Chapter XVI: Act IV: , Scene I. Henry, with lute, singing (5)

Of course God sent the little babies, but how did he get them down to Mrs. Katzman? She averred that she got them out of the river, but this Velleda knew to be a fib, for of course they would drown in the river. Tante said they fell down from Heaven, but of course such a fall would kill a little baby. Gros-mamma Wallenstein said a stork brought them, and for a time Velleda thought Mrs. Katzman must be a stork; but when she saw a picture of one she knew that it was only a bird. Then she decided that the stork carried the babies to Mrs. Katzman's and she divided them around; but Mrs. Katzman's little boy, questioned in the most searching manner, declared that he had never seen a sign of any stork about the premises.

Just after Baby Ernest's coming, Velleda and Freddy went all the way to Mrs. Katzman's house--and it was quite a long way, fully three blocks--to beg her to exchange him for a girl.

"We've only used him two days and he's just as good as new," stated Velleda, guiltily concealing the fact that he cried a great deal. But Mrs. Katzman said she really couldn't think of it, as God settled all those matters himself. It was on this occasion that Velleda had cross-examined Mrs. Katzman's little boy regarding the stork. There was no doubting the truth of Georgie's statements, for he told Velleda dolefully that he himself had long desired a brother or a sister, but never a baby had he seen in that house. Evidently Mrs. Katzman fetched them from somewhere else in the brown satchel.

"You might have had ours," said Velleda. "We didn't want him. We prayed for a girl."

"Oh, you'll soon find out _that_ don't do any good." Georgie kicked gloomily at a stone. "I used to pray, too, but God's awful stubborn when it comes to babies."

Velleda wondered at the strangeness of things. All the little girls and some of the little boys who had no baby brother or sister to take care of, thought it a great treat to be allowed to wheel the baby-buggy up and down the square, really a most irksome task, as Velleda could testify. At Velleda's house they believed with the poet that "Time's noblest offspring is the last," so the baby reigned king, which was not always pleasant for his smaller slaves. Therefore she wondered at Georgie's taste. However, since he evidently regarded his brotherless state as a deep misfortune, she was full of sympathy and would do what she could for him.

"You just pray a little harder," she advised; "and," struck by a brilliant thought, "look in the brown satchel every night! Maybe you'll find one left over."

She and Freddy went home feeling very sorry for Georgie. He was only another illustration of the old saying which Onkel often commented on--the shoemaker's children wear ragged shoes, the painter's own house is the last to receive a fresh coat, and the stork woman has no baby of her own.

Regarding this great question there was one point upon which everybody agreed. Velleda had her own system of deciding questions; she sifted the versions of her various informants, retained those points upon which all agreed, and upon this common ground proceeded to erect the structure of her own reasoning. Grown-ups, she knew, had a weakness for mild fibbing, which was not lying and not wrong at all, but was naturally very disconcerting when one burned to learn the real truth about a thing. The stork theory, the river theory, the falling from Heaven theory--all possessed one mutual starting point: God sent the little babies. There was of course no doubt in that regard, and Velleda finally decided that God placed them in the woods in a certain spot, marked where they were to go, and then vanished into Heaven (for of course no one had ever seen God), whereupon Mrs. Katzman approached with the brown satchel.

This was a most satisfactory theory, with no flaws in its logic, reasonable and probable, and conflicting with no known law. The question was shelved.

Velleda, going up to the third floor room of Nellie Johnson with a pitcher of milk which the dairywoman had asked her to deliver, found the girl huddled up before a small stove, looking so white and miserable that Velleda's heart ached for her, although she knew that Nellie was a very wicked person and nobody in the neighborhood spoke to her. Across her knees lay a white bundle. Velleda considered the matter.

"I guess God loves you anyway, Nellie," she concluded. "He has sent you a little baby."

The girl tossed the bundle upon the bed with a fierce gesture.

"God?" she said bitterly. "It ain't God sent that baby. The Devil sent him!"

Velleda fled down the stairs.

It is indeed a puzzling world.

FOOTNOTE:

[94] Copyright, 1910, by Small, Maynard and Company.

CHARLES NEVILLE BUCK

Charles Neville Buck, novelist and short-story writer, was born near Midway, Kentucky, April 15, 1879. He spent the first fifteen years of his life at his birthplace, save the four years he was in South America with his father, the Hon. C. W. Buck, who was United States Minister to Peru from 1885 to 1889, and the author of _Under the Sun_, a Peruvian romance. At the age of fifteen years, Charles Neville Buck went to Louisville to enter the high school; and, in 1898, he was graduated from the University of Louisville. He studied art and joined the staff of _The Evening Post_, of Louisville, as cartoonist, which position he held for a year, when he became an editorial writer on that paper. Mr. Buck studied law and was admitted to the bar, but he did not practice. In 1908 he quit journalism for prose fiction. His short-stories were accepted by American and English magazines, but he won his first real reputation with a novel of mental aberration, entitled _The Key to Yesterday_ (New York, 1910), the scenes of which were set against Kentucky, France, and South America. Mr. Buck's next novel, _The Lighted Match_ (New York, 1911), was an international love romance in which a rich young American falls in love with the princess, and about-to-be-queen, of a bit of a kingdom near Spain. Benton, hero, has a rocky road to travel, but he, of course, demolishes every barrier and proves again that love finds a way. _The Lighted Match_ is a rattling good story, and it contains many purple patches between the hiss of the revolutionist's bomb and lovers' sighs. Mr. Buck's latest novel, _The Portal of Dreams_ (New York, 1912), was a very clever story. His first Kentucky novel, and the finest thing he has done, he and his publisher think, is _The Strength of Samson_, which will appear in four parts in _The Cavalier_, a weekly magazine, for February, 1913, after which it will be almost immediately published in book form under the title of _The Call of the Cumberlands_. Mr. Buck's home is at Louisville, Kentucky, but he spends much of his time in New York, where he lives at the Hotel Earle, in Waverly Place, a stone's throw from the apartments of his friend, Thompson Buchanan, the Kentucky playwright.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Harper's Weekly_ (October 8, 1910); _Cosmopolitan
Magazine_ (August, 1911); _Who's Who in America_ (1912-1913).

THE DOCTRINE ACCORDING TO JONESY[95]

[From _The Lighted Match_ (New York, 1911)]

Despite the raw edge on the air, the hardier guests at "Idle Times" still clung to those outdoor sports which properly belonged to the summer. That afternoon a canoeing expedition was made up river to explore a cave which tradition had endowed with some legendary tale of pioneer days and Indian warfare.

Pagratide, having organized the expedition with that object in view, had made use of his prior knowledge to enlist Cara for the crew of his canoe, but Benton, covering a point that Pagratide had overlooked, pointed out that an engagement to go up the river in a canoe is entirely distinct from an engagement to come down the river in a canoe. He cited so many excellent authorities in support of his contention that the matter was decided in his favor for the return trip, and Mrs. Porter-Woodleigh, all unconscious that her escort was a Crown Prince, found in him an introspective and altogether uninteresting young man.

Benton and the girl in one canoe, were soon a quarter of a mile in advance of the others, and lifting their paddles from the water they floated with the slow current. The singing voices of the party behind them came softly adrift along the water. All of the singers were young and the songs had to do with sentiment.

The girl buttoned her sweater closer about her throat. The man stuffed tobacco into the bowl of his pipe and bent low to kindle it into a cheerful spot of light.

A belated lemon afterglow lingered at the edge of the sky ahead. Against it the gaunt branches of a tall tree traced themselves starkly. Below was the silent blackness of the woods.

Suddenly Benton raised his head.

"I have a present for you," he announced.

"A present?" echoed the girl. "Be careful, Sir Gray Eyes. You played the magician once and gave me a rose. It was such a wonderful rose"--she spoke almost tenderly--"that it has spoiled me. No commonplace gifts will be tolerated after that."

"This is a different sort of present," he assured her. "This is a god."

"A what!" Cara was at the stern with the guiding paddle. The man leaned back, steadying the canoe with a hand on each gunwale, and smiled into her face.

"Yes," he said, "he is a god made out of clay with a countenance that is most unlovely and a complexion like an earthenware jar. I acquired him in the Andes for a few _centavos_. Since then we have been companions. In his day he had his place in a splendid temple of the Sun Worshipers. When I rescued him he was squatting cross-legged on a counter among silver and copper trinkets belonging to a civilization younger than his own. When you've been a god and come to be a souvenir of ruins and dead things--" the man paused for a moment, then with the ghost of a laugh went on "--it makes you see things differently. In the twisted squint of his small clay face one reads slight regard for mere systems and codes."

He paused so long that she prompted him in a voice that threatened to become unsteady. "Tell me more about him. What is his godship's name?"

"He looked so protestingly wise," Benton went on, "that I named him Jonesy. I liked that name because it fitted him so badly. Jonesy is not conventional in his ideas, but his morals are sound. He has seen religions and civilizations and dynasties flourish and decay, and it has all given him a certain perspective on life. He has occasionally given me good council."

He paused again, but, noting that the singing voices were drawing nearer, he continued more rapidly.

"In Alaska I used to lie flat on my cot before a great open fire and his god-ship would perch crosslegged on my chest. When I breathed, he seemed to shake his fat sides and laugh. When a pagan god from Peru laughs at you in a Yukon cabin, the situation calls for attention. I gave attention.

"Jonesy said that the major human motives sweep in deep channels, full-tide ahead. He said you might in some degree regulate their floods by rearing abutments, but that when you tried to build a dam to stop the Amazon you are dealing with folly. He argued that when one sets out to dam up the tides set flowing back in the tributaries of the heart it is written that one must fail. That is the gospel according to Jonesy."

He turned his face to the front and shot the canoe forward. There was silence except for the quiet dipping of their paddles, the dripping of the water from the lifted blades, and the song drifting down river. Finally Benton added:

"I don't know what he will say to you, but perhaps he will give you good advice--on those matters which the centuries can't change."

Cara's voice came soft, with a hint of repressed tears.

"He has already given me good advice, dear--" she said, "good advice that I can't follow."

FOOTNOTE:

[95] Copyright, 1911, by W. J. Watt and Company.

GEORGE BINGHAM

George Bingham ("Dunk Botts"), newspaper humorist, was born near Wallonia, Kentucky, August 1, 1879. He quit school at the age of ten years to become "the devil" in a printing office at Eddyville, Kentucky. Two years later he removed to Mayfield, Kentucky, and accepted a position on _The Mirrow_. Shortly afterwards he wrote his first ficticious "news-letter" from an imaginary town called Boney Ridge, Kentucky, and submitted it to the critical eye of a tramp printer. This nomad at once saw the boy's design: to burlesque the letters received from the _Mirrow's_ crossroad correspondents; and he encouraged him. Mr. Bingham remained at Mayfield until he was twenty years of age, at which time he felt important enough to go out and see the world. Like most prodigals homesickness seized him for its very own; and he started home perched high on a freight train. Homeward bound he first had the name of his future paper suggested to him. Battling through a tiny town in Tennessee he enquired of the brakeman as to its name.

"Walhalla," answered the "shack."

"Hogwallow?" repeated the young Kentuckian.

"Hell no! Who ever heard of a place called 'Hogwallow'?"

Upon reaching home Mr. Bingham decided to put the village of Hogwallow, Kentucky, on the map. His first letter from that town was printed in the old _Mayfield Monitor_, under the pen-name of "Dunk Botts," which he has retained hitherto. After having written several Hogwallow letters, he was compelled to accept a position on a small newspaper; then nothing more was heard of Hogwallow until 1901, when he wrote a letter every few weeks, for a year, and then went to California. He "arrived back home on June 1, 1905, had a chill a week later, and launched _The Hogwallow Kentuckian_ on July 15." He took the public into his confidence, telling them that his object was to conduct a burlesque newspaper, or, rather, a parody on one. He peopled his imaginary town and its environs with forty or more characters whose names summed them up without further ado; and he founded such important places as Rye Straw, Tickville, Hog Hill church and graveyard, Wild Onion schoolhouse, Gander Creek, and several other necessary hamlets and institutions. On May 15, 1909, Mr. Bingham suspended publication in order to make another trip to California. Two years later he returned to Kentucky for the sole purpose of resurrecting his paper. He resumed publication on June 17, 1911, at Paducah, but Irvin Cobb's town seemingly got on his nerves and, after three months, he tucked his "sheet" under his arm and returned to his first love, Mayfield, where he has remained ever since. _The Hogwallow Kentuckian_ is published every Saturday night, read in thirty-seven states, and copied by the leading newspapers of America and England. Mr. Bingham has written more than five thousand "news items" for the paper, besides some five hundred short-stories, sketches, and paragraphs. He contributes considerable Hogwallow news to Charles Hamilton Musgrove's[96] page in _The Evening Post_ of Louisville; but he is an "outside contributor," doing his work at Mayfield.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. Letters from Mr. Bingham to the Author; the St.
Louis _Post-Dispatch_ (January 14, 1912).

HOGWALLOW NEWS

[From _The Hogwallow Kentuckian_ (December 21, 1912)]

Atlas Peck can't see why his left shoe wears out so much quicker than his right one, when his right one does just as much walking as his left.

Until times get better and the financial questions of the nation gets fully settled the Old Miser on Musket Ridge will live on two hickorynuts per day.

Sim Flinders has brought back with him from the Calf Ribs neighborhood a feather bed made of owl feathers. While coming home with it on his back the other night it was so soft and downy he fell to sleep while walking along the road.

Yam Sims appeared in public last Sunday with a new pair of pants and a striped necktie. They have made a wonderful change in his appearance, and until they wear out he will rank among our best people.

A dawg fight attracted a lot of attention and broke up the conversation at the Hog Ford moonshine still house the other day. One of the dawgs belonged to Poke Eazley and the other to Jefferson Potlocks, and the difficulty came up over some misunderstanding between their owners.

Ellick Hellwanger is fixing to celebrate his wooden wedding next week with a quart of wood alcohol.

Tobe Moseley's mule is able to walk around again after being propped up against a persimmon tree for several days.

Tobe Moseley took his jug over to the sorghum mill early Tuesday morning of last week after some molasses, and has not yet returned. No grave fears, however, are entertained on account of his protracted absence, as sorghum molasses run slow in cold weather.

Bullets have been falling in Hogwallow for the past few days. They are thought to be those Raz Barlow fired at the moon a few nights ago.

Luke Mathewsla has a good hawg pen for sale cheap. It would make a good front yard, and Luke may move his house up behind it.

Cricket Hicks has gone up to Tickville to get an almanac, as he is on the program for a lot of original jokes at Rye Straw Saturday night.

Isaac Hellwanger fell off of a foot lawg while watching a panel of fence float down Gander creek the other morning. He says it don't pay to get too interested in one thing.

Slim Pickens has received through the mails a bottle of dandruff cure, and he is taking two teaspoonfuls after each meal.

Poke Eazley has been puny this week with lumbago, and had to be excused from singing at the Dog Hill church Sunday, being too weak to carry a tune, or lift his voice.

Fit Smith is having his shoes remodeled, and will occupy them next week.

Columbus Allsop's head has been itching for several days. He says that is a sign Christmas is coming.

The Dog Hill Preacher will be surprised by his congregation next Sunday morning when they will give him a Christmas present, which they have already bought. The preacher is greatly surprised every time his congregation gives him anything.

Fletcher Henstep's geese are being fattened for Christmas, and have been turned loose in the Musket Ridge corn patches. They all wear lanterns as it is late before they get in at night.

FOOTNOTE:

[96] Mr. Musgrove, who is to leave _The Post_ at the end of 1912 to become humorist editor of _The Louisville Times_, was born in Kentucky, and is the author of a charming volume of verse, _The Dream Beautiful and Other Poems_ (Louisville; 1898). He is to issue in 1913 another book of poems, through a Louisville firm, to be entitled _Pan and Aeolus_. When Mr. Musgrove joins _The Times_ he will take _The Post's_ clever cartoonist, Paul Plaschke, with him; and they will occupy an office next to Colonel Henry Watterson's in the new Courier-Journal and Times building.

MABEL PORTER PITTS

Miss Mabel Porter Pitts, poet, was born near Flemingsburg, Kentucky, January 5, 1884. Her family removed to Seattle, Washington, when she was a girl, and her education was received at the Academy of the Holy Names. Miss Pitts lived at Seattle for a number of years, but she now resides at San Francisco. Her verse and short-stories have appeared in several of the eastern magazines, and they have been read with pleasure by many people. Her first book of poems, _In the Shadow of the Crag and Other Poems_ (Denver, Colorado, 1907), is now in its third edition, five thousand copies having been sold so far. This seems to show that there are people in the United States who care for good verse. Miss Pitts is well-known on the Pacific coast, where she has spent nearly all her life, but she must be introduced to the people of her native State, Kentucky. Her short-stories are as well liked as her poems, a collection of them is promised for early publication, and she should have a permanent place in the literature of Kentucky.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Overland Monthly_ (January; December, 1904; April,
1908).

ON THE LITTLE SANDY[97]

[From _In the Shadow of the Crag and Other Poems_ (Denver, 1907)]

Just within the mystic border of Kentucky's blue grass region
There's a silver strip of river lying idly in the sun,
On its banks are beds of fragrance where the butterflies are legion
And the moonbeams frame its glory when the summer day is done.

There's a little, rose-wreathed cottage nestling close upon its
border
Where a tangled mass of blossoms half conceals an open door,
There's a sweet, narcotic perfume from a garden's wild disorder,
And the jealous poppies cluster where its kisses thrill the shore.

From across its dimpled bosom comes the half-hushed, careful calling
Of a whippoorwill whose lonely heart is longing for its mate,
And the sun aslant the sleepy eyes of fox-gloves gently falling
Tells the fisherman out yonder that the hour is growing late.

From the branches of the poplars a spasmodic sleepy twitter
Comes, 'twould seem, in careless answer to the pleading of a song,
And perhaps the tiny bosom holds despair that's very bitter
For his notes are soon unheeded by the little feathered throng.

Then the twilight settling denser shows a rush-light dimly burning--
Ah, how well I know the landing drowsing 'neath its feeble beams,
And my homesick heart to mem'ries of the yesterday is turning
While I linger here, forgotten, with no solace but my dreams.

FOOTNOTE:

[97] Copyright, 1907, by the Author.

MARION FORSTER GILMORE

Miss Marion Forster Gilmore, the young Louisville poet and dramatist, was born at Anchorage, Kentucky, November 27, 1887. She was educated at Hampton College, Louisville, and at a private school in Washington, D. C. At the age of fourteen years she wrote a poem while crossing the Rocky Mountains that attracted the attention of Joaquin Miller and Madison Cawein, and won her the friendship of both poets. When but fifteen years old she had completed her three-act tragedy of _Virginia_, set in Rome during the days of the Decemvirs. This is purely a play for the study, and hardly fitted for stage presentation, yet it has been praised by William Faversham, the famous actor. Miss Gilmore contributed lyrics to the _Cosmopolitan Magazine_ and _Leslie's Weekly_, which, with her play, she published in a charming book, entitled _Virginia, a Tragedy, and Other Poems_ (Louisville, Kentucky, 1910). _The Cradle Song_, originally printed in the _Cosmopolitan_ for May, 1908, is one of the best of her shorter poems. Miss Gilmore has recently returned to her home at Louisville, after having spent a year in European travel and study.[98]

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Cosmopolitan Magazine_ (January, 1909); _Current
Literature_ (August, 1910).

THE CRADLE SONG[99]

[From _Virginia, a Tragedy, and Other Poems_ (Louisville, Kentucky, 1910)]

Adown the vista of the years,
I turn and look with silent soul,
As though to catch a muted strain
Of melody, that seems to roll
In tender cadence to my ear.
But, as I wait with eyes that long
The singer to behold--it fades,
And silence ends the Cradle Song.

But when the shadows of the years
Have lengthened slowly to the West,
And once again I lay me down
To sleep, upon my mother's breast,
Then well I know I ne'er again
Shall cry to God, "How long? How long?"
For, to my soul, her voice will sing
A never-ending Cradle Song.

FOOTNOTES:

[98] There are two other young women poets of Louisville who should be mentioned in the same breath with Miss Gilmore: Miss Ethel Allen Murphy, author of _The Angel of Thought and Other Poems_ (Boston, 1909), and contributor of brief lyrics to _Everybody's Magazine_; and Miss Hortense Flexner, on the staff of _The Louisville Herald_, whose poems in the new _Mammoth Cave Magazine_ have attracted much attention. Miss Flexner is to have a poem published in _The American Magazine_ in 1913.

[99] Copyright, 1910, by the Author.