[Illustration: THE HOME OF AUGUSTA EVANS WILSON, ASHLAND PLACENow owned by Mrs. George Fearn, Jr. ]

LITERARY HEARTHSTONES OF DIXIE

_By_

LA SALLE CORBELL PICKETT

AUTHOR OF "PICKETT AND HIS MEN, " "JINNY, " ETC. 

_With Portraits and Illustrations_

PHILADELPHIA & LONDON

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

1912

COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANYCOPYRIGHT, 1912, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER, 1912

PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANYAT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESSPHILADELPHIA, U. S. A. 

 Transcriber's Note:

 There is an inconsistency in the fifth paragraph of the Forword where the author refers to Dr. Bagley's "The Old Fashioned Gentleman, " and the reference to Dr. Bagby's "The Old Virginia Gentleman" in the chapter "Bacon and Greens". 

FOREWORD. 

The fires still glow upon the hearthstones to which our southernwriters in the olden days gave us friendly welcome. They are as brightto-day as when, "four feet on the fender, " we talked with some giftedfriend whose pen, dipped in the heart's blood of life, gave word tothoughts which had flamed within us and sought vainly to escape thewalls of our being that they might go out to the world and fulfil theirmission. They who built the shrines before which we offer our devotionhave passed from the world of men, but the fires they kindled yet burnwith fadeless light. 

To us who have dwelt in the same environment and found beauty in thesame scenes that inspired them to eloquent expression of the thoughts, the loves, the hopes, and the aspirations which were our own as wellas theirs, these writers of our South are living still and will livethrough the long procession of the years. In the garden of our livesthey planted the flowers of poesy, of fable, and of romance. With thechanges of the years those flowers may have passed into the realm ofthe old-fashioned, like the blossoms in Grandmother's garden, but arethere any sweeter or more royally blooming than these?

The lustre of our gifted ones is not dimmed by the passage of time, but in the rush of new books upon the world the readers of to-day losesight of the volumes which wove threads of gold into the joys andsorrows of the generation now travelling the downward slope of life. Their starry radiance is sometimes lost to view in the electric flashof the present day. If these pages can in any slight way aid inkeeping their memory bright they will have reached their highest aim. 

The poets of Dixie in war days tended the flames that glowed upon thealtar of patriotism. Their lives were given to their country as trulyas if their blood had crimsoned the sod of hard-fought fields. Theygave of their best to our cause. Their bugle notes echo through theyears, and the mournful tones of the dirges they sang over the graveof our dreams yet thrill our hearts. Before our eyes "The ConqueredBanner" sorrowfully droops on its staff and "The Sword of Lee" flashesin the lines of our Poet-Priest. 

For the quotations with which are illustrated the varying phases ofhis poetic thought I am indebted to the kindness of the publishersof Father Ryan's poems, Messrs. P. J. Kenedy & Sons. For certainselections from the poems of Hayne I am indebted to the Lothrop, Lee & Shephard Company, and for selections from Dr. Bagley's "TheOld Fashioned Gentleman, " Messrs. Charles Schribner's Sons. 

My thanks are due the Houghton, Mifflin Company for permission toinclude in my paper on Margaret Junkin Preston two poems and otherquotations from the "Life and Letters of Margaret J. Preston, " by Mrs. Allan, the step-daughter of Mrs. Preston. 

The selections in the article on Georgia's doubly gifted son, SidneyLanier, poet and musician, are given through the kind permission ofProfessor Edwin Mims and of Doubleday, Page & Company, publishers ofMrs. Clay's "A Belle of the Fifties. "

CONTENTS

 PAGE

"THE POET OF THE NIGHT" 11 Edgar Allan Poe

"THE SUNRISE POET" 41 Sidney Lanier

"THE POET OF THE PINES" 69 Paul Hamilton Hayne

"THE FLAME-BORN POET" 99 Henry Timrod

"FATHER ABBOT" 125 William Gilmore Simms

"UNCLE REMUS" 151 Joel Chandler Harris

"THE POET OF THE FLAG" 175 Francis Scott Key

"THE POET-PRIEST" 201 Father Ryan

"BACON AND GREENS" 225 Dr. George William Bagby

"WOMAN AND POET" 253 Margaret Junkin Preston

"THE 'MOTHER' OF 'ST. ELMO'" 283 Augusta Evans Wilson

ILLUSTRATIONS

 PAGE

THE HOME OF AUGUSTA EVANS WILSON, ASHLAND PLACE _Frontispiece_

EDGAR ALLAN POE 20

SIDNEY LANIER 58

HOUSE WHERE TIMROD LIVED DURING HIS LAST YEARS 116

WOODLANDS, THE HOME OF WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 126

JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS 156

SNAP-BEAN FARM, ATLANTA, GEORGIA 166

FRANCIS SCOTT KEY 194

FATHER RYAN 204

ST. MARY'S CHURCH, MOBILE. FATHER RYAN'S LATERESIDENCE ADJOINING 216

DR. GEORGE W. BAGBY 236

"AVENEL" 240

LITERARY HEARTHSTONES OF DIXIE

"THE POET OF THE NIGHT"

EDGAR ALLAN POE

"I am a Virginian; at least, I call myself one, for I have resided allmy life until within the last few years in Richmond. "

Thus Edgar A. Poe wrote to a friend. The fact of his birth in Bostonhe regarded as merely an unfortunate accident, or perhaps the work ofthat malevolent "Imp of the Perverse" which apparently dominated hislife. That it constituted any tie between him and the "Hub of theUniverse, " unless it might be the inverted tie of opposition, he neveradmitted. The love which his charming little actress mother cherishedfor the city in which she had enjoyed her greatest triumphs seemed tohave turned to hatred in the heart of her brilliant and erratic son. In his short and disastrous sojourn in Boston, when his fortunes wereat their lowest ebb, it is not likely that his thought once turned tothe old house on Haskins, now Carver, Street, where his ill-starredlife began. 

The reason given by Poe, "I have resided there all my life untilwithin the last few years, " suggests but slight cause for his love ofRichmond, the home of his childhood, the darkening clouds of which, viewed through the softening lens of years, may have shaded off tobrighter tints, as the roughness of a landscape disappears and meltsinto mystic, dreamy beauty as we journey far from the scene. 

The three women who had been the stars in the troubled sky of hisyouth irradiated his memory of the Queen City of the South. In thechurchyard of historic old Saint John's, that once echoed to the wordsof Patrick Henry, "Give me liberty or give me death!" Poe's mother layin an unidentified grave. In Hollywood slept his second mother, whohad surrounded his boyhood with the maternal affection that, like anunopened rose in her heart, had awaited the coming of the little childwho was to be the sunbeam to develop it into perfect flowering. OnShockoe Hill was the tomb of "Helen, " his chum's mother, whose beautyof face and heart brought the boyish soul

 To the Glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome. 

Through the three-fold sanctification of the twin priestesses, Love andSorrow, Richmond was his home. 

So Virginia claims her poet son, the tragedy of whose life is a gloomy, though brilliant, page in the history of American literature. 

There are varying stories told of Poe's Richmond home. The impressionthat he was the inmate of a stately mansion, where he was trained toextravagance which wrought disaster in later years, is not borne outby the evidence. When the loving heart and persistent will of Mrs. Allan opened her husband's reluctant door to the orphaned son ofthe unfortunate players, that door led into the second story of thebuilding at the corner of Fourteenth Street and Tobacco Alley, in whichMessrs. Ellis & Allan earned a comfortable, but not luxurious, livingby the sale of the commodity which gave the alley its name. As it wascustomary in those days for merchants to live in the same building withtheir business, the fact that he did so does not argue that Mr. Allanwas "down on his luck, " but neither does it presuppose that he was thepossessor of wealth. But it was a home in the truest sense for littleEdgar, for it was radiant with the love of the tender-hearted woman whohad brought him within its friendly walls. 

From this home Mr. Allan went to London to establish a branch of theCompany business. He was accompanied by Mrs. Allan and Edgar, and theboy was placed in the school of Stoke-Newington, shadowy with the dimprocession of the ages and gloomed over by the memory of Eugene Aram. The pictured face of the head of the Manor School, Dr. Bransby, indicates that the hapless boys under his care had stronger thanhistoric reasons for depression in that ancient institution. 

England was thrilling with the triumph of Waterloo, and evenStoke-Newington must have awakened to the pulsing of the atmosphere. Not far away were Byron, Shelley, and Keats, at the beginning of theirbrief and brilliant careers, the glory and the tragedy of which mayhave thrown a prophetic shadow over the American boy who was to travela yet darker path than any of these. 

Under the elms that bordered the old Roman road, what forms of antiqueromance would lie in wait for the dreamy lad, joining him in hisSaturday afternoon walks and telling him stories of their youth in theancient days to mingle with the age-youth in the heart of thedual-souled boy. The green lanes were haunted by memories ofbroken-hearted lovers: Earl Percy, mourning for the fair and fickleAnne; Essex, calling vainly for the royal ring that was to have savedhim; Leicester, the Lucky, a more contented ghost, returning inpleasing reminiscence to the scenes of his earthly triumphs, comfortably oblivious of his earthly crimes. What boy would not havefound inspiration in gazing at the massive walls, locked and barredagainst him though they were, within which the immortal RobinsonCrusoe sprang into being and found that island of enchantment, thefavorite resort of the juvenile imagination in all the generationssince?

At Stoke-Newington the introspective boy found little to win him fromthat self-analysis which later enabled him to mystify a world thatrarely pauses to take heed of the ancient exhortation, "Know thyself. "In the depths of his own being he found the story of "William Wilson, "with its atmosphere of weird romance and its heart of solemn truth. 

Incidentally, he uplifted the reputation of the American boy, so far asregarded Stoke-Newington's opinion, by assuring his mates when theymarvelled over his athletic triumphs and feats of skill that all theboys in America could do those things. 

At the end of the year in which the family returned fromStoke-Newington Mr. Allan moved into a plain little cottage a story anda half high, with five rooms on the ground floor, at the corner of Clayand Fifth Streets. Here they lived until, in 1825, Mr. Allan inheriteda considerable amount of money and bought a handsome brick residence atthe corner of Main and Fifth Streets, since known as the Allan House. With the exception of two very short intervals, from June of this yearuntil the following February was all the time that Poe spent in theAllan mansion. 

The Allan House, in its palmy days, might appeal irresistibly to themind of a poet, attuned to the harmonies of artistic design andresponsive to the beauties of romantic environment. It was a two-storybuilding with spacious rooms and appointments that suggested the tasteof the cultivated mistress of the stately dwelling. On the second floorwas "Eddie's room, " as she lovingly called it, wherein her affectionateimagination as well as her skill expended themselves lavishly for thepleasure of the son of her heart. 

A few years later, upon his sudden return after a long absence, it washis impetuous inquiry of the second Mrs. Allan as to the dismantling ofthis room that led to his hasty retreat from the house, an incidentupon which his early biographers, led by Dr. Griswold, based thefiction that Mr. Allan cherished Poe affectionately in his home untilhis conduct toward "the young and beautiful wife" forced the expulsionof the poet from the Allan house. The fact is that Poe saw the secondMrs. Allan only once, for a moment marked by fiery indignation on hispart, and on hers by a cold resentment from which the unfortunatevisitor fled as from a north wind; the second Mrs. Allan's strong pointbeing a grim and middle-aged determination, rather than "youth andbeauty. " Not that the thirty calendar years of that lady wouldnecessarily have conducted her across the indefinite boundaries of theuncertain region known as "middle age, " but the second Mrs. Allan wasborn middle-aged, and the almanac had nothing to do with it. 

It was in the sunshine of youth and the warmth of love and thefragrance of newly opening flowers of poetry that Edgar Poe lived inthe new Allan home and from the balcony of the second story looked outupon the varied scenes of the river studded with green islets, thevillage beyond the water, and far away the verdant slopes and forestedhills into the depths of which he looked with rapt eyes, seeing visionswhich that forest never held for any other gaze. Mayhap, adown thosedim green aisles he previsioned the "ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir"with the tomb of Ulalume at the end of the ghostly path through theforest--the road through life that led to the grave where his heart layburied. Through the telescope on that balcony he may first havefollowed the wanderings of Al Araaf, the star that shone for him alone. In the dim paths of the moonlit garden flitted before his eyes thedreamful forms that were afterward prisoned in the golden net of hiswondrous poesy. 

[Illustration: EDGAR ALLAN POEFrom the daguerreotype formerly owned by Edmund Clarence Stedman]

To these poetic scenes he soon bade farewell, and on St. Valentine'sday, 1826, entered the University of Virginia, where Number 13, WestRange, is still pointed out as the old-time abiding place ofVirginia's greatest poet, whose genius has given rise to moreacrimonious discussion than has ever gathered about the name of anyother American man of letters. The real home of Poe at this time wasthe range of hills known as the Ragged Mountains, for it was amongtheir peaks and glens and caverns and wooded paths and ripplingstreams that he roamed in search of strange tales and mystic poemsthat would dazzle his readers in after days. His rambles among thehills of the University town soon came to a close. Mr. Allan, beingconfronted by a gaming debt which he regarded as too large to fit thesporting necessities of a boy of seventeen, took him from college andput him into the counting-room of Ellis & Allan, a position far fromagreeable to one accustomed to counting only poetic feet. 

The inevitable rupture soon came, and Poe went to Boston, the city ofhis physical birth and destined to become the place of his birth intothe tempestuous world of authorship. Forty copies of "Tamerlane andOther Poems" appeared upon the shelf of the printer--and nowhere else. It is said that seventy-three years later a single copy was sold for$2, 250. Had this harvest been reaped by the author in those earlydays, who can estimate the gain to the field of literature?

Boston proving inhospitable to the firstling of her gifted son'simagination, the Common soon missed the solitary, melancholy figurethat had for months haunted the old historic walks. Edgar A. Poedropped out of the world, or perhaps out of the delusion of fancyinghimself in the world, and Edgar A. "Perry" appeared, an enlistedsoldier in the First Artillery at Fort Independence. For two years"Perry" served his country in the sunlight, and Poe, under night'sstarry cover, roamed through skyey aisles in the service of the Museand explored "Al Araaf, " the abode of those volcanic souls that rushin fatal haste to an earthly heaven, for which they recklesslyexchange the heaven of the spirit that might have achievedimmortality. 

A severe illness resulted in the disclosure of the identity of theyoung soldier, and a message was sent to Mr. Allan, who effected hisdischarge and helped secure for him an appointment to West Point. Onhis way to the Academy he stopped in Baltimore and arranged for thepublication of a new volume, to contain "Al Araaf, " a revised versionof "Tamerlane, " and some short poems. 

Some months later No. 28 South Barracks, West Point, was the despairof the worthy inspector who spent his days and nights in unsuccessfulefforts to keep order among the embryo protectors of his country. Poe, the leader of the quartette that made life interesting in Number 28, was destined never to evolve into patriotic completion. He soonreached the limit of the endurance of the officials, that being, inthe absence of a pliant guardian, the only method by which a cadetcould be freed from the walls of the Academy. 

Soon after leaving the military school Poe made a brief visit toRichmond, the final break with Mr. Allan took place, and the poet wentto Baltimore. 

Number 9 Front Street, Baltimore, is claimed as the birthplace of Poe. There is a house in Norfolk that is likewise so distinguished. Thereare other places, misty with passing generations, similarly known tohistory. Poe, though not Homeric in his literary methods, had much thesame post-mortem experience as the Father of the Epicists. 

At the time of the Poet-wanderer's return to Baltimore his aunt, Mrs. Clemm, had her humble but neat and comfortable home on Eastern Avenue, then Wilks Street, and here he found the first home he had known sincehis childhood and, incidentally, his charming child cousin, Virginia, who was to make his home bright with her devotion through theremainder of her brief life. 

In these early days no thought of any but a cousinly affection hadrippled the smooth surface of Virginia's childish mind, and she wasthe willing messenger between Poe and his "Mary, " who lived but ashort distance from the home of the Clemms, and who, when the frostsof years had descended upon her, denied having been engaged tohim--apparently because her elders were more discreet than shewas--but admitted that she cried when she heard of his death. 

In his attic room on Wilks Street he toiled over the poems and talesthat some time would bring him fame. 

Poe was living in Amity Street when he won the hundred-dollar prizeoffered by the _Saturday Visitor_, with his "Manuscript Found in aBottle, " and wrote his poem of "The Coliseum, " which failed of a prizemerely because the plan did not admit of making two awards to the sameperson. A better reward for his work was an engagement as assistanteditor of the _Southern Literary Messenger_, which led to his removalto Richmond. 

The _Messenger_ was in a building at Fifteenth and Main Streets, inthe second story of which Mr. White, the editor, and Poe, had theiroffices. The young assistant soon became sole editor of thepublication, and it was in this capacity that he entered upon thecritical work which was destined to bring him effective enemies toassail his reputation, both literary and personal, when the grave hadintervened to prevent any response to their slanders. Not but that hepraised oftener than he censured, but the thorn of censure pricksdeeply, and the rose of praise but gently diffuses its fragrance to bewafted away on the passing breeze. The sharp satire attractedattention to the _Messenger_, as attested by the rapid growth of thesubscription list. 

Here Poe was surrounded by memories of his childhood. The building wasnext door to that in which Ellis & Allan had their tobacco store inPoe's school days in Richmond. The old Broad Street Theatre, on thesite of which now stands Monumental Church, was the scene of hisbeautiful mother's last appearance before the public. Near Nineteenthand Main she died in a damp cellar in the "Bird in Hand" district, through which ran Shockoe Creek. Eighteen days later the old theatrewas burned, and all Richmond was in mourning for the dead. 

At the northwest corner of Fifth and Main Streets, opposite the Allanmansion, was the MacKenzie school for girls, which Rosalie Poeattended in Edgar's school days. He was the only young man who enjoyedthe much-desired privilege of being received in that hall of learning, and some of the bright girls of the institution beguiled him intorevealing the authorship of the satiric verses, "Don Pompioso, " whichcaused their victim, a wealthy and popular young gentleman ofRichmond, to quit the city with undue haste. The verses were the boy'srevenge upon "Don Pompioso" for insulting remarks about the positionof Poe as the son of stage people. 

On Franklin Street, between First and Second, was the Ellis home, where Poe, with Mr. And Mrs. Allan, lived for a time after theirreturn from England. On North Fifth Street, near Clay, still stood thecottage that was the next home of the Allans. At the southeast cornerof Eleventh and Broad Streets was the school which Poe had attended, afterward the site of the Powhatan Hotel. Near it was the home of Mrs. Stanard, whose memory comes radiantly down to us in the lines "ToHelen. "

Ever since the tragedy of the Hellespont, it has been the ambition ofpoets to perform a noteworthy swimming feat, and one of Poe'sschoolboy memories was of his six-mile swim from Ludlam's Wharf toWarwick Bar. 

On May 16, 1836, in Mrs. Yarrington's boarding-house, at the corner ofTwelfth and Bank Streets, Poe and Virginia Clemm were married. Thehouse was burned in the fire of 1865. 

In January, 1837, Poe left the _Messenger_ and went north, after whichmost of his work was done in New York and Philadelphia. "The Fall ofthe House of Usher" was written when he lived on Sixth Avenue, nearWaverley Place, and "The Raven" perched above his chamber door in ahouse on the Bloomingdale Road, now Eighty-Fourth Street. 

When living in Philadelphia Poe went to Washington for the doublepurpose of securing subscribers for his projected magazine, and ofgaining a government appointment. The house in which he stayed duringhis short and ill-starred sojourn in the Capital is on New YorkAvenue, on a terrace with steps to a landing whence a longer flightleads to a side entrance lost in a greenery of dark and heavy bushes. On the opposite side is a small, square veranda. The building, whichis two stories and a half high, was apparently a cheerful yellow colorin the beginning, but it has become dingy with time and weather. Thescars of its long battle with fate give it the appearance of beingabout to crumble and crash, after the fashion of the "House of Usher. "It has windows with gloomy casements, opening even with the ground inthe first story, and in the second upon a narrow balcony. A sign onthe front of the building invites attention to a popular make ofglue. [1]

 [1] Since this was written the old house has been torn down. 

In 1849, about two years after the passing of the gentle soul ofVirginia, Poe returned to Richmond. He went first to the United StatesHotel, at the southwest corner of Nineteenth and Main Streets, in the"Bird in Hand" neighborhood where he had looked for the last time onthe face of his young mother. He soon removed to the "Swan, " becauseit was near Duncan Lodge, the home of his friends, the MacKenzies, where his sister Rose had found protection. The Swan was a long, two-storied structure with combed roof, tall chimneys at the ends, anda front piazza with a long flight of steps leading down to the street. It was famous away back in the beginning of the century, having beenbuilt about 1795. When it sheltered Poe it wore a look of having stoodthere from the beginning of time and been forgotten by the passinggenerations. 

Duncan Lodge, now an industrial home, was then a stately mansion, shaded by magnificent trees. Here Poe spent much of his time, and oneevening in this friendly home he recited "The Raven" with suchartistic effect that his auditors induced him to give it as a publicreading at the Exchange Hotel. Unfortunately, it was in midsummer, andboth literary Richmond and gay Richmond were at seashore and mountain, and there were few to listen to the poem read as only its author couldread it. Later in the same hall he gave, with gratifying success, hislecture on "The Poetic Principle. "

In early September, with some friends, he spent a Sunday in the HygeiaHotel at Old Point. At the request of one of the party he recited "TheRaven, " "Annabel Lee, " and "Ulalume, " saying that the last stanza of"Ulalume" might not be intelligible to them, as it was not to him andfor that reason had not been published. Even if he had known what itmeant, he objected to furnishing it with a note of explanation, quoting Dr. Johnson's remark about a book, that it was "as obscure asan explanatory note. "

Miss Susan Ingram, an old friend of Poe, and one of the party at OldPoint, tells of a visit he made at her home in Norfolk following theday at Point Comfort. Noting the odor of orris root, he said that heliked it because it recalled to him his boyhood, when his adoptedmother kept orris root in her bureau drawers, and whenever they wereopened the fragrance would fill the room. 

Near old St. John's in Richmond was the home of Mrs. Shelton, who, asElmira Royster, was the youthful sweetheart from whom Poe took atender and despairing farewell when he entered the University ofVirginia. Here he spent many pleasant evenings, writing to Mrs. Clemmwith enthusiasm of his renewed acquaintance with his former lady-love. 

Next to the last evening that Poe spent in Richmond he called on SusanTalley, afterward Mrs. Weiss, with whom he discussed "The Raven, "pointing out various defects which he might have remedied had hesupposed that the world would capture that midnight bird and hang itup in the golden cage of a "Collection of Best Poems. " He was hauntedby the "ghost" which "each separate dying ember wrought" upon thefloor, and had never been able to explain satisfactorily to himselfhow and why, his head should have been "reclining on the cushion'svelvet lining" when the topside would have been more convenient forany purpose except that of rhyme. But it cannot be demanded of a poetthat he should explain himself to anybody, least of all to himself. Tohis view, the shadow of the raven upon the floor was the most glaringof its impossibilities. "Not if you suppose a transom with the lightshining through from an outer hall, " replied the ingenious Susan. 

When Poe left the Talley home he went to Duncan Lodge, a shortdistance away, and spent the night. The next night he was at Sadler'sOld Market Hotel, leaving early in the morning for Philadelphia, butstopping in Baltimore, where came to him the tragic, mysterious end ofall things. 

Poe knew men as little as he knew any of the other every-day facts oflife. In the depths of that ignorance he left his reputation in thehands of the only being he ever met who would tear it to shreds andthrow it into the mire. 

"THE SUNRISE POET"

SIDNEY LANIER

In my memory-gallery hangs a beautiful picture of the Lanier home as Isaw it years ago, on High Street in Macon, Georgia, upon a hillockwith greensward sloping down on all sides. It is a wide, roomymansion, with hospitality written all over its broad steps that leadup to a wide veranda on which many windows look out and smile upon thevisitor as he enters. One tall dormer window, overarched with a highpeak, comes out to the very edge of the roof to welcome the guest. Two, smaller and more retiring, stand upon the verge of thehigh-combed house-roof and look down in friendly greeting. There aretall trees in the yard, bending a little to touch the old houselovingly. 

Far away stretched the old oaks that girdled Macon with greenery, where Sidney Lanier and his brother Clifford used to spend theirschoolboy Saturdays among the birds and rabbits. Near by flows theOcmulgee, where the boys, inseparable in sport as well as in the moreserious aspects of life, were wont to fish. Here Sidney cut the reedwith which he took his first flute lesson from the birds in the woods. Above the town were the hills for which the soul of the poet longed inafter life. 

Macon was the "live" city of middle Georgia. She made no effort torival Richmond or Charleston as an educational or literary centre, butshe had an admirable commercial standing, and offered a generoushospitality that kept her in fond remembrance. In the Maconpost-office Sidney Lanier had his first business experience, to offsetthe drowsy influence of sleepy Midway, the seat of Oglethorpe College, where he continued his studies after completing the course laid out inthe "'Cademy" under the oaks and hickories of Macon. 

January 6, 1857, Lanier entered the sophomore class of Oglethorpe, where it was unlawful to purvey any commodity, except Calvinism, "within a mile and a half of the University"--a sad regulation forcollege boys, who, as a rule, have several tastes unconnected withreligious orthodoxy. 

Lanier carried with him the "small, yellow, one-keyed flute" which hadsuperseded the musical reed provided by Nature, and practised upon itso fervently that a college-mate said that he "would play upon hisflute like one inspired. "

Montvale Springs, in the mountains of Tennessee, where Sidney'sgrandfather, Sterling Lanier, built a hotel in which he gave histwenty-five grandchildren a vacation one summer, still holds thememory of that wondrous flute and yet more marvellous nature among the"strong, sweet trees, like brawny men with virgins' hearts. " From itsferns and mosses and "reckless vines" and priestly oaks liftingyearning arms toward the stars, Lanier returned to Oglethorpe as atutor. Here amid hard work and haunting suggestions of a coming poem, "The Jacquerie, " he tried to work out the problem of his life'sexpression. 

 * * * * *

When the guns of Fort Sumter thundered across Sidney Lanier's dreamsof music and poetry, he joined the Macon volunteers, the first companyto march from Georgia into Virginia. It was stationed near Norfolk, camping in the fairgrounds in the time that Lanier describes as "thegay days of mandolin and guitar and moonlight sails on the JamesRiver. " Life there seems not to have been "all beer and skittles, " orthe poetic substitutes therefor, for he goes on to say that theirprincipal duties were to picket the beach, their "pleasures and sweetrewards of toil consisting in ague which played dice with our bones, and blue mass pills that played the deuce with our livers. "

In 1862, the Company went to Wilmington, North Carolina, where theyindulged "for two or three months in what are called the 'dry shakesof the sand-hills, ' a sort of brilliant tremolo movement. " The timenot required for the "tremolo movement" was spent in building FortFischer, until they were ordered to Drewry's Bluff, and then to theChickahominy, where they took part in the Seven Days' fight. 

Even war places were literary shrines for Lanier, for wherever hechanced to be he was constantly dedicating himself anew to the workof his life. In Petersburg he studied in the Public Library. In thatold town he first saw General R. E. Lee, and watched his calm faceuntil he "felt that the antique earth returned out of the past andsome mystic god sat on a hill, sculptured in stone, presiding over aterrible, yet sublime, contest of human passions"--perhaps the mostpoetic conception ever awakened by the somewhat familiar view of anelderly gentleman asleep under the influence of a sermon on a drowsymid-summer day. Writing to his father from Fort Boykin, he asks himto "seize at any price volumes of Uhland, Lessing, Schelling, Tieck. "

In the spring of 1863, on a visit to his old home in Macon, Lanier metMiss Mary Day and promptly fell in love, a fortunate occurrence forhim, in that he secured an inspiring companion in his short andbrilliant life, and for us because it is to her loving care that weowe the preservation of much of his finest work. On the return toVirginia, he and his brother Clifford had as companions the charmingMrs. Clement C. Clay and her sister, who wanted escorts from Macon toVirginia. She claims to have bribed them with "broiled partridges, sho' 'nuf sugar, and sho' 'nuf butter and spring chickens, 'qualitysize, '" to which allurements the youthful poets are alleged to havesuccumbed with grace and gallantry. I recall an evening that GeneralPickett and I spent with Mrs. Clay at the Spotswood Hotel, when shetold us of her trip from Macon, and her two poet escorts. I rememberthat Senator Vest was present and played the violin while Senator andMrs. Clay danced. 

Sidney Lanier said of his experience at Fort Boykin, on Burwell's Bay, that it was in many respects "the most delicious period" of his life. It may be that no other young soldier found so much of romance andpoetry in the service of Mars or put so much of it into the lives ofthose around him. There are old men, now, who in their youth lived onthe James River, in whose hearts the melody of Sidney Lanier's fluteyet lingers in golden fire and dewy flowering. At Fort Boykin hedecided the question of his vocation, writing to his father soeloquent a letter upon the desirability of pursuing his tastes, ratherthan trying to follow the paternal footsteps in a profession for whichhe had no talent, that his father relinquished all hope of making alawyer of his gifted son. 

In Wilmington, North Carolina, Lanier served as signal officer untilhe was captured and taken to the prison camp at Point Lookout, inwhich gloomy place was developed the disease which in a few yearsdeprived literature and music of a light that would have sparkled inbeauty through the mists of centuries. Imprisonment did not serve asan interruption to the work of the student, for even a prison cell wasa shrine to the radiant gods of Lanier's vision. Probably Heine andHerder were never before translated in surroundings so littlecongenial to those masters of poesy. One of his fellow-prisoners saidthat Lanier's flute "was an angel imprisoned with us to cheer andconsole us. " To the few who are left to remember him at that time, thewaves of the Chesapeake, with the sandy beach sweeping down to kissthe waters, and the far-off dusky pines, are still melodious with thatmusic. 

After his release he was taken to the Macon home, where he wasdangerously ill for two months, being there when General Wilsoncaptured the town and Mr. Jefferson Davis and Senator Clement C. Claywere brought to the Lanier house on their gloomy journey to FortressMonroe. In that month Lanier's mother died of consumption, and hespent the summer months at home with his father and sister. In theautumn he taught on a large plantation nine miles from Macon, where, with "mind fairly teeming with beautiful things, " he was shut up inthe "tare and tret" of the school-room. He spent the winter at PointClear on Mobile Bay, breathing in health with the sea-breezes and theair that drifted fragrantly through the pines. 

As clerk in the Exchange Hotel in Montgomery, the property of hisgrandfather and his uncles, he may have found no more advantageous afield for his "beautiful things" than in the Georgia school-room, buteven in that "dreamy and drowsy and drone-y town" there was some life"late in the afternoon, when the girls come out one by one and shineand move, just as the stars do an hour later. " But Lanier was aspatient and self-contained in peace as he had been brave in war, andhe accepted the drowsy life of Montgomery as he had accepted theromance and adventures of Fort Boykin, on Sundays playing thepipe-organ in the Presbyterian Church, and spending his leisure infinishing "Tiger Lilies, " begun in the wild days of '63, on Burwell'sBay. In 1867 he returned to Macon, where in September he read theproof of his book, his one effort at romance-writing, chieflynoticeable for its musical element. The fluting of the author isrecalled by the description of the hero's flute-playing: "It is likewalking in the woods among wild flowers just before you go into somevast cathedral. "

 * * * * *

The next winter Sidney Lanier was teaching in Prattville, Alabama, atown built on a quagmire by Daniel Pratt, of whom one of his negroessaid his "Massa seemed dissatisfied with the way God had made theearth and he was always digging down the hills and filling up thehollows. " Prattville was a small manufacturing town, and Lanier wasabout as appropriately placed there as Arion would have been in atin-shop, but he kept his humorous outlook on life, departing from hisserenity so far as to make his only attempts at expressing in versehis political indignation, the results of which he did not regard aspoetry, and they do not appear in the collection of his poems. Hismuse was better adapted to the harmonies than to the discords of life. Some lines written then furnish a graphic picture of conditions in theSouth at that time:

 Young Trade is dead, And swart Work sullen sits in the hillside fern And folds his arms that find no bread to earn, And bows his head. 

In 1868, after Lanier's marriage, he took up the practice of law inhis father's office in Macon. In that town he made his eloquentConfederate Memorial address, April 26, 1870. 

Lanier, to whom "Home" meant all that was radiant and joyous in life, wrote to Paul Hamilton Hayne that he was "homeless as the ghost ofJudas Iscariot. " He was thrust upon a wandering existence by thealways unsuccessful attempt to find strength enough to do his work. AtBrunswick he found the scene of his Marsh poems in "the length and thebreadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn, " in which he reacheshis depth of poetic feeling and his height of poetic expression. 

From Lookout Mountain he wrote Hayne that at about midnight he hadreceived his letter and poem, and had read the poem to some friendssitting on the porch, among them Mr. Jefferson Davis. From AlleghanySprings he wrote his wife that new strength and new serenity"continually flash from out the gorges, the mountains, and the streamsinto the heart and charge it as the lightnings charge the earth withsubtle and heavenly fires. " Lanier's soul belonged to music more thanto any other form of art, and more than any other has he linked musicwith poetry and the ever-varying phenomena of Nature. Of a perfect dayin Macon he wrote:

 "If the year was an orchestra, to-day would be the calm, passionate, even, intense, quiet, full, ineffable flute therein. "

In November, 1872, Lanier went to San Antonio in quest of health, which he did not find. Incidentally, he found hitherto unrevealeddepths of feeling in his "poor old flute" which caused the old leaderof the Maennerchor, who knew the whole world of music, to cry out withenthusiasm that he had "never heard de flude accompany itself pefore. "

That part of his musical life which Sidney Lanier gave to the worldwas for the most part spent in Baltimore, where he played in thePeabody Orchestra, the Germania Maennerchor, and other musicsocieties. An old German musician who used to play with him in theOrchestra told me that Lanier was the finest flutist he had everheard. 

It was in Baltimore, too, that he gave the lectures which resulted inhis most important prose-writings, "The Science of English Verse, ""The English Novel, " "Shakespeare and His Forerunners. "

In August, 1874, at Sunnyside, Georgia, amid the loneliness ofabandoned farms, the glory of cornfields, and the mysterious beauty offorest, he wrote "Corn, " the first of his poems to attract theattention of the country. It was published in _Lippincott's_ in 1875. Charlotte Cushman was so charmed by it that she sought out the authorin Baltimore, and the two became good friends. 

At 64 Centre Street, Baltimore, Lanier wrote "The Symphony, " which hesaid took hold of him "about four days ago like a real James Riverague, and I have been in a mortal shake with the same, day and night, ever since, " which is the only way that a real poem or real music or areal picture ever can get into the world. He says that he "will berejoiced when it is finished, for it verily racks all the bones of myspirit. " It appeared in _Lippincott's_, June, 1875. 

Lanier was at 66 Centre Street, Baltimore, when he wrote the words ofthe Centennial Cantata, which he said he "tried to make as simple andcandid as a melody of Beethoven. " He wrote to a friend that he was notdisturbed because a paper had said that the poem of the Cantata waslike a "communication from the spirit of Nat Lee through a Bedlamitemedium. " It was "but a little grotesque episode, as when a catbirdpaused in the midst of the most exquisite roulades and melodies to mewand then take up his song again. "

 * * * * *

In December of that year he was compelled to seek a milder climate inFlorida, taking with him a commission to write a book about Floridafor the J. B. Lippincott Company. Upon arriving at Tampa, he wrote to afriend:

 Tampa is the most forlorn collection of little one-story frame houses imaginable, and as May and I walked behind our landlord, who was piloting us to Orange Grove Hotel, our hearts fell nearer and nearer towards the sand through which we dragged. Presently we turned a corner and were agreeably surprised to find ourselves in front of a large three-story house with old nooks and corners, clean and comfortable in appearance and surrounded by orange trees in full fruit. We have a large room in the second story, opening upon a generous balcony fifty feet long, into which stretch the liberal arms of a fine orange tree holding out their fruitage to our very lips. In front is a sort of open plaza containing a pretty group of gnarled live-oaks full of moss and mistletoe. 

[Illustration: SIDNEY LANIERFrom a photograph owned by H. W. Lanier]

In May he made an excursion of which he wrote:

 For a perfect journey God gave us a perfect day. The little Ocklawaha steamboat _Marion_--a steamboat which is like nothing in the world so much as a Pensacola gopher with a preposterously exaggerated back--had started from Palatka some hours before daylight, having taken on her passengers the night previous; and by seven o'clock of such a May morning as no words could describe, unless words were themselves May mornings, we had made the twenty-five miles up the St. John's to where the Ocklawaha flows into that stream nearly opposite Welaka, one hundred miles above Jacksonville. 

It was on this journey that he saw the most magnificent residence thathe had ever beheld, the home of an old friend of his, an alligator, who possessed a number of such palatial mansions and could change hisresidence at any time by the simple process of swimming from one toanother. 

On his return to Baltimore he lived at 55 Lexington in four roomsarranged as a French flat. He makes mention of a gas stove "on whichmy comrade magically produces the best coffee in the world, and this, with fresh eggs (boiled through the same handy little machine), bread, butter, and milk, forms our breakfast. " December 3 he writes from thelittle French flat, announcing that he "has plunged in and broughtforth captive a long Christmas poem for _Every Saturday_, " a Baltimoreweekly publication. The poem was "Hard Times in Elfland. " He says, "Wife and I have been to look at a lovely house with eight rooms andmany charming appliances, " whereof the rent was less than that of thefour rooms. 

The next month he writes from 33 Denmead Street, the eight-room house, to which he had gone, with the attendant necessity of buying "at leastthree hundred twenty-seven household utensils" and "hiring a coloredgentlewoman who is willing to wear out my carpets, burn out my range, freeze out my water-pipes, and be generally useful. " He mentionshaving written a couple of poems, and part of an essay on Beethovenand Bismarck, but his chief delight is in his new home, which investshim with the dignity of paying taxes and water rates. He takes theview that no man is a Bohemian who has to pay water rates and streettax. 

 * * * * *

In addition to supporting his new dignity he finds time and strengthfor his usual work, and he writes on January 30, 1878, "I have beenmainly at work on some unimportant prose matter for pot-boilers, but Iget off a short poem occasionally, and in the background of my mind amwriting my Jacquerie. " Unfortunately, "Jacquerie" remained in thebackground of his mind, with the exception of two songs--all we haveto indicate what a stirring presentation our literature might have hadof the fourteenth century awakening of "Jacques Bonhomme, " that earlyprecursor of the more terrible arousing in 'Ninety-Three. 

In the latter part of the year Lanier was living at Number 180 St. Paul Street, and in December he wrote to a friend:

 "Bayard Taylor's death slices a huge cantle out of the world. .. . It only seems that he has gone to some other Germany a little farther off. .. . He was such a fine fellow, one almost thinks he might have talked Death over and made him forego his stroke. "

At Bayard Taylor's home, where Lanier visited, were two immensechestnut trees, much loved by the two poets. Mrs. Taylor wrote thatone of the trees died soon after the death of its poet owner. Theother lingered until a short time after the passing of Lanier. It wasin connection with the lines of the "Cantata, " written in theBaltimore home of the Southern poet, that the poet friends began along-continued series of letters which one loves to read on a winternight, when the winds are battling with the world outside, and thefire gleams redly in the open grate, and the lamp burns softly on thelibrary table, and all things invite to poetic dreams. 

November 12, 1880, Sidney Lanier wrote to his publisher a letter ofappreciation of the beautiful work done upon his volume, "The Boy'sKing Arthur. " It is dated at Number 435 North Calvert Street, thelatest Baltimore address that we have. 

 * * * * *

The distinction Sidney Lanier achieved as first flutist in theorchestra of the Peabody Institute led to an offer of a position inthe Thomas Orchestra, which the condition of his health did not permithim to accept. 

In the summer of 1880 his "Science of English Verse" was published. "Shakespeare and His Forerunners" resulted from his work with hisclasses in Elizabethan Poetry. "The English Novel" is the course oflectures on "Personality Illustrated by the Development of Fiction, "delivered at Johns Hopkins University in the winter of 1880-'81. As weread the printed work in its depth and strength, we do not realizethat his wife took the notes from his whispered dictation, and thathis auditors as they listened trembled lest, with each sentence, thatdeep musical voice should fall on eternal silence. All this while hehad been working at lectures and boys' books, when, as he said, "athousand songs are singing in my heart that will certainly kill me ifI do not utter them soon. " One of the thousand, "Sunrise, " he utteredwith a temperature of 104 degrees burning out his life, but it is fullof the rapture of the dawn. 

To the pines of North Carolina the poet was taken, in the hope thatthey might give him of their strength. But the wind-song through theirswaying branches lulled him to his last earthly sleep. On the 7th ofSeptember the narrow stream of his earthly existence broadened anddeepened and flowed triumphantly into the great ocean of Eternal Life. 

"THE POET OF THE PINES"

PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE

"Why are not your countrymen all poets, surrounded as they are bybeautiful things to inspire them?" I asked a young Swiss. 

"Because, " he replied, "my people are so accustomed to beauty that ithas no influence upon them. "

They had never known anything but beauty: there were no sharpcontrasts to clash, flint-like, and strike out sparks of divine fire. 

Had the beauty of old Charleston produced the same negative effect, Southern literature would have suffered a distinct loss--if that maybe regarded as lost which has never been possessed. For centuries theQueen of the Sea stood in a vision of splendor, the tumultuous wavesof the Atlantic dashing at her feet, eternal sunshine crowning herroyal brow. Her gardens were stately with oleanders and pomegranates, brilliant with jonquils and hyacinths, myrtle and gardenia. Roses ofthe olden time, Lancaster and York and the sweet pink cinnamon, breathed the fragrance of days long past. The hills that environed herwere snowy with Cherokee roses and odorous with jasmine andhoneysuckle. Her people dwelt in mansions in the corridors of whichancestral ghosts from Colonial days kept guard. 

In old Charleston that goes back in history almost a century beforethe Revolution and extends to the opening of the Sixties--the oldQueen City by the Sea, which now few are left to remember--was acircle of congenial creative souls just before the first shot at FortSumter heralded the destruction of the old-time life of the Colonialcity. William Gilmore Simms was the head and mentor of the brilliantlittle band, and the much younger men, Paul Hamilton Hayne and HenryTimrod, were the fiery souls that gave it the mental electricitynecessary to furnish the motive power. Through all the coming days oftrial and hardship, of aspiration and defeat, of watching from thetowers of high achievement or lying prone in the valley of failure, not one of that little circle ever lost the golden memory of thosemagic evenings in the home of the novelist and poet, the thinker anddreamer, William Gilmore Simms, the intellectual father of them all. 

At that time in the old city was another picturesque home that harkedback to Colonial days--stately, veranda-circled, surrounded by thatfascinating atmosphere of history and poetry known to those olddwellings alone of all the structures of the New World: the home ofthe Southern poet of Nature, Paul Hamilton Hayne. Its many-windowedfront looked cheerfully out upon a wide lawn radiant with flowers ofbygone fashion, loved by the poets of olden times, and bright with thegreenery that kept perpetual summer around the historic dwelling. Thisbeautiful pre-Revolutionary home was burned in the bombardment ofCharleston, and with it was destroyed the library that had been thepride of the poet's heart. 

In this old home the Poet of the Pines was born of a family thatlooked back to the opening days of the eighteenth century, whenCharleston was young, glowing with the beauty of her birth into theforests of the New World, wearing proudly the tiara of her loyalty toKing and Crown. Looking back along the road that stretched between thefirst Hayne, who helped to make of the old city a memory to becherished on the page of history and a picture on the canvas of thepresent to awaken admiration, and the young soul that looked withpoetic vision on the beginning of the new era, one sees a longsuccession of brilliant names and powerful figures. 

Paul Hayne was the great-grand-nephew of "the Martyr Hayne, " who hasgiven to Charleston her only authentic ghost-story, the scene of whichwas a brick dwelling which stood till 1896 at the corner of Atlanticand Meeting Streets. Colonel Isaac H. Hayne, a soldier of theRevolution, secured a parole, that he might be with his dying wife. While on parole he was ordered to fight against his country. Ratherthan be forced to the crime of treason, he broke his parole, wascaptured and condemned to death. From her beautiful, mahogany-panelleddrawing-room in that old home where the two streets cross, hissister-in-law, who had gone with his two little children to plead forhis life, watched as he passed on his way from the vault of the oldCustom House, used then as a prison, to the gallows. "Return, returnto us!" she called in an agony of grief. As he walked on he replied, "If I can I will. " It is said that his old negro mammy, to whom he wasalways "my chile, " ran out to the gate with the playthings she hadfondly cherished since the days when they were to him irresistibleattractions, crying, "Come back! Come back!" To both calls his heartresponded with such longing love that when the soul was released, theold home knew the step and the voice again. Ever afterward wheneventide fell, one standing at that window would hear a ghostly voicefrom the street below and steps upon the stairs and in the hall;footsteps of one coming--never going. 

Paul Hamilton Hayne's uncle, Colonel Arthur P. Hayne, fought underJackson at New Orleans, and was afterward United States Senator. Paulwas nephew of Robert Y. Hayne, whose career as a statesman and anorator won for him a fame that has not faded with the years. With thisuncle, Paul found a home in his orphaned childhood. 

Of his sailor father, Lieutenant Hayne, his shadowy memory takes formin a poem, one stanza of which gives us a view of the brave seaman'slife and death:

 He perished not in conflict nor in flame, No laurel garland rests upon his tomb; Yet in stern duty's path he met his doom; A life heroic, though unwed to fame. 

Though he pathetically mourns:

 Never in childhood have I blithely sprung To catch my father's voice, or climb his knee, still

 Love limned his wavering likeness on my soul, Till through slow growths it waxed a perfect whole Of clear conceptions, brightening heart and mind. 

That clear conception remained a lifelong treasure in the poet'sheart. 

Through a great ancestral corridor had Paul Hamilton Hayne descended, with soul enjewelled with all the gems of character and thought thathad sparkled in the long gallery through which he had travelled intothe earth-light. 

In the school of Mr. Coates, in Charleston, he was fitted to enterCharleston College, a plain, narrow-fronted structure with sixseverely classic columns supporting the façade. It stood on thefoundation of the "old brick barracks" held by the Colonial troopsthrough a six-weeks siege by twelve thousand British regulars underSir Henry Clinton. 

Hayne satisfied the hunger and thirst of his excursive and ardent mindby browsing in the Charleston Library on Broad and Church streets. Itmay be that sometimes, on his way to that friendly resort, he passedthe old house on Church Street which once sheltered GeneralWashington; a substantial three-storied building with ornamentalwoodwork which might cause its later use as a bakery to seem out ofharmony to any but _chefs_ with high ideals of their art. 

The Library of old Charleston was composed chiefly of English classicsand the literature of France in the olden time when Europe furnishedus with something more than anarchy, clothes, and bargain-countertitles. A sample of the Young America of that early day asked an oldgentleman, "Why are you always reading that old Montaigne?" The replywas, "Why, child, there is in this book all that a gentleman needs tothink about, " with the discreet addition, "Not a book for littlegirls, though. " If we find in our circle of poets a certainstateliness of style scarcely to be looked for in a somewhat newrepublic that might be expected to rush pell-mell after an idea andcapture it by the sudden impact of a lusty blow, after the manner ofthe minute-men catching a red-coat at Lexington; if we observe intheir writing old world expressions that woo us subtly, like the odorof lavender from a long-closed linen chest, we may attribute it to thefact that aristocratic old Charleston, though the first to assert herindependence of the political yoke, yet clung tenaciously to theliterary ideals of the Old World. 

On Meeting Street was Apprentices' Library Hall, where Glidden led hishearers through the intricacies of Egyptian Archæology. Here Agassizsometimes lectured on Zoölogy, and our youthful poet may have watchedanimals from the jungle climb up the blackboard at the touch of whatwould have been only a piece of chalk in any other hand, but became amagic creative force under the guidance of that wizard of science. Here he could have followed with Thackeray the varying fortunes andethic vagaries of the royal Georges. His poetic soul may have kindledwith the fire of Macready's "Hamlet" when, thinking that he was toofar down the slope of life to hark back to the days of the youthfulDane, he proved that he still had the glow of the olden time in hissoul by reading the part as only Macready could. In this old hall hemay have looked upon the paintings which inspired him to create hisown pictures, luminous with softly tinted word-colors. 

Meeting Street seems to have been named with reference to its uses, for here, too, was the old theatre, gone long ago, where FannieEllsler danced with a wavering, quivering, shimmering grace that drovehumming-birds to despair. In that theatre it may be that Paul Hayneheard Jenny Lind fill the night with a melody which would irradiatehis soul throughout life and reproduce itself in the music-tones ofhis gently cadenced verse. There the ill-fated Adrienne Lecouvreurlived and died again in her wondrous transmigration into the soul ofthe great Rachel. 

When a boy, Hayne's heart may have often thrilled to the voice of thescholarly Hugh Swinton Legare, as he made the heart of some classicold poem live in the music of his organ-tones. 

A sensitive soul surrounded by the influences of life in oldCharleston had many incentives to high and harmonious expression. 

That the Queen City of the Sea did not claim the privilege of thefickleness alleged to be incident to the feminine character isillustrated by the fact that she had but two postmasters in seventyyears, a circumstance worthy of note "in days like these, when ev'rygate is thronged with suitors, all the markets overflow, " and thedisbursing counter is crowded with claimants for the rewards due forcommendable activity in the campaign. One of those two was PeterBascot, an appointee of Washington. The other was Alfred Huger, "thelast of the Barons, " who had refused to take the office in the time ofBascot. 

In old Charleston the servants were the severest sticklers forpropriety, and the butlers of the old families rivalled each other inthe loftiness of their standards. Jack, the butler of "the last of theBarons, " was wide awake to the demands of his position, and when anold sea captain, an intimate friend of Mr. Huger, dining with thefamily, asked for rice when the fish was served he was first met witha chill silence. Thinking that he had not been heard, he repeated therequest. Jack bent and whispered to him. With a burst of laughter, thecaptain said, "Judge, you have a treasure. Jack has saved me fromdisgrace, from exposing my ignorance. He whispered, 'That would notdo, sir; _we_ never eats rice with fish. '"

Russell's book-shop on King Street was a favorite place of meeting forthe Club which recognized Simms as king by divine right. From thesepleasant gatherings grew the thought of giving to Charleston a mediumthrough which the productions of her thought might go out to theworld. In April, 1857, appeared _Russell's Magazine_, bearing thenames of Paul Hamilton Hayne and W. B. Carlisle as editors, though uponHayne devolved all the editorial work and much of the other writingfor the new publication. He had helped to keep alive the _SouthernLiterary Messenger_ after the death of Mr. White and the departure ofPoe for other fields of labor, had assisted Richards on the _SouthernLiterary Gazette_ and had been associate editor of Harvey's_Spectator_. For Charleston had long been ambitious to become theliterary centre of the South. The object of _Russell's Magazine_ wasto uphold the cause of literature in Charleston and in the South, andincidentally to stand by the friends of the young editor, who carriedhis partisanship of William Gilmore Simms so far as to permit thepublication of a severe criticism of Dana's "Household Book of Poetry"because it did not include any of the verse of the Circle's ruggedmentor. _Russell's_ had a brilliant and brief career, falling uponsilence in March, 1860; probably not much to the regret of Paul Hayne, who, while too conscientious to withhold his best effort from anyenterprise that claimed him, was too distinctly a poet not to feelsomewhat like Pegasus in pound when tied down to the editorial desk. 

This quiet life, in which the gentle soul of Hayne, with its delicatesensitiveness, poetic insight, and appreciation of all beauty, foundcongenial environment, soon suffered a rude interruption. AsCharleston was the first to throw off the yoke of Great Britain anddraw up a constitution which she thought adapted to independentgovernment, so did she first express the determination of SouthCarolina to break the bonds that held her turbulent political soul inuncongenial association. 

Hayne heard the twelve-hour cannonade of Fort Sumter's hundred andforty guns echoing over the sea, and saw the Stars and Bars flutterabove the walls of the old fort. He saw Generals Bee and Johnson comeback from Manassas, folded in the battle flag for which they had giventheir lives, to lie in state in the City Hall at the marble feet ofCalhoun, the great political leader whom they had followed to theinevitable end. General Lee was in the old town for a little while. Aman said to him, "It is difficult for so many men to abandon theirbusiness for the war. " The general replied, "Believe me, sir, thebusiness of this generation _is_ the war. " In the spirit of thisanswer Charleston met the crisis so suddenly come upon her. 

All the young poet's patriotic love and inherited martial instincturged him to the battle, but his frail physique withheld him from thefield, and he took service as an aide on the staff of GovernorPickens. 

At the close of the war, wrecked in health, with only the memory ofhis beautiful home and library left to him, with not even a piece ofthe family silver remaining from the "march to the sea, " Hayne went tothe pine-barrens of Georgia, eighteen miles from Augusta, to build anew home. 

When the first man and woman were sent out from their garden home, itwas not as a punishment for sin, but as an answer to their ambitiousquest for knowledge and their new-born longing for a wider life. Itwas not that the gate of Eden was closed upon them; it was that thegates of all the Edens of the world were opened for them and for thegenerations of their children. One of those gates opened upon the Edenof Copse Hill, where the poet of Nature found a home and all friendlysouls met a welcome that filled the pine-barrens with joy for them. OfCopse Hill the poet says:

 A little apology for a dwelling was perched on the top of a hill overlooking in several directions hundreds of leagues of pine-barrens there was as yet neither garden nor inclosure near it; and a wilder, more desolate and savage-looking home could hardly have been seen east of the prairies. 

What that "little apology of a dwelling" was to him is best picturedin his own words:

 On a steep hillside, to all airs that blow, Open, and open to the varying sky, Our cottage homestead, smiling tranquilly, Catches morn's earliest and eve's latest glow; Here, far from worldly strife and pompous show, The peaceful seasons glide serenely by, Fulfil their missions and as calmly die As waves on quiet shores when winds are low. Fields, lonely paths, the one small glimmering rill That twinkles like a wood-fay's mirthful eye, Under moist bay-leaves, clouds fantastical That float and change at the light breeze's will, -- To me, thus lapped in sylvan luxury, Are more than death of kings, or empires' fall. 

Here with "the bonny brown hand" in his that was "dearer than all dearthings of earth" Paul Hayne found a life that was filled with beauty, notwithstanding its moments of discouragement and pain. We like toremember that always with him, helping him bear the burdens of life, was that wifely hand of which the poet could say, "The hand whichpoints the path to heaven, yet makes a heaven of earth. "

On sunny days he paced to and fro under the pines, the many windows ofhis mind opened to the studies in light and shade and his soul attunedto the music of the drifting winds and the whispering trees. WhenNature was in darkened mood and gave him no invitation to the opencourt wherein she reigned, he walked up and down his library floor, engrossed with some beautiful thought which, in harmonious garb ofwords, would go forth and bless the world with its music. 

The study, of which he wrote:

 This is my world! within these narrow walls I own a princely service

was perhaps as remarkable a room as any in which student ever spenthis working hours, the walls being papered wholly with cuts frompapers and periodicals. The furniture was decorated in the same way, even to the writing desk, which was an old work bench left by somecarpenters. All had been done by the "bonny brown hands" that neverwearied in loving service. 

Many of his friends made pilgrimages to the little cottage on thehill, where they were cordially welcomed by the poet, who, happy inhis home with his wife and little son, lived among the flowers whichhe tended with his own hands, surrounded by the majesty of the pineswhose

 Passion and mystery murmur through the leaves, -- Passion and mystery touched by deathless pain, Whose monotone of long, low anguish grieves For something lost that shall not live again. 

Hither came Henry Timrod, doomed to failure, loss, and early death, but with soul eternally alive with the fires of genius. In the lastdays of his sad and broken life William Gilmore Simms came to renewold memories and recount the days when life in old Charleston wasiridescent as the waves that washed the feet of the Queen of the Sea. Congenial spirits they were who met in that charming little studywhere Paul Hayne walked "the fields of quiet Arcadies" and

 . .. Gleamings of the lost, heroic life Flashed through the gorgeous vistas of romance. 

Hayne had the subtle power of touching the friendliness in the heartsof those who were far away, as well as of the comrades who had walkedwith him along the road of life. Often letters came from friends inother lands, known to him only by that wireless intuitional telegraphywhereby kindred souls know each other, though hands have not met noreyes looked into eyes. Many might voice the thought expressed by one:"I may boast that Paul Hayne was my friend, though it was never mygood fortune to meet him. " Many a soul was upheld and strengthened byhim, as was that of a man who wrote that he had been saved fromsuicide by reading the "Lyric of Action. " His album held autographedphotographs of many writers, among them Charles Kingsley, WilliamBlack, and Wilkie Collins. He cherished an ivy vine sent him byBlackmore from Westminister Abbey. 

Hayne's many-windowed mind looked out upon all the phases of thebeauty of Nature. Her varied moods found in him a loving response. Heawaited her coming as the devotee at the temple gate waits for theapproach of his Divinity:

 I felt, through dim, awe-laden space, The coming of thy veiled face; And in the fragrant night's eclipse The kisses of thy deathless lips, Like strange star-pulses, throbbed through space!

Whether it is drear November and

 But winds foreboding fill the desolate night And die at dawning down wild woodland ways, or in May "couched in cool shadow" he hears

 The bee-throngs murmurous in the golden fern, The wood-doves veiled by depths of flickering green, for him the music of the spheres is in it all. Whether at midnight

 The moon, a ghost of her sweet self, * * * * *

 Creeps up the gray, funereal sky wearily, how wearily, or morning comes "with gracious breath of sunlight, " it is a part ofglorious Nature, his star-crowned Queen, his sun-clad goddess. 

To no other heart has the pine forest come so near unfolding itsimmemorial secret. That poet-mind was a wind-harp, and its quiveringstrings echoed to every message that came from the dim old woods onthe "soft whispers of the twilight breeze, " the flutterings of thenewly awakened morn or the crash of the storm. "The Dryad of the Pine"bent "earth-yearning branches" to give him loving greeting and receivehis quick response:

 Leaning on thee, I feel the subtlest thrill Stir thy dusk limbs, tho' all the heavens are still, And 'neath thy rings of rugged fretwork mark What seems a heart-throb muffled in the dark. 

"The imprisoned spirits of all winds that blow" echoed to his ear fromthe heart of the pine-cone fallen from "the wavering height of yonmonarchal pine. "

When a glorious pine, to him a living soul, falls under the axe hehears "the wail of Dryads in their last distress. "

In the greenery of his loved and loving pines, with memories happy, though touched to tender sadness by the sorrows that had come to theold-time group of friends, blessed with the companionship of the twoloving souls who were dearest to him of all the world, he sang themelodies of his heart till a cold hand swept across the strings of hiswonderful harp and chilled them to silence. 

In his last year of earth he was invited to deliver at VanderbiltUniversity a series of lectures on poetry and literature. Before theinvitation reached him he had "fallen into that perfect peace thatwaits for all. "

"THE FLAME-BORN POET"

HENRY TIMROD

A writer on Southern poets heads his article on one of the most giftedof our children of song, "Henry Timrod, the Unfortunate Singer. "

At first glance the title may seem appropriate. Viewed by the standardset up by the world, there was little of the wine of success inTimrod's cup of life. Bitter drafts of the waters of Marah were servedto him in the iron goblet of Fate. But he lived. Of how many of theso-called favorites of Fortune could that be said? Through the mistsof his twilit life, he caught glimpses of a sun-radiant morning ofwondrous glory. 

Thirty years after Timrod's death a Northern critic, writing of thenew birth of interest in Timrod's work, said: "Time is the idealeditor. " Surely, Editor Time's blue pencil has dealt kindly with ourflame-born poet. 

In Charleston, December 8, 1829, the "little blue-eyed boy" of hisfather's verse first opened his eyes upon a world that would give himall its beauty and much of its sadness, verifying the paternalprophecy:

 And thy full share of misery Must fall in life on thee!

In early childhood he was destined to lose the loving father to whomhis "shouts of joy" were the sweetest strain in life's harmony. 

Henry Timrod and Paul Hayne, within a month of the same age, wereseat-mates in school. Writing of him many years later, Hayne tells ofthe time that Timrod made the thrilling discovery that he was a poet;that being, perhaps, the most exciting epoch in any life. Coming intoschool one morning, he showed Paul his first attempt at verse-writing, which Hayne describes as "a ballad of stirring adventures andsanguinary catastrophe, " which he thought wonderful, the youthfulauthor, of course, sharing that conviction. Convictions are easy atthirteen, even when one has not the glamour of the sea and the romanceof old Charleston to prepare the soul for their riveting. 

Unfortunately, the teacher of that school thus honored by the presenceof two budding poets had not a mind attuned to poesy. Seeing the boyscommuning together in violation of the rules made and provided forschool discipline, he promptly and sharply recalled them to thesubjects wisely laid down in the curriculum. Notwithstanding thisearly discouragement, the youthful poet, abetted by his faithfulfellow song-bird, persevered in his erratic way, and Charleston hadthe honor of being the home of one who has been regarded as the mostbrilliant of Southern poets. 

When Henry Timrod finished his course of study in the chillingatmosphere in which his poetic ambition first essayed to put forth itstender leaflets, he entered Franklin College, in Athens, the nucleusof what is now the University of Georgia. A few years ago a visitorsaw his name in pencil on a wall of the old college. The "Toombs oak"still stood on the college grounds, and it may be that its whisperingleaves brought to the youthful poet messages of patriotism which theyhad garnered from the lips of the embryonic Georgia politician. Timrodspent only a year in the college, quitting his studies partly becausehis health failed, and partly because the family purse was not equalto his scholastic ambition. 

Returning to Charleston at a time when that city cherished theambition to become to the South what Boston was to the North, hehelped form the coterie of writers who followed the leadership of thatburly and sometimes burry old Mentor, William Gilmore Simms. The youngpoet seems not to have been among the docile members of the flock, forwhen Timrod's first volume of poems was published Hayne wrote toSimms, requesting him to write a notice of Timrod's work, not that he(Timrod) deserved it of Simms, but that he (Hayne) asked it of him. Itmay be that Timrod's recognition of the fact that he could writepoetry and that Simms could only try to write it led to a degree ofyouthful assumption which clashed with the dignity of the older man. The Nestor of Southern literature seems not to have cherishedanimosity, for he not only noticed Timrod favorably, but in afteryears, when the poet's misfortunes pressed most heavily upon him, madeevery possible exertion to give him practical and much neededassistance. 

Upon his return from college, Timrod, with some dim fancies concerninga forensic career circling around the remote edges of his imagination, entered the office of his friend, Judge Petigru. The "irrepressibleconflict" between Law and Poesy that has been waged through thegenerations broke forth anew, and Timrod made the opposite choice fromthat reached by Blackstone. Judging from the character of the rhythmiccomposition in which the great expounder of English law took leave ofthe Lyric Muse, his decision was a judicious one. Doubtless that ofour poet was equally discreet. When the Club used to gather inRussell's book-shop on King Street, Judge Petigru and his recalcitrantprotégé had many pleasant meetings, unmarred by differences as to therelative importance of the Rule in Shelley's Case and the flight ofShelley's Lark. 

Henry Timrod was thrust into the literary life of Charleston at a timewhen that life was most full of impelling force. It was a Charlestonfilled with memories quite remote from the poetry and imaginativeliterature which represented life to the youthful writers. It was aCharleston with an imposing background of history and oratory, forensic and legislative, against which the poetry and imagination ofthe new-comers glittered capriciously, like the glimmering offireflies against the background of night, with swift, uncertainvividness that suggested the early extinguishing of those quiveringlamps. But the heart of Charleston was kindled with a new ambition, and the new men brought promise of its fulfilment. 

Others have given us a view of the literary life of Charleston, of hersocial position, of her place in the long procession of history. ToTimrod it was left to give us martial Charleston, "girt without andgarrisoned at home, " looking "from roof and spire and dome across hertranquil bay. " With him, we see her while

 Calm as that second summer which precedes The first fall of the snow, In the broad sunlight of heroic deeds The City bides the foe. 

Through his eyes we look seaward to where

 Dark Sumter, like a battlemented cloud, Looms o'er the solemn deep. 

We behold the Queen City of the Sea standing majestically on thesands, the storm-clouds lowering darkly over her, the distant thundersof war threatening her, and the pale lightnings of the coming tempestflashing nearer, And down the dunes a thousand guns lie couched, Unseen, beside the flood-- Like tigers in some Orient jungle crouched That wait and watch for blood. 

We see her in those dark days before the plunge into the darkness hasbeen taken, as

 Meanwhile, through streets still echoing with trade, Walk grave and thoughtful men, Whose hands may one day wield the patriot's blade As lightly as the pen. 

Thus he gives us the picture of the beautiful city of his love as

 All untroubled in her faith, she waits The triumph or the tomb. 

Hayne said that of all who shared the suppers at the hospitable homeof Simms in Charleston none perhaps enjoyed them as vividly as Timrod. He chooses the word that well applies to Timrod's life in all itsvariations. He was vivid in all that he did. Being little of a talker, he was always a vivid listener, and when he spoke, his words leapedforth like a flame. 

Russell's book-shop, where the Club used to spend their afternoons inpleasant conversation and discourse of future work, was a place ofkeen interest to Timrod, and when their discussions resulted in theestablishment of _Russell's Magazine_ he was one of the mostenthusiastic contributors to the ambitious publication. 

While Charleston was not the place of what would be called Timrod'smost successful life, it was the scene in which he reached his highestexemplification of Browning's definition of poetry: "A presentment ofthe correspondence of the universe to the Deity, of the natural to thespiritual, and of the actual to the ideal. "

In the environments of Charleston he roamed with hisNature-worshipping mother, who taught him the beauties of clouds andtrees and streams and flowers, the glory of the changeful pageantry ofthe sky, the exquisite grace of the bird atilt on a swaying branch. Through the glowing picture which Nature unfolded before him he lookedinto the heart of the truth symbolized there and gave us messages fromwoods and sky and sea. While it may be said that a poet can make hisown environment, yet he is fortunate who finds his place where naturehas done so much to fit the outward scene to the inward longing. 

In Charleston he met "Katie, the Fair Saxon, " brown-eyed and with

 Entangled in her golden hair Some English sunshine, warmth and air. 

He straightway entered into the kingdom of Love, and that sunshinemade a radiance over the few years he had left to give to love andart. 

In the city of his home he answered his own "Cry to Arms" when the"festal guns" roared out their challenge. Had his physique been asstrong as his patriotism, his sword might have rivaled his pen inreflecting honor upon his beautiful city. Even then the seeds ofconsumption had developed, and he was discharged from field service. Still wishing to remain in the service of his country, he tried thework of war correspondent, reaching the front just after the battle ofShiloh. Overcome by the horrors of the retreat, he returned toCharleston, and was soon after appointed assistant editor of the_Daily South Carolinian_, published in Columbia. He removed to thecapital, where his prospects became bright enough to permit hismarriage to Kate Goodwin, the English girl to whom his Muse pays suchglowing tribute. 

In May, 1864, Simms was in Columbia, and on his return to "Woodlands"wrote to Hayne that Timrod was in better health and spirits than foryears, saying: "He has only to prepare a couple of dwarf essays, making a single column, and the pleasant public is satisfied. These hedoes so well that they have reason to be so. Briefly, our friend is ina fair way to fatten and be happy. "

This prosperity came to an end when the capital city fell a victim tothe fires of war, and Timrod returned to the city of his birth, wherefor a time the publication of the _South Carolinian_ was continued, hewriting editorials nominally for fifteen dollars a month, practicallyfor exercise in facile expression, as the small stipend promised wasnever paid. With the paper, he soon returned to Columbia, where aftera time he secured work in the office of Governor Orr, writing to Haynethat twice he copied papers from ten o'clock one morning till sunriseof the next. 

With the close of the session, his work ended, and in the spring hevisited Paul Hayne at Copse Hill. Hayne says: "He found me with myfamily established in a crazy wooden shanty, dignified as a cottage, near the track of the main Georgia railroad, about sixteen miles fromAugusta. " To Timrod, that "crazy wooden shanty, " set in immemorialpines and made radiant by the presence of his poet friend, was finerthan a palace. On that "windy, frowzy, barren hill, " as MauriceThompson called it, the two old friends spent together the spring daysof '67--such days as lingered in golden beauty in the memory of one ofthem and have come down to us in immortal verse. 

Again in August of that year he visited Copse Hill, hoping to findhealth among the pines. Of these last days Paul Hayne wrote yearslater:

 In the latter summer-tide of this same year I again persuaded him to visit me. Ah! how sacred now, how sad and sweet, are the memories of that rich, clear, prodigal August of '67!

 We would rest on the hillsides, in the swaying golden shadows, watching together the Titanic masses of snow-white clouds which floated slowly and vaguely through the sky, suggesting by their form, whiteness, and serene motion, despite the season, flotillas of icebergs upon Arctic seas. Like lazzaroni we basked in the quiet noons, sunk into the depths of reverie, or perhaps of yet more "charmed sleep. " Or we smoked, conversing lazily between the puffs, "Next to some pine whose antique roots just peeped From out the crumbling bases of the sand. "

 But the evenings, with their gorgeous sunsets, "rolling down like a chorus" and the "gray-eyed melancholy gloaming, " were the favorite hours of the day with him. 

One of those pines was especially his own, by his love and his choiceof its shade as a resting place. Of it Paul Hayne wrote when hisfriend had passed from its shadows for the last time:

 The same majestic pine is lifted high Against the twilight sky, The same low, melancholy music grieves Amid the topmost leaves, As when I watched and mused and dreamed with him Beneath those shadows dim. 

Such dreams we can dimly imagine sometimes when we stand beneath aglorious pine and try to translate its whisperings into words, andwatch "the last rays of sunset shimmering down, flashed like a royalcrown. " Sometimes we catch glimpses of such radiant visions when westand in the pine shadows and think, as Hayne did so often after thatbeautiful August, "Of one who comes no more. " Under that stately treehe

 Seemed to drink the sunset like strong wine Or, hushed in trance divine, Hailed the first shy and timorous glance from far Of evening's virgin star. 

In all his years after, Paul Hayne held in his heart the picture ofhis friend with head against that "mighty trunk" when

 The unquiet passion died from out his eyes, As lightning from stilled skies. 

So through that glowing August on Copse Hill the two Southern poetswalked and talked and built their shrine to the shining Olympicgoddess to whom their lives were dedicated. 

When summer had wrapped about her the purple and crimson glories ofher brilliant life and drifted into the tomb of past things, Timrodleft the friend of his heart alone with the "soft wind-angels" andmemories of "that quiet eve"

 When, deeply, thrillingly, He spake of lofty hopes which vanquish Death; And on his mortal breath A language of immortal meanings hung That fired his heart and tongue. 

[Illustration: HOUSE WHERE TIMROD LIVED DURING HIS LAST YEARS1108 Henderson Street, Columbia, S. C. ]

Impelled by circumstances to leave the pines before their inspiringbreath had given him of their life, he had little strength to renewthe battle for existence, and of the sacrifice of his possessions towhich he had been forced to resort he writes to Hayne: "We have eatentwo silver pitchers, one or two dozen silver forks, several sofas, innumerable chairs, and a huge bedstead. "

We should like to think of life as flowing on serenely in that prettycottage on Henderson Street, Columbia, its wide front veranda crownedwith a combed roof supported by a row of white columns. In its cooldimness we may in fancy see the nature-loving poet at eventide lookinginto the greenery of a friendly tree stretching great arms lovingly tothe shadowy porch. A taller tree stands sentinel at the gate, as if toguard the poet-soul from the world and close it around with the beautythat it loved. 

But life did not bring him any more of joy or success than he hadachieved in the long years of toil and sorrow and disappointment, brightened by the flame of his own genius throwing upon the dark wallof existence the pictures that imagination drew with magic hand uponhis sympathetic, ever responsive mind. On the sixth of October, afterthat month of iridescent beauty on Copse Hill, came the days of whichhe had written long before:

 As it purples in the zenith, As it brightens on the lawn, There's a hush of death about me, And a whisper, "He is gone!"

On Copse Hill, "Under the Pine, " his lifelong friend stood andsorrowfully questioned:

 O Tree! have not his poet-touch, his dreams So full of heavenly gleams, Wrought through the folded dulness of thy bark, And all thy nature dark Stirred to slow throbbings, and the fluttering fire Of faint, unknown desire?

Near the end of his last visit he had told Paul Hayne that he did notwish to live to be old--"an octogenarian, far less a centenarian, like old Parr. " He hoped that he might stay until he was fifty orfifty-five; "one hates the idea of a mummy, intellectual or physical. "If those coveted years had been added to his thirty-eight beautifulones, a brighter radiance might have crowned our literature. Or, wouldthe vision have faded away with youth?

On the seventh of October, 1867, Henry Timrod was laid to rest inTrinity Churchyard, Columbia, beside his little Willie, "the Christmasgift of God" that brought such divine light to the home only to leaveit in darkness when the gift was recalled before another Christmasmorn had gladdened the world. The poet's grave is marked by a shafterected by loving hands, but a memorial more fitting to one who soloved the beautiful is found in the waving grasses and the fragrantflowers that Nature spreads for her lover, and the winds of heaventhat breathe soft dirges over his lowly mound. 

In Washington Square, Charleston, stands a monument erected in 1901 bythe Timrod Memorial Association of South Carolina to the memory of themost vivid poet the South has given to the world. On the west panel isan inscription which expresses to us the mainspring of his character:

 Through clouds and through sunshine, in peace and in war, amid the stress of poverty and the storms of civil strife, his soul never faltered and his purpose never failed. To his poetic mission he was faithful to the end. In life and in death he was "not disobedient unto the Heavenly vision. "

On the panel facing the War Monument are three stanzas from his ownbeautiful Ode, sung at the decoration of Confederate graves inMagnolia Cemetery in 1867--such a little time before his passing thatit seems to have mournful, though unconscious, allusion to his ownearly fall in the heat of earth's battle:

 Sleep sweetly in your humble graves; Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause, Though yet no marble column craves The pilgrim here to pause. 

 In seeds of laurel in the earth The blossom of your fame is blown, And somewhere, waiting for its birth, The shaft is in the stone. 

 Stoop, angels, hither from the skies! There is no holier spot of ground Than where defeated valor lies, By mourning beauty crowned!

The shaft which the prophetic eye of Timrod saw "in the stone" was intime revealed, and years later that other shaft, awaiting the hour fordoing homage to the poet, found the light. To-day the patriot soldiersasleep in Magnolia, and their poet alike, have stately testimonials ofthe loving memory of their people. 

 [Note: The quotations from Henry Timrod found in this book are used by special permission of the B. F. Johnson Publishing Company, the authorized publishers of Timrod's Poems. ]

"FATHER ABBOT"

WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS

Woodlands, near Midway, the half-way stop between Charleston andAugusta, was a little kingdom of itself in the years of its greatnesswhen William Gilmore Simms was monarch of the fair domain. It was farfrom being a monastery, though its master was known as "Father Abbot. "The title had clung to him from the pseudonym under which he hadwritten a series of letters to a New York paper, upholding the viewthat Charlestonians should not go north on health-seeking vacationswhen they had better places nearer home, mentioning Sullivan's Islandwhere the hospitable Fort Moultrie officers "were good hands atdrawing a cork. " Of course, he meant a trigger. 

Rather was Woodlands a bit of enchanted forest cut from an oldblack-letter legend, in which one half expected to meet mediæval knightson foaming steeds--every-day folk ride jogging horses--threading theirway through the mysterious forest aisles in search of those romanticadventures which were necessary to give knights of that period anexcuse for existence. It chanced, however, that the only knights knownto Woodlands were the old-time friends of its master and the youthfulwriters who looked to "Father Abbot" for literary guidance. 

Having welcomed his guests with the warmth and urbanity which made hima most enjoyable comrade, Father Abbot would disperse them to seekentertainment after the manner agreeable to them. For the followers ofold Isaac Walton there was prime fishing in the Edisto River, that"sweet little river" that ripples melodiously through "Father Abbot's"pages. To hunters the forest offered thrilling occupation. For thepleasure rider smooth, white, sandy bridle-paths led in silvery curvesthrough forests of oak or pine to the most delightful of Nowheres. 

[Illustration: WOODLANDS, THE HOME OF WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMSBy courtesy of D. Appleton & Company]

Having put each guest into the line of his fancy, the master ofWoodlands would betake himself to his library to write his thirtypages, the daily stint he demanded from the loom of his imagination. Sometimes he had a companion in Paul Hayne who, not so much given tooutdoor life as many of the frequenters of Woodlands, liked to sit inthe library, weaving some poetic vision of his own or watching theflight of the tireless pen across the page. 

By and by the pen would drop upon the desk, its task finished for thatmorning, and the worker would look up with an air of surprise atbecoming aware of his companion and say: "Near dinner time, old boy. What do you say to a sherry and soda?" As there was only one thing tobe said to a sherry and soda, this was the signal for repairing to thedining room. By the time the sherry and soda sparkled hospitablewelcome the sportsmen returned and after doing justice to the geniusof the host in mixed drinks, they were seated around a generous table, most of the good things with which it was laden having come from thewaters and fields and vines of Woodlands. For if a world-wide war hadclosed all the harbors of earth Woodlands could still have offeredluxurious banquets to its guests. The host beguiled the time withanecdotes, of which he had an unfailing store that never lost a pointin his telling, or declaimed poetry, of which his retentive memoryheld an inexhaustible collection. 

The feast was followed by cigars, Simms having begun to smoke of lateyears to discourage a tendency to stoutness. Then all would join inthe diversions of the afternoon, which sometimes led to the "Edge ofthe Swamp, " a gruesome place which the poet of Woodlands hadcelebrated in his verse. Here

 Cypresses, Each a great, ghastly giant, eld and gray Stride o'er the dusk, dank tract. 

Around the sombre cypress trees coiled

 Fantastic vines That swing like monstrous serpents in the sun. 

There are living snakes in the swamp, yet more terrifying than theviny serpents that circle the cypresses, and

 The steel-jaw'd cayman from his grassy slope Slides silent to the slimy, green abode Which is his province. 

Now and then a bit of sunny, poetic life touches upon the gloomy place, for

 See! a butterfly That, travelling all the day, has counted climes Only by flowers . .. Lights on the monster's brow. 

An insecure perch for the radiant wanderer. The inhospitable sauriandives with embarrassing suddenness and dips the airy visitor into the"rank water. " The butterfly finds no charm in the gloomy place andflies away, which less ethereal wanderers might likewise be fain todo. Now and then the stillness that reigned over that home of malignthings was broken by the sound of a boat-horn on a lumber raftfloating down the Edisto. 

A song written by Simms chants the charms of a grapevine swing in thefestoons of which half a dozen guests could be seated at once, all ondifferent levels, book in one hand, leaving the other free to reach upand gather the clusters of grapes as they read. After supper they saton the portico, from which they looked through a leafy archway formedby the meeting of the branches of magnificent trees, and discussedliterature and metaphysics. 

The Christmas guests at Woodlands would be awakened in early morningby the sound of voice and banjo and, looking from their windows, couldsee the master distributing gifts to his seventy dusky servitors. Inthe evenings host and guests met in the spacious dining room whereSimms would brew a punch of unparalleled excellence, he being asfamous for the concoction of that form of gayety as was his friend, Jamison, down the river, for the evolution of the festive cocktail. 

Life flowed on pleasantly at Woodlands from October till May in thoseidyllic years before death had made a graveyard of the old home andfire had swept away the beautiful mansion. 

William Gilmore Simms first opened his eyes upon the world of men inCharleston, at a time when to be properly born in Charleston meant tobe born to the purple. William Gilmore, alas! did not inherit thatimperial color. He sprang from the good red earth, whence comes thevigor of humanity, and dwelt in the rugged atmosphere of toil whichthe Charleston eye could never penetrate. Politically, the City by theSea led the van in the hosts of Democracy; ethically, she remained farin the rear with the Divine Right of Kings and the Thirty-NineArticles of Aristocracy. 

So Charleston took little note of the boy whose father failed in tradeand fared forth to fight British and Indians under Old Hickory and towander in that far Southwest known as Mississippi to ascertain whetherthat remote frontier might offer a livelihood to the unfortunate. Thesmall William Gilmore, left in the care of his grandmother, wasapprenticed to a druggist and became a familiar figure on the streetsof Charleston as he came and went on his round of errands. Smallwonder that the Queen of the Sea, having swallowed his pills andpowders in those early days, had little taste for his literary outputin after years. 

In Charleston he not only learned the drug business, but took hisfirst course in the useful art of deception, reading and writingverses by the light of a candle concealed in a box, to hide its raysfrom his thrifty grandmother, who was adverse not only to the waste ofcandles but to the squandering of good sleep-time. 

Fortunately, she had no objection to furnishing him with entertainmentin off hours. For the material of much of his work in after life washe indebted to the war stories and ancient traditions that she toldher eager little grandson in those 'prentice days. But for her oldentales, the romances of Revolutionary South Carolina and the shiveryfascination of "Dismal Castle" might have been unknown to futurereaders. 

All the region around Charleston, so rich in historic memories, was aninspiration to the future romance writer. The aged trees festoonedwith heavy gray moss lent him visions of the past to reappear in manya volume. In his boat in Charleston harbor, and on the sands lookingout over the ocean, he gathered that collection of sea pictures whichadorned his prose and verse in the years to come. 

Over on Morris Island glowed the Charleston light, "the pale, star-like beacon, set by the guardian civilization on the edges of thegreat deep. " Lying on the shore he watched "the swarthy beauty, Night, enveloped in dark mantle, passing with all her train of starryservitors; even as some queenly mourner, followed by legions of gayand brilliant courtiers, glides slowly and mournfully in sad state andsolemnity on a duteous pilgrimage to some holy shrine. " He saw "overthe watery waste that sad, sweet, doubtful light, such as Spenserdescribes in the cathedral wood: 'A little glooming light, most like ashade. '" Drifting about in his boat he might pass Long Island, wherein 1776 the ocean herself fought for Charleston, interposing animpassable barrier to the advance of Sir Henry Clinton. 

While sea and shore and sky and earth were giving him of their best, his father came back with innumerable stories of adventure that wouldof themselves have set up a young romancer in business. Having talkedhis mind dry of experiences he returned to Mississippi to make anothercollection of thrilling tales, leaving William Gilmore, Jr. , with amental outlook upon life which the glories of Charleston could neverhave opened to him. 

Drugs, considered as a lifelong pursuit, did not appeal to the youthwho had been writing verses ever since he had arrived at the age ofeight years and now held a place in the poet's corner of a Charlestonpaper. He went into the law office of his friend, Charles E. Carroll, where his perusal of Blackstone was interspersed with reading poetryand writing Byronic verses. 

While thus variously engaged he received an invitation to visit hisfather in the wilds of Mississippi, a call to which his adventurousspirit gave willing response. Were there not Indians and other wildthings and the choicest assortment of the odds and ends of humanityout there, just waiting to be made useful as material for the pen ofan ambitious romancer? Through untrodden forests he rode in a silencebroken only by his horse's feet and the howl of wolves in thedistance. To all the new views of the world he kept open the windowsof his mind and they were transmitted to his readers in the years tocome. If he did not sleep with head pillowed upon the grave of one ofDe Soto's faithful followers, he at least thought he did, and thefancy served him as the theme of verse. And those varying types ofhuman nature and beast nature--do they not all appear again upon theprinted page?

When the end of his visit came his father pleaded:

"Do not think of Charleston. Whatever your talents they will there bepoured out like water on the sands. Charleston! I know it only as aplace of tombs. "

There came a time when he, too, knew it only as a place of tombs. Justnow he knew it as the home of the Only Girl in the world, so--what wasthe use? And then, Charleston is born into the blood of all her sons, whether she recognizes them or not. It is better to be a door-keeperin Charleston than to dwell in the most gorgeous tents of outsidebarbarians. So he who was born to the Queen City would hang on to theremotest hem of her trailing robe at the imminent risk of having hisbrains dashed out on the cobble-stones as she swept along her royalway, rather than sit comfortably upon velvet-cushioned thrones in aplace unknown to her regal presence. Simms came back to his nativecity with her "unsociable houses which rose behind walls, shutting inbeautiful gardens that it would have been a sacrilege to let thepublic enjoy. "

Soon after his return he was admitted to the bar and proved hisforensic prowess by earning $600 in the first year of his practice, adegree of success which enabled him to unite his destiny with that ofthe Only Girl, and begin housekeeping in Summerville, a suburbanvillage where living was cheap. For, though "Love gives itself and isnot bought, " there are other essentials of existence which are not solavish with themselves. 

The pen-fever had seized upon Simms with great virulence and hefollowed his fate. Soon after his return from Mississippi, GeneralCharles Coates Pinckney died and Simms wrote the memorial poem forhim. When LaFayette visited Charleston the pen of Simms was calledupon to do suitable honor to the great occasion. Such periodicalattacks naturally resulted in a chronic condition. Charleston was thescene of his brief, though not wholly unsuccessful, career as aplay-wright. In Charleston he edited the _Daily Gazette_ in theexciting tunes of Nullification, taking with all the strength that wasin him the unpopular side of the burning question. In the doorway ofthe Gazette office he stood defiantly as the procession of Nullifierscame down the street, evidently with hostile intentions toward thebelligerent editor. Seeing his courageous attitude the enthusiastsbecame good-natured and contented themselves with marching by, givingthree cheers for their cause. 

In that famous bookshop, Russell's, on King Street he was accustomedto meet in the afternoons with the youthful writers who looked uponhim as their natural born leader. In his "Wigwam, " as he called hisCharleston home, he welcomed his followers to evenings of brightnessthat were like stars in their memory through many after years ofdarkness. When he made his home at Woodlands he often came to the"Wigwam" to spend a night, calling his young disciples in for anevening of entertainment. His powerful voice would be heard ringingout in oratory and declamation so that neighbors blocks away would sayto Hayne or Timrod next morning, "I noticed that you had Simms withyou last night. " In 1860 the "Wigwam" was accidentally burned. 

At Woodlands, Simms awaited the coming of the war which he hadpredicted for a number of years. There he was when the battle ofFredericksburg filled him with triumphant joy, and he saw in fancy"Peace with her beautiful rainbow plucked from the bosom of the stormand spread from east to west, from north to south, over all the sunnyplains and snowy heights. " Unfortunately, his radiant fancy wrought inbaseless visions and the fires of the storm had burned away thatbrilliant rainbow before Peace came, as a mourning dove with shadowywings hovering over a Nation's grave. 

In May, 1864, Simms went to Columbia and was there when the town wasdestroyed by fire, the house in which he was staying being saved byhis presence therein. "You belong to the whole Union, " said anofficer, placing a guard around the dwelling to protect the sturdywriter who counted his friends all over the Nation. He said to friendswho sympathized with him over his losses, "Talk not to me about mylosses when the State is lost. "

Simms describes the streets of Columbia as "wide and greatly protectedby umbrageous trees set in regular order, which during the vernalseason confer upon the city one of its most beautiful features. "

The _Daily South Carolinian_ was sent to Charleston to save it fromdestruction. Its editors, Julian Selby and Henry Timrod, remained inthe office on the south side of Washington Street near Main, wherethey prepared and sent out a daily bulletin while bomb-shells fellaround them, until their labors were ended by the burning of thebuilding. 

From the ashes of the _Carolinian_ arose the _Phoenix_ and Simms wasits editor through its somewhat brief existence. Selby relates thatSimms offended General Hartwell and was summoned to trial at theGeneral's headquarters on the corner of Bull and Gervais Streets. Theresult of the trial was an invitation for the defendant to a sumptuousluncheon and a ride home in the General's carriage accompanied by abasket of champagne and other good things. The next day the Generaltold a friend that if Mr. Simms was a specimen of a South Carolinagentleman he would not again enter into a tilt with one. "He outtalkedme, out-drank me, and very clearly and politely showed me that Ilacked proper respect for the aged. "

The _Phoenix_ promptly sank back into its ashes and Simms returned toCharleston to a life of toil and struggle, not only for his ownlivelihood but to help others bear the burden of existence that wasvery heavy in Charleston immediately succeeding the war. Timrod wroteto him, "Somehow or other, you always magnetize me on to a littlestrength. "

In 1866 Simms visited Paul Hayne at Copse Hill, the shrine to whichmany footsteps were turned in the days when the poet and his littlefamily made life beautiful on that pine-clad summit. Hayne welcomedhis guest with joy and with sorrow--joy to behold again the face ofhis old friend; sorrow to see it lined with the pain and losses of theyears. 

Of all their old circle, Simms was the one whose wreck was the mostdisastrous. He had possessed so many of the things which make lifedesirable that his loss had left him as the storm leaves the ruinedship which, in the days of its magnificence, had ridden the waves withthe greatest pride. The fortnight in Copse Hill was the first relieffrom toil that had come to him since death and fire and defeat haddone their worst upon him. His biographer says, "He was as eager asever to pass the night in profitless, though pleasant, discussionswhen he should have been trying to regain his strength through sleep. "To a later visitor Paul Hayne showed a cherished pine log on whichwere inscribed the names of Simms and Timrod. 

Upon the return of Simms he wrote to his friend at Copse Hill that nolanguage could describe the suffering of Charleston. He said that thepicture of Irving, given him by Hayne, served a useful purpose inhelping to cover the bomb-shell holes still in his walls. "For thelast three years, " he writes, "I have written till two in the morning. Does not this look like suicide?" He mentions the fact that he shareswith his two sons his room in which he sleeps, works, writes andstudies, and is "cabin'd, cribbed, confined"--"I who have had suchample range before, with a dozen rooms and a house range for walking, in bad weather, of 134 feet. " The old days were very fair as seenthrough the heavy clouds that had gathered around the Master ofWoodlands. 

In 1870, June 11th, the bell of Saint Michael's tolled the messagethat Charleston's most distinguished son had passed away. His funeralwas in Saint Paul's. He was buried in Magnolia Cemetery, at thededication of which twenty-one years earlier he had read thededication poem. The stone above him bears simply the name, "Simms. "

On the Battery in Charleston a monument commemorates the broken lifeof one who gave of his best to the city of his home and his love. Verily might he say: I asked for bread and you gave me a stone. 

"UNCLE REMUS"

JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS

Seeing the name of Joel Chandler Harris, many people might have tostop and reflect a moment before recalling exactly what claim thatgentleman had upon the attention of the reader. "Uncle Remus" bringsbefore the mind at once a whole world of sunlight and fun, with not afew grains of wisdom planted here and there. The good old fun-lovingUncle has put many a rose and never a thorn into life's flower-garden. 

Being in Atlanta some years ago, when Mr. Harris was on the editorialstaff of the _Constitution_, I called up the office and asked if Imight speak to him. The gentleman who answered my call replied thatMr. Harris was not in, adding the information that if he were he wouldnot talk through the telephone. I asked what time I should be likelyto find him in the office. 

"He will be in this afternoon, but I fear that he would not see you ifyou were the angel Gabriel, " was the discouraging reply. 

"I am not the angel Gabriel, " I said. "Tell him that I am a lady--Mrs. Pickett--and that I should like very much to see him. "

"If you are a lady, and Mrs. Pickett, I fear that he will vanish andnever be found again. "

Notwithstanding the discouragements, I was permitted to call thatafternoon in the hope that the obdurate Uncle Remus might graciouslyconsent to see me. I found him in his office in the top story of thebuilding, an appropriate place to avoid being run to covert by thepublic, but inconvenient because of the embarrassment which mightresult from dropping out of the window if he should have themisfortune to be cornered. To say that I was received might bethrowing too much of a glamour over the situation. At least, I was notsummarily ejected, nor treated to a dissolving view of Uncle Remusdisappearing in the distance, so I considered myself fortunate. I toldhim that I had called up by telephone that morning to speak to him. 

"I never talk through the telephone, " he said. "I do not like to talkin a hole. I look into a man's eyes when I talk to him. "

When Uncle Remus was fairly run to earth and could not escape, he wasquite human in his attitude toward his caller; his only fault beingthat he was prone to talk of his visitor's work rather than his own, and a question that would seem to lead up to any personal revelationon his part would result in so strong an indication of a desire forflight that the conversation would be directed long distances awayfrom Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby. He was a born story-teller, andhad not the made author's owl-like propensity to perch upon highplaces and hoot his wisdom to the passing crowd. The expression"literary" as applied to him filled him with surprise. He calledhimself an "accidental author"; said he had never had an opportunityof acquiring style, and probably should not have taken advantage of itif he had. He was always as much astonished by his success as otherpeople are by their failures. 

 * * * * *

I met him once at a Confederate reunion in Atlanta, where I took mylittle grand-children, who had been brought up on Uncle Remus, to seehim. Having heard their beauty praised, he cautioned them not to thinktoo much of their looks, telling them that appearance was of littleconsequence. He gave each of them a coin, saying, "I don't believe ingiving money to boys; I believe in their working for it. "

"Well, " said little George, "haven't we earned it listening to UncleRemus?"

"If that is so, I'm afraid I haven't money enough to pay you what Iowe you. "

He was at ease and natural and like other people with children. Heinvited them to come to his farm and see the flowers and trees, telling them how his home received the name of "The Wren's Nest. " Ashe sat one morning on the veranda, he saw a wren building a nest onhis letter-box by the gate. When the postman came he went out andasked him to deliver the mail at the door, to avoid disturbing MadamWren's preparations for housekeeping. The postman was faithful, andthe Wren family had a prosperous and happy home. 

"You must never steal an egg from a nest, " he told the boys. Curvingone hand into an imitation nest holding an imaginary egg, he hoveredover it with the other hand, rubbing it gently, explaining to theboys, who watched him with absorbing interest, how the egg wouldchange to a beautiful fluff of feathers and music, and after a whilewould fly away among the trees and fill the woods with sweet sounds. "If you destroy the egg, you kill all that beauty and music, and therewill be no little bird to sit on the tree and sing to you. " The boysassured him that they had never taken an egg, nor even so much aslooked into the nest, because some birds will leave their nests if youjust look into them. 

At the reception given to Mrs. Jackson, Mrs. Stuart, Winnie Davis, andmyself, Mr. Harris was invited to stand in line, but declined. Itwould be difficult to imagine him as standing with a receiving party, shaking hands with the public. He was asked to speak, but that waseven less to be expected. The nearest he ever came to making a speechwas once when he sat upon the platform while his friend, Henry O. Grady, was addressing a large assemblage with all that eloquence forwhich he was noted. When he had finished, the call for "Harris" camewith great volume and persistency. He arose and said, "I am coming, "walked down from the platform and was lost in the crowd. 

[Illustration: JOEL CHANDLER HARRISAt Home]

Uncle Remus wrote his stories at "Snap Bean Farm, " in West End, asuburb of Atlanta. They filled his evenings with pleasure after theoffice grind was over. If no one but himself had ever seen them, hewould have been as happy in the work as he was when the public wasdelighting in the adventures of Br'er Wolf and Br'er B'ar. In thatcosy home the early evening was given to the children, and the laterhours to recording the tales which had amused them through thetwilight. 

A home it was, not only to him but to all who came in friendship tosee him in his quiet retreat. There was no room in it for those whomcuriosity brought there to see the man of letters or to do honor to alion. The lionizing of Uncle Remus was the one ambition impossible ofachievement in the literary world. For everything else that touchedupon the human, the vine-embowered, tree-shaded house on Gordon Streetopened hospitable doors. 

 * * * * *

Joel Chandler Harris was born in Eatonton, the county-seat of PutnamCounty, Georgia, and in his early days attended the Eatonton Academy, where he received all the academic training he ever had. His vitallyhelpful education was gained in the wider and deeper school of life, and few have been graduated therefrom with greater honors. 

At six years of age he had the good fortune to encounter "The Vicar ofWakefield, " than whom, it is safe to assert, no boy of such tenderyears had ever a better and more inspiring friend. This belovedclerical gentleman led young Joel into a charmed land of literature, in which he dwelt all his life. 

In the post-office at Eatonton was an old green sofa, very much theworse for wear, which yet offered a comfortable lounging place for theboy Joel, adapted to his kittenish taste for curling up in quietretreats. There he would spend hours in reading the newspapers thatcame to the office. In one of them he found an announcement of a newperiodical to be published by Colonel Turner on his plantation ninemiles from Eatonton. In connection with this announcement was anadvertisement for an office boy. It occurred to the future "UncleRemus, " then twelve years old, that this might open a way for him. Hewrote to Colonel Turner, and a few days later the Colonel drove up totown to take the unknown boy to his plantation. So beside the editorJoel Chandler Harris rode to the office of the _Countryman_ and to hishappy destiny. It has been said that but for the Turner plantationthere would have been no Uncle Remus, but what would have become ofthe possibilities of that good old darky if the little Joel had notenjoyed the acquaintance of a good-natured post-master who permittedhim to occupy the old green sofa and browse among the second-classmail of the Eatonton community?

Surely there was never a better school for the development of abudding author than the office of the _Countryman_, and thewell-selected library in the home of its editor, and the greatwildwood that environed the plantation. 

Best of all, there were the "quarters, " where "Uncle Remus" conducteda whole university of history and zoölogy and philosophy and ethicsand laughter and tears. Down in the cabins at night the printer's boywould sit and drink in such stores of wit and wisdom as could not lieunexpressed in his facile mind, and the world is the richer for everymoment he spent in that primitive, child-mind community, with itsancient traditions that made it one with the beginning of time. 

At times he joined a 'coon hunt, and with a gang of boys and a pack ofhounds chased the elusive little animal through the night, returninghome triumphant in the dawn. He hunted rabbits in the woods, and, maybe, became acquainted with the character of the original Br'erRabbit from his descendants in the old plantation forest. 

From the window near which his type-case stood he saw the squirrelsscampering over trees and roofs, heard the birds singing in thebranches, caught dissolving views of Br'er Fox flitting across thegarden path, and breathed in beauty and romance to be exhaled laterfor the enchantment of a world of readers. 

In Colonel Hunter's library, selected with scholarly taste, he foundthe great old English masters who had the good fortune to be born intothe language while it was yet "a well of English undefiled. " In thatwell he became saturated with a pure, direct, simple diction whichlater contact with the tendencies of his era and the ephemeralproduction of the daily press was not able to change. 

 * * * * *

It was in the office of the _Countryman_ that Joel Chandler Harrismade his first venture into the world of print, shyly, as became onewho would afterward be known as the most modest literary man inAmerica. When Colonel Hunter found out the authorship of the brightparagraphs that slipped into his paper now and then with increasingfrequency, he captured the elusive young genius and set it to work asa regular contributor. In this periodical the young writer's firstpoem appeared: a mournful lay of love and death, as a first poemusually is, however cheerful a philosopher its author may ultimatelybecome. 

This idyllic life soon ceased. When the tide of war rolled overcentral Georgia, it swept many lives out of their accustomed paths anddestroyed many a support around which budding aspirations had woundtheir tendrils. The "printer's boy" sat upon a fence on the old Turnerplantation, watching Slocum's Corps march by, and amiably receivingthe good-natured gibes and jests of the soldiers, who apparently foundsomething irresistibly mirth-provoking in the quaint little figure bythe wayside. Sherman was marching to the sea, and the Georgia boy wastaking his first view of the progress of war. 

Among the many enterprises trampled to earth by those ruthless feetwas the _Countryman_, which survived the desolating raid but a shorttime. It was years before the young journalist knew another home. Forsome months he set type on the Macon _Daily Telegraph_, going fromthere to New Orleans as private secretary of the editor of the_Crescent Monthly_. When the _Crescent_ waned and disappeared from thejournalistic sky, he returned to Georgia and became editor, compositor, pressman, mailing clerk, and entire force on the Forsyth_Advertiser_. 

A pungent editorial upon the abuses of the State government, whichappeared in the _Advertiser_, attracted the attention of Colonel W. T. Thompson and led him to offer Mr. Harris a place on the staff of theSavannah _Daily News_. Happily, there lived in Savannah the charmingyoung lady who was to be the loving centre of the pleasant home of"Uncle Remus. " The marriage took place in 1873, and Mr. Harrisremained with the _News_ until '76, when, to escape yellow fever, heremoved to Atlanta. He was soon after placed on the editorial staff ofthe _Constitution_, and in its columns Uncle Remus was firstintroduced to the world. 

 * * * * *

In his home in West End, "Snap-Bean Farm, " he lived in calm contentwith his harmonious family and his intimate friends, Shakespeare andhis associates, and those yet older companions who have come down tous from ancient Biblical times. Some of his intimates were chosen fromlater writers. Among poets, he told me that Tom Moore was his mostcherished companion, the one to whom he fled for consolation inmoments of life's insufficiencies. 

Mr. Harris had no objection to talking in sociable manner of otherwriters, but if his visitor did not wish to see him close up like aclam and vanish to the seclusion of an upper room it was better not tomention Uncle Remus. Neither had he any fancy for the kind of talkthat prevails at "pink teas" and high functions of society in general. Anything that would be appropriate to the topics introduced in suchplaces would never occur to him, and the vapory nothingness was sofilled with mysterious terrors for him that he fled before them inunspeakable alarm. 

[Illustration: SNAP-BEAN FARM, ATLANTA, GEORGIAThe residence of Joel Chandler Harris]

"Snap-Bean Farm" was all the world that he cared for, and here helived and wove his enchantments, not in his well-appointed study, as athoroughly balanced mind would have done, but all over the house, justwhere he happened to be, preferably beside the fire after the littleones had gone to bed, leaving memories of their youthful brightness tomake yet more glowing the flames, and waves of their warmth of soul tolinger in enchantment about the hearth. 

It was a sunny, happy day when I visited "Snap-Bean Farm. " Aviolet-bordered walk led me to the pretty frame cottage, built upon aterrace quite a distance from the street--a shady, woodsy, leafy, flowery, fragrant distance--a distance that suggested infinite beautyand melody, infinite fascination. When the home was established there, the rumbling and clang of the trolley never broke the stillness of thepeaceful spot. A horse-car crept slowly and softly to a near-byterminus and stopped, as if, having reached Uncle Remus and his woodsyhome, there could be nothing beyond worth the effort. There were widereaches of pine-woods, holding illimitable possibilities of romance, of legend, of wildwood and wild-folk tradition. It was a country homein the beginning, and it remained a country home, regardless of theoutstretching of the city's influences. Joel Chandler Harris had acountry soul, and if he had been set down in the heart of a metropolishis home would have stretched out into mystic distances of greeneryand surrounded itself with a limitless reach of cool, vibrant, amberatmosphere, and looked out upon a colorful and fragrant wilderness offlowers, and he would have dwelt in the solitudes that God made. 

As I walked, a fragrance wrapped me around as with a veil of radiantmist. It came straight from the heart of his many-varied roses thatclaimed much of his time and care. The shadow of two great cedar treesreached protecting arms after me as I went up to the steps of thecottage hidden away in a green and purple and golden and pink tangleof bloom and sweet odors; ivy and wistaria and jasmine andhoneysuckle. Beside the steps grew some of his special pet roses. Their glowing and fragrant presence sometimes afforded him a congenialtopic of discourse when a guest chanced to approach too closely thesubject of the literary work of the host, if one may use the term inconnection with a writer who so constantly disclaimed any approach toliterature, and so persistently declined to take himself seriously. 

In the front yard was a swing that appealed to me reminiscently withthe force of the olden days when I had a swing of my very own. As I"let the old cat die, " we talked of James Whitcomb Riley's poem, "Waitin' fer the Cat to Die, " and Mr. Harris told me of the visitRiley had made to him not long before. Two men with such cheerfulviews of life could not but be congenial, and it was apparent that thevisit had brought joy to them both. 

I did not see the three dogs and seven cats--mystic numbers!--but feltconfident that my genial host could not have been satisfied with anyless. 

The charmed circle in which Br'er Fox and Br'er Rabbit shone as socialstars is yet with us, and we shall not let it go out from our lives. The mystic childhood of a dim, mysterious race is brought to usthrough these beings that have come to us from the olden time "whenanimals talked like people. "

"The Sign of the Wren's Nest" is peopled by these legendary forms withtheir never-dying souls. They lurk in every corner and peer out fromevery crevice. They hide behind the trees, and sometimes in themoonlight we see them looking out at us as we walk along the path. They crouch among interlacing vines and look at us through the lacyscreen with eyes in which slumber the traditions of the ages. 

We look for the Magician who, with a wave of the hand, made all theseto live and move before us. We know he must be there. We "cannot makehim dead"; but he can make himself and us alive in the life of thepast. A little door, with one shutter of Memory and one of Faith, opens before us, and he comes to dwell again in the world which hecreated in "The Sign of the Wren's Nest. "

"THE POET OF THE FLAG"

FRANCIS SCOTT KEY

Away back in the years, Terra Rubra, the colonial home of John RossKey, spread out broad acres under the sky of Maryland, in the northernpart of Frederick County. Girt by noble trees, the old mansion, builtof brick that came from England in the days when the New World yetremained in ignorance of the wealth of her natural and industrialresources, stood in the middle of the spacious lawn which afforded abeautiful playground for little Francis Scott Key and his youngsister, who lived here the ideal home life of love and happiness. Among the flowers of the terraced garden they learned the firstlessons of beauty and sweetness and the triumph of growth andblossoming. At a short distance was a dense line of forest, luring theyoung feet into tangled wildernesses of greenery and the colorfulbeauty of wild flowers in summer, and lifting great gray arms insolemn majesty against the dun skies of winter. Through it flowed therippling silver of Pipe Creek on its sparkling way to the sea. At thefoot of a grassy slope a spring offered draughts of the clear purewater which is said to be the only drink for one who would write epicsor live an epic. Beyond a wide expanse of wind-blown grass the youngeyes saw the variant gray and purple tints of the Catoctin Mountains, showing mystic changes in the floodtide of day or losing themselves inthe crimson and gold sea of sunset. 

In this stately, old, many-verandaed home, looking across nearly threethousand acres of fertile land as if with a proud sense of lordship, the wide-browed, poet-faced boy with the beautiful dreamy eyes and theline of genius between his delicately arched brows passed the goldenyears of his childhood. 

It is said that President Washington once went to Terra Rubra to visithis old friend. General John Ross Key, of Revolutionary fame. It maybe that the venerated hand of the "Father of His Country"--the handthat had so resolutely put away all selfish ambitions and had reachedout only for good things to bestow upon his people and his nation--waslaid in blessing upon the bright young head of little Francis ScottKey, helping to plant in the youthful heart the seed that afterwardblossomed into the thought which he expressed many years later:

 I have said that patriotism is the preserving virtue of Republics. Let this virtue wither and selfish ambition assume its place as the motive for action, and the Republic is lost. 

 Here, my countrymen, is the sole ground of danger. 

Seven miles from Annapolis, where the Severn River flows into RoundBay, stands Belvoir, a spacious manor-house with sixteen-inch walls, in which are great windows reaching down to the polished oak floor. Inthis home of Francis Key, his grandfather, the young Francis Scott Keyspent a part of the time of his tutelage, preparing for entrance intoSt. John's College, the stately buildings of which were erected by acertain early Key, who had come to our shore to help unlock the gatesof liberty for the world. 

The old college, with its historic campus, fits well into theatmosphere of Annapolis, standing proudly in her eighteenth-centurydignity, watching the rest of the world scramble in a helter-skelterrush for modern trivialities. Its old walls are in pleasing harmonywith the colonial mansions poised on little hillocks, from which theylook down on you with benevolent condescension and invite you to climbthe long flights of steps that lead to their very hearts, grand buthospitable, which you do in a glow of high-pitched ambition, as if youwere scaling an arduous but fascinating intellectual height. Havingreached the summit, you stop an instant on the landing, partly forbreathing purposes, but more especially to exult a moment on theheight of triumph. 

The four-storied college at the end of Prince George Street--regalAnnapolis would not be content with a street of less than royaldignity--looks down with pleased approval on its wide expanse of greencampus, for that stretch of ground has a history that makes it worthyof the noble building which it supports. It spread its greenery to theview of those window-eyes decades before the Revolution, and when thatfiery torch flamed upon the country's record the college greenfurnished a camping place for the freedom-loving Frenchmen who cameover the sea to help set our stars permanently into the blue of ournational sky. In 1812 American troops pitched their tents on thefamous campus, and under the waving green of its summer grasses andthe white canopy of its winter snows men who died for their country'shonor lie in their long sleep. 

On the grounds east of the college buildings stands the Tulip Treewhich sheltered the first settlers of Annapolis in 1649, and may havehidden away in the memory-cells of its stanch old heart reminiscencesof a time when a bluff old Latin sailor, with more ambition in hissoul than geography in his head, unwittingly blundered onto a NewWorld. Whatever may be its recollections, it has sturdily weatheredthe storms of centuries, surviving the tempests hurled against it byNature and the poetry launched upon it by Man. It has been known bythe name of the "Treaty Tree, " from a tradition that in the shade ofits branches the treaty with the Susquehannoghs was signed in 1652. In1825 General La Fayette was entertained under its spreading boughs, and it has since extended hospitable arms over many a patrioticcelebration. 

In "the antiente citie" Francis Scott Key found many things whichappealed to his patriotic soul. On the State House hill was the oldcannon brought to Maryland by Lord Baltimore's colony and rescued froma protracted bath in St. Mary's River to take its place among the manyrelics of history which make Annapolis the repository of old storiestinged by time and fancy with a mystic coloring of superstition. Helived in the old "Carvel House, " erected by Dr. Upton Scott onShipwright Street. Not far away was the "Peggy Stewart" dwelling, overlooking the harbor where the owner of the unfortunate _PeggyStewart_, named for the mistress of the mansion, was forced by therevolutionary citizens of Annapolis, perhaps incited by anover-zealous enthusiasm but with good intentions, to burn his ship inpenalty for having paid the tax on its cargo of tea. 

If Francis Key had a taste for the supernatural, there was ampleopportunity for its gratification in this haven of tradition. He mayhave seen the headless man who was accustomed to walk down GreenStreet to Market Space, with what intention was never divulged. Everyold house had its ghost, handed down through the generations, asnecessary a piece of furniture as the tester-bed or the sideboard. Perhaps not all of these mysterious visitants were as quiet as theshadowy lady of the Brice house, who would glide softly in at the hourof gloaming and, with her head on her hand, lean against the mantel, look sadly into the faces of the occupants of the room, and vanishwithout a sound--of course, it is undeniable that Annapolis would haveonly well-bred ghosts. 

After graduation from St. John's, in that famous class known as the"Tenth Legion" because of its brilliancy, Francis Scott Key studiedlaw in the office of his uncle, Philip Barton Key, in Annapolis, wherehis special chum was Roger Brooke Taney, who persuaded him to beginthe practice of his profession in Frederick City. In 1801 the youthfuladvocate opened his law office in the town from which theRevolutionary Key had marched away to Boston to join ColonelWashington's troops. Francis Key invited his friend to visit TerraRubra with him, and Mr. Taney found the old plantation home sofascinating that many visits followed. Soon there was a wedding atbeautiful Terra Rubra, when pretty, graceful Ann Key became the wifeof the future Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. 

In 1802, at Annapolis, in the mahogany wainscoted drawing-room of theold Lloyd house, built in 1772, Key was married to Mary Tayloe Lloyd. 

After a few years of practice in Frederick City, Francis Scott Keyremoved to Georgetown, now West Washington. Here at the foot of whatis known as M Street, but was Bridge Street in the good old daysbefore Georgetown had given up her picturesque street names for theinsignificant numbers and letters of Washington, half a block from theold Aqueduct Bridge, stands a two-storied, gable-roofed, dormer-windowed house, bearing in black letters the inscription, "TheKey Mansion. " Below is the announcement that it is open to the publicfrom 9 A. M. To 5 P. M. Daily, excepting Sunday. On a placard betweentwo front doors are printed the words, "Home of Francis Scott Key, author of The Star-Spangled Banner, " the patriotic color-scheme beingshown in the white placard and blue and red lettering. 

For more than a century the house has stood there, and the circlingyears have sent it into remote antiquity of appearance, the storms oftime having so swept it with their winds and beaten it with theirrains and bombarded it with snow and sleet and hail as to makedifficult the realization that it was once the home of bounding, scintillant life, and that its walls in the years gone by were radiantwith the visions and hopes and ambitions of a happy group of youthfulsouls. It stands at the foot of what is now a street of shops, and thewearing away of the decades have taken from it all suggestion of homesurroundings. 

Through a door at the left I passed into a wide hall, on the walls ofwhich are some patriotic inscriptions. There is one, a quotation fromPresident McKinley, that conveys an admonition the disregard of whichleads to consequences we often have occasion to deplore: "Thevigilance of the Citizen is the safety of the Republic. "

At the right of the hall are two rooms, locked now, but serving asparlors when the sad old house was a bright, beautiful home. A steepColonial stairway leads to a hall on the second floor, where againthere are inscriptions on the walls to remind the visitor of hisduties as a citizen of the nation over which the Star-Spangled Banneryet waves. 

On the second floor the first sign of life appeared. A door stoodslightly ajar, and in answer to a touch a tall woman with a face ofunderlying tragedy and a solitary aspect that fitted well with theloneliness of the old house appeared and courteously invited me toenter. She is the care-taker of the mansion, bears an aristocratic oldVirginia name, and is wrapped around with that air of gloomilygarnered memories characteristic of women who were in the heart of thecrucial period of our history. I am not surprised when she tells methat she watched the battle of Fredericksburg from her window as shelay ill in her room, and that she witnessed the burning of Richmondafter the surrender. I recognize the fact that life has been a harderbattle, since all her own have passed over the line and left her tothe lonely conflict, than was ever a contest in those days of war. 

She tells me that the Key relics have all been taken to the Betsy Rosshouse in Philadelphia. What they were she does not know, for they wereall packed in boxes when she first came to the Key mansion. The onlyobject left from the possessions of the man who made that old dwellinga shrine upon which Americans of to-day ought to place offerings ofpatriotism is an old frame in a small room at the end of the hall. Onthe bottom of the frame is printed in large black letters the name, Francis Scott Key. Some jagged fragments within the frame indicatethat something, either picture or flag, has been hastily andcarelessly removed. 

Finding no relic of the man whose life once glorified the now dark andgloomy house, I hold with the greater tenacity the mental picture Ihave of the old flag I used to see in the National Museum. Faded, discolored, and tattered, it is yet the most glorious piece of buntingour country owns to-day--the flag that floated over Fort McHenrythrough the fiery storm of that night of anxious vigil in which ournational anthem was born. 

In this old house on Bridge Street Francis Scott Key lived when he wasAttorney for the District of Columbia, and in a small brick officeadjoining his home he did the work that placed him in the front rankof the American bar. 

St. John's Episcopal Church, not far away, where he was vestryman, hasa tablet to the memory of Reverend Johannes I. Sayrs, a former rector, on which is an inscription by Key. In Christ Church is a memorialwindow dedicated to Francis Scott Key. 

"It is a pity that the old house is to be sold, " said a resident ofGeorgetown. 

"Is it to be sold?" I asked. For a long time this fate has beenhovering over the old Key home, but I had hoped, even when there wasno hope. 

"Yes, " was the reply. "The ground is wanted for business buildings. "

"A pity?" I said. "It is more than a pity; it is a national shame. " Isthere not patriotism enough in our land to keep that shrine sacred tohistoric memory?

It was from this house that Key set out September 4, 1814, tonegotiate for the release of Dr. Beanes, one of his friends, who, after having most kindly cared for British soldiers when wounded andhelpless, was arrested and taken to the British fleet as a prisoner inrevenge for his having sent away from his door-yard some intoxicatedEnglish soldiers who were creating disorder and confusion. Key, incompany with Colonel John S. Skinner, United States Agent for Paroleof Prisoners, arrived at Fort McHenry, on Whetstone Point, in time towitness the effort of General Ross to make good his boast that he "didnot care if it rained militia, he would take Baltimore and make it hiswinter headquarters. "

They were on the ship _Surprise_, and, upon making their plea fortheir captive friend, were told that he had inflicted atrociousinjuries upon British soldiers, and the Admiral had resolved to hanghim from the yard-arm. The eloquence of Mr. Key, supplemented byletters written by British officers to Dr. Beanes, thanking him forthe many kindnesses which they had received from him, finally wonAdmiral Cochrane from his vengeful decision. After the release of thecaptive the Americans were not permitted to return to land, lest theymight carry information detrimental to the British cause. Thus AdmiralCochrane, who enjoyed well-merited distinction for doing the wrongthing, placed his unwilling guests in their own boat, the _Minden_, asnear the scene of action as possible, with due regard for theirphysical safety, in order that they might suffer the mortification ofseeing their flag go down. Two hours had been assigned, in the Britishmind, for the accomplishment of that beneficent result, after which"terms for Baltimore" might be considered. 

For three days Key and his companions watched the landing of ninethousand soldiers and marines at North Point, preparatory to theattack on the fort, which was defended by a small force of rawmilitia, partly composed of the men who had been so easily defeated atBladensburg. They were under command of Colonel George Armistead, whofaced a court-martial if he should not win, for the Washingtonadministration had peremptorily ordered him to surrender the fort. 

Through the long hours of the 13th Key paced the deck of his boat, watching the battle with straining eyes and a heart that thrilled andleaped and sank with every thunder of gun and flash of shell. The daywas calm and still, with no wind to lift the flag that drooped aroundits staff over Fort McHenry. At eventide a breeze unfurled its folds, and as it floated out a shell struck it and tore out one of itsfifteen stars. 

Night fell. His companions went below to seek rest in such unquietslumbers as might visit them, but there was no sleep in the heart ofKey. Not until the mighty question which filled the night sky withthunder and flame and surged in whelming billows through his own soulfound its answer in the court of Eternal Destiny could rest come tothe man who watched through the long hours of darkness, waiting fordawn to bring triumph or despair. 

Silence came--the silence that meant victory and defeat. Whose was thevictory? The night gave no answer, and the lonely man still paced upand down the deck of the _Minden_. Then day dawned in a glory in theeast, and a glory in the heart of the anxious watcher. In that firstthrill of joy and triumph our majestic anthem was formed. 

Key took from his pocket an old letter, and on its blank pagepencilled the opening lines of the song. In the boat which took himback to Baltimore he finished the poem, and in his hotel made a copyfor the press. The next day the lines were put into type by SamuelSands, an apprentice in the office of the _Baltimore American_, whohad been deserted in the general rush to see the battle as being tooyoung to be trusted at the front, and that evening they were sung inthe Holliday Street Theatre. The next day the air was heard upon thestreets of Baltimore from every boy who had been gifted with a voiceor a whistle, and "The Star-Spangled Banner" was soon waving over themusical domain as victoriously as it had floated from the ramparts ofFort McHenry. 

[Illustration: FRANCIS SCOTT KEYAt the age of 35]

It is in the great moments of life that a man gives himself to theworld, and in the giving parts from nothing of himself, for in thegift he but expands his own nature and keeps himself in greatermeasure than before. May not he to whom our great anthem came throughthe battle-storm smile pityingly upon the futile efforts of to-day tosupply a national song that shall eclipse the noble lines born ofpatriotism and battle ardor and christened in flame?

Thus it was that Francis Scott Key reached the high tide of lifebefore the defences of the Monumental City, and to Baltimore hereturned when that tide was ebbing away, and in view of the old fort, under the battlements of which he had fallen to unfathomable depths ofsuffering and risen to immeasurable heights of triumphant joy, hecrossed the bar into the higher tide beyond. On a beautiful hillBaltimore has erected a stately monument to the memory of the man wholinked her name with the majestic anthem which gives fitting voice toour national hopes. 

Away on the other edge of our continent, in Golden Gate Park, SanFrancisco, another noble shaft tells the world that "the Star-SpangledBanner yet waves" over all our land and knows no distinctions ofNorth, South, East, or West. 

In Olivet Cemetery, in the old historic city of Frederick, Maryland, is the grave of Francis Scott Key. Over it stands a marble columnsupporting a statue of Key, his poet face illumined by the art of thesculptor, his arms outstretched, his left hand bearing a scrollinscribed with the lines of "The Star-Spangled Banner, " while on thepedestal sits Liberty, holding the flag for which those immortal lineswere written. 

Thus, perpetuated in granite, the noble patriot stands, looking overthe town to which he long ago gave this message:

 But if ever, forgetful of her past and present glory, she shall cease to be "the land of the free and the home of the brave, " and become the purchased possession of a company of stock-jobbers and speculators; if her people are to become the vassals of a great moneyed corporation, and to bow down to her pensioned and privileged nobility; if the patriots who shall dare to arraign her corruptions and denounce her usurpations are to be sacrificed upon her gilded altar, --such a country may furnish venal orators and presses, but the soul of national poetry will be gone. That muse will "never bow the knee in mammon's fane. " No, the patriots of such a land must hide their shame in her deepest forests, and her bards must hang their harps upon the willows. Such a people, thus corrupted and degraded, "Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust from whence they sprung, Unwept, unhonored, and unsung. "

"THE POET-PRIEST"

FATHER RYAN

My first meeting with Father Ryan was at the Atlantic Hotel inNorfolk, in which town he had spent the first seven years of his life, his parents having emigrated from Limerick and found a home there ashort time before his birth. He has been claimed by a number ofcities, and the dates of his nativity, as assigned by biographers, range from 1834 to 1840, 1839 being the one best established. He toldme that his early memories of his Norfolk home were especiallyassociated with figs and oysters, the oysters there being the largestand finest he had ever seen, they and the figs seeming to "rhyme withhis appetite. " Then he told me an oyster story:

"A negro boatman was rowing some people down the river, among them twoprominent politicians who were discussing an absent one. 'He has nomore backbone than an oyster, ' said one. The boatman laughed, andsaid, 'Skuse me, marsers, but if you-all gemmen don' know no mo' 'boutpoliticians dan you does 'bout oyschers you don' know much. No mo'backbone dan a oyscher! Why, oyschers has as much backbone as folkshas, en ef you cuts into 'em lengfwise a little way ter one side enlooks at 'em close you'll see dar backbone's jes' lak we all'sbackbone is. De only diffunce is de oyscher's backbone is ter oneside, jes' whar it ought ter be, 'stead er in de middle. Dat's dereason I t'ink de debbil mus' er tuck a han' en he'ped ter mek wealls, en you know de Lord says, Let _us_ mek man; dat shows dat Hedidn' do hit all by Hese'f; ef He had He'd a meked we all's backboneter de side whar de oyscher's is, ter pertect us, en put our shinbones behime our legs, whar dey wouldn't all de time git skint, en putour calfs in de front. '"

My impression of Father Ryan was of being in the presence of a greatpower--something indefinable and indescribable, but invincibly sure. He was of medium height, and his massive head seemed to bend by itsown weight, giving him a somewhat stooped appearance. His hair, brown, with sunny glints touching it to gold, was brushed back from his wide, high forehead, falling in curls around his pale face and over hisshoulders. I recall with especial distinctness the dimple in his chin, a characteristic of many who have been very near to me, for whichreason it attracted my attention when appearing in a face new to me. His eyes were his greatest beauty, --Irish blue, under gracefullyarched brows, and luminous with the sunshine that has sparkled in theeyes of his race in all the generations, caught by looking skyward fora light that dawned not upon earth. His expression was sad, and thebeautiful smile that illumined his face, radiating compassion, kindness, gentleness and the humor of the Kelt, made me think of abrilliant noontide sun shining across a grave. 

We discussed Folk Lore, and he said that some of the best lessons weretaught in the Folk Lore of the plantation negro. One of his sermonswas on "Obstinacy, " illustrated by a story told him by an old coloredman:

"Marser, does you know de reason dat de crab walks back'ards? Well, hit's dis away: when de Lord wuz mekin' uv de fishes He meked dediffunt parts en put 'em in piles, de legs in one pile, de fins inanudder, en de haids in anudder. Do' de crab wan't no fish, He mekedhit at de same time. Afterwards He put 'em tergedder en breaved inter'em de bref er life. He stuck all de fishes' haids on, but de crab wuzobstreperous en he say, 'Gib me my haid; I gwine put hit on myse'f. 'De Lord argufied wid him but de crab wouldn' listen, en he say hegwine put hit on. So de Lord gin him his haid en 'course he put hit onback'ards. Den he went ter de Lord en ax' Him ter put hit straight, but de Lord wouldn' do hit, en He tole him he mus' go back'ards allhis life fer his obstinacy. En so 'tis wid some people. "

[Illustration: FATHER RYANFrom the portrait in Murphy's Hotel, Richmond, Virginia]

Father Ryan told me that one of the greatest obstacles with which hehad to contend in his dealings with people was the lack of ethicsensitiveness which rendered them oblivious to the harm of deviationsfrom principle which seemed not to result in great evil. People whowould not steal articles of value did not hesitate to cheat incar-fare, taking the view that the company got enough out of thepublic without their small contribution. He said, "They are like twovery religious old ladies who, driving through a toll-gate, asked thekeeper the rate. Being newly appointed, he looked into his book andread so much for a man and a horse. The woman who was driving whippedup the horse, calling out, 'G'lang, Sally, we goes free. We are twoold maids and a mare. ' On they went without paying. "

When Abram Ryan was seven years old the family moved to St. Louis, where the boy attended the schools of the Christian Brothers, in histwelfth year entering St. Mary's Seminary, in Perry County, Missouri. He completed his preparation for the work to which his life wasdedicated, in the Ecclesiastical Seminary at Niagara, New York. Uponordination he was placed in charge of a parish in Missouri. 

On a boat going down the canal from Lynchburg to Lexington, where hewas a fellow-passenger with us, he met his old friend, John Wise, andentered into conversation with him, in the course of which he made thestatement that he came from Missouri. "All the way from Pike?" quotedMr. Wise. "No, " replied Father Ryan, "my name is _not_ Joe Bowers, Ihave _no_ brother Ike, " whereupon he sang the old song, "Joe Bowers, "in a voice that would have lifted any song into the highest realms ofmusic. 

He recited his poem, "In Memoriam, " written for his brother David, whowas killed in battle, one stanza of which impressed me deeply becauseof the longing love in his voice when he spoke the lines:

 Thou art sleeping, brother, sleeping In thy lonely battle grave; Shadows o'er the past are creeping, Death, the reaper, still is reaping, Years have swept and years are sweeping Many a memory from my keeping, But I'm waiting still and weeping For my beautiful and brave. 

The readers of his poetry are touched by its pathetic beauty, but onlythey who have heard his verses in the tones of his deep, musical voicecan know of the wondrous melody of his lines. 

When I said to him that I wished he would write a poem on Pickett'scharge at Gettysburg, he replied:

"It has been put into poetry. Every flower that blooms on that fieldis a poem far greater than I could write. There are some things toogreat for me to attempt. Pickett's charge at Gettysburg is one ofthem. "

A lady who chanced to be on the boat with us repeated Owen Meredith'spoem of "The Portrait. " At its close he said with sad earnestness, "Iam sorry to hear you recite that. Please never do it again. It is alibel on womanhood. "

It may be that he was thinking of "Ethel, " the maiden whom, it issaid, he loved in his youth, from whom he parted because Heaven hadchosen them both for its own work, and his memories deepened thesacredness with which all women were enshrined in his thought. She wasto be a nun and he a priest, and thus he tells of their parting:

 One night in mid of May their faces met As pure as all the stars that gazed on them. They met to part from themselves and the world; Their hearts just touched to separate and bleed; Their eyes were linked in look, while saddest tears Fell down, like rain, upon the cheeks of each: They were to meet no more. 

The "great brown, wond'ring eyes" of the girl went with him on his waythrough life, shadowed like the lights of a dim cathedral, butluminous with love and sacrifice. How much of the story he tells inpathetic verse was his very own perhaps no one may ever know, but thereader feels that it was Father Ryan himself who, after "years andyears and weary years, " walked alone in a place of graves and found"in a lone corner of that resting-place" a solitary grave with itsveil of "long, sad grass" and, parting the mass of white roses thathid the stone, beheld the name he had given the girl from whom he hadparted on that mid-May night. 

 "ULLAINEE. "

Those who were nearest him thought that the vein of sadness windingthrough his life and his poetry was in memory of the girl who lovedand sacrificed and died. When they marvelled over the mournful minortones in his melodious verse he made answer:

 Go stand on the beach of the blue boundless deep, When the night stars are gleaming on high, And hear how the billows are moaning in sleep, On the low-lying strand by the surge-beaten steep, They're moaning forever wherever they sweep. Ask them what ails them: they never reply; They moan on, so sadly, but will not tell you why! Why does your poetry sound like a sigh? The waves will not answer you; neither shall I. 

At the beginning of the war Father Ryan was appointed a chaplain inthe Army of Northern Virginia, but often served as a soldier. He wasin New Orleans in 1862 when an epidemic broke out, and devoted himselfto the care of the victims. Having been accused of refusing to bury aFederal he was escorted by a file of soldiers into the presence ofGeneral Butler, who accosted him with great sternness:

"I am told that you refused to bury a dead soldier because he was aYankee. "

"Why, " answered Father Ryan in surprise, facing the hated generalwithout a tremor, "I was never asked to bury him and never refused. The fact is, General, it would give me great pleasure to bury thewhole lot of you. "

Butler lay back in his arm-chair and roared with laughter. "You've gotahead of me, Father, " he said. "You may go. Good morning, Father. "

One of the incidents of which Father Ryan told me occurred whensmallpox was raging in a State prison. The official chaplain had fledand no one could be found to take his place. One day a prisoner askedfor a minister to pray for him, and Father Ryan, whose parish was notfar away, was sent for. He was in the prison before the messenger hadreturned and, having been exposed to contagion, was not permitted toleave. He remained in the prison ministering to the sick until theepidemic had passed. 

Immediately after the war he was stationed in New Orleans where heedited _The Star_, a Roman Catholic weekly. Afterward he was inNashville, Clarksville, and Knoxville, and from there went to Augusta, Georgia, where he founded and edited the "_Banner of the South_, "which was permanently furled after having waved for a few years. 

Unlike most Southern poets, Father Ryan did not take his themes fromNature, and when her phenomena enters into his verse it is usually asa setting for the expression of some ethic or emotional sentiment. Hehas been called "the historian of a human soul, " and it was in thecrises of life that his feeling claimed poetical expression. When heheard of Lee's surrender "The Conquered Banner" drooped its mournfulfolds over the heart-broken South. In his memorial address atFredericksburg when the Southern soldiers were buried, he first read"March of the Deathless Dead, " closing with the lines:

 And the dead thus meet the dead, While the living' o'er them weep; And the men by Lee and Stonewall led, And the hearts that once together bled, Together still shall sleep. 

June 28, 1883, I was in Lexington and saw the unveiling of Valentine'srecumbent statue of General Lee in Washington and Lee University. Atthe conclusion of Senator Daniel's eloquent oration Father Ryanrecited his poem, "The Sword of Lee, " the first time that it had beenheard. 

In Lexington I was at a dinner where Father Ryan was a guest. He tolda story of a reprobate Irishman, for whom he had stood godfather. Uponone occasion the man took too much liquor and, under its influence, killed a man, for which he was sentenced to a term in thepenitentiary. Through the efforts of the Father he was, after a time, pardoned and employment secured for him. One evening he came to thepriest's house intoxicated and asked permission to sleep in the barn. "No, " said the Father, "go sleep in the gutter. " "Ah, Father, sure an'I've shlept in the gutter till me bones is all racked with therheumatism. " "I can't help that; I can't let you sleep in the barn;you will smoke, you drunken beast, and set the barn on fire and maybeburn the house, and they belong to the parish. " "Ah, Father, forgiveme! I've been bad, very bad; I've murdered an' kilt an' shtole an'been dhrunk, an' I've done a heap of low things besides, but low asI'm afther gettin', Father, I never got low enough to shmoke. " The manslept in the barn and the parish suffered no loss. 

One evening at a supper at Governor Letcher's we were responding tothe sentiment, "Life. " I gave some verses which, in Father Ryan'sview, were not serious enough for a subject so solemn. He looked at methrough his wonderfully speaking eyes and answered me in his melodiousvoice:

 Life is a duty--dare it, Life is a burden--bear it, Life is a thorn-crown--wear it; Though it break your heart in twain Seal your lips and hush your pain; Life is God--all else is vain. 

"Yes, Father, " I said, and there was silence. 

[Illustration: ST. MARY'S CHURCH, MOBILE. FATHER RYAN'S LATE RESIDENCE ADJOININGBy courtesy of P. J. Kenedy & Sons]

Always a wanderer, our Poet-Priest found his first real home, sincehis childhood, when pastor of St. Mary's Church in Mobile. To thathome he pays a tribute in verse. 

It was an enchanting solitude for the "restless heart, "--the plainlittle church with its cross pointing the way upward, the fronthalf-hidden by trees through which its window-eyes look out to thestreet. A short distance from the church and farther back was thepriest's house, set in a bewilderment of trees and vines and shrubberyfrom which window, chimney, roof, and cornice peep out as if withinquisitive desire to see what manner of world lies beyond the forest. 

 Up into the silent skies Where the sunbeams veil the star, Up, --beyond the clouds afar, Where no discords ever mar, Where rests peace that never dies. 

Here, amid the "songs and silences, " he wrote "just when the moodcame, with little of study and less of art, " as he said, his thoughtsleaping spontaneously into rhymes and rhythms which he called verses, objecting to the habit of his friends of giving them "the higher titleof poems, " never dreaming of "taking even lowest place in the rank ofauthors. "

 I sing with a voice too low To be heard beyond to-day, In minor keys of my people's woe, But my songs will pass away. 

 To-morrow hears them not-- To-morrow belongs to fame-- My songs, like the birds', will be forgot, And forgotten shall be my name. 

But a touch of prophecy adds the thought:

 And yet who knows? Betimes The grandest songs depart, While the gentle, humble, and low-toned rhymes Will echo from heart to heart. 

So the "low-toned rhymes" of him to whom "souls were always more thansongs, " written "at random--off and on, here, there, anywhere, " touchthe heart and linger like remembered music in a long-gone twilight. 

In 1872 Father Ryan travelled in Europe, visited Rome and had anaudience with the Pope, of whom he wrote:

 I saw his face to-day; he looks a chief Who fears nor human rage, nor human guile; Upon his cheeks the twilight of a grief, But in that grief the starlight of a smile. 

In 1883 he began an extended lecture tour in support of a charity ofdeep interest in the South, but his failing health brought his effortto an early close. 

The fiery soul of Father Ryan soon burned out its frail setting. Inhis forty-eighth year he retired to a Franciscan Monastery inLouisville, intending to make the annual retreat and at its close tofinish his "Life of Christ, " begun some time before. He arrived at theConvent of St. Bonifacius March 23, 1886. The environment of the oldMonastery, the first German Catholic establishment in Louisville, built in 1838, is not attractive. The building is on a narrow sidestreet filled with small houses and shops crowded up to the sidewalk. But the interior offered a peaceful home for which the world-wearyheart of the Poet-Priest was grateful. From a balcony where he wouldsit, breathing in the cool air and resting his soul in the unbrokensilence, he looked across the courtyard shaded by beautiful trees, filled with flowers and trellised vines, his heart revelling in theriot of color, the wilderness of greenery, all bathed in golden floodsof sunshine and canopied with an ever-changing and ever-gloriousstretch of azure sky. 

Father Ryan was never again to go out from this peaceful harbor intothe tumultuous billows of world-life. He had been there but a shorttime when his physician told him that he must prepare for death. "Why, " he said, "I did that long years ago. " The time of rest forwhich he had prayed in years gone by was near at hand. 

 My feet are wearied and my hands are tired, My soul oppressed-- And I desire, what I have long desired-- Rest--only rest. 

 * * * * *

 The burden of my days is hard to bear, But God knows best; And I have prayed--but vain has been my prayer For rest--sweet rest. 

In his last days his mind was filled with reminiscences of the war andhe would arouse the monastery and tell the priests and brothers, "Goout into the city and tell the people that trouble is at hand. War iscoming with pestilence and famine and they must prepare to meet theinvader. "

On Thursday of Holy Week, April 22, 1886, the weary life drifted outupon the calm sea of Eternal Peace. 

"BACON AND GREENS"

DR. GEORGE WILLIAM BAGBY

We, the general and I, were the first to be informed of the supernalqualities of bacon and greens. All Virginians were aware of the primeimportance of this necessary feature of an Old Dominion dinner, butthat "a Virginian could not be a Virginian without bacon and greens"was unknown to us until the discoverer of that ethnological fact. Dr. George William Bagby, read us his lecture on these cheerfulcomestibles. We were the first to see the frost that "lies heavy onthe palings and tips with silver the tops of the butter-bean poles, where the sere and yellow pods are chattering in the chilly breeze. "

In the early days after the war Dr. Bagby had a pleasant habit ofdropping into our rooms at the Exchange Hotel in Richmond, and as soonas the ink was dry on that combination of humor and pathos and wisdomto which he gave the classic title of "Bacon and Greens" he brought itand read it to us. I can still follow the pleasant ramble on which hetook us in fancy through a plantation road, the innumerable delightsalong the way never to be appreciated to their full extent by any buta real Virginian brought up on bacon and greens, and the arrival atthe end of the journey, where we were taken possession of as if we"were the Prodigal Son or the last number of the _Richmond Enquirer_. "My eyes were the first to fill with tears over the picture of the poorold man at the last, sitting by the dying fire in the empty house, while the storm raged outside. 

Though so thoroughly approving of "bacon and greens, " there wasanother feature of Virginia life, as well as of Southern lifegenerally, that met with Dr. Bagby's stern opposition--the duel. Ionce had opportunity to note his earnestness in trying to prevent ameeting of this kind. Two young men of whom General Pickett was veryfond, Page McCarty, a writer for the press and an idol of Richmondsociety, and a brilliant young lawyer named Mordecai became involvedin a quarrel which led to a challenge. The innocent cause of thedispute was the golden-haired, blue-eyed beauty, Mary Triplett, thebelle of Richmond, who had long been the object of Page McCarty'sdevotion but had shown a preference for another adorer. Page wrotesome satiric verses which, though no name was given, were known by allRichmond to be leveled at Miss Triplett. Mr. Mordecai resented theverses and the dispute which followed resulted in a challenge. Dr. Bagby came to our rooms when Page McCarty was there and made anunavailing effort to secure peace. Both he and the general wereunsuccessful in their pacific attempts, the duel took place and PageMcCarty, who bore a name that had in former times become famous in theduelling annals of Virginia, killed his antagonist at first shot. 

Though so strongly opposed to the practice, Dr. Bagby twice came neartaking a principal part in a duel. Soon after the close of the war hewrote an editorial on prisoners of war, in which he took the groundthat more Southern soldiers died in Northern prisons than Northernersin Southern prisons, giving figures in support of his statement. ANorthern officer in Richmond answered the article, questioning itsveracity. The doctor promptly sent a challenge to combat which theofficer declined, saying that he had fought hard enough for theprisoners in war-time, he did not intend to fight for them now thathostilities were over. 

The second time that our genial humorist came near the serious realityof a duel he was the party challenged. The cause of themisunderstanding that promised to result so tragically was a magazinearticle in which the doctor caricatured a peculiar kind of VirginiaEditor. The essay was a source of amusement to all its readers exceptone editor, who imagined himself insulted. Urged on by misguidedfriends, he challenged the author of the offending paper who, notwithstanding his opposition to the code, accepted. A meeting wasarranged and the belligerents had arrived at historic Bladensburg withblood-thirsty intent, when one of those sunny souls, possessed of auniversality of mind which rendered him a friend to all parties, arrived on the scene and a disastrous outcome was averted. 

Dr. Bagby has been called "a Virginia realist. " To him, receiving hisfirst views of life from the foot of the Blue Ridge, one realism ofthe external world was too beautiful to admit of his finding in theideal anything that could more nearly meet his fancy-picture ofloveliness than the scenes which opened daily before his eyes. Yearslater a memory of his early home returns to him in the dawn:

 Suddenly there came from thicket or copse of the distant forest, I could not tell where, a "wood-note wild" of some bird I had not heard for half a century nearly, and in an instant the beauty, the mystery, the holiness of nature came back to me just as it came in childhood when sometimes my playmates left me alone in the great orchard of my home in Cumberland. 

He avows himself

 --a pagan and a worshipper of Pan, loving the woods and waters, and preferring to go to them (when my heart was stirred thereto by that mysterious power which, as I conceive, cares little for worship made stately and to order on certain recurring calendar days) rather than to most of the brick and mortar pens that are supposed to hold in some way that which the visible universe no more contains than the works of his hands contain the sculptor who makes them; for I take it that the glittering show revealed by the mightiest telescope, or by the hope mightier even than the imagination of the highest mind, is but as a parcel of motes shining in a single thin beam of the great sun unseen and hidden behind shutters never to be wide opened. 

Our "Virginia Realist" needed not to call upon his imagination forpersonalities with which to fill his free-hand sketches of nature, forthere was in his kindly humor and geniality a charm which drew forthfrom all he met just the qualities necessary to fill in his world withthe characters he desired. A wide and deep sympathy enabled him tomake that world so real and true that his readers entered it at onceand found therein such entertaining companionship that they were fainto abide there ever after. 

In 1835, when a boy fresh from Parley's History of America, the futurehumorist made a journey from Cumberland County to Lynchburg, hearingby the way alarming sounds which the initiated recognized as thereport of the blasting of rocks on the "Jeems and Kanawha Canell. " Tothe boy, with second-hand memories of Washington and his men trampingconfusedly about his mind, the noises signified a cannonade and hewaited in terrified excitement for the British bullet that was to puthim beyond the conflicts of the world, trying to postpone the evilmoment by hiding between two large men who were fellow-passengers withhim. This was in the days when the celebrated "Canell" was a subjectfor the imagination to contemplate as a triumph of futurity and anobject for hope to feed upon--a period in which the traveller embarkedupon a fascinating batteau and spent a week of dreamy beauty insailing from Lynchburg to Richmond and ten days back to the hill city. Time was not money in those days, it was vision and peace and colorand sunshine and all wherein the soul of man delighteth itself andreveleth in the joy of living. The stream of imagination was no moredammed than the river in which "shad used to run to Lynchburg, "showing a highly developed æsthetic taste on the part of the shad. Theyouthful traveller went to the Eagle Hotel and took a view of MainStreet and dared not even wonder if he should ever be big enough tolive in Richmond. Rapt soul of youth's dawn, with myriad dreams all tovanish when the sun rises upon the morning!

On his return from an absence of two years in the North the greatCanal was completed and, while his early impression of theunparallelled magnitude of the Queen City had suffered revision, hisvisions of journeying by canal were yet to be realized. At the foot ofEighth Street, Richmond, he took the packet-boat, passed under SeventhStreet bridge, and with the other passengers lingered on deck to seeRichmond slowly disappear in the distance. That night the dolefulpacket-horn, contrasted with his memory of the cheerful, musical noteof the old stage-horn, brought to the lad his first realization of theinadequacies of modern improvements. 

Ascending the James the traveller had a view of the best of the oldVirginia life, its wealth of beauty, its home comfort, its atmosphereof serenity, of old memories, rich and vivid, like the wine that laycob-webbed in ancestral cellars, of gracious hospitality, of a softlytinted life like the color in old pictures and the soul in old books. The gentle humorist lived to see that life pass away from the OldDominion and all too soon he vanished into another world where, likeall true Virginians, he expected to find the old home-life again. 

These canal days were in the early Dickens period, and occasionallythe youthful traveller could not resist the temptation to go below andlose himself in those pages which had then almost as potent a charm intheir novelty as they have now in their friendly familiarity. But theriver-isle, which held an interest in futurity for him because of hisintention to found a romance there when he should be "big enough towrite for the papers, " would draw him back to the deck. There was apath across the hills that the passengers must follow, disembarkingfor that purpose. Near Manchester was a haunted house which he lookedupon with those ghostly shivers that made a person so delightfullyuncomfortable, for he, like the rest of us, did believe in ghosts, whatever he might say to the contrary. There was the ruined mill and, best of all, the Three-Mile Lock, inspiring him with the highestambition of his life, to be a lock-keeper. Then came Richmond; themetropolis of the world, to the young voyager. 

[Illustration: DR. GEORGE W. BAGBYFrom the portrait in the possession of the family]

Dr. Bagby studied for his profession at the Medical College of theUniversity of Pennsylvania and from there went to Lynchburg, openingan office where now stands the opera house. Unfortunately for hisprofessional career but happily for the cause of the literature ofVirginia life, the office of the _Lynchburg Virginian_ was near, andits editor, Mr. James McDonald, proved a kindred soul to the youngphysician. In the absences of the editor, Dr. Bagby filled his chairand fell a victim to the fascination with which the Demon of theFourth Estate lures his chosen to their doom. In Lynchburg he firstfound his true calling and there, too, he met with his first failure, the demise of the _Lynchburg Express_, of which he was part owner, andwhich went to the wall by reason of the well-known weakness of geniusin regard to business matters. 

Upon the collapse of the _Express_ Dr. Bagby went to Washington ascorrespondent for a number of papers, and while there attaineddistinction as a humorist through the "Letters of Mozis Addums, "written for the _Southern Literary Messenger_, of Richmond. 

His abiding place is of hazy uncertainty, one of his kinsmensaying--"He didn't live anywhere, " He might as well have dwelt in hisown "Hobgoblinopolis. " His wanderings had taught him the peculiarcharm of the Virginia roads of that day, as evidenced by theaspiration of "Mozis Addums" when contemplating the limitations of his"Fifty Millions":

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

It may be, as the doctor laments, that "The old Virginia gentleman, All of the olden time, " has passed away, the colonial house ismodernized, and the ghost, the killing of whom would be "an enormityfar greater than the crime of killing a live man, " has been laid torest for half a century, but the old scenes and the old-time life comeback to us who once knew it, in the pages of the perennial boy whorecalls the time when "me and Billy Ivins and the other fellows setforth with six pine poles and a cymling full of the best and biggestfishing worms, " to fish in the Appomattox where it "curves around thefoot of Uncle Jim's plantation, " and where there is a patriarchalbeech with a tangle of roots whereon the Randolphs of historic notewere wont to repose in the days long gone. This fishing party is underthe fair October skies when "the morn, like an Eastern queen, issumptuously clad in blue and gold; the sheen of her robes in dazzlingsunlight, and she comes from her tent of glistening, silken, celestialwarp, beaming with tender smiles. " "It is a day of days for flatback, provided the moon is right. " But "Billy Ivins swears that theplanetary bodies have nothing to do with fish--it's all confoundedsuperstition. " So they cast in their hooks, "Sutherland's best, " andtalk about Harper's Ferry and "old Brown" until one of the party"thinks he has a nibble" and begs for silence, which at oncesupervenes out of respect for the momentous interests hanging in thebalance. When the excitement is over the frivolous Bagby takesadvantage of the relief from suspense to make an exasperating pun, after the manner of a newspaper man, and "Billy Ivins swears he willkill him for a fool. "

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

[Illustration: "AVENEL"The home of the Burwells, where Dr. Bagby spent many happy days]

A part of the conversation shows us that this fishing expedition tookplace in the autumn of 1859, not a year before Dr. Bagby was called tothe post of editor of the _Southern Literary Messenger_, taking theplace of the poet, John R. Thompson, who was sent to England to leadthe forlorn hope of a magazine to represent the Southern cause inLondon. A banquet was given at Zetelle's restaurant as a farewell toMr. Thompson and welcome to Dr. Bagby. 

The office of the _Messenger_ was in the Law Building, a four-storiedstructure erected in 1846 on the southeast corner of Capitol Square, fronting on Franklin Street. Here he was hard at work, making the_Messenger_ worthy of its former editors, his predecessor, Mr. Thompson, Mr. White, of early days, Edgar A. Poe, and a succession ofbrilliant writers, only less widely known, when the guns before Sumtertempted the new editor to the field, a position for which he was illfitted as to physical strength, whatever might be the force of hispatriotism. He was soon running risks of pneumonia from the effects ofover-drilling and the chilling breezes from Bull Run Mountain, andmaking up his mind "not to desert, but to get killed at the firstopportunity, " that being the most direct route he could think of tothe two prime essentials of life, a clean shirt and solitude. Heneither deserted nor was killed, but was detailed to write letters andpapers for one of the officers, and slept through the fight of the18th at Manassas as a result of playing night orderly from midnight tomorning. 

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

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

He returned to his work on the _Messenger_ and the editorial sanctumbecame the meeting place of the wits of Richmond. It was here that thecelebrated Confederate version of "Mother Goose" was evolved from theconjoined wisdom of the circle and written with the stub of theeditorial pencil on the "cartridge-paper table-cloth, " one stanzadealing with a certain Northern general thus:

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

The various authors were astonished to find their productions in thenext issue of the _Messenger_ and were later dismayed when the verseswere read at a meeting of the Mosaic Club, each with the name of thewriter attached. 

While editor of the _Messenger_, Dr. Bagby wrote occasionally for the_Richmond Examiner_, thereby becoming associated in a friendly waywith its editor, John M. Daniel, whose brilliant and continuous fightupon the administration at Richmond kept him vividly before thepublic. Though the genial doctor deplored the aggressiveness of the_Examiner_, he could not resist the temptation to employ his trenchantpen in treating of public affairs. This led to his possession of thefamous latchkey which "fitted the door of the house on Broad Street, opposite the African Church, " a key of which he wrote that it "has itscharm, " and certainly one which he made more enchanting to his readersthan any other such article has ever proved. 

These two men, so different in view-point and expression, so similarin principle and purpose, met in Washington in 1861 at Brown's Hotel, that famous old hostelry dear to the Southern heart in the yearsbefore the tide of war swept the old Washington away forever andbrought a new South to take the place of the old plantation life. Congenial as they were in many ways, the possession of the latchkey, Dr. Bagby tells us, did not argue an intimate personal relation, asthe fancy of the brilliant editor of the _Examiner_ was apparentlychangeable, and wavered when he discovered that his assistant neitherplayed chess nor talked sufficiently to inspire him to conversationalexcellence. But the key opened to the younger man, whenever he sowilled, the pleasant three-storied brick house on Broad Street wherethe valiant editor kept bachelor's hall in a manner that would suggestthe superfluity of complicating the situation with a wife and family. 

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

On a second floor passage was an object which must have excited moreenvy than the magnificent mirrors and solid old furniture were capableof arousing--a bag of Java coffee, and coffee thirty dollars apound--the latter fact not deterring the luxurious owner of thisstately abode from imbuing his pet terriers with the coffee-drinkinghabit. A little room cut off from a passage in the third story was alibrary of old and rare editions of the classics. A back room, sunlitand warm, gave a view of James River, the Henrico Hills, and thespacious dells and forests of Chesterfield. To the mind of Dr. Bagbyall these things were represented by "John M. Daniel's Latchkey" and, for all the charm of "Home, Sweet Home, " is it not better to have theprivileges without the responsibilities of a latchkey?

Next to the editorial office of the _Messenger_ that of the _DailyExaminer_ was the place with which Dr. Bagby was, perhaps, bestacquainted in Richmond. There, with the fiery editor, he spent hisevenings in reading proof, comforted by a mild cigar and protected bya Derringer which Mr. Daniel would put on the table when he firstarrived, a not unnecessary precaution, for if there was one place moredangerous than another in the Richmond of war days it was almost anypoint in the near vicinity of the belligerent editor of the_Examiner_. 

Dr. Bagby was married to Miss Parke Chamberlayne of Richmond, and wemay be sure that she was the model from which he drew his charmingstudy of "the Virginia lady of the best type, " who accompanies "TheOld Virginia Gentleman" in his pages. 

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

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

"WOMAN AND POET"

MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON

"Whoever has the good fortune to follow its trails and shimmeringwaters is already half a poet, " wrote Professor Harris of the roadthat leads down from the verdant hills of the Alleghanies overpicturesque gorge and crag and fissure into the quiet of the valleyand brings us by exquisite stages to the beautiful town of Lexington, Virginia. Making that journey in taking my boy, fourteen years old, tothe Virginia Military Institute, I entered at once two charmingregions--Lexington with its romantic environment, and the heart ofMargaret Junkin Preston. 

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

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

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

Mrs. Preston spent much of her time in knitting because the weaknessof her eyes made reading and writing difficult. "Are you never tiredof knitting?" I asked. She replied that it did not tire her, and toldme that Mrs. Lee said she loved to knit because she did not have toput her mind on the work. She could think and talk as well when shewas knitting for the reason that she did not have to keep her eyes norher attention upon what she was doing. She knew perfectly well whenshe came to a seam. In a letter from a soldier to Mrs. Lee he thankedher for the socks she had sent him, and wrote; "I have fourteen pairsof socks knitted by my mother and my mother's sisters and the ChurchSewing Society, and I have not a shirt to my back nor a pair oftrousers to my legs nor a whole pair of shoes to my feet. " "But, " saidMrs. Lee as she concluded the story, "I continued to knit socks justthe same. "

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

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

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

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

In this little home, where rigid economy was practised and highaspirations reigned, our future poet entered upon the severeintellectual training which caused her at twenty-one, when the door ofscholastic learning was closed upon her by the partial failure of hersight, to be called a scholar, though she sorrowfully resented thetitle, asking, "How can you speak of one as a scholar whose studieswere cut short at twenty-one?"

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

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

In Lafayette, a new college in Easton, Pennsylvania, Dr. Junkin soonfound opportunity to carry on his system of training for practical andreligious life and here Margaret spent sixteen happy and busyyears--happy but for the gray veil that fell between her and her lovedstudies before those years had passed. She was obliged to prepare herGreek lessons at night, and the only time her father had for hearingher recitations was in the early morning before breakfast, which inthat household meant in the dim candlelight of the period; not awholesome time for perusing Greek text. For Margaret Junkin it meantseven years of physical pain, a part of the time in a darkened room, and the lifelong regret of unavailing aspirations. It was in Eastonthat she began to write in any serious and purposeful fashion, theresult of her semi-blindness, as, but for that, she would have devotedher life to painting, for which she had decided talent. In thebeautiful environment of Easton the young soul had found the poeticglow that tinged its early dawn. Hills crowned with a wealth offorests, fields offering hospitality to the world, glimmering of theDelaware waters rippling silverly along their happy way, auroral dawnsand glorious sunsets, all inspired the youthful poet's imagination tomelodious effort. Of Margaret as she was in the Easton days in 1836, aLafayette freshman thus writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Lexington, Margaret's sister, Eleanor, met the grave and dignifiedMajor T. J. Jackson, Professor of Mathematics in the Virginia MilitaryInstitute, and in 1853 was married to him. Here the death of the sweetand gentle mother brought to the life of Margaret Junkin its crowningsorrow, and shortly afterward the lovely young wife of Major Jacksonleft the earthly home. 

The Professor of Latin in the Virginia Military Institute was MajorJ. T. L. Preston, grandson of Edmund Randolph. He was a man of greatdignity of character and manner and of unusual scholarship. ThoughMargaret Junkin had at times requested her nearest of kin to secludeher in an asylum for the insane should she ever manifest a tendency tomarry a widower with children, she proceeded quite calmly and withreason apparently unclouded, to fall in love with and marry ProfessorPreston, notwithstanding his possession of seven charming and amiablesons and daughters left over from a former congenial marriage. Sheproved a most devoted mother to her large family, who returned heraffection in full measure. A volume of her poetry is dedicated to hereldest stepdaughter who, after the death of Margaret, was her mostloving and appreciative biographer. To her great sorrow, one of thesons was killed in battle. 

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

In the early years of her married life writing was laid aside whileshe devoted herself to the care of her family, the entertainment ofthe many visitors who came to the Preston house and the beautificationof her new home, finding plenty of space in the attractive house andextensive grounds with their noble trees, orchard, garden and meadowfor the outlet of all her imagination. In this ideal home she wasliving her peaceful and happy life when the bugle call destroyed theserenity of the country. She suffered one of her greatest sorrows inthe difference of political opinion between her Northern father andher Southern husband. The latter, holding that while secession wasunwise, coercion was tyranny, followed Virginia when she cast in herlot with the seceding States. Dr. Junkin and his widowed youngestdaughter, Julia, returned to Philadelphia, while Colonel Prestonjoined Stonewall Jackson's army. 

Margaret Preston's worship of the muses was woven in with her devotionto the household goddesses, and in her journal the receiving of thefirst copy of her new volume of poems is sandwiched in between themaking of twenty-two gallons of blackberry wine and thirty-threebottles of ketchup. House-cleaning and "Tintoretto"; pickles and "MonaLisa"; hearth-painting and "Bacharach wine" were all closely connectedin her every-day experience. From a ride through the blue hills shewould return with a poem singing in her heart, radiant with sun, shaded with the mists of the darkening heights, and when it hadbubbled over in laughter and dreams and tears and was safe upon thewritten page, she would go into the kitchen and produce such marvelsof cookery as made her a housewife of more than local fame. 

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

 THROUGH THE PASS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Perhaps few travellers have seen as much in a summer's wandering asdid Margaret Preston, yet it was on her "blind slate" that she wasforced to write of these things and of the "crowning delight of thesummer, " the tour through Switzerland. She said, "My picture galleryof memory is hung henceforth with glorious frescoes which blindnesscannot blot or cause to fade. "

Life in Preston House with all its enchantments came to an end forMargaret Preston with the passing of the noble and loving man who hadmade her the priestess of that home shrine. The first two years afterhis death she spent with her stepdaughter, Mrs. Allan, who lived nearthe old home. Then she went to the home of Dr. George J. Preston, ofBaltimore, where she was the centre of the home and took great delightin his children with their pretty "curly red heads. " She never walkedagain except to take a few steps with a crutch. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AUGUSTA EVANS WILSON

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

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

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

She told me of the many adventures of "Macaria" in its early days. Camp "Beulah, " named in honor of her second book, which appeared notlong before the opening of the war and brought her at once intoprominence as a writer, was near Summerville, the girlhood home ofAugusta Evans, and in that camp and its hospital, as well as in themany others which soon sprang up around the Evans residence, she tooka Southern woman's share in the work, the darkness and the heartacheof the time. Her friend, Mr. Thomas Cooper De Leon, of Mobile, gives apicture of her in those days:

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

She was amanuensis, as well as nurse, cook and general purveyor oflight and comfort, and she sent many a cheering letter to waitinghearts at home, and never was the power of her glowing pen used morenobly and helpfully than when, forced to write the last dread messageof all, it wove into the sorrowful words a golden thread of love andfaith and hope. 

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

Miss Evans contrived to slip a copy of her new book across the linesto a publisher friend who, being unable at that time to bring out anew edition, took it to the J. B. Lippincott Company and arranged forits publication. Immediately afterward it was found that anotherpublisher had come into possession of a copy and had an edition offive thousand ready to issue but, upon inquiry, expressed hisintention of paying no royalty to the author. Through the efforts ofMr. Lippincott he was induced to allow a royalty. Miss Evans afterwardwrote to her friend:

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

In telling me of this she said that the kindness of Mr. Lippincott didnot surprise her, as she remembered with gratitude the generosity ofthe Lippincott Company in regard to Southern obligations at theopening of the war. 

With the beautiful voice which so enchanted me she once took captiveGeneral Bragg's army on Lookout Mountain. With her mother she had goneto visit her brother, Captain Howard Evans, just before the battle ofChickamauga. It chanced that he had been sent to the front before theyarrived, but they were hospitably received and given a hut on theslope. At midnight they were awakened by steps and whispers and uponinquiry found that their unexpected visitors were soldiers who hadcrept through the lines to see Miss Evans and hear her sing. Themother was disposed to object to her appearing at a time and place notconventionally appropriate to artistic performances, but, wrapping hertravelling coat and robe about her, she went out into the moonlightwith her mass of hair streaming in the wind like a flying cloud, andsang that thrilling song written by her friend, Randall, "Maryland, myMaryland. " As the melodious tones swelled out upon the night and camefloating back in echoes from the rugged peaks and mountain walls, theyfilled the audience with rapt delight. When the song was finished thesobs and cheers that burst from the soldier-hearts formed an encorenot to be denied, and again that battle-cry thrilled out upon the air. The moment of silence that followed was broken by the high, shrill, quavering, penetrating note of the rebel yell. 

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

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

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

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

In 1868 Augusta Evans was married to Mr. Lorenze M. Wilson, Presidentof the Mobile & Montana Railroad, and became mistress of the beautifulhome on the Spring Hill shell road near the picturesque city ofMobile. The house looked toward the road through aisles of greeneryacross a yard filled with flowers diffusing a perfume blended ofgeraniums, roses, tropical plants and the blossoms of the North. Achorus of birds filled the air with music. Majestic old live-oaks withtwilight veils of gray moss were like tall and stately nuns pausingsuddenly to count their beads to the music of vesper bells. Magnoliatrees in dense white blossom gave the impression that winter hadaroused from his summer sleep and unfolded his blanket of snow to addhis most beautiful touch to the charms of the golden days. A handsomedriveway led across a lawn to a veranda, vine-wreathed and hidden in acrush of flowers. The house, divided by a wide hall, opened upon broadpiazzas. Leading up to it through brilliant blossoming was a whitepath between sentinel lines of oak trees that reached out friendlyhands to clasp each other above the broad footway. Amid such beautyone felt lost in a mystic world of which he had never dreamed andrevelled in a vision from which he might hope that there would be nowaking. 

Augusta Jane Evans was born May 4, 1835, near Columbus, Georgia. "TheQueen City of the Chattahoochee" is enthroned in a pine forest amid arange of hills that form a semi-circle about the city with its finewide streets and magnificent shade trees. The St. Elmo Institute forgirls, with its great oak grove and its beautiful lake, was the modelfor the school in the book, "St. Elmo. " Sweet memories of thebeautiful home in Columbus remained in the heart of Miss Evans and shesaid in after years that many of the happiest days of her girlhoodwere spent there. In later years she had here her "White Farm, " onwhich all the animals and fowls were white. 

In her childhood the family removed to Galveston, Texas, goingafterward to San Antonio. In the two years spent here she studiedunder the tutorship of her mother, who never gave up her charge to thecare of a professional teacher, though the responsibility of sevenother children might have furnished her with an excuse for doing so. 

In the most enchanting city of Texas the future novelist wassurrounded by the romantic myths of Indian lore. On a day long past, the miracle of the San Antonio River and its valley had burst upon theenraptured eyes of Tremanos, the young Apache brave, from the hilltopto which he had climbed with weary footsteps, followed by the gauntshadow of death, dazed by the phantoms on the distant horizon, luredon by mystic spirit music brought to him on the wings of the scorchingwinds; and he had gone with glad heart down into the rich and verdantplains of "Tejas, the Beautiful. "

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

In her story of "Inez, " founded upon the most tragic event in thehistory of the Lone Star State, the defence of the Alamo, Miss Evansthus described the scene from the viewpoint of the newly arrivedimmigrant:

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

By this river of romantic beauty and old-time myth Augusta Evans spenttwo of youth's impressionable years. On Main Plaza, near the Alamo, where the Frost National Bank now stands, was the Evans store, whereshe, the daughter of the store-keeper, lived. Almost under the shadowof the tragically historic old mission, by the park near which SantaAna had his headquarters, she received the incentive and gathered thematerial for her first novel, "Inez, " written in her own room at nightas a gift with which to surprise her father and mother. The work of agirl of fifteen, it did not appeal to many readers, but it contained avivid description of the inspired heroism and self-sacrifice of themen whose deeds crowned the history of Texas with the sanctity of thesupreme glory of self-immolation upon the altar of patriotism. We havefallen upon commercial days now, and the traditions of the old Alamocircle around a warehouse. Alamo Plaza is now the scene of the annual"Battle of the Flowers, " a joyous and beautiful occasion which throwsa fragrant floral veil about the terrible memories that gloom over theplace. 

At the close of the two years spent in San Antonio, the familyreturned to Columbus and later found a home in Mobile, Alabama, thetown of the "Maubila, " Choctaw, Indians. It is a pleasant town ofshaded streets, romantic drives and beautiful homes. Its historyreaches back through the centuries to a time long before the UnitedStates had being, and it is the only American city that has seen fiveflags wave over it: French, English, Spanish, United States andConfederate. 

While in this home Augusta Evans became widely known through thepublication in 1859 of her second novel, "Beulah. " Then came the war, bringing forth her one war-novel, "Macaria. " "Vashti, " "St. Elmo, ""Infelice, " "At the Mercy of Tiberius, " the latter being her best, followed in quick succession, until her marriage put a close to herwork, for Mr. Wilson was unwilling that she should tax her strength byclose application. Life in the delightful home furnished interestenough to make resort to fiction unnecessary as an entertainment. In1879 the death of Mr. Wilson ended the idyllic home life and shereturned to her desk, writing "The Speckled Bird" and "Devota, " with apen that had lost much of its charm in the days of happy absorption. 

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

It has been observed that the stories of Augusta Evans have nolocation. They happen in any place where the people chance to be and, given that kind of people, the story would evolve itself in the sameway anywhere else. But for her there was always a place in whichflowers grew and trees waved their branches to the breeze and mademystic aisles of purpled glooms, shot through with glimpses of sunamid silences broken happily by the songs of birds. There were alwaysthe wide sky and dim reaches of space and great walls of majesticmountains against the horizon. However gifted might be her maidens inroaming amid the stars or delving in philosophic depths, they, likeherself, had always eyes for the beauties which Nature sets in place, and why should all these things be geographically bounded anddesignated by appellations to be recorded in the Postoffice Guide?

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

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

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

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

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