Chapter III: Appendix: 383 (2)

An eyewitness says of these martyrs to liberty: "They behaved with firmness, evincing no hesitation or trepidation whatever." Among those shot was a lad of fifteen who begged earnestly on his knees that some one be sent to him who could speak English, but not the slightest attention was paid to him. One handsome young man desired that his watch be sent to his sweetheart. After the first discharge those who were not instantly killed were beaten upon the head until life was extinct. One poor fellow received three balls in his neck, and, raising himself in the agonies of death, was struck by a soldier with the butt of a musket and his brains dashed out.

Colonel Crittenden, as the leader of the party, was shot first, and alone. One of the rabble pushed through the line of soldiers, and rushed up to Crittenden and pulled his beard. The gallant Kentuckian, with the utmost coolness, spit in the coward's face. He refused to kneel or to be blindfolded, saying in a clear, ringing voice: "A Kentuckian kneels to none except his God, and always dies facing his enemy!"--an expression that became famous. Looking into the muzzles of the muskets that were to slay him, standing heroically erect in the very face of death, with his own hands, which had been unbound at his request, he gave the signal for the fatal volley; and died, as he had lived, "Strong in Heart." Captain Ker also refused to kneel. They stood up, faced their enemies, were shot down, and their brains were beaten out with clubbed muskets.

FOOTNOTE:

[7] Copyright, 1906, by the Filson Club.

ROBERT BURNS WILSON

Robert Burns Wilson, poet of distinction, the son of a Pennsylvania father and a Virginia mother, was born in his grandfather's house near Washington, Pennsylvania, October 30, 1850. When a very small child he was taken to his mother's home in Virginia; and there the mother died when her son was but ten years old, which event saddened his subsequent life. Mr. Wilson was educated in the schools of Wheeling, West Virginia, after which he went to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to study art. When but nineteen he was painting portraits for a living. In 1871 he and John W. Alexander, now the famous New York artist, chartered a canoe and started down the Ohio river from Pittsburgh, hoping in due course to dock at Louisville, Kentucky. They had hardly reached the Kentucky shore, however, when they disagreed about something or other, and young Alexander left him in the night and returned to Pittsburgh. The next day Mr. Wilson ran his boat into a bank in Union county, Kentucky; he lived in that county a year, when he went up to Louisville. He gained more than a local reputation with a crayon portrait of Henry Watterson, and he was actually making considerable headway as an artist when he was discovered by the late Edward Hensley, of Frankfort, Kentucky, who persuaded him to remove to that town. Mr. Wilson settled at Frankfort in 1875, and he lived there for the following twenty-five years. His literary and artistic labors are inseparably interwoven with the history and traditions of that interesting old town, for he was its "great man" for many years, and its toast. As painter and poet he was heralded by the folk of Frankfort until the outside world was attracted and nibbled at his work. The first public recognition accorded his landscapes was at the Louisville and New Orleans Expositions of 1883 and 1884.

Mr. Wilson's first poem, _A Wild Violet in November_, was followed by the finest flower of his genius, _When Evening Cometh On_, which was originally printed in _Harper's Magazine_ for October, 1885. This is the only Southern poem or, perhaps, American, that can be mentioned in the same breath with Gray's _Elegy_. Many of his poems and prose papers were published in _Harper's_, _The Century_, and other periodicals. His first book, _Life and Love_ (New York, 1887), contained the best work he has ever done. The dedicatory lines to the memory of his mother were lovely; and there are many more poems to be found in the volume that are very fine. _Chant of a Woodland Spirit_ (New York, 1894), a long poem of more than fifty pages, portions of which had originally appeared in _Harper's_ and _The Century_, was dedicated to John Fox, Jr., with whom Mr. Wilson was friendly, and who spent a great deal of his time at the poet's home in Frankfort. His second and most recent collection of lyrics, _The Shadows of the Trees_ (New York, 1898), was widely read and warmly received by all true lovers of genuine poesy. Mr. Wilson's striking poem, _Remember the Maine_, provoked by the tragedy in Havana harbor, was printed in _The New York Herald_; and another of his several poems inspired by that fiasco of a fight that is remembered, _Such is the Death the Soldier Dies_, appeared in _The Atlantic Monthly_. The Kentucky poet's battle-hymns to the boys in blue were excelled by no other American singer, unless it was by the late William Vaughn Moody. Mr. Wilson's fourth and latest work, a novel, _Until the Day Break_ (New York, 1900), is unreadable as a story, but the passages of nature prose are many and exquisite.

While he has always been a writing-man of very clear and definite gifts, Mr. Wilson has painted many portraits and landscapes, working with equal facility in oils, water-color, and crayon. He is held in esteem by many competent critics as an artist of ability, but nearly all of his work in any of three mediums indicated, is exceedingly moody and pessimistic; and his water-colors, especially, are "muddy." It is greatly to be regretted that he did not remain the poet he was born to be, instead of drawing his dreams--many use a stronger word--in paints.

As has been said, Mr. Wilson was the presiding genius of the town of Frankfort during his life there; and he was a bachelor! Thereby hangs a tale with a meaning and a moral. For many years the widows and the other women past their bloom, burned incense at the shrine of the mighty man who could wrap himself in his great-coat, dash through a field and over a fence, punching plants with his never-absent stick, and return to town with a poem pounding in his pulses, and another landscape in his brain. Ah, he was a great fellow! But the tragedy of it all: after all these years of adoration from ladies overanxious to get him into their nets, they awoke one morning in 1901 to find that little Anne Hendrick, schoolgirl, and daughter of a former attorney-general of Kentucky, had married their heart's desire, that their dreams were day-dreams after all. The marriage took place in New York, after which they returned to Frankfort. The following year their child, Elizabeth, was born; and a short time afterwards he removed to New York, where he has lived ever since. Rumors of his art exhibitions have reached Kentucky; but the only tangible things have been prose papers and lyrics in the magazines.

A short time before his death, Paul Hamilton Hayne, the famous Southern poet, sent Wilson this greeting: "The old man whose head has grown gray in the service of the Muses, who is about to leave the lists of poetry forever, around whose path the sunset is giving place to twilight, with no hope before him but 'an anchorage among the stars,' extends his hand to a younger brother of his art with an earnest _Te moriturus saluto_." These charming words were elicited by _June Days_, and _When Evening Cometh On_.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Recent Movement in Southern Literature_, by C.
W. Coleman, Jr. (_Harper's Magazine_, May, 1887); _Who's Who in
America_ (1901-1902); _Library of Southern Literature_ (Atlanta,
v. xv, 1910), an excellent study by Mrs. Ida W. Harrison.

LOVINGLY TO ELIZABETH, MY MOTHER[8]

[From _Life and Love. Poems_ (New York, 1887)]

The green Virginian hills were blithe in May,
And we were plucking violets--thou and I.
A transient gladness flooded earth and sky;
Thy fading strength seemed to return that day,
And I was mad with hope that God would stay
Death's pale approach--Oh! all hath long passed by!
Long years! Long years! and now, I well know why
Thine eyes, quick-filled with tears, were turned away.

First loved; first lost; my mother:--time must still
Leave my soul's debt uncancelled. All that's best
In me, and in my art, is thine:--Me-seems,
Even now, we walk afield. Through good and ill,
My sorrowing heart forgets not, and in dreams
I see thee, in the sun-lands of the blest.

Frankfort, Kentucky, October 6, 1887.

WHEN EVENING COMETH ON

[From the same]

When evening cometh on,
Slower and statelier in the mellowing sky
The fane-like, purple-shadowed clouds arise;
Cooler and balmier doth the soft wind sigh;
Lovelier, lonelier to our wondering eyes
The softening landscape seems. The swallows fly
Swift through the radiant vault; the field-lark cries
His thrilling, sweet farewell; and twilight bands
Of misty silence cross the far-off lands
When evening cometh on.

When evening cometh on,
Deeper and dreamier grows the slumbering dell,
Darker and drearier spreads the bristling wold,
Bluer and heavier roll the hills that swell
In moveless waves against the shimmering gold.
Out from their haunts the insect hordes, that dwell
Unseen by day, come thronging forth to hold
Their fleeting hour of revel, and by the pool
Soft pipings rise up from the grasses cool,
When evening cometh on.

When evening cometh on,
Along their well-known paths with heavier tread
The sad-eyed, loitering kine unurged return;
The peaceful sheep, by unseen shepherds led,
Wend bleating to the hills, so well they learn
Where Nature's hand their wholesome couch hath spread;
And through the purpling mist the moon doth yearn;
Pale gentle radiance, dear recurring dream,
Soft with the falling dew falls thy faint beam,
When evening cometh on.

When evening cometh on,
Loosed from the day's long toil, the clanking teams,
With halting steps, pass on their jostling ways,
Their gearings glinted by the waning beams;
Close by their heels the heedful collie strays;
All slowly fading in a land of dreams,
Transfigured specters of the shrouding haze.
Thus from life's field the heart's fond hope doth fade,
Thus doth the weary spirit seek the shade,
When evening cometh on.

When evening cometh on,
Across the dotted fields of gathered grain
The soul of summer breathes a deep repose,
Mysterious murmurings mingle on the plain,
And from the blurred and blended brake there flows
The undulating echoes of some strain
Once heard in paradise, perchance--who knows?
But now the whispering memory sadly strays
Along the dim rows of the rustling maize
When evening cometh on.

When evening cometh on,
Anon there spreads upon the lingering air
The musk of weedy slopes and grasses dank,
And odors from far fields, unseen but fair,
With scent of flowers from many a shadowy bank.
O lost Elysium, art thou hiding there?
Flows yet that crystal stream whereof I drank?
Ah, wild-eyed Memory, fly from night's despair;
Thy strong wings droop with heavier weight of care
When evening cometh on.

When evening cometh on,
No sounding phrase can set the heart at rest.
The settling gloom that creeps by wood and stream,
The bars that lie along the smouldering west,
The tall and lonely, silent trees that seem
To mock the groaning earth, and turn to jest
This wavering flame, this agonizing dream,
Ah, all bring sorrow as the clouds bring rain,
And evermore life's struggle seemeth vain
When evening cometh on.

When evening cometh on,
Anear doth Life stand by the great unknown,
In darkness reaching out her sentient hands;
Philosophies and creeds, alike, are thrown
Beneath her feet, and questioning she stands,
Close on the brink, unfearing and alone,
And lists the dull wave breaking on the sands;
Albeit her thoughtful eyes are filled with tears,
So lonely and so sad the sound she hears
When evening cometh on.

When evening cometh on,
Vain seems the world, and vainer wise men's thought.
All colors vanish when the sun goeth down.
Fame's purple mantle some proud soul hath caught
No better seems than doth the earth-stained gown
Worn by Content. All names shall be forgot.
Death plucks the stars to deck his sable crown.
The fair enchantment of the golden day
Far through the vale of shadows melts away
When evening cometh on.

When evening cometh on,
Love, only love, can stay the sinking soul,
And smooth thought's racking fever from the brow:
The wounded heart Love only can console.
Whatever brings a balm for sorrow now,
So must it be while this vexed earth shall roll;
Take then the portion which the gods allow.
Dear heart, may I at last on thy warm breast
Sink to forgetfulness and silent rest
When evening cometh on?

FOOTNOTE:

[8] Copyright, 1887, by O. M. Dunham.

DANIEL HENRY HOLMES

Daniel Henry Holmes is, with the possible exceptions of Theodore O'Hara and Madison Cawein, the foremost lyric poet Kentucky can rightfully claim, although he happened to be born at New York City, July 16, 1851; and that single fact is the only flaw in Kentucky's fee simple title to his fame. His father, Daniel Henry Holmes, Senior, was a native of Indiana; his mother was an Englishwoman. Daniel Henry Holmes, Senior, settled at New Orleans when a young man as a merchant; but a year after the birth of Daniel Henry Junior--as the future poet always signed himself while his father lived--or in 1852, he purchased an old colonial house back of Covington, Kentucky, as a summer place for his family, and called it Holmesdale. So Daniel Henry Junior Holmes became a warm-weather Kentuckian when but one year old; and he spent the following nine summers at Holmesdale, returning each fall to New Orleans for the winter. When the Civil War began his father, whose sympathies were entirely Southern, removed his family to Europe, where eight years were spent in Tours and Paris. In 1869, at the age of eighteen years, Daniel Henry Junior, with his family, returned to the United States, and entered his father's business at New Orleans. His dislike for commercialism in any form became so great that his father wisely permitted him to return to Holmesdale, which was then in charge of an uncle, and to study law at Cincinnati. In the same year that he returned to Holmesdale (1869), the house was rebuilt; and it remains intact to-day. His family shortly afterwards joined him, and Holmesdale became the manor-place of his people for many years. Holmes was graduated in law in 1872, and he practiced in a desultory manner for some years. In 1883 he married Miss Rachel Gaff, of Cincinnati, daughter of one of the old and wealthy families of that city. He and his bride spent the year of their marriage at Holmesdale, and, in 1884, went abroad.

Holmes's first and finest book of poems, written at Covington, was entitled _Under a Fool's Cap: Songs_ (London, 1884), and contained one hundred and forty-four pages in an edition that did not exceed five hundred copies. The poet whimsically placed his boyhood name of "Daniel Henry Junior" upon the title-page. This little volume is one of the most unique things ever done by an American hand. Holmes took twenty-four old familiar nursery jingles, which are printed in black-face type at the top of the lyrics relating to them, and he worked them over and turned them over and did everything but parody them; and in only one of them--_Margery Daw_--did he discard the original metres. He employed "three methods of dealing with his nursery rhymes; he either made them the basis of a story, or he took them as an allegory and gave the 'modern instance,' or he simply continued and amplified. The last method is, perhaps, the most effective and successful of all," the poems done in this manner being far and away the finest in the book. Holmes spent the seven years subsequent to the appearance of _Under a Fool's Cap_, in France, Italy, and Germany. In 1890 his father gave him Holmesdale. He returned to Kentucky, and the remaining years of his life were spent at Covington, save several winters abroad.

Holmes's second book of lyrics, _A Pedlar's Pack_ (New York, 1906), which was largely written at Holmesdale, contained many exceedingly clever and charming poems, but, with the exception of some fine sonnets, _A Pedlar's Pack_ is verse, while _Under a Fool's Cap_ is genuine poetry. Holmes was an accomplished musician, and his _Hempen Homespun Songs_ (Cincinnati, 1906), mostly written in Dresden, contained fourteen songs set to music, of which four had words by the poet. Of the other ten songs, three were by W. M. Thackeray, two by Alfred de Musset, and Austin Dobson, Henri Chenevers, W. E. Henley, Edgar Allan Poe, and Alfred Tennyson were represented by having one of their songs set to music. This was his only publication in the field of music, and his third and final book. Holmes's last years were spent at the old house in Covington, devoted to arranging his large library, collected from the bookshops of the world, and to his music. His life was one of endless ease, the universal pursuit of wealth being neither necessary nor engaging. He had lived parts of more than forty years of his life at Holmesdale when he left it for the last time in the fall of 1908 to spend the winter at Hot Springs, Virginia, where he died suddenly on December 14, 1908. He had hardly found his grave at Cincinnati before lovers of poetry on both sides of the Atlantic arose and demanded word of his life and works. This demand has been in part supplied by Mr. Thomas B. Mosher, the Maine publisher, who has exquisitely reprinted _Under a Fool's Cap_, and written this beautiful tribute to the poet's memory:

"One vital point of interest should be restated: the man who took
these old tags of nursery rhymes and fashioned out of them some of
the tenderest lyrics ever written was an American by birth and in
the doing of this unique thing did it perfectly. That he never
repeated these first fine careless raptures is nothing to his
discredit. That he _did_ accomplish what he set himself to do with
an originality and a proper regard to the quality of his work
rather than its quantity is the essential fact; and in his ability
to touch a vibrating chord in the hearts of all who have come
across these lyrics we feel that the mission of Daniel Henry
Holmes was fulfilled both in letter and in spirit."

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Hesperian Tree_, edited by J. J. Piatt
(Cincinnati, 1900); _The Cornhill Magazine_ (August, 1909), review
of _Under a Fool's Cap_, by Norman Roe; _The Bibelot_ (May, 1910);
_Under a Fool's Cap_ (Portland, Maine, 1910; 1911), lovely
reprints of the 1884 edition, with Mr. Roe's review and foreword
by Mr. Mosher; letters from Mrs. Holmes, the poet's widow, who has
recently reopened Holmesdale.

BELL HORSES

[From _Under a Fool's Cap_ (London, 1884)]

Bell horses, Bell horses,
What time of day?
One o'clock! Two o'clock!
Three! and away.

I shall wait by the gate
To see you pass,
Closely press'd, three abreast,
Clanking with brass:

With your smart red mail-cart
Hard at your heels,
Scarlet ground, fleck'd around
With the Queen's seals.

Up the hills, down the hills,
Till the cart shrink
To a faint dab of paint
On the sky-brink,

Never stop till you drop,
On to the town,
Bearing great news of state
To Lords and Crown.

And down deep in the keep
Of your mail-cart,
There's a note that I wrote
To my sweetheart.

I had no words that glow,
No penman's skill,
And high-born maids would scorn
Spelling so ill;

But what if it be stiff
Of hand and thought,
And ink-blots mark the spots
Where kisses caught,

He will read without heed
Of phrases' worth,
That I love him above
All things on earth.

I must wait here, till late
Past Evensong,
Ere you come tearing home--
Days are so long!--

But I'll watch, till I catch
Your bell's chime clear ...
If you'll bring _me_ something--
Won't you please, dear?

MY LADY'S GARDEN

[From the same]

How does my Lady's garden grow?
How does my Lady's garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle-shells,
And pretty girls all in a row.

All fresh and fair, as the spring is fair,
And wholly unconscious they are so fair,
With eyes as deep as the wells of sleep,
And mouths as fragrant as sweet June air.

They all have crowns and all have wings,
Pale silver crowns and faint green wings,
And each has a wand within her hand,
And raiment about her that cleaves and clings.

But what have my Lady's girls to do?
What maiden toil or spinning to do?
They swing and sway the live-long day
While beams and dreams shift to and fro.

And are so still that one forgets,
So calm and restful, one forgets
To think it strange they never change,
Mistaking them for Margarets.

But when night comes and Earth is dumb,
When her face is veil'd, and her voice is dumb,
The pretty girls rouse from their summer drowse,
For the time of their magic toil has come.

They deck themselves in their bells and shells,
Their silver bells and their cockle-shells,
Like pilgrim elves, they deck themselves
And chaunting Runic hymns and spells,

They spread their faint green wings abroad,
Their wings and clinging robes abroad,
And upward through the pathless blue
They soar, like incense smoke, to God.

Who gives them crystal dreams to hold,
And snow-white hopes and thoughts to hold,
And laughter spun of beams of the sun,
And tears that shine like molten-gold.

And when their hands can hold no more,
Their chaliced hands can hold no more,
And when their bells, and cockle-shells,
With holy gifts are brimming o'er,

With swift glad wings they cleave the deep,
As shafts of starlight cleave the deep,
Through Space and Night they take their flight
To where my Lady lies asleep;

And there, they coil above her bed,--
A fairy crown above her bed--
While from their hands, like sifted sands,
Falls their harvest winnowed.

And this is why my Lady grows,
My own sweet Lady daily grows,
In sorcery such, that at her touch,
Sweet laughter blossoms and songs unclose.

And this is what the pretty girls do,
This is the toil appointed to do,
With silver bells, and cockle-shells,
Like Margarets all in a row.

LITTLE BLUE BETTY

[From the same]

Little Blue Betty lived in a lane,
She sold good ale to gentlemen.
Gentlemen came every day,
And little Blue Betty hopp'd away.

A rare old tavern, this "Hand and Glove,"
That Little Blue Betty was mistress of;
But rarer still than its far-famed taps
Were Betty's trim ankles and dainty caps.

So gentlemen came every day--
As much for the caps as the ale, they say--
And call'd for their pots, and her mug to boot:
If it bettered their thirst they were welcome to't;

For Betty, with none of those foolish qualms
Which come of inordinate singing of psalms,
Thought kissing a practice both hearty and hale,
To freshen the lips and smarten the ale.

So gallants came, by the dozen and score,
To sit on the bench by the trellised door,
From the full high noon till the shades grew long,
With their pots of ale, and snatches of song.

While little Blue Betty, in shortest of skirts,
And whitest of caps, and bluest of shirts,
Went hopping away, rattling pots and pence,
Getting kiss'd now and then as pleased Providence.

How well I remember! I used to sit down
By the door, with Byronic, elaborate frown
Staring hard at her, as she whisk'd about me,--
Being jealous as only calf-lovers can be,

Till Betty would bring me my favourite mug,
Her lips all a-pucker, her shoulders a-shrug,
And wheedle and coax my young vanity back,
So I fancied myself the preferred of the pack.

Ah! the dear old times! I turn'd out of my way,
As I travell'd westward the other day,
For a ramble among those boy-haunts of mine,
And a friendly nod to the crazy old sign.

The inn was gone--to make room, alas!
For a railroad buffet, all gilding and glass,
Where sat a proper young person in pink,
Selling ale--which I hadn't the heart to drink.

THE OLD WOMAN UNDER THE HILL

[From the same]

There was an old woman lived under the hill,
And if she's not gone, she lives there still;
Baked apples she sold and cranberry pies,
And she's the old woman who never told lies.

A queer little body, all shrivelled and brown,
In her earth-colour'd mantle and rain-colour'd gown,
Incessantly fumbling strange grasses and weeds,
Like a rickety cricket, a-saying its beads.

In winter or summer, come shine or come rain,
When the bustles and beams into twilight wane,
To the top of her hill, one can see her climb,
To sit out her watch through the long night-time.

The neighbourhood gossips have strange tales to tell--
As they sit at their knitting and tongues waggle well
Of the queer little crone who lived under the hill
When the grannies among them were hoppy-thumbs still.

She was once, they say, a young lassie, as fair
As white-wing'd hawthorn in April air,
When under the hill--one fine evening--she met
A stranger, the strangest maid ever saw yet:

From his crown to his heels he was clad all in red,
And his hair like a flame on his shoulders was shed;
Not a word spake he, but clutching her hand,
Led her off through the darkness to Shadowland.

What befell her there no mortal can tell,
But it must have been things indescribable,
For when she returned, at last, alone,
Her beauty was dead, and her youth was gone.

They gather'd about her: she shook her head
--She had been through Hell--that was all she said
In answer to whens, and hows, and whys;
So they took her word, for she never told lies.

And now, they say, when the sun goes down
This queer little woman, all shrivell'd and brown
Turns into a beautiful lass, once more,
With gold-stranded hair and soft eyes of yore,

And out of the hills in the stills and the gloams
Her beautiful fabulous lover comes,
In scarlet doublet and red silken hose,
To woo her again--till the Chanticleer crows.

And she, poor old crone, sits up on her hill
Through the long dreary night, till the dawn turns chill,
And suffers in silence and patience alway,
In the hope that God will forgive, some day.

MARGERY DAW

[From the same]

See-Saw! Margery Daw!
Sold her bed to lie upon straw;
Was she not a dirty slut
To sell her bed, and live in dirt?

And yet perchance, were the circumstance
But known, of Margery's grim romance,
As sacred a veil might cover her then
As the pardon which fell on the Magdalen.

It's a story told so often, so old,
So drearily common, so wearily cold:
A man's adventure,--a poor girl's fall--
And a sinless scapegoat born--that's all.

She was simple and young, and the song was sung
With so sweet a voice, in so strange a tongue,
That she follow'd blindly the Devil-song
Till the ground gave way, and she lay headlong.

And then: not a word, not a plea for her heard,
Not a hand held out to the one who had err'd,
Her Christian sisters foremost to condemn--
God pity the woman who falls before them!

They closed the door for evermore
On the contrite heart which repented sore,
And she stood alone, in the outer night,
To feed her baby as best she might.

So she sold her bed, for its daily bread,
The gown off her back, the shawl off her head,
Till her all lay piled on the pawner's shelf,
Then she clinch'd her teeth and sold herself.

And so it came that Margery's name
Fell into a burden of Sorrow and Shame,
And Margery's face grew familiar in
The market-place where they trade in sin.

What use to dwell on this premature Hell?
Suffice it to say that the child did well,
Till one night that Margery prowled the town,
Sickness was stalking, and struck her down.

Her beauty pass'd, and she stood aghast
In the presence of want, and stripped, at the last,
Of all she had to be pawned or sold,
To keep her darling from hunger and cold.

So the baby pined, till Margery, blind
With hunger of fever, in body and mind,
At dusk, when Death seem'd close at hand,
Snatch'd a loaf of bread from a baker's stand.

Some Samaritan saw Margery Daw,
And lock'd her in gaol to lie upon straw:
Not a sparrow falls, they say--Oh well!
God was not looking when Margery fell.

With irons girt, in her felon's shirt,
Poor Margery lies in sorrow and dirt,
A gaunt, sullen woman untimely gray,
With the look of a wild beast, brought to bay.

See-saw! Margery Daw!
What a wise and bountiful thing, the Law!
It makes all smooth--for she's out of her head,
And her brat is provided for. It's dead.

WILLIAM H. WOODS

William Hervey Woods, poet, was born near Greensburg, Kentucky, November 17, 1852, the son of a clergyman. He was educated at Hampden-Sidney College, in Virginia, after which he studied for the church at Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Virginia. Mr. Woods was ordained to the ministry of the Southern Presbyterian church in 1878; and since 1887 he has been pastor of the Franklin Square church at Baltimore. For the past several years he has contributed poems to _Scribner's_, _Harper's_, _The Century_, _The Atlantic Monthly_, _The Youth's Companion_, _The Independent_, and several other periodicals. This verse was collected and published in a pleasing little volume of some hundred and fifty pages under the title of _The Anteroom and Other Poems_ (Baltimore, 1911). As is true of the purely literary labors of most clergymen, a few of the poems are somewhat marred by the homiletical tone--they simply must point a moral, even though that moral does not adorn the tale. Several of the poems reveal the author's love for his birthplace, Kentucky; and, taken as a whole, the book is one of which any of our singers might be proud.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Courier-Journal_ (January 16, 1912);
_Scribner's Magazine_ (July; August, 1912).

SYCAMORES[9]

[From _The Anteroom and Other Poems_ (Baltimore, 1911)]

They love no crowded forest dark,
They climb no mountains high,
But ranged along the pleasant vale
Where shining waters lie,
Their brown coats curling open show
A silvery undergleam,
Like the white limbs of laughing boys
Half ready for the stream.

What if they yield no harvests sweet,
Nor massive timbers sound,
And all their summer leafage casts
But scanty shade around;
Their slender boughs with zephyrs dance,
Their young leaves laugh in tune,
And there's no lad in all the land
Knows better when 'tis June.

They come from groves of Arcady,
Or some lost Land of Mirth,
That Work-a-day and Gain and Greed
May not possess the earth,
And though they neither toil nor spin,
Nor fruitful duties pay,
They also serve, mayhap, who help
The world keep holiday.

FOOTNOTE:

[9] Copyright, 1911, by the Author.

ANDREW W. KELLEY

Andrew W. Kelley ("Parmenas Mix"), poet preeminent of life on a country newspaper, was born in the state of New York about 1852. When twenty years of age he left Schenectady, New York, for Tennessee, but in 1873 he settled at Franklin, Kentucky, where he spent the remainder of his life. He was associate editor of Opie Read's paper, _The Patriot_, for some time, but when that sheet died, he drifted from pillar to post until a kindly death discovered him. The gossips of the quiet little town of Franklin will to-day tell the enquirer for facts regarding Kelley's life that he was engaged to a New York girl, all things were ready for the celebration of the ceremony, when the bride-to-be suddenly changed her mind, and poor _Parmenas Mix_ was thus started in the drunkard's path. He planned to go East for several years prior to his death, to seek his literary fortunes, but he sat in his room and dreamed his life away. Kelley died at Franklin, Kentucky, in 1885. He was buried in the potter's field, a pauper and an outcast, which condition was wholly caused by excessive drinking. The very place of his grave can only be guessed at to-day. Kelley wrote many poems, nearly all of which celebrated some phase of life on a country newspaper, but his masterpiece is _The Old Scissors' Soliloquy_, which was originally published in _Scribner's Monthly_--now _The Century Magazine_--for April, 1876. It appeared in the "Bric-a-Brac Department," illustrated with a single tail-piece sketch of editorial scissors "lying at rest" upon newspaper clippings, with "a whopping big rat in the paste." Many of his other poems were also published in _Scribner's_. _The New Doctor_, _Accepted and Will Appeal_, and _He Came to Pay_, done in the manner of Bret Harte's _The Aged Stranger_, are exceedingly clever. A slender collection of his poems could be easily made, and should be. Opie Read wrote a tender tribute to the memory of his former friend, in which his merits were thus summed up: "The country has surely produced greater poets than 'Parmenas Mix,' but I doubt if we shall ever know a truer lover of Nature's divine impulses. He lightened the heart and made it tender, surely a noble mission; he talked to the lowly, he flashed the diamond of his genius into many a dark recess. He preached the gospel of good will; he sang a beautiful song."

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Blades o' Blue Grass_, by Fannie P. Dickey
(Louisville, 1892); _Poetry of American Wit and Humor_, by R. L.
Paget (Boston, 1899).

THE OLD SCISSORS' SOLILOQUY

[From _Scribner's Monthly_, April, 1876]

I am lying at rest in the sanctum to-night,--
The place is deserted and still,--
To my right lie exchanges and manuscripts white,
To my left are the ink and the quill--
Yes, the quill, for my master's old-fashioned and quaint,
And refuses to write with a pen;
He insists that old Franklin, the editor saint,
Used a quill, and he'll imitate Ben.

I love the old fellow--together for years
We have managed the _Farmer's Gazette_,
And although I am old, I'm his favorite shears
And can crowd the compositors yet.
But my duties are rather too heavy, I think,
And I oftentimes envy the quill
As it lazily leans with its nib in the ink
While I'm slashing away with a will.

But when I was new,--I remember it well,
Though a score of long years have gone by,--
The heaviest share of the editing fell
On the quill, and I think with a sigh
Of the days when I'd scissor an extract or two
From a neighboring editor's leader,
Then laugh in my sleeve at the quill as it flew
In behalf of the general reader.

I am being paid off for my merriment then,
For my master is wrinkled and gray,
And seldom lays hold on his primitive pen
Except when he wishes to say:
"We are needing some money to run this machine,
And subscribers will please to remit;"
Or, "That last load of wood that Jones brought us was green,
And so knotty it couldn't be split."

He is nervous and deaf and is getting quite blind
(Though he hates to acknowledge the latter),
And I'm sorry to say it's a puzzle to find
Head or tale to the most of his matter.
The compositors plague him whenever they see
The result of a luckless endeavor,
But the darling old rascal just lays it to me,
And I make no remonstrance whatever.

Yes, I shoulder the blame--very little I care
For the jolly compositor's jest,
For I think of a head with the silvery hair
That will soon, very soon be at rest.
He has labored full long for the true and the good
'Mid the manifold troubles that irk us--
His only emolument raiment and food,
And--a pass, now and then, to the circus.

Heigho! from the past comes a memory bright
Of a lass with the freshness of clover
Who used me to clip from her tresses one night
A memorial lock for her lover.
That dear little lock is still glossy and brown,
But the lass is much older and fatter,
And the youth--he's an editor here in the town--
I'm employed on the staff of the latter.

I am lying at rest in the sanctum to-night--
The place is deserted and still--
The stars are abroad and the moon is in sight
Through the trees on the brow of the hill.
Clouds hurry along in undignified haste
And the wind rushes by with a wail--
Hello! there's a whooping big rat in the paste--
How I'd like to shut down on his tail!

LATE NEWS

[From _Scribner's Monthly_, December, 1876]

In the sanctum I was sitting,
Engaged in thought befitting
A gentleman of letters--dunning letters, by the way--
When a seedy sort of fellow,
Middle-aged and rather mellow,
Ambled in and questioned loudly, "Well, sir, what's the news to-day?"

Then I smiled on him serenely--
On the stranger dressed so meanly--
And I told him that the Dutch had taken Holland, sure as fate;
And that the troops in Flanders,
Both privates and commanders,
Had been dealing very freely in profanity of late.

Then the stranger, quite demurely,
Said, "That's interesting, surely;
Your facilities for getting news are excellent, that's clear;
Though excuse me, sir, for stating
That the facts you've been narrating
Are much fresher than the average of items gathered here!"

YOUNG E. ALLISON

Young Ewing Allison, one of the most versatile of the Kentucky writers of the present school, was born at Henderson, Kentucky, December 23, 1853. He left school at an early age to become the "devil" in a Henderson printing office. At seventeen years of age Mr. Allison was a newspaper reporter. At different times he has been connected with _The Journal_, of Evansville, Indiana; city and dramatic editor of _The Courier-Journal_; editor of _The Louisville Commercial_; and from 1902 to 1905 he was editor of _The Louisville Herald_. Mr. Allison founded _The Insurance Field_ at Louisville, in 1887, and has since edited it. He has thus been a newspaper man for more than forty years; and though always very busy, he has found time to write fiction, verse, literary criticism, history, and librettos. In prose fiction Mr. Allison is best known by three stories: _The Passing of Major Kilgore_, which was published as a novelette in _Lippincott's Magazine_ in 1888; _The Longworth Mystery_ (_Century Magazine_, October, 1889); and _Insurance at Piney Woods_ (Louisville, 1896). In half-whimsical literary criticism he has published two small volumes which are known in many parts of the world: _The Delicious Vice_ (Cleveland, 1907, first series; Cleveland, 1909, second series). These papers are "pipe dreams and adventures of an habitual novel-reader among some great books and their people." Mr. Allison's libretto, _The Ogallallas_, a romantic opera, was produced by the Bostonians Opera Company in 1894; and his _Brother Francisco_, a libretto of tragic opera, was presented at the Royal Opera House, Berlin, by order of Emperor William II. The music to both of these operas was composed by Mr. Henry Waller, Liszt's distinguished pupil. In history Mr. Allison has written _The City of Louisville and a Glimpse of Kentucky_ (Louisville, 1887); and _Fire Underwriting_ (Louisville, 1907). Of his lyrics, _The Derelict_, a completion of the four famous lines in Robert Louis Stevenson's _Treasure Island_, has been printed by almost every newspaper and magazine in the English-speaking world, set to music by Mr. Waller, and an illustrated _edition de luxe_ has recently appeared. _The Derelict_ and _The Delicious Vice_ have firmly fixed Mr. Allison's fame.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Confessions of a Tatler_, by Elvira M. Slaughter
(Louisville, 1905); letter from Mr. Allison to the writer.

ON BOARD THE DERELICT

A Reminiscence of _Treasure Island_

[From a leaflet edition]

_Fifteen men on the Dead Man's chest--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!_
--[_Cap'n Billy Bones his song_]

Fifteen men on the Dead Man's chest--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
The mate was fixed by the bos'n's pike,
The bos'n brained with a marlinspike,
And the Cookey's throat was marked belike
It had been gripped
By fingers ten;
And there they lay,
All good dead men,
Like break-o'-day in a boozin' ken--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

Fifteen men of a whole ship's list--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Dead and bedamned, and the rest gone whist!
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
The skipper lay with his nob in gore
Where the scullion's axe his cheek had shore,
And the scullion he was stabbed times four.
And there they lay
And the soggy skies
Dreened all day long
In up-staring eyes--
At murk sunset and at foul sunrise--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

Fifteen men of 'em stiff and stark--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Ten of the crew had the Murder mark--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
'Twas a cutlass swipe, or an ounce of lead,
Or a yawing hole in a battered head--
And the scuppers glut with a rotting red.
And there they lay--
Aye, damn my eyes!--
All lookouts clapped
On paradise,
All souls bound just the contra'wise--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

Fifteen men of 'em good and true--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Every man Jack could ha' sailed with Old Pew--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
There was chest on chest full of Spanish gold,
With a ton of plate in the middle hold,
And the cabins riot of loot untold.
And they lay there
That had took the plum
With sightless glare
And their lips struck dumb,
While we shared all by the rule of thumb--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

_More was seen through the sternlight screen--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Chartings undoubt where a woman had been--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
A flimsy shift on a bunker cot,
With a thin dirk slot through the bosom spot,
And the lace stiff-dry in a purplish blot.
Or was she wench ...
Or some shuddering maid...?
That dared the knife
And that took the blade?...
By God! she was stuff for a plucky jade!--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!_

Fifteen men on the Dead Man's chest--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
We wrapp'd 'em all in a mains'l tight,
With twice ten turns of a hawser's bight
And we heaved 'em over and out of sight--
With a yo-heave-ho!
And a fare-you-well!
And a sullen plunge
In the sullen swell,
Ten-fathoms deep on the road to hell--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

HESTER HIGBEE GEPPERT

Mrs. Hester Higbee Geppert ("Dolly Higbee"), newspaper woman and novelist, was born near Edina, Missouri, March 12, 1854. She was the daughter of James Parker Higbee, a Kentuckian, and his second wife, Martha Lane (Galleher) Higbee, a woman of Virginian parentage. Both of Miss Higbee's parents died before she was fourteen years old, and she came to Lexington, Kentucky, to live in the family of Dr. Samuel H. Chew, who had married her half-sister. Dr. Chew's farm was situated some seven miles from Lexington, and there Miss Higbee lived for ten years. She was educated in Midway, Kentucky, and then taught for several years. She detested teaching and, "in January, 1878, while it was still quite dark, I stole down stairs with five dollars in my pocket and such luggage as I could carry in a handbag, tiptoed into the drizzle and 'lit out.'" The flip of a nickle determined that her new home should be Louisville, and to that city she went. Miss Higbee was the first woman in Kentucky, if not in the South, to adopt journalism as a profession. The following fourteen years of her life were spent in the daily grind of newspaperdom, she having held almost every position on _The Courier-Journal_, save that of editor-in-chief. In the four hottest weeks of the year, and in the brief intervals of leisure she could snatch from her daily duties, Miss Higbee wrote her now famous novel, _In God's Country_ (New York, 1890). After the Lippincotts had refused this manuscript, _Belford's Monthly Magazine_ accepted it by telegram, paying the author two hundred dollars for it, and publishing it in the issue for November, 1889; and in the following May the story appeared in book form. Colonel Henry Watterson wrote a review of _In God's Country_ that was afterwards published as an introduction for it, and this did much to bring the tale into wide notice. Miss Higbee went to Chicago in 1893 to accept a position on _The Tribune_. On April 4, 1894, she was married to Mr. William Geppert of Atlanta, and the first five years of their married life were spent at Atlanta. It was during this time that Mrs. Geppert's best story was written, _Burton's Scoop_, one of the first American stories written upon hypnotism and related phenomena. The opening chapters of this appeared in the author's little literary magazine, _The Autocrat_, which she conducted at Atlanta for about two years, but it has never been published in book form. Two musical romances, entitled _The Scherzo in B-Flat Minor_ (Atlanta, 1895), and _Un Ze Studio_ (Atlanta, 1895), attracted considerable attention, and a third was announced as _Side Lights_, but was never published. _In God's Country_ was dramatized, with Miss Catherine Gray cast in the role of _Lydia_, and opened at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, New York, September 5, 1897, but the work of the playwright and actors was most displeasing to the author. In 1900 Mr. Geppert became one of the editors of the New York _Musical Courier_, and he and his wife have since resided at Croton-on-the-Hudson. Mrs. Geppert has abandoned literature, but _In God's Country_ has given her a permanent place among the writers of Kentucky.[10]

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Confessions of a Tatler_, by Elvira M. Slaughter
(Louisville, 1905); _Lexington Leader_ (July 25, 1909).

THE GARDENER AND THE GIRL[11]

[From _In God's Country_ (New York, 1890)]

Her hair had come down and was tumbling about her neck; she whipped it out and caught it back with a hairpin, took up the guitar, and skirted the shadowy porch to the room over the kitchen. The window was open and she could see Karl sitting in the middle of the room with his head bowed upon his hands. She tapped lightly on the pane. He looked up and saw her standing in the dim light with the guitar in her hand.

"Karl," she said, "I want you to sing me that song before you go--the one you sung me that day for your dinner."

He came forward and took the instrument. He saw she had been crying, but the experience of the summer had been so crushing, he was so subdued by her past behavior, that he did not dream the tears were for him.

"You are grieved for someding," he said, with touching sympathy.

He opened the door and gave her a chair, and, sitting near her on the sill of the window, began to sing the song with all the tenderness and pathos his own yearning and bitter disappointment could put into it. It brought back all the old tumult. She saw now, when it was too late, that she had overestimated her strength. When he finished, she was sobbing; and in an instant he was kneeling by her chair, raising to her a face sad, searching, but shining with the tremulous glow of a hope just born.

"You weep. Liebchen, is it for me?"

She did not answer, but laid a hand gently on his head and looked at him, with all the pent yearning of her full heart, all the agony of that long, weary struggle, and all the pathos of defeat in her eyes. It was no use. At that moment it seemed that there was nothing else in the world but him. Everything else was remote, dim, and unreal.

He clasped her with a fierce, exultant joy.

"You love me in spite of dis?" he asked, looking down at his coarse attire. "You love me in spite of dat I am your nigga?"

"In spite of all," she faltered.

It was out at last: the crest of victory sank in inglorious surrender. Her humiliation was his triumph.

He looked at her with a face radiant, shining with a beauty not of earth.

"Liebchen," he whispered, "it is divine."

"You vill gome mit me to mein gountry?" he asked presently.

She laid a finger on his lips. "Don't," she said; "I can't bear it."

"I vill not be a vagabond in mein own gountry; we vill be very happy. Gome mit me, Liebchen."

He would not be a vagabond in his own country. The information that would have been worth much to her once was worth nothing now. She scarcely heard it.

"I can't do that," she said. "You must go, and I must stay here and do as I have promised; but I wanted to tell you that I know I have been very cruel, and that I am very sorry. It was hard for me, too, and I could not trust myself to be kind."

It seemed but a moment she had been sitting there with his arms around her and his head upon her breast, but the east was red and the sun was almost up. Lydia rose wearily. The sense of defeat, that was more fatiguing than the struggle, clung to her. "It's time you were gone," she said. He took her hands in his and asked, with searching earnestness,

"If you love me, vy vill you not gome mit me?"

"I can't," she answered, too tired for explanation.

"Is it your fader?" he asked.

She nodded, and said good-bye, looking up at him with a tender glow on her face. The hair streaming about her shoulders had caught the flame of sunrise like a torch. He stooped and touched it with his lips as reverently as he would have kissed the garment of a saint.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] Mrs. Geppert died at Scarsborough-on-the-Hudson, New York, February 23, 1913. Her remains were not brought to Kentucky for interment.

[11] Copyright, 1890, by the Belford Company.

HENRY C. WOOD

Henry Cleveland Wood, novelist and verse-maker, was born at Harrodsburg, Kentucky, in January, 1855. His mother was a writer of local reputation. In 1874 Mr. Wood's poems and stories began to appear in English and American magazines; and he has continued his work for them until this day. Seven of his novels have been serialized by the following publications: _Pretty Jack and_ _Ugly Carl_ (_The Courier-Journal_); _Impress of Seal and Clay_ (_New York Ledger_, in collaboration with his uncle, Henry W. Cleveland, author of a biography of Alexander H. Stephens); _The Kentucky Outlaw_, and _Love that Endured_ (_New York Ledger_); _Faint Heart and Fair Lady_ (_The Designer_); _The Night-Riders_ (_Taylor-Trotwood Magazine_); and _Weed and War_ (_The Home and Farm_). Of these only one has been issued in book form, _The Night Riders_ (Chicago, 1908). This was a tale of love and adventure, depicting the protest against the toll-gate system in Kentucky years ago, with a brief inclusion of the more recent tobacco troubles. Mr. Wood's verse has been printed in _Harper's Weekly_, _Cosmopolitan_, _Ainslee's Magazine_, _The Smart Set_, _The Youth's Companion_, and other periodicals. Two of his librettos, _The Sultan's Gift_ and _Amor_, have been set to music; and at least one of his plays has been produced, entitled _The Pretty Shakeress_. Mr. Wood conducts a little bookshop in his native town of Harrodsburg.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Blades o' Blue Grass_, by Fannie P. Dickey
(Louisville, 1892); _Illustrated Kentuckian_ (November, 1894).

THE WEAVER

[From _The Quiver_ (London, England)]

The sun climbed up the eastern hills,
And through the dewy land
Shot gleams that fell athwart the rills
That sang on every hand.

Upon the wood and in the air
There hung a mystic spell,
And on the green sward, every where,
Soft shadows lightly fell.

And in a cottage where the bloom
Of roses on the wall
Filled all the air, there was a loom
Well built of oak and tall.

All through the fragrant summer day
A maiden, blithe and fair,
Sat at the loom and worked away,
And hummed a simple air;--

"Oh! idle not, ye leafy trees,
Weave nets of yellow sun,
And kiss me oft, O! balmy breeze,
My task is but begun."

Still higher in the hazy sky
The sun climbed on and on,
And autumn winds came rushing by,
The summer's bloom was gone;

Now sat a mother at the loom,
The shuttle flew along,
With whirr that filled the little room
Together with her song;--

"O! shuttle! faster, faster fly,
For know ye not the sun
Is climbing high across the sky,
And yet my work's not done?"

The sun shot gleams of amber light
Along the barren ground,
And shadows of the coming night
Fell softly all around.