Chapter VII: Appendix: 383 (6)

The Democratic party favors the policy of raising its taxes at the custom house by a tariff that is levied for revenue only, which clearly excludes the idea of protecting the manufacturer's profits. In my opinion, the dividing line between the positions of the two great parties on this question is very clear and easily ascertained in theory. Where the tariff rates balance the difference in cost at home and abroad, including an allowance for the difference in freight rates, the tariff must be competitive, and from that point downward to the lowest tariff that can be levied it will continue to be competitive to a greater or less extent. Where competition is not interfered with by levying the tax above the highest competitive point, the profits of the manufacturer are not protected. On the other hand, when the duties levied at the custom house equalizes the difference in cost at home and abroad and in addition thereto they are high enough to allow the American manufacturer to make a profit before his competitor can enter the field, we have invaded the domain of the protection of profits. Some men assert that the protection of reasonable profits to the home manufacturer should be commended instead of being condemned, but in my judgment, the protection of any profit must of necessity have a tendency to destroy competition and create monopoly, whether the profit protected is reasonable or unreasonable.

You should bear in mind that to establish a business in a foreign country requires a vast outlay both in time and capital. Should the foreigner manufacturer attempt to establish himself in this country he must advertise his goods, establish selling agencies and points of distribution before he can successfully conduct his business. After he has done so, if the home producer is protected by a law that not only equals the difference in cost at home and abroad, but also protects a reasonable or unreasonable profit, it is only necessary for him to drop his prices slightly below the point that the law has fixed to protect his profits and his competitor must retire from the country or become a bankrupt, because he would then have to sell his goods at a loss and not a profit, if he continued to compete. The foreign competitor having retired, the home producer could raise his prices to any level that home competition would allow him and it is not probable that the foreigner who had already been driven out of the country would again return, no matter how inviting the field, as long as the law remained on the Statute Books that would enable his competitor to again put him out of business.

Thirty or forty years ago, when we had numbers of small manufacturers, when there was honest competition without an attempt being made to restrict trade and the home market was more than able to consume the production of our mills and factories, the danger and the injury to the consumer of the country was not so great or apparent as it is to-day, when the control of many great industries has been concentrated in the hands of a few men or a few corporations, because domestic competition was prohibited. When we cease to have competition at home and the law prohibits competition from abroad by protecting profits, there is no relief for the consumer except to cry out for government regulation. To my mind, there is no more reason or justice in the government attempting to protect the profits of the manufacturers and producers of this country than here would be to protect the profits of the merchant or the lawyer, the banker or the farmer, or the wages of the laboring man. In almost every line of industry in the United States we have as great natural resources to develop as that of any country in the world. It is admitted by all that our machinery and methods of doing business are in advance of the other nations. By reason of the efficient use of American machinery by American labor, in most of the manufactures of this country, the labor cost per unit of production is no greater here than abroad. It is admitted, of course, that the actual wage of the American laborer is in excess of European countries, but as to most articles we manufacture the labor cost in this country is not more than double the labor cost abroad. When we consider that the average _ad valorem_ rate of duty levied at the custom house on manufactures of cotton goods is 53% of the value of the article imported and the total labor cost of the production of cotton goods in this country is only 21% of the factory value of the product, that the difference in labor cost at home and abroad is only about as one is to two, and that ten or eleven per cent of the value of the product levied at the custom house would equal the difference in the labor wage, it is apparent that our present tariff laws exceed the point where they equalize the difference in cost at home and abroad, and we realize how far they have entered into the domain of protecting profits for the home manufacturer. This is not only true of the manufacture of cotton goods, but of almost every schedule in the tariff bill. To protect profits of necessity means to protect inefficiency. It does not stimulate industry because a manufacturer standing behind a tariff wall that is protecting his profits is not driven to develop his business along the lines of greatest efficiency and greatest economy. This is clearly illustrated in a comparison of the wool and the iron and steel industries. Wool has had a specific duty that when worked out to an _ad valorem_ basis amounts to a tax of about 90% of the average value of all woolen goods imported into the United States, and the duties imposed have remained practically unchanged for forty years. During that time the wool industry has made comparatively little progress in cheapening the cost of its product and improving its business methods. On the other hand, in the iron and steel industry the tariff rate has been cut every time a tariff bill has been written. Forty years ago the tax on steel rails amounted to $17.50 a ton, to-day it amounts to $3.92. Forty years ago the tax on pig iron was $13.60 a ton, to-day it is $2.50. The same is true of most of the other articles in the iron and steel schedule, and yet the iron and steel industry has not languished; it has not been destroyed and it has not gone to the wall. It is the most compact, virile, fighting force of all the industries of America to-day. It has long ago expanded its productive capacity beyond the power of the American people to consume its output and is to-day facing out towards the markets of the world, battling for a part of the trade of foreign lands, where it must meet free competition, or, as is often the case, pay adverse tariff rates to enter the industrial fields of its competitor.

Which course is the wiser for our government to take? The one that demands the protection of profits the continued policy of hot-house growth for our industries? The stagnation of development that follows where competition ceases, or, on the other hand, the gradual and insistent reduction of our tariff laws to a basis where the American manufacturer must meet honest competition, where he must develop his business along the best and most economic lines, where when he fights at home to control his market he is forging the way in the economic development of his business to extend his trade in the markets of the world. In my judgment, the future growth of our great industries lies beyond the seas. A just equalization of the burdens of taxation and honest competition, in my judgment, are economic truths; they are not permitted to-day by the laws of our country; we must face toward them, and not away from them.

What I have said does not mean that I am in favor of going to free trade conditions or of being so radical in our legislation as to injure legitimate business, but I do mean that the period of exclusion has passed and the era of honest competition is here.

Let us approach the solution of the problem involved with the determination to do what is right, what is safe, and what is reasonable.

ELIZABETH ROBINS

Mrs. Elizabeth Robins Parkes, the well-known novelist of the psychological school, was born at Louisville, Kentucky, August 6, 1862. She was taken from Louisville as a young child by her parents for the reason that her father had built a house on Staten Island, where she lived until her eleventh year, when she went to her grandmother's at Zanesville, Ohio, to attend Putnam Female Seminary, an institution of some renown, where her aunts on both sides of the house had received their training. _Mrs. Gano_, the one fine character of Miss Robins's first successful novel, _The Open Question_, is none other than her own grandmother, Jane Hussey Robins, to whom she dedicated the story; and the house in which she lived is faithfully described in that story. In 1874, when she was twelve years of age, Miss Robins made her first visit to Kentucky since having left the State some years before; and she has been back many times since, her latest visit being made in 1912. Her mother and many of her kinsfolk are buried in Cave Hill cemetery; and her brother, uncle, and other relatives, including Charles Neville Buck, the young Kentucky novelist, reside at Louisville. She is, therefore, a Kentuckian to the core. On January 12, 1885, she was married to George Richmond Parkes, of Boston, who died some years ago. While passing through London, in 1889, Mrs. Parkes decided it was the most pleasing city she had seen, and she established herself there. She now maintains Backset Town Farm, Henfield, Sussex; and a winter home at Chinsegut, Florida. Mrs. Parkes won her first fame as an actress, appearing in several of Ibsen's plays, and attracting wide attention for her work in _The Master Builder_, especially. While on the stage she began to write under the pen-name of "C. E. Raimond," so as not to confuse the public mind with her work as an actress; and this name served her well until _The Open Question_ appeared, at which time it became generally understood that the actress and author were one and the same person. She soon after began to write under her maiden name of Elizabeth Robins--and thus confounded herself with the wife of Joseph Pennell, the celebrated American etcher. With her long line of novels Miss Robins takes her place as one of the foremost writers Kentucky has produced. A full list of them is: _George Mandeville's Husband_ (New York, 1894); _The New Moon_ (New York, 1895); _Below the Salt_ (London, 1896), a collection of short-stories, containing, among others, _The Fatal Gift of Beauty_, which was the title of the American edition (Chicago, 1896); _The Open Question_ (New York, 1898). Miss Robins was friendly with Whistler, the great artist, and he designed the covers for _Below the Salt_ and _The Open Question_, a morbid but powerful novel. She has been especially fortunate in seizing upon a subject of vital, timely importance against which to build her books; and that is one of the real reasons for her success. What the public wants is what she wants to give them. When gold was discovered in the Klondike, and all the world was making a mad rush for those fields, Miss Robins wrote _The Magnetic North_ (New York, 1904). That fascinating story was followed by _A Dark Lantern_ (New York, 1905), "a story with a prologue;" _The Convert_ (New York, 1907), a novel based upon the suffragette movement in London, with which the author has been identified for seven years, and for which she has written more, perhaps, than any one else; _Under the Southern Cross_ (New York, 1907); _Woman's Secret_ (London, 1907); _Votes for Women: A Play in Three Acts_ (London, n. d. [1908]), a dramatization of _The Convert_, produced by Granville Barker at the Court Theatre, London, with great success. The title of this play, if not the contents, has gone into the remotest corners of the world as the accepted slogan of the suffragette cause. _Come and Find Me!_ (New York, 1908), another story of the Alaska country, originally serialized in _The Century Magazine_; _The Mills of the Gods_ (New York, 1908); _The Florentine Frame_ (New York, 1909); _Under His Roof_ (London, n. d. [1910]), yet another short-story of the suffragette struggle in London, printed in an exceedingly slender pamphlet; and _Why?_ (London, 1912), a brochure of questions and answers concerning her darling suffragettes. Upon these books Elizabeth Robins has taken a high place in contemporary letters. Her very latest story is _My Little Sister_, based upon a background of the white slave traffic in London, the shortened version of which appeared in _McClure's Magazine_ for December, 1912, concluded in the issue for January, 1913, after which it will be published in book form in America under the original title; but the English edition will bear this legend, "Where Are You Going To?" When the first part of this strong story was printed in _McClure's_ it attracted immediate and very wide attention, and again illustrated the ancient fact concerning the author's novels: her ability to make use of one of the big questions of the day as a scene for her story. Another book on woman's fight for the ballot, to be entitled _Way Stations_ may be published in March, 1913. Miss Robins is the ablest woman novelist Kentucky has produced; but her short-stories are not comparable to Mrs. Andrew's.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Critic_ (June, 1904); _The Bookman_ (November,
1907); _McClure's Magazine_ (December, 1910); _Harper's Magazine_
(August, 1911).

A PROMISING PLAYWRIGHT[35]

[From _The Florentine Frame_ (New York, 1909)]

Mrs. Roscoe invoked the right manager. _The Man at the Wheel_ was not only accepted, it was announced for early production. Special scenery was being painted. The rehearsals were speedily in full swing. The play had been slightly altered in council--one scene had been rewritten.

Generously, Keith made his acknowledgements. "I should not have gone at it again, but for you," he told Mrs. Roscoe. "It had got stale--I hated it, till that day I read it to you."

She smiled. "Nobody needs an audience so much as a dramatist. I was audience."

"You brought the fresh eye, you saw how the _scene a faire_ could be made more poignant. Do you know," he said in that way he was getting into, re-envisaging with this companion some old outlook, "I sometimes feel the only difference between the poor thing and the good thing is that in one, the hand fell away too soon, and in the other it was able to give the screw just one more turn. You practically helped me to give the final turn that screwed the thing into shape."

She shook her head, and then he told her that after a dozen rebuffs he had made up his mind to abandon the play that very day he and the Professor had talked of cinque cento ivories.

It was not unnatural that the scant cordiality of Mrs. Mathew, whenever Keith encountered that lady at her sister's house, was insufficient to make him fail in what he acknowledged to Fanshawe as a sort of duty. This was: keeping Mrs. Roscoe fully informed of all the various stages in the contract-negotiation, the cast decisions, and the checkered fortunes of rehearsal.

It is only fair to Mrs. Mathew to admit that she had one reason more cogent even than she quite realized for objecting to the new addition to a circle that had, as Genie complained, grown very circumscribed during the days of mourning.

If keeping Mrs. Roscoe _au courant_ with the fortunes of the play had appeared to Keith in the light of an obligation imposed by common gratitude, Mrs. Mathew conceived it as no less her duty not to allow dislike of the new friend's presence to interfere with the sisterly relation--a relation which on the older woman's part had always had in it a touch of the maternal. If that young man was "getting himself accepted upon an intimate footing"--all the more important that Isabella's elder sister should be there at least as much as usual, if only to prevent the curious from "talking."

In pursuance to this conception of her duty, one evening during the later rehearsals, Mrs. Mathew stood just inside the door of the cloak room that opened out of the famous gray and white marble entrance hall of the Roscoe house. Engaged in the homely occupation of depositing her "artics" in a corner where they would not be mixed up with other people's, Mrs. Mathew was arrested by a slight noise. Upon putting out her head she descried Miss Genie creeping down the stairs with a highly conspiratorial air. The girl, betraying every evidence of suppressed excitement, came to a halt before the closed doors of the drawing-room. The sound of Keith's voice reading aloud came softened through the heavy panels, and seemed to reassure the eavesdropper. She ran on noiseless feet to the low seat, where a man's hat showed black against the soft tone of the marble. She lifted the hat and appeared to be fumbling with the coat that was lying underneath.

Suddenly the flash of a small square envelope on its way to the recesses of the visitor's overcoat!

"What are you doing?" demanded Aunt Josephine, coming down the hall.

"Oh! How you startled me! I'm not doing anything in particular--just waiting about till that blessed reading's over." She left the letter concealed in the folds of the coat, and for an instant she held the hat in front of her perturbed face: "Don't men's things have a nice Russia-leathery smell?" she remarked airily.

"Genie Roscoe, what pranks are you playing?" As Mrs. Mathew took hold of the coat, the girl's self-possession failed her a little. She clung to the garment, sending anxious glances toward the door, whispering her nervous remonstrances and begging Aunt Josephine not to talk so loud. "You'll interrupt them."

"What is going on?" demanded Aunt Josephine, relaxing her hold on the coat.

"He's reading."

"Your poor mother!"

"Oh, she likes it."

"Humph! And that young man--does he never get tired of his own works?"

"It isn't _his_ works that he's reading. It's other people's--to make him forget the way they murder the play at rehearsal. It's French things they read, usually." Genie hurried on with a nervous attempt to be diverting. "There's a new poet, did you know? I like the new ones best, don't you? What I can't stand is when they are so ancient, that they're like that decayed old Ronsard--"

The form Mrs. Mathew's literary criticism took was a violent shake of the visitor's coat. Out of the folds dropped a note. It was addressed in Genie's hand to Mr. Chester Keith.

"What foolishness is this--"

"Don't tell mother," prayed the girl, trying in vain to recover the envelope.

Mrs. Mathew's face grew graver as she took in the girl's feverish anxiety.

"Dear Aunt Josephine!" Genie slipped her hand coaxingly through the arm of the forbidding-looking lady. "I know you wouldn't be so unkind. For all mother seems so gentle and you sometimes look so severe, you're ten times as forgiving, really, as mother is. You're more broadminded," said the unblushing flatterer.

"Oh, really"--Mrs. Mathew smiled a little grimly--but she had ere now proved herself as accessible to coaxing as the cast-iron seeming people often are. They betray, on occasion, a touching gratitude at not being taken at their own grim word.

"Why should I hesitate to tell what you don't hesitate to do?"

But Genie's arm was round her. "Oh, _you_ know why. Mother has such extravagantly high ideas about what people ought to do."

In the other hand Mrs. Mathew still held the note, out of the girl's reach. "You make a practice of this?"

"No, no. It's the first time, and I'll never do it again, if you'll promise not to tell on me."

Mrs. Mathew hesitated.

"Dearest auntie, _be nice_! If you tell," the girl protested, "I'll have no character to keep up and I'll write him real--well, real letters."

"What do you mean? Isn't this a real letter?"

"No. It doesn't say half. It's _nothing_ to what I could--"

"Very well, if it's nothing--" Mrs. Mathew tore open the note.

Before she could so much as unfold it, Genie had plucked it out of her hand and fled upstairs.

Half way to the top she leaned over the bannisters. "If you tell I'll remember it all my life. If you don't I'll love you for ever and ever."

"You're a very silly child. And I'm not at all sure I won't speak to your mother."

"But I am!" the coppery head was hung ingratiatingly over the hand rail.

Aunt Josephine was already thinking of matters more important than a school girl's foolishness. "How long has that man been here?"

"Oh, hours and hours!" said Genie, accepting the diversion with due gratitude. "He stays longer and longer."

"Humph! that's what I think!" Aunt Josephine stalked into the drawing-room.

FOOTNOTE:

[35] Copyright, 1909, by the Macmillan Company.

ELLEN CHURCHILL SEMPLE

Miss Ellen Churchill Semple, Kentucky's distinguished anthropo-geographer, was born at Louisville, Kentucky, in 1863. Vassar College conferred the degree of Bachelor of Arts upon her in 1882, and the Master of Arts in 1891. She then studied for two years at the University of Leipzig. Miss Semple has devoted herself to the new science of anthropo-geography, which is the study of the influence of geographic conditions upon the development of mankind. Since 1897 she has contributed articles upon her subject to the New York _Journal of Geography_, the London _Geographical Journal_, and to other scientific publications. Miss Semple's first book, entitled _American History and Its Geographic Conditions_ (Boston, 1903), proclaimed her as the foremost student of the new science in the United States. A special edition of this work was published for the Indiana State Teachers' Association, which is said to be the largest reading circle in the world. In 1901 Miss Semple prepared an interesting study of _The Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky Mountains_, which was issued in 1910 as a bulletin of the American Geographical Society. Miss Semple's latest work is an enormous volume, entitled _Influences of Geographic Environment on the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography_ (New York, 1911). This required seven long years of untiring research to prepare, and with its publication she came into her own position, which is quite unique in the whole range of American literature. Although scientific to the last degree, her writings have the real literary flavor, which is seldom found in such work. Miss Semple lectured at Oxford University in 1912, and in the late autumn of that year she discussed Japan, in which country she had experienced much of value and interest, before the Royal British Geographical Society in London, and later before the Royal Scottish Geographical Society in Edinburgh. Between various lectures in Scotland and England she continued her researches in the London libraries, returning to the United States as the year closed.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Nation_ (December 31, 1903); _Political Science
Quarterly_ (September, 1904).

MAN A PRODUCT OF THE EARTH'S SURFACE[36]

[From _Influences of Geographic Environment_ (New York, 1911)]

Man is a product of the earth's surface. This means not merely that he is a child of the earth, dust of her dust; but that the earth has mothered him, fed him, set him tasks, directed his thoughts, confronted him with difficulties that have strengthened his body and sharpened his wits, given him his problems of navigation or irrigation, and at the same time whispered hints for their solution. She has entered into his bone and tissue, into his mind and soul. On the mountains she has given him leg muscles of iron to climb the slope; along the coast she has left these weak and flabby, but given him instead vigorous development of chest and arm to handle his paddle or oar. In the river valley she attaches him to the fertile soil, circumscribes his ideas and ambitions by a dull round of calm, exacting duties, narrows his outlook to the cramped horizon of his farm. Up on the windswept plateaus, in the boundless stretch of the grasslands and the waterless tracts of the desert, where he roams with his flocks from pasture to pasture and oasis to oasis, where life knows much hardship but escapes the grind of drudgery, where the watching of grazing herds gives him leisure for contemplation, and the wide-ranging life a big horizon, his ideas take on a certain gigantic simplicity; religion becomes monotheism, God becomes one, unrivalled like the sand of the desert, and the grass of the steppe, stretching on and on without break or change. Chewing over and over the cud of his simple belief as the one food of his unfed mind, his faith becomes fanaticism; his big spacial ideas, born of that ceaseless regular wandering, outgrow the land that bred them and bear their legitimate fruit in wide imperial conquests.

Man can no more be scientifically studied apart from the ground which he tills, or the lands over which he travels, or the seas over which he trades, than polar bear or desert cactus can be understood apart from its habitat. Man's relation to his environment are infinitely more numerous and complex than those of the most highly organized plant or animal. So complex are they that they constitute a legitimate and necessary object of special study. The investigation which they receive in anthropology, ethnology, sociology and history is piecemeal and partial, limited as to the race, cultural development, epoch, country or variety of geographic conditions taken into account. Hence all these sciences, together with history so far as history undertakes to explain the causes of events, fail to reach a satisfactory solution of their problems, largely because the geographic factor which enters into them all has not been thoroughly analyzed. Man has been so noisy about the way he has "conquered Nature," and Nature has been so silent in her persistent influence over man, that the geographic factor in the equation of human development has been overlooked.

FOOTNOTE:

[36] Copyright, 1911, by Henry Holt and Company.

MRS. ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON

Mrs. Annie Fellows Johnston, creator of the famous "Little Colonel Series," was born at Evansville, Indiana, May 15, 1863, the daughter of a clergyman. Miss Fellows was educated in the public schools of Evansville, and then spent the year of 1881-1882 at the State University of Iowa. She was married at Evansville, in 1888, to William L. Johnston, who died four years later, leaving her a son and daughter. Mrs. Johnston's first arrival in Kentucky as a resident (though not as a visitor), was in 1898, and then she stayed only three years. Her son's quest of health led her first to Walton, New York, then to Arizona, where they spent a winter on the desert in sight of Camelback mountain, which suggested the legend of _In the Desert of Waiting_. From Arizona they went to California and then, in 1903, decided to try the climate of Texas, up in the hill country, north of San Antonio. Mrs. Johnston called her home "Penacres," and she lived there until her son's death in the fall of 1910. She and her daughter returned to Pewee Valley, Kentucky, in April, 1911, and purchased "The Beeches," the old home of Mrs. Henry W. Lawton, the widow of the famous American general. The house is situated in a six acre grove of magnificent beech-trees, and is a place often mentioned in "The Little Colonel" stories. Mrs. Johnston's books are: _Big Brother_ (Boston, 1893); _The Little Colonel_ (Boston, 1895); _Joel: A Boy of Galilee_ (Boston, 1895; Italian translation, 1900); _In League with Israel_ (Cincinnati, 1896), the second and last of Mrs. Johnston's books that was not issued by L. C. Page and Company, Boston; _Ole Mammy's Torment_ (1897); _Songs Ysame_ (1897), a book of poems, written with her sister, Mrs. Albion Fellows Bacon, the social reformer of Evansville, Indiana; _The Gate of the Giant Scissors_ (1898); _Two Little Knights of Kentucky_ (1899), written in Kentucky; _The Little Colonel's House Party_ (1900); _The Little Colonel's Holidays_ (1901); _The Little Colonel's Hero_ (1902); _Cicely_ (1902); _Asa Holmes, or At the Crossroads_ (1902); _Flip's Islands of Providence_ (1903); _The Little Colonel at Boarding-School_ (1903), the children's "Order of Hildegarde" was founded on the story of _The Three Weavers_ in this volume; _The Little Colonel in Arizona_ (1904); _The Quilt that Jack Built_ (1904); _The Colonel's Christmas Vacation_ (1905); _In the Desert of Waiting_ (1905; Japanese translation, Tokio, 1906); _The Three Weavers_ (1905), a special edition of this famous story; _Mildred's Inheritance_ (1906); _The Little Colonel, Maid of Honor_ (1906); _The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding_ (1907); _Mary Ware_ (1908); _The Legend of the Bleeding Heart_ (1908); _Keeping Tryst_ (1908); _The Rescue of the Princess Winsome_ (1908); _The Jester's Sword_ (1909; Japanese translation, Tokio, 1910); _The Little Colonel's Good Times Book_ (1909); _Mary Ware in Texas_ (1910); and _Travellers Five_ (1911), a collection of short-stories for grown people, previously published in magazines, with a foreword by Bliss Carman. The little Kentucky girl--called the "Little Colonel" because of her resemblance to a Southern gentleman of the old school--has had Mrs. Johnston's attention for seventeen years, and she has recently announced that she is at work upon the twelfth and final volume of the "Little Colonel Series," as she feels that work for grown-ups is more worth her while. This last story of the series was published in the fall of 1912, entitled _Mary Ware's Promised Land_; and needless to say her "promised land" is Kentucky. There are "Little Colonel Clubs" all over the world, as Mrs. Johnston has learned from thousands of letters from children, and when she rings down the curtain upon her heroine many girls and boys in this and other countries will be sad.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Current Literature_ (April, 1901); _The Century_
(September, 1903).

THE MAGIC KETTLE[37]

[From _The Little Colonel's Holidays_ (Boston, 1901)]

Once upon a time, so the story goes (you may read it yourself in the dear old tales of Hans Christian Andersen), there was a prince who disguised himself as a swineherd. It was to gain admittance to a beautiful princess that he thus came in disguise to her father's palace, and to attract her attention he made a magic caldron, hung around with strings of silver bells. Whenever the water in the caldron boiled and bubbled, the bells rang a little tune to remind her of him.

"Oh, thou dear Augustine,
All is lost and gone,"

they sang. Such was the power of the magic kettle, that when the water bubbled hard enough to set the bells a-tinkling, any one holding his hand in the steam could smell what was cooking in every kitchen in the kingdom.

It has been many a year since the swineherd's kettle was set a-boiling and its string of bells a-jingling to satisfy the curiosity of a princess, but a time has come for it to be used again. Not that anybody nowadays cares to know what his neighbor is going to have for dinner, but all the little princes and princesses in the kingdom want to know what happened next.

"What happened after the Little Colonel's house party?" they demand, and they send letters to the Valley by the score, asking "Did Betty go blind?" "Did the two little Knights of Kentucky ever meet Joyce again or find the Gate of the Giant Scissors?" "Did the Little Colonel ever have any more good times at Locust, or did Eugenia ever forget that she too had started out to build a Road of the Loving Heart?"

It would be impossible to answer all these questions through the post-office, so that is why the magic kettle has been dragged from its hiding-place after all these years, and set a-boiling once more. Gather in a ring around it, all you who want to know, and pass your curious fingers through its wreaths of rising steam. Now you shall see the Little Colonel and her guests of the house party in turn, and the bells shall ring for each a different song.

But before they begin, for the sake of some who may happen to be in your midst for the first time, and do not know what it is all about, let the kettle give them a glimpse into the past, that they may be able to understand all that is about to be shown to you. Those who already know the story need not put their fingers into the steam, until the bells have rung this explanation in parenthesis.

(In Lloydsboro Valley stands an old Southern mansion, known as "Locust." The place is named for a long avenue of giant locust-trees stretching a quarter of a mile from house to entrance gate in a great arch of green. Here for years an old Confederate colonel lived all alone save for the negro servants. His only child, Elizabeth, had married a Northern man against his wishes, and gone away. From that day he would not allow her name to be spoken in his presence. But she came back to the Valley when her little daughter Lloyd was five years old. People began calling the child the Little Colonel because she seemed to have inherited so many of her grandfather's lordly ways as well as a goodly share of his high temper. The military title seemed to suit her better than her own name for in her fearless baby fashion she won her way into the old man's heart and he made a complete surrender.

Afterward when she and her mother and "Papa Jack" went to live with him at Locust, one of her favorite games was playing soldier. The old man never tired of watching her march through the wide halls with his spurs strapped to her tiny slipper heels, and her dark eyes flashing out fearlessly from under the little Napoleon cap she wore.

She was eleven when she gave her house party. One of the guests was Joyce Ware, whom some of you have met, perhaps, in "The Gate of the Giant Scissors," a bright thirteen-year-old girl from the West. Eugenia Forbes was another. She was a distant cousin of Lloyd's, who had no home-life like other girls. Her winters were spent in a fashionable New York boarding-school, and her summers at the Waldorf-Astoria, except the few weeks when her busy father could find time to take her to some seaside resort.

The third guest, Elizabeth Lloyd Lewis, or Betty, as every one lovingly called her, was Mrs. Sherman's little god-daughter. She was an orphan, boarding on a backwoods farm on Green River. She had never been on the cars until Lloyd's invitation found its way to the Cuckoo's Nest. Only these three came to stay in the house, but Malcolm and Keith MacIntyre (the two little Knights of Kentucky) were there nearly every day. So was Rob Moore, one of the Little Colonel's summer neighbors.

The four Bobs were four little foxterrier puppies named for Rob, who had given one to each of the girls. They were so much alike they could only be distinguished by the colour of the ribbons tied around their necks. Tarbaby was the Little Colonel's pony, and Lad the one that Betty rode during her visit.

After six weeks of picnics and parties, and all sorts of surprises and good times, the house party came to a close with a grand feast of lanterns. Joyce regretfully went home to the little brown house in Plainsville, Kansas, taking her Bob with her. Eugenia and her father went to New York, but not until they had promised to come back for Betty in the fall, and take her abroad with them. It was on account of something that had happened at the house party, but which is too long a tale to repeat here.

Betty stayed on at Locust until the end of the summer in the House Beautiful, as she called her god-mother's home, and here on the long vine-covered porch, with its stately white pillars, you shall see them first through the steam of the magic caldron).

Listen! Now the kettle boils and the bells begin the story!

FOOTNOTE:

[37] Copyright, 1901, by L. C. Page and Company.

EVA A. MADDEN

Miss Eva Anne Madden, author of a group of popular stories for children, was born near Bedford, Kentucky, October 26, 1863, the elder sister of Mrs. George Madden Martin, creator of _Emmy Lou_. Miss Madden was educated in the public schools of Louisville, Kentucky, after which she took a normal course. At the mature age of fourteen she was writing for _The Courier-Journal_; two years later she was doing book reviews for _The Evening Post_; and when eighteen years of age she became a teacher in the public schools. Miss Madden taught for more than ten years, or until 1892, when she went to New York and engaged in newspaper work. Her first book, _Stephen, or the Little Crusaders_ (New York, 1901), was published only a few months before she sailed for Europe, where she has resided for the last eleven years. Miss Madden's _The I Can School_ (New York, 1902), was followed by her other books, _The Little Queen_ (Boston, 1903); _The Soldiers of the Duke_ (Boston, 1904); and her most recent story, _Two Royal Foes_ (New York, 1907). Miss Madden has been the Italian representative of a London firm since 1907; and since 1908 she has been the correspondent of the Paris edition of the _New York Herald_ for the city in which she lives, Florence, Italy. She had a very good short-story in _The Century_ for February, 1911, entitled _The Interrupted Pen_.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Library of Southern Literature_ (Atlanta, 1910, v.
xv); _Who's Who in America_ (1912-1913).

THE END OF "THE I CAN SCHOOL."[38]

[From _The I Can School_ (New York, 1902)]

"Good-bye, Miss Ellison," she said, putting up her little mouth to be kissed. "I'm sorry that it's the end of the 'I Can School.'"

Then Miss Ellison was all smiles.

"You sweet little thing," she said, which was exactly what she had done ten months before.

How long ago that seemed to Virginia. How stupid she had been about learning to spell that easy "cat."

Now she could read a whole page about a black cat which got into the nest of a white hen, and she could add numbers, and "write vertical." She had painted in a book, and modeled a lovely half-apple, made real by a stem and the seeds of a russet she had had for lunch one day. She knew the name of all the birds about Fairview, and she could tell about the wild flowers.

Altogether she felt very learned and scornful of a certain small person who had thought Kentucky the name of a little girl, and who had known nothing of George Washington, and who had called C-A-T kitten-puss.

Virginia's mamma was very proud of all her little girl knew. She did not wait for Virginia to get her work from the janitor. She took it all carefully home to show her husband.

"Papa," said Virginia, the moment Mr. Barton entered the house that evening, "it's vacation!"

"Vacation!" said her father. "My! my! I remember that there was a time, Miss Barton, when I loved it better than school; do you?"

Virginia hesitated.

"Ten months," she said at last, "is a lot of school. Lucretia and Catherine seem just as tired, papa. Their lessons don't interest them now that it's so hot. I love the 'I Can School,' papa; but it's nice to stay at home and play 'Lady come to see.'"

This was a very long speech for Virginia, the longest that she ever had made.

Her papa laughed.

"Miss Barton," he said, "profound student that you are, I see that in some things you are not altogether different from your parent. But let me remind you, Miss Barton, when you feel at times a little tired of vacation, that the 'I Can' will begin again on the tenth of September."

"And Miss Ellison will be so glad to see me!" said Virginia confidently.

Her papa laughed.

"As for that, Miss Barton--"

"Now don't, Edward," interrupted his wife. "I am sure, Virginia, that Miss Ellison will be glad to see you in the fall. If I were you I would write her a little letter in the vacation. I have her address."

"And I'll tell Billy and Carter and Harry and all the children, and we'll all write so that she won't forget us. And she'll answer them, mamma, won't she?"

"I think she will," answered her mother. "It will be very nice for you to write to her."

But her husband said in a low voice, "Poor Miss Ellison."

"Good Miss Ellison, papa," said Virginia. "She's nice and I love her."

FOOTNOTE:

[38] Copyright, 1902, by Thomas Y. Crowell and Company.

JOHN FOX, Jr.

John Fox, Junior, Kentucky's master maker of mountain myths, was born at Stony Point, near Paris, Kentucky, December 16, 1863, the son of a schoolmaster. He was christened "John William Fox, Junior," but he early discarded his middle name. By his father he was largely fitted for Kentucky, now Transylvania, University, which institution he entered at the age of fifteen, spending the two years of 1878-1880 there, when he left and went to Harvard. Mr. Fox was graduated from Harvard in 1883, the youngest man in his class. Though he had written nothing during his collegiate career, upon quitting Cambridge he joined the staff of the New York _Sun_ and later entered Columbia Law School. He soon abandoned law and went with the _New York Times_, where he remained several months, when illness--blind and blessed goddess in disguise!--compelled him to go south in search of health. At length he found himself high up in the Cumberland Mountains, associated with his father and brother in a mining venture. He also taught school for a time, but the mountaineers of Kentucky were upon him, and he began to weave romances about them. Mr. Fox's first story, _A Mountain Europa_ (New York, 1894), originally appeared in two parts in _The Century Magazine_ for September and October, 1892. It was dedicated to James Lane Allen, whom its author had to thank for encouragement when he stood most in need of it. _On Hell-fer-Sartain Creek_, which followed fast upon the heels of his first book, made Mr. Fox famous in a fortnight. Written in a day and a half, _Harper's Weekly_ paid him the munificent sum of six dollars for it, and printed it back with the advertisements in the issue for November 24, 1894. The ending was transposed just a bit and a word or two discarded for apter words before it was published in book form; and these revisions were very fine, greatly improving the tale. In its most recent dress it counts less than five small pages; and it may be read in as many minutes. The mountain dialect prevails throughout. It "admits an epic breadth," the biggest thing Mr. Fox has done hitherto, and now generally regarded as a very great short-story.

_A Cumberland Vendetta and Other Stories_ (New York, 1895), contained, besides the title-story, first published in _The Century_, a reprinting of _A Mountain Europa_--which made the third time it had been printed in three years--_The Last Stetson_, and _On Hell-fer-Sartain Creek_. This volume was followed by Mr. Fox's finest work, entitled _Hell-fer-Sartain and Other Stories_ (New York, 1897). Of the ten stories in this little volume but four of them are in correct English, the others, the best ones, being in dialect. The last and longest story, _A Purple Rhododendron_, originally appeared in _The Southern Magazine_, a now defunct periodical of Louisville, Kentucky. _The Kentuckians_ (New York, 1897), was published a short time after _Hell-fer-Sartain and Other Stories_. This novelette pitted a man of the Blue Grass against a man of the Kentucky hills, and the struggle was not overly severe; the reading world did little more than remark its appearance and its passing.

When the Spanish-American war was declared Mr. Fox went to Cuba as a Rough Rider, but left that organization to act as correspondent for _Harper's Weekly_. He witnessed the fiercest fighting from the firing lines, and his own experiences were largely written into his first long novel, entitled _Crittenden_ (New York, 1900). This tale of love with war entwined was well told; and its concluding clause: "God was good that Christmas!" has become one of his most famous expressions. After the war Mr. Fox returned to the South. _Bluegrass and Rhododendron_ (New York, 1901), was a series of descriptive essays upon life in the Kentucky mountains, in which Mr. Fox did for the hillsmen what Mr. Allen had done for the customs and traditions of his own section of the state in _The Bluegrass Region of Kentucky_. It also embodied his own personal experiences as a member of the police guard in Kentucky and Virginia. The word "rhododendron" is Mr. Fox's shibboleth, and he seemingly never tires of writing it.

_The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come_ (New York, 1903), is his best long novel so far. The boy, Chad, is, perhaps, his one character-contribution to American fiction; and the boy's dog, "Jack," stands second to the little hero in the hearts of the thousands who read the book. The opening chapters are especially fine. The love story of _The Little Shepherd_ is most attractive; and the Civil War is presented in a manner not wholly laborious. After _Hell-fer-Sartain_ this novel is far and away the best thing Mr. Fox has done.

_Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories_ (New York, 1904), contained the title-story and five others, including _The Last Stetson_, which had appeared many years before in _Harper's Weekly_, and later in _A Cumberland Vendetta_. Mr. Fox attempted to reach the theatre of the Russian-Japanese War, as a correspondent for _Scribner's Magazine_, but he was not allowed to join the ever advancing armies. His experiences may be read in _Following the Sun-Flag_ (New York, 1905), with its tell-tale sub-title: "a vain pursuit through Manchuria." His next work was a novelette, _A Knight of the Cumberland_ (New York, 1906), first published as a serial in _Scribner's Magazine_. It was well done and rather interesting.

Mr. Fox spent the greater part of the year of 1907 in work upon _The Trail of the Lonesome Pine_ (New York, 1908), a story that must be placed beside _The Little Shepherd_ when any classification of the author's work is made. The heroine, June, is none other than Chad in feminine garb. The book contains some of the most excellent writing Mr. Fox has done, the descriptions being especially fine. It was dramatized by Eugene Walter and successfully produced. A few months after the publication of _The Trail_, the author married Fritzi Scheff, the operatic star, to whom he had inscribed his story. They have a home at Big Stone Gap, in the Virginia mountains.

In April, 1912, Mr. Fox's most recent novel, _The Heart of the Hills_, began as a serial in _Scribner's_, to be concluded in the issue for March, 1913. It is red with recent happenings in Kentucky, happenings which are, at the present time, too hackneyed to be of very great interest to the people of that state.[39] It must be remembered always that Mr. Fox is a story-teller pure and simple, and that he seemingly makes little effort to arrive at the stage of perfection in the mere matter of writing that characterizes the work of a group of his contemporaries. That he is a wonderful maker of short-stories in the mountain dialect is certain; but that he is a great novelist is yet to be established.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Current Literature Magazine_ (New York, September,
1903); _Little Pilgrimages Among the Men Who Have Written Famous
Books_, by E. F. Harkins, (Boston, 1903, Second Series); _Library
of Southern Literature_ (Atlanta, 1909, v. iv).

THE CHRISTMAS TREE ON PIGEON[40]

[From _Collier's Weekly_ (December 11, 1909)]

The sun of Christmas poured golden blessings on the head of the valley first; it shot winged shafts of yellow light through the great Gap and into the month of Pigeon; it darted awakening arrows into the coves and hollows on the Head of Pigeon, between Brushy Ridge and Black Mountain; and one searching ray flashed through the open door of the little log schoolhouse at the forks of Pigeon and played like a smile over the waiting cedar that stood within--alone.

Down at the mines below, the young doctor had not waited the coming of that sun. He had sprung from his bed at dawn, had built his own fire, had dressed hurriedly, and gone hurriedly on his rounds, leaving a pill here, a powder there, and a word of good cheer everywhere. That was his Christmas tree, the cedar in the little schoolhouse--his and _hers_. And _she_ was coming up from the Gap that day to dress that tree and spread the joy of Christmas among mountain folks, to whom the joy of Christmas was quite unknown.

An hour later the passing mail-carrier, from over Black Mountain, stopped with switch uplifted at his office door.

"Them fellers over the Ridge air comin' over to shoot up yo' Christmas tree," he drawled.

The switch fell and he was gone. The young doctor dropped by his fire--stunned; for just that thing had happened ten years before to the only Christmas tree that had ever been heard of in those hills except his own. From that very schoolhouse some vandals from the Crab Orchard and from over Black Mountain had driven the Pigeon Creek people after a short fight, and while the surprised men, frightened women and children, and the terrified teacher scurried to safety behind rocks and trees, had shot the tree to pieces. That was ten years before, but even now, though there were some old men and a few old women who knew the Bible from end to end, many grown people and nearly all of the children had never heard of the Book, or of Christ, or knew that there was a day known as Christmas Day. That such things were so had hurt the doctor to the heart, and that was why, as Christmas drew near, he had gone through the out-of-the-way hollows at the Head of Pigeon, and got the names and ages of all the mountain children; why for a few days before Christmas there had been such a dressing of dolls in the sweetheart's house down in the Gap as there had not been since she herself was a little girl; and why now the cedar tree stood in the little log schoolhouse at the forks of Pigeon. Moreover, there was as yet enmity between the mountaineers of Pigeon and the mountaineers over the Ridge and Black Mountain, who were jealous and scornful of any signs of the foreign influence but recently come into the hills. The meeting-house, courthouse, and the schoolhouse were yet favorite places for fights among the mountaineers. There was yet no reverence at all for Christmas, and the same vandals might yet regard a Christmas tree as an imported frivolity to be sternly rebuked. The news was not only not incredible, it probably was true; and with this conclusion some very unpleasant lines came into the young doctor's kindly face and he sprang from his horse.

Two hours later he had a burly mountaineer with a Winchester posted on the road leading to the Crab Orchard, another on the mountainside overlooking the little valley, several more similarly armed below, while he and two friends, with revolvers, buckled on, waited for the coming party, with their horses hitched in front of his office door. This Christmas tree was to be.

It was almost noon when the doctor heard gay voices and happy laughter high on the ridge, and he soon saw a big spring wagon drawn by a pair of powerful bays--Major, the colored coachman, on the seat, the radiant faces of the Christmas-giving party behind him, and a big English setter playing in the snow alongside.

Up Pigeon then the wagon went with the doctor and his three friends on horseback beside it, past the long batteries of coke-ovens with grinning darkies, coke-pullers, and loaders idling about them, up the rough road through lanes of snow-covered rhododendrons winding among tall oaks, chestnuts, and hemlocks, and through circles and arrows of gold with which the sun splashed the white earth--every cabin that they passed tenantless, for the inmates had gone ahead long ago--and on to the little schoolhouse that sat on a tiny plateau in a small clearing, with snow-tufted bushes of laurel on every side and snowy mountains rising on either hand.

The door was wide open and smoke was curling from the chimney. A few horses and mules were hitched to the bushes near by. Men, boys, and dogs were gathered around a big fire in front of the building; and in a minute women, children, and more dogs poured out of the schoolhouse to watch the coming cavalcade.