Chapter XII: Act IV: , Scene I. Henry, with lute, singing (1)

Ope, throw ope thy bower door,
And come thou forth, my sweet!
'Tis morn, the watch of love is o'er,
And mating hearts should meet.
The stars have fled and left their grace
In every blossom's lifted face,
And gentle shadows fleck the light
With tender memories of the night.
Sweet, there's a door to every shrine;
Wilt thou, as morning, open thine?
Hark! now the lark has met the clouds,
And rains his sheer melodious flood;
The green earth casts her mystic shrouds
To meet the flaming god!
Alas, for me there is no dawn
If Glaia come not with the sun.

[_Enter Glaia. The king kneels as she approaches._]

_Gla._ 'Tis you!

_Hen._ [Leaping up] Pardoned! Queen of this bowerland,
Your glad eyes tell me that I have not sinned.

_Gla._ How cam'st thou here? Now who plays Hubert false?
Nay, I'm too glad thou'rt come to question so.
'Tis easy to forgive the treachery
That opes our gates to angels.

_Hen._ O, I'm loved?

_Gla._ Yes, Henry. All the morn I've thought of you,
And I rose early, for I love to say
Good-by to my dear stars; they seem so wan
And loath to go away, as though they know
The fickle world is thinking of the sun
And all their gentle service of the night
Is quite forgot.

_Hen._ And what didst think of me?

_Gla._ That you could come and see this beauteous wood,
Fair with Spring's love and morning's kiss of grace,
You'd be content to live awhile with me,
Leave war's red step to follow living May
Passing to pour her veins' immortal flood
To each decaying root; and rest by springs
Where waters run to sounds less rude than song,
And hiding sibyls stir sweet prophecies.

_Hen._ The only springs I seek are in your eyes
That nourish all the desert of myself.
Drop here, O, Glaia, thy transforming dews,
And start fair summer in this waste of me!

_Gla._ Poor Henry! What dost know of me to love?

_Hen._ See yon light cloud half-kirtled with faint rose?
What do I know of it but that 'tis fair?
And yet I dream 'twas born of flower dews
And goes to some sweet country of the sky,
So cloud-like dost thou move before my love,
From beauty coming that I may not see,
To beauty going that I can but dream.
O, love me, Glaia! Give to me this hand,
This miracle of warm, unmelting snow,
This lily bit of thee that in my clasp
Lies like a dove in all too rude a cote--
Wee heaven-cloud to drop on monarch brows
And smooth the ridgy traces of a crown!
Rich me with this, and I'll not fear to dare
The darkest shadow of defeat that broods
O'er sceptres and unfriended kings.

_Gla._ Why talk
Of crowns and kings? This is our home, dear Henry,
For if you love me you will stay with me.

_Hen._ Ah, blest to be here, and from morning's top
Review the sunny graces of the world,
Plucking the smilingest to dearer love,
Until the heart becomes the root and spring
Of hopes as natural and as simply sweet
As these bright children of the wedded sun
And dewy earth!

_Gla._ I knew you'd stay, my brother!
You'll live with me!

_Hen._ But there's a world not this,
O'er-roofed and fretted by ambition's arch,
Whose sun is power and whose rains are blood,
Whose iris bow is the small golden hoop
That rims the forehead of a king,--a world
Where trampling armies and sedition's march
Cut off the flowers of descanting love
Ere they may sing their perfect word to man,
And the rank weeds of envies, jealousies,
Push up each night from day's hot-beaten paths--

_Gla._ O, do not tell me, do not think of it!

_Hen._ I must. There is my world, and there my life
Must grow to gracious end, if so it can.
If thou wouldst come, my living periapt,
With virtue's gentle legend overwrit,
I should not fail, nor would this flower cheek,
Pure lily cloister of a praying rose,
E'er know the stain of one despoiling tear
Shed for me graceless. Will you come, my Glaia?

_Gla._ Into that world? No, thou shalt stay with me.
Here you shall be a king, not serve one. Ah,
The whispering winds do never counsel false,
And senatorial trees droop not their state
To tribe and treachery. Nature's self shall be
Your minister, the seasons your envoys
And high ambassadors, bearing from His court
The mortal olive of immortal love.

_Hen._ To man my life belongs. Hope not, dear Glaia,
To bind me here; and if you love me true,
You will not ask me where I go or stay,
But that your feet may stay or go with mine.
Let not a nay unsweet those tender lips
That all their life have ripened for this kiss.
[_Kisses her_]
O ruby purities! I would not give
Their chaste extravagance for fruits Iran
Stored with the honey of a thousand suns
Through the slow measure of as many years!

_Gla._ Do brothers talk like that?

_Hen._ I think not, sweet

_Gla._ But you will be my brother?

_Hen._ We shall see.

_Gla._ And you will stay with me? No? Ah, I fear
All that you love in me is born of these
Wild innocences that I live among,
And far from here, all such sweet value lost,
I'll be as others are in your mad world,
Or wither mortally, even as the sprig
A moment gone so pertly trimmed this bough.
Let us stay here, my Henry. We shall be
Dear playmates ever, never growing old,--
Or if we do 'twill be at such a pace
Time will grow weary chiding, leaving us
To come at will.

_Hen._ No, Glaia. Even now
I must be gone. I came for this----to say
I'd come again, and bid you watch for me.
A tear? O, love! One moment, then away!

[_Exeunt. Curtain_]

FOOTNOTE:

[65] Copyright, 1906, by Charles Scribner's Sons.

HARRY L. MARRINER

Harry Lee Marriner, newspaper poet, was born at Louisville, Kentucky, March 24, 1871, the son of a schoolman. He was educated by his father and in the public schools of his native city. He engaged in a dozen different businesses before he suddenly discovered that he could write, which discovery caused him to accept a position on the now defunct _Chicago Dispatch_, from which he went to _The Evening Post_, of Louisville, remaining with that paper for several years. In 1902 Mr. Marriner went to Texas and became assistant city editor of the _Dallas News_; and he has since filled practically all the editorial positions, being at the present time Sunday editor of both the _Dallas News_ and the _Galveston News_, which are under the same management. In 1907 Mr. Marriner originated a feature consisting of a daily human interest poem, printed on the front page of his two papers. For some time he concealed his identity under the title of "The News Staff Poet," but in 1909 he discarded his cloak and came out into the sunlight of reality in order that his hundreds of admirers throughout the Southwest might be content. Mr. Marriner's "poetry" is rather homely verse based upon the everyday things and thoughts and experiences of everyday people. This verse has had a wonderful vogue in Texas and Oklahoma, and the surrounding States. Dealing with dogs and "kids," with sore toes and sentiment, with joys and griefs, dolls and ball gowns, country stores and city life, street cars and prairie schooners, mint-fringed creeks and bucking bronchos, it is a medley of everything human. The cream of his verse has been brought together in three charming little books: _When You and I Were Kids_ (New York, 1909); _Joyous Days_ (Dallas, 1910); and _Mirthful Knights in Modern Days_ (Dallas, 1911). Mr. Marriner has written the lyrics for two musical comedies; and he has had short-stories in the periodicals.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. Letters from Mr. Marriner to the Author; _The Dallas
News_ (December 2, 1911).

WHEN MOTHER CUTS HIS HAIR[66]

[From _When You and I Were Kids_ (New York, 1909)]

How doth the mind of man go back to when he was a boy;
When feet were full of tan and dust, and life was full of joy;
But many a man looks back in fear, for in a time-worn chair,
He sees himself draped in a sheet, while Mother cuts his hair.

The scissors drag, and sniffles rise when ears lop in the way,
And on the porch rain locks of hair like tufts of prairie hay,
'Til in the glass a little boy, his anguish scarcely hid,
Looks on himself and views with pain the job that Mother did.

The mule may shed in summertime the felt that Nature grew,
The rabbit may lose bits of fur, and look like blazes, too;
But neither bears that patchwork look, that war map of despair,
That zigzags on the small boy's head when Mother cuts his hair.

SIR GUMSHOO[67]

[From _Mirthful Knights in Modern Days_ (Dallas, 1911)]

Sir Gumshoo, known as Wot d'Ell, a noble Knight from Spain,
Was one who was so strong a Pro he'd water on the brain.
He would not drink a dram at all, or even sniff at it,
And just the sight of lager beer would throw him in a fit.

It chanced one day Sir Gumshoo rode upon a noble quest--
His lady had acquired a cold that settled on her chest,
And to the rural districts he repaired, for it was plain
He must secure some goosegrease that she might get well again.

He found a rude, bucolic rube who had goosegrease to sell;
Sir Gumshoo bought about a quart, and all was going well
When he who rendered geese to grease made him a stealthy sign
And led him to a bottle filled with elderberry wine.

The Knight declined; he was a Pro, which fact he did explain;
The farmer, sore disgusted, took his goosegrease back again,
Whereat the Knight in anguish sore gave up himself for lost
And took a fierce and fiery drink with all his fingers crossed.

That night he rode as rides a pig upon a circus steed;
He clutched his charger 'round the neck, for he was stewed indeed,
And, bowing to his lady fair, as bows the wind-tossed pine,
He handed her part of a quart of elderberry wine.

FOOTNOTES:

[66] Copyright, 1909, by the Author.

[67] Copyright, 1911, by the Author.

LUCIEN V. RULE

Lucien V. Rule, poet, was born at Goshen, Kentucky, August 29, 1871. He spent one year at State College, Lexington, when he went to Centre College, Danville, from which he was graduated in 1893. Mr. Rule studied for the ministry, but he later engaged in newspaper work, in which he spent six or seven years. During the last few years he has devoted his time to writing and speaking upon social and religious subjects. His first book of poems, entitled _The Shrine of Love and Other Poems_ (Chicago, 1898), is his best known work. He is also the author of a small pamphlet of social and political satires, entitled _When John Bull Comes A-Courtin'_ (Louisville, 1903). This contains the title-poem, the sub-title of which reads: "Sundry Meditations on the Rumored Matrimonial Alliance between J. Bull, Bart., and his cousin, Lady Columbia;" and several shorter poems. Those inscribed to Tolstoi, Whittier, and Walt Whitman are very strong. Mr. Rule's latest book is _The House of Love_ (Indianapolis, 1910). In 1913 he will probably publish a group of poetic dramas-in-cameo for young people, and a brief collection of biographical studies. Mr. Rule resides at his birthplace, Goshen, Kentucky.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Southern Writers_, by W. P. Trent (New York, 1905);
letters from Mr. Rule to the Author.

WHAT RIGHT HAST THOU?[68]

[From _When John Bull Comes A Courtin'_ (Louisville, Kentucky, 1903)]

What right hast thou to more than thou dost need
While others perish for the want of bread?
What right hast thou upon a palace bed
To idly slumber while the homeless plead;
A vicious and voluptuous life to lead,
While millions struggle on in rags and shame?
What right hast thou thus vilely to inflame
Thy fellow men with hate, O fiend of greed?
What right hast thou to take the hallowed name
Of God upon thy lips, or Christ's, who came
To save the race from sorrows thou dost cause?
Not always helpless 'neath thy cruel paws,
O Beast of Capital, shall Labor lie;
Thy doom this day is thundered from the sky!

THE NEW KNIGHTHOOD

[From the same]

Arise, my soul, put off thy dark despair;
Say not the age of chivalry is gone;
For lo, the east is kindling with its dawn,
And bugle echoes bid thee wake to wear
Majestic moral armour, and to bear
A worthy part in truth's eternal fray.
Say not the muse inspires no more to-day,
Nor that fame's flowers no longer flourish fair.
Live thou sublimely and then speak thy heart,
If thou wouldst build an altar unto art.
Stand with the struggling and the stars above
Will shower celestial thoughts to thrill thy pen.
Put self away and walk alone with Love,
And thou shalt be the marvel of all men!

FOOTNOTE:

[68] Copyright, 1903, by the Author.

EVA WILDER BRODHEAD

Mrs. Eva Wilder (McGlasson) Brodhead, novelist and short-story writer, was born at Covington, Kentucky, in 187-. Her parents were not of Southern origin, her father having been born in Nova Scotia, and her mother at Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She was educated in New York City and in her native town of Covington. She began to write when but eighteen years of age, and a short time thereafter her first novel appeared, _Diana's Livery_ (New York, 1891). This was set against a background most alluring: the Shaker settlement at Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, into which a young man of the world enters and falls in love with a pretty Shakeress. Her second story, _An Earthly Paragon_ (New York, 1892), which was written in three weeks, ran through _Harper's Weekly_ before being published in book form. It was a romance of the Kentucky mountains, laid around Chamouni, the novelist's name for Yosemite, Kentucky. It was followed by a novelette of love set amidst the salt-sea atmosphere of an eastern watering place, _Ministers of Grace_ (New York, 1894). Hildreth, the scene of this little story, is anywhere along the Jersey coast from Atlantic City to Long Branch. _Ministers of Grace_ also appeared serially in _Harper's Weekly_, and when it was issued in book form Col. Henry Watterson called the attention of Richard Mansfield to it as a proper vehicle for him, and the actor promptly secured the dramatic rights, hoping to present it upon the stage; but his untimely death prevented the dramatization of the tale under highly favorable auspices. It was the last to be published under the name of Eva Wilder McGlasson, as this writer was first known to the public, for on December 5, 1894, she was married in New York to Mr. Henry C. Brodhead, a civil and mining engineer of Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania. Mrs. Brodhead's next novelette, _One of the Visconti_ (New York, 1896), the background of which was Naples, the hero being a young Kentuckian and the heroine of the old and famous Visconti family, was issued by the Scribner's in their well-known Ivory Series of short-stories. Her last Kentucky novel, _Bound in Shallows_ (New York, 1896), originally appeared in _Harper's Bazar_. That severe arbiter of literary destinies, _The Nation_, said of this book: "No such work as this has been done by any American woman since Constance Fenimore Woolson died." It was founded on material gathered at Burnside, Kentucky, where Mrs. Brodhead spent two summers. Her most recent work, _A Prairie Infanta_ (Philadelphia, 1904), is a Colorado juvenile, first published in _The Youth's Companion_. Aside from her books, Mrs. Brodhead won a wide reputation as a short-story writer and maker of dialect verse. More than fifty of her stories have been printed in the publications of the house of Harper, the publishers of four of her books; in _The Century_, _Scribner's_, and other leading periodicals. Many of her admirers hold that the short-story is her especial forte. Five of them may be mentioned as especially well done: _Fan's Mammy_, _A Child of the Covenant_, _The Monument to Corder_, _The Eternal Feminine_, and _Fair Ines_. She has written much dialect verse which appeared in the Harper periodicals, _The Century_, _Judge_, _Puck_, and other magazines. Neither her short-stories nor her verse has been collected and issued in book form. Since her marriage Mrs. Brodhead has traveled in Europe a great deal, and in many parts of the United States, traveled until she sometimes wonders whether her home is in Denver or New York, and, although she is in the metropolis more than she is in the Colorado capital, her legal residence is Denver, some distance from the mining town of Brodhead, named in honor of her husband's geological discoveries and interests. In 1906 she was stricken with a very severe illness, followed by her physician's absolute mandate of no literary work until her health should be reestablished, which has been accomplished but recently. She has published but a single story since her sickness, _Two Points of Honor_, which appeared in _Harper's Weekly_ for July 4, 1908. At the present time Mrs. Brodhead is quite well enough to resume work; and the next few years should witness her fulfilling the earnest of her earlier novels and stories, firmly fixing her fame as one of the foremost women writers of prose fiction yet born on Kentucky soil.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Harper's Weekly_ (September 3, 1892); _The
Book-buyer_ (September, 1896).

THE RIVALS[69]

[From _Ministers of Grace_ (New York, 1894)]

As the days merged towards the end of August, Hildreth was packed to the very gates. The wiry yellow grasses along the neat walks were trampled into powder. The very sands, for all the effacing fingers of the tides, seemed never free of footprints, and by day and night the ocean promenade, the interior of the town, lake-sides, hotels, and the surf itself, were a press of holiday folk.

In these times Mr. Ruley seldom went forth in his rolling-chair, except early of a morning, when the beach was yet way-free, and the sands unfrequented save for a few barelegged men, who, with long wooden rakes, cleaned up the sea-verge for the day.

Sometimes Wade pushed the chair. But since the night when he gave Elizabeth the honeysuckles he had in some measure avoided the old preacher's small circle. There had been, on that occasion, a newness of impulse in his spirit which made him feel the advisability of keeping himself out of harm's way, however sweet that way might seem. Graham was the favored suitor. He, Wade, having no chance for the rose, could at least withhold his flesh from the thorn.

"So," said Gracie Gayle, "you're out of the running?"

"Ruled off," smiled Wade.

"Don't you make any mistakes," wisely admonished Miss Gayle. "I've seen her look at him, and I've seen her look at _you_."

"This is most surprising," indicated Wade, with a feigned accent. "You will pardon me, Gracie, if I scarcely credit your statement."

"Be sarcastic if you want to," said Gracie. "If you knew anything at all, you'd know that straws show which way the wind blows. When a woman regards a man with a kind of flat, frank sincerity, it's because her heart's altogether out of his reach. When she looks _around_ him rather than _at_ him, it's because----" Gracie lifted her shoulders suggestively.

"Grace," breathed Wade, gravely, "I am hurt to the quick to see you developing the germs of what painfully resembles thought. For Heaven's and your sex's sake, pause while there is yet time! Women who form the pernicious habit of thinking lose in time the magic key which unlocks the hearts of men."

Grace sniffed.

"Men's hearts are never locked," she said, sagaciously. "The heavier the padlock the smoother the hinges." She shook her crisp curls as she tripped away with her airy, mincing, soubrette tread.

Notwithstanding the inconsequent nature of this talk, it set Wade to thinking. Perhaps he had carried his principle of self-effacement too far. At all events, when he next saw Miss Ruley, he went up to her and stopped for a moment's conversation.

It chanced to be on the sands. Elizabeth was sitting by herself under the arch of a lace-hung sunshade, which cast shaking little shadows on her face, sprigging it with such delicate darkness as lurk in the misty milk of moss-agate.

"You are going in, then?" she asked, smiling up rather uncertainly, and noticing his flannel attire. "Mr. Graham is already very far out. That is he, I think, taking that big breaker. What a stroke!"

Wade, focussing an indulgent eye, saw a figure away beyond the other bathers, rising to the lift of a great billow. The man swam with a splendid motion. Whether he dived, or floated, or circled his arms in that whirling stroke of his, he seemed in subtle sympathy with the sea, possessed of a kinship with it, and in an element altogether his own.

Wade expressed an appropriate sentiment of admiration.

Just then Gracie Gayle came gambolling along, a childish shape, kirtled to the knee in bright blue, and turbaned in vivid scarlet. Among the loose-waisted figures on the sands she was like a humming-bird scintillating in a staid gathering of barnyard fowls. Bailey was with her, having returned after a fortnight's absence.

The two paused beside Elizabeth, and Wade went on, confused by the singular way in which that small fair face, shadow-streaked and faintly smiling, lingered in his vision. He was still perplexed with a half-pleasant, half-pained consciousness of it as he plunged into the pushing surf and felt a dizzy world of water heave round him. The surge was strong to-day, and the splashing and screaming of the shore bathers sent him farther and still farther out. Gradually their cries lessened in his ear, and there was with him presently only the hollow thud of the waves and the rushing hiss of the crestling foam.

Once, as he rose to a sea-lift, it seemed to him that he heard a sound that was not the boom of the breakers nor the song of the slipping froth. It came again, whatever it was, and as he gave ear he took in a human intonation, sharp and agonized. It was a cry for help.

Wade shook the brine from his hair, freeing his gaze for an outlook. In the glassy mound of water to his right a face, lean and white with alarm, gleamed and faded. That the sinking man was Graham came instantly to Wade's mind--Graham, a victim to some one of the mischances which the sea reserves for those who adventure too confidently with her.

Wade struck out instantly for the spot where Graham's appalled features had briefly glimpsed. Shoreward he could note an increasing agitation among the multitudes. Evidently the people had noticed the peril of the remote swimmer whose exploits had so lately won admiring comment. The beachguard no doubt was buckling to his belt the life-rope coiled always on the sands for such emergencies. Cries of men and women rang stifled over the water--exclamations of fear and advice and excitement, mingled in a long continuous wail.

Graham's head rose in sight, a mere speck upon the dense green of the bulging water. Wade, fetching nearer in wide strokes, suddenly felt himself twisted violently out of his course, and whirled round in a futile effort with some mysterious current. He was almost near enough to lay hold of Graham when this new sensation explained lucidly the cause of Graham's danger. They were both in the claws of an undertow, which, as Wade realized its touch, appeared as if wrenching him straight out to the purring distance of the farther sea.

Even in the first consternation of this discovery he felt himself thrust hard against a leaden body, and in the same instant Graham's hands snatched at him in a desperate reach for life.

"For God's sake don't hold me like this!" Wade expostulated. "Let go. Trust me to do what I can. You're strangling me, man!"

But Graham was past sanity. He only clutched with the more frenzy at the thing which seemed to keep him from the ravenous mouth of the snarling waters.

Wade, in a kind of composed despair, sent a look towards the beach. They were putting out a boat, a tiny sheel which frisked in the surf, and seemed motionless in the double action of the waves. Men laid hard at the oars. The little craft took the first big wave as a horse takes a hurdle. It dropped from the glassy height, and Wade saw it sink into a breach of the sea. Then flashing with crystal, it bore up again and outward.

The figures running and gesticulating on the beach had a marvellous distinctness to Wade's submerging eyes. He noticed the blue sky, flawed with scratches of white, the zigzag roof-lines of the great town, the twisting flags and meshes of the dark wire. Everything oppressed him with a sort of deadly clearness, as if a metal stamp should press in melting wax.

He was momently sinking, drawn ever outward by the undercurrent, and downward by the weighty burden throttling him in its senseless grasp. He looked once more through a blinding veil of foam, and saw the boat dipping far to the left. A phantasm of life flickered before him. Unsuspected trivialities shook out of their cells, and amazed him with the pygmy thrift of memory. Then came a sense of confusion, as if the spiritual and corporal lost each its boundary and ranged wild, and Wade felt the sea in his eyes, stroking them down as gently as ever any watcher by the dying.

FOOTNOTE:

[69] Copyright, 1894, by Harper and Brothers.

CORDIA GREER PETRIE

Mrs. Cordia Greer Petrie, a talented writer of very great promise and of decided performance, was born near Merry Oaks, Kentucky, February 12, 1872. When she was a child her parents removed to Louisville, Kentucky, and in the public schools of that city she was educated, after which she spent a half-year at old Eminence College, Eminence, Kentucky. In July, 1894, Miss Greer was married to Dr. Hazel G. Petrie, of Fairview, Kentucky, who, for the past ten years, has been mine physician in various sections of eastern Kentucky. At the present time he is serving six mines and making his home at Chenoa, near Pineville, Kentucky. In her writings Mrs. Petrie has created a character of great originality in Angeline Keaton, an unlettered inhabitant of a remote Kentucky hamlet. "Of the original Angeline," Mrs. Petrie once wrote, "I know but little. She and her shiftless, 'no-erkount' husband, Lum, together with her son, Jeems Henry, lived in Barren county, not far from Glasgow. Angeline supported the family by working on the 'sheers,' 'diggin one half the taters fur tother half!' She was very anxious for her boy to 'git an edjycation' and no sooner would he get comfortably settled in a 'cheer' until she would exclaim, 'Jeems Henry! Git up offen them britches, you lazy whelp! Git yer book and be gittin some larnin in your head!' Without a word Jim Henry would climb up the log wall and from under the rafters abstract his blue back speller." Characterization is Mrs. Petrie's chief strength; and she is a positive refutation of the masculine dictum that women lack humor. With her friend, Miss Leigh Gordon Giltner, the short-story writer, she collaborated on an Angeline sketch, entitled "When the Bees Got Busy," which was published in the _Overland Monthly_ for August, 1904; and the prize story reprinted at the end of this note is the only other Angeline story that has been published so far. She has won several prizes with other stories, but a group of the Angeline sketches are in manuscript, and they will shortly appear in book form. _Angeline Keaton_, "with her gaunt angular form clad in its scant calico gown," is sure to "score" when she makes her bow between the covers of a book. She is every bit as cleverly conceived as _Mrs. Wiggs_, _Susan Clegg_, or any of the other quaint women who have recently won the applause of the American public.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. Letters from Mrs. Petrie to the Author; Miss Leigh Gordon Giltner's study in _The Southern Home Journal_ (Louisville).

ANGELINE JINES THE CHOIR

[From _The Evening Post_ (Louisville, Kentucky)]

She sat upon the edge of the veranda, fanning herself with her "split" sunbonnet, a tall, angular woman, whose faded calico gown "lost connection" at the waist line. Her spring being dry, she came to our well for water. Discovering that Angeline Keaton was a "character," I invariably inveigled her to rest awhile on our cool piazza before retracing her steps up the steep, rocky hillside to her cabin home.

"I missed you yesterday," I said as a starter.

"Yes'm," she answered in a voice harsh and strident, yet touched with a peculiar sibilant quality characteristic of the Kentucky backwoodsman, "and thar wuz others that missed me, too!"

Settling herself comfortably, she produced from some hidden source a box of snuff and plied her brush vigorously.

"We-all have got inter a wrangle over at Zion erbout the church music," she began. "I and Lum, my old man, has been the leaders ever since we moved here from Lick-skillet. We wuz alluz on hand--Lum with his tunin' fork and me with my strong serpraner. When it come to linin' off a song, Lum wuz pintedly hard to beat. Why, folks come from fur and near to hear us, and them city folks, at Mis' Bowles' last summer, 'lowed thar warn't nothing in New York that could tech us. One of 'em offered us a dollar to sing inter a phonygraf reckerd, but we wuz afeerd to put our lives in jopperdy by dabblin' in 'lectricerty. But even celebrerty has its drawbacks, and a 'profit is not without honor in his own country,' as the saying is. A passel of 'em got jellus, a church meeting was called, unbeknownst to us, and ermong 'em they agreed to make a change in the music at old Zion. That peaked-faced Betty Button wuz at the bottom of it. Ever since she tuk that normal course at Bowling Green she's been endeverin' to push herself inter promernence here at Bear Waller. Fust she got up a class in delsarty, but even Bear Waller warn't dull ernough to take to that foolishness! Then she canvassed the county with a cuttin' system and a book called 'Law at a Glance.' Now she's teaching vokle culshure. She orter know singers, like poits, is born, not made! Jest wantin' to sing won't do it. It takes power. It's give up mine's the powerfullest voice in all Bear Waller. I kin bring old Brindle in when she's grazing in the woods, back o' Judge Bowles' medder, and I simply step out on the portico and call Lum to dinner when he's swoppin' yarns down to the store quarter o' mile away. Fur that matter, though, a deef and dum man could fetch Lum to _vittles_.

"Do you know Bear Waller owes its muserkil educashun to me? Mine wuz the fust accordyon brought to the place, and I wuz allus ready to play fur my nabers. I didn't hafter be _begged_. I orgernized the Zobo band, I lent 'em my ballads, but whar's my thanks? At the battin' of an eye they're ready to drop me for that quavery-voiced Button gal and them notes o' hern that's no more'n that many peryids and commers.

"When the committee waited on me and Lum we jest flew mad and 'lowed we'd quit. Maybe we wuz hasty, but it serves 'em right. Besides, these Bear Wallerites ain't compertent to appreshiate a voice like mine, nohow. I decided I'd take my letter to Glasgow and jine that brag choir of their'n. It did me good to think how it 'ud spite some folks to see me leadin' the singin' at the county seat!

"Lum wuz dead set ergin it, but armin' myself with the rollin' pin and a skillet o' bilin grease, I finally pervailed on him to give in. Lum is of a yieldin' dispersishun if a body goes at 'im right.

"Jim Henry, that's my boy, an' I tuk a early start. We had tied up the colt in the cow shed and I wuz congratulatin' myself on bein' shet of the pesky critter when I heerd him nicker. Lookin' back, I saw him comin' in a gallerp, his head turned to one side, while he fairly obscured the landscape with great clouds o' pike dust!

"We wuz crossin' the railroad when old Julie heered that nicker, an' right thar she balked. Neither gentle persuasion from the peach tree switch which I helt in my hand, nor well-aimed kicks of Jim Henry's boots in her flanks could budge her till that colt come up pantin' beside her. We jest did clear the track when the accomerdashun whizzed by. Well, sir, when old Julie spied them kyars she began buck-jumpin' in a manner that would'er struck terror to a less experienced hosswoman. Jim Henry, who wuz gazin' at the train with childlike pleasure, wuz tuk wholly by suprise, and before he knowed what wuz up he wuz precippytated inter the branches o' a red-haw tree. He crawled out, a wreck, his face and hands scratched and bleedin' and his britches hangin' in shreds, and them his Sundays, too! I managed to pin 'em tergether with beauty pins, and cautionin' him not to turn his back to the ordiance, we finally resumed our journey. That colt alluz tries hisself, and jest as we reached the square, in Glasgow, his appertite began clammerin', and Julie refused to go till the pesky critter's wants wuz appeased. Them Glasgowites is dear lovers of good hoss flesh, and quite a crowd gethered to discuss the good pints of the old mare and that mule colt.

"Some boys mistook Jim Henry for somebody they knowed and hollered, 'Say, Reube!' 'Hey, Reube!' at him. Jim Henry wuz fur explainin' to 'em their mistake, till one of 'em began to sing, 'When Reuben comes to town, he's shore to be done brown!' 'Jim Henry,' says I, sternly, 'you're no child o' mine ef you take _that_! Now, if you don't get down and thrash him I'm agoin' to set you afire when I get you home.'

"Jim Henry needed no second biddin'. He wuz off that nag in a jiffy, and the way he did wallerp that boy wuz a cawshun! He sellerbrated his victry by givin' the Bear Waller war-whoop. Then crawlin' up behind me, he said he wuz _now_ ready fur meetin'. That boy's a born fiter. He gets it honest, for me and Lum are both experts, but then practice makes perfect, as the sayin' is.

"Our arrival created considerable stir in meetin'. Why is it that when a distinguished person enters a church it allus perduces a flutter? Owin' to the rent in Jim Henry's britches, I shoved him inter the back seat. Cautionin' him not to let me ketch him throwin' paper wads, I swept merjestercally up the ile and tuk a seat by the orgin. A flood of approvin' glances fastened themselves on my jet bonnet and fur-lined dolman. I wuz sorry I didn't know the fust song. It must have been a new one to that choir. Thar wuz four of 'em and each one wuz singin' it to a different tune, and they jest couldn't keep tergether! The coarse-voiced gal to my rear lagged dretfully. When the tall blonde, who wuz the only one of 'em that knowed the tune, when she'd sing,

"'Wake the song!'

that gal who lagged would echo,

"'Wake the song!'

in a voice as coarse as Lum's. She 'peared to depend on the tall gal for the words, for when the tall 'un would sing,

"'Song of Ju-ber-lee,'

the gal that lagged, and the two gents, would repeat, 'Of Ju-ber-lee.'

"I passed her my book, thinkin' the words wuz tore out o' hern, but, la! she jest glared at me, and she and them gents, if anything, bellered louder'n ever. I looked at the preacher, expecting to see him covered with shygrin, but, la! he wuz takin' it perfectly cam, with his eyes walled up at the ceilin' and his hands folded acrost his stummick like he might be havin' troubles of his own.

"I kept hopin' that tryo would either ketch up with the leader or jest have the curridge to quit. Goodness knows, I done what I could fur 'em, by beatin' time with my turkey wing.

"Somebody must have give 'em a tip, for the next song which the preacher give out as 'a solo,' that tryo jest pintedly giv it up and set thar is silent as clambs. The tall gal riz and commenced singin' and that tryo never pertended to help her out! My heart ached in symperthy fur her as she stood thar alone, singin' away with her voice quaverin', and not a human bein' in that house jined in, not even the _preacher_! But she had _grit_, and kept right on! Most people would'er giv right up. She's a middlin' good singer, but is dretfully handercapt by that laggin' tryo and a passel o' church members that air too triflin' to sing in meetin'. The song wuz a new 'un to me, but havin' a nacheral year for music, I soon ketched the tune and jined in on the last verse with a vim. Of course I could only hummit, not knowin' the words, but I come down on it good and strong and showed them folks that Angeline Keaton ain't one to shirk a duty, if they wuz. After the sermon the preacher giv out 'Thar Is a Fountain Filled with Blood.' Here wuz my chanct to show 'em what the brag-voice of Bear Waller wuz like!

"With my voice risin' and falling and dwellin' with extry force on the fust syllerbles of foun-tin and sin-ners, in long, drawn-out meeter, I fairly lost myself in the grand old melerdy. I wuz soarin' inter the third verse when I discovered I wuz the only one in the house that knowed it! The rest of 'em wuz singin' it to a friverlous tune like them Mose Beasley plays on his fiddle! What wuz more, they wuz titterin' like I wuz in errer! The very idy! That wuz too much fur me, and beckernin' Jim Henry to foller, I marched outer meetin'!

"We found the old mare had slipped the bridle and gone home, so thar wuz nothin' left fur us to do but foot it. The last thing I heered as we struck the Bear Waller pike and set out fur home wuz that coarse-voiced gal, still lagging behind, as she sang,

"'The Blood of the Lamb!'"

MARIA THOMPSON DAVIESS

Miss Maria Thompson Daviess, author of _The Melting of Molly_, was born at Harrodsburg, Kentucky, in October, 1872, the descendant of the famous Joseph Hamilton Daviess, the granddaughter of the historian of Harrodsburg, whose full name she bears, and the niece of Mrs. H. D. Pittman and Miss Annie Thompson Daviess, the Kentucky novelists. Miss Daviess was graduated from Science Hill Academy, Shelbyville, Kentucky, in 1891, after which she studied English for a year at Wellesley College. She then went to Paris to study art at Julien's, and several of her pictures have been hung in the Salon. As a miniature painter she excelled. At the conclusion of her art course, Miss Daviess returned to America, making her home at Nashville, Tennessee, where she resides at the present time. She taught at Belmont College, Nashville, for a year or more, and set up as a painter of miniatures for a public that demanded values in their portraits that she could not see fit to grant, so she finally decided to write. Miss Daviess's first book, and the one that she is still best known by, was _Miss Selina Lue and the Soap-Box Babies_ (Indianapolis, 1909). Miss Lue, spinster, tucks babies into a row of soap-boxes, maintaining sort of a free day-nursery, and the reader has much delicious humor from her duties. _Miss Selina Lue_ was followed by _The Road to Providence_ (Indianapolis, 1910), dominated by the character of Mother Mayberry, guide, philosopher, and friend to a Tennessee town; _Rose of Old Harpeth_ (Indianapolis, 1911), was a love story "as ingenuous and sweet as a boy's first kiss under a ruffled sunbonnet." Selina Lue and Mother Mayberry were both past their bloom; Rose possessed the power and glory of youth. _The Treasure Babies_ (Indianapolis, 1911), was a delightful children's story, which has been dramatized and produced, but Miss Daviess's most charming novel, _The Melting of Molly_ (Indianapolis, 1912), was "the saucy success of the season," for eight months the best selling book in America. Molly must melt from the plumpest of widows to the slenderest of maidens in just three months because the sweetheart of her girlhood days, now a distinguished diplomat, homeward bound, demands a glimpse of her in the same blue muslin dress which she wore at their parting years ago. The melting process, with the O. Henry twist at the end, is the author's business to narrate, and she does it in the most fetching manner. The little novel is "gay, irresistible, all sweetness and spice and everything nice." Miss Daviess's latest story, _Sue Jane_ (New York, 1912), has for its heroine a little country girl who comes to Woodlawn Seminary (which is none other than the author's _alma mater_, Science Hill), is at first laughed at and later loved by the girls of that school. She is as quaint and charming a child as one may hope to meet in the field of juvenile fiction. _The Elected Mother_ (Indianapolis, 1912), the best of the three short-stories tucked in the back of the Popular edition of _Miss Selina Lue_ (New York, 1911), was a rather unique argument for woman's equal rights. It proves that motherhood and mayoralties may go hand and hand--in at least one modern instance. _Harpeth Roses_ (Indianapolis, 1912), were wise saws culled from the pages of her first four books, made into an attractive little volume. Just as the year of 1912 came to a close Miss Daviess's publishers announced that her new novel, _Andrew the Glad_, a love story, would appear in January, 1913. _Phyllis_, another juvenile, will also be issued in 1913, but will first be serialized in _The Visitor_, a children's weekly, of Nashville. That Miss Daviess has been an indefatigable worker may be gathered at a glance. She has the "best seller touch," which is the most gratifying thing a living writer may possess. The present public demands that its reading shall be as light as a cream puff and sparking as a brook, and, in order to qualify for _The Bookman's_ monthly handicap, a writer must possess those two requisites: deftness of touch and brightness. These Miss Daviess has. And so, when the summer-days are over-long and the winter's day is dull, Maria Thompson Daviess and her brood of books will be found certain dispellers of earthly woes and bringers of good cheer.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Bookman_ (December, 1909); _The Bookman_ (July,
1912).

MRS. MOLLY MORALIZES[70]

[From _The Melting of Molly_ (Indianapolis, 1912)]

Why don't people realize that a seventeen-year-old girl's heart is a sensitive wind-flower that may be shattered by a breath? Mine shattered when Alfred went away to find something he could do to make a living, and Aunt Adeline gave the hard green stem to Mr. Carter when she married me to him. Poor Mr. Carter!

No, I wasn't twenty, and this town was full of women who were aunts and cousins and law-kin to me, and nobody did anything for me. They all said with a sigh of relief, "It will be such a nice safe thing for you, Molly." And they really didn't mean anything by tying up a gay, dancing, frolicking, prancing colt of a girl with a terribly ponderous bridle. But God didn't want to see me always trotting along slow and tired and not caring what happened to me, even pounds and pounds of plumpness, so he found use for Mr. Carter in some other place but this world, and I feel that He is going to see me through whatever happens. If some of the women in my missionary society knew how friendly I feel with God, they would put me out for contempt of court.

No, the town didn't mean anything by chastening my spirit with Mr. Carter, and they didn't consider him in the matter at all, poor man. Of that I feel sure. Hillsboro is like that. It settled itself here in a Tennessee valley a few hundreds of years ago and has been hatching and clucking over its own small affairs ever since. All the houses set back from the street with their wings spread out over their gardens, and mothers here go on hovering even to the third and fourth generation. Lots of times young, long-legged, frying-size boys scramble out of the nests and go off to college and decide to grow up where their crow will be heard by the world. Alfred was one of them.

And, too, occasionally some man comes along from the big world and marries a plump little broiler and takes her away with him, but mostly they stay and go to hovering life on a corner of the family estate. That's what I did.

I was a poor, little, lost chick with frivolous tendencies and they all clucked me over into this empty Carter nest which they considered well-feathered for me. It gave them all a sensation when they found out from the will just how well it was feathered. And it gave me one, too. All that money would make me nervous if Mr. Carter hadn't made Doctor John its guardian, though I sometimes feel that the responsibility of me makes him treat me as if he were my step-grandfather-in-law. But all in all, though stiff in its knees with aristocracy, Hillsboro is lovely and loving; and couldn't inquisitiveness be called just real affection with a kind of squint in its eye?

And there I sat on my front steps, being embraced in a perfume of everybody's lilacs and peachblow and sweet syringa and affectionate interest and moonlight, with a letter in my hand from the man whose two photographs and many letters I had kept locked up in the garret for years. Is it any wonder I tingled when he told me that he had never come back because he couldn't have me and that now the minute he landed in America he was going to lay his heart at my feet? I added his honors to his prostrate heart myself and my own beat at the prospect. All the eight years faded away and I was again back in the old garden down at Aunt Adeline's cottage saying good-by, folded up in his arms. That's the way my memory put the scene to me, but the word "folded" made me remember that blue muslin dress again. I had promised to keep it and wear it for him when he came back--and I couldn't forget that the blue belt was just twenty-three inches and mine is--no, I _won't_ write it. I had got that dress out of the old trunk not ten minutes after I had read the letter and measured it.

No, nobody would blame me for running right across the garden to Doctor John with such a real trouble as that! All of a sudden I hugged the letter and the little book up close to my breast and laughed until the tears ran down my cheeks.

Then before I went into the house I assembled my garden and had family prayers with my flowers. I do that because they are all the family I've got, and God knows that all His budding things need encouragement, whether it is a widow or a snowball-bush. He'll give it to us!

And I'm praying again as I sit here and watch for the doctor's light to go out. I hate to go to sleep and leave it burning, for he sits up so late and he is so gaunt and thin and tired-looking most time. That's what the last prayer is about, almost always,--sleep for him and no night call!

FOOTNOTE:

[70] Copyright, 1912, by the Bobbs-Merrill Company.

CALE YOUNG RICE

Cale Young Rice, poet and dramatist, was born at Dixon, Kentucky, December 7, 1872. He graduated from Cumberland University, in Tennessee, and then went to Harvard University, where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1895, and his Master's degree in the following year. In 1902 Mr. Rice was married to Miss Alice Caldwell Hegan, whose _Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch_ had been published the year before. Mr. Rice has been busy for years as a lyric poet and maker of plays for the study, though several of them, indeed, have received stage presentation. His several books of shorter poems are: _From Dusk to Dusk_ (Nashville, Tennessee, 1898); _With Omar_ (Lebanon, Tennessee, 1900), privately printed in an edition of forty copies; _Song Surf_ (Boston, 1901), in which _With Omar_ was reprinted; _Nirvana Days_ (New York, 1908); _Many Gods_ (New York, 1910); and his latest book of lyrics, _Far Quests_ (New York, 1912). Mr. Rice's plays have been published as follows: _Charles di Tocca_ (New York, 1903); _David_ (New York, 1904); _Plays and Lyrics_ (London and New York, 1906), a large octavo containing _David_, _Yolanda of Cyprus_, a poetic drama, and all of his best work; _A Night in Avignon_ (New York, 1907), a little one-act play based upon the loves of Petrarch and Laura, which was "put upon the boards" in Chicago with Donald Robertson in the leading _role_. It was part one of a dramatic trilogy of the Italian Renaissance. Next came a reprinting in an individual volume of his _Yolanda of Cyprus_ (New York, 1908); and _The Immortal Lure_ (New York, 1911), four plays, the first of which, _Giorgione_, is part two of the trilogy of one-act plays of which _A Night in Avignon_ was the first part. The trilogy will be closed with another one-act drama, _Porzia_, which is now announced for publication in January, 1913. Mr. Rice has been characterized by the _New York Times_ as a "doubtful poet," but that paper's recent and uncalled for attack upon Madison Cawein, together with many other seemingly absurd positions, makes one wonder if it is not a "doubtful judge." After all is said, it must be admitted that Mr. Rice has done a small group of rather pleasing lyrics, and that his plays, perhaps impossible as safe vehicles for an actor with a reputation to sustain, are not as turgid as _The Times_ often is, and not as superlatively poor as some critics have held. Of course, Mr. Rice is not a great dramatist, nor a great poet, yet the body of his work is considerable, and our literature could ill afford to be rid of it. The Rices have an attractive home in St. James Court, Louisville, Kentucky.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Critic_ (September, 1904); _The Atlantic
Monthly_ (September, 1904); _The Bookman_ (December, 1911);
_Lippincott's Magazine_ (January, 1912).

PETRARCA AND SANCIA[71]

[From _A Night in Avignon_ (New York, 1907)]

_Petrarca._ While we are in the world the world's in us.
The Holy Church I own--
Confess her Heaven's queen;
But we are flesh and all things that are fair
God made us to enjoy--
Or, high in Paradise, we'll know but sorrow.
You though would ban earth's beauty,
Even the torch of Glory
That kindled Italy once and led great Greece--
The torch of Plato, Homer, Virgil, all
The sacred bards and sages, pagan-born!
I love them! they are divine!
And so to-night--I--
(_Voices._)
They! it is Lello! Lello! Lello! Sancia!--

(_Hears a lute and laughter below, then a call, "Sing, Sancia"; then Sancia singing:_)

To the maids of Saint Remy
All the gallants go for pleasure;
To the maids of Saint Remy--
Tripping to love's measure!
To the dames of Avignon
All the masters go for wiving;
To the dames of Avignon--
That shall be their shriving!

(_He goes to the Loggia as they gayly applaud. Then Lello cries:_)

_Lello._ Ho-ho! Petrarca! Pagan! are you in?
What! are you a sonnet-monger?

_Petrarca._ Ai, ai, aih!
(_Motions_ Gherhardo--_who goes_.)

_Lello._ Come then! Your door is locked! down! let us in!
(_Rattles it._)

_Petrarca._ No, ribald! hold! the key is on the sill!
Look for it and ascend!
(Orso _enters_.)
Stay, here is Orso!

(_The old servant goes through and down the stairs to meet them. In a moment the tramp of feet is heard and they enter--_Lello_ between them--singing_:)

Guelph! Guelph! and Ghibbeline!
Ehyo! ninni! onni! onz!
I went fishing on All Saints' Day
And--caught but human bones!

I went fishing on All Saints' Day,
The Rhone ran swift, the wind blew black!
I went fishing on All Saints' Day--
But my love called me back!

She called me back and she kissed my lips--
Oh, my lips! Oh! onni onz!
"Better take love than--bones! bones!
(Sancia _kisses_ Petrarca.)
Better take love than bones."

(_They scatter with glee and_ Petrarca _seizes_ Sancia _to him_.)