & Co. pub- lished in March, 1902, is by all odds the most remarkable of the many recent suc- cessful first novels. Until lately a success- ful first novel was a rarity; now it is almost a commonplace. " The Helmet of Navarre," "When Knighthood Was in Mower," " Eben Holden," " Graustark," " The Spenders," " The Spoilsmen " all these are first novels, and successes. " The Leopard's Spots," though not so popular as some of them, is the most remarkable of all. Max Nordau says that it has deliber- ately undone the work of Harriet Beecher Stowe. At least, it may fairly be regarded 113 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES as the South's long-deferred answer to " Uncle Tom's Cabin." In the twelve- month following its publication one hun- dred thousand copies were sold. In " The Leopard's Spots " is met again the same infamous Legree whom Mrs. Stowe depicted ; but now, instead of hold- ing slaves and beating some to death, he is a " truly loyal " Southern, inciting the negroes to demand their full share of the privileges of citizenship, and taking first pick of the spoils. George Harris, the only educated negro in the tale, is represented to be the son of Eliza Harris, who escaped from a slave pen, and, with her child in her arms, fled across the ice-choked Ohio with hounds baying in her trail. Strictly speaking, " The Leopard's Spots " is not so much an answer as a sequel to " Uncle Tom's Cabin." By por- traying its abuses, Mrs. Stowe dealt slav- 114 THOMAS DIXON, JK. ery a blow from which it never recovered. That slavery cloaked fearful abuses no Southerner not even Mr. Dixon himself denies, or could honestly deny. But " Uncle Tom's Cabin " did not look for- ward to the consequences of the emancipa- tion of the negro; and that these conse- quences are troublesome, and often fearful, no Northerner not even one of Garri- son's sons could honestly deny. The re- lation between " Uncle Tom's Cabin " and " The Leopard's Spots," therefore, is sim- ply local. Mrs. Stowe was not responsible for the scalawags who took possession of the South after the war; nor was Mr. Dixon responsible for the abuses inflicted upon helpless and innocent negroes, both male and female, before the war. But, after all has been said, the negro problem still remains; and this is the problem which the Virginia novelist begs 115 LITTLE PILGBIMAGES his readers to consider. " Can the Ethi- opian change his skin or the leopard his spots ? " Can the thoughtful white man ever admit the negro to full social and po- litical equality ? Possibly some Northern- ers would vote for a negro of Dr. Booker T. Washington's stamp for President of the United States. Mr. Roosevelt has had Doctor Washington at dinner in the White House. But would the most sympathetic Northern negromaniac, a refined, aristo- cratic white man, encourage and permit a negro to marry into his family ? The substance of Mr. Dixon's argument, which repudiates the idea that absolute equality between Caucasian and Ethiopian exists in the United States, lies in the chap- ter entitled " Equality with a Reserva- tion." The Honourable Everett Lowell, a Boston statesman, has made a powerful speech at the Cooper Union, New York, in 116 THOMAS PIXON, JR. denunciation of an atrocious lynching con- sequent upon an atrocious assault, and George Harris, his negro protege, a poet, a scholar, Harvard graduate, a gentleman of his kind, has heard him with gratitude and admiration has heard him demand "per- fect equality " and has thereby been em- boldened to ask for the hand of Miss Helen, Lowell's daughter. " Harris," says Lowell, furiously, when the negro declares his love, " this is crazy nonsense. Such an idea is preposterous. I am amazed that it should ever have en- tered your head. Let this be an end of it here and now, if you have any desire to retain my friendship." Harris, stunned by this swift blow in his very teeth, protests that he, like Lowell, is a Harvard graduate, and that they are equals in culture. " Granted," says Lowell. " Nevertheless 117 LITTLE PILGRIMAGES you are a negro, and I do not desire the infusion of your blood in my family." " But I have more of white than negro blood, sir." " So much the worse. It is the mark of shame." " But it is the one drop of negro blood at which your taste revolts, is it not ? " " To be frank, it is." Lowell admits their political equality. " Politics is but a secondary phenomena of society. You said absolute equality," protests Harris. " The question you broach," replies Lowell, " is a question of taste, and the deeper social instincts of racial purity and self-preservation. I care not what your culture, or your genius, or your position, I do not desire, and will not permit, a mix- ture of negro blood in my family. The idea is nauseating, and to my daughter it 118 THOMAS DIXON, JR. would be repulsive beyond the power of words to express it ! " " And yet," pleads Harris, " you invited me to your home, introduced me to your daughter, seated me at your table, and used me in your appeal to your constituents, and now when I dare ask the privilege of seek- ing her hand in honourable marriage, you, the scholar, patriot, statesman, and philoso- pher of equality and democracy, slam the door in my face and tell me that I am a negro ! Is this fair or manly ? " " I fail to see its unfairness," is Low- ell's answer ; and finally Harris is ordered from the house. That scene presents the negro problem stripped of all its shams and subterfuges. It is a violent picture. The effect might have been produced more quietly and more truthfully. The plain truth is that no negro in Harris's position would presume 119 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES to seek the hand of a white lady. He would be content with political and ath- letic equality. A young negro orator said at Harvard last June that the negro prob- lem would find its solution in religion; yet only a few years ago, in Boston, the cradle of abolition, a worthy negro bishop was denied bed and board at all the lead- ing hotels, and even Booker T. Washing- ton himself, when he visits Boston to ap- peal to his influential admirers there, is obliged to put up at a hotel in one of the cheapest parts of the city. Naturally "The Leopard's Spots" aroused much hostile criticism, based on the allegation that it appealed to preju- dice and that it raked up dead issues. The author replied in a letter from which we quote these few paragraphs : " I have not sought to arouse race hatred or prejudice. For the negro I have the 120 THOMAS DIXON, JR. friendliest feelings and the profoundest pity. What I have attempted to show is that this nation is now beginning to face an apparently insoluble problem. Fred- eric Harrison declares it to be the darkest shadow over the future of the American republic. . . . " I claim the book is an authentic hu- man document, and I know it is the most important moral deed of my life. There is not a bitter or malignant sentence in it. It may shock the prejudices of those who have idealized or worshipped the negro as canonized in ' Uncle Tom.' Is it not time they heard the whole truth? They have heard only one side for forty years. . . . " The only question for a critic to deter- mine when discussing my moral right to publish such a book is this : Is the record of life given important and authentic ? If eighteen millions of Southern people, who 121 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES at present rule, believe what my book ex- presses, is it not well to know it ? I assert that they do believe it, and the number of Southern white people to-day who disagree with c The Leopard's Spots ' could all be housed on a half -acre lot. I challenge any man to deny this. If it is true, is it not of tremendous importance that the whole nation shall know it ? " Like the strength of " Uncle Tom's Cabin," the strength of " The Leopard's Spots " is elemental. The Southern novel is curiously crude. The simplest rules of grammar are repeatedly broken and the characters talk stiltedly and again ab- surdly. Miss Lowell, the Bostonian, is made to say, " If Bob don't write me faith- fully I'll make him come here and live in Boston." A young woman of her environ- ment could not say " If Bob don't," any more than her proud and prudent father 122 THOMAS DIXQN, JR. could ever leave her alone to entertain a negro or be entertained by him. The Re- publicans of Massachusetts have courted the negro's vote, but they have never ac- customed themselves to inviting the negro to their houses. The love-story of the hero, Charles Gas- ton, and Miss Sallie Worth is the least extravagant and the most pleasing feature of the novel. Indeed, that story more than anything else in the book contains a prom- ise of good things to come. The scene of Gaston's proposal to Miss Sallie is poet- ically described, and the manly directness of the young gentleman and the coy yet finely modest demeanour of the young lady are delineated with captivating skill. The character of Charles Gaston, whose boyhood is saddened by the deplorable days of the Reconstruction period, and under whose leadership the white men rule su- 123 LITTLE PILGBIMAGES preme, is drawn from the present Governor of North Carolina. Comparatively speaking, the author of " The Leopard's Spots " is still a young man. He was born in Shelby, North Caro- lina, January 11, 1864. His father was a well-known Baptist minister. At the age of nineteen Thomas was graduated from Wake Forest College, one of the minor schools of his native State, and, by the way, the alma mater of the hero of the novel. Then Mr. Dixon entered Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, as a spe- cial student in history and politics. This advantage was gained by means of a scholarship. The following year, 1884, he took up the study of law at the Greensboro (North Carolina) Law School, from which he was graduated with honours in 1886. That same year he was admitted to the bar of all the courts in the State, including 124 THOMAS DIXQN, JR. the United States district courts, and also to the bar of the United States Supreme Court at Washington. However, with characteristic restlessness, he resigned these privileges, in October, 1886, to enter the ministry. Seven months before he had been married to Miss Harriett Bussey, of Mont- gomery, Alabama. It would be a rather difficult task to note in an orderly fashion all the steps that Mr. Dixon took from his graduation at Wake Forest College to his entrance into the min- istry. For one thing, he was a member of the North Carolina Legislature from 1884 to 1886; but other pursuits seem to have lessened legislative attractions for him. At the same time, in 1884, he must have been a curious, if not a powerful, legis- lator, for he was then only twenty years old, and consequently not a voter. A young 125 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES man to have been affected by the buzzing of the political bee ! In 1887, after his ordination, he was elected pastor of a Baptist church in Ral- eigh, North Carolina. During the follow- ing year he occupied a Baptist pulpit in Boston, and the next year he accepted a call to the People's Temple (Baptist) in New York. There his restlessness waned, for there he remained until 1899. Before the close of his ministry he enjoyed the rep- utation of attracting larger congregations than any other Protestant preacher in the country. At any rate, his ministration was remarkably popular ; and when he pleased he could preach a highly sensational ser- mon. Many of his pulpit utterances are to be found in the books which he compiled prior to his leaving New York " Living Problems in Religion and Social Science " (1891), "What Is Religion?" (1902), 126 THOMAS DIXON, JK. " Sermons on Ingersoll " (1894), and the " Failure of Protestantism in New York " (1897). The last book may be said to have foretold his departure from the min- istry. As pastor of the People's Church he rose to more than local prominence by reason of his freedom and originality of thought, his vigour of expression, and his independence of action. He proved on many occasions that he was not a man to be fettered by traditions or by customs ; but, at the same time, he stood afar from radi- calism. His faith was as strong at the end of his ministry as at the start, and his inde- pendence concerned the lesser restraints. He did not hesitate, for instance^ to go hunting with a gun which is not exactly a clerical occupation. It was as a preacher, by the way, that Mr. Dixon first became identified with fic- tion. Camden, the heroic preacher who 127 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES figures in one of Lilian Bell's stories, was drawn from the same man who afterward drew the heroic figure of Charles Gaston in " The Leopard's Spots." Nearly every educated imaginative boy at some time feels disposed to write books. Our North Carolina boy was no exception to this rule; and though law, and after- ward religion, drew him away from liter- ature, he has returned to it as to a first love. After leaving the People's Temple he spent much of his time lecturing; and indeed, he is one of the most popular lec- turers in America. But he kept literature in mind, and simply awaited his theme his opportunity. " The Leopard's Spots " simmered in his mind for more than a year. Almost every day something went into the mental pot some idea, some fact found in an obscure quarter, some new answer to an old argu- 128 THOMAS DIXQN, JK. ment. The actual writing of the novel oc- cupied about sixty days. Part of the writ- ing was done in a deserted cabin on the shore of Chesapeake Bay, across from " Elmington," the author's estate ; and part was done in the spare hours of a lec- ture tour. This tour was full of distraction. There is a story which tells how a peremptory dinner call at a hotel brought him moodily down-stairs. As he was entering the din- ing-room, a black hall-boy pulled his sleeve and said, " 'Scuse me, suh ; but I reck'n you's forgot sump'n." " Have I ? " said Mr. Dixon, puzzled. "What is it?" " You's sutunly forgot all 'bout dat collah an' necktie." Sure enough, in his excite- ment he had overlooked his neckwear, and he returned to his room thankful that his omission was not worse. He does not mind telling a story on himself. 129 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES " Elmington Manor," the author's new house in Dixondale, Virginia, is a truly magnificent estate. The five hundred acres comprise all the attractions of the country and the seashore. Quail, wood- cock, and wild turkey abound; there are twenty-five acres of oyster beds; there is a beach a mile and a half long; there are three hundred large shade trees on the lawn; the white house, with its imposing portico, contains thirty-five rooms, and the drive from the porch to the front gate is two miles long. The log-cabin in which the author works was planned by him and built by negroes under his supervision. Across the creek from " Elmington " and the five hundred acres roundabout were once among the possessions of the Indian princess Pocahontas. Mr. Dixon's latest novel, " The One Woman," is a New York story dealing 130 THOMAS DIXON, JE. with divorce and socialism. It is related that when his publishers read the manu- script they notified him to make his own terms. The shock which the reception of that notice must have produced is some- thing which most authors still merely dream of experiencing. 131 FINLEY PETER DUNNE. FINLEY PETEK DUNNE /N 1898 happened two memorable af- fairs. One was the war with Spain, and the other was the appearance of " Mr. Dooley." Truly, the two heroes of '98 were Dewey and the philosopher of Arr-chey Road. And the philosopher has surpassed the soldier; he has remained constantly popular. When we have forgot- ten what ships took part in the battle of Manila Bay we shall still delight in the pages of "Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War." The creator of Mr. Dooley, Finley Peter Dunne, is a native of Chicago, and now a resident of New York ; and whereas, by the way the martial hero aforementioned is drawing a noble salary from the govern- 133 LITTLE PILGKI MAGES inent, Mr. Dunne is drawing a princely salary $40,000 from one of the New York publishing houses. In Chicago, in St. Patrick's parish, was Mr. Dunne born on July 10, 1867. As all good American boys do, he went to the pub- lic schools, and in 1885, at the age of eighteen, after his moderate schooling and some little knocking about, he entered the literary world by the side door of jour- nalism. Of course he began as a reporter. Only the rich amateurs, or the lucky heirs to some newspaper property, begin as any- thing else. Many of the ablest newspaper men are reporters to the last. In 1891 he was made city editor of the Chicago Times; and from that time till 1898 he occupied various positions on vari- ous newspapers, after the manner of Chi- cago journalists. In 1898, the year of his bound to fame, he was managing editor of 134 EINLEY PETEE DUNNE the Chicago Journal; and, like most other managing editors, he still found leisure moments for private practice. It is one of the principal duties of a managing editor to see that all the other members of the force work resolutely, dutifully. Many a bag of peanuts has been shelled in that autocrat's room. Soon after the beginning of the war the biting humour of Mr. Dooley found soft places in Washington, and particularly among the department fops and fossils. Bombast, red tape, procrastination, incom- petency, stupidity, overzealousness, jeal- ousy all these flaws and foibles were ex- posed, laughably yet mercilessly, by the Chicago Irish-American. Especially funny and severe was he with the famous Board of Strategy. In fact, he brought that blundering body into national ridicule, and so thoroughly and inimitably that other 135 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES writers, with a few inconsequential excep- tions, granted him a monopoly, and the people at large enriched their common sense. Weekly the friends and foes of the war looked for Mr. Dooley's comments on the procession of events looked as eagerly for those comments as for the despatches from Cuba and Porto Rico and the Philip- pines. And then the war ended ; and then it was whispered in divers rural side-sta- tions of literature that Mr. Dooley would end. But no. Simply his present vocation ended. His philosophy is not like an arc- light one steady, concentrated blaze ; it is more like the diamond, with its many- sided brilliancy. In plain words, Mr. Dooley proved that he could flash at every turn. " Mr. Dooley in the Hearts of His Countrymen " proved to be as witty and as 136 FINLEY PETEE DUNNE wise as had proved " Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War." It is to be supposed that no one forgets his Mr. Dooley of Boord of Sthrathegy fame, his simple, homely, Irish- Ameri- can humour. Now, compare with that, if you please, this specimen of his later hu- mour, taken from an article printed in Collier's Weekly (February 28, 1903). The article was entitled : " On the White House Expense Account " : " Up to this day ivry prisidint in th' White House has lived as become his sta- tion, that is, Hinnissy, very badly. For- eign noblemen long unaccustomed to lookin' upon th' currant wine whin it was red within th' cup come out iv th' White House with their hands on their stomach. Th' first lady iv th' land cut th' hair iv th' first childher iv th' land with her own fair hands an' th' first gintleman in th' land 137 LITTLE PILGBIMAGES was often to bo seen wurrukin' th' wringer on Mondahs. They wasn't a man howiver humble that wint to th' White House an' didn't feel at home or worse. They was a corjal welcome f'r wan an' all in that hos- pitable mansion. But whin Teddy Bosen- felt came in he changed all that. Th' first thing he done was to make over th' White House. Up to his time th' White House was a place where anny gintleman cud live but wudden't if there was a hotel handy. But it wasn't good enough f'r this jood. He changed it around, this mansion full iv th' best thraditions of our govermint an' ivry other kind of thraditions, this sacred ol' hen-coop where a cinchry iv statesmen had come an' gone he changed it round to suit th' idees iv archytecture in New York. He put th' coal cellar on th' roof, th' kitchen in th' threasury departmint an' arranged it so that guests enthered through 138 FIN LEY EETEE DUNNE th' laundhry an' proceeded up through th' ash chute to a pint where they was picked up be an autymatic distributor and dis- thributed th' legs in the east room, th' ar-rms in th' west room, an' so on. Before he wint at it th' White House looked like a handsome calcimined packin'-case with windows cut in f'r Gin'ral Miles to lave by. Afther this jood prisidint got through with it it looked as though th' packin'-case had taken Tiddy's advice an' raised a large fam'ly iv soap-boxes, tea-caddies, an' little ice-chests. In this palace he lives like a king an' onaisy lies th' head that wears a crown." It is a remarkable fact that although Mr. Dunne had a few imitators in the be- ginning, he has had none since. Of his field he has a sinecure and a monopoly. Furthermore, to his mission there seems to be no end. His philosophy is not merely 139 LITTLE PILQK IMAGES interesting, amusing. Mr. Dooley's is a pat philosophy. The old gentleman has an eye for local affairs, and at the same time, he takes advantage of the statesman's ways and discusses everything under the sun. TJius he has endeared himself to broad-minded aliens; and, mirabile dictu! even to the cultured English. The clev- erest daily in the whole United Kingdom, Tory of the Tories and bluest of the blue- blooded, for a time published his com- ments on British stupidity in South Africa and on Chinese duplicity in Pekin, At one time Mr. Dunne seemed destined to be the first regular correspondent of every enterprising weekly in Christendom. But we must go back a little. "No doubt you would like to know how Mr. Dooley came into being. The idea occurred to Mr. Dunne in his reportorial days; but it was not material- 140 FINLEY PETEE DUNNE ized until 1893, the year of the Columbian Exposition. About the middle of that year two Chi- cago men were speaking to each other about the exposition. One of them con- demned Eugene Field for his attacks on local manners in " Sharps and Flats " his column in a local paper, and usually more rather sharp than flat. Field's barbs were amusement for New York and Boston. The man said that his idea of excellent local humour, pointed but genial, was an Irish dialect story he had read in the Evening Post the Saturday before, en- titled " Among the Potes," and purporting to be Colonel McNeery's account of a visit to the " Lithry Congress." The following Saturday the colonel described a call on the lady managers. Unfortunately, these earlier writings of Mr. Dunne are yet un- collected. 141 LITTLE PILGBIMAGES The impulse to write this weekly col- umn for his paper came to Mr. Dunne through his slight acquaintance with an Irishman named McGarry, who kept a saloon on Dearborn Street, near Madison, not far from the Chicago Tribune build- ing. Until lately, you see, Mr. Dunne's environment has been totally journalistic. McGarry, the saloon-keeper, was an old Irishman who had a bright if not always happy way of commenting on local politics and local events. His originality made him very attractive to the newspaper men of the locality. Among his casual patrons was Dunne, who, one day hearing a par- ticularly breezy speech by the McGarry, used it for the beginning of his dialect sketches. Further than that, the articles were Mr. Dunne's own conception. He used the name McNeery; and within a year the saloon wherein he got his first 142 FIKLEY PETER DUNNE irresistible inspiration was transformed into a haberdashery. Within a year, too, the name McNeery was changed to Dooley, the name now renowned the world over. The Arr-chey Road familiar to readers of Mr. Dooley is Archer Avenue, formerly an old turnpike and generally called Archer Road, which in the early days was the centre of Irish life in the " Windy City." Mr. Dunne has said that when he was a boy there were many characters of the Dooley type in that section of Chi- cago, and originally it was his idea that the views of one of these characters, based on newspaper items all these men were in- veterate newspaper readers would be a capital medium for the discussion of local affairs. Thus at first they were little more than sketches of Irish life in Chi- cago; but gradually they broadened into their present universal state. 143 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES The name Dooley was a random choice. Though not as common as McKenna, Hen- nessy, O'Brien, and Kelly (the names of the other individuals now and then men- tioned in the articles), it is a thorough- bred Irish name. These other individuals are all more or less real. There was even a Father Kelly in the Archer Koad neighbourhood, which neighbourhood, by the way, is to-day as much Italian and Syrian as Irish. At first Mr. Dunne did not take his Dooley articles very seriously; it was the seriousness with which strangers strangers in Boston, in New York, in Newport News and in Tacoma by-and- by took them that aroused him to a sense of their immense importance. There was a demand for them in every part of the country ; and from Maine as well as from 144 FINLEY PETEK DUNNE Texas he received letters full of sugges- tions and congratulations. In the beginning the Dooley article was a regular Saturday feature of the Post. Usually it was done in an hour snatched from editorial work, which was then re- garded as his most important work. There was no reaching for brilliancy, no attempt at polish. The purpose was sim- ply to amuse. But it was this very ease and informality of the articles that caught the popular fancy. The spontaneity was so genuine ; the timeliness was so obvious. If the present Dooley articles seem to lack the latter quality, the spontaneity is as fresh as ever. Fame has insisted upon a marble fountain, but the spring within bubbles as of yore. What is the Dooley brogue? It is not the brogue of Terence Mulvaney; nor is it the brogue of Rory O'More. It is in- 145 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES tended to be the speech of an Irishman whose mother-tongue, or native dialect, has been modified by localisms. At the same time, intelligent Irishmen have compli- mented Mr. Dunne on the naturalness of Mr. Dooley's language. Dooley is a bright-minded, soft-hearted, sharp-tongued Irishman who has been thoroughly devel- oped by the pushing and hauling, the ris- ing and falling, the joking and swearing of American life. On the whole, his phi- losophy is as amiable as it is true. Three years ago Mr. Dunne, accepting several very flattering offers, left Chicago for New York. There, in the new literary centre of the land, he was married, last December, to Miss Margaret Abbott ; there he has contracted to work, and there, con- sequently, for an indefinite period, will reside with him the happiest of our twen- tieth-century philosophers. 146 GEORGE GARY EGGLESTON GEOKGE CAEY EGGLESTON ^j CKITIC in Baltimore has re- S1 marked : " 'No writer in the score and more of novelists now exploit- ing in the Southern field can, for a moment, compare in truth and interest to Mr. Eggleston. He is to-day the single novelist who writes of the Virginias and Carolinas as they really were before the war between the States." The word of a Southern critic in this case must needs be accepted by a North- erner. We might add that Mr. Eggleston, in aiming to write wholesome stories, has at times too perceptibly suppressed his masculinity. Which reminds us that some thirty years ago Henry James, who was then 147 LITTLE PILGRIMAGES doing the American correspondence for Literature, came across a copy of " A Rebel's Recollections," by George Gary Eggleston. What affected the keen young critic most was the rebel's suppressed vitality. Mr. James was moved to inquire how in the name of Mars a man who had survived so many extraordinary dramas and tragedies such thrilling romances and such appalling carnages could write in cold blood, as if of house parties and sham fights at the country fairs. Some day, said James, Mr. Eggleston will awake to the loss of his opportunities. The awakening has come. It began in 1901 with the appearance of " A Carolina Cavalier," and it has been continued in "Dorothy South" and in "The Master of Warlock." Mr. Kipling has told us of the ship that found herself. Now Mr. 148 GEOEGE GARY EGGLESTOK Eggleston may write intimately of the au- thor who found himself. It took Mr. Eggleston a good many years to find himself. No doubt the good red blood was pumping out of his heart all the time, and no doubt his note-books were orderly storehouses of romantic wealth; but the prick that drew the blood and still small voice that urged the modest historian to higher flights were tardy, very tardy. It may have been the dreadful incubus of journalism that closeted this entertain- ing romancist for so long a time. Mr. Eggleston was a journalist practically from the close of the Civil War to 1900. The author's father, Joseph Gary Eggles- ton, migrated from his native State of Virginia to Indiana in his youth. He settled down and practised his profession of law in the town of Yevay. George was the second of four children, the oldest of 149 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES whom was Edward, the novelist and his- torian, who died last year. The date of George's birth was November 26, 1839. When he was six or seven years old his mother became a widow. At the age of fifteen he was graduated from the Madison High School and entered the Indiana As- bury University. About the middle of his second year he, in company with nearly all the other students, was expelled. It was probably an exaggerated instance of the common frontier disputes between pupils and teacher, in which usually the more stubborn force won. Returning to Madison, whither his mother had gone from Vevay, George took a school on the edge of the town, at a place called Ryker's Ridge, and there this six- teen-year-old teacher had pupils ranging from infancy to full age. This life was not without its roughness and trouble, as 150 GEOEGE CAEY EGGLESTON those who have read Edward Eggleston's novel, " The Hoosier Schoolmaster," which was suggested by George's experi- ences at Madison, must remember. The young schoolmaster held his chair, more bravely than enthusiastically, for half a year or more ; then he went East along the route which his father had followed going West. So, until he was seventeen, George Eg- gleston lived in his native State. The fact that he in his youth should have left In- diana for Virginia, and thus reversed what his father had done, is noteworthy. The formative influence had been at work before the prairie was left behind for the academic groves of Virginia. The boy had been an eager browser in one of the largest and choicest libraries in the West. " It was a fearfully mixed hodgepodge," 151 LITTLE PILGRIMAGES he once wrote, " in which I sometimes passed from a volume of old homilies to one of Mistress Aphra Behn's naughtiest novels, or from a poem of crack-brained old Doctor Donne to ' The Children of the Abbey/ and thence to Locke or Bacon or Hobbs or Homer, and back again to c Scot- tish Chiefs/ with perhaps a dip into Dis- raeli's ' Vivian Gray/ by the way. It was all sorts of reading, but I think it did me good, and bred a certain catholicity of taste which has been and is still of service to me. If I read ' Tom Jones/ and ' Joseph Andrews/ and f Peregrine Pickle/ and ' Roderick Random/ I also read ' Rasselas/ and the ' Vicar of Wakefield/ and Miss Burney's ' Evelina.' If I enjoyed the light food furnished in ' Charles O'Mal- ley ' and ' Harry Lorrequer ' and ' Valen- tine Vox/ I was pleased also with Scott and the poets, of whom Byron and Words- 152 GEORGE GARY EGGLESTON worth for somehow they pleased me about equally, answering, I suppose, to different wants of my nature were my favourites after Shakespeare, who was my dissipation from childhood. " I remember that in school I learned so quickly that I had much spare time, and I made still more by neglecting lessons sometimes ; this spare time I gave to Scott and Shakespeare, cutting the volumes to pieces and concealing the leaves between the maps in my atlas, so that I might at once enjoy the reputation of diligence in geographical study and the pleasure of reading what I liked. About that time I read * Smiley on Class-meetings/ Baxter's ' Saints' Rest,' and somebody's l Plan of Salvation,' who the author was I have luckily forgotten, as I do not like to bear malice, reading them upon compulsion." In the spring of 1856, George, with a 153 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES younger brother, went to the old Eggleston homestead in Amelia County, Virginia, and at the same time he passed from the independent state of a hoosier school- master to the guardianship of an uncle. At the same time his elder brother, Ed- ward, was being educated at a boarding- school in the county. George matriculated at Richmond College; and after leaving this institution he began the practice of law in Richmond. He was not long in Richmond when the war broke out. Being in the very centre of Confederate enthusiasm, he yielded to the popular movement and enlisted as a private in J. E. B. Stuart's First Regi- ment of Virginia Cavalry. Not long after enlisting he was transferred from the cav- alry to the artillery branch of the army, and in this slower but none the less im- portant branch of the service he played his 154 GEOEGE GARY EGGLESTON conscientious part from the first battle at Bull Run to the surrender at Appomattox Court-house. When Lee handed over his sword to Grant, and the armies dispersed to recover the arts and sciences of peace, young Eg- gleston, then in his twenty-sixth year, bor- rowed some money and went, first home to Indiana, and thence on to Illinois. Here, in the latter State, in Cairo, he found him- self engaged for the second time in opposi- tion to the government ; but now his oppo- sition took the more legitimate form of the prosecution of claims. In this task he spent a year, travelling to all parts of the country. Finishing this case, he took mem- bership in a commission house of Mem- phis, Tennessee, but after a few months' experience in this business he became the private correspondent and legal adviser of 155 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES a prosperous house in Cairo. With this house he remained from 1866 to 1870. Meantime he had married, and domestic responsibilities rising in company with a distaste for business, he decided that he would be at once more successful and more contented in the East, which had already begun to revive from the war. Resigning his position in Cairo, he made haste to reach New York. Here his career turned into a new chan- nel. Here, for the first time, the seed scattered in the family library in Vevay rooted and flowered, though at first in the out-of-the-way path of journalism. Like most newspaper men, he began as a reporter; and from this undignified but important office he rose and drifted until, during his second year in New York, he became editor-in-chief of Hearth and Home,, with which periodical his brother 156 GEOEGE OAKY EGGLESTON Edward had become connected in 1870. He conducted Hearth and Home until its sale; and in the short time elapsing be- tween that time and his entrance into the employ of the New York Evening Post, in the fall of 1875, he devoted himself to writing. In January, 1876, the ambitious Hoosier, now half- Virginian by reason of his associations and tastes, was promoted to the literary editorship of the Evening Post, which position he held for some six years. Later he was employed by the New York Commercial- Advertiser; and from 1889 to 1900 he was on the editorial staff of the New York World. But all this time he was leading the double life of journalist and author; which, in its way, is about as bad as any other kind of double life. He had offered as a prelude to his literary career, in 1872, 157 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES a homiletical work entitled " How to Edu- cate Yourself." The next year came " A Man of Honour/' and the next his remark- able book on the war, " A Kebel's Eecollec- tions"; in 1875, "How to Make a Liv- ing" (a book which he might well have illustrated himself), and then a series of books for boys, of which the avowed pur- pose was to furnish stories full of adven- ture and outdoor life. In the author's opinion, a boy's liking for stories of adventure is perfectly natural, and hurtful literature of adventure can be supplanted " only by harmless literature of adventure > not by books that have no adventure in them." He read the Hollo stories when he was a boy, and the Abbott histories and all that sort of dry juvenility, and he believes that the reading did him good ; but he also believes that boys should have their share of books of adventure. 158 GEOKGE GARY EGGLESTON These views spurred Mr. Eggleston on to his reformation of our juvenile literature, an undertaking in which he won a signal success. Indeed, the boy of to-day may thank the author of " The Signal Boy " that even the name of the once famous Rollo is but a memory. On the whole, Mr.. Eggleston has done nothing since 1900 that he might not have done thirty years before. If things always went as they should go, in place of " How to Educate Yourself " the reading public of 1872 would have been regaled with " A Carolina Cavalier." Every young man at Richmond College in the forties must have been familiar with the deeds of brave Rutledge and of black Tarleton, and with the charming Southern life that predom- inates in " Dorothy South " and in " The Master of Warlock." No other writer now exploiting the Southern field writes 159 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES at once so truthfully and so interestingly, because none other has had Mr. Eggleston's opportunities for observation. The most remarkable part of it all is that he should have so completely preserved the spirit of the old South, which was adventurous and tender and chivalrous to a fault. As one critic expressed it in connection with " A Carolina Cavalier " : " It may lack the slash-and-thrust excitement which many have learned to crave, but it has more en- during qualities to make up for its ab- sence." Again, we find a Southerner saying of "The Master of Warlock": " The soldiers in it are drawn with a masculine hand, but the same hand also depicts the tenderness and mystery of a true woman's heart." The tenderness or coldness of the author is exhibited in the scene in " A Carolina Cavalier " in which the hero and his sup- 160 GEORGE GARY EGGLESTON porters pursue a band of Tarleton's wretches who have carried off the hero's sister. Among young Alton's supporters are some rogues, but these rogues are patriots, and, compared with the English officer's men, chevaliers. These outlaws are led by a man named Humphreys. The rescue is accomplished, after some hard fighting; and then the author gives us the following scene: " ' What have you done with your pris- oners ? ' he (Alton, the hero) asked. " ' There are none/ answered Hum- phreys. ' These fellows don't take pris- oners.' " And to his horror, Roger discovered that such was the truth. The men who had thrown down their arms had been quickly despatched in order that their cap- tors might be free to continue the fight upon their comrades, and when these in 161 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES turn offered surrender, one of the smuggler men called out : ' We will give you Tarle- ton's quarter ! ' What that meant a road strewn with dead men quickly revealed. " i This is horrible/ said Koger to Bar- negal, as Jacqueline emerged at their call from the cane. " ' I do not know/ said Barnegal. ' For myself, I am savage enough to-night to rejoice in it, and, besides, it is a trick that the British themselves have taught us. Those fellows did not cry " E"o quarter," you remember. Their cry was " Tarleton's quarter." It is a cry that is going up all over this land. It is the cry of desperate men forced into savagery by savagery. It is the recoil of an explosion. It is the un- bending of an overstrained bow. Let's not be too sensitive about it. Jacqueline at least is safe.' ? The average erring reader is gratified 162 GEORGE GARY EGGLESTON by BarnegaFs words. There was some hot blood in Barnegal; but Alton, the hero, must fit the author's high standard of tem- perance and chivalry. The word " whole- some " is printed in " caps. " in Mr. Eg- gleston's dictionary. The reward of this native delicacy or literary policy is the exceptional popular- ity of Mr. Eggleston's recent novels ; and if there were not those among the reading public with a taste for something else than Paris paper-covers and Russian dismal- ness, these Southern tales would not be popular. Mr. Eggleston lives and works in New York, but, judging by his novels, his heart must half the time be back in the land perfumed by trailing honeysuckle and climbing roses. 163 ELLIOTT FLOWER. ELLIOTT FLOWER JTLLIOTT FLOWER became an JTT author of some importance when the Century Magazine published his " Policeman Flynn " sketches a few years ago. These sketches were a periodic delight for more than a year, and since then, in book form, they have been to their author a steady source of profit and praise. This year Mr. Flower has made his appear- ance in a more serious role as the author of " The Spoilsmen," a novel touching on political life in Chicago; and of this we shall speak later on. Incidentally, he has written a series of Irish sketches, some- what like the " Policeman Flynn " sketches both in nature and in merit, for 165 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES the Woman s Home Companion, and a large number of short stories for various magazines. The best of these short stories, in the author's opinion, are " The Man Who Was Dead," " The Defeat of Amos/' " The Tragedy of the Cipher Code," and " The Uninherited Inheritance." Mr. Flower was born in Madison, Wis- consin, August 2, 1863. He was well educated, in private as well as in public schools. As commonly happens so com- monly, indeed, that it is barely worth men- tioning he laboured with the pen when he was very young. " I always went in for elaborate plots then," he says, " and figured on turning out novels of about two hundred thousand words which are still unfinished." " The Spoilsmen " contains less than half two hundred thousand words. The boy so often tries to do what the man would not dream of doing. Mr. Mower 166 ELLIOTT FLOWER has preserved, possibly for his own enter- tainment, some products of his juvenile audacity. His first public venture into literature was as one of the editors of a paper called the Student. That was while he and the other editor, Mr. Webster P. Huntingdon, were being tutored at Keene, New Hamp- shire. The Student " had a glorious career of about six months." The quotation is from one of the editors. At the age of nineteen the ambitious youth from Madison was in Chicago, studying law, but he soon abandoned law to join Mr. Harry B. Smith, now well- known as the librettist of popular comic operas, in the publication of an illustrated humourous weekly named the Rambler. The weekly failed for want of sufficient capital; and in 1886 the ex-law student 167 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES and ex-editor joined the staff of the Chi- cago Tribune. " I did this," he says, " by simply re- porting for duty day after day. I found out when the rest of the staff reported and showed up a little ahead of time. For a week or so my conversations with the city editor ran something like this : " c Anything for me to-day ? 9 " ' ^ot to-day.' " ' Good day/ " Finally the city editor began giving me something to do occasionally, and in- side of a month I was on the payroll." That was the turning-point in his career. Reporting for a newspaper affords a young man with literary aspirations some in- comparable opportunities to work, and, best of all, to see. The first-rate reporter is necessarily a trained observer. He sees things as they are, though, to be sure, he 168 ELLIOTT FLOWEE occasionally caters to the popular taste by putting the yellow colour on thick. Mr. Flower spent seven years on the Tribune, filling many positions and alto- gether acquiring a thorough knowledge of the newspaper business. " Among other things, he had charge of the Tribune force at the Johnstown flood, and he trailed Burke, one of the murderers in the cele- brated Doctor Cronin case, to Winnipeg. His own store of experiences as a reporter is probably ample enough to supply him with dramatic and romantic material as long as he chooses to write. It is worth noting that at one time he " covered " local politics for the Tribune. This point is intimately connected with the writing of " The Spoilsmen." After a year of free-lance journalism he joined the Chicago Evening Post, for which he wrote editorials and took charge 169 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES of a column of satirical and humourous comment. Two years ago he gave up jour- nalism as a profession, but he still con- ducts a department in the Evening Post and one in the Brooklyn Sunday Eagle. From the beginning of his newspaper career he had done more or less work for the comic weeklies; but he did not turn his talent to magazine work until 1899. He has remarked : " I had a lot of trouble at first convincing the editors that I was capable of writing what they wanted, but finally met with reasonable success, the Century being the first magazine to give me any real encouragement." This en- couragement was the request to furnish a series of " Policeman Flynn " sketches. Apropos of Mr. Mower's experiences with editors, it would be extremely inter- esting if some of our popular authors should publish their reminiscences of that 170 ELLIOTT FLOWEK side of their careers. Possibly this extract from a letter written by the author of " The Spoilsmen " may inspire some equally en- tertaining imitations : " You never can tell what an editor will do," he says, " and the more you know about him the less capable you are of judging. When I have a short story ready to send away, I go over the list of maga- zines, pick out those that in my judgment would be most likely to accept it, and then send it to some other. I find I get the best results in this way. Formerly, I used to act on my own judgment, and I would have to make seven or eight trials to sell a story ; now, by ' coppering ' my own judgment, I often hit it right the very first time. And the newspaper editor is an uncertain quantity, just like the maga- zine editor. You never can tell what he will do, either. I was in Winnipeg once 171 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES for a Chicago paper, and the editor tele- graphed me to come home. I did so, reached the office, and he said, ' Go back. 7 I went back to Winnipeg on the next train." One of the " manuscript experiences " which Mr. Flower relates is about a story that came back from an editor with the suggestion that it be revised along certain lines. After this had been done, the editor sent it back a second time with the state- ment that he feared the fault lay in the story rather than in the treatment of it (as he had at first supposed), and it was still unacceptable. Mr. Flower promptly sent the revised version to another editor, and this came back with the suggestion that he liked the story but thought it could be improved. After waiting a short time, to give the impression that he had rewrit- ten it, Mr. Flower sent this second editor 172 ELLIOTT FLOWEE the original version, and it was promptly accepted. All of which leads him to say that the editor, speaking generally, is a per- petual puzzle. They tell a story of Mr. Flower which illustrates not only his sagacity but also the power of his former love the press. How a reporter came to nominate a Pres- ident of the United States would be a piece of fiction, but how one came to nominate the President of the Board of Lady Mana- gers of the World's Columbian Exposition is a true tale ; and that position was to the ladies of the land hardly less desirable and important than the one in Washington is and always will be to men. At the beginning of the World's Fair movement, the story runs, two rival organi- zations of women were formed in Chicago to take care of the interests of their sex. Each sought government recognition, and 173 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES when provision was made for the Board of Lady Managers each sought to gain con- trol of that body. Each had a candidate for the presidency, but the lady who seemed to have a clear lead was persona non grata to the Chicago reporters. They had found her extremely disagreeable when it was necessary to go to her for news, for she regarded them as interlopers and nothing less. In the circumstances it was decided in the Chicago newspaper circle to defeat the arrogant lady, but to do that it was necessary to find a stronger candidate. " Mrs. Potter Palmer would make a good president," suggested Mr. Flower one day. " Ideal ! " was the unanimous reply ; and that was the beginning. It was conceded that the influence of the National Commission would be paramount, 174 ELLIOTT FLOWER and so the reporters scattered to interview the commissioners. They simply inquired whether it was true that Mrs. Palmer would be favoured for the position. The commissioners replied that it was news to them, but that Mrs. Palmer was a charm- ing and capable lady. If any such move- ment was on foot they wished to join it. That was enough for the reporters, and the next morning the papers announced that the commission was virtually unanimous for Mrs. Potter Palmer. The commission- ers fell into line enthusiastically. Each credited some other with the " happy thought," but none knew the truth. Lady managers arriving from other States relied on the commissioners from their States for advice in the matter, and their reliance was not in vain. Mrs. Palmer, nominated by Mr. Flower and his fellow reporters and supported by the commissioners, was 175 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES elected by the lady managers ; and it was afterward conceded that the choice was the best that could have been made. To revert to Mr. Flower's literary work, it reveals a diversity of power that in itself constitutes no mean promise of uncommon success. This observant, spirited, sympa- thetic writer touches human interest on every side as a successful journalist trains himself to do; but where the jour- nalist stops the novelist begins, and for his equipment as a novelist Mr. Flower has his rich fund of humour and his ingenious mind. That the author of some delightful character sketches should also be the author of the most powerful and successful polit- ical novel of the day is sufficient credit for a young man. " The Spoilsmen " is an opportune book. It is an indictment, in romantic form, of the average administering of city 170 ELLIOTT FLOWEK government. It follows close on the scan- dals disclosed in Minneapolis and in St. Louis, and it accompanies the charges which are continually being made against city officials in Chicago, in New York, in Philadelphia, and in Boston. " Corbett was clever and well-posted. He knew all the local politicians and offi- cials, and was familiar with the gossip concerning them." Corbett is the journal- ist in " The Spoilsmen," and it is fair to assume that as he was well-posted, so is Mr. Flower. A journalist of long experi- ence cannot but be well-posted, and, unless he take sides with one party or the other, cannot fail to present the most damning evidence concerning municipal corruption. This is Corbett again : " He was inclined to be cynical, but never bitter. Cynicism comes naturally to the experienced re- porter. He sees so much of pretence and 177 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES insincerity in the line of his work, espe- cially political work, that in time he finds himself doubting the possibility of an un- selfish and disinterested action. Still, Cor- bett was only mildly cynical; not of- fensively pessimistic." No doubt this fairly describes Mr. Flower's own feelings ; although the effect made by " The Spoils- men " is not cynicism, but pessimism. However, it should be borne in mind that Mr. Flower, in touching on political schemes, is a reporter, not a reformer. He deals with effects, not with causes. He simply holds the mirror up to political life in a big American city. When he di- gresses, he is, like Corbett, cynical with- out bitterness. Thus his description of the manner in which what is known as " society " took the candidacy of the fash- ionable but conscientious Darnell: " Society was uncertain how to take the 178 ELLIOTT FLOWER candidacy of Harold Darnell. Of course, society likes to experience new sensations, for they serve to drive away the ennui of existence ; and at first he was a mixture of amusement and enthusiasm. He was ' our ' candidate. While society is far from being confined to one ward, neverthe- less he was ' our ' candidate wherever society gathered. If truth be told, a good many of those who were most enthusiastic did not know whether he belonged to their wards or not and did not care. He was their representative, just the same. They laughed, but they admired. It was a joke, but it was also something more than a joke. In fact, society was puzzled, and its emotions were conflicting. It gave both raillery and applause, and it was not quite certain which expressed its real sentiments. Society is always fearful of making a mis- take in passing judgment on anything out 179 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES of the usual line. In consequence, the safest rule seems to be to either ignore or condemn everything that is not strictly conventional." Darnell, being an earnest fellow, and not averse to playing the honourable tricks of " the game/' associates more or less with a politician named Ryan, and together they meet and greet the humble constituents (it is always the constituents that are humble, though the politician is sup- posed to be their servant), and they even foregather with other bosses and candi- dates in Casey's saloon. Then " society " turned its back on him. " Just what so- ciety expected, society itself could not say, but it certainly was not this. That he should be popular was quite proper, but he should be popular in a dignified way. There should be something of condescen- sion in his manner. So society began to 180 ELLIOTT FLO WEE shrug its shoulders and gossip. It was not prepared to condemn him outright, but it could mildly and inferentially voice its disapproval, especially when he was not present. Society can be anything but frank and straightforward." Which is all so cynical, and so true! This is no place for a dissertation on the political shortcomings of any class, but if the philosophical reformers, the earnest, honest, non-professional reformers are seek- ing an excellent text for a tract they should turn to the tenth chapter of " The Spoils- men," which is entitled " The Verdict of Society." Mr. Flower was a journalist; now he is a novelist. Zola trod the same path, and Zola the novelist wielded far more power than Zola the journalist could ever have wielded. Not all the editorials written 181 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES throughout Christendom, and all the poems, struck such a blow as he struck when he took his stand by the side of Dreyfus and made his famous speech. He was an ardent believer in the novel with a purpose. Now " The Spoilsmen " is a novel with a purpose, which purpose is to expose the hollowness and viciousness of the present system of municipal government in the United States. The picture which Mr. Flower draws is not a pleasant one, on the whole, for despite the admirable cour- age of Mason, the hardware retailer who opposes " the gang " and is ruined ; the equally admirable courage and novel, Uto pian enterprise of Darnell, the wealthy young lawyer, who, like Mason, finds one term in the council enough; the tender devotion of Mrs. Mason, and the clever, 182 ELLIOTT FLOWEB charming ways of Miss Josephine Hadley, whom Darnell gains when all seemed lost, in spite of these bright, cheerful flashes, the effects that remain uppermost in the reader's mind in the end are much the same as those of a wet and windy night in autumn. Virtue wins the best rewards, which are peace of mind and a woman's virginal heart ; but the city remains in the hands of " the gang," the victim of indif- ference and partisanship and chicanery and downright rascality. Mr. Flower is married, and he does his literary work in an office in a down-town building in Chicago. When Mrs. Flower read " The Spoilsmen " she was surprised to learn that he knew so much or any- thing, rather about politics. Evidently he has a happy way of leaving literary work behind him in his office at dinner- 183 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES time. As a former contributor to the comic weeklies he must have determined never to present any excuse for the sur- vival of the literary husband Joke. 184 JOHN FOX, JR. JOHN FOX, JK. ; S a general rule," said one of y'jf Shelley's friends, " it is wise to avoid writers whose works amuse or delight you, for should you see them they will delight you no more." There is enough truth in the observa- tion to make it a general rule, but an ex- ception to the rule is John Fox, Jr. The fact is, Mr. Fox has all the traits of a born actor. We do not mean the public pose, the salient mannerisms, the eccentric dress often noticed in actors, but a natural aptitude for mimicry and an ease and grace of manner suitable to the impersonation of any dramatic character. To a friend of his who knew him inti- 185 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES mately at Harvard we are indebted for the following information : " While at Harvard, Mr. Fox displayed histrionic talent of a high order, having been ' leading -lady ' of the dramatic so- ciety of his class. There has been made a college sketch of Mr. Fox, showing him in a quaint old-fashioned woman's garb, with odd little ringlets hanging down all over his head, and a most absurd bonnet perched upon its top. It is the portrayal of the character of Madame Perrichon in that familiar comedy, ' Papa Perrichon/ T. Eussell Sullivan translated the work for the Boston Museum, and it was his ver- sion that the famous Harvard society to which he belonged used on its travels, for Fox and the other boys made a trip i down East ' to Exeter, Portland, Bangor, and Augusta, having a great amount of fun, a vast deal of experience, and a rather un- 186 JOHN FOX, JR. pleasant financial loss in the mock theat- rical excursion. A sturdy, squar&shoul- dered young fellow would seem to be an odd figure in petticoats, but every one who has seen the Harvard theatricals knows how cleverly athletes are often turned into buxom young maidens." Mr. Fox's success on the college stage has been repeated on the wider American platform. Not since Mr. Cable's ablest days has the American platform held so delightful a reader of his own writings as Mr. Fox. As for his ability as a twofold inter- preter of Kentucky mountain life, the fore- most Kentucky writer, James Lane Allen, has said : " Not only is he a very beautiful reader, but he is the first public reader of the dialect of the Tennessee and Kentucky mountaineers that has yet appeared. Now, in no species of American short story has 187 LITTLE PILGBIMAGES there been greater need of an interpreter of the dialect than in that of the Cumber- land Mountains; and this interpretation Mr. Fox is admirably prepared to give. For he has lived several years among the native folk, has talked with them, has stud- ied them, and become himself their literary interpreter through his splendid work in the magazines." Mr. Fox is a native of Stony Point, Bourbon County, Kentucky, and in that healthy Blue-grass world he was reared. He was graduated from Harvard in 1883, and after a short term in the Columbia Law School took a hand in the intense struggle of New York newspaper life. Early in the nineties there was a great boom in the region of the Cumberland Mountains, and the Kentuckian, in the company of some other college men, tried to take advantage of it. The result of 188 JOHN FOX, JE. that boom is that it made an author of the young man. " It's a fact," said the young novelist to us, once upon a time, " that a stern sense of duty will make men courageous make heroes of them, even. I've ob- served that at Big Stone Gap. The Gap is in the Cumberland Mountains, Virginia, about twenty miles from the Kentucky line. I went down there some years ago with about thirty other college men mostly from Harvard and Yale and Colum- bia. The place was absolutely lawless. The men who were carrying on feuds there used to pursue one another all over the mountains and terrorize the people. Now, we were down there for business. So we organized a police force. I think there was nothing ever like it. We were some- thing more than a vigilance committee. We each had a Winchester, a badge, and 189 LITTLE PILGRIMAGES a club, and we each took turn in patrolling the town. When a citizen got too offensive, we marched him off to the calaboose ; and at first the calaboose couldn't hold all our prisoners. If a man showed any disposi- tion to defy us, we simply hit him on the head. The next day, perhaps, he would come to town in an orderly manner, and the very one of us that knocked him down and thrashed him would say ' Howdy ' to him. That disarmed him of suspicion. He might have thought that we were bent on a wholesale feud, but when he found out that we let him have his own way so long as he was on his good behaviour, then the great light of law and order came down upon him. In a year and a half we had Big Stone Gap ideally quiet. A woman could walk around town at any time of the night or day and never be insulted. That's what a college police force did for 190 JOHN FOX, JK. a wild nest in the Cumberland Moun- tains. " Outside of Big Stone Gap, the inhab- itants, as a rule, live far apart. The moun- taineer prefers to have his neighbours at least a few miles off. That was Daniel Boone's preference, too, you remember. When he found a family within some miles of him he moved farther West. His name, by the way, is borne by families in the mountains. I drew the character of Boone Stallard, in ' The Kentuckians,' for instance, from a young man named Boone Logan." It is a remarkable feature of Mr. Fox's literary career that he has never had a manuscript rejected. His first story, bear- ing the felicitous title, " A Mountain Europa," was promptly accepted by the publishers of the Century Magazine when he submitted it to them a dozen years ago. 191 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES Later appeared two collections of moun- tain tales, one entitled " Hell fer Sartain," and the other " A Cumberland Vendetta." His first novel was " The Kentuckians," which was first published serially in Har- per's Monthly. The curiously abrupt end- ing of " The Kentuckians " has aroused much comment. Readers are left in doubt as to which of the two heroes, Marshall, the son of Kentucky blue blood, or Stallard, the sturdy mountaineer, is to win the daughter of the governor. " I did not mean to make the matter puzzling," Mr. Fox has explained to a friend. " To those who have written me as if an enigma existed, I refer them to ' Stallard shook his head/ ' his home and hers,' and why 6 Katherine's eyes filled with tears.' Ro- mantic young women, overcome with sym- pathy for Stallard, may take comfort thusly : ' Long, long afterwards, when 192 JOHN FOX, JR. Stallard was a Cabinet Minister, he was persuaded one night to attend some social function. Looking through the door, he saw a beautiful woman, familiar in face and figure. And she was dressed in black.' " Mr. Fox's next novel, " Crittenden," was published in 1900. It was a new departure altogether. The writer had left his famil- iar mountains and followed the history of two young Kentuckians of fine blood through the Spanish War. This novel grew out of the novelist's experiences as a war correspondent. Here and there in the pictures of Kentucky is a suggestion of the charming art of James Lane Allen ; and the battle-field scenes are described with a vividness which thrills the reader through and through. The battle scenes in " Crittenden," in- deed, are worthy of a place among the 193 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES best descriptions of war. They show a facile and powerful pen, a highly trained power of observation, and a heart teeming with manliness and human sympathy. There is strength of character in abun- dance, as well as strength of action. Here is a striking picture: " It had been a slow, toilsome march up that narrow lane of death, and, so far, Crittenden had merely been sprinkled with Mauser and shrapnel. His regiment had begun to deploy to the left, down the bed of a stream. The negro cavalry and the Rough Riders were deploying to the right. Now broke the storm. Imagine sheet after sheet of hailstones, coated with polished steel, and swerved when close to the earth at a sharp angle to the line of descent, and sweeping the air horizontally with an awful hiss swifter in flight than a peal of thunder from sky to earth, and hardly less 194 JOHN FOX, JK. swift than the lightning flash that caused it " ' T-t-seu-u-u-h ! T-t-seu-oo ! T-t-seu- oo ! 9 they went like cloud after cloud of lightning-winged insects, and passing, by God's mercy and the Spaniard's bad marksmanship passing high. Between two crashes came a sudden sputter, and some singing thing began to play up and down through the trees, and to right and left, in a steady hum. It was a machine- gun playing for the range like a mighty hose-pipe, watering earth and trees with a steady spreading jet of hot lead. It was like some strange, huge monster, un- seeing and unseen, who knows where his prey is hidden and is searching for it blindly by feeling or by sense of smell coming ever nearer, showering the leaves down, patting into the soft earth ahead, swishing to right and to left, and 195 LITTLE PILGRIMAGES at last playing in a steady stream about the prostrate soldiers. " ' Swish-ee ! Swish-ee ! Swish-ee ! > The character of Graf ton, one of the war correspondents, may be accepted as exem- plifying the novelist's personal trials and adventures. "Blue-grass and Rhododendron," the volume of Kentucky sketches published in 1901, is worthy of the attention of the good people who regard the Cumberland mountaineer as the rankest sort of outlaw. According to Mr. Fox, the Kentucky mountaineer " has been more isolated than the mountaineer of any other State. There are regions more remote and more sparsely settled, but nowhere in the Southern moun- tains has so large a body of mountaineers been shut off so completely from the out- side world. As a result, he illustrates Mr. Theodore Roosevelt's fine observation 196 JOHN FOX, JR. that life away from civilization simply em- phasizes the natural qualities, good and bad, of an individual. The effect of this truth seems perceptible in that any trait common to the Southern mountaineer seems to be intensified in the mountaineer of Kentucky. He is more clannish, prouder, more hospitable, fiercer, more loyal as a friend, more bitter as an enemy, and in meanness when he is mean, mind you he can out-Herod his race with great ease." In " The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come/' Mr. Fox revisits the scene of his early successes. It is his most ambitious effort, and, on the whole, his best. With breadth of vision naturally develops breadth of power ; these promising transi- tions are to be seen plainly in each new work of the Kentuckian. He did not find the Cumberlands un- 197 LITTLE PILGRIMAGES trodden literary ground. Miss Murfree (Charles Egbert Craddock) had been in that vicinity before him. But, as Mr. Howells with his exquisite discernment has said, Mr. Fox arrived when the right methods of fiction had been ascertained; he was not obliged to " outlive the false school in which we of another generation were bred, and whose influence Miss Mur- free did not escape." As Mr. Howells delicately puts it : " It is high testimony to the truth of her art that one working in the same field confirms the impression of its reality by his later observation and report, and it is no question of his origi- nality that at his best he makes you think of her." Mr. Fox does his literary work at all seasons of the year. During the winter he divides his time mostly between New York and Big Stone Gap (the bottom has 198 JOHN FOX, JR. not entirely dropped out of that once pros- perous mineral mining-town, and there, too, the climate is always refreshing). Last winter he and Thomas Nelson Page gave some readings together in Washing- ton. In the summer he enjoys outdoor life to the full, as his occasional stories in Outing suggest. We have before referred to the discovery in Mr. Fox's latest work of traces of the influence of James Lane Allen. Needless to say, the younger holds the older writer in the highest regard, nor could he have a purer model. Socially the chronicler of Big Stone Gap is popular. Once met, his presence is ever welcoma His manner is frank, hearty, cheerful, honest, manly. To twist what Samuel Rogers said of Jacqueline, to know him is to love him though he is unmarried. A brother, Rector K. Fox, is senior member of the publish- 199 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES ing house of Fox & Duffield, New York. As a writer Mr. Fox is steadily earnest and ambitious. Like Doctor Hale's model person, he looks upward, not down, for- ward, not back, and his aim is in each new effort to eclipse himself. A writer of this stamp, endowed with natural gifts, is bound to succeed. 200 HKNRY HARLAND. HENKY HAKLAND rHE following belated and conven- tional notice appeared in the weekly literary supplement of one of the New York daily papers last Decem- ber: " Mr. Henry Harland, whose stories, 'The Cardinal's Snuff-box' and ' The Lady Paramount,' have delighted the English-speaking world, arrived in the city last Monday after a very stormy passage on La, Champagne. Mr. Harland is an American, and his literary appren- ticeship was served in New York, where he studied the inexhaustible Jewish prob- lems and presented his view of them in some very strong fiction published under 201 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES the pseudonym of Sydney Luska. It was then that he produced ' The Yoke of Thorah,' 'As It Was Written,' etc. To Mr. Harland's early good fortune he came under the influence of one or two able litterateurs who have since earned fame as the greatest living American men of letters, and who advised his visiting Europe and England with a view to study- ing the artistic and literary movements then going on in the Old World. It is said that, with a small grip in his hand his entire baggage Mr. Harland boarded a liner, and, so potent has been the siren song of the Eastern world, that there he has remained ever since, travelling from one lovely and historic spot to an- other, drinking in the refreshing beauties, and from time to time greeting his less fortunate toilers in the land of his birth with the tales of his imagination. Mr. 202 HENKY HA BLAND Harland finds a very wide and cordial welcome here." By birth Mr. Harland is an American of Americans, as he comes from the Nor- wich (Connecticut) Harlands, who are descended from the first Pilgrims in- deed, from so historical a couple as John Alden and Priscilla Mullens, hero and heroine of the Longfellow poem; but by proclivity he is distinctly European. For years his home has been in England, and his heart in Italy. His most interesting works, " As It Was Written " (1885) and "The Cardinal's Snuff-box" (1900), are respectively a story of Jewish life in New York and of English life in Italy. Harry Harland, as he is still called by his friends on this side of the Atlantic, was born in St. Petersburg, Bussia, on March 1, 1861. His father was Thomas Harland, of Norwich, in his day a well- 203 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES known lawyer and mathematician. After the ordinary American boy's term in the public schools, Harry entered the College of the City of New York, which he left at the end of his sophomore year. Then he spent a year at Harvard. In 1882, hav- ing arrived at his majority, he decided to spend a year abroad. They say that of the next few years " Grandison Mather " is autobiographical ; but there is some discrepancy between the account of the year which young Mather spent in Paris and Mr. Harland's state- ment to a friend that most of his first year abroad was spent in Rome. How- ever, he must have spent some time in Paris, for only an observer, a close, satu- rated, enthusiastic observer could have written " A Latin-Quarter Courtship," one of his early books, of which it was remarked by one respected New York 204 HENRY HARLAND critic : " By the delightful, tripping, care- less nothings that belong to the talk of living youth, by a bonhomie that lets us share his enthusiasm, making us almost partakers of his inspiration, by a delicacy of touch that fairly eludes description, by the ideality of his realism, in fact, by that ineffable quality of the French known as temperament, Mr. Harland has in this story given us what we shall not soon forget." In Rome the young man joined a club, and sat at the tables of some of the most aristocratic families. There, too, he made his informal entrance into literature, writ- ing letters for the New York Tribune, and articles (translated by a friend) for Italian papers. Eeturning to New York, he found a place in the surrogate's office; and the next year, 1884, he married. His wife, as 205 LITTLE PILGRIMAGES he once described her, is half-American and half -French; maiden name, Aline Merriam. Her grandfather was a mem- ber of the French Academy. Is she sil- houetted in Miss Rose Cartret " Mas- sachusetts family " who married Gran- dison Mather? Like Grandison Mather, Harry Harland scribbled in his boyhood. Presumably the account of Mather's scribblings in Paris would nearly fit what the real young man did - " He would get an idea, a plot, a motive, for an essay, a short story, a novel, an epic, a lyric; and, all aflame with en- thusiasm for it, he would sit down to write it out. But conception and execution are two quite dissimilar processes, as every- body knows; one being a sudden, short- lived ecstasy, the other a long, hard, up- hill labour. After he had dashed off a few fervid pages, he would inevitably en- 206 HENRY HARLAND counter a stumbling-block, and be brought up with, a round turn. Then, while he was casting about for a method of sur- mounting it, a new idea, a new plot, a new motive, would flash into his head, and cut out the old one, for in matters of this sort, at any rate, last love is best. And thereupon the half-begun manuscript would be shoved ignominiously into a cor- ner, and an equally brief reign of favour would commence for its successor. You see, he liked nothing better than to build literary castles in the air; but he lacked the patience to toil and moil day after day, until he had forced one of them to materialize in ink on paper. . . . Again, as he looked into the future from the van- tage-ground of one-and-twenty, he saw no bourne. There was plenty of time. The thought of that moment when work and will might awake too late, ' to gaze upon 207 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES their life sailed by/ never disturbed him. Besides, he did not regard himself as idle. Even though he never did, he was always going to, accomplish something. His next venture in authorship he always intended to carry to a successful termination. And then he was laying up material. He was seeing the world, and he was acquiring a wide familiarity with the literature of France. The number of yellow-covered French books that he read was indeed pro- digious." His first published story a short one was bought by S. S. McClure for a newspaper syndicate. Probably few of his present thousands of admirers ever read " A Week in a Day." He began his first novel, " As It Was Written," soon after his marriage. To know his environ- ment at that time, and his experiences, one 208 HENKY HAKLAND may take the second half of " Grandison Mather " with some literalness. Certainly we may accept his pictures of the city officials in " Grandison Mather/' and of the Grickels the simple-man- nered, big-hearted German Jews as veri- similar. His portrait of Mr. Montgomery Temple, of the prothonotary's office, is fairly sparkling. And why and how was "As It Was Written " done ? The plot an excellent one, by the way simmered in the au- thor's mind for a long time. The actual writing was done speedily, fervidly. This is how Grandison Mather this is how Harry Harland worked on that first book : " He would reach home at about five o'clock dead tired, as has been said. Till half-past six he would rest in his easy chair at the window, overlooking the river ; perhaps chatting with his wife, perhaps 209 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES reading a book, perhaps taking a mite of a nap. At half -past six came dinner; after which, fortifying himself with a cup of black coffee, he would go to his writing- table, and remain there until midnight. But he soon found that this program would not answer. There were two fatal ob- jections to it. To begin with, he ac- complished very little; and that little was bad : the reason being, of course, that he was too fatigued to do his best. His freshest energies were gone. Only the dregs of himself were left, so to speak. . . . But, furthermore, upon quitting his work at midnight, and going to bed, he couldn't sleep. . . . This, of course, would never do. He was burning the candle at both ends; and unless he speedily adopted a wiser and more provident method, it would all be burnt up. The method which he pres- ently did adopt was this : he went to bed 210 HENRY HAELA1STD every evening at seven o'clock ; rose at the summons of an alarm-clock at two the next morning ; and then, lighting his lamp and brewing himself a cup of coffee, pegged away at his manuscripts, until the day broke, and it behooved him to get ready to go down-town." Without doubt the Everett St. Marc of " Grandison Mather " is Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman, of whom Mr. Harland once said : " He was my literary sponsor, having been a classmate of my father ; and he has since been my helpful literary friend. I owe him two-thirds of my suc- cess." Mr. Stedman is also Harland's spiritual godfather. " As It Was Written. A Jewish Musi- cian's Story. By Sydney Luska." That was the announcement. Why the pseudonym? Not, surely, for the reason which the hero of " Grandison Mather " 211 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES gave to his wife " Because, if it should be a failure, I don't want to be handi- capped by it, I don't want to be saddled with an unsuccessful book." No, not for that reason, for the same character after- ward says : " But if it succeeds, I can drop the nom-de-plume, run up my true colours, and no one will be the loser." For " As It Was Written " succeeded and its author did not run up his true colours. George Gary Eggleston said that it was " certainly a work of no common sort," and Mr. Stedman said that its " in- tensity, picturesqueness, and exciting nar- ration are in sharp contrast with the works of our analytic novelists ; " and a dozen other acceptable critics, who knew not Syd- ney Luska from the town clerk of Raw- hide, Colorado, gave out praise lavishly; yet, in spite of it all, it was " Sydney 212 HEKEY HARLANP Luska " that wrote " Mrs. Peixada " and " The Yoke of the Thorah." With the exception of " Grandison Mather," which is valuable chiefly for its autobiographical hints, the early writings of Mr. Harland are at best fine youthful promises, though " As It Was Written " achieved what for its day was the remark- ably large sale of fifty thousand copies. Have the youthful promises been ful- filled? To the last letter. To-day Mr. Harland is not only the maker of the most ingenious and romantic plots; he is the master of a most charming style. If one should care to examine into a comparison which would be neither odious nor uncomplimentary, let him put the crudities of the author's first books alongside a chapter of his later books. Mr. Harland's books are indeed a human document: they reveal his literary and 213 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES his spiritual development. Only a master of the art of writing could have produced the opening chapter of " The Lady Para- mount " ; only a beautiful mind could have given us the description (in the same book) of the Annunciation. It is worthy to be mated with the prayer of St. Alphon- sus de Ligouri. Do you remember it ? " ' When a musician composes an Ave Maria/ he (Adrian, the hero's chum) in- structed them, ' what he ought to try for is exactly what those nice old fifteenth- century painters in Italy tried for when they painted their Annunciations. He should try to represent what one would have heard, if one had been there, just as they tried to represent what one would have seen. Now, how was it ? What would one have heard? What did our Blessed Lady herself hear? Look. It was the springtime, and it was the end of day. 214 HENRY HARLAND And she sat in her garden. And God sent His angel to announce the " great thing * to her. But she must not be frightened. She, so dear to God, the little maid of fifteen, all wonder and shyness and inno- cence, she must not be frightened. She sat in her garden, among her lilies. Birds were singing around her; the breeze was whispering lightly in the palm-trees ; near by a brook was plashing ; from the village came the rumour of many voices. All the pleasant, familiar sounds of nature and of life were in the air. She sat there, think- ing her white thoughts, dreaming her holy day-dreams. And, half as it were in a day-dream, she saw an Angel come and kneel before her. But she was not fright- ened for it was like a day-dream and the Angel's face was so beautiful and so tender and so reverent, she could not have been frightened, even if it had seemed 215 LITTLE PILGEI MAGES wholly real. He knelt before her, and his lips moved, but, as in a dream, silently. All the familiar music of the world went on the bird-songs, the whisper of the wind, the babble of the brook, the rumour of the village. They all went on there was no pause, no hush, no change nothing to startle her only, somehow, they seemed all to draw together, to be- come a single sound. All the sounds of earth and heaven, the homely, familiar sounds of earth, but the choiring of the stars too, all the sounds of the universe, at that moment, as the Angel knelt before her, drew together into a single sound. And " Hail," it said, " hail, Mary, full of grace!"'" The hour had long been coming, but with "The Cardinal's Snuff -Box," in 1900, Mr. Harland at last struck twelve. Doubt- less, reader, you have read the story: 216 HENEY HAELAND doubtless you own it and have read it twice. It is a triumph a pure delight. So, in a slightly less bright key, is " The Lady Paramount," which was published last year. The two books have met de- served success. They have simplicity, cleverness, freshness; they are as grace- ful as swallows 7 flights, and as full of ten- derness and of ethereal beauty as if they had been done by some gifted nun. ~Not Newman himself has shown more elevated thought or more felicity of expression; and not the most inveterate naturalist has shown a happier knowledge and a deeper sympathy with the world around us. Wit- ness, for example, the somewhat similar scenes in which the heroines attract the birds. The author's latest work, " My Friend Prospero," which bids fair to be a worthy successor to the other Anglo-Italian ro- 217 LITTLE PILGRIMAGES mances, began its serial issue in the June McClure's. In the ever-expanding world of litera- ture, Mr. Harland is at once a joy and an example. 218 ARTHUR SHERBURNE HARDY. ARTHUB SHERBURNE HARDY rHEY tell how Lewis Carroll amused himself between hours devoted to mathematics hy writ- ing about the delightful adventures of little Alice; and with what fortunate results, for though Dodridge is a name still recog- nized by scientists, Lewis Carroll is a name beloved from New York to Mel- bourne. In 1881 Arthur Sherburne Hardy came into scientific prominence as the author of "Elements of Quaternions," a work so excellent that it was adopted as a text- book at West Point, at Annapolis, and at Woolwich, in England. This work was followed before long by an annotated trans- lation of Argand's " Theory of Imagina- 219 LITTLE PILGBIMAGES tive Quantities," and by a treatise on the " Application of Photography to Survey- ing." Mr. Hardy at that time was prob- ably spoken of as " the rising young mathe- matician." But in 1883 appeared an uncommonly interesting novel, " But Yet a Woman," with the name of Arthur Sherburne Hardy on the title-page; and then the lovers of quaternions were simply dumfounded. The connection between mathematics, the most exact of sciences, and fiction strikes one at first as being whimsical and para- doxical; but, as a writer, some years ago, said of Mr. Hardy's work, mathematical power " implies a vigorous imagination, and it is not strange that he should have turned from the consideration of the ntli power of numbers to a field that most would regard as more attractive, and took up fiction as his by-work." Besides, as 220 AKTHUK SHERBURNE HARDY Prof. Brander Matthews has argued, fic- tion is a misleading term. What may seem to an author to be a novel situation, a bit of sheer romance, very often turns out to be a more or less accurate statement of a bygone fact. The saying, " There is nothing new under the sun/' takes on more force every day. Thus, in a way, the writer of fiction becomes the chronicler of actual events; thus, by a masterly stretch of imagination and of those highly developed qualities of mind which distin- guish the worthy novelist from the ordi- nary gossip, fancy approaches fact, and, to a certain extent, attains the dignity of fact. "No one surely has less to do, pro- fessionally, with fiction than the teacher of mathematics, and so it may come about that he, of all men, should take pleasure in producing something entirely foreign to facts, something too preposterous ever 221 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES to be proved a fact. Therefore we have " Alice in Wonderland," which can never be a fact until some new Barnum and Cag- liostro combine forces. However, the similarity between Lewis Carroll and Mr. Hardy ends with the statement that each turned from mathe- matics to fiction. The child who visited Wonderland bears no resemblance what- soever to the heroine of " But Yet a Woman." If the " Elements of Quaternions " was successful, so was the novel. The author won instant distinction by each venture. "The publication of 'But Yet a Woman,' " said a critic in 1890, " was a surprise and delight to the public. The book was at once successful. Edition after edition was called for, and it was repub- lished twice in England. Seldom has the first work of an author met with such uni- 222 ARTHUR SHERBURNE HARDY versal commendation. All were charmed with its graceful and sparkling style, with its rich descriptions and its pungent aphor- istic sentences," The author of these widely separated works was born in Andover, Massachusetts, August 13, 1847. His father, Alpheus Hardy, was a prominent Boston merchant. The father being well-to-do, Arthur was given a very liberal education. A part of his boyhood was spent in Neuchatel, Switzerland, and there he acquired that familiarity with the French language which has since served him so well in the diplomatic field. However, it was at Phillips Andover Academy that he prepared for college. He entered Amherst, but remained only a year, leaving it for West Point, where he was graduated in 1869. " I was graduated," he reports, simply, 223 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES " and two days afterward I was married. I was qualified by my rank for admission to the ordnance department, but soon after the usual order of service was changed. I made application for every available post except the one which I got." That one was an artillery post on the Dry Tortugas; and nothing connected with it being agreeable either to him or to his wife, he resigned from the army after serving eighteen months. It is said that General Sherman approved his course, saying that there was something better in store for him than military life. " Mili- tary life," Mr. Hardy observed years afterward, " has a charm which those who have once been permeated by it ever wish to renew. But I did not like its servitude." The glamour of military life had at- tracted him in his boyhood, for during the Civil War he had made his way to a re- 224 AKTHUK SHEKBUKNE HAKDY cruiting-office in Boston, where his father, who had been notified by the adjutant- general, reclaimed him. After resigning from the army he de- voted some months to miscellaneous work, and in 1873 he was elected professor of civil engineering in Iowa College. Soon afterward Dartmouth invited him to oc- cupy a similar position, but he declined. The offer was renewed, and this time he said he would accept if he were granted a year abroad to travel and study. This was agreed to, and he accordingly spent most of a year in a school of technology in Paris. In 1874 he went to Dartmouth. " One of the familiar sights of my freshman year," said a Dartmouth man to us, "was the slight figure of Professor Hardy riding his gray horse with that perfection which all West Pointers attain, a big black and white dog dashing breath- 225 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES lessly along as escort. Sometimes the rambler in the park would run across him, armed with a racquet, going down to van- quish his colleagues in the game of serves and returns or be vanquished, as the case might be. Since then I have met him in the class-room and in society, and have found him always the same, dignified yet never drawing around himself that divin- ity that sometimes separates a college pro- fessor from college men." In 1897 McKinley appointed Professor Hardy United States Minister and Con- sul General to Persia. It was a personal honour from the President, but it was im- mediately approved by the New Hamp- shire senators. Two years later Mr. Hardy was transferred to Greece, and still later to Switzerland ; and last year Presi- dent Roosevelt appointed him to the im- 226 AETHUB SHEREURNE HARDY portant office of Minister to Spain. He holds this office at present. Mr. Hardy's literary works comprise ''But Yet a Woman;" "The Wind of Destiny," a second novel, which appeared in 1886 ; " Passe Rose," a third romance bearing on the times of Charlemagne, which began as a serial in the Atlantic Monthly in 1888; and "His Daughter First," which ran in the Atlantic last year, and was published in book form in May, 1903. It will be noticed that "Passe Rose" and "His Daughter First" are fourteen years apart, but in those fourteen years Mr. Hardy was busy with things more important to him than novel-writing. However, from time to time poems had come from his pen. His very first literary attempt was a poem, " Francesca of Rim- ini," and now his poems are numerous enough to warrant a separate volume. 227 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES The " Wind of Destiny " was never pop- ular. Its flavour was too tragic for the taste of fifteen years ago. " Passe Rose " was praised for its fidelity as a picture of a romantic day. It came prematurely. If it had been published a few years ago it might have made a sensation. The author's latest novel, and his first one since " Passe Rose," is one of those rare delights which you wish to consume at one sitting. The selfishness of the widower's daughter, and the dissolution of this selfishness in the crucible of love; the incidental pleasures of the New England house-party, and the dramatic complica- tions of the 'New York stock-market these themes are handled adroitly and charmingly. Each different character is portrayed with masterly skill and power; the proud, misunderstood heroine; her bright but unsophisticated governess and 228 ARTHUR SHERBURNE HARDY companion ; her doting, commercial father ; the tender-hearted, transparent widow, whom the father loves ; the widow's lovely but unimpressive friend and guest, Mar- garet ; Margaret's masculine, worldly-wise mother; Margaret's manly lover; the ur- bane, audacious freebooter of finance each of these varying characters is re- markably well drawn. The author's power to arouse and sustain interest is unde- niable, irresistible. We recall what was said of his first novel " its graceful and sparkling style," its " rich descriptions, and its pungent aphoristic sentences " and we are compelled to say that these attributes of " But Yet a Woman " have reappeared in " His Daughter First." There is the same " succession of delight- ful scenes and happy thoughts ; " there is the same trinity of attractions noted by a critic years ago in the almost forgotten 229 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES predecessors of the present novel the author's " happy expression of those ideas of life and conduct that are in every mind, his appreciation of natural beauty, and his artistic arrangement of scene and inci- dent." Perhaps some readers remember the beautiful allegory of Death and Love in the " Wind of Destiny," or the affecting description of nightfall in the forest, in u Passe Kose." " His Daughter First " throbs with nat- ural life. Here, for instance, is the scene in which Margaret and Paul, with their love for each other not yet discovered and declared, are caught in the storm in the New England hills: " So they went on. A thin crust over- laid the snow, shining under the sun like a burnished mirror. To the west and south the sky was clear, while far away to the north, under the ragged line of cloud, yel- 230 ARTHUR SHERBURNE HARDY low light showed the limits of the storm- Swaying to the wind like the drapery of some mighty unseen figure, the veils of falling snow swept up the further slopes of the hill. There was still a chance that its rocky buttresses might shoulder them off into the valley beyond. One could see from the smokelike clouds of driven snow drifting away from the summit that the fight was on, and that the wind was sweep- ing the crest bare. " ' How magnificent ! ' cried Margaret. ' It is worth coming to see. Shall we wait here till it passes ? There will be no view up there now.' " They were still in the sunshine and scarcely felt the wind, but the words were hardly out of her mouth when sun and sky were blotted out in a furious rush of whirling sleet. It required all her strength to keep her feet, to breathe, and the sharp 231 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES crystals stung her face and neck like the lashes of whips. She had instinctively turned her back to the blast, but could neither see nor speak, when suddenly everything became black, she felt some- thing warm and thick over her head and shoulders, and heard Paul's voice: 4 Walk straight ahead. I'll keep you in the path. It will be over in a minute.' " She stumbled on through the drifts, steadied by the push of the guiding hand on her shoulder. The relief was so great that she could not protest. " c There ! it's all over. It was nothing but a bluff,' said Paul, drawing back the coat he had thrown over her. She was far more beautiful now than in the candle- light of yesterday, struggling for her breath, her cheeks aflame, her hair and lashes white with the sleet. He saw there 232 AKTHUE SHEKBUKKE HAKDY were two brown splashes in her eyes. 4 Were you frightened ? ' " ' Frightened ? No/ she gasped. ' I hadn't a faculty left. It was so sudden.' " ' It was a bit sudden/ laughed Paul, putting on his coat. ' I thought you were going to be blown away.' " ' I think I should have been if ' " ' But you are all right now/ he inter- rupted. ' You can see the house down there in the sun. We might go on but for the drifts.' " He brushed the snow from her neck and hair with his handkerchief and turned up the collar of her jacket as he spoke. It was the first time in her life a man's hand had cared for her, and she felt the strength and gentleness of its touch all the homeward way." Mr. Hardy is a man of medium height, with a strong, muscular figure, now some- 233 LITTLE PILGBIMAGES what softening under the pressing hospital- ities of diplomatic life; with a clean-cut, rather benevolent face, and bluish gray eyes. A handsome man withal, and with the additional graces of courtliness and vivacity. " He is always an agreeable companion," says a friend, " and among intimate friends a most delightful one. His conversation is easy, suggestive, and enlivened by a quick perception of humour." Since beginning his career as a diplomatist he has found abundant oppor- tunity to indulge his taste for social in- tercourse. For their social attainments he likes the French people especially well. He is a polished man of the world; and a fourfold success as teacher, poet, diplo- mat, and novelist. 234 JACK LONDON JACK LONDON JACK LONDON came into sight comet-like three years ago with The Son of the Wolf," a collec- tion of nine stories that had appeared al- ready under the favourable auspices of the Overland Monthly and the Atlantic Monthly. When it became known that London was but twenty-four years old the praise of the literary world grew louder, for the stories were of rare power and imagination. " The Son of the Wolf " was deservedly one of the marked successes of the spring of 1900. A few critics even went so far as to cry, " Another Kipling ! " Many " Kiplings " have come and gone. The original Kipling is still unrivalled, unique. 235 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES Nevertheless the writing of these stories by a young man of twenty-three (he was barely twenty-four when the collection came out) was a remarkable literary achievement. There were many signs in the book that Mr. London knew his Kip- ling well ; but there was no sign of servile imitativeness. The young student might well have claimed to be a master in his own right. Of course, it was not his fault that the critics made the invidious com- parison. Lazy and superficial critics are for ever doing that sort of thing. " The Priestly Prerogative," Mr. Lon- don's first bit of fiction, was done when he was twenty-two. It was printed in the Overland Monthly in January, 1899 ; and in that very month the author was twenty- three years old. But there were better stories in the book than " The Priestly Prerogative." Kipling himself has rarely 236 JACK LONDON surpassed the ghastly sombreness of " In a Far Country," the fourth story in the book; and therein the enthusiastic critics are amply justified. It is the story of two grumbling, shirking adventurers crossing the snowfields to the gold mines of the Klondike. One of the men had been a clerk ; the other had had even richer leisure. Their cabin for the winter was built near two cairns dread relics of previous failures. One, the softer and more intelligent of the two, oppressed with the boundless inanity, " lived with Death among the dead, emasculated by the sense of his own insignificance, crushed by the passive mas- tery of the slumbering ages. The magni- tude of all things appalled him. Every- thing partook of the superlative save him- self the perfect cessation of wind and motion, the immensity of the snow-covered 237 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES wilderness, the height of the sky and the depth of the silence. That weather-vane if it would only move. If a thunderbolt would fall, or the forest flare up in flame* The rolling up of the heavens as a scroll, the crash of Doom anything, anything ! But no, nothing moved; the Silence crowded in, and the Fear of the North laid icy fingers on his heart. " Once, like another Crusoe, by the edge of the river he came upon a track, the faint tracery of a snowshoe rabbit on the delicate snowcrust. It was a revelation. There was life in the Northland. He would follow it, look upon it, gloat over it. He forgot his swollen muscles, plunging through the deep snow in an ecstasy of anticipation. The forest swallowed him up, and the brief midday twilight van- ished ; but he pursued his quest till ex- hausted nature asserted itself and laid him 238 JACK LONDON helpless in the snow. There he groaned and cursed his folly, and knew the track to be the fancy of his brain; and late that night he dragged himself into the cabin on hands and knees, his cheeks frozen and a strange numbness about his feet. Weatherbee grinned malevolently, but made no effort to help him. He thrust needles into his toes and thawed them out by the stove. A week later mortification set in. " But the clerk had his own troubles. The dead men came out of their graves more frequently now, and rarely left him, waking or sleeping. He grew to wait and dread their coming, never passing the twin cairns without a shudder. One night they came to him in his sleep and led him forth to an appointed task. Frightened into inarticulate horror, he awoke between the heaps of stones and fled wildly into 239 LITTLE PILGRIMAGES the cabin. But he had lain there for some time, for his feet and cheeks were also frozen." One day the poor fellows dragged them- selves outside to watch for the evanescent sun. " The stillness of death was about them. In other climes, when nature falls into such moods, there is a subdued air of expectancy, a waiting for some small voice to take up the broken strain. ~Not so in the North. The two men had lived seem- ing aeons in this ghostly peace. They could remember no song of the past; they could conjure no song of the future. This unearthly calm had always been, the tranquil silence of eternity. " Their eyes were fixed upon the north. Unseen, behind their backs, behind the towering mountains to the south, the sun swept toward the zenith of another sky 240 JACK LONDON than theirs. Sole spectators of the mighty canvas, they watched the false dawn slowly grow. A faint flame began to glow and smoulder. It deepened in in- tensity, ringing the changes of reddish- yellow, purple, and saffron. So bright did it become that Cuthfert thought the sun must surely be behind it, a miracle, the sun rising in the north! Suddenly, without warning and without fading, the canvas was swept clean. There was no colour in the sky. The light had gone out of the day. They caught their breaths in half -sobs. But lo! the air was a-glint with particles of scintillating frost, and there, to the north, the wind-vane lay in vague outline on the snow. A shadow! A shadow ! It was exactly midday. They jerked their heads hurriedly to the south. A golden rim peeped over the mountain's 241 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES snowy shoulder, smiled upon them an in- stant, then dipped from sight again. " There were tears in their eyes as they sought each other. A strange softening came over them. They felt irresistibly drawn toward each other. The sun was coming back again. It would be with them to-morrow, and the next day, and the next. And it would stay longer every visit, and a time would come when it would ride their heaven day and night, never once dropping below the sky-line. There would be no night. The ice-locked winter would be broken ; the winds would blow and the forests answer; the land would bathe in the blessed sunshine, and life renew. Hand in hand, they would quit this horrid dream and journey back to the Southland. They lurched blindly forward, and their hands met, their 242 JACK LONDON poor maimed hands, swollen and distorted beneath their mittens." Other writers have pictured the romantic North, but none has so deeply impressed upon his readers what Mr. London has tersely called the Fear of the North. He has been so successful because he is gifted with a rare imagination and a well cultivated mind, and because he himself, at the age when men receive impressions quickly and conceive glowing sympathies, had experienced the Northland gloom. He had barely completed his freshman year at the University of California his only year in college, by the way when the rush to the Klondike in the fall of 1897 carried him with it. Other men brought home money, but he brought home a wealth of knowledge and fancies which he has since been industriously converting into the good coin of the Eepublic. 243 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES He matured young. He was born in San Francisco on January 12, 1876. His father, a Pennsylvanian by birth, had been soldier, scout, backwoodsman, trapper, all- round wanderer ; and he died, unhappily, just before his son rose to fame. His mother was born in Ohio. The author has surely inherited the spirit of unrest. Mr. London's first years were spent on country ranches, but when he was nine years old the family settled down in the city of Oakland, where, until the death of his father, the family lived. Since that year, with the exception of a short time spent in school, Mr. London has worked for his living. He has followed many occupations, but no trades. The vagrant drop in his blood has been leading him hither and thither. In 1892, at the age of sixteen, he shipped before the mast; the following year took 244 JACK LONDON him to Japan and to the seal-hunting grounds in Behring Sea; and in 1894 he began to indulge his first great ambition, which was to explore the under world of the United States. This is not the world of the comic weekly Weary Willies; but the world of tragedies and romances. With tramps he travelled the length and breadth of the continent, stealing rides on trains and working only for a night's lodging and a breakfast. The enterprise had nat- ural attractions for him ; and of the social and economic truths which he discovered the public has heard very little. He has described tramp life in newspaper articles, but he has said nothing so impressive as Professor Wyckoff has, or Mr. I. K. Friedman. He has been more the amateur "hobo" than the professional sociologist. Some day, however, he may tell the ro- mance of the tramps' estate. 245 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES After this eccentric ten-thousand-mile expedition Mr. London attended the High School in Oakland for a year, and at the end of the spring term " crammed " for entrance to the University of California. In three months, without coaching, he did what his classmates in the High School spent two years doing : he learned enough to pass the examinations and to matricu- late. That was an extraordinary exhibi- tion of bodily strength and mental capa- city. He was obliged, much against his will, to give up college just before the com- pletion of his freshman year. It seems that his scholastic aspirations were doomed to be defeated. Nothing daunted, however, he returned to work; and then came the next impor- tant influence in his life, the stampede to the Klondike. This last and most desperate of the 246 JACK LONDON nineteenth-century adventures had no more enthusiastic participant than Jack Lon- don. Nature and experience qualified him to take part; his buoyant, dreamy spirit promised to sustain him under any hard- ship and any disappointment. And it did. He was among the few who crossed the death-dealing Chilcoot Pass that saddest and wildest of the Northern graveyards in the winter of 1897. Other men staked claims that earned them fortunes, and other men wrote descriptions of their expe- riences ; but London was the only member of the adventurous army to come back with a mind teeming with wonderful im- pressions and no less wonderful sensations. Witness pages of the story " In a Far Country," and of another story, " The White Silence." There is a paragraph in the latter tale which illustrates the rare impressibility of the author's mind, as 247 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES well as his uncommon skill with words. It says: " The afternoon wore on, and with the awe, born of the White Silence, the voice- less travellers bent to their work. Nature has many tricks wherewith she convinces man of his finity, the ceaseless flow of the tides, the fury of the storm, the shock of the earthquake, the long roll of heaven's artillery, but the most tremendous, the most stupefying of all, is the passive phase of the White Silence. All movement ceases, the sky clears, the heavens are as brass; the slightest whisper seems sacrilege, and man becomes timid, affrighted at the sound of his own voice. Sole speck of life jour- neying across the ghostly wastes of a dead world, he trembles at his audacity, realizes that his is a maggot's life, nothing more. Strange thoughts arise unsummoned, and 248 JACK LONDON the mystery of all things strives for utter- ance. And the fear of death, of God, of the universe, comes over him, the hope of the Resurrection and the Life, the yearn- ing for immortality, the vain striving of the imprisoned essence, it is then, if ever, man walks alone with God." Consider the writer's youth, and his lack of schooling, and his utter alienation from what is pompously spoken of as the intellectual life, and you have new proof of the fact that the artist is born, not made. Much more of this artistry has Mr. London exhibited in " The God of His Fathers," in " Children of the Frost," and it is not altogether absent in his disappointing first novel, " A Daughter of the Snows." But the author is still comparatively very young, and experience has been his chief school. His new book, " The Call of the 249 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES Wild/' is welcome, for it has taken him back to an inspiriting, romantic territory the Klondike. Mr. London was married on April 7, 1900, to Miss Bessie Maddern, of Oak- land, and he lives in Piedmont Heights, which rise over Oakland and give a splendid view of the Golden Gate of the bay out of which and into which he once sailed as an ordinary deck-hand. He is still interested in the condition of his more humble fellow men, and during a recent trip to England mingled for a couple of months with the hard-pressed residents of the East End of London, and for weeks more with the hop-pickers of Kent. Naturally he has a strong liking for out- door pastimes. His build is sturdy; his face rugged, smooth-shaven and kindly; 250 JACK LONDON his gray eyes express his every emotion; his manner is that of a shrewd but genial man of the world. He is to-day the ablest writer of fiction in the far West. 251 GEORGE HORACE LORIMER. GEORGE HORACE LORIMER X->EORGE HORACE LORIMER f "" was born in Louisville, brought up in Albany and Boston and Chicago, educated at Colby University, Maine, and at Yale, introduced to commercial life in Chicago, introduced to journalism in Bos- ton, and to the higher literature in Phila- delphia. He has brushed sleeves with all kinds of Americans on their native heaths ; and perhaps that is what makes him in business and in literature a figure with marked American characteristics. As ed- itor of the Saturday Evening Post, of Phil- adelphia, and as author of the " Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son," he is one of the notable Americans of the day. 253 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES This would be enough to say of a septua- genarian ; and Mr. Lorimer is only thirty- five. He was born in the Kentucky metrop- olis on October 6, 1868. His father is the Eev. Dr. George Claude Lorimer, himself no slight figure in literature as well as in religion. Doctor Lorimer was pastor of the Walnut Street Baptist Church in Louisville when his son was born. The following year, 1869, Doctor Lorimer took charge of the First Baptist Church in Al- bany, "New York. In 1870 he went to the Shawmut Avenue Baptist Church in Bos- ton. Nine years later he moved to Chicago, In 1891 he returned to Boston, and two years ago he left Boston, the Massachu- setts capital, for New York, to take charge of the Madison Avenue Baptist Church. Of course, wherever his father went there went little George Horace, too. Doc- tor Lorimer, by the way, is a Scot by birth, 254 GEOKGE HOEACE LOEIMEK and it can hardly be from him that the son got his singular humourous element. It may be that he got it from his mother, who was a Miss Arabella Burford, of Harrods- burg, Kentucky. It will be noticed that young George Horace's earlier education was of an itin- erant nature. We have traced him only to one school in particular, and that is to the Mosely High School in Chicago. It must be surmised that the boy was strictly trained at home, and this surmise makes his wisdom, as put down in the " Letters from a Self -Made Merchant to His Son," seem less preternatural. The letters are dis- tinguished for a horse-sense strain that could hardly have been acquired between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-three. After leaving college young Lorimer went back to Chicago, where his father was then settled, and got employment in the 255 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES pork-packing establishment of Philip D. Armour, that extraordinary self-made mer- chant who may unconsciously have contrib- uted many a suggestion to the creator of " Old Gorgon " Graham. Altogether the minister's son spent eight years in the pork- packing business ; and the most noteworthy event of this period was his marriage, on June 6, 1893, to Alma Viola Ennis, the daughter of Judge Ennis, of Chicago. However, we may say that during that period he also acquired that thorough fa- miliarity with all the branches of the busi- ness which Armour built up, and that sound common-sense view of life in general, which enliven in so remarkable a manner the three hundred pages of " Letters from a Self -Made Merchant to His Son." Inci- dentally he did so well in the business that his salary finally reached five thousand a year. 256 GEOEGE HOKACE LOKIMEE But pork was beginning to Lave fewer and fewer attractions for him. The success of Armour was enough to discourage com- petition, nor was the young employee likely to inherit a part of the business; nor, in short, was it altogether to his liking. So, shortly after his marriage, he resigned from his hard-won and lucrative position and moved to Boston, where his father was at this time pastor of Tremont Temple; and in Boston he entered journalism. His relationship to one of the foremost clergymen in the city quickly brought him many opportunities ; but in his four years of journalism he achieved none of those grand successes that generally signalize even the briefest journalistic careers. He was loyal, steady-going, hard-working. In his time the title " yellow journalism " had not yet been invented ; and, for that mat- ter, it so happened that the city editor was 257 LITTLE PILGRIMAGES wont to insist on giving Lorimer church assignments and the like. It was on one of these assignments that he had an expe- rience which he probably still remembers. He was assigned to report one of the numerous semi-religious reunions fre- quently held in the Tremont Temple halls a Baptist reunion, it must have been, for his father was down to make a speech. Mrs. Lorimer, the reporter's mother, sat in the gallery. Young Lorimer took his place at the reporters' table. He had set no river afire, as we have said, and his identity was not known, out- side of the office of the Boston Post, to more than a dozen newspaper men. Even to those whom he met frequently, with an exception or two, he was rather self-con- tained and cool-mannered, though by no means exclusive or self-important. A small, stuck-up journalist would be a curi- 258 GEOEGE HORACE LOEIMER osity. Anyhow, young Lorimer was not known to all the other reporters at the table, and particularly to a cynical Philis- tine who had already survived three Boston creeds. The supper was Puritanic cold meats and cold rolls and hot coffee; and the speeches were also Puritanic fervent and protracted. It was a sort of large fam- ily gathering, where the ladies and gentle- men of the press were the only outsiders. Doctor Lorimer spoke. When his speech had grown to an unusual length, one of the reporters leaned across the table and re- marked to no one in particular: "Well, if he isn't the longest-winded yet." The lady at the table, who knew the Lorimers, blushed the colour of a July sunset; but the Post reporter kept that same set, almost stern, face with which the readers of the popular magazines are familiar. 259 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES Indeed, there is barely a trace of humour in either his countenance or his ordinary- address. It may be that Mr. Lorimer took up journalism for the purpose of gathering knowledge of the world. It is modern journalism that holds the mirror up to nature with a vengeance. Anyhow, after four years of journalism he retired to the field of general literature. In 1898, or not very long after his de- parture from newspaper life, he went to Philadelphia as literary editor of the Sat- urday Evening Post., the famous periodical which Benjamin Franklin, soundest of American philosophers and smoothest of American statesmen, established and con- ducted. " It is a little curious," remarks one critic, " that the man who has written the modern ' Poor Kichard's Almanac ' (I re- 260 GEOKGE HORACE LORIMER f er to the ' Letters from a Self -Made Mer- chant to His Son ') should be the editor of the paper that Franklin founded and edited. There is more of ' Poor Richard's ' incisive wit and illuminating wisdom in this book than in any book of its kind that has been written in this generation. That a man as young as Mr. Lorimer should be able to deal out such wise saws and modern instances seems almost incredible." It does, no mistake ; and we shall never know the real secret of this phenomenon until we have the Lorimer autobiography. On St. Patrick's Day, 1899, Mr. Lori- mer became editor-in-chief of the Saturday Evening Post, and it was while aiming to uplift his paper that the young editor got the inspiration to write the series of letters which have added so much to the popularity of the Evening Post, and which 261 LITTLE PILGRIMAGES have brought himself a glory perhaps never dreamed of. The letters, twenty in number, appeared in serial form in the Evening Post, begin- ning in 1901 and ending in 1902. But it was not until they appeared in book form, in October, 1902, that they excited the reading public at large. The book was the one genuine literary sensation in this country last year; and the stir which it created has by no means subsided. It lacks just one of the qualities requisite for lasting popularity: it contains no appeal to the feminine majority of the reading public. It calls attention, as a magazine critic very well said, " to another Ameri- can humourist who, if not exactly of the first rank, is very near it. We don't think it has all the elements necessary to make it a popular success to feminine readers, 262 GEORGE HOEACE LOEIMER but most men who take it up are sure to like it very much." The "Letters from a Self -Made Mer- chant to His Son " is distinctively a man's book. We doubt seriously that the author would make a success of letters from a self- made mother to her daughter. All his work suggests that he would wisely leave feminine matters to feminine writers. The letters are from John Graham, a successful pork-packer of Chicago, to his son, who in the beginning is a student at Harvard and in the end is a rising young pork-packer. We extract a few samples of this Franklinian wit and wisdom from the thirteenth letter, addressed to Pierre- pont Graham, the son, after his shrewd deal in pork. " Mr. Pierrepont's orders have been looking up," explains the author, " so the old man gives him a pat on the back but not too hard a one." 263 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES " DEAR PIEEEEPONT : That order for a car-load of Spotless Snow Leaf from old Shorter is the kind of back talk I like. We can stand a little more of the same sort of sassing. I have told the cashier that you will draw thirty a week after this, and I want you to have a nice suit of clothes made and send the bill to the old man. Get something that won't keep people guessing whether you follow the horses or do buck and wing dancing for a living. Your taste in clothes seems to be lasting longer than the rest of your college education. You looked like a young widow who had raised the second crop of daisies over the deceased when you were in here last week. " Of course, clothes don't make the man, but they make all of him except his hands and face during business hours, and that's a pretty considerable area of the human 264 GEOKGE HOEACE LORIMER animal. A dirty shirt may hide a pure heart, but it seldom covers a clean skin. If you look as if you had slept in your clothes, most men will jump to the conclu- sion that you have, and you will never get to know them well enough to explain that your head is so full of noble thoughts that you haven't time to bother with the dan- druff on your shoulders. And if you wear blue and white striped pants and a red necktie, you will find it difficult to get close enough to a deacon to be invited to say grace at his table, even if you never play for anything except coffee or beans. . . . " But it isn't enough to be all right in this world ; you've got to look all right as well, because two-thirds of success is mak- ing people think you are all right. So you have to be governe'd by general rules, even though you may be an exception. People 265 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES have seen four and four make eight, and the young man and the small bottle make a damned fool so often that they are hard to convince that the combination can work out any other way. The Lord only allows so much fun for every man that He makes. Some get it going fishing most of the time and making money the rest; some get it making money most of the time and going fishing the rest. You can take your choice, but the two lines of business don't gee. The more money, the less fish. The farther you go, the straighter you've got to walk. . . . " There are two unpardonable sins in this world success and failure. Those who succeed can't forgive a fellow for being a failure, and those who fail can't forgive him for being a success. If yon do succeed, you will be 'too busy to bother very much about what the failures think. 266 GEOEGE HQBACE LOKIMER " I dwell a little on this matter of ap- pearances because so few men are really thinking animals. Where one fellow reads a stranger's character in his face, a hun- dred read it in his get-up. We have shown a dozen breeds of dukes, and droves of col- lege presidents and doctors of divinity through the packing-house, and the work- men never noticed them except to throw livers at them when they got in their way. But when John L. Sullivan went through the stock-yards it just simply shut down the plant. The men quit the benches with a yell and lined up to cheer him. You see, John looked his job, and you didn't have to explain to the men that he was the real thing in prize-fighters. Of course, when a fellow gets to the point where he is something in particular, he doesn't have to care because he doesn't look like anything special; but while a young fel- 267 LITTLE PILGRIMAGES low isn't anything in particular, it is a mighty valuable asset if he looks like some- thing special" Mr. Lorimer is a man of medium height, rather lightly built, with a calm presence and a shrewd light in his eye. He looks " like something special." It is safe to predict that time will add many inches to his now striking literary stature. 268 CHARLES MAJOR CHARLES MAJOR "~10UR years ago last May Charles t* Major and another gentleman sat conversing in a room in the Wal- dorf-Astoria, New York. " Well," said the other gentleman, " how did you come to write ' When Knighthood Was in Flower ? > " " That's a long story," replied Mr. Major. " I wrote it to please myself, in the first place; and when I had written it I liked it. In fact, at intervals during the writing of it I found myself asking, f Is that idea really mine ? How did it come to me ? ' I had written essays and stories for years in Shelbyville, on the Blue River, in Indiana, where I live and 269 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES have my law office. Writing has been my favourite diversion. I used to lock the door of my office after business hours and go at it with a vengeance. " Yes, I wrote to please myself. But the romance of Mary Tudor and Charles Brandon was scarcely finished when the thought came to me that others might en- joy reading it. That was five or six years ago. I sent the manuscript to publishers here in E"ew York. They offered objec- tions objections practically amounting to rejections. So I put the manuscript away. At the same time, I liked the characters in the story so much that I wondered why others could not like them. " The present success of the book is complimentary to my judgment." On rare occasions brilliant bodies flash across the sky at night. The astronomers call them comets. A comet in the literary 270 CHARLES MAJOR world was " When Knighthood Was in Flower." How the publishers who first rejected the tale reached such a decision might be explained by the circumstance that the historical romance was not popular early in the nineties, and by the fact that " When Knighthood Was in Flower " lacks the literary finish which some readers look upon as the sine qua non of success. Maurice Thompson (may his soul rest in peace!) lighted up the situation clearly when he wrote : " One thing about Mr. Major's work deserves special mention: it shows conscientious mastery of details, a sure evidence of patient study. What it may lack as literature is compensated for in lawful coin of human interest and in general truthfulness to the facts and the atmosphere of the life he depicts. " When asked how he arrived at his ac- 271 LITTLE PILGBIMAGES curate knowledge of old London, London in the time of Henry VIII., he fetched an old book, ' Stow's Survey of London/ from his library, and said : f You remem- ber in my novel that Mary goes one night from Bridewell Castle to Billingsgate Ward through strange streets and alleys. Well, that journey I made with Mary, aided by " Stow's Survey," with his map of London before me.' ' Mr. Major has already been quoted as saying that he wrote originally for his own pleasure. To quote him again, " When Knighthood Was in Flower " was not writ- ten " deliberately to be published. Perhaps if I had considered publication in advance, the work would have been different. I wrote it in pencil, and. as fast as I could. I gave no time to polishing of phrases. I thought only of expressing the ideas that were occurring to me. 272 CHAELES MAJOK " The ideas came " and here is where he touches on the origin of his literary success " of reading Hall's ' Chronicles of the War of the Koses.' It was an old edition, issued in 1548. I had always en- joyed the writers of that period. Hall's description of Mary Tudor and Charles Brandon delighted me more than did any other tale. Then came to me the tempta- tion to write a historical romance convey- ing my ideas of the relations between Mary Tudor and Charles Brandon. My main purpose was to marry them after a series of obstacles, adventures, had been experienced. These incidents were devel- oped while I wrote. I cannot say that I laid down a plot in advance. One chapter suggested another. I tried to avoid two things in particular: one was the intro- duction of solid historical matter, and the other was extremes in the love-scenes. A 273 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES historical romance should have vivacity above all things." But more of these confessions anon. Let us consider the author's life for awhile. Mr. Major was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, July 25, 1856. His father, Stephen Major, was an Irishman (born in Granard, County Longford), who rose to a high position in the legal profession in Indiana. The family is said to be de- scended from a warrior named D'Fy, who crossed from the Continent to England with William the Conqueror. Later the Majors settled in Scotland, but during Cromwell's time one of the Majors went to Ireland; and this man was Charles's ancestor. Charles first went to school in Indian- apolis. When he was thirteen years of age his family moved to Shelbyville, in the same State; and there the boy completed 274 CHABLES MAJOK his public school education. Then he went to the University of Michigan, from which he was graduated in 1875. For a time he travelled, and then he read law in his father's office, being admitted to the bar in 1877. The next eight years he spent quietly, practising law and writing after hours for his own pleasure. Then, succumbing to a temptation that befalls nearly every ambitious American at some time, he en- tered politics, and he was elected to the State legislature on the Democratic ticket. He served creditably, no doubt for one term. Then he returned to the quieter walks of law and literature. It is not apparent that Mr. Major de- voted much serious attention to law. But it might be said that his legally trained mind threw new light upon the subject of the historical romance. In other words, the 275 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES young Shelbyville attorney, with his head in the shadow of the lamp in his office, evolved some striking theories regarding the novelist's treatment of history. These theories he put into effect in " When Knighthood Was in Flower," and, later, in " Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall." " If history is to be treated as a science and not as a mere entertaining array of facts," he has said, in explanation of these theories (see Scribners for June, 1900), " it should be studied from the lower classes upward not from the top down- ward. If there is a science of history and certainly there is it is but another name for the science of human conduct. If that science has progressed slowly up to the present time, it is because those who have left us the meagre historic record that we possess, wishing to glorify kings 2T6 CHAELES MAJOR and mighty personages, have given us only a poor fragment of what was done by the swarming thousands of humanity in by- gone days. The source from which facts may be gleaned whereon to base the prin- ciples of such a science is the people, who, as individuals, are the medium through which its laws must act; whose composite motives, culminating in national move- ments, are the net results." That this point was well taken has been proved by the recent overthrow of modern English as well as ancient Roman histo- rians, and by the reversal of popular opin- ion touching the character of many his- torical figures. Nor have all these re- versals been for the better. And this is Mr. Major's law of historical romance: "Novelists (I here betray the craft) are compelled to create situations in order that they may lead up to certain 277 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES things they wish to say, or facts they wish to use. That, however, must be done adroitly, for most readers resent a trap laid by a writer in order that he may ex- ploit his learning or his wit. Of all forms of evil that beset the historical novelist, the greatest is the temptation to display his- torical knowledge, but a writer who coerces his pen into such a display dulls his pen. . . . Unless an author can maintain, with- out deviation, from the first to the last pages of his book, the language of the period of which he writes, his work will be better, his pages will be more easily read, and whatever true atmosphere he may be able to create in other ways will be more convincing, if he writes in the language of his own times. ~No books have a stronger flavour of their own period than the D'Artagnan romances well translated into modern English. 278 CHAKLES MAJOR " It were as well for an English author to attempt to give German atmosphere to a story of German life by writing in broken English, as to attempt to give old- time flavour to an old-time tale by writing in a tongue composed of both the old and the new. . . . " I believe there is now no definite con- formity in opinion as to what constitutes historical atmosphere. This is due more to the lack of thought than to the lack of knowledge. Each one seems to have a carelessly-formed conception of his own upon the subject. One seems to believe that ' methinks ' is atmospheric. Another holds that ' an ? for l if ' is historic to the core. ' Gad-zooks ' wafts another back- ward, and again, for others, ' By my hali- dom/ in the mouth of the butcher's boy, would straightway make a knight of him." So Mr. Major applied his theories. In 279 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES the main, the application is effective. The familiar language lends an air of natural- ness to his characters; and the shrewd in- troduction of historical information insures a sufficiency of atmosphere. There is left, under this method, nothing but the slight incongruity of Elizabethan oaths and twentieth-century figures just as in his pictures Mr. Howard Chandler Christy shows us a heroine with an Elizabethan ruff and an up-to-date Parisian head-dress. We have seen Mr. Christy's " Dorothy Vernon " in Central Park. Mr. Major is not a stylist, as Maurice Thompson said in other words; but he is a fertile inventor of dramatic situations, and he has the art of making every action seem probable. Moreover, he possesses the still rarer art of arousing what they call " heart interest," and of causing his read- ers to sympathize with his young people's 280 CHAKLES MAJOR maddest fancies and boldest deeds. Thus you smile at Dorothy when she enters the tap-room and makes eyes at Sir John Manners, of whom she has suddenly be- come enamoured; and so, too, you pardon Sir Malcolm for forgetting his pure Madge while he rides to Haddon Hall with the seductive Mary Tudor. Does not the author of " Dorothy Ver- non " forget himself when he goes to fetch history in the scene where Dorothy des- troys the marriage contract with Lord James Stanley ? " Soon the humming turned to whistling. Whistling in those olden days was looked upon as a species of crime in a girl." Does he not ? But we forgive him such a slight bit of clum- siness we forgive and forget when we read his glorious love-scenes. Never were love-scenes more glowing, more spirited, more pregnant at once with the divine 281 LITTLE PILGRIMAGES sentiment and with the mortal passion. Take the scene in which Sir Malcolm woos the lovely blind girl Madge: " Madge and I sat for a few minutes at the window, and I said, ' You have not been out to-day for exercise,' " I had ridden to -Derby with Sir George and had gone directly on my return to see my two young friends. Sir George (Dor- othy's father) had not returned. " * Will you walk with me about the room ? ' I asked. " My real reason for making the sugges- tion was that I longed to clasp her hand, and to feel its velvety touch, since I should lead her if we walked. " She quickly rose in answer to my invitation and offered me her hand. As we walked to and fro a deep, sweet con- tentment filled my heart, and I felt that 282 CHA'RLES MAJQK any words my lips could coin would but mar the ineffable silence. " Never shall I forget the soft light of that gloaming as the darkening red rays of the sinking sun shot through the pan- elled window across the floor and illumined the tapestry upon the opposite wall. " The tapestries of Haddon Hall are among the most beautiful in England, and the picture upon which the sun's rays fell was that of a lover kneeling at the feet of his mistress. Madge and I passed and repassed the illumined scene, and while it was softly fading into shadow a great flood of tender love for the girl whose soft hand I held swept over my heart. It was the noblest motive I had ever felt. " Moved by an impulse I could not re- sist, I stopped in our walk, and falling to my knees pressed her hand ardently to my lips. Madge did not withdraw her 283 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES hand, nor did she attempt to raise me^ She stood in passive silence. The sun's rays had risen as the sun had sunk, and the light was falling like a holy radiance from the gates of paradise upon the girl's head. I looked upward, and never in my eyes had woman's face appeared so fair and saintlike. She seemed to see me and to feel the silent outpouring of my affection. I rose to my feet, and clasping both her hands, spoke only her name, ' Madge.' " She answered simply, ' Malcolm, is it possible ? ' And her face, illumined by the sunlight and by the love-god, told me all else. Then I gently took her to my arms and kissed her lips again and again and again, and Madge by no sign nor gesture said me nay. She breathed a happy sigh, her head fell upon my breast, and all else of good that the world could offer compared with her was dross to me." 284 CHAKLES MAJQE A happy union of flaming passion and purest, coolest sentiment; such a scene as must popularize its author. So the popularity of these two more important of Mr. Major's books is easily understood. The stories are composed of the two attractive elements of love and conflict of troubled love, indeed, and bloody conflict. They bring to mind what Kipling says, that two things greater than all things are; the first is love and the second is war. One day when the novelist was in New York, about a year after the happy advent of his first story, he remarked : " Well, I am sorry only that I did not begin ten years ago. I could have done then the work that I am doing now." But not every novelist is famous and prosperous at forty-two. We doubt that Indiana's talented son has lost much time. 285 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES Mr. Major is a well-built, dark-complex- ioned, smooth-shaven man who does not look his years. He was married in 1885, at Shelbyville, to Miss Alice Shaw; and their home in Shelbyville is said to be the centre of genial and charming hospitality. 286 GEORGE BARK MCCUTCHEON. GEOKGE BAKE McCUTCHEON the novelists who were born and not made, George Barr McCutcheon is one of the latest, but not one of the least. He came to the front in a single bound, and with brilliant effect, in 1900. " Grau- stark " did for him all that the " Prisoner of Zenda " did for Anthony Hope. But there is this difference between the Eng- lish and the American romancist; that whereas Mr. Hawkins rose on the remnants of several failures, Mr. McCutcheon rose successful with his first serious attempt. Last year we had occasion to communi- cate with the author of " Graustark " and u Castle Craneycrow," and in response to 287 LITTLE PILGRIMAGES a request he sent this modest sketch of himself : " Born in 1866 in Jefferson County, Indiana, on the old McCutcheon farm and homestead. " Son of Capt. John B. McCutcheon. Brother of John T., the Record (Chicago) cartoonist and war correspondent, and Ben. F. McCutcheon, railroad editor of the Record. Began newspaper work in 1889 as reporter on Lafayette Morning Journal, made city editor of Lafayette Daily Courier in 1893, and been such ever since. Attended Purdue University, but did not graduate. Have lived in Lafayette twenty- five years. Not married. Tried for three months to be an actor with a very queer opera company in the early '80s against wishes of parents. Walked home. Don't want to be an actor now. Belonged to and took part in the plays of Lafayette 288 GEORGE BAER McCUTCHEON Dramatic Club, however. Been writing short stories for years, but not as serious business. ' Graustark ' was begun on Christmas Day, 1898, and finished the next summer." The sketch may be amended as follows : Mr. McCutcheon was born on July 26, 1866. He received his early education in the Lafayette public schools. For four months in the year 1882 he was the come- dian of a strolling opera company. In 1900, after the success of his first novel, he undertook " Castle Craneycrow," which he finished in the spring of 1902. Sim- ultaneously with its publication, the fol- lowing August, he gave up journalism, and moved from Lafayette to Chicago, where he lives now and practises his profession of novelist. Incidentally it may be said that his brother John is one of the ablest cartoonists of the times; that in him the 289 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES humourous quality is as marked as the romantic quality is in George. In a communication to the Book News last year, the novelist confessed that the manuscripts which he produced before the writing of " Graustark " would, collected together, have made a bonfire " large enough to discourage the ambition of the most progressive incendiary on earth. The acceptance and publication of a few short stories quite a number of years ago, when life was young and hope was high, gave me the encouragement to dabble in big things. So I wrote and wrote until my father who did not believe that I could write even a fairly intelligible school com- position undertook to convince me of the error of my way by sending me to my uncle's farm, where I expected to work off a large portion of my ambition and at the same time cultivate corn instead of 290 GEOEGE BAKE McCUTCHEOISr literature. My employment as a farm- hand covered a period of three weeks, and I did not do enough hard work to acquire a calloused place on my hands. In that time, however, I wrote seven chapters of a very thrilling romance, in which one lone scout exterminated more Indians than Buffalo Bill ever saw. It may be wise and expedient to say, in this connection, that I was not quite fifteen when this first contribution to my literary ash-pile was undertaken. Eude, but I presume judi- cious, editors and publishers kindly re- turned a half-dozen of my most cherished novels, having heard, perhaps, that I had another way of disposing of them. Perse- verance is, like virtue, its own reward. There was at least one publisher who said my ideas were clever, and that in time I could probably turn out an acceptable 291 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES story. He did not know what disaster this bit of encouragement was to produce." Mr. McCutcheon went to Purdue with the purpose of graduating, but he fell into trouble with the faculty in his freshman year. " The mature thoughts of after years/' he says, " completely exonerate the professors." He had lived in Lafayette about a dozen years when the Journal took him on as a reporter at a salary of five dollars a week. As he is a born journalist or romancer he did so well that four years afterward the Courier made him its city editor. George Ade was in journalism in Lafayette at that time. Indeed, it is note- worthy that Ade and McCutcheon were born in the same year in the same State, and that the two went to the same univer- sity. Ade was graduated from Purdue in 292 GEOEGE BAKU McCUTCHEON 1887, and went into journalism imme- diately afterward. While Mr. McCutcheon was city editor of the Lafayette Courier he wrote a long story called " The Wired End/' which ap- peared in his paper in weekly instalments. Evidently it was a rather juvenile effort, else by this time it would have been re- printed. " Graustark " found instant favour with Herbert S. Stone & Co. " It was an in- tensely satisfactory sensation to me to know that it was accepted by the first publisher who saw it," the author once remarked. Two weeks after publication it was being translated and dramatized. It is a stronger book than " Castle Craney- crow," but that is not saying that the second book is unworthy or uninteresting. On the contrary, " Castle Craneycrow " is a capital story, in spite of its flaws. In 293 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES his excellent review of it in the Bookman, shortly after its publication, Mr. Paul Wil- stach took occasion to say of the author: '* He is a story-teller, not a stylist, a rheto- rician or a philosopher. But he has a tale to tell which he embellishes with taste and discretion, really astonishing fertility of imagination, and sufficient sense of human nature to bring the characters and story near to the reader without making them commonplace. There is no trickery. He starts directly for the point and makes it honestly. The devious path is not his. Neither does he affect the primrose path of dalliance. It's cut and run from page to page. Strenuous is an overworked word at present, but it must needs be dragged out again to define ( Castle Craneycrow.' ' Which is a very fair criticism. Mr. McCutcheon's stories are made for enjoyment, not for analysis. To apply 294 GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON severe tests of criticism to them would be as futile as to pick a musical toy to pieces. The toy pleases; let it be. So with " Graustark " and " Castle Craney- crow." They are a series of pleasing and exciting incidents lightly put together to serve the purpose of entertainment. The author's aim is clear and simple; and the result is to be judged accordingly. It is not always the author who aims high that scores the most points. Mr. McCutcheon's accomplished skill in the treatment of a climax in producing a rounded, effective, dramatic climax is excellently shown in the last scene of " Cas- tle Craneycrow." It should be enough to say that the scene is well-nigh faultlessly handled ; that the action combines vigour, intensity, logic; that the reader is sur- prised, thrilled, delighted. The events leading to this final climax 295 LITTLE PILGRIMAGES are the betrothal of Miss Dorothy Garrison, an American, and Prince Ugo Ravorelli, a profligate Italian nobleman ; the jealous interference of Mr. Philip Quentin, an American ; the abduction of Miss Garrison the hour before her marriage to the prince ; her incarceration by Quentin and his friends in Castle Craneycrow, and her gradual dislike for the prince (based on facts regarding his viciousness there related and proved to her), and gradual total ad- miration for the desperate but decent Quentin. The abduction has been an inter- national sensation. It has been generally attributed to bandits seeking gold, but Prince Ugo has been following a trail of his own. This trail finally brings him and his two accomplices and the Belgian officers to Castle Craneycrow. Proof of the ab- duction will bring the guilty parties to jail. Prince Ugo, who does not know of 296 GEOKGE BAKE McCUTCHEON Dorothy's change of heart, is filled with the twofold pleasure of love and revenge. Lord Saxondale, the owner of the castle, and Quentin's friend, admits the prince and his companions. Dorothy and Lady Saxonville, accompanied by friends, come down-stairs. The scene begins : "' Dorothy!' cried Ugo. ' Thank heaven, I have found you ! ' " She stopped on the bottom step, within arm's length of Philip Quentin. There was a moment of indecision, a vivid flush leaped into her lovely cheek, and then her hand went quickly forth and rested on Quentin's shoulder. He started and looked at her for the first time. " ' I am sorry, Ugo, for the wrong I have done you,' she said, steadily, but her hand trembled convulsively on Phil's shoul- der. Mechanically he reached up and took 297 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES the slim fingers in his broad, strong hand and rose to the step beside her. " ' The wrong ? ' murmured the prince, mechanically. " ' In running away from you as I did/ she said, hurriedly, as if doubting her own power to proceed. < It was heartless of me, and it subjected you to the cruelest pain and humiliation. I cannot ask you to for- give me. You should despise me.' " ' Despise you ? ' he gasped, slowly. The truth began to dawn on two men at the same time. Ugo's heart sank like a stone and Quentin's leaped as if stung by an electric shock. His figure straightened, his chin was lifted, and the blood surged from all parts of his body to his turbulent heart " ' I loved him, Prince Kavorelli, better than all the world. It was a shameless way to leave you, but it was the only way/ 298 GEOEGE BAKU McCUTCHEOlSr she said, her voice full. Then she lifted her eyes to Quentin's, and for the moment all else was forgotten. " ' My God, you you did not leave Brussels of your own free will ! ' cried the prince, his eyes blazing. Sallaconi and Laselli moved toward the door, and the police officer's face was a study. " ' I ran away with the man I love,' she answered, bravely. " 'It is a lie ! ' shrieked the Italian. Saxondale seized his hand in time to pre- vent the drawing of a revolver from his coat pocket. ' Damn you ! This is a trick!' " ' You have Miss Garrison's word for it, your Excellency. She was not abducted, and your search has been for naught,' said the big Englishman. t There are no abduct- ors here. The famous abduction was a 299 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES part of the game and it was abetted by the supposed victim.' " ' But there is a reward for her return to Brussels/ interrupted the Luxemburg official, speaking for the first time. ' I must insist that she come with me.' " ' The reward is for Miss Dorothy Garrison, is it not ? ' demanded Saxondale. " ' Yes, my lord.' " { Well, as you cannot get out of the castle and your friends cannot get into it until we open the doors, there is abso- lutely no possibility of your taking Dorothy Garrison to Brussels.' " ' Do you mean to oppose the law ? ' cried Ugo, panting with rage. " ' Gentlemen, as the host in Castle Craneycrow, I invite you to witness the marriage ceremony which is to make it impossible for you to take Dorothy Garri- son to Brussels. You have come, gentle- 300 GEOEGE BAER McCUTCHEON men a trifle noisily and unkindly, I admit just in time to witness the wed- ding of my two very good friends who eloped with the sound of wedding-bells in their ears. Father Bivot, the bride and groom await you.' " ' Dorothy, my darling ! ' whispered Quentin. She turned her burning face away. " ' It is my way, Phil. I love you/ she murmured." The words " The End " follow; and all too soon, it must be thought, for surely it would please the average reader to have Prince Ugo well punished. For him to see Dorothy married to his rival was not enough, except for the author's romantic purposes. The tale might have been com- pleted with a few lines stating the black- hearted Italian's consignment to the ranks 301 LITTLE PILGRIMAGES of tourists' guides for life, or to some equally severe fate. The scene reveals the author's strength and weakness. His strength is demon- strated in the easy, ingenious, dramatic turns; his weakness in the stereotyped phraseology. Then, too, the reader must overlook the unconventionally of the mar- riage, while to be true to his office Father Bivot could not. Our romancers are wont to blunder when they touch on papistical ground. Therefore, too, the arrangement for an evening service in the Brussels cathedral, with a bishop to officiate ! Mar- riages do not take place at night in Catholic churches, though a Catholic priest might privately, in a house, officiate at an evening ceremony. Besides, though Prince Ugo is presumably a Catholic, it is nowhere hinted that Miss Garrison is of the same persua- sion, and in that event a marriage in a 302 GEOKGE BAKR McCUTCHEOISr church by a bishop would be out of the question. Such foggy situations confuse careful readers. " I will say, seriously," are the Western- er's words, " that it has been a hard, uphill fight, and I should like to congratulate, from the bottom of my heart, the author who can say that his first attempt at novel writing found a publisher waiting and willing to take it off his hands. The Stand- ard Oil Company could have formed a new and inexhaustible trust with the mid- night oil I have burned." You see, sincerity and industry, together with his talent, are at the bottom of Mr. McCutcheon's success. The lightest effects are sometimes produced by the hardest efforts. The novelist's words recall the an- swer made by Tennyson to the lady who congratulated him on a particularly grace- ful couplet. " Ah, madam," said the poet, 303 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES " you would hardly believe how many cigars that cost ma" The author's latest novel, " The Sher- rods," has been running serially in one of the monthly magazines this year, and, doubtless, in book form, it will prove one of the popular successes of the new season. 304 F. HOPKINSON SMITH. F. HOPKIXSON SMITH of the most interesting figures in American literature is F. Hop- kinson Smith. He does something more than write entertaining stories and paint rich pictures and build sturdy light- houses and give pleasing readings: he is a remarkably strong personality, and such a personality, particularly when it turns to the right side of current events, is the most interesting of all. When, some years ago, Mr. Gladstone was blowing peas at the Sultan of Turkey and half the Christian world was applaud- ing him, Mr. Smith, who knew his Con- stantinople and his sultan, had a few words to say from another point of view; and if he did not make a single convert, he 305 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES at least proved his own fearlessness (for he had much to lose by taking that unpop- ular position) and his devotion to what seemed to him to be the truth. Again, after the Dreyfus trial, he re- fused to exhibit his pictures at the Paris Exposition of 1900. " No, sir," he said. " Ten years from now I hope to be able to tell my friends that I had nothing to do with the French nation after that trial." He was second only to Zola himself in condemning the French generals and the mass of the French people. A visitor once observed that it was a mystery to him where Mr. Smith found the time to paint so many pictures. " Time ! " exclaimed the artist or the author, as you please. " Why, there's time enough. If artists would not lounge about their studios smoking and waiting for an inspiration, they would accomplish 306 F. HOPKINSON SMITH a great deal more. I believe in work. If I have anything to accomplish I go to work, and the inspiration will come when I demand its presence. When I was last in Venice (this was in 1893) I painted steadily for fifty-three days ten hours a day, and finished fifty-three pictures, and when I returned to New York I sold seven- teen of those pictures for six thousand dol- lars. I never forget for one moment that time is precious. I never forget that the sun does not stand still, and if a man is not careful the sun will leave him with his work unfinished. It is easy enough to accomplish something if you set out for it in earnest. I never had an hour's instruction in art in my life. I believed I could paint. I set to work, and, by hard, patient industry, I learned what little I know of art. Before I begin work I ask myself these questions : Is it worth paint- 307 LITTLE PILGRIMAGES ing? After it is painted will it be worth the trouble ? Does it compose well ? Will it translate into black and white; that is, will it possess strong contrasts of light and shade? Satisfied on these points, I don't waste any time. I don't forget that the sun is moving; that in three hours the whole phase of the scene will be altered, and if I don't catch that light now I never will catch it. The next day the sky and myself will not be the same. My digestion may be disturbed by a potato, and nature's face may be clouded for some reason. " Am I an impressionist ? No, sir ; but, if you will permit the phrase, I am an expressionist. An impressionist says too little and a realist says too much. There are three things an artist who paints out-of- doors should never lose sight of : the tem- perature, the time of day, and the kind of atmosphere, the veil through which he 308 F. HOPKINSON SMITH is looking, the percentage of humidity, which involves the whole range between sunrise and sunset." These remarks (which were addressed to a friend of the sketcher in Boston) give an idea of Mr. Smith's mental vigour and of his physical energy. It is such vigour and such energy, of course, which breed the solid principles governing his daily life. Mr. Smith was born in Baltimore, Octo- ber 23, 1838, the son of Francis Hopkin- son and Susan Treackle Smith. He went to school in his native city, and studied with the intention of entering Princeton; but the year before he could carry out this intention his father met a business reverse. This event changed the course of young Smith's life. Instead of going to college, he went to work in a hardware store, his salary being fifty dollars a year. His age was then sixteen. A couple of years later 309 LITTLE PILGRIMAGES lie became assistant superintendent in a Baltimore iron foundry owned by an older brother; but the war broke out, and the foundry shut down. For the second time the boy was thrown upon his own resources. Then he left his native Baltimore to take a position in New York with a friend of the family who happened to be in the iron business. It was while thus engaged that, at the age of twenty-five, Smith made up his mind to be an engineer. After awhile he began to branch out on his own hook, and finally he formed a partnership with James Symington, among whose attributes was a propensity to dabble in art. The first big contract the firm undertook to fill was the construction of the stone ice-breaker around the Bridgeport Light- house. This was followed in time by the building of the breakwater at Block Island, 310 F. HOPKINSON SMITH the jetties at the mouth of the Connecticut River, the sea-wall on Governor's Island, New York harbour, the foundation and pedestal for the Statue of Liberty, on Bed- loe's Island, and the Race Rock Light- house, at New London. Those, perhaps, are the best-known works of the firm. Mr. Smith was once asked what engineering work of his gave him the most satisfaction, and he replied : " The Race Rock Light- house." In his house in New York City, Smith has a framed bond given by his great- grandfather, Francis Hopkinson, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independ- ence, as security for a loan, and the lender's receipt, proving the aforesaid ancestor's integrity. It is undoubtedly from this Francis Hopkinson that our romancist has inherited his love for art, if such a love be a matter of heredity, and not a spontaneous 311 LITTLE PILGRIMAGES passion happily fostered. Francis Hop- kinson was an amateur in water-colours. Another ancestor, a great-uncle, Judge Joseph Hopkinson, was the first president of the excellent Academy of Fine Arts, a Philadelphia institution; and the judge likewise had a taste for the brush. Hop- kinson Smith tried his hand at water- colours when he was a boy. To-day he ranks among the foremost of our artists. In a word, he has succeeded admirably in three professions engineering, paint- ing, and literature ; and his extraordinary achievements fully support his rule that enthusiasm and industry cannot be de- feated. He was forty-five when he stepped into the literary world. At that time he had prepared for reproduction as illustrations a series of water-colours picturing odd spots of the world that he had visited in 312 F. HOPKINSON SMITH his delightful, enviable vagrancy. The publisher asked him if he wouldn't furnish a little reading-matter for each plate; and the outcome of this was his first book, "Well-Worn Boads." The book, on ac- count of its strong attractiveness to art- lovers, was instantly successful. This, to- gether with " Old Lines in New Black and White/' and " A White Umbrella in Mexico," well maintained his literary reputation until the arrival of the still charming " Colonel Carter of Carters- ville," which solidified it. This romance was one of the most popular books of its day; and there are critics who aver that it remains its author's best effort. How- ever, to those who will have him at his best, plaiting romance with the chat of a rare artist, we recommend the all too scant volume known as " A Day at Laguerre's and Other Days." It is the very essence 313 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES of delightf ulness intimate, observant, philosophical, polished, and sufficiently disconnected to be full of piquant reflec- tions and descriptions. It is much like the author's conversation is reported to be somewhat breezy, ebullient, refresh- ing. The introduction betrays the man. Do you remember it? " These light sketches are the records, I must confess, of some more idle days stolen from a busy and far more practical life. I have committed these depradations upon myself for years, and have then run off to the far corners of the earth and sat down in some forgotten nook to enjoy my plunder. " The villainy, strange to say, has only served to open my eyes the wider and my heart, too, for that matter and to 314 F. HOPKINSOST SMITH bring me closer to my many fellow tramps who have delighted my soul and still do. " Idle tramps, if you will, who love the sunlight and simple fare and simple ways ; ne'er-do-wells, who haunt the cafes and breakfast at twelve; vagrants made mil- lionaires by a melon and a cigarette ; men- dicants who own a donkey and a pair of panniers, have three feast-days a week, earn but half a handful of copper coin, and sing all day for the very joy of living. " If you can unhook your neck from the new car of Juggernaut American Prog- ress which is crushing out the sweet- ness of an old-timed, simpler life, and would gain a little freedom, turn bandit yourself. If you have the pluck to take a long rest, the sun is still blazing along the Grand Canal in dear old Venice. If you can only muster up courage for a short breathing-spell, even a day, there is 315 LITTLE PILGBIMAGES still a chop to be served under the vines overhanging the Bronx." Of course he intended this little bit of intimacy this characteristic little bit for New York readers. But he would say the same thing to Bostonians, to Philadel- phians, to Calif ornians. He is of the rare sort of men part artists and part philosophers who find beauty in places wherefrom the natives have departed in search of beauty. The sense of beauty, it seems, must be in the heart as well as in the eye. Mr. Smith would be a pleasant .companion for a stroll through the Public Garden, in Boston, through Central Park, through Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, or along the shores of the Great Lakes. At the same time, he has been passionately attached to his dear old Venice. Perhaps to himself, as to many others, has come the appreciation of the beauties at home 316 F. HOPKIlSrSON SMITH only after an acquaintance with the beau- ties abroad. However, he is a man of singularly warm attachments. Apropos of his conclusions from his own experiences, he had an interesting talk with a friend of the writer of " Little Pilgrimages " a few years ago. " I believe," he said at the time, " that it is far better for a man, when he has any creative endowment, and has a passion for art for its own sake and not as a mere means of making money, to go into some occupation which will earn him a liveli- hood, and then in his evenings and on his Sundays he can take down his Aladdin's lamp and give it a rub. I think in this way a man keeps his art high and noble, his worthiest and best expression. He does not have to hurry over his work and he does not have to meet popular demands. He does the best that is in him all the 317 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES while and, perhaps, one day, through constant rubbing, the Aladdin's lamp may make his other work unnecessary and then he can devote himself to doing the highest work of which he is capable." But he was not unaware of the objection, we believe, that the day's work takes some of the oil theoretically belonging to the Aladdin's lamp. " The trouble with literary life," he went on to say to this same visitor, " is that it has its perpetual temptations to rest sat- isfied with the market standard, in order to get the necessary market price. When a writer or an artist says to himself, ' It isn't good, but I guess it will do,' he may make a success, but he will never obtain the satisfaction which is the artist's real reward. " Well, this is the bribe of poor human nature. The great artist is so swallowed 318 F. HOPKINSON SMITH up in the moralities of his art that he would as soon sully his conscience as mar his paper or his canvas. For these stern moralists my heart glows with enthu- siasm." Many autobiographical touches have been recognized by close readers of " Tom Grogan," "Caleb West," and ^ Oliver Horn ; " indeed, the latter book is well- known to be strongly reflective of Mr. Smith's own views and experiences. He has realized the ideal of a satisfied exist- ence. This does not mean, of course, that he is satisfied with his performances; it means rather that he is happy in having followed his own bent in all things. " There are few men living," it has been said of him, " who have got so much out of life." His house in Thirty-fourth Street, New York, has been described as not exactly his home; it has been de- 319 LITTLE PILGBIMAGES scribed as " a sort of entrepot and head- quarters, where he stores the spoils of travel, and now and then stays over night." " The Under Dog," his new book, is a collection of tales dealing, as the title sug- gests, with men whom the world has used hard. It is characteristically dramatic and poetic, and it is lifted above the average by its serious purpose and its ideal pres- entation of justice. With the exception of Mark Twain, none of our authors is better known than Hop- kinson Smith, for lecturing, which takes him hither and thither publicly, is one of his numerous avocations. He is a rather tall, well-built man. His characteristics energy, vivacity, good nature, earnest- ness are all prominent. There is no mistaking the man after a moment's study of him, and particularly after a short talk 320 F. HOPKINSON SMITH with him. His manner of thinking and his manner of expressing his thoughts are alike vigorous. Some people, meeting him for the first time and not knowing him, might take him for an army officer, and others might take him for a prosperous business man. If he has any strong affec- tations, he effectually conceals them. " The man impresses one," said a literary friend of his once, " as having enormous physical and intellectual powers, with which are blended the fine sensibilities of a woman, and a delicacy of fancy and sentiment rarely found in one personality." Precisely. It is that blend which has made Mr. Smith one of the most interest- ing figures of contemporaneous life. 321 BOOTH TARKINGTON. BOOTH TARKINGTOtf rHE manuscript of that little gem, " Monsieur Beaucaire," lay in Booth Tarkington's desk two years before the author had the requisite courage and confidence to submit it to a publisher. But you you who have read the mem- orable story will say, " Why should the author of e Monsieur Beaucaire ' lack courage or confidence ? " Let this fact answer: During the five years previous to the instant success of the tale of the adventurous Duke of Orleans, the young Indiana author had earned ex- actly twenty-two dollars and fifty cents by his literary labours. Moreover, even that small total was paid to him by a comic 323 LITTLE FILGEIMAGES weekly Life. For five long, hard, am- bitious, yearning years no one would take him seriously. No one but himself. In 1899, when " Monsieur Beaucaire " appeared, Mr. Tarkington was thirty years old. The seed long since planted had sprouted and flowered at last. " At an early age," once said the gentle- man from Indiana to a friend, " my mind revolved around bits of local history, and when too young to write easily, my sister acted as my amanuensis. To her I dictated my early impressions, and delighted in stories of daring and adventurous life. Jesse James, the desperado, appealed to my youthful fancy, and, in consequence, my early attempts at composition invariably commenced, ' It was dusk, and four horse- men were seen riding over the top of the hill.' With my companions, I fashioned a stage in my father's barn, and there we 324 BOOTH TAKKINGTON enacted ' The Escapades of Jesse James/ from my pen, charging an admission of three cents. How distinctly I remember the barroom scene, always too short to my way of thinking, with the crack of the pistol shots! And how poignant was my regret that I could not play both Jesse James and Bob Ford, his slayer." As the boy was, so, in this case, was the young man. The earnest pursuits of Booth Tarkington in his twenties were literature and the stage. Tarkington, Newton Booth, was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, July 29, 1869. He was named after an uncle, Newton Booth, who distinguished himself not only as an orator but also as a governor of California. This uncle was related to the famous actors of that name. Hence, doubtless, the young man's dramatic instinct and his fondness 325 LITTLE PILGRIMAGES for the stage a fondness, we are told, amounting to real talent. In another line he is descended from a somewhat noted orator and scholar of Rev- olutionary times, the Rev. Thomas Hooker. His great-grandmother was the lovely Mary Newton who ornaments the " Annals of Old Salem." From his mother the young author inherits the French strains that account for his leaning toward French history, in this country and in the old country, and probably also for the vivacity of his style. For, notably in " The Two Vanrevels," Booth Tarkington has exhibited rare style as well as rare dramatic instinct. " The Two Vanrevels " is probably as excellent a literary product as any young man ever achieved. Booth was prepared for college (after the usual attendance at the public schools of his native city) at Phillips Exeter 326 BOOTH TAKKINGTON Academy, in New Hampshire ; but, unlike most Exeter boys, he did not go to Har- vard, but to Purdue, and then to Prince- ton. At Exeter he gave promise of what was to come, for he showed exceptional ability in speaking, writing, and drawing. This promise he strengthened year by year. With his first serious story he won the prize offered by the Nassau Lit, one of the Princeton papers; and shortly after- ward he was elected editor of the Lit, Then he rejuvenated the Tiger, another Princeton paper, and for a long time was its principal editor and illustrator. With a college mate named Wheeler he collabo- rated on an opera, which he staged and directed, and in which he took a promi- nent part. The piece proved so successful that it was repeated the next year and the next. He was a soloist at many of the Princeton Glee Club's entertainments, 327 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES and, besides, he wrote most of the songs sung by the club in his day. He set Poe's " Kaven " to music. But this was by no means the end of his versatility. He won distinction in the college dramas, and he wrote the prize song for Commencement in 1893. One of the Princeton men of a decade ago has said that Tarkington " had a pleas- ing baritone voice, well suited to solo parts of college glees, and he was always called upon for a song when the seniors were singing on the steps of Nassau Hall in the evenings of the spring of ? 93." After college what? That is the question which many a youth fearfully ponders. In the December (1902) Outlook, Charles Hall Garrett gave an account of this crucial time in the life of the subject of this sketch. The account ran: 328 BOOTH TARKINGTON " One balmy summer evening Mr. Booth Tarkington, after his graduation from Princeton, stood idly with a group of friends on the porch of the Garden House at Jamestown, Rhode Island, watching the dancers within. " * Booth,' asked one who had known him for years, ( what are you going to do now that you have graduated ? ' " ' I think/ he said, with a certain amount of earnestness, ' I will enter jour- nalism.' " In vain for years," continues Mr. Garrett, " he sought recognition, always rewriting his returned manuscripts, never being satisfied with the work of his pen, persevering, till the way opened and two novels were accepted at once. " While at Princeton he drew for one of the college papers and wrote for two others. In one can be found almost the 329 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES entire circus scene from ' The Gentleman from Indiana,' Although, after gradua- tion, he desired to become a writer, he began the study of art. " ' But,' said Mr. Tarkington, ' I never advanced beyond technique. I sent a drawing and a joke to Life. The draw- ing was accepted and the joke rejected. A subsequent drawing and joke were re- versed in the matter of acceptance. I fol- lowed them up with forty drawings, all of which were refused. It was the dis- proportionate return for my work that for ever decided me to undertake journal- ism.' " Idle decision, and futile. Fate was to be kinder than that to him ! The journal- ism into which he drifted was of the amateur, impoverishing kind, and very soon he got out of it and went home to Indianapolis. 330 BOOTH TAKKINGTON There, before long, he found himself taking a hearty interest in an amateur dramatic club. Three plays which he wrote for this organization were so re- markably popular that he was thereby in- duced to rewrite them and to attempt to have at least one of them brought out on the professional stage. In 1895 he came East to New York for that purpose, but, failing, he returned home. " I then wrote a story," he has said him- self, " of fifty thousand words. It was refused by many publishers, but became the greater part of ' The Gentleman from Indiana/ so my pains were not thrown away. I submitted ' Monsieur Beaucaire * to McClure's, which they liked, and wrote to me asking me to call, and inquiring if I had written anything else. I spoke of ' The Gentleman from Indiana,' which was in an unfinished state. They asked to see 331 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES it, advised me to complete it, and then to do a little pruning, and I might say that I did not spare it, but slashed, con- densed, and rewrote the book from begin- ning to end ; always bearing in mind that it was to be a serial, that each instalment should in some way make reference to the past, and have an ending both satisfactory and carrying " which the publishers ex- cused him from doing in " The Two Van- revels." In 1899, after the publication of " Mon- sieur Beaucaire," Tarkington was referred to commonly as " the young author who has suddenly sprung into popularity ; " but we have seen how deceptive was that phrase. That paltry $22.50 represented the sum total of all the previous years of hard, incessant work work at college, work in "New York, in 1895, for that short-lived magazine called John- A -Dreams, to which 332 BOOTH TARKINGTON he contributed under the pen-name of S. Cecil Woodf ord, work for the Indianapolis papers under the name of John Corbuton, and work which went forth only to return. " Writing is a trade," said Tarkington to a guest at his home last year, " and, like any other trade, it must be learned. We must serve our apprenticeship; but we must work it out alone. There are no teachers. We must learn by failure and by repeated effort how the thing should be done." Tarkington's struggle upward bears some resemblance to that of his master, Robert Louis Stevenson, whom he has studied faithfully, if not accepted as a model. One cannot read ten pages of " The Two Vanrevels " without recalling the liveliness and the grace of the writer of "The Wreckers" which, by the 333 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES way, is Tarkington's favourite among Ste- venson's books. " The Two Vanrevels " (which was elaborated out of a short tale written years before) is a step far in advance of " Mon- sieur Beaucaire " and " The Gentleman from Indiana," It is combined of the charm of the first and the strength of the second. It has poetry, imagination, vigour, the true dramatic touch, the relieving sense of humour. It is Stevensonian, yet it has a fineness all its own. Note the vividness and the delicacy of the picture of the heroine waiting outside the house in which the reckless admirable Crailey Gray had died of his wound: " It was between twilight and candle- light, the gentle half-hour when the kind old Sand Man steals up the stairs of houses where children are; when rustic lovers stroll with slow and quiet steps down coun- 334 BOOTH TARKINGTON try lanes, and old bachelors are loneliest and dream of the things that might have been. Through the silence of the clear dusk came the whistle of the evening boat that was to bear Tom Vanrevel through the first stage of his long journey to the front of war, and the sound fell cheerlessly upon Miss Betty's ear, as she stood lean- ing against the sun-dial among the lilac bushes. Her attitude was not one of reverie; yet she stood very still, so still that, in the wan shimmer of the fading afterglow, one might have passed close by her and not have seen her. The long, dark folds of her gown showed faintly against the gray stone, and her arms, bare from the elbow, lay across the face of the dial with unrelaxed fingers clenching the cornice; her head drooping, not languidly, but with tension, her eyes half-closed, showing the lashes against a pale cheek; and thus, 335 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES motionless, leaning on the stone in the dusk, she might have been Sorrow's self." A few lines, as an artist would say, but how effective ! Whether " Monsieur Beaucaire " is a pure bit of fiction is immaterial; but we know that " The Gentleman from In- diana " and "The Two Vanrevels " are reflections of Indiana history. Mr. Tark- ington obtained much of the material for i( The Two Vanrevels " from his mother's girlhood memories of the old town of Rouen, in Indiana ; and undoubtedly that is why the book has so much " atmosphere." As for the other novel, when it was being published serially the author was severely criticized for what some Hoosiers regarded as disloyalty to the State. As the Bourbons of Rouen attacked Vanrevel for his poor opinion of Polk, so these later hotheads at first called the novelist snob and traitor, 336 BOOTH TAEKINGTOIsr and advised him to leave Indiana. " It never occurred to me to be disloyal," said he, long afterward, " and I was glad when the story was finished, and they saw that they were mistaken." Mr. Tarkington is of medium height. Previous to his marriage to Miss Laura Louisa Fletcher, of Indianapolis, which took place on June 18, 1902, he was an inveterate club-man. At the last State election he became a member of the Legis- lature. So we have two of our popular novelists actively engaged in politics the author of " The Two Vanrevels " and the author of " The Crisis." Of course they tell a great many stories about the Indiana romancist. One night last year he met the Japanese Minister, M. Kogoro, and Judge McMillan, of "New Mexico, in one of the New York hotels, 337 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES and, as sometimes will happen, the three men tried to measure one another's power. " I can govern by injunctions," said the judge. " I can involve nations in war," said the diplomat. "Well, I could, if I would, make the whole world laugh at you," said the author to them. They then acknowledged that the pen was still mightiest. Then there is the doughnut episode, which became a national joke. It seems that Tarkington . owned and may still own a small corner lot in Indianapolis where stood a baker's shop. A citizen residing near by complained that the smell of cooking doughnuts was offen- sive, and, as he got no satisfaction out of his complaint, he brought suit, in which the baker and the novelist were co-der fendants. This started the report that 338 BOOTH TAKKINGTON Tarkington was in the doughnut business, and for months he shared with the trust magnates and the country bumpkins the distinction of occupying the humourists' at- tention. " I don't expect to live that story down," hopelessly remarked the victim. 339 OWEN WISTER. OWEN WISTER /N "The Virginian" Owen Wister may be said to have found himself. For years, though not steadily, he had been trying to produce a genuine note- worthy book; and just as the public was on the verge of completely losing sight of him, and just as the critics were about to give him up as a hopeless case, he produced his masterpiece a romance of which, on the whole, the most famous of our writers might well be proud a romance well qualified for mention as the " great Amer- ican novel." " The Virginian " was the foremost book of 1902, and it bids fair to be a pop- ular book for many years to come. It is historical; it is romantic; it combines 341 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES all the elements that attract popularity; and, besides, it is unique in its subject and in its style. The subject, the unpolished days of the West, must always be interest- ing to Americans ; indeed, it must grow in interest as those days recede ; and the style is like the subject, lacking polish and yet winning admiration. Now, a word about the author before we touch on the book. Mr. Wister was born in Philadelphia, July 14, 1860. He is the fourth generation of his family in direct descent that has occupied itself with literature. After a forebear was named the creeping wistaria ; and the great Fanny Kemble was his maternal grandmother. When he was ten years of age he went abroad with his family; and abroad he spent three years. He returned to this country to enter St. Paul's School, at Concord, New Hampshire, a well-known 342 OWEN WISTEK school for boys of the old families; and there he studied until his eighteenth year, when he matriculated at Harvard. Even then the literary aptitude was more than superficial in him. He had written his first little piece for the paper at St. Paul's School, in 1873, that is, shortly after his arrival at Concord. At Harvard he wrote the libretto for one of the Hasty Pudding shows '" Dido and ^neas " was the name of the production. In his junior year he wrote a poem on Beethoven, which the Atlantic Monthly published. So, not unexpectedly, toward the end of his college life he began to take a student's interest in music, and when he was graduated, in the class of 1882, he carried off the highest honours in that divine branch of learning. This achievement induced him to elect a musical career for himself, and with 343 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES this idea firmly in mind he went abroad immediately after his graduation. He sought Liszt, and the great musician ad- vised him to study composition in Paris. The next year circumstances obliged him to abandon his musical studies. Failing in health soon after his return to America he went elk hunting in the far West in Wyoming and Arizona. This trip caused the current of his life to revert to its original channel. That is to say, leaving forms and con- ventionalities behind, his inherited spirit found bolder play, his imagination found wider range, his naturally kindly heart found a larger opportunity. In short, he found the West inspiriting, invigorating; a cure for bodily ailments and a tonic for mental forces. In 1885, having regained his health, he entered the Harvard Law School. This 344 OWEN WISTER was the third turn in his life. First liter- ature; second, music; now, law. Two years later he was a Bachelor of Laws and a Master of Arts. Then he started to estab- lish a practice for himself. However, each effort in this line was opposed by a new desire to go West again. For more than a hundred years the West has fascinated nearly every native Ameri- can, if not to the extent of drawing him to her prairies and her sublime mountains, at least to the extent of arousing his in- terest in her wild picturesqueness and her variegated characters. Finally, after spending a few years swinging between the Delaware and the Rockies, he gave himself up entirely to the spirit of the West; that is to say, he left law for literature, left the life prosaic for the life imaginative. The first product was " The Dragon of 345 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES Wantley," a forgotten story which ap- peared in 1892. Three years later ap- peared " Red Men and White," which in a sense was the precursor of " The Vir- ginian." But " Red Men and White " was not of a popular nature. The critics rec- ognized its virility, and the students of American history recognized its lifelike- ness; but the general reading public missed these fine points. Its atmosphere was depressing; and that is a condition from which the general run of the people will always turn. " Lin McLean," which came out in 1897, met the same fate: while praised by the most discriminating critics, it was shunned by the general. To them it was truly caviare. Yet what the careful critics said of these books was sufficient to encourage Mr. Wis- ter to keep to the trail. In the ten years following his graduation from the law 346 OWEN WISTER school he had made some fifteen trips West; and though he had not learned to shoot a half-dollar through the centre while riding at full gallop, still he had learned his West thoroughly. " Ulysses S. Grant," a biography, and " The Jimmy John Boss " came in 1900; and in 1902 " The Virgin- ian." An unpretentious work, " Philos- ophy Four," has lately been included by the Macmillans in their Little Novels series. One of the most striking features of " The Virginian " is its solidity. There are no flowers of speech ; there is no fanci- ful inflation. " It is different from the romantic creation of story-tellers in search of material and from the carefully elab- orated pictures of more self-conscious novelists," said Lucy Munroe, writing for the Critic. " There is something broad and generous and free about it. It holds 347 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES the wide horizons and makes evident the sweep of things across a new world. Some- thing of the freshness of the open air is in these pages : hints of strange, far- away places where art is still undiscovered and life alone is capitalized. The rest- lessness of cities, their excited pleasures and harsh ambitions, seem foolish and in- tangible. The open air gives a new per- spective, a blander outlook, a gayer, freer, saner view of the relations of things. In the readjustment everything is simplified and the natural becomes the inevitable. The earth is once again given her due in the scheme of things. ... It is a real man that emerges out of all this in ' The Virginian,' a man who has known the waste places of the world and slashed his own way against hostility. The strong young West, alert and watchful and com- manding, is in his careless figure. It is 348 OWEN WISTEK a part of him as India is a part of Kim. . . . The special note is a fine large hon- esty, a just and wholesome outlook upon men and things. But with this goes a sense of humour which would give colour to the most barren waste, and life to the tamest character." Another critic said that the portrait of the Virginian " is a little idealized, per- haps, but none the less convincing for that reason, the man is so thoroughly the result of his calling and his environment. Technically the book is admirable, finely planned, superbly carried out. A series of incidents in the cowboy's daily life, at bottom it yet possesses the qualities re- quired to make a novel a well-sustained leitmotiv; and never, perhaps, since the days of Bret Harte, has the characteristic Western humour found so suggestive and appreciative, so successful an interpreter. 349 LITTLE PILGE IMAGES Indeed, Mr. Wister does for the cowboy what Harte did for the miner/' and so forth. In conclusion, " Mr. Wister . . . has furnished an enduring addition to the gallery of characteristically American types in fiction." Sentiments of a similar nature were evoked by the book in England. The Acad- emy, torn from its insular pedestal, said: " We believe in the Virginian, which is saying a good deal when it is remembered that he represents the difficult blend of extraordinary tenderness with an invinci- ble will. Bret Harte had the trick of that kind of man. So has Mr. Wister, and his treatment is hardly less delicate." There is abundant evidence in " The Virginian " that the author was conscious of the extraordinary richness of the durable richness of his material. There is the size of the book, in the first place, 350 OWEJST WISTEE half as long again as the average novel; and there must be something extraordinary in a book to justify so large a size now- adays. There is the dedication to Presi- dent Roosevelt, with the significant lines: " Some of these pages you have seen, some you have praised, one stands new-written because you blamed it." There is the long time which the author spent on the book, since separate chapters of it were published years before the book appeared as a whole. Critical eyes will note the scrupulously careful finish of the novel. " The Virginian " is not perfection ; for it has vague pages; but, all in all, its diversity is agreeable and admirable. The chapter called " Em'ly " is the ripest humour ; while the chapters " Where Fancy Was Bred," and " You're Going to Love Me Before We Get Through," de- scriptive of the Swinton barbecue, wherein 351 LITTLE PILGKIMAGES our old friend, Lin McLean, of the days of '97, and the Virginian mix up the youngsters, are as funny as a pair of clowns. Then there is the grim story of the lynching, and there is the thrilling drama played by the Virginian and his enemy Trampas on the eve of the Vir- ginian's marriage. That whole chapter dealing with this last event, the chapter en- titled "With Malice Aforethought," is marvellously absorbing. The reader is affected as though by actual presence in the frontier town ; as though he heard the generous fellows offer to take the case of Trampas off the Virginian's hands, and saw the cowardly, curlike Trampas insult and defy the chivalrous bridegroom, and overheard the Virginian, resolved to meet his enemy outside the town, say to the pale, lone girl, " I have no right to kiss you any more," and at last saw the two men meet 352 OWEN WISTEE face to face and thankfully saw Tram- pas fall. And from this last scene the reader may profitably revert to page 147, the first act of the subsidiary drama in the book called " The Game and the Nation." The page starts off: " There can be no doubt of this : " All America is divided into two classes, the quality and the equality. The latter will always recognize the former when mistaken for it. Both will be with us until our women bear nothing but kings. " It was through the Declaration of In- dependence that we Americans acknowl- edged the eternal inequality of man. For by it we abolished a cut-and-dried aristoc- racy. We had seen little men artificially held up in high places, and great men artificially held down in low places, and 353 LITTLE PILGRIMAGES our own justice-loving hearts abhorred this violence to human nature. Therefore, we decreed that every man should thenceforth have equal liberty to find his own level. By this very decree we acknowledged and gave freedom to true aristocracy, saying, ' Let the best man win, whoever he is.' Let the best man win ! That is America's word. That is true democracy. And true democracy and true aristocracy are one and the same thing. If anybody cannot see this, so much the worse for his eye- sight." So, at the end of that chapter wherein the Virginian kills the man who has hated and plagued him for years, we renew those reflections on equality. " For the Virgin- ian had been equal to the occasion: that is the only kind of equality which I recog- nize." " The Virginian " has deserved its rare 354 OWEN WISTER success. It has entirely justified Mr. Wis- ter's desertion of law for literature. With- out it the all too small gallery of portraits of the cowboy would be for ever incomplete. For those mad, passionate, primeval days pictured in the book are gone; and with them went the living presentment of the Virginian. " He rides in his historic yes- terday," Mr. Wister says. " You will no more see him gallop out of the unchanging silence than you will see Columbus on the unchanging sea come sailing from Palos with his caravels." But while the cowboy has gone, the stuff out of which he was made remains. The sturdy, daring, honourable, old-fash- ioned American youth " will be here among us always, invisible, waiting his chance to live and play as he would like. His wild kind has been among us always, since 355 LITTLE PILGBIMAGES the beginning: a young man with his temptations, a hero without wings." We have already made use of Mr. Wis- ter's saying that the East is the head, and the West the heart of the country. He once explained this to a friend, saying: " One thing I have noticed regarding the East and the West. It can be expressed briefly, although it will require explana- tion afterward. In saying that the head of the country seems to be the East, while the heart seems to be the West, I may per- haps mean that the West seems cruder, although I never phrase it to myself in just that way, but in travelling about there one is struck continually with the kindness of everybody, and with their interest in all people who are in trouble. Their knowledge and their good feeling also are not confined to their own part of the country and what is going on there, 356 OWEN WISTEE whether it be prosperity or adversity, but their interest extends to the East. That is to say, if you go to Chicago or San Fran- cisco, or wherever the centres of popula- tion are, you will find that most people you talk with are familiar with things in New York and the East, and are interested to know what New York and other large Eastern cities are doing; while, on the other hand, when you return from Western regions to New York and Philadelphia, people in those cities seem very much less concerned with other parts of the country, and are more concerned with their own immediate surroundings and life, almost, I should say, the least national, although far more civilized." Mr. Wister spends much of his time in Philadelphia, where he is well known among both the quality and the equality, to use his own words. For some years he 357 LITTLE PILGEIMAGES was secretary to the managers of the ex- clusive Assemblies. And are you still curious regarding the page of the Virginian which President Roosevelt blamed? It was the detailed description of what cruel Balaam did to the pony Pedro. The President said that it was too horrible even though it more than justified the fearful pounding which Balaam got from the horrified and enraged hero. THE END. 358 THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ This book is due on the last DATE stamped below. Om-6,'67(H2523s8)2373 o-rnnrn AT HOI 3 2106 00204 6461