Chapter II: Part 2

"I begin to write at about 9 A.M. Keep at work till noon. Resume about 1.30 P.M., and leave my studio about 4. I then exercise for two hours. I walk or ride horseback, according to the weather. When it rains I put on a heavy pair of boots and trudge five to seven miles across the country. I usually ride about a dozen miles. To this habit of taking regular exercise I attribute my good health. I eat just what I want and as much as I want. When night comes I lie down and sleep like a child, never once waking until morning. I usually retire at 9.30 and rise at 7.30, aiming to secure nine hours' sleep. I smoke at pleasure, a pipe or a cigar, but never a cigarette, which I consider the deadliest thing a person can put in his mouth. The amount of work I produce in a day varies greatly. Sometimes I write four hundred and sometimes twelve hundred words. What I write to-day in the rough, to-morrow I revise, perhaps reducing it to twenty words, perhaps striking out all the day's work and beginning at the same point once more. That constitutes my second copy. When proofs come from the publisher another revision takes place. It consists chiefly of condensation and expurgation."

He was asked once what he considered the secret of his success. "Work," he answered, "and, as an author, the doing it myself with my own hand, not by means of a typewriter, or amanuensis or stenographer. To work I would add universal reading."

"Who is your favorite novelist?" the questioner went on.

"Sir Walter Scott."

"What is your favorite novel?"

"'Ivanhoe.'"

"And your favorite poem?"

"'Idylls of the King.'"

"What do you consider the sublimest poetry in the world?"

"You will find it in the Psalms and Job, in Homer, in Milton and in Shakespeare."

"Who, in your judgment, are the three greatest warriors the world has produced?"

"Alexander, Cæsar, Napoleon."

"Who, in your opinion, were the greatest American statesmen?"

"George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. Alexander Hamilton is, in my judgment, the father of the American Constitution. But that Constitution would never have been adopted save for the support given it by the great name of George Washington."

We have said, after all, far too little of this distinguished man, but all that we might say would hardly give the right emphasis to the greatness of his manifold deeds and to the charm of his personal character.

GEORGE W. CABLE

During his visit to this country a few years ago Mr. J. M. Barrie said to the students at Smith College that no American novelist merits a higher rank than Mr. George W. Cable. True as, in the abstract, this foreign estimate of Mr. Cable's worth is, it would awaken a rather feeble echo among the devourers of our colonial literature. Yet one of the Southerner's characteristic stories, "The Grandissimes," for instance, or "Posson Jone," or "Madame Delphine," is deserving of a recommendation to the liveliest admirer of eighteenth century heroes and heroines.

At bottom, there is much in common between Mr. Barrie and Mr. Cable, and this circumstance may account for the Scotchman's enthusiastic utterance at Smith College. Each has a poetical love for nature; each has portrayed a picturesque corner of the world with the kindest intention, the broadest sympathy and the choicest skill; each has been the object of misunderstanding at home and of warm admiration abroad, and each has led where others may only follow. It is perfectly natural that two such lovable and loving men should clasp hands across the sea.

We must admit that the writer who has pictured New Orleans as vividly as Balzac pictured his beloved Paris was better known, say, ten years ago, than he is to-day. Then he had fewer distractions than he has to-day. Then he had reached the climax of his literary productivity. Then he was personally endearing himself to his fellow-countrymen with his inimitably delightful recitations and songs. There have been authors who drew larger audiences, and who, to use a homely phrase, made more noise on their tours, but there has never been an author whose readings from his works gave sweeter pleasure; and, as for his manner of singing the Creole folksongs, it was indescribably charming. Mr. John Fox, Jr., is the only other American author who has ventured to sing folk-songs publicly; and we may say, without fear of suggesting the odious comparison, that the younger man has been very successful, too.

"Many years ago," Mr. Cable once said, "when I discovered that these folk-songs of the slaves of former Louisiana Creoles had a great charm of their own and were preserved by tradition only, I was induced to gather them and reduce them to notation. I found that others were so strongly interested in the songs that, without pretending to any musical authority or original charm of voice, I was tempted to sing one or two of them before public audiences. The first time I did so was in Boston, and since then I have rarely been allowed to leave them out of my entertainment, when the length of my literary program left room for them."

But we must look back farther. To start at the very beginning, George Washington Cable was born in New Orleans on October 12, 1844. His father was of Virginian descent; his mother of New England. They were married in Indiana ten years before George was born, and they moved to New Orleans after the hard times of 1837. The father died in 1859, and then George, at the age of fifteen, went to work to help support the family. He was a very small boy for his age; and indeed it is related that in 1863, when the family was sent outside the Union lines for refusing to take the oath of allegiance, his sisters had no difficulty in obtaining permission to have their "little brother" accompany them. The "little brother," however, was not so harmless as he looked. He volunteered to fight for the Confederacy, and was mustered into the Fourth Mississippi Cavalry, then in Gen. Wirt Adams's brigade. For a time after the war he rolled cotton on the New Orleans levees and carried a surveyor's chain along the banks of the Atchafalaya; and by and by he found a place on the _New Orleans Picayune_. He is therefore to be counted among the authors whose literary career started in the reporter's room. His strong taste for culture and his zeal for the public welfare soon made an outlet for themselves in short articles touching on current topics; and, though the articles were much enjoyed by the readers of the _Picayune_, the young writer before long felt the distaste for newspaper work which, early or late, comes to almost every journalist with high literary aims. Journalism is the best school of experience in the world, but it can be attended too long.

Cable resisted the fascinations of journalism firmly and wisely. At the height of his success he left the _Picayune_ and went into the counting-room of a cotton house. He had a good eye for the picturesque features of daily life, the features met commonly in the daily papers, and at his leisure he wrote a few short stories based on New Orleans characters. One day these stories, which he had made no attempt to sell, came into the hands of an agent of the old _Scribner's Monthly_, who happened to visit Louisiana in connection with the well-remembered Great South papers. This agent, by name Edward King, praised the stories, and, at the author's request, sent one of them to New York. The story, for some reason, came back; but the next one sent, "Sieur George," brought a note of acceptance and encouragement from Richard Watson Gilder, Doctor Holland's associate.

A few years later a volume of these Louisiana sketches was published under the title of "Old Creole Days." It was immediately recognized as a notable addition to our short story literature. Nevertheless, the author stuck to his desk in the counting-room. Many another ambitious young writer, in the circumstances, would have given up his position and leaned entirely upon his pen. Young Cable had a cool head. He knew that he was moving forward handsomely, and that if he yielded to the excitement of the situation for a moment he might fall back. So his pen rusted for two years, when he accepted an order for a serial story. This turned out to be "The Grandissimes," a clear and entertaining exposition of the author's views of the old-fashioned Southern life, a happy mingling of fact and fiction, of fun and sobriety, of calm appreciation of the Louisiana aristocracy and a warm toleration of the struggles of the poor negro slaves. Of course, this attitude added nothing to the author's popularity among Southerners.

To illustrate this, a Southern woman, who happened to visit Northampton, where of late Mr. Cable has made his home, was asked if she ever read his stories. "Of course not," she indignantly answered; "I wouldn't think of looking at them." However, she was persuaded to look at them after a while; and it is a peculiar tribute to their delicate yet powerful charm that the woman expressed regret that she had misconceived his work and opposed his ideas.

"The Grandissimes" was so successful that the publishers are said to have sent the author a check for five hundred dollars more than the contract price. This first long tale was followed by another much the same in vein and in atmosphere, "Madame Delphine," which is the story-teller's own favorite. The subject and the style are equally delightful.

In 1879, when Mr. Cable was thirty-five years old, the business house in which he had worked to keep his feet on earth dissolved, and the clerk had to choose between returning to journalism and devoting himself entirely to literature. By this time he seems to have been more self-reliant and more confident. At any rate, he chose literature. The first thing he did was to decline to write for more than one publisher. It must be said again that a steadier head never produced a story.

A strong sense of duty, in fact, early established control of his work. His interests were not permitted to grow narrow. He realized that he possessed exceptionally abundant resources for the production of miscellaneous literature touching on the development of the middle South, and he determined to make the most of his possessions. In 1880, for example, we find him engaged in a special article on New Orleans for the Census Bureau, and his native city was also the theme of an article which he wrote for the "Encyclopedia Britannica." One of his critics has said: "Since Hawthorne's Custom House reports, few pages of the Government documents have been enriched by so discriminating a pen as in the exhaustive census monograph upon the past and present of the Southern metropolis." This paper led to a series of articles entitled "The Creoles of Louisiana," written for _The Century_, in which the reader will note an artistic combination of dry history and vivid imagination.

That such a painstaking, conscientious, dutiful writer should ever be charged with falling into an anachronism may seem preposterous; but although the charge has been made, we find no instance in which it has been sustained. A writer who once visited him brushed the charge aside vigorously: "Mr. Cable's plan of work," he said, "is unusually methodical, for his counting-room training has stood him in good stead. All his notes and references are carefully indexed and journalled, and so systematized that he can turn, without a moment's delay, to any authority he wishes to consult. In this respect, as in many others, he has not, perhaps, his equal among living authors. In making his notes, it is his usual custom to write in pencil on scraps of paper. These notes are next put into shape, still in pencil, and the third copy, intended for the press, is written in ink on note-paper--the chirography exceedingly neat, delicate and legible. He is always exact, and is untiring in his researches.... Before attempting to write upon any historical point, he gathers together all available material without reckoning time or trouble; and, under such conditions, nothing is more unlikely than that he should be guilty of error."

The business life which fortunately imposed so valuable a system upon him incidentally inspired his second novel, "Dr. Sevier," many of the scenes in which are faithful pictures of his own experiences as a youth. As in the historical sketches, so in this second novel the poetic imagination of the author fairly rivals his grasp of the prosaic relations existing between man and man. But such relations were supremely vital from his viewpoint, and his third novel, "Bonaventure," was written in moments stolen from the discussion of the questions of elections, prison systems, and the future of the negro. The reader will note in the hero of this story the personification of the practical strengthening and yet spiritualizing gospel which the author has enunciated in his private and public religious work. For it is important to chronicle that Mr. Cable has done as much to Christianize several communities as the most energetic minister would be expected to do; and from his scrupulous performance of not merely the ordinary Christian duties but also of duties self-imposed, he has never allowed literature or society to beguile him.

Naturally his social and political studies drew many invitations to address public meetings. It was at Johns Hopkins University, while lecturing on literary art, that, upon the suggestion of President Gilman, he ventured for the first time to read selections from his own stories. The delight of the audience was no less a surprise to him than the realization of his own elocutionary skill. This he set about to cultivate, and with such success that for years afterward he was enthusiastically welcomed to the great cities. It was once estimated that in his busiest years on the platform he traveled more than ten thousand miles every twelve months.

For various reasons, particularly that he might be able to write of the South impartially and that he might be nearer the literary market, he moved to Simsbury, Conn., in 1884, and the next year to Northampton, Mass., where he has lived ever since. But he has never lost sight of his native concern in the progress of the South; and as for his philanthropy, in Northampton it has spread wider and wider.

There, on the edge of one of the quietest and loveliest towns in Massachusetts, he has had built for himself a home suited to all his excellent tastes, and there he lives, intent always on making someone happy, and writing simply enough to maintain the brilliancy and popularity of his name.

HENRY JAMES

Henry James has been at pains, lately, to put a stop to a report that he proposes to return to America, yet by descent and at heart he is undoubtedly as loyal an American as his neighbor in England, Bret Harte. Even a cosmopolite may be patriotic.

Mr. James has been called the first American cosmopolitan author. It is an unusually interesting fact that, like Mr. Harte, who also lives in England, James was born in Albany, N. Y., the date of his birth being April 15, 1843. His grandfather, William James, who made a fortune in the Syracuse salt works, had settled in Albany soon after his immigration from Ireland. His millions were divided among eleven children, one of whom was Henry James, Sr., the novelist's father. This branch of the James family moved to Germany when our author was a boy; and there he and his brothers and sister were educated for some years. It used to be said that, like his distinguished contemporaries, Howells and Aldrich, James never enjoyed the advantages of a college education; but it is a fact, nevertheless, that the James children were thoroughly educated. Henry James, Sr., intellectually, was a remarkable man, and Miss Walsh of New York, whom he married, has been described as "his complement in the possession of sterling practical qualities and the sustaining common sense of woman." Besides, there were the educational advantages of travel which the James children enjoyed. When the Jameses returned to this country they settled in Cambridge. It was there that Howells made the acquaintance of the elder James.

We are tempted to quote extensively from Howells's memories of Henry James, Sr., but we shall confine our quotation to a single paragraph:

"At all times he thought originally in words of delightful originality, which painted a fact with the greatest vividness. Of a person who had a nervous twitching of the face, and who wished to call up a friend to them, he said: 'He _spasmed_ to the fellow across the room, and introduced him.' His written style had traits of the same adventurousness, but it was his speech which was most captivating. As I write of him I see him before me: his white bearded face, with a kindly intensity which at first glance seemed fierce, the mouth humorously shaping the mustache, the eyes vague behind the glasses; his sensitive hand gripping the stick on which he rested his weight to ease it from the artificial limb he wore."

Henry James, Jr., is one of five children. Equally as celebrated as Henry, both at home and abroad, is William James, a professor at Harvard. In March, 1865, a month before his twenty-second year, Henry James made his first appearance in literature with a contribution to _The Atlantic Monthly_, entitled "A Story of a Year," which naturally had to do with the War of the Rebellion. It was _The Atlantic_ which also published his first serial story, "Poor Richard," which ran through three numbers. Later followed "Gabrielle de Bergerac" and "Watch and Ward," each a little more ambitious than its predecessors; and finally came his first long story, "Roderick Hudson," which lasted through twelve numbers of _The Atlantic_. The stories aroused a great deal of comment, most of which was favorable. This encouraged him to abandon all thought of law, which he had studied at Harvard, and make literature his profession. About the same time he went to England, where he has since spent most of his time.

Like Harte, James has suffered from the charge of expatriation. The very fact that the English reading public, which is a most discerning public, was quick to appreciate the rare quality of James's style has been sufficient to keep some American critics in bad temper--as if the mere matter of residence has any intimate connection with literature! If James were an utter snob, if he slurred Americans or disclaimed any acquaintance with them, if his cynicism were not well founded, or if his satire were simply burlesque, he might justly be attacked; but as, personally, he is gentle and unassuming, as his cynicism is not a mania, and as his satire is more or less truthful, the belligerent critics have been largely wasting their ammunition. Probably no story of his has ever stirred up bitterer talk than "Daisy Miller," with its unconventional American heroine; yet it was only justice, not to mention literary acumen, which prompted so spirited an American as Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, in his "Short Studies of American Authors," to say of the author of "Daisy Miller" that "he has achieved no greater triumph than when, in this last-named book, he succeeds in holding our sympathy and even affection, after all, for the essential innocence and rectitude of the poor wayward girl whose follies he has so mercilessly portrayed." It is a singular commentary on the injustice of the denouncers of "Daisy Miller" that the young lady of Boston whom gossip made the original of the story was "cut" by society.

His friends and enemies were still further divided by "The American" and "The Portrait of a Lady," and we suspect that the author was poking a little fun at the hostile camp when he had the American woman journalist in the latter story say, "I was going to bring in your cousin--the alienated American. There is a great demand now for the alienated American, and your cousin is a beautiful specimen. I should have handled him severely."

Mr. James's friends say that he went to England, originally, for the benefit of his health. It cannot be gainsaid that he has a temperament which makes itself at home in all lands. He is, indeed, as much a citizen of Paris as of London, and his stories in French have been warmly praised by French critics. But it may be that, after all, he saw the wisdom of writing reminiscently, of writing at a distance from his subjects. Mr. Cable, for example, saw it when he moved North from New Orleans; and, furthermore, we know that many an author has been condemned unjustly for telling the truth. The great novelist is not the idealist, with his world of prize-baby angels and impossible saints; he is a photographer, and his mind and his hand are a camera that cannot lie. Mr. Warner once said that the object of the novel is to entertain; Mr. James has said that it is to represent life. James Lane Allen, we remember, joined the two statements thus: "The object of the novel is to entertain by representing life."

James's reach is transatlantic. Americans and Britons alike share prominence in his works. Then, too, of late, his characters have grown more and more ethereal and ghostly; they have such faint connection with the world of chalk-cliffs and prairies that the question of their citizenship is insignificant. Physically they appear to us only in episodes; intellectually they are universal types. But, really, the last word on Henry James's art was said long ago by _The Spectator_:

"Mr. Henry James is certainly a very remarkable illustration of the tendency of our age to subdivide, in the finest way, the already rather extreme division of labor, till a very high perfection is attained in producing articles of the most curiously specialized kind, though apparently without the power of producing anything outside that kind. For a long time we have had novelists who are wonderfully skillful in a particular form of novels, but who seem unable to master more than one form for themselves. But Mr. Henry James, though he has attained a very great perfection in his own line, seems not to aim at anything quite so considerable as a story of human life of any sort. He eschews a story. What he loves is an episode, i. e., something which by the nature of the case is rather a fragment cut out of life, and _not_ a fair or average specimen of it, nor even such a part of it as would give you the best essence of the whole,--but rather an eddy in it, which takes you for an interval out of its main current, and only ends as you get back into the main current again, or at least at the point at which you might get back into the main current again, if some event (accidental, in relation to the art of the story) did not occur to cut off abruptly the thread of the narrative.... One might perhaps say that Mr. Henry James has discerned in relation to literature what has long been known in relation to art--that with artists of any genius, 'sketches' are apt to be more satisfying than finished pictures. But then the sketches we like so much in artists' studios are, though unfinished pictures, still pictures of what the painter has been most struck with, pictures in which he has given all that struck him most, and left only what did not strike him to be filled in by the fancy of the public. Now, Mr. Henry James does not give us sketches of the most striking features in what he sees of human life and passion, so much as finished pictures of the little nooks and bays into which human caprice occasionally drifts, when the main current of life's deeper interests has left us for a moment on one side, and rushed past us.... Mr. Henry James is not so much a novelist as an episodist, if such a term be allowable. But he is a wonderful episodist."

All in all, that is the keenest and fairest criticism of James's works ever written. It should be taken with every one of his stories, just as soda is taken with brandy. Such a criticism is not fugacious; it is complementary.

It brings to mind the amusing criticism of "The Sacred Fount," notably Carolyn Wells's "Verbarium Tremens," published in _The Critic_, with its bright termination--

The mad gush of "The Sacred Fount" is ringing in my ear,
Its dictional excitements are obsessing me, I fear.
For its subtle fascination makes me read it, then, alack,
I find I have the James-james, a very bad attack!

James is an exceedingly neat man, and this side of him at once strikes every visitor to his home. The only known exception to this characteristic neatness is his handwriting, which is said to be as vexatious as Horace Greeley's was. "I have a letter from him before me now," says one of his correspondents. "The signature I know to be 'Henry James.' You might take it for Henryk Sienkiewicz."

The same correspondent relates a story which throws a new light on his personality:

"You will be astonished, possibly, to know that his income from his writing is a scant three hundred pounds a year, though in spite of this there has never come a man in need to Henry James to whom he has not offered a part of what he calls his own.

"Not so long ago a novelist in England died. He left two little children, absolutely alone in the world. One of that man's friends put by a little sum for them, and, out of the kindness of his heart, wrote to other literary men soliciting their help. He sought a maker of books who lives in a castle ... whom he knew to have an income of over twenty thousand pounds from his literary work.

"'Won't you aid these little folk?' he asked. Not a cent was forthcoming.

"Henry James was written in the matter. By return mail came a check for fifty pounds, one-tenth of his whole year's income."

We have been informed that this estimate of Mr. James's income is rather small; but, even if his income be as large as that of the "maker of books who lives in a castle," the fact remains that Mr. James proved his generosity handsomely.

James has acquired his extraordinarily brilliant style at the expense of incessant and determined effort. The dazzling spontaneities are really the product of toilsome hours. He works mostly in the morning, writing slowly, and his stories are written again and again before they go off to his publisher's. With him writing is a profession, a task; he is not the child of moods. Occasionally he visits friends--old friends, like Marion Crawford--but the greater part of the year he spends quietly and almost reclusely in England.

FRANCIS RICHARD STOCKTON.]

FRANCIS RICHARD STOCKTON

At a dinner given in honour of Mr. Frank R. Stockton by the Authors' Club of New York, early in the year 1901, Mr. Richard Watson Gilder, the editor of _The Century_, said: "A young man once came to me and said he would like to contribute to the magazine every month. I asked him what he wanted to write. 'Oh,' he said, 'I'd like to send you each month a story like The Lady or the Tiger?'" Mr. Gilder said at the end of his speech: "When I think of the immense amount of pleasure Mr. Stockton brought into the life of Stevenson it seems to me that alone would be to him a benediction forever."

The editor of _The Century_ thus happily illustrated the attitude of the reading world toward Mr. Stockton: on one side is an eager desire to emulate him, and on the other an equally eager desire to go to him for pleasure or for comfort. There is a natural grace about his stories which has often deceived the inexpert into an attempt to rival him, while the sweet and simple comedy of the stories has for more than a quarter of a century been the delight of young and old. The young man who visited Mr. Gilder, and the brilliant novelist solacing himself with the acquaintance of Pomona, Ardis Claverden, Mrs. Null, and Chipperton, are types.

The object of this variety of admiration was born in Philadelphia on April 5, 1834. On his father's side he is a descendant of the Richard Stockton who signed the Declaration of Independence. His father was notable chiefly for his religious zeal. He married twice, and his second wife was the author's mother. She was a Virginian; and from her side of the family tree was derived the name Ardis, found in "Ardis Claverden." There is a Stocktonian touch in the familiar story that the Christian name of Francis Richard was imposed upon Mr. Stockton by one of his half-sisters, who borrowed half of it from Francis I. of France and half from Richard Coeur de Lion. Some readers will doubtless remember Louise Stockton, Francis's sister, who was given the name of Napoleon's second wife.

It is remarkable, by the way, that with a sister so ready in the choice of names the novelist should himself find denomination a troublesome phase of his art. "The hardest work I have," he once said, "is naming my characters. Many of them are completely made up, others are suggested by something, others are but slightly changed from real names. I seldom use a name that in itself is a description of the character. That was Dickens's way, you remember. Nevertheless, sometimes one of my names does describe the character. Take Tippengray of 'The Squirrel Inn.' Tippengray was a man whose hair was slightly tipped with gray. I always liked that name. Chipperton in 'A Jolly Fellowship' is very descriptive also."

Francis Richard first went to a private school in West Philadelphia. Later he attended the public school, and at the age of eighteen was graduated from the Central High School with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. It was noticed at school that his bent was literary. In fact, this was obvious to his parents when he was only ten, for at that age he began to scribble verses. In spite of this proclivity, however, the boy, after leaving the high school, took up wood-carving as a profession. Just one bond existed between himself and the world of letters, and that was his membership in a high school organization called the "Literary and Forensic Circle." Upon this slight basis has been erected an exceptionally brilliant career, for it was to the Circle that the Ting-a-Ling stories were first read. These stories were collected for his first book. The Circle also heard "Kate" as soon as it was written. This story and "The Story of Champaigne" were published by the _Southern Messenger_; and it is sufficient to say that they created a demand for more like them. Thereafter, until 1874, Stockton wrote many short stories, his star all the time rising a little higher above the horizon.

But in 1874 the star blazed forth wondrously with the appearance of the first part of "Rudder Grange." From that day the author's place among the famous American humorists has been secure. The primary effect of the remarkable success of the first part of "Rudder Grange" was to encourage the author to write a second part; its next effect was to persuade him to abandon wood-carving for literature.

There was an extraordinary infantile tangle connected with the popular story. In the original papers in _Scribner's_ there was no baby; in the first edition of the book there was one baby; in the second edition there were three babies; in the third edition there were two. The author finally let Pomona's baby disappear, for it would have embarrassed her trip abroad. The author tells a story about this baby.

"I had planned out the book of Pomona's travels," he says, "and was about ready to write it. I was in Philadelphia at the time, and had a business appointment with my dentist, an old friend. By the way, you should never change your dentist any more than you should your plumber. Both will want to take out the work of their predecessors, swearing that it was done very badly. Well, while in the chair I got to talking with this dentist friend about my new book. I told him I had serious thoughts of killing the baby. He was very much interested. We talked over the advisability of doing this, and, while he was not convinced, he in the main agreed with me.

"I had been finished with, and clasping his hand went into the waiting room on my way out. This waiting-room was filled with women. As I passed through the door I heard him call:

"'Then you have positively decided to kill that baby?'

"'Positively,' I replied.

"You should have seen the women stare. It was not until I got well out in the hallway that I realized what they must, of course, have thought."

Pomona, the heroine, existed in real life. She was a charity girl whom the Stocktons had taken into the family. She was incorrigibly careless, however, and back to the charitable institution she was sent. She was stage-struck, too, and for all we know--Mr. Stockton veils the matter, half mysteriously,--she may have escaped from her guardians and won bouquets for herself before the footlights. While we are on the subject of characters real and imaginary we may add that Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine enjoyed actual existence under more common names. It has always been a source of affected trouble to Stockton that some people will persist in calling the former Mrs. Leeks and the latter Mrs. Al-e-shi-ne, instead of Aleshine.

The author's success with these two characters recalls the criticism that he was ignorant of the way in which young folks make love. "It is much more to my liking," he says, "to write about middle-aged women than young women. The older ones have more character; you can make them do more amusing things."

But, to revert to the main line, "Rudder Grange" carved its writer's name in the Hall of Fame. It is undoubtedly his most popular work, for there is a call for it even at this late day. Some of his admirers call it his masterpiece. It is no backhanded compliment to say that he has never improved upon the profusion or the quaintness of its humor.

We have said that the success of "Rudder Grange" induced Stockton to abandon everything but literature. He worked first for the _Philadelphia Morning Post_; later he joined Edward Eggleston on _Hearth and Home_; by and by he cast his lot with _Scribner's Monthly_, and finally he settled down on the editorial staff of _St. Nicholas_. In this position he remained until, in 1880, he gave up editorial work altogether. Thereafter he devoted himself entirely to fiction.

Even more sensational than the luck of "Rudder Grange" was the luck of "The Lady or the Tiger?" The story had a phenomenal sale--for those days--in this country, and it has been translated into a few foreign languages. "Perhaps the most interesting thing about 'The Lady or the Tiger?'" says the humorist, "is its great popularity among the savage races. It has been told again and again by the story-tellers of Burmah. A missionary once told the story to a tribe of Karens up in the north of Burmah. When she came back a year later the tribe surrounded her and wanted to know if she had found out whether--

"I cannot answer the question, for I have no earthly idea myself. I really have never been able to decide whether the Lady or the Tiger came out of that door. Yet I must defend myself. People for years have upbraided me for leaving it a mystery; some used to write me that I had no right to impose upon the good nature of the public in that manner. However, when I started in to write the story, I really intended to finish it. But it would never let itself be finished. I could not decide. And to this day, I have, I assure you, no more idea than anyone else."

It used to be said that Mr. Stockton was a short-story writer and nothing more, as if that were not the most difficult branch of fiction; but he silenced these reckless critics with "The Late Mrs. Null," which, in the beginning, had the biggest circulation of all his books. Since then book has followed book, regularly but not hurriedly. The author of "Rudder Grange" does not follow the plan of Trollope; he does not work so many hours a day, mood or no mood. Sometimes up to luncheon time not a word has been put on paper.

He never writes; he dictates. In his early days he dictated to his wife, but in recent years he has employed a stenographer. At any appointed hour in the morning the young woman trips downstairs from the room at the top of the house to which she and her noisy typewriter have been banished, and if the author have his subject well in mind he delivers one thousand five hundred words before the morning is over. From this first draft the secretary makes the draft for the printer, which seldom is revised. The fact is, Stockton shapes his delightful stories in his mind as effectively as most other authors shape theirs on paper; and, therefore, when a story has been dictated, he is done with it. Mrs. Stockton, of whom we spoke as his first amanuensis, was Miss Marian E. Tuttle of Amelia County, Virginia, visits to whose home gave the novelist the impressions of negro life which he has described so felicitously. At present the Stocktons live near Charlestown, West Virginia. The estate, named Claymont, comprises one hundred and fifty acres of a wide-spreading piece of land once owned by Washington. The house is said to have been planned by the first President himself. At any rate, it was built by the immortal patriot's grandnephew, and it takes its name from the Washington homestead in England. Very appropriately the edition of Mr. Stockton's works has been given the title of Shenandoah.

Personally the fanciful story-teller is small, spare, and shy. His is an elusive personality. "A personality more winsome and delightful," says one of his friends, "it would be difficult to find. It is a small man that sits before you, a keen-eyed man, whose eyes you know miss nothing, a man whose mustache is iron-gray and whose hair is almost white. His photographs give no hint of the man; they do not even mirror his personal appearance. Nothing save a talk with him gives you that." Another friend has said: "The big dark eyes, full of patient, weary expression, are luminous; the mouth close and discouraged, expands into smiling curves, sweet and sympathetic; the whole soul is in the face, and from head to foot, Frank Stockton is the genial responsive man. It is like a brilliant burst of sunshine following a cloud, suddenly and unexpectedly, and therefore more delicious in surprise and beauty."

Everyone under this charmer's spell will, we are sure, say with Edmund Clarence Stedman:

I have stayed at the Rudder Grange
Just after the wedding chime,
Though that jolliest lodge--how strange!--
Is of age at this very time;
I have roamed in the Squirrel Inn
(With my vouchers from Germantown);
To the House of Martha I've been,
And more than once have gone down
In the queerest of all queer wrecks,
And have argued and taken my tea
With Mesdames Aleshine and Lecks,
All up to our necks in the sea;
I have solved, with my private elf,
That Lady-and-Tiger riddle
That routed the Sphinx herself
And parted the world in the middle;
And all this fellowship jolly,
With a wizard that led me around
Through wonder and sweetest folly,
From first to last I have found
His fancy more passing rare
Than that of mask or mummer
Since Puck and Oberon wove the snare
In a night's dream of midsummer;
So I'll roam with him and his throng,
Wherever the course meander,
Though he frolic a century long.
And outlive by a year the sage vizier
Of the Two-Horned Alexander.

JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS

In an article published by _The Bookman_ not very long ago Mr. James Lane Allen remarked that Uncle Remus was one of the two names in American fiction which have attained anything like universality of acceptance, the other name being, of course, Uncle Tom. And yet fame was thrust upon Mr. Joel Chandler Harris.

It happened in this wise. Mr. Harris went to work for the _Atlanta Constitution_ as an editorial writer in 1876, succeeding Mr. Samuel W. Small, who has since prefixed to his name the title of Reverend. Mr. Small had made a success with sketches dealing with a character called Uncle Si, and Capt. Evan P. Howell, the editor of the _Constitution_, desired to have the success maintained in some form. So he approached Mr. Harris with the suggestion that he should try his hand at negro sketches. The young writer was diffident. He pleaded inexperience, incapability; but Captain Howell wouldn't listen to the excuses. In a good-natured way he pursued his associate, requesting, begging, entreating, encouraging. If Mr. Harris would only put into black-and-white those plantation stories with which he was accustomed to entertain the staff! If he would only get his courage up! Finally, the young man yielded and put some of the memories of his boyhood in Putnam County, Georgia, into the mouth of a negro named Uncle Remus. Uncle Remus he has been ever since the publication of the first sketch--Uncle Remus, famous and beloved throughout the land.

Captain Howell is said to have gone to the editors' room the morning of the first appearance of Uncle Remus and shouted: "Well, Harris, you're a trump! If you just keep up that lick your fortune is made. Everybody is talking about Uncle Remus, so give us another story." It was given willingly.

Mr. Harris was born in 1848 in what used to be known as Middle Georgia. Like many another of our well-established authors, he received a good part of his education at the printer's case in a country newspaper office. It was at the case--just as in the story of Howells and of Mark Twain--that the Georgian acquired his love of journalism--a love which often very naturally develops into a love for higher and more durable literature. He joined the staff of the _Atlanta Constitution_ at the age of eighteen. For a time he served as dramatic critic, in addition to his other service; but he soon found that he had no taste for the theatre. It must be that it was his hard lot to fall among poor actors, for it was not long before he gave up the work and formed a determination to visit the theatre as seldom as possible. Thereafter, he was virtually permitted by the editor of the _Constitution_ to follow his own bent.

But the story is moving along a little too fast. It should be said that Mr. Harris was fortunate in his birthplace. Eatonton, the capital of Putnam County, was not a lively spot, in a mercantile sense, in the days before the war, but it could boast of an excellent school, Eatonton Academy.

Speaking of Eatonton, the _Baltimore American_, some thirteen or fourteen years ago, printed this strange biography of Mr. Harris under the title of "A Humorist's Sad Romance":

"Joel C. Harris, the famous humorist, of the _Atlanta_ (Ga.) _Constitution_, has had a strangely romantic career. His father was a missionary, and it was at the small town of Boog-hia, on the southern coast of Africa, that Joel was born. He was educated by his father, and is a profound Sanscrit scholar, besides being thoroughly versed in Hebraic and Buddhist literature. Just before the Civil War he emigrated to America, and taught school in a village near Lake Teeteelootchkee, Fla. There he fell in love with Sallie O. Curtis, daughter of a wealthy planter, and soon was engaged by Colonel Curtis as a private tutor. The parents made no objection to their daughter's choice of a husband, but the war came on before the marriage could take place, and so Colonel Curtis and Mr. Harris went away to the war. The Colonel lost all his property during the strife, and at the battle of Columbia, S. C., a grape shot tore his leg into shreds. When the war closed Miss Sallie died of yellow fever, and Mr. Harris became the support and comfort of the maimed sire of his dead sweetheart. The two yet live together in a vine-covered cottage near Atlanta. Mr. Harris is hardly forty years of age, but his snow-white hair tells the sorrow of his life. He is noted for his generosity, his amiability and his tenderness."

The fact is that from the time of his birth until General Sherman swept toward the sea after burning Atlanta, Mr. Harris lived in Eatonton. When he was six years old he could read, and it is said that a stray copy of "The Vicar of Wakefield," met in his juvenile days, did much to develop his taste for good literature. Joel attended Eatonton Academy for a few terms, and at the age of twelve went to work for Colonel Turner, the publisher of a weekly called _The Countryman_.

It was the boy's own enterprise and ambition which brought this about. It was Joel himself who heard that Colonel Turner was in need of a boy with "willing hands" to learn the printer's trade, and who went unbidden and unendorsed to apply for a job. The publisher and the youngster took a liking to each other on sight, and young Harris was put to work forthwith.

Those were unquestionably among the happiest days of the humorist's life. This is not saying, of course, that his cup of happiness is not brimming over to-day; but those were days of new contentment. The young printer's work was not burdensome; but the happiest fact of all is that his employer, Colonel Turner, had a rich library, in which his youngest workman was free to browse in leisure moments. The acorn of taste for good books which the boy had cultivated at home here developed into an oak; and the soil in which the acorn took root was fertile, and there was ample room for the spread of every growing limb and bough.

At first the lad delved among the Elizabethans. Sir Thomas Browne, too, became one of his favorite authors--nowadays Mr. Harris leans toward Thackeray, Stevenson, Scott, Kipling and James Whitcomb Riley--a good catholic taste. Few boys ever enjoyed a more advantageous course of reading. Gradually the juvenile printer drifted from his books into writing, just as a student one day quits the gallery and starts to paint some work of his own. Colonel Turner responded to the ambition of his protégé most generously. He praised the little works judiciously, and before long young Harris was prompted to doff his anonymity and stand up to be judged by himself. Thereafter he became a regular contributor to _The Countryman_--which was truly rustic in scope as well as in title--and the name of Harris began to be spoken throughout Georgia.

This pleasant existence was interrupted by the war, which to the editor and his assistant was indeed the fulfilment of an ancient threat. When Sherman left Atlanta to march to the sea, he shaped his course through Eatonton, and before him fled the loyal Southerners. Among the last to leave the town was the proprietor of _The Countryman_. Young Harris remained behind to look after the property. Little damage was done in Eatonton, but the budding author, finding the state of affairs chaotic, started, when the war was over, to make his fortune elsewhere. He found employment on various newspapers, first in Macon, then in New Orleans, then in Forsyth, and then in Savannah. In Savannah he secured an editorial position on the _Morning News_, of which W. T. Thompson, the author of "Major Jones's Courtship," and other once popular humorous writings, was then the general manager. In Savannah, the vagrant Eatontonian married Miss La Rose, and there he lived, with ever-increasing success, until 1876, when yellow fever swept through the town. Then he moved to Atlanta and went to work for the _Constitution_. And here we shall take up the original thread of this article.

In 1880, four years after the beginning of Mr. Harris's connection with the _Constitution_, the Uncle Remus sketches, which meantime had won much praise throughout the country, were numerous enough to make a book of, and "Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings" was published by the Appletons. The book solidified the author's fame. It had the good fortune to be reprinted in England. Even then, more than twenty years ago, it was reasonable to say that Uncle Remus was one of the foremost characters in American fiction. In 1883, "Nights with Uncle Remus," was published; the following year "Mingo and Other Sketches in Black and White"; in 1887, "Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches." Up to date, Harris's books number at least sixteen.

But we must not lose sight of the fact that all the time the successful story-teller kept up his editorial work on the paper to whose fame he was contributing so materially. Indeed, until his retirement from newspaper work, in 1900, his chief title was that of a "hard-working journalist." It was his habit until within recent years to give his mornings and afternoons to the _Constitution_ work, and his evenings to miscellaneous literary work. He was able to maintain this arduous program for so long a time because of his apparently inexhaustible good nature and his simple manner of life; and, moreover, attention to duties at hand soon became second nature in him. In recent years, however, he gave only his mornings to his editorial labors. "His habit," says an Atlanta correspondent, "was to come down to the office at nine o'clock in the morning, get his editorial assignments for the day, and then go home and do his work, sending his copy down early in the afternoon." Such was his spirit of independence that if the editor chanced to be late in coming down to the office he would not waste time in waiting for him, but would pick up his bundle of newspapers and start for home. Nevertheless, he would send in his copy without fail. On making his morning visit to the office Mr. Harris was never out of sorts. His good humor was perennial, and he never failed to impart it to his co-workers. Though it was his lot to write editorials on political topics, he never enjoyed the rancor of partisan politics, and he managed to put into his editorials enough of humor to make the work pleasant to himself as well as to others.

At the same time, the idol of the _Constitution_ staff, it is said, never took a hearty interest in politics; he simply bowed to the fact that as an editorial writer he could hardly eschew politics entirely. But he felt that he owed much to the _Constitution_ for the opportunity it had given him to make his reputation; and he allowed this circumstance to outweigh his personal inclinations until the time came when he found that he would either have to give up his editorial work or neglect his literary contracts. So, finally, on Sept. 6, 1900, he departed from the office of the _Constitution_ for good, taking with him the tearful love of all his associates. As a sort of legacy, he left two sons on the paper, Julian, the managing news editor, and Evelyn, the city editor.

And then, almost at the end of his fifty-second year, the dearest Georgian of them all entered upon an unembarrassed literary career, with every promise of doing more work and better work than ever. But even if this promise should rest unfulfilled--which seems almost out of question--we have with us Uncle Remus and Aunt Minervy Ann, Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox, creations unsurpassed in originality and in delightfulness.

Mr. Harris's work is done at his home in West End, one of the suburbs of Atlanta, and few visitors are permitted to interrupt him. Not that he is gruff; he is simply retiring. He prefers to be known by his books. They who know him intimately--and they are not many--say that he is remarkably kind and hospitable. We respect his desire for privacy. We will not even knock on the door and beg one glimpse of his private life. With the whole reading public we shall be content to note his boundless cheerfulness and rare enjoyableness as a story-teller.

S. WEIR MITCHELL

About sixty years ago Oliver Wendell Holmes, taking dinner one night in Philadelphia with his friend, Dr. John K. Mitchell, was so pleased with one of Dr. Mitchell's boys, by name Silas Weir, then a little more than ten years old, that he gave the boy a copy of his famous ballad on the frigate Constitution.