Chapter II: Appendix: 383 (1)

MRS. AGNES B. MITCHELL 385
WHEN THE COWS COME HOME 385

KENTUCKY IN AMERICAN LETTER

JAMES NEWTON BASKETT

James Newton Baskett, novelist and scientist, was born near Carlisle, Kentucky, November 1, 1849. He was taken to Missouri in early life by his parents. He was graduated from the University of Missouri in 1872, since which time he has devoted himself almost exclusively to fiction and to comparative vertebrate anatomy, with ornithology as his particular specialty. At the world's congress of ornithologists at the Columbian Exposition in 1893, Mr. Baskett presented a paper on _Some Hints at the Kinship of Birds as Shown by Their Eggs_, which won him the respect of scientists from many lands. He has published three scientific works and three novels: _The Story of the Birds_ (New York, 1896); _The Story of the Fishes_ (New York, 1899); _The Story of the Amphibians and Reptiles_ (New York, 1902); and his novels: _At You All's House_ (New York, 1898); _As the Light Led_ (New York, 1900); and his most recent book, _Sweet Brier and Thistledown_ (Boston, 1902). Of this trio of tales the first one, _At You All's House_, is the best and the best known, Mr. Baskett's masterpiece hitherto. For the Texas Historical Society he wrote, in 1907, a series of papers upon the _Early Spanish Expedition in the South and Southwest_. With the exception of three years spent in Colorado for the benefit of his health, Mr. Baskett has resided at Mexico, Missouri, since leaving Kentucky.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Athenaeum_ (July 28, 1900); _The Book Buyer_
(October, 1900); _Library of Southern Literature_ (Atlanta, 1909,
v. i).

"I 'OVES 'OO BEST, 'TAUS 'OO BEAT 'EM ALL"[1]

[From _As the Light Led_ (New York, 1900)]

They had been boy and girl together, not schoolmates nor next-farm neighbors, but their homes were in the same region. Her father's house was far enough away to make the boy's visits not so frequent as to foster the familiarity which breeds contempt, yet they gave him an occasional little journey out of the humdrum of home lanes, and away from the monotonous sweep of the prairie's flat horizon.

Hers was rather a timber farm, located on the other side of Flint Creek, where the woods began to fringe out upon the treeless plain again; but his was high out eastward upon the prairie swell, several miles from water. From his place the wooded barrier between them seemed only a brown level brush-stroke upon the sky's western margin.

Sometimes, when he was tired from his day's work afield, he watched the sun sink behind this border, which the distance made so velvety; and, if the day were clear, it looked to him as if the great glowing ball were lying down upon a cushion for its comfort. If it set in a bank of cloud or storm, it seemed to send up long streaming, reaching stripes, as if it waved a farewell to the sky, and stretched a last grasp at the day as it left it, or shot a rocket of distress as it sank.

When a child he had often sent her his good-will upon the westering messenger, and he imagined that the beams, sometimes shot suddenly out from beneath a low-hung cloudy curtain, were answers to his greetings. Long after it was dreary at his place, he fancied the light was still cuddling somewhere in the brush near her and that it was cheery yet over there.

When he was seven and she was three, he was visiting at her house one day. She was sitting on a bench in the old, long porch, shouting to him, her elder brother, and some others, as they came toward her from a romp out in the orchard. Suddenly Bent bantered the boys for a race to the baby; and, swinging their limp wool hats in their hands, they sped toward her. The child caught the jubilance of the race, and when Bent dropped first beside her, she grabbed him about the neck, laid the rose of her cheek against the tan of his, and said:

"I 'oves 'oo best, 'tause 'oo beat 'em all."

The act was an infant tribute to prowess, a bound here in babyhood of the heart which wants but does not weigh; of the body which asks but does not question. The boy felt his heart go to meet hers, so that the little girl stood ever after as his idol. As time went on, his reverence for her as a lisper grew as she became a lass; and though, out of the dawning to them of what the years might bring, there came eras of pure embarrassment, wherein their firmness and trust wavered a little, yet confiding companionship came anew and stayed, till some new revelation of each to self or other barred for a time again their ease and intimacy. They were man and woman now, with a consciousness of much that the grown-up state must finally mean to them, if this continued. There was the freedom from embarrassment which experience brings; but there came with all this a sort of proximity of hopes and aims, which, burdened sweetly with its own importance, persisted with a presage of a crisis down the line.

He could no longer ride up to her side as she left the stile at church, and, without a previous engagement or the lubricant of a commonplace, open a conversation right into the heart of things. When she responded to him now it was with a shy sort of confidence which admits so much yet defines so little. Yet never when they met did they fail to pick up the thread, which tended to bind them closer and closer, and give it a conscious snatch of greater strain, till, as either looked back at the skein of incidents, there came a delightful feeling of hopeless entanglement in this fibre of their fate. However, the ends of the filament were free and floating yet, as the fray of a swirling gossamer in the autumn wind. Day by day these two felt that these frayed ends would meet sometime; and hold? or snap? and then? and then!

Nothing had ever strongly tried their attachment. Yet there was creeping now into the heart of each a sort of heaviness--a wondering, at least--if the other was still holding true to the childish troth; a definite sort of mental distrust was abiding between them, along with a readiness to be equal to anything which an emergency might bring. But in their hearts they were lovers still.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Copyright, 1900, by the Macmillan Company.

JAMES LANE ALLEN

James Lane Allen, the foremost living American master of English prose, was born near Lexington, Kentucky, December 21, 1849. His home was situated some five miles from Lexington, on the old Parker's Mill road, and it was burned to the ground more than thirty years ago. He was the seventh and youngest child of Richard Allen, a Kentuckian, and his wife, Helen Foster Allen, a native of Mississippi. Lane Allen, as he was known in Kentucky until he became a distinguished figure in contemporary letters, was interested in books and Nature when a boy under his mother's tutelage. He was early at Kentucky University, now rechristened with its ancient name, Transylvania. Mr. Allen was valedictorian of the class of 1872; and five years later the degree of Master of Arts was granted him, after an amusing quibble with the faculty regarding the length of his oration, _The Survival of the Fittest_. He began his career as teacher of the district school at the rural village of Slickaway, which is now known as Fort Spring, about two miles from his birthplace. He taught this school but one year, when he went to Richmond, Missouri, to become instructor of Greek in the high school there. A few years later he established a school for boys at Lexington, Missouri. Mr. Allen returned to Kentucky to act as tutor in a private family near Lexington; and in 1878, he was elected principal of the Kentucky University Academy. He resigned this position, in 1880, to accept the chair of Latin and English in Bethany College, Bethany, West Virginia, which he occupied for two years, when he returned once more to Lexington, Kentucky, to open a private school for boys in the old Masonic Temple. In 1884 Mr. Allen discarded the teacher's garb for that of a man of letters, and since that time he has devoted his entire attention to literature.

While his kinsfolk and acquaintances regarded him with quiet wonder, if not alarmed astonishment, he carefully arranged his traveling bags and set his face toward the city of his dreams and thoughts--New York. Once there he shortly discovered that it was a deal easier to get into the kingdom of heaven than into the pages of the great periodicals, yet he had come to the city to make a name for himself in literature and he was not to be denied. His struggle was most severe, but his victory has been so complete that the bitterness of those days has been blown aside. The first seven or eight years of his life as a writer, Mr. Allen divided between New York, Cincinnati, and Kentucky. He finally quit Kentucky in 1893, and he has not been in the state since 1898, at which time his _alma mater_ conferred the honorary degree of LL. D. upon him. He now resides in New York.

Mr. Allen began with short essays for _The Critic_, _The Continent_, _The Independent_, _The Manhattan_, and other periodicals; and he contributed some strong and fine poems to _The Atlantic Monthly_, _The Interior_, _Harper's Monthly_, _Lippincott's Magazine_, _The Independent_, and elsewhere. But none of these represented the true beginning of his work, of his career. His first short-story to attract general attention was _Too Much Momentum_, published in _Harper's Magazine_ for April, 1885. It, however, was naturally rather stiff, as the author was then wielding the pen of a 'prentice. This was followed by a charming essay, _The Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky_, in _Harper's_ for February, 1886, and which really pointed the path he was to follow so wonderfully well through the coming years.

His first noteworthy story, _Two Gentlemen of Kentucky_, appeared in _The Century Magazine_ for April, 1888. Then followed fast upon each other's heels, _The White Cowl_; _King Solomon of Kentucky_, perhaps the greatest short-story he has written; _Posthumous Fame_; _Flute and Violin_; and _Sister Doloroso_, all of which were printed in the order named, and in _The Century_, save _Flute and Violin_, which was originally published in _Harper's Magazine_ for December, 1890. These "Kentucky tales and romances" were issued as Mr. Allen's first book, entitled _Flute and Violin_ (New York, 1891; Edinburgh, 1892, two volumes). Many of the author's admirers have come to regard these stories as the finest work he has done. As backgrounds for them he wrote a series of descriptive and historical papers upon Kentucky, originally published in _The Century_ and _Harper's_, and collected in book form under the title of the first of them, _The Blue Grass Region of Kentucky_ (New York, 1892). Up to this time Mr. Allen had written nothing but short-stories, verses, and sketches. While living at Cincinnati he wrote his first novelette, _John Gray_ (Philadelphia, 1893), which first appeared in _Lippincott's Magazine_ for June, 1892. This is one of the author's strongest pieces of prose fiction, though it has been well-nigh forgotten in its original form.

These three books fitted Mr. Allen for the writing of an American classic, _A Kentucky Cardinal_ (New York, 1894), another novelette, which was published in two parts in _Harper's Magazine_ for May and June, 1894, prior to its appearance in book form. This, with its sequel, _Aftermath_ (New York, 1895), is the most exquisite tale of nature yet done by an American hand. It at once defies all praise, or adverse criticism, being wrought out as perfectly as human hands can well do. At the present time the two stories may be best read in the large paper illustrated edition done by Mr. Hugh Thomson, the celebrated English artist, to which Mr. Allen contributed a charming introduction. _Summer in Arcady_ (New York, 1896), which passed through the _Cosmopolitan Magazine_ as _Butterflies_, was a rather realistic story of love and Nature, and somewhat strongly drawn for the tastes of many people. When his complete works appear in twelve uniform volumes, in 1913 or 1914, this "tale of nature" will be entitled _A Pair of Butterflies_.

_The Choir Invisible_ (New York, 1897), Mr. Allen's first really long novel, was an augmented _John Gray_, and it placed him in the forefront of American novelists. Mr. Orson Lowell's illustrated edition of this work is most interesting; and it was dramatized in 1899, but produced without success, as the author had prophesied. Later in the same year _Two Gentlemen of Kentucky_ appeared as a bit of a book, and was cordially received by those of the author's admirers who continued to regard it as his masterpiece. _The Reign of Law_ (New York, 1900), a tale of the Kentucky hemp-fields, of love, and evolution, was published in London as _The Increasing Purpose_, because of the Duke of Argyll's prior appropriation of that title for his scientific treatise. The prologue upon Kentucky hemp strengthened Mr. Allen's reputation as one of the greatest writers of descriptive prose ever born out of Europe. It was widely read and discussed--in at least one quarter of the country--with unnecessary bitterness, if not with blind bigotry.

_The Mettle of the Pasture_ (New York, 1903), which was first announced as _Crypts of the Heart_, is a love story of great beauty, saturated with the atmosphere of Kentucky to a wonderful degree, yet it has not been sufficiently appreciated. For the five years following the publication of _The Mettle_, Mr. Allen was silent; but he was working harder than ever before in his life upon manuscripts which he has come to regard as his most vital contributions to prose fiction. In the autumn of 1908 his stirring speech at the unveiling of the monument to remember his hero, King Solomon of Kentucky, was read; and three months later _The Last Christmas Tree_, brief prelude to his Christmas trilogy, appeared in _The Saturday Evening Post_. _The Bride of the Mistletoe_ (New York, 1909), part first of the trilogy, is one of the finest fragments of prose yet published in the United States. It aroused criticism of various kinds in many quarters, one declaring it to be one thing, and one another, but all agreeing that it was something new and wonderful under our literary sun. The critics of to-morrow may discover that _The Bride_ was the foundation-stone of the now much-heralded _Chunk of Life School_ which has of late taken London by the ears. Yet, between _The Bride_ and _The Widow of the Bye Street_ a great gulf is fixed. Part two of the trilogy was first announced as _A Brood of the Eagle_, but it was finally published as _The Doctor's Christmas Eve_ (New York, 1910). This, one of Mr. Allen's longest novels, was met by adverse criticism based on several grounds, but upon none more pointedly than what was alleged to be the unnatural precocity of the children, who do not appear to lightly flit through the pages in a way that our old-fashioned conventions would prescribe they should, but somewhat seem to clog the unfolding of the tale. Whatever estimate one may place upon _The Doctor_, he can scarcely be held to possess the subtile charm of _The Bride_. The third and final part of this much-discussed trilogy will hardly be published before 1914, or perhaps even subsequent to that date.

_The Heroine in Bronze_ (New York, 1912), is Mr. Allen's latest novel. It is an American love story with all of the author's exquisite mastery of language again ringing fine and true. For the first time Mr. Allen largely abandons Kentucky as a landscape for his story, the action being in New York. The phrase "my country," that recurs throughout the book, succeeds the "Shield," which, in _The Bride of the Mistletoe_, was the author's appellation for Kentucky. The sequel to _The Heroine_--the story the boy wrote for the girl--is now preparing.

Twenty years ago Mr. Allen wrote, "Kentucky has little or no literature;" and while he did not write, perhaps, with the whole horizon of its range before him, there was substantial truth in the statement. The splendid sequel to his declaration is his own magnificent works. He pointed out the lack of merit in our literature, but he did a far finer and more fitting thing: he at once set out upon his distinguished career and has produced a literature for the state. He has created Kentucky and Kentuckians as things apart from the outside world, a miniature republic within a greater republic; and no one knows the land and the people other than imperfectly if one cannot see and feel that his conception is clear and sentient. With a light but firm touch he has caught the shimmering atmosphere of his own native uplands and the idiosyncrasies of their people with all the fidelity with which the camera gives back a material outline.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Stories of James Lane Allen_, by L. W. Payne,
Jr., in _The Sewanee Review_ (January, 1900); _James Lane Allen's
Country_, by Arthur Bartlett, _The Bookman_ (October, 1900);
_Famous Authors_, by E. F. Harkins (Boston, 1901); _Authors of Our
Day in Their Homes_, by F. W. Halsey (New York, 1902); _Social
Historians_, by H. A. Toulmin, Jr. (Boston, 1911).

KING SOLOMON OF KENTUCKY: AN ADDRESS[2]

[From _The Outlook_ (December 19, 1908)]

We are witnessing at present a revival of conflict between two ideas in our civilization that have already produced a colossal war; the idea of the greatness of our Nation as the welded and indissoluble greatness of the States, and the idea of the separate dignity and isolated power of each sovereign commonwealth. The spirit of the Nation reaches out more and more to absorb into itself its own parts, and each part draws back more and more into its own Attic supremacy and independence, feeling that its earlier struggles were its own struggles, that its heroes were its own heroes, and that it has memories which refuse to blend with any other memories. It will willingly yield the luster of its daily life to the National sun, but by night it must see its own lighthouses around its frontiers--beacons for its own wandering mariner sons and a warning to the Nation itself that such lights are sacred wherever they stand and burn.

But if the State more and more resists absorption into the Federal life, then less and less can it expect the Nation to do what it insists is its own peculiar work; the greater is the obligation resting upon it to make known to the Nation its own peculiar past and its own incommunicable greatness. Among the States of the Union none belongs more wholly to herself and less to the Nation than does Kentucky; none perhaps will resist more passionately the encroachments of Federal control; and upon her rests the very highest obligation to write her own history and make good her Attic aloofness.

But there is no nobler or more eloquent way in which a State can set forth its annals than by memorializing its great dead. The flag of a nation is its hope; its monuments are its memories. But it is also true that the flag of a country is its memory, and that its monuments are its hopes. And both are needed. Each calls aloud to the other. If you should go into any land and see it covered with monuments and nowhere see its flag, you would know that its flag had gone down into the dust and that its hope was ended. If you should travel in a land and everywhere see its flag and nowhere its monuments, you would ask yourself, Has this people no past that it cares to speak of? and if it has, why does it not speak of it? But when you visit a country where you see the flag proudly flying and proud monuments standing everywhere, then you say, Here is a people who are great in both their hopes and in their memories, and who live doubly through the deeds of their dead.

Where are Kentucky's monuments for her battlefields? There are some; where are the others? Where are her monuments for her heroes that she insists were hers alone? Over her waves the flag of her hopes; where are the monuments that are her memories?

This man whom you memorialize to-day was not, in station or habiliment, one of Kentucky's higher heroes; his battlefield was the battlefield of his own character; but the honor rightly heaped upon him at last makes one remember how many a battlefield and how many a hero remain forgotten. Not alone the fields and heroes of actual war, but of civic and moral and scientific and artistic leadership. These ceremonies--whom will they incite to kindred action elsewhere? What other monuments will they build?

There is a second movement broader than any question of State or National patriotism, in which these ceremonies also have their place. It is the essential movement of our time in the direction of a new philanthropy.

No line of Shakespeare has ever been perhaps more quoted than this: "The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones." It is true that he put the words into the mouth of a Roman of old; but they were true of the England of his time and they remained true for centuries after his death. But within the last one hundred years or less an entirely new spirit has been developed; a radically new way of looking at human history and at human character has superseded the old. The spirit and genius of our day calls for the recasting of Shakespeare's lines: Let the evil that men do be buried with them; let the good they did be found out and kept alive.

I wish to take one illustration of the truth of this from the history of English literature.

Do you know when and where it was that satire virtually ceased to exist in English literature? It was at the birthplace and with the birth of Charles Darwin. From Darwin's time, from the peak on which he stood, a long slope of English literature sinks backward and downward toward the past; and on that shadowy slope stand somewhere the fierce satirists of English letters. Last of them all, and standing near where Darwin stood, is the great form of Thackeray. All his life he sought for perfection in human character and never found it. He searched England from the throne down for the gentleman and never found the gentleman. The life-long quest sometimes left him bitter, always left him sad. For all of Thackeray's work was done under the influence of the older point of view, that the frailties of men should be scourged out of them and could be. Over his imagination brooded the shadow of a vast myth--that man had thrown away his own perfection, that he was a fallen angel, who wantonly refused to regain his own paradise.

And now from the peak of the world's thought on which Darwin stood, the other slope of English literature comes down to us and will pass on into the future. And as marking the beginning of the modern spirit working in literature, there on this side of Darwin, near to him as Thackeray stood near to him on the other side, is the great form of George Eliot. George Eliot saw the frailties of human nature as clearly as Thackeray saw them; she loved perfection as greatly as he loved perfection; but on her lips satire died and sympathy was born. She was the first of England's great imaginative writers to breathe in the spirit of modern life and of modern knowledge--that man himself is a developing animal--a creature crawling slowly out of utter darkness toward the light. You can satirize a fallen angel who willfully refuses to regain his paradise; but you cannot satirize an animal who is developing through millions of years his own will to be used against his own instincts.

And this new spirit of charity not only pervades the new literature of the world, but has made itself felt in every branch of human action.

It has affected the theatre and well-nigh driven the drama of satire from the stage. Every judge knows that it goes with him to the bench; every physician knows that it accompanies him into the sick-room; every teacher knows that he must reckon with it as he tries to govern and direct the young; every minister knows that it ascends with him into his pulpit and takes wing with his prayer.

And thus we come back around a great circle of the world's endeavor to the simple ceremony of this hour and place. There is but one thing to be said; it is all that need be said; it is an attempt to burnish one corner of a hero's dimmed shield.

It is autumn now, the season of scythe and sickle. Time, the Reaper, long ago reaped from the field of this man's life its heroic deed; and now after so many years it has come back to his grave and thrown down the natural increase. On the day when King Solomon was laid here the grass began to weave its seamless mantle across his frailties; but out of his dust sprang what has since been growing--what no hostile hand can pluck away, nor any wind blow down--the red flower of a man's passionate service to his fellow-men when they were in direst need of him.

And so, long honor to his name! A new peace to his ashes!

THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE[3]

[From _The Saturday Evening Post_ (Philadelphia, December 5, 1908)]

The stars burn out one by one like candles in too long a night.

Children, you love the snow. You play in it, you hunt in it; it brings the tinkling of sleighbells, it gives white wings to the trees and new robes to the world. Whenever it falls in your country, sooner or later it vanishes: forever falling and rising, forming and falling and melting and rising again--on and on through the ages.

If you should start from your homes and travel northward, after a while you would find that everything is steadily changing: the air grows colder, living things begin to be left behind, those that remain begin to look white, the music of the earth begins to die out; you think no more of color and joy and song. On you journey, and always you are traveling toward the silent, the white, the dead. And at last you come to the land of sunlessness and silence--the reign of snow.

If you should start from your homes and travel southward, as you crossed land after land, in the same way you would begin to see that life was failing, colors fading, the earth's harmonies being replaced by the discords of Nature's lifeless forces, storming, crushing, grinding. And at last you would reach the threshold of another world that you dared not enter and that nothing alive ever faces--the home of the frost.

If you should rise straight into the air above your housetops, as though you were climbing the side of an unseen mountain, you would find at last that you had ascended to a height where the mountain would be capped with snow. All round the earth, wherever its mountains are high enough, their summits are capped with the one same snow; for above us, everywhere, lies the upper land of eternal cold.

Some time in the future, we do not know when, but some time in the future, the Spirit of the Cold at the north will move southward; the Spirit of the Cold at the south will move northward; the Spirit of the Cold in the upper air will move downward to meet the other two. When the three meet there will be for the earth one whiteness and silence--rest.

* * * * *

A great time had passed--how great no one knew; there was none to measure it.

It was twilight and it was snowing. On a steep mountainside, near its bald summit, thousands of feet above the line that any other living thing had ever crossed, stood two glorious fir trees, strongest and last of their race. They had climbed out of the valley below to this lone height, and there had so rooted themselves in rock and soil that the sturdiest gale had never been able to dislodge them; and now the twain occupied that beetling rock as the final sentinels of mortal things.

They looked out toward the land on one side of the mountain; at the foot of it lay a valley, and there, in old human times, a village had thriven, church spires had risen, bridal candles had twinkled at twilight. On the opposite side they looked toward the ocean--once the rolling, blue ocean, singing its great song, but level now and white and still at last--its voice hushed with all other voices--the roar of its battleships ended long ago. One fir tree grew lower down than the other, its head barely reached up to its comrade's breast. They had long shared with each other the wordless wisdom of their race; and now, as a slow, bitter wind wandered across the delicate green harps of their leaves, they began to chant--harping like harpers of old who never tired of the past.

The fir below, as the snowflakes fell on its locks and sifted closely in about its throat, shook itself bravely and sang:

"Comrade, the end for us draws nigh; the snow is creeping up. To-night it will place its cap upon my head. I shall close my eyes and follow all things into their sleep."

"Yes," thrummed the fir above, "follow all things into their sleep. If they were thus to sleep at last, why were they ever awakened? It is a mystery."

The whirling wind caught the words and bore them to the right and to the left over land and over sea:

"Mystery--mystery--mystery."

Twilight deepened. The snow scarcely fell; the clouds trailed through the trees so close and low that the flakes were formed amid the boughs and rested where they were created. At intervals out of the clouds and darkness the low musings went on:

"Where now is the Little Brother of the Trees--him of the long thoughts and the brief shadow?"

"He thought that he alone of earthly things was immortal."

"Our people, the Evergreens, were thrust forth on the earth a million ages before he appeared; and we are still here, a million ages since he left, leaving not a trace of himself behind."

"The most fragile moss was born before he was born; and the moss outlasted him."

"The frailest fern was not so perishable."

"Yet he believed he should have eternal youth."

"That his race would return to some Power who had sent it forth."

"That he was ever being borne onward to some far-off, divine event, where there was justice."

"Yes, where there was justice."

"Of old it was their custom to heap white flowers above their dead."

"Now white flowers cover them--the frozen white flowers of the sky."

It was night now about the mountaintop--deep night above it. At intervals the communing of the firs started up afresh:

"Had they known how alone in the universe they were, would they not have turned to each other for happiness?"

"Would not all have helped each?"

"Would not each have helped all?"

"Would they have so mingled their wars with their prayers?"

"Would they not have thrown away their weapons and thrown their arms around one another? It was all a mystery."

"Mystery--mystery."

Once in the night they sounded in unison:

"And all the gods of earth--its many gods in many lands with many faces--they sleep now in their ancient temples; on them has fallen at last their unending dusk."

"And the shepherds who avowed that they were appointed by the Creator of the universe to lead other men as their sheep--what difference is there now between the sheep and the shepherds?"

"The shepherds lie with the sheep in the same white pastures."

"Still, what think you became of all that men did?"

"Whither did Science go? How could it come to naught?"

"And that seven-branched golden candlestick of inner light that was his Art--was there no other sphere to which it could be transferred, lovely and eternal?"

"And what became of Love?"

"What became of the woman who asked for nothing in life but love and youth?"

"What became of the man who was true?"

"Think you that all of them are not gathered elsewhere--strangely changed, yet the same? Is some other quenchless star their safe habitation?"

"What do we know; what did he know on earth? It was a mystery."

"It was all a mystery."

If there had been a clock to measure the hour it must now have been near midnight. Suddenly the fir below harped most tenderly:

"The children! What became of the children? Where did the myriads of them march to? What was the end of the march of the earth's children?"

"Be still!" whispered the fir above. "At that moment I felt the soft fingers of a child searching my boughs. Was not this what in human times they called Christmas Eve?"

"Hearken!" whispered the fir below. "Down in the valley elfin horns are blowing and elfin drums are beating. Did you hear that--faint and far away? It was the bells of the reindeer! It passed: it was the wandering soul of Christmas."

Not long after this the fir below struck its green harp for the last time:

"Comrade, it is the end for me. Good-night!"

Silently the snow closed over it.

The other fir now stood alone. The snow crept higher and higher. It bravely shook itself loose. Late in the long night it communed once more, solitary:

"I, then, close the train of earthly things. And I was the emblem of immortality; let the highest be the last to perish! Power, that put forth all things for a purpose, you have fulfilled, without explaining it, that purpose. I follow all things into their sleep."

In the morning there was no trace of it.

The sun rose clear on the mountaintops, white and cold and at peace.

The earth was dead.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Copyright, 1908, by the Outlook Company.

[3] Copyright, 1908, by the Curtis Publishing Company.

NANCY HUSTON BANKS

Mrs. Nancy Huston Banks, novelist, was born at Morganfield, Kentucky, about 1850. She is the daughter of the late Judge George Huston, who for many years was an attorney and banker of her native town. When a young woman Miss Huston was married to Mr. James N. Banks, now a lawyer of Henderson, Kentucky. Mrs. Banks's first book, _Stairs of Sand_ (Chicago, 1890), has been forgotten by author and public alike, but shortly after its publication, she went to New York, and there she resided at the Hotel St. James for many years. At the present time she is living in London. She became a contributor to magazines, her critical paper on Mr. James Lane Allen and his novels, which appeared in _The Bookman_ for June, 1895, being her first work to attract serious attention. A few years later Mrs. Banks dropped her magazine work in order to write her charming novel of life in southern Kentucky, _Oldfield_ (New York, 1902). This story was highly praised in this country and in England, the critics of London coining a descriptive phrase for it that has stuck--"the Kentucky Cranford." Her next novel, _'Round Anvil Rock_ (New York, 1903), was a worthy follower of _Oldfield_. One reviewer called it "a blend of an old-fashioned love story and an historical study." Mrs. Banks's most recent novel is _The Little Hills_ (New York, 1905). The opening words of this story: "The air was the breath of spice pinks," was seized upon by the critics and set up as a sign-post for the book's tone. Mrs. Banks has been a great traveler. She was sent to South Africa during the Boer war by _Vanity Fair_ of London, and her letters to that publication were most interesting. She knew Cecil Rhodes and George W. Steevens, the war correspondent, and, with her beauty and charm, she became a social "star" in the life about her. Mrs. Banks's one eccentricity--according to the literary gossips of New York--is her distaste for classical music; and that much of her success is due to the fact that she knows how to handle editors and publishers, we also learn from the same source. At least one of her contemporaries once held--though he has since wholly relented and regretted much--that, in a now exceedingly scarce first edition, she out-ingramed Ingram! But, of course, that is another story.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Critic_ (September, 1902); _The Nation_
(February 5, 1903); _The Bookman_ (February, 1904).

ANVIL ROCK[4]

[From _'Round Anvil Rock_ (New York, 1903)]

The courage and calmness which he had found in himself under this test, heartened him and made him the more determined to control his wandering fancy. Looking now neither to the right nor the left, he pressed on through the clearing toward the buffalo track in the border of the forest which would lead him into the Wilderness Road. Sternly setting his thoughts on the errand that was taking him to the salt-works, he began to think of the place in which they were situated, and to wonder why so bare, so brown, and so desolate a spot should have been called Green Lick. There was no greenness about it, and not the slightest sign that there ever had been any verdure, although it still lay in the very heart of an almost tropical forest. It must surely have been as it was now since time immemorial. Myriads of wild beasts coming and going through numberless centuries to drink the salt water, had trodden the earth around it as hard as iron, and had worn it down far below the surface of the surrounding country. The boy had seen it often, but always by daylight, and never alone, so that he noted many things now which he had not observed before. The huge bison must have gone over that well-beaten track one by one, to judge by its narrowness. He could see it dimly, running into the clearing like a black line beginning far off between the bordering trees; but as he looked, the darkness deepened, the mists thickened, and a look of unreality came over familiar objects. And then through the wavering gloom there suddenly towered a great dark mass topped by something which rose against the wild dimness like a colossal blacksmith's anvil. It might have been Vulcan's own forge, so strange and fabulous a thing it seemed! The boy's heart leaped with his pony's leap. His imagination spread its swift wings ere he could think; but in another instant he reminded himself. This was not an awful apparition, but a real thing, wondrous and unaccountable enough in its reality. It was Anvil Rock--a great, solitary rock rising abruptly from the rockless loam of a level country, and lifting its single peak, rudely shaped like a blacksmith's anvil, straight up toward the clouds.

THE OLD-FASHIONED FIDDLERS

[From the same]

Those old-time country fiddlers--all of them, black or white--how wonderful they were! They have always been the wonder and the despair of all musicians who have played by rule and note. The very way that the country fiddler held his fiddle against his chest and never against his shoulder like the trained musician! The very way that the country fiddler grasped his bow, firmly and squarely in the middle, and never lightly at the end like a trained musician! The very way that he let go and went off and kept on--the amazing, inimitable spirit, the gayety, the rhythm, the swing! No trained musician ever heard the music of the country fiddler without wondering at its power, and longing in vain to know the secret of its charm. It would be worth a good deal to know where and how they learned the tunes that they played. Possibly these were handed down by ear from one to another; some perhaps may have never been pent up in notes, and others may have been given to the note reader under other names than those by which the country fiddlers knew them. This is said to have been the case with "Old Zip Coon," and the names of many of them would seem to prove that they belonged to the time and the country. But there is a delightful uncertainty about the origin and the history of almost all of them--about "Leather Breeches" and "Sugar in the Gourd" and "Wagoner" and "Cotton-eyed Joe," and so on through a long list.

FOOTNOTE:

[4] Copyright, 1903, by the Macmillan Company.

WILLIAM B. SMITH

William Benjamin Smith, perhaps the greatest scholar ever born on Kentucky soil, first saw the light at Stanford, Kentucky, October 26, 1850. Kentucky (Transylvania) University conferred the degree of Master of Arts upon him in 1871; and the University of Goettengen granted him his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1879. Dr. Smith was professor of mathematics in Central College, Missouri, from 1881 to 1885, when he accepted the chair of physics in the University of Missouri. In 1888 he was transferred to the department of mathematics in the same institution, which he held until 1893, when he resigned to accept a similar position at Tulane University. In 1906 Dr. Smith was elected head of the department of philosophy at Tulane, which position he holds at the present time. He was a delegate of the United States government to the first Pan-American Scientific Congress, held at Santiago, Chile, in 1908. Dr. Smith is the author of the following books, the very titles of which will show his amazing versatility: _Co-ordinate Geometry_ (Boston, 1885); _Clew to Trigonometry_ (1889); _Introductory Modern Geometry_ (New York, 1893); _Infinitesimal Analysis_ (New York, 1898); _The Color Line_ (New York, 1905), a stirring discussion of the Negro problem from a rather new perspective; two theological works, written originally in German, _Der Vorchristliche Jesus_ (Jena, Germany, 1906); and _Ecce Deus_ (Jena, Germany, 1911), the English translation of which was issued at London and Chicago in 1912. These two works upon proto-Christianity have placed Dr. Smith among the foremost scholars of his day and generation in America. Besides his books he wrote two pamphlets of more than fifty pages each upon _Tariff for Protection_ (Columbia, Missouri, 1888); and _Tariff Reform_ (Columbia, Missouri, 1892). These show the author at his best. And his biography of James Sidney Rollins, founder of the University of Missouri, was published about this time. During the month of October, 1896, Dr. Smith published six articles in the Chicago _Record_, on the sliver question and in defense of the gold standard, which were certainly the most thorough brought out by the presidential campaign of that year. Among his many public addresses, essays, and articles, _The Pauline Codices F and G_ may be mentioned, as well as his articles on _Infinitesimal Calculus_ and _New Testament Criticism_ in the _Encyclopaedia Americana_ (New York, 1906); and he compiled the mathematical definitions for the _New International Dictionary_ (New York, 1908). Dr. Smith's fine poem, _The Merman and the Seraph_, was crowned in the _Poet Lore_ competition of 1906. As a mathematician, philosopher, sociologist, New Testament critic, publicist, poet, and alleged prototype of _David_, hero of Mr. James Lane Allen's _The Reign of Law_--which he most certainly was not!--Dr. Smith stands supreme among the sons of Kentucky.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Current Literature_ (June, 1905); _The Nation_
(November 23, 1911).

A SOUTHERN VIEW OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM[5]

[From _The Color Line_ (New York, 1905)]

It is idle to talk of education and civilization and the like as corrective or compensative agencies. All are weak and beggarly as over against the almightiness of heredity, the omniprepotence of the transmitted germ-plasma. Let this be amerced of its ancient rights, let it be shorn in some measure of its exceeding weight of ancestral glory, let it be soiled in its millenial purity and integrity, and nothing shall ever restore it; neither wealth, nor culture, nor science, nor art, nor morality, nor religion--not even Christianity itself. Here and there these may redeem some happy spontaneous variation, some lucky freak of nature; but nothing more--they can never redeem the race. If this be not true, then history and biology are alike false; then Darwin and Spencer, Haeckel and Weismann, Mendel and Pearson, have lived and laboured in vain.

Equally futile is the reply, so often made by our opponents, that miscegenation has already progressed far in the Southland, as witness millions of Mulattoes. Certainly; but do not such objectors know in their hearts that their reply is no answer, but is utterly irrelevant? We admit and deplore the fact that unchastity has poured a broad stream of white blood into black veins; but we deny, and perhaps no one will affirm, that it has poured even the slenderest appreciable rill of Negro blood into the veins of the Whites. We have no excuse whatever to make for these masculine incontinences; we abhor them as disgraceful and almost bestial. But, however degrading and even unnatural, they in nowise, not even in the slightest conceivable degree, defile the Southern Caucasian blood. That blood to-day is absolutely pure; and it is the inflexible resolution of the South to preserve that purity, no matter how dear the cost. We repeat, then, it is not a question of individual morality, nor even of self-respect. He who commerces with a negress debases himself and dishonours his body, the temple of the Spirit; but he does not impair, in anywise, the dignity or integrity of his race; he may sin against himself and others, and even against his God, but not against the germ-plasma of his kind.

Does some one reply that some Negroes are better than some Whites, physically, mentally, morally? We do not deny it; but this fact, again, is without pertinence. It may very well be that some dogs are superior to some men. It is absurd to suppose that only the elect of the Blacks would unite with only the non-elect of the Whites. Once started, the _pamnixia_ would spread through all classes of society and contaminate possibly or actually all. Even a little leaven may leaven the whole lump.

Far more than this, however, even if only very superior Negroes formed unions with non-superior Whites, the case would not be altered; for it is a grievous error to suppose that the child is born of its proximate parents only; it is born of all its ancestry; it is the child of its race. The eternal past lays hand upon it and upon all its descendants. However weak the White, behind him stands Europe; however strong the Black, behind lies Africa.

Preposterous, indeed, is this doctrine that _personal excellence is the true standard_, and that only such Negroes as attain a certain grade of merit should or would be admitted to social equality. A favourite evasion! _The Independent_, _The Nation_, _The Outlook_, the whole North--all point admiringly to Mr. Washington, and exclaim: "But only see what a noble man he is--so much better than his would-be superiors!" So, too, a distinguished clergyman, when asked whether he would let his daughter marry a Negro, replied: "We wish our daughters to marry Christian gentlemen." Let, then, the major premise be, "All Christian gentlemen are to be admitted to social equality;" and add, if you will, any desired degree of refinement or education or intellectual prowess as a condition. Does not every one see that any such test would be wholly impracticable and nugatory? If Mr. Washington be the social equal of Roosevelt and Eliot and Hadley, how many others will be the social equals of the next circle, and the next, and the next, in the long descent from the White House and Harvard to the miner and the ragpicker? And shall we trust the hot, unreasoning blood of youth to lay virtues and qualities so evenly in the balance and decide just when some "olive-coloured suitor" is enough a "Christian gentleman" to claim the hand of some simple-hearted milk-maid or some school-ma'am "past her bloom?" The notion is too ridiculous for refutation. If the best Negro in the land is the social equal of the best Caucasian, then it will be hard to prove that the lowest White is higher than the lowest Black; the principle of division is lost, and complete social equality is established. We seem to have read somewhere that, when the two ends of one straight segment coincide with the two ends of another, the segments coincide throughout their whole extent.

THE MERMAN AND THE SERAPH[6]

[From _Poet-Lore_ (Boston, 1906)]

I

Deep the sunless seas amid,
Far from Man, from Angel hid,
Where the soundless tides are rolled
Over Ocean's treasure-hold,
With dragon eye and heart of stone,
The ancient Merman mused alone.

II

And aye his arrowed Thought he wings
Straight at the inmost core of things--
As mirrored in his magic glass
The lightning-footed Ages pass--
And knows nor joy nor Earth's distress,
But broods on Everlastingness.

"Thoughts that love not, thoughts that hate not,
Thoughts that Age and Change await not,
All unfeeling,
All revealing,
Scorning height's and depth's concealing,
These be mine--and these alone!"--
Saith the Merman's heart of stone.

III

Flashed a radiance far and nigh
As from the vortex of the sky--
Lo! a maiden beauty-bright
And mantled with mysterious might
Of every power, below, above,
That weaves resistless spell of Love.

IV

Through the weltering waters cold
Shot the sheen of silken gold;
Quick the frozen heart below
Kindled in the amber glow;
Trembling heavenward Nekkan yearned,
Rose to where the Glory burned.

"Deeper, bluer than the skies are,
Dreaming meres of morn thine eyes are;
All that brightens
Smile or heightens
Charm is thine, all life enlightens,
Thou art all the soul's desire"--
Sang the Merman's heart of fire.

"Woe thee, Nekkan! Ne'er was given
Thee to walk the ways of Heaven;
Vain the vision,
Fate's derision,
Thee that raps to realms elysian,
Fathomless profounds are thine"--
Quired the answering voice divine.

V

Came an echo from the West,
Pierced the deep celestial breast;
Summoned, far the Seraph fled,
Trailing splendours overhead;
Broad beneath her flying feet,
Laughed the silvered ocean-street.

VI

On the Merman's mortal sight
Instant fell the pall of Night;
Sunk to the sea's profoundest floor
He dreams the vanished vision o'er,
Hears anew the starry chime,
Ponders aye Eternal Time.

"Thoughts that hope not, thoughts that fear not,
Thoughts that Man and Demon veer not,
Times unending
Comprehending,
Space and worlds of worlds transcending,
These are mine--but these alone!"--
Sighs the Merman's heart of stone.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] Copyright, 1905, by McClure, Phillips and Company.

[6] Copyright, 1906, by Richard G. Badger.

ANDERSON C. QUISENBERRY

Anderson Chenault Quisenberry, historical writer, was born near Winchester, Kentucky, October 26, 1850. He was educated at Georgetown College, Georgetown, Kentucky. In 1870 Mr. Quisenberry engaged in Kentucky journalism, being editor of several papers at different periods, until 1889, when he went to Washington to accept a position in the War Department; but he has continued his contributions to the Kentucky press to the present time. His first volume was _The Life and Times of Hon. Humphrey Marshall_ (Winchester, Kentucky, 1892). This was followed by his other works: _Revolutionary Soldiers in Kentucky_ (1896); _Genealogical Memoranda of the Quisenberry Family and Other Families_ (Washington, D. C., 1897); _Memorials of the Quisenberry Family in Germany, England, and America_ (Washington, D. C., 1900); _Lopez's Expeditions to Cuba, 1850-51_ (Louisville, Kentucky, 1906), one of the most attractive of the Filson Club publications; and _History by Illustration: General Zachary Taylor and the Mexican War_ (Frankfort, Kentucky, 1911), the most recent volume in the Kentucky Historical Series of the State Historical Society. Mr. Quisenberry resides at Hyattsville, Maryland, going into Washington every day for his official duties.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. Letters from Mr. Quisenberry to the present writer;
_Who's Who in America_ (1912-1913).

THE DEATH OF CRITTENDEN[7]

[From _Lopez's Expeditions to Cuba, 1850-1851_ (Louisville, Kentucky, 1906)]

The victims, bound securely, were brought out of the boat twelve at a time; of these, six were blindfolded and made to kneel down with their backs to the soldiers, who stood some three or four paces from them. These six executed, the other six were put through the same ghastly ceremony; then twelve others were brought from the boat; and so on, until the terrible and sickening tragedy was over. As each lot were murdered their bodies were cast aside to make room for the next lot.