Chapter II: Part 2

Mr. Burroughs has been his own architect; and I know many people who might wish that he had been theirs too. He planned and superintended the erection of his house, which is a four-gabled structure, with a porch in front and a broad balcony in the rear. Most of the timber for the upper story is oak from his old Delaware County farm. The stone of which the two lower stories are built was obtained on the spot, and is a dark slate plentifully veined with quartz. Great pains were taken in the building to turn the handsomest samples of quartz to the fore, and to put them where they would do the most good, artistically. Over the lintel of the door, for example, is a row of three fine specimens; and a big chunk, with mosses lying between its crystals, protrudes from the wall near the porch. The variety of color so obtained, with the drab woodwork of the upper story and the red Virginia vine, keeps the house, at all seasons, in harmony with its surroundings. It is no less so within; for doors, wainscots, window-frames, joists, sills, skirting-boards, floor and rafters are all of native woods, left of their natural colors, and skillfully contrasted with one another; one door being of Georgia pine with oak panels, another of chestnut and curled maple, a third of butternut and cherry, and so on. Grayish, or brownish, or russet wall-papers, and carpets to match, give the house very much of the appearance of a nest, into the composition of which nothing enters that is not of soft textures and low and harmonious color.

ROGER RIORDAN.

GEORGE W. CABLE

GEORGE W. CABLE

AT NEW ORLEANS AND NORTHAMPTON

Far up in the “garden district” of New Orleans stands a pretty cottage, painted in soft tones of olive and red. A strip of lawn bordered with flowers lies in front of it, and two immense orange trees, beautiful at all seasons of the year, form an arch above the steps that lead up to the piazza. Here Mr. Cable made his home for some years, and here were written “The Grandissimes,” “Madame Delphine” and “Dr. Sevier.” Those who were fortunate enough to pass beyond its portals found the interior cosy and tasteful, without any attempt at display. The study was a room of many doors and windows with low bookcases lining the walls, and adorned with pictures in oil and water-colors by G. H. Clements, and in black and white by Joseph Pennell. The desk, around which hovered so many memories of Bras-Coupé and Madame Delphine, and gentle Mary, was a square, old-fashioned piece of furniture, severely plain, but very roomy.

Neither was comfort neglected; for a hammock swung in the study, in which the author could rest, from time to time, from his labors. Mr. Cable’s plan of work is unusually methodical, for his counting-room training has stood him in good stead. All his notes and references are carefully indexed and journaled, and so systematized that he can turn, without a moment’s delay, to any authority he wishes to consult. In this respect, as in many others, he has not, perhaps, his equal among living authors. In making his notes, it is his usual custom to write in pencil on scraps of paper. These notes are next put into shape, still in pencil, and the third copy, intended for the press, is written in ink on note-paper--the chirography exceedingly neat, delicate and legible. He is always exact, and is untiring in his researches. The charge of anachronism has several times been laid at his door; but this is an accusation it would be difficult to prove. Before attempting to write upon any historical point, he gathers together all available data without reckoning time or trouble; and, under such conditions, nothing is more unlikely than that he should be guilty of error. Mr. Cable has a great capacity for work, and his earlier stories were written under the stress of unremitting toil. Later, when he was able to emerge from business life and follow the profession of literature exclusively, he continued his labors in the church, and never allowed any engagement to interfere with his Sunday-school and Bible-classes. In his books, religion has the same place that it takes in a good man’s life. Nothing is said or done for effect; neither is he ashamed to confess his faith before the world.

It is perhaps strange that Mr. Cable should have the true artistic, as well as the religious, temperament, since these two do not invariably go hand in hand. Music, painting, and sculpture are full of charms for him, and he is an intuitive judge of what is best in art. His knowledge of music is far above the ordinary, and he has made a unique study of the usually elusive and baffling strains of different song-birds. He is such a many-sided man that he should never find a moment of the day hanging heavily upon his hands. The study of botany was a source of great pleasure to him, at one time; and he had, also, an aviary in which he took a deep interest.

Seemingly sedate, Mr. Cable is full of fun; and charming as he is in general society, a compliment may be paid him that cannot often be spoken truthfully of men of genius--namely, that he appears to the best advantage in his own home. His children are a merry little band of five girls and one boy, each evincing, young as they are, some distinctive talent. It is amusing to note their appreciation of ‘father’s fun,’ and his playful speeches always give the signal for bursts of laughter. This spirit of humor, so potent “to witch the heart out of things evil,” is either hereditary or contagious, for all of these little folks are ready of tongue. The friends whom Mr. Cable left behind him, in New Orleans, remember with regretful pleasure the delightful little receptions which have now become a thing of the past. Sometimes, at these gatherings, he would sing an old Scotch ballad, in his clear, sweet tenor voice, or one of those quaint Creole songs that he has since made famous on the lecture platform; or, again, he would read a selection from “Dukesborough Tales”--one of his favorite humorous works. Nothing was stereotyped or conventional, for Mr. Cable is, in every aspect of life, a dangerous enemy of the common-place. But the pleasant dwelling-place has passed into other hands; other voices echo through the rooms; and Mr. Cable has found a new home in a more invigorating climate.

The highway leading from the town of Northampton, Mass., which one must follow in order to find Mr. Cable’s house, has the aspect of a quiet country road, but is, in reality, one of the streets of the city, with underlying gas and water-pipes. It is studded with handsome dwellings, some of brick and stone, others of simple frame-work--each with velvet lawn shaded with spreading elms, and here and there a birch or pine. The romancer’s house is the last at the edge of the town, on what is fitly named the Paradise Road. It is a red brick building of two stories and a half, with a vine-covered piazza; and the smooth-cut lawn slopes gently down to the street, separated only from the sidewalk by a stone coping. Above all things, one is conscious, on entering here, of a sense of comfort and home happiness. The furniture is simple but exceedingly tasteful, of light woods with little upholstery; and the visitor finds an abundance of easy-chairs and settees of willow. The study is a delightful nook, opening by sliding doors from the parlor on one side and the hall on another. A handsome table of polished cherry, usually strewn with books and papers, occupies the center of the room, and, as in the old home, the walls are lined with book-shelves. A large easy-chair, upon which the thoughtful wife insisted, when the room was being fitted up, affords a welcome resting-place to the weary author. Sometimes she lends her gentle presence to the spot, and sits there, with her quiet needlework, while the story or lecture is in the course of preparation. One of the charms of this sanctum is the view from the two windows that extend nearly to the floor. From one may be descried the blue and hazy line of the Hampshire hills, while from the other one sees Mt. Holyoke and Mt. Tom uprearing their stately heads to the sky. Sloping down from the carriage-drive which passes it lies Paradise--a stretch of woods bordering Mill River. No more appropriate name could be given it, for if magnificent trees, beautiful flowers, green-clad hill and dell, and winding waters, and above all, the perfect peace of nature, broken only by bird-notes, can make a paradise, it is found in this corner of Northampton, itself the loveliest of New England towns. Mr. Cable confesses that this scene of enchantment is almost too distracting to the mind, and that, when deeply engaged in composition, he finds it necessary to draw the curtains.

If the days in Mr. Cable’s home are delightful, the evenings are not less charming. After the merry tea and the constitutional walk have been taken, the family gather in the sitting-room. Usually, two or three friends drop in; but if none come, the children are happy to draw closely around their father, while he plays old-time songs or Creole dances on his guitar. As he sings, one after another joins in, and finally the day is ended with a hymn and the evening worship. The hour is early, for the hard-working brain must have its full portion of rest. It is one of Mr. Cable’s firm-rooted principles that the mind can not do its best unless the body is well treated; and he gives careful attention to all rules of health. Apart from the brilliant fact of his genius, this is the secret of the evenness of his work. There is no feverish energy weakening into feverish lassitude; it moves on without haste, without rest. Mr. Cable well advised a young writer never to publish anything but his best; and it is this principle, doubtless, that has prevented him from thinking it necessary, as many English and American authors seem to fancy, to turn out a certain amount of printed matter every year. In addition to his literary labors, Mr. Cable is frequently absent from home on reading and lecture engagements, and great is the rejoicing of his family when they have him once more among them. Mr. Cable’s place in literature is as unique as that of Hawthorne. He is distinctively and above all things an American. He has not found it necessary to cross the water in search of inspiration; and he is the only American author of any prominence whose turn of mind has never been influenced by the foreign classics.

What Bret Harte has done for the stern angularity of Western life, Mr. Cable has wrought, in infinitely finer and subtler lines, for his soft-featured and passionate native land. Those who come after him in delineation of Creole character can only be followers in his footsteps, for to him alone belongs the credit of striking this new vein, so rich in promise and fulfillment. An alien coming among them would be as one who speaks a different language. He would be impressed only by superficial peculiarities, and would chronicle them from this standpoint. But Mr. Cable knows these people to their heart’s core; he is saturated with their individuality and traditions; to him their very inflection of voice, turn of the head, motion of the hands, is eloquent with meaning. His work will endure because it is entirely wholesome, and full of that “sanity of mind” which speaks with such a strenuous voice to the mass of mankind. The writer who appeals from a diseased imagination to an audience full of diseased and morbid tastes, must necessarily have a small _clientèle_; for there are comparatively few people, as balanced against the vast hordes of workers, who are so satiated with the good things of this life that they must always seek for some new sensation strong enough to blister their jaded palates. The men and women who labor and endure desire after their day of toil something that will cheer and refresh; and this will remain so as long as health predominates over disease.

The engraving in _The Century_ of February, 1882, has made the reading public familiar with Mr. Cable’s features; but there is lacking the lurking sparkle in the dark hazel eyes, and the curving of the lips into a peculiarly winning smile. In person, Mr. Cable is small and slight, with chestnut hair, beard and moustache; and there is a marked development of the forehead above the eyebrows, supposed, by believers in phrenology, to indicate unusual musical talent. On paper, it is hard to express the charm of his individuality, or the pleasure of listening to his sunny talk, with its quaint turns of thought and the felicitous phrases that spring spontaneously to his lips. Those who have been impressed by the deep humanity that made it possible for him to write such a book as “Dr. Sevier,” will find the man and the author one and indivisible. Nothing is forced, or uttered for the sake of making an impression; and the listener may be sure that Mr. Cable is saying what he thinks. The conscientiousness that enabled him to be a brave soldier and an untiring business man, runs through his whole life; and he has none of that moral cowardice which staves off an expression of opinion with a falsely pleasant word.

J. K. WETHERILL.

[Eight years ago Mr. Cable left the house in Paradise Road for a new Colonial house on “Dryad’s Green,” against a background of pines,--“Tarryawhile,” with a cottage workshop of two rooms near by.--EDITORS.]

S. L. CLEMENS (MARK TWAIN)

S. L. CLEMENS (MARK TWAIN)

AT HARTFORD AND ELMIRA

The story of Mark Twain’s life has been told so often that it has lost its novelty to many readers, though its romance has the quality of permanence. But people to-day are more interested in the author than they are in the printer, the pilot, the miner, or the reporter, of twenty or thirty years ago. The editor of one of the most popular American magazines once alluded to him as “the most widely read person who writes in the English language.” More than half a million copies of his books have been sold in this country. England and the English colonies all over the world have taken at least half as many in addition. His sketches and shorter articles have been published in every language which is printed, and the larger books have been translated into German, French, Italian, Norwegian, Danish, etc. He is one of the few living men with a truly world-wide reputation. Unless the excellent gentlemen who have been engaged in revising the Scriptures should claim the authorship of their work, there is no other living writer whose books are now so widely read as Mark Twain’s; and it may not be out of the way to add that in more than one pious household the “Innocents Abroad” is laid beside the family Bible, and referred to as a hand-book of Holy Land description and narrative.

Off the platform and out of his books, Mark Twain is Samuel L. Clemens--a man who was born November 30, 1835. He is of a very noticeable personal appearance, with his slender figure, his finely shaped head, his thick, curling, very gray hair, his heavy arched eyebrows, over dark gray eyes, and his sharply, but delicately, cut features. Nobody is going to mistake him for any one else, and his attempts to conceal his identity at various times have been comical failures. In 1871 Mr. Clemens made his home in Hartford, and in some parts of the world Hartford to-day is best known because it is his home. He built a large and unique house in Nook Farm, on Farmington Avenue, about a mile and a quarter from the old centre of the city. It was the fancy of its designer to show what could be done with bricks in building, and what effect of variety could be got by changing their color, or the color of the mortar, or the angle at which they were set. The result has been that a good many of the later houses built in Hartford reflect in one way or another the influence of this one. In their travels in Europe, Mr. and Mrs. Clemens have found various rich antique pieces of household furniture, including a great wooden mantel and chimney-piece, now in their library, taken from an English baronial hall, and carved Venetian tables, bedsteads, and other pieces. These add their peculiar charm to the interior of the house. The situation of the building makes it very bright and cheerful. On the top floor is Mr. Clemens’s own working-room. In one corner is his writing-table, covered usually with books, manuscripts, letters, and other literary litter; and in the middle of the room stands the billiard-table, upon which a large part of the work of the place is expended. By strict attention to this business, Mr. Clemens has become an expert in the game; and it is part of his life in Hartford to get a number of friends together every Friday for an evening of billiards. He even plans his necessary trips away from home so as to get back in time to observe this established custom.

Mr. Clemens divides his year into two parts, which are not exactly for work and play respectively, but which differ very much in the nature of their occupations. From the first of June to the middle of September, the whole family, consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Clemens and their three little girls, are at Elmira, N. Y. They live there with Mr. T. W. Crane, whose wife is a sister of Mrs. Clemens. A summer-house has been built for Mr. Clemens within the Crane grounds, on a high peak, which stands six hundred feet above the valley that lies spread out before it. The house is built almost entirely of glass, and is modeled exactly on the plan of a Mississippi steamboat’s pilot-house. Here, shut off from all outside communication, Mr. Clemens does the hard work of the year, or rather the confining and engrossing work of writing, which demands continuous application, day after day. The lofty work-room is some distance from the house. He goes to it every morning about half-past eight and stays there until called to dinner by the blowing of a horn about five o’clock. He takes no lunch or noon meal of any sort, and works without eating, while the rules are imperative not to disturb him during this working period. His only recreation is his cigar. He is an inveterate smoker, and smokes constantly while at his work, and, indeed, all the time, from half-past eight in the morning to half-past ten at night, stopping only when at his meals. A cigar lasts him about forty minutes, now that he has reduced to an exact science the art of reducing the weed to ashes. So he smokes from fifteen to twenty cigars every day. Some time ago he was persuaded to stop the practice, and actually went a year and more without tobacco; but he found himself unable to carry along important work which he undertook, and it was not until he resumed smoking that he could do it. Since then his faith in his cigar has not wavered. Like other American smokers, Mr. Clemens is unceasing in his search for the really satisfactory cigar at a really satisfactory price, and, first and last, has gathered a good deal of experience in the pursuit. It is related that, having entertained a party of gentlemen one winter evening in Hartford, he gave to each, just before they left the house, one of a new sort of cigar that he was trying to believe was the object of his search. He made each guest light it before starting. The next morning he found all that he had given away lying on the snow beside the pathway across his lawn. Each smoker had been polite enough to smoke until he got out of the house, but every one, on gaining his liberty, had yielded to the instinct of self-preservation and tossed the cigar away, forgetting that it would be found there by daylight. The testimony of the next morning was overwhelming, and the verdict against the new brand was accepted.

At Elmira, Mr. Clemens works hard. He puts together there whatever may have been in his thoughts and recorded in his note-books during the rest of the year. It is his time of completing work begun, and of putting into definite shape what have been suggestions and possibilities. It is not his literary habit, however, to carry one line of work through from beginning to end before taking up the next. Instead of that, he has always a number of schemes and projects going along at the same time, and he follows first one and then another, according as his mood inclines him. Nor do his productions come before the public always as soon as they are completed. He has been known to keep a book on hand for five years, after it was finished. But while the life at Elmira is in the main seclusive and systematically industrious, that at Hartford, to which he returns in September, is full of variety and entertainment. His time is then less restricted, and he gives himself freely to the enjoyment of social life. He entertains many friends, and his hospitable house, seldom without a guest, is one of the literary centers of the city. Mr. Howells is a frequent visitor, as Bayard Taylor used to be. Cable, Aldrich, Henry Irving, Stanley, and many others of wide reputation, have been entertained there. The next house to Mr. Clemens’s on the south is Charles Dudley Warner’s home, and the next on the east is Mrs. Stowe’s, so that the most famous three writers in Hartford live within a stone’s throw of each other.

At Hartford Mr. Clemens’s hours of occupation are less systematized, but he is no idler there. At some times he shuts himself in his working-room and declines to be interrupted on any account, though there are not wanting some among his expert billiard-playing friends to insist that this seclusion is merely to practice uninterruptedly while they are otherwise engaged. Certainly he is a skillful player. He keeps a pair of horses, and rides more or less in his carriage, but does not drive, or ride on horseback. He is, however, an adept upon the bicycle. He has made its conquest a study, and has taken, and also experienced, great pains with the work. On his bicycle he travels a great deal, and he is also an indefatigable pedestrian, taking long walks across country, frequently in the company of his friend the Rev. Joseph H. Twichell, at whose church (Congregational) he is a pew-holder and regular attendant. For years past he has been an industrious and extensive reader and student in the broad field of general culture. He has a large library and a real familiarity with it, extending beyond our own language into the literatures of Germany and France. He seems to have been fully conscious of the obligations which the successful opening of his literary career laid upon him, and to have lived up to its opportunities by a conscientious and continuous course of reading and study which supplements the large knowledge of human nature that the vicissitudes of his early life brought with them. His resources are not of the exhaustible sort. He is a member of (among other social organizations) the Monday Evening Club of Hartford, that was founded nearly twenty years ago by the Rev. Dr. Bushnell, Dr. Henry, and Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull, and others, with a membership limited to twenty. The club meets on alternate Monday evenings from October to May in the houses of the members. One person reads a paper and the others then discuss it; and Mr. Clemens’s talks there, as well as his daily conversation among friends, amply demonstrate the spontaneity and naturalness of his irrepressible humor.

His inventions are not to be overlooked in any attempt to outline his life and its activities. “Mark Twain’s Scrap-Book” must be pretty well known by this time, for something like 100,000 copies of it have been sold yearly for ten years or more. As he wanted a scrap-book, and could not find what he wanted, he made one himself, which naturally proved to be just what other people wanted. Similarly, he invented a note-book. It is his habit to record at the moment they occur to him such scenes and ideas as he wishes to preserve. All note-books that he could buy had the vicious habit of opening at the wrong place and distracting attention in that way. So, by a simple contrivance, he arranged one that always opens at the right place; that is, of course, at the page last written upon. Other simple inventions by Mark Twain include a vest which enables the wearer to dispense with suspenders; a shirt, with collars and cuffs attached, which requires neither buttons nor studs; a perpetual-calendar watch-charm, which gives the day of the week and of the month; and a game whereby people may play historical dates and events upon a board, somewhat after the manner of cribbage, being a game whose office is twofold--to furnish the dates and events, and to impress them permanently upon the memory.

In 1885 Mark Twain and George W. Cable made a general tour of the country, each giving readings from his own works: and they had crowded houses and most cordial receptions. It was not a new sort of occupation for Mark Twain. Back in the early days, before his first book appeared, he delivered lectures in the Pacific States. His powers of elocution are remarkable, and he has long been considered by his friends one of the most satisfactory and enjoyable readers of their acquaintance. His parlor-reading of Shakspeare and Browning is described as a masterly performance. He has hitherto refused to undertake any general course of public reading, though very strong inducements have been offered to him to go to the distant English colonies, even as far as Australia.

CHARLES HOPKINS CLARK.

[After the failure of the firm of Charles L. Webster & Co., of which he was a member, Mr. Clemens accomplished the Herculean task of discharging debts not legally his, by a lecture tour in this country and in Australia. On his return home, he was met in England by the sad news of the sudden death of his eldest daughter. After four more years in Europe, for the most part in Vienna, he came back to this country. The Hartford home was left unoccupied, partly on account of sad associations, and the family spent the winter in New York. They then leased a house at Riverdale on the Hudson, from where they will move to the new home at Tarrytown which Mr. Clemens has recently bought.--EDITORS.]

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

AT WEST NEW BRIGHTON

It is not noticed that the most determined fighters, both in battle and on the field of public affairs, are often the gentlest, most peaceable men in private converse and at home. The public was for a long time accustomed to regard Mr. Curtis as a combatant; but many who know of him in that character would have been surprised could they have met him in the quiet study on Staten Island, where his work was done.

A calm, solid figure, of fine height and impressive carriage, a moderately ruddy complexion, with snowy side-whiskers, and gray hair parted at the crown, gave him somewhat the appearance that we conventionally ascribe to English country gentlemen. There was an air of repose about the surroundings and the occupant of the room where he worked. Over the door hung a mellowed and rarely excellent copy of the Stratford portrait of Shakspeare; shelves filled with books--the dumb yet resistless artillery of literature--were placed in all the spaces between the three windows; and other books and pamphlets--the small arms and equipments--covered a part of the ample table. A soft-coal fire in the grate threw out intermittently its broad, genial flame, as if inspired to illumination by the gaze of Emerson, or Daniel Webster, or the presence of blind Homer, whose busts were in an opposite corner. Altogether, the spot seemed very remote from all loud conflicts of the time. There was none of that confusion, that tempestuous disarray of newspapers, common in the workshops of editors. Yet an examination of the new books and documents which lay before him would show that Mr. Curtis established here a sluice-way through which was drawn a current of our chief literature and politics; and some of the lines in his massive lower face indicated the resoluteness which underlay his natural urbanity and kindness. Although his father came from Massachusetts and he himself was born in Providence, Mr. Curtis was identified with New York. In 1839, at the age of fifteen, he moved with his father to this city. Three years later he enlisted with the Brook Farm enthusiasts, but in 1844 withdrew to Concord, as Hawthorne had done. There, with his brother, he worked at farming, and continued to study until 1846, when he came back to New York, still bent upon preparing himself for a literary life, though he chose not to go to college. He went, instead, to Europe, remaining there and in the East for four years, six months of which he spent as a student at the University of Berlin.

Bringing home copious materials for the work, he wrote the “Nile Notes of a Howadji,” which the Harpers promptly accepted and published in 1851, the author being then twenty-seven. It is interesting to observe that he never went through that period of struggle to which most young writers must submit; a fact presaging the almost unbroken success of his later career. His other two books of travel appeared the next year, and at the same time he began to divide with Donald G. Mitchell the writing of the “Easy Chair” in _Harper’s Monthly_, which he afterward took wholly upon himself and continued until his death. His connection with _Harper’s Weekly_ began in 1857, and for six years he supplied a series of papers entitled “The Lounger” to that periodical. In 1863 he became its political editor. Meanwhile he had published “The Potiphar Papers,” the one successful satire on social New York since Irving’s “Salmagundi”; also “Prue and I,” and “Trumps,” his only attempt at a novel. This, too, treats of New York life. Finally he married, in 1856, and settled on Staten Island, where he lived until he died in 1892, in a house only a few rods distant from that in which he was married.

Yet, New Yorker as he was by long association, residence and interest, he had a close relationship with Massachusetts; partly through his marriage into a Massachusetts family of note--the Shaws; partly, perhaps, through the ties formed in those idyllic days at Brook Farm and Concord. And in Massachusetts he had another home, at Ashfield, to which he repaired every summer. It is an old farm-house on the outskirts of the village, which lies among beautiful maple-clad hills, between the Berkshire valley and the picturesque neighborhood of the Deerfields and Northampton. A number of years ago, with his friend Charles Eliot Norton, Mr. Curtis aided in founding a library for Ashfield, and he was so much of a favorite with his neighbors there, that they were anxious to make him their representative in Congress. He, however, seemed to prefer their friendship, and the glorious colors of their autumn woods, to their votes. Throughout the greater part of the fierce presidential campaign of 1884 Mr. Curtis conducted his voluminous work as editor and as independent chieftain in this quiet retreat. In 1875 it was to him that Concord turned when seeking an orator for the centenary of her famous “Fight”; and it was he again whom Boston, in the spring of 1883, invited to pronounce the eulogy upon Wendell Phillips. These are rather striking instances of Massachusetts dependence on a New York author and orator, discrepant from a theory which makes the dependence all the other way.

But Mr. Curtis long since gained national reputation as a lecturer. His first venture in that line was “Contemporary Art in Europe,” in 1851; then he fairly got under way with “The Age of Steam,” and soon became one of that remarkable group, including Starr King, Phillips and Beecher, who built up the lyceum into an important institution, and went all over the country lecturing. Mr. Curtis gave lectures every winter until 1872. I remember his saying, some time before that, “I have to write and deliver at least one sermon a year”; and indeed they _were_ sermons, of the most eloquent kind, rife with noble incitements to duty, patriotism, lofty thought, ideal conduct. In 1859, at Philadelphia, having long before engaged to speak on “The Present State of the Anti-Slavery Question,” he was told that it would not be allowed. Many people entreated him not to attempt it; but, while disclaiming any wish to create disturbance or to be martyred, he stated that he found himself forced to represent the principle of free speech, and that nothing could induce him to shrink from upholding it. Accordingly he began his lecture from a platform guarded by double rows of police. A tumult was raised in the hall, and a mob attacked the building simultaneously from without, intending to seize the speaker and hang him. For twenty minutes he waited silently, while vitriol-bottles and brick-bats were showered through the windows, and the police fought the rioters in both hall and street. The disturbance quelled, he went on for an hour, saying all that he had to say, amid alternate hisses and applause, and with the added emphasis of missiles from lingering rioters smashing the window glass. Is it surprising that this man should have the courage to rise and shout out a solitary “No,” against the hundreds of a State convention, or that he should have dared to “bolt” the Presidential nomination of his party, in spite of jeers and sneers and cries of treachery?

Mr. Curtis’s adversaries, in whatever else they may have been right, were apt to make two serious mistakes about him. One was, that they considered him a dilettante in politics; the other, that they overlooked his “staying-power.” For over thirty-four years he not only closely studied and wrote upon our politics, but he also took an active share in them.

For twenty-five years he was the chairman of a local Republican committee; he made campaign speeches; he sat in conventions; he influenced thousands of votes. Moreover, his views triumphed. They did so in the anti-slavery cause; they did so in the Civil Service Reform movement, and in the Independent movement of 1884. Surely that is not the record of a dilettante. He never pulled wires, nor did he seek office; that is all. Once he ran for Congress in a Democratic district, sure of defeat, but wishing to have a better chance, as candidate, for speech-making. He took the chairmanship of the Civil Service Advisory Board as an imperative duty, and resigned it as soon as he saw its futility under President Grant’s rule. Seward wanted to make him Consul-General in Egypt; Mr. Hayes offered him the mission to England, and again that to Germany; but he refused each one. His only political ambition was to instil sound principles, and to oppose practical _patriotism_ to “practical politics.” Honorary distinctions he was willing to accept, in another field. He was an LL.D. of Harvard, Brown and Madison universities; and in 1864 he was appointed a Regent of the University of New York, in the line of succession to John Jay, Chancellor Kent and Gulian Verplanck. This, it seems to me, was a very fit association, for Mr. Curtis was attached by his qualities of integrity and refinement to the best representatives of New York. The idea often occurs to one, that he, more than any one else, continued the example which Washington Irving set; an example of kindliness and good-nature blended with indestructible dignity, and of a delicately imaginative mind consecrating much of its energy to public service.

A teacher of a true State policy, rather than a statesman--an inspiring leader, more than he was an organizer or executant--he yet did much hard work in organizing, and tried to perpetuate the desirable tradition that culture should be joined to questions of right in Government, and of the popular weal. Twenty years a lecturer, without rest; twenty-five years a political editor; thirty-six years the suave and genial occupant of the “Easy Chair”; always steadfast to the highest aims, and ignoring unworthy slurs;--may we not say reasonably that he had “staying power”? One source of it was to be found in the serene cheer of his family life in that Staten Island cottage to which he clung so closely, and among the well-loved Ashfield hills, where he long continued to show that power.

GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP.

DR. EDWARD EGGLESTON

DR. EDWARD EGGLESTON

AT LAKE GEORGE

Owl’s Nest, the summer retreat of Dr. Edward Eggleston, is picturesquely situated on Dunham’s Bay, an arm of Lake George that deeply indents the land on the southeastern shore of the lake. This site was chosen partly because the land hereabout is owned by his son-in-law, and partly because of the seclusion the place affords from the main current of summer business and travel. With the utmost freedom of choice, a spot better suited to the needs of a literary worker with a family could hardly have been selected within the entire thirty-six miles covering the length of Lake George. Here, a few years ago, among black rocks, green woods, and blue waters, all pervaded by the breath of balsam, cedar, and pine, the author of “The Hoosier Schoolmaster,” after various flights to other northern places of resort, built the nest which he has since continued to occupy during six months of the year (with the exception of one year spent abroad), and in which he does the better part of his literary work, with material about him prepared at his winter home in Brooklyn. Owl’s Nest (doubtless jocosely so-called because of the utter absence from it of everything owlish) consists of three architecturally unique and tasteful buildings, occupying a natural prominence on the western shore of the bay. One, the family cottage, is a handsome-looking and commodious structure of wood, liberally furnished in a manner becoming the artistic and literary proclivities of its occupants. A little below this, to the right, and nearer the lake shore, is a summer boarding-house, built by the owner of the farm for the accommodation of the friends and admirers of Dr. Eggleston, who annually follow his flight into the country--so impossible, as it would seem, is it to escape the consequences of fame. The third and most striking structure upon the grounds is Dr. Eggleston’s workshop and library--his lasting and peculiar mark on the shores of Lake George, and the most prominent and elaborate piece of work of its kind to be found anywhere in northern New York. This was laid out by a Springfield, Mass., architect, after plans of the proprietor’s own. It is built of brown sandstone quarried on the spot, and laid by local stone-workers, finished in native chestnut and cherry by home mechanics, and decorated without with designs, and within with carvings, by the hand of the author’s artist-daughter, Allegra. Thus are secured for it at once a sturdy native character of its own, and a sylvan harmony and grace most pleasing to the fancy. Within this stronghold are arranged in due order the weapons of the literary champion--historian, novelist, and essayist--as well as the tools of his daughter, who has long been working in conjunction with her father in the production of the illustrated novel, “The Graysons,” given to the world in 1888.

It is into this stronghold that one is conducted on a Sunday afternoon, after the usual hearty hand-shake; especially if one’s visit relates in any way to things literary, or to questions that are easiest settled in an atmosphere of books. You are led through a door opening at the rear of the building, toward the cottage; immediately opposite to which, upon entering, appears the entrance to the artist’s studio; thence along a narrow passage traversing the length of the west wall and lined to the ceiling with books, through a doorway concealed by a pair of heavy dropping curtains, and into the author’s study, occupying the south end of the building. Here you are seated in a soft chair beside a deep, red brick fireplace (adorned with andirons and other appurtenances of ancient pattern, captured from some old colonial mansion), and before a modern bay-window opening to the south.

This window is, structurally, the chief glory and ornament of Dr. Eggleston’s study--broad, deep, and high, filling fully one-third of the wall-space in the south end, and so letting into the room, as it were, a good portion of all out-doors. From this window is obtained a charming view of the finest points in the surrounding scenery. Directly in front stretches out for miles to the southward a broad expanse of marsh, through which winds in sinuous curves a sluggish creek that ends its idling course where the line of blue water meets the rank green of the swale. Just here extends from shore to shore a long causeway of stone and timber, over which runs the highway through the neighborhood. Flanking the morass on each side are two parallel lines of mountains, looking blue and hazy and serene on a still day, but marvelously savage and wild and threatening when a storm is raging. These are, respectively, the French Mountain spur on the west; and on the east a long chain of high peaks, which begins with the Sugar Loaf, three miles inland, approaches the eastern shore, and forms with the grand peaks of Black, Buck and Finch mountains a magnificent border to the lake as far down as the Narrows, where it terminates in the bold and picturesque rock of Tongue Mountain.

This view constitutes almost the whole outlook from the spot, which is otherwise encroached upon by an intricate tangle of untamed nature--woods, cliffs and ravines, that back it up on the west, and flank it on either side down to the water’s edge. Turning from the view of things outside to consider the things within, you find yourself, apart from the necessary furniture of the room, walled in by books, to apparently interminable heights and lengths. I think Dr. Eggleston told me he has here something like four thousand volumes, perhaps one-fourth of which may be classed as general literature; the rest being volumes old and new, of ever conceivable date, style and condition, bearing upon the subject of colonial history. These have been gathered at immense pains from the libraries and bookstalls of Europe and America. In his special field of work Dr. Eggleston long ago proved himself a profound student and a thorough and successful operator. But if books tire you, there is at hand a most interesting collection of souvenirs of foreign travel--pictures, casts, quaint manuscripts, etc.--besides rare autographs, curios, and relics of every sort, gathered from everywhere, all of which he shows you with every effort and desire to entertain. In common with other distinguished persons, Dr. Eggleston has undergone persecution by the inveterate collector of autographs. One claimant for a specimen of his penmanship, writing from somewhere in the Dominion, solicited a “few lines” to adorn his album withal; whereupon he went to his desk and, taking a blank sheet, drew with pen and ink two parallel black lines across it, added his signature, and mailed it promptly to the enclosed address.

The work upon which Dr. Eggleston is engaged (“Life in the Thirteen Colonies”) has already occupied him over six years, and he estimates that it will be nearly six years more ere it is completed. Chapters of it have been appearing from time to time, during its composition, in _The Century_ magazine; and the first completed volume is now in the possession of The Century Co. for early publication. It is distinctively a history of the people in their struggle for empire; recording to the minutest details their public and domestic life and affairs, treating exhaustively of their manners, customs, politics, wars, religion, manufactures, and agriculture, showing in what they failed and in what succeeded. All this is wrought out in a vivid style, and possesses the interest and vigor of a romance. This has been his chief work. Otherwise he has contributed to the periodicals a large number of essays, short stories, etc., and has lately (by way of recreation) prepared a youth’s history of the American settlements, for school use. His working-hours are from eight in the morning till two in the afternoon, during which time he sticks to his desk, where he is to be found every day except Sunday, apparently hopelessly entangled in a thicket of notes and references, in manuscript and in print, which besets him on all sides. But to the worker there, each stack is a trusted tool on which he lays his hand unerringly when it is wanted. He has perfected a system of note-making which reduces the labor of reference to a minimum, while a type-writer performs for him the mechanical part of the work. His afternoons are given to socialities and recreation. His four little grandchildren come in for a large share of his leisure time; and it is a good thing to see them all rolling together on the study floor and making the place ring with their merriment.

I have seen in one of the older anthologies a poem entitled “The Helper,” of which I remember these words:

“There was a man, a prince among his kind,
And he was called the Helper.”

These verses, ever since I read them, have had a certain fascination for me. There is that in them suggestive of the flavor of rare old wine. There are helpers and helpers, from some types of which we pray evermore to be delivered. But there are the true, the born helpers, whom those in need of effectual advice and furtherance should as heartily pray to fall into the way of. These last do not always appear duly classified, labeled and shelved, to be taken down in answer to all trivial and promiscuous complaints, since, as has been noted, the true helper always proceeds, not by system, but by instinct, which through practice becomes in him unerring, and sufficient to guide him without stumbling. Such a helper is Edward Eggleston. He is a philanthropist who exists chiefly for the sake of doing good to his fellows, and who grows fat in doing it. It is a destiny from which he can not escape, and would not if he could.

One who observes much has often to deplore the absence from our modern life and institutions of any sphere large enough for the exercise and display of the full sum of the powers and faculties of any of our recent or contemporary great men of the people. Compare one of our most gifted men with the stage upon which he is compelled to act, and the disproportion is startling. How much that is above price is thus lost beyond recovery, and often how little we get from such beyond the results of some special popular talent, perhaps itself not representative of the strongest faculties of the person. I first got acquainted with Dr. Eggleston through his novels “The Circuit Rider” and “Roxy,” and being then in the novel-reading phase of intellectual development, I of course believed them unrivaled in contemporary literature, as they fairly are of their kind. My enthusiasm lasted till I heard him preach from the pulpit, and straightway my admiration for the writer was lost in astonishment at the preacher. Never had I heard such sermons; and I still believe I never have. But upon closer acquaintance, my astonishment at the preacher was swallowed up in wonder at the conversational powers of my new friend. Never had I heard such a talker--never have I heard such a one. But the best unveiling was the last, when I discovered under all these multifarious aspects the characteristics and attributes of a born philanthropist. Hitherto I had known only the writer, the preacher, and the talker; now I began to know the man.

In Paris, London, Venice, Florence, in the remote towns and villages of England and the Continent, wherever it has been the fortune of Dr. Eggleston to pitch his tent for a season, his domicile has everywhere been known and frequented by those in need of spiritual or material comfort; and few of such have ever had occasion to complain of failure in getting their reasonable wants satisfied. In these dispensations he has the warmest encouragement and support of Mrs. Eggleston and their daughters, by whom these beautiful and humane traits are fully shared. I once expressed my wonder as to how, amidst the severest professional labors, he could stand so much of this extraneous work, without detriment to his constitution. “What! do you call that work?” was the characteristic answer. Fortunately a splendid physique defeats the ill-effects that would seem inevitable. And indeed every literary man should possess the nerves of a farmer and the physique of a prize-fighter as a natural basis of success. Dr. Eggleston is a good sailor and an expert climber, and with these accomplishments, and a perpetually cheerful humor, he manages to keep his body in trim. He can row you out to Joshua’s Rock, or to Caldwell, if that lies in your way; or lead you with unerring precision through tangled labyrinths, to visit the choice nooks and scenes of the neighborhood, such as the lovely Paradise, the dark Inferno, and the mysterious Dark Brook.

There is something broadly and deeply elemental in Dr. Eggleston’s joyous appreciation of nature, his touching love of little children, and his insight into the springs of animal life. His home habits are simple and beautiful, abounding in all the Christian graces, courtesies, and cordialities which help to maintain the ideal household. Everybody knows something of his personal appearance, if not by sight, then by report--the great bulk of frame, the large leonine head, now slightly grizzled, the deep, sharp, kindly eyes, the movements deliberate but not slow; and more, perhaps, of his conversation--precise, rapid, multifarious, swarming with ideas and the suggestions of things which the rapidity of his utterance prevents him from elaborating--original, opulent of forms, rich in quotation and allusion. And then the laugh--vast, inspiriting, uplifting. But there is such a thing as friendship becoming too friendly!

O. C. AURINGER.

[Nearly a third of Dr. Eggleston’s mature life has been covered by the period since this article was written, and during this period his most finished literary work has been produced. “The Faith Doctor,” his last novel, was published in 1891; a few years later two school readers for young children, “Stories of American Life and Adventure” and “Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans” appeared. These books the author estimates highly. In 1899 “The Beginners of a Nation” was published, and in 1901 “The Transit of Civilization,”--the crowning labor of his life and the outcome of historical researches which he has been carrying on for twenty years. The year just past has been devoted to the preparation of a new school history of the United States. Dr. Eggleston’s health is unstable, and he may not continue his writing, but he has in contemplation a volume relating to life in the United States in the seventeenth century, and also a somewhat autobiographical work, not so much concerning himself as phases of life that he has seen.--EDITORS.]

EDWARD EVERETT HALE

EDWARD EVERETT HALE

ON ROXBURY HEIGHTS, BOSTON

The pulpit of Boston--what a fellowship of goodly names the phrase recalls! Knotty old stub-twist Cotton Mather,

“With his wonderful inkhorn at his side”;

saintly Ellery Channing; courtly Edward Everett; soaring Emerson; sledge-hammer Beecher, _père_; Parker, the New England Luther; golden-mouthed Starr King; mystic, Oriental Weiss; Freeman Clarke--steady old “Saint James”; Father Taylor, the Only; quaint, erratic Bartol, the last of the Transcendentalists; impetuous Phillips Brooks; and manly, practical Everett Hale. Can you measure the light they have spread around--its range, its brilliancy? The Christian pulpit of Boston has been a diadem of light to half the world. It has been distinctively not an ecclesiastical, but a patriotic, educational, and intellectual force. Yet, out of the whole cluster of preacher-authors, one can strictly claim for literature only our American Kingsley--Edward Everett Hale. It is not so much by warrant of his studies in Spanish history that we class him among the _literati_--although in some degree he has proved the successor of Prescott in this field, and has lately prepared “The Story of Spain” for Putnam’s Nations Series; but it is in virtue of his novels, his help-stories for young folks, and his books of travel.