Chapter VIII: Appendix: 383 (7)

Since sunrise the motley group had been waiting there: the women thinly clad in dresses of worsted or dark calico, and a shawl or short jacket or man's coat, with a sunbonnet or "fascinator" on their heads, and men's shoes on their feet--the older ones stooped and thin, the younger ones carrying babies, and all with weather-beaten faces and bare hands; the men and boys without overcoats, their coarse shirts unbuttoned, their necks and upper chests bared to the biting cold, their hands thrust in their pockets as they stood about the fire, and below their short coat sleeves their wrists showing chapped and red; while to the little boys and girls had fallen only such odds and ends of clothing as the older ones could spare. Quickly the doctor got his party indoors and to work on the Christmas tree. Not one did he tell of the impending danger, and the Colt's .45 bulging under this man's shoulder or on that man's hip, and the Winchester in the hollow of an arm here and there were sights too common in these hills to arouse suspicion in anybody's mind. The cedar tree, shorn of its branches at the base and banked with mosses, towered to the angle of the roof. There were no desks in the room except the one table used by the teacher. Long, crude wooden benches with low backs faced the tree, with an aisle leading from the door between them. Lap-robes were hung over the windows, and soon a gorgeous figure of Santa Claus was smiling down from the very tiptop of the tree. Ropes of gold and silver tinsel were swiftly draped around and up and down; enmeshed in these were little red Santas, gaily colored paper horns, filled with candy, colored balls, white and yellow birds, little colored candles with holders to match, and other glittering things; while over the whole tree a glistening powder was sprinkled like a mist of shining snow. Many presents were tied to the tree, and under it were the rest of the labeled ones in a big pile. In a semicircle about the base sat the dolls in pink, yellow, and blue, and looking down the aisle to the door. Packages of candy in colored Japanese napkins and tied with a narrow red ribbon were in another pile, with a pyramid of oranges at its foot. And yet there was still another pile for unexpected children, that the heart of none should be sore. Then the candles were lighted and the door flung open to the eager waiting crowd outside. In a moment every seat was silently filled by the women and children, and the men, stolid but expectant, lined the wall. The like of that tree no soul of them had ever seen before. Only a few of the older ones had ever seen a Christmas tree of any kind and they but once; and they had lost that in a free-for-all fight. And yet only the eyes of them showed surprise or pleasure. There was no word--no smile, only unwavering eyes mesmerically fixed on the wonderful tree.

The young doctor rose, and only the sweetheart saw that he was nervous, restless, and pale. As best he could he told them what Christmas was and what it meant to the world; and he had scarcely finished when a hand beckoned to him from the door. Leaving one of his friends to distribute the presents, he went outside to discover that one vandal had come on ahead, drunk and boisterous. Promptly the doctor tied him to a tree, shouldered a Winchester, and himself took up a lonely vigil on the mountainside. Within, Christmas went on. When a name was called a child came forward silently, usually shoved to the front by some relative, took what was handed to it, and, dumb with delight, but too shy even to murmur a word of thanks, silently returned to its seat with the presents hugged to its breast--presents that were simple, but not to those mountain mites; colored pictures and illustrated books they were, red plush albums, simple games, fascinators and mittens for the girls; pocket-knives, balls, firecrackers, and horns, mittens, caps, and mufflers for the boys; a doll dressed in everything a doll should wear for each little girl, no one of whom had ever seen a doll before, except what was home-made from an old dress or apron tied in several knots to make the head and body. Twice only was the silence broken. One boy quite forgot himself when given a pocket-knife. He looked at it suspiciously and incredulously, turned it over in his hand, opened it and felt the edge of the blade, and, panting with excitement, cried: "Hit's a shore 'nough knife!"

And again when, to make sure that nobody had been left out, though all the presents were gone, the master of ceremonies asked if there was any other little boy or girl who had received nothing, there arose a bent, toothless old woman in a calico dress and baggy black coat, her gray hair straggling from under her black sunbonnet, and her hands gnarled and knotted from work and rheumatism. Simply as a child, she spoke:

"I hain't got nothin'."

Gravely the giver of the gifts asked her to come forward, and, nonplussed, searched the tree for the most glittering thing he could find. Then all the women pressed forward and then the men, until all the ornaments were gone, even the half-burned candles with their colored holders, which the men took eagerly and fastened in their coats, clasping the holders to their lapels or fastening the bent wire in their button-holes, and pieces of tinsel rope, which they threw over their shoulders--so that the tree stood at last just as it was when brought from the wild woods outside.

Straightway then the young doctor hurried the departure of the merry-makers from the Gap. Already the horses stood hitched, and, while the laprobes were being carried out, a mountaineer, who had brought along a sack of apples, lined up the men and boys, and at a given word started running down the road, pouring out the apples as he ran, while the men and boys scrambled for them, rolling and tussling in the snow. As the party moved away, the mountaineers waved their hands and shouted good-by to the doctor, too shy still to pay much heed to the other "furriners" in the wagon. The doctor looked back once with a grateful sigh of relief but no one in the wagon knew that there had been any danger that day. How great the danger had been not even the doctor knew then. For the coming vandals had got as far as the top of the Dividing Ridge, had there quarreled and fought among themselves, so that, as the party drove away, one invader was at that minute cursing his captors, who were setting him free, and high upon the ridge another lay dead in the snow.

In time there was a wedding at the Gap, and long afterward the doctor, riding by the little schoolhouse, stopped at the door, and from his horse shoved it open. The Christmas tree stood just as he had left it on Christmas Day, only, like the evergreens on the wall and over the windows, it, too, was brown, withered and dry. Gently he closed the door and rode on.

FOOTNOTES:

[39] When Mr. Fox followed the trail of the Goebel tragedy he was poaching upon the especial preserves of Miss Eleanor Talbot Kinkead, whose romance of the "autocrat," _The Courage of Blackburn Blair_ (New York, 1907), was widely read and reviewed. Miss Kinkead was born in Kentucky, and, besides the story mentioned above, is the author of _'Gainst Wind and Tide_ (Chicago, 1892); _Young Greer of Kentucky_ (Chicago, 1895); _Florida Alexander_ (Chicago, 1898); and _The Invisible Bond_ (New York, 1906).

[40] Copyright, 1909, by P. F. Collier and Son.

FANNIE C. MACAULAY

Mrs. Fannie Caldwell Macaulay ("Frances Little"), "the lady of the Decoration," was born at Shelbyville; Kentucky, November 22, 1863, the daughter of a jurist. She was educated at Science Hill Academy, Shelbyville, a noted school for girls. Miss Caldwell was married to James Macaulay of Liverpool, England, but her marriage proved unhappy. From 1899 to 1902 Mrs. Macaulay was a kindergarten teacher in Louisville, Kentucky; and from 1902 to 1907 she was engaged as supervisor of kindergarten work at Hiroshima, Japan. From Japan she wrote letters home which were so charming and clever that her niece, Mrs. Alice Hegan Rice, the Louisville novelist, insisted that she make them into a book. The result was _The Lady of the Decoration_ (New York, 1906), for more than a year the most popular book in America. This little epistolary tale of heroic struggle for one's work and one's love, was read in all parts of the English-speaking world. It set the high-water mark, probably, for even the "six best sellers." Mrs. Macaulay's second book, _Little Sister Snow_ (New York, 1909), was the tender love story of a young American and a Japanese girl. The lad sailed away to his American sweetheart, leaving "Little Sister Snow" blowing him kisses from her native shore. Mrs. Macaulay's latest story, _The Lady and Sada San_ (New York, 1912), was published in London under the title of _The Lady Married_, which was clearer, as it is the sequel to _The Lady of the Decoration_. The Lady's husband, Jack, sails away to China in pursuit of his scientific duties, leaving her lonely in Kentucky. She decides to make another journey to Japan; and on the way over she falls in with a charming young American-Japanese girl, Sada San, whom she subsequently saves from a most cruel fate. She then finds her husband, ill and exhausted with his long trip, and returns with him to Kentucky. The descriptions of the countries through which she passes are very fine: the best writing the author has shown hitherto. The little volume was reported as the best selling book in America at Christmas time of 1912. Mrs. Macaulay has spent much of her life during the last several years in Japan, but her home is at Louisville. She is a prominent club woman, and a charming lecturer upon the beauties of Nippon.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Bookman_ (June, 1906); _Who's Who in America_
(1912-1913).

APPROACHING JAPAN[41]

[From _The Lady of the Decoration_ (New York, 1906)]

Still on Board. August 18th.

DEAR MATE:

I am writing this in my berth with the curtains drawn. No I am not a bit sea-sick, just popular. One of the old ladies is teaching me to knit, the short-haired missionary reads aloud to me, the girl from South Dakota keeps my feet covered up, and Dear Pa and Little Germany assist me to eat.

The captain has had a big bathing tank rigged up for the ladies, and I take a cold plunge every morning. It makes me think of our old days at the cottage up at the Cape. Didn't we have a royal time that summer and weren't we young and foolish? It was the last good time I had for many a long day--but there, none of that!

Last night I had an adventure, at least it was next door to one. I was sitting up on deck when Dear Pa came by and asked me to walk with him. After several rounds we sat down on the pilot house steps. The moon was as big as a wagon wheel and the whole sea flooded with silver, while the flying fishes played hide and seek in the shadows. I forgot all about Dear Pa and was doing a lot of thinking on my own account when he leaned over and said:

"I hope you don't mind talking to me. I am very, very lonely." Now I thought I recognized a grave symptom, and when he began to tell me about his dear departed, I knew it was time to be going.

"You have passed through it," he said. "You can sympathize."

I crossed my fingers in the dark. "We are both seeking a life work in a foreign field--" he began again, but just here the purser passed. He almost stumbled over us in the dark and when he saw me and my elderly friend, he actually smiled!

Don't you dare tell Jack about this, I should never hear the last of it.

Can you realize that I am three whole weeks from home! I do, every second of it. Sometimes when I stop to think what I am doing my heart almost bursts! But then I am so used to the heartache that I might be lonesome without it; who knows?

If I can only do what is expected of me, if I can only pick up the pieces of this smashed-up life of mine and patch them into a decent whole that you will not be ashamed of, then I will be content.

The first foreign word I have learned is "Alohaoe," I think it means "my dearest love to you." Anyhow I send it laden with the tenderest meaning. God bless and keep you all, and bring me back to you a wiser and a gladder woman.

FOOTNOTE:

[41] Copyright, 1906, by the Century Company.

JAMES D. BRUNER

James Dowden Bruner, editor of many masterpieces of French literature, as well as an original critic of that literature, was born near Leitchfield, Kentucky, May 19, 1864. He was graduated from Franklin College, Franklin, Indiana, in 1888, and then taught French and German at Franklin for two years. Professor Bruner studied a year in Paris and Florence and, on his return to this country, in 1893, he was elected professor of Romance languages in the University of Illinois. Johns Hopkins University conferred the degree of Ph. D. upon him, in 1894, his dissertation being _The Phonology of the Pistojese Dialect_ (Baltimore, 1894, a brochure). From 1895 to 1899 Dr. Bruner was professor of Romance languages and literatures in the University of Chicago; from 1901 to 1909 he held a similar chair in the University of North Carolina; and since 1909 he has been president of Chowan College, Murfreesboro, North Carolina. Dr. Bruner has edited, with introductions and critical notes, _Les Adventures du Dernier Abencerage_, par Chateaubriand (New York, 1903); _Le Roman d'un Jeune Homme Pauvre_, par Octave Feuillet (Boston, 1904); _Hernani_, par Victor Hugo (New York, 1906); and _Le Cid_, par Pierre Corneille (New York, 1908), his finest critical edition of any French classic hitherto. His _Studies in Victor Hugo's Dramatic Characters_ (Boston, 1908), announced the advent of a new critic of the great Frenchman's plays. It is an excellent piece of work.

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

THE FRENCH CLASSICAL DRAMA[42]

[From _Le Cid_, par Pierre Corneille (New York, 1908)]

Corneille in the _Cid_ founded the French classical drama. Before the appearance of this masterpiece, a transition drama containing characteristics of the tragi-comedy as well as of the regular classical tragedy, of which Corneille's next three plays, _Horace_, _Cinna_, and _Polyeucte_, were to be perfect examples, the tragi-comedy prevailed in France. This tragi-comedy, or irregular drama, was a Renaissance product, having a history and characteristics of its own, being largely influenced by the tragedies of Seneca. Its most important characteristics are non-historic subjects, serious or tragic plots, the mixture of comic and tragic elements or tones, the high rank of the leading characters, the _style noble_, looseness of structure, the disregard of the minor or Italian unities of time and place, the classical form of verse and number of acts, romanesque elements, and a happy ending.

The most striking characteristic of the French classical drama of the seventeenth century, as of the modern short story, is that of compression. This statement is true both as to its form and its content. The accidental accessories of splendid decorations, magnificent costumes, subsidiary plots, and secondary characters that might detract from the main situation or obscure the general impression, are, as far as possible, sacrificed to the essential or necessary interests of dramatic art. Improbable and irrational elements are reduced to a minimum. Digressions, episodes, long soliloquies, oratorical tirades, minute descriptions of external nature, and complicated machinery that would encumber the plot or destroy proportion, are largely eliminated. The classical dramatist is too sensitive to the beautiful, the sublime, the essential, and the universal to admit into his conception of fine art either moral and physical deformity or the accidental and particular aspects of life. Classical tragedy is furthermore narrow in its choice of subject and form, in its number and range of characters, in its representation of material and physical action on the stage, and in its number of events, incidents, and actions. Its subjects and materials are taken almost wholly from ancient classical and Hebrew sources. Mediaeval, national, and modern foreign raw material, whether life, history, legend, or literature, is seldom utilized. Its manners and ideas are those of the court and the _salons_, and its religion is pagan. Its language is general, cold, regular, and conventional, and its versification is confined to rimed Alexandrine couplets, with the immovable caesura and little _enjambement_.

The Frenchman's love of proportion, symmetry, restraint, and logical order led him to the cult of form. In striving after perfection of form, he naturally adopted compression as the best method of expressing this innate artistic reserve. This compactness and concentration of form, this compressed brevity, which the Frenchman inherited from the Latins, is well illustrated by the following lines from Wordsworth:

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower;
Hold infinity in the palm of hand,
And eternity in an hour.

FOOTNOTE:

[42] Copyright, 1909, by the Author.

MADISON CAWEIN

Madison Cawein, whom English critics name the greatest living American poet, was born at Louisville, Kentucky, March 23, 1865. He was christened "Madison Julius Cawein," but he had not gotten far in the literary lane before his middle name was dropped, though the "J." may be found upon the title-pages of his earlier books. After some preparatory work he entered the Louisville Male High School, in 1881, at the age of sixteen years. At high school Madison Cawein began to write rhymes which he read to the students and teachers upon stated occasions, and he was hailed by them as a true maker of song. He was graduated in 1886 in a class of thirteen members. Being poor in purse, Mr. Cawein accepted a position in a Louisville business house, and he is one of the few American poets who wrote in the midst of such commercialism. His was the singing heart, not to be crushed by conditions or environment of any kind. The year after his graduation he collected the best of his school verse and published them as his first book, _Blooms of the Berry_ (Louisville, 1887). In some way William Dean Howells and Thomas Bailey Aldrich saw this volume, praised it, and fixed the future poet in his right path. _The Triumph of Music_ (Louisville, 1888), sounded after _The Blooms of the Berry_, and since that time hardly a year has passed without the poet putting forth a slender volume. The next few years saw the publication of his _Accolon of Gaul_ (Louisville, 1889); _Lyrics and Idyls_ (Louisville, 1890); _Days and Dreams_ (New York, 1891); _Moods and Memories_ (New York, 1892); _Red Leaves and Roses_ (New York, 1893); _Poems of Nature and Love_ (New York, 1893); _Intimations of the Beautiful_ (New York, 1894), one of his longest poems; _The White Snake_ (Louisville, 1895), metrical translations from the German poets; _Undertones_ (Boston, 1896), which contained some of the finest lyrics he has done so far; _The Garden of Dreams_ (Louisville, 1896); _Shapes and Shadows_ (New York, 1898); _Idyllic Monologues_ (Louisville, 1898); _Myth and Romance_ (New York, 1899); _One Day and Another_ (Boston, 1901), a lyrical eclogue; _Weeds by the Wall_ (Louisville, 1901); _A Voice on the Wind_ (Louisville, 1902). A glance at these titles, following fast upon each other, convinces the reader that Mr. Cawein was writing and publishing far too much, that he was not sufficiently critical of his work. Edmund Gosse, the famous English critic, has always been one of Mr. Cawein's most ardent admirers, and, in 1903, he selected the best of his poems, wrote a delightful introduction for them, and they were published in London under the title of _Kentucky Poems_. This volume brought the poet many new friends, as it assembled the best of his work from volumes long out of print and rather difficult to procure. _The Vale of Tempe_ (New York, 1905), contained the best of Mr. Cawein's work written since the publication of _Weeds by the Wall_ in 1901. _Nature-Notes and Impressions_ (New York, 1906), a collection of poems and prose-pastels, was especially notable for the fact that it contained the first and only short-story the poet has written, entitled "Woman or--What?"

_The Poems of Madison Cawein_ (Indianapolis, 1907, five volumes), charmingly illustrated by Mr. Eric Pape, the Boston artist, with Mr. Gosse's introduction, brought together all of Mr. Cawein's work that he cared to rescue from many widely scattered volumes. He made many revisions in the poems, some of which (in the judgment of the writer) tend to mar their original beauty. But it is a work of which any poet may be proud; and it is not surpassed in quality or quantity by any living American.

Mr. Cawein's _Ode in Commemoration of the Founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony_ (Louisville, 1908), which he read at Gloucester in August, 1907, was rather lengthy, but it contained many strong and fine lines; and a group of New England sonnets, some of the best he has done, appeared at the end of the ode. His _New Poems_ (London, 1909), was followed by _The Giant and the Star_ (Boston, 1909), a small collection of children's verse, dedicated to his little son, who furnished their inspiration. _Let Us Do the Best that We Can_ (Chicago, 1909), was a beautiful brochure; and _The Shadow Garden and Other Plays_ (New York, 1910), was four chamber-dramas which have been highly praised, and which contain some of the most delicate work the poet has done. _So Many Ways_ (Chicago, 1911), was another pamphlet-poem; and it was followed by _Poems_ (New York, 1911), selected from the whole range of his work by himself, with a foreword by William Dean Howells. Mr. Cawein's latest volume is entitled _The Poet, the Fool and the Faeries_ (Boston, 1912). It brings together his work of the last two or three years, both in the field of the lyric and of the drama. And from the mechanical aspect it is his most beautiful book. The poet will publish two books through a Cincinnati firm in 1913, to be entitled _The Republic--a Little Book of Homespun Verse_, and _Minions of the Moon_.

In March, 1912, literary Louisville celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of _Blooms of the Berry_, and the forty-seventh birthday of its author, Madison Cawein, the city's most distinguished man of letters. This was the first public recognition Mr. Cawein has received in the land of his birth, though it is now proposed to place a bust of him in the public library of Louisville. He is better known in New York or London than he is in Kentucky, but it will not be long before the people of his own land realize that they have been entertaining a world-poet, possibly, unawares. He is so far removed from any Kentucky poet of the present school that to mention him in the same breath with any of them is to make one's self absurd. Looking backward to the beginnings of our literature and coming carefully down the slope to this time, but two poets rise out of the mist of yesterday to greet Cawein and challenge him for the laureateship of Kentucky makers of song: Theodore O'Hara with his immortal elegy, and Daniel Henry Holmes with his sheaf of tender lyrics. These three are the nearest approach to the ineffable poets--who left the earth with the passing of Tennyson--yet nurtured upon Kentucky soil.

Mr. Cawein is, of course, a poet of Nature, a landscape poet in particular who paints every color on the palette into his work. Had he been an artist he would have exhausted all colors conceived thus far by man, and would fain have originated new ones. There are literally hundreds of his poems in which every line is as surely a stroke as if done with the brush of a painter. Color, color, is his shibboleth-scheme, and he who would woo Nature in her richest robes may read Cawein and be content.

Amazing as it may seem Mr. Cawein has thirty-four volumes to his credit--almost one for every year of his life. This statement stamps him as one of the most prolific poets of modern times, if not, indeed, of all time. And that it is not all quantity, may be seen in the recent declaration of _The Poetry Review_ of London: "He appears quite the biggest figure among American poets; his _return to nature_ has no tinge of affectation; it is genuine to the smallest detail. If he suffers from fatigue, it is in him, at least, not through that desperate satiety of town life which with so many recent poets has ended in impressionism and death."

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Poets of the Younger Generation_, by William Archer
(London, 1901); _The Younger American Poets_, by Jessie B.
Rittenhouse (Boston, 1904); _History of American_ _Literature_,
by R. P. Halleck (New York, 1911); _The Poetry Review_ (London,
October, 1912).