Chapter V: Preface: The Civil War—and After (2)

John Hay was born at Salem, Indiana, in 1838, graduated from Brown
University in 1858 and was admitted to the Illinois bar a few years
later. At nineteen, when he went back to Warsaw, the little
Mississippi town where he had lived as a boy, he dreamed only of
being a poet—a poet, it must be added, of the pleasantly
conventional, transition type. But the Civil War was to disturb his
mild fantasies. He became private secretary to Lincoln, then major
and assistant adjutant-general under General Gilmore, then secretary
of the Legation at Paris, _chargé d’affaires_ at Vienna and
secretary of legation at Madrid.

His few vivid _Pike County Ballads_ came more as a happy accident
than as a deliberate creative effort. When Hay returned from Spain
in 1870, bringing with him his _Castilian Days_, he still had
visions of becoming an orthodox lyric poet. But he found everyone
reading Bret Harte’s short stories and the new expression of the
rude West. (See Preface.) He speculated upon the possibility of
doing something similar, translating the characters into poetry. The
result was the six racy ballads in a vein utterly different from
everything Hay wrote before or after. The poet-politician seems to
have regarded this series somewhat in the nature of light, extempore
verse, belonging to a far lower plane than his serious publications;
he talked about them reluctantly, he even hoped that they would be
forgotten. It is difficult to say whether this regret grew because
Hay, loving the refinements of culture, at heart hated any
suggestion of vulgarity, or because of a basic lack of courage—Hay
having published his novel of labor unrest in the early 80’s (_The
Breadwinners_) anonymously.

The fact remains, his rhymes of Pike County have survived all his
more classical lines. They served for a time as a fresh influence,
they remain a creative accomplishment.

Hay was in politics all the later part of his life, ranking as one
of the most brilliant Secretaries of State the country has ever had.
He died in 1905.

JIM BLUDSO,
OF THE PRAIRIE BELLE

Wall, no! I can’t tell whar he lives,
Becase he don’t live, you see;
Leastways, he’s got out of the habit
Of livin’ like you and me.
Whar have you been for the last three year
That you haven’t heard folks tell
How Jimmy Bludso passed in his checks
The night of the Prairie Belle?

He war’n’t no saint,—them engineers
Is all pretty much alike,—
One wife in Natchez-under-the-Hill
And another one here, in Pike;
A keerless man in his talk was Jim,
And an awkward hand in a row,
But he never flunked, and he never lied,—
I reckon he never knowed how.

And this was all the religion he had:
To treat his engine well;
Never be passed on the river;
To mind the pilot’s bell;
And if ever the Prairie Belle took fire,
A thousand times he swore,
He’d hold her nozzle agin the bank
Till the last soul got ashore.

All boats has their day on the Mississip,
And her day come at last,—
The Movastar was a better boat,
But the Belle she _wouldn’t_ be passed.
And so she came tearin’ along that night—
The oldest craft on the line—
With a nigger squat on her safety-valve,
And her furnace crammed, rosin and pine.

The fire bust out as she clar’d the bar,
And burnt a hole in the night,
And quick as a flash she turned and made
For that wilier-bank on the right.
Thar was runnin’ and cussin’, but Jim yelled out,
Over all the infernal roar,
“I’ll hold her nozzle agin the bank
Till the last galoot’s ashore.”

Through the hot, black breath of the burnin’ boat
Jim Bludso’s voice was heard,
And they all had trust in his cussedness,
And knowed he would keep his word.
And, sure’s you’re born, they all got off
Afore the smokestacks fell,—
And Bludso’s ghost went up alone
In the smoke of the Prairie Belle.

He warn’t no saint,—but at jedgement
I’d run my chance with Jim,
’Longside of some pious gentlemen
That wouldn’t shook hands with him.
He seen his duty, a dead-sure thing,—
And went for it thar and then;
And Christ ain’t a goin’ to be too hard
On a man that died for men.

BANTY TIM

(_Remarks of Sergeant Tilmon Joy to the White Man’s Committee of Spunky
Point, Illinois_)

I reckon I git your drift, gents,—
You ’low the boy sha’n’t stay;
This is a white man’s country;
You’re Dimocrats, you say;
And whereas, and seein’, and wherefore,
The times bein’ all out o’ j’int,
The nigger has got to mosey
From the limits o’ Spunky P’int!

Le’s reason the thing a minute:
I’m an old-fashioned Dimocrat too,
Though I laid my politics out o’ the way
For to keep till the war was through.
But I come back here, allowin’
To vote as I used to do,
Though it gravels me like the devil to train
Along o’ sich fools as you.

Now dog my cats ef I kin see,
In all the light of the day,
What you’ve got to do with the question
Ef Tim shill go or stay.
And furder than that I give notice,
Ef one of you tetches the boy,
He kin check his trunks to a warmer clime
Than he’ll find in Illanoy.

Why, blame your hearts, jest hear me!
You know that ungodly day
When our left struck Vicksburg Heights, how ripped
And torn and tattered we lay.
When the rest retreated I stayed behind,
Fur reasons sufficient to me,—
With a rib caved in, and a leg on a strike,
I sprawled on that damned glacee.

Lord! how the hot sun went for us,
And br’iled and blistered and burned!
How the Rebel bullets whizzed round us
When a cuss in his death-grip turned!
Till along toward dusk I seen a thing
I couldn’t believe for a spell:
That nigger—that Tim—was a crawlin’ to me
Through that fire-proof, gilt-edged hell!
The Rebels seen him as quick as me,
And the bullets buzzed like bees;
But he jumped for me, and shouldered me,
Though a shot brought him once to his knees;
But he staggered up, and packed me off,
With a dozen stumbles and falls,
Till safe in our lines he drapped us both,
His black hide riddled with balls.

So, my gentle gazelles, thar’s my answer,
And here stays Banty Tim:
He trumped Death’s ace for me that day,
And I’m not goin’ back on him!
You may rezoloot till the cows come home,
But ef one of you tetches the boy,
He’ll wrastle his hash to-night in hell,
Or my name’s not Tilmon Joy!

_Bret Harte_

(Francis) Bret Harte was born August 25, 1839, at Albany, New York.
His childhood was spent in various cities of the East. Late in 1853
his widowed mother went to California with a party of relatives, and
two months later, when he was fifteen, Bret Harte and his sister
followed. He dreamed even at this age of being a poet. During the
next few years he was engaged in school-teaching, typesetting,
politics, mining and journalism, becoming editor of _The Overland
Monthly_ at San Francisco in 1868.

Harte’s fame came suddenly. Late in the sixties he had written a
burlesque in rhyme of two Western gamblers trying to fleece a
guileless Chinaman who claimed to know nothing about cards but who,
it turned out, was scarcely as innocent as he appeared. Harte, in
the midst of writing serious poetry, had put the verses aside as too
crude and trifling for publication. Some time later, just as _The
Overland Monthly_ was going to press, it was discovered that the
form was one page short. Having nothing else on hand, Harte had
these rhymes set up. Instead of passing unnoticed, the poem was
quoted everywhere; it swept the West and captivated the East. When
_The Luck of Roaring Camp_ followed, Harte became not only a
national but an international figure. England acclaimed him and _The
Atlantic Monthly_ paid him $10,000 to write for a year in his Pike
County vein.

_East and West Poems_ appeared in 1871; in 1872 he published an
enlarged _Poetical Works_ including many earlier pieces. His scores
of short stories represent Harte at his best; “M’liss,” “Tennessee’s
Partner,” “The Outcast of Poker Flat”—these are the work of a
lesser, transplanted Dickens. His novels are of minor importance;
they are carelessly constructed, theatrically conceived; his
characters are little more than badly-wired marionettes that betray
every movement made by their manipulator.

In 1872 Harte, encouraged by his success, returned to his native
East; in 1878 he went to Germany as consul. Two years later he was
transferred to Scotland and, after five years there, went to London,
where he remained the rest of his life. Harte’s later period remains
mysteriously shrouded. He never came back to America, not even for a
visit; he ceased to correspond with his family; he separated himself
from all the most intimate associations of his early life. He died,
suddenly, at Camberley, England, May 6, 1902.

“JIM”

Say there! P’r’aps
Some on you chaps
Might know Jim Wild?
Well,—no offense:
Thar ain’t no sense
In gittin’ riled!
Jim was my chum
Up on the Bar:
That’s why I come
Down from up yar,
Lookin’ for Jim.
Thank ye, sir! _You_
Ain’t of that crew,—
Blest if you are!
Money? Not much:
That ain’t my kind;
I ain’t no such.
Rum? I don’t mind,
Seein’ it’s you.
Well, this yer Jim,—
Did you know him?
Jes’ ’bout your size;
Same kind of eyes;—
Well, that is strange:
Why, it’s two year
Since he came here,
Sick, for a change.
Well, here’s to us:
Eh?
The h—— you say!
Dead?
That little cuss?
What makes you star’,
You over thar?
Can’t a man drop
’s glass in yer shop
But you must r’ar?
It wouldn’t take
D——d much to break
You and your bar.

Dead!
Poor—little—Jim!
Why, thar was me,
Jones, and Bob Lee,
Harry and Ben,—
No-account men:
Then to take _him_!

Well, thar—Good-by.
No more, sir—I—
Eh?
What’s that you say?
Why, dern it!—sho!—
No? Yes! By Joe!
Sold!
Sold! Why, you limb,
You ornery,
Derned, old,
Long-legged Jim.

PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES

(_Table Mountain, 1870_)

Which I wish to remark,
And my language is plain,
That for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar,
Which the same I would rise to explain.

Ah Sin was his name;
And I shall not deny,
In regard to the same,
What that name might imply;
But his smile it was pensive and childlike,
As I frequent remarked to Bill Nye.

It was August the third,
And quite soft was the skies;
Which it might be inferred
That Ah Sin was likewise;
Yet he played it that day upon William
And me in a way I despise.

Which we had a small game,
And Ah Sin took a hand:
It was Euchre. The same
He did not understand;
But he smiled as he sat by the table,
With a smile that was childlike and bland.
Yet the cards they were stocked
In a way that I grieve,
And my feelings were shocked
At the state of Nye’s sleeve,
Which was stuffed full of aces and bowers,
And the same with intent to deceive.

But the hands that were played
By that heathen Chinee,
And the points that he made,
Were quite frightful to see,—
Till at last he put down a right bower,
Which the same Nye had dealt unto me!

Then I looked up at Nye,
And he gazed upon me;
And he rose with a sigh,
And said, “Can this be?
We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor,”—
And he went for that heathen Chinee.

In the scene that ensued
I did not take a hand,
But the floor it was strewed
Like the leaves on the strand
With the cards that Ah Sin had been hiding,
In the game “he did not understand.”

In his sleeves, which were long,
He had twenty-four packs,—
Which was coming it strong,
Yet I state but the facts;
And we found on his nails, which were taper,
What is frequent in tapers,—that’s wax.

Which is why I remark,
And my language is plain,
That for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar,—
Which the same I am free to maintain.

_Joaquin Miller_

Cincinnatus (Heine) Miller, or, to give him the name he adopted,
Joaquin Miller, was born in 1841 of immigrant parents. As he himself
writes, “My cradle was a covered wagon, pointed west. I was born in
a covered wagon, I am told, at or about the time it crossed the line
dividing Indiana from Ohio.” When Miller was twelve, his family left
the mid-West with “two big heavily laden wagons, with eight yoke of
oxen to each, a carriage and two horses for mother and baby sister,
and a single horse for the three boys to ride.” The distance covered
in their cross-country exodus (they took a roundabout route to
Oregon) was nearly three thousand miles. The time consumed, he
records, “was seven months and five days. There were no bridges, no
railroad levels, nothing of the sort.... Many times, at night, after
ascending a stream to find a ford, we could look back and see our
smouldering camp-fires of the day before.” This journey made a
lasting impression on the boy’s impressionable mind; it was this
tortuous wandering that gave Miller his reverence for the
spaciousness and glory of the West in general and the pioneer in
particular. After two years in the Oregon home, he ran away to find
gold.

At fifteen we find Miller living with the Indians as one of them; in
1859 (at the age of eighteen) he attends a missionschool “college”
in Eugene, Oregon; between 1860 and 1865 he is express-messenger,
editor of a pacifist newspaper that is suppressed for opposing the
Civil War, lawyer and, occasionally, a poet. He holds a minor
judgeship from 1866 to 1870.

His first book (_Specimens_) appears in 1868, his second (_Joaquin
et al._, from which he took his name) in 1869. No response—not even
from “the bards of San Francisco Bay” to whom he had dedicated the
latter volume. He is chagrined, discouraged, angry. He resolves to
quit America, to go to the land that has always been the
nursing-ground of poets. “Three months later, September 1, 1870, I
was kneeling at the grave of Burns. I really expected to die there
in the land of my fathers.” He arrives in London, unheralded,
unknown. He takes his manuscripts to one publisher after another
with the same negative result. Finally, with a pioneer desperation,
he prints privately one hundred copies of his _Pacific Poems_,
sending them out for review. Sensation! The reversal of Miller’s
fortunes is one of the most startling in all literature. He becomes
famous overnight. He is fêted, lauded, lionized; he is ranked as an
equal of Browning, given a dinner by the Pre-Raphaelites, acclaimed
as “the great interpreter of America,” “the Bryon of Oregon”!

His dramatic success in England is easily explained. He brought to
the calm air of literary London, a breath of the great winds of the
plain. The more he exaggerated his crashing effects, the louder he
roared, the better the English public liked it. When he entered
Victorian parlors in his velvet jacket, hip-boots and flowing hair,
childhood visions of the “wild and woolly Westerner” were realized
and the very bombast of his work was glorified as “typically
American.”

And yet, for all his overstressed muscularity, Miller is strangely
lacking in creative energy. His exuberance and whipped up rhetoric
cannot disguise the essential weakness of his verse. It is, in spite
of a certain breeziness and a few magnificent descriptions of cañons
and mountain-chains, feeble as well as false, full of cheap heroics,
atrocious taste and impossible men and women. (See Preface.) One or
two individual poems, like “Crossing the Plains” and parts of his
apostrophes to the Sierras, the Pacific Ocean and the Missouri river
may live; the rest seem doomed to a gradual extinction.

From 1872 to 1886, Miller traveled about the Continent. In 1887 he
returned to California, dwelling on the Heights, helping to found an
experimental Greek academy for aspiring writers. He died there,
after a determinedly picturesque life, in sight of the Golden Gate,
in 1913.

BY THE PACIFIC OCEAN[2]

Here room and kingly silence keep
Companionship in state austere;
The dignity of death is here,
The large, lone vastness of the deep.
Here toil has pitched his camp to rest:
The west is banked against the west.

Above yon gleaming skies of gold
One lone imperial peak is seen;
While gathered at his feet in green
Ten thousand foresters are told.
And all so still! so still the air
That duty drops the web of care.
Beneath the sunset’s golden sheaves
The awful deep walks with the deep,
Where silent sea-doves slip and sweep,
And commerce keeps her loom and weaves.
The dead red men refuse to rest;
Their ghosts illume my lurid West.

CROSSING THE PLAINS[3]

What great yoked brutes with briskets low,
With wrinkled necks like buffalo,
With round, brown, liquid, pleading eyes,
That turn’d so slow and sad to you,
That shone like love’s eyes soft with tears,
That seem’d to plead, and make replies,
The while they bow’d their necks and drew
The creaking load; and looked at you.
Their sable briskets swept the ground,
Their cloven feet kept solemn sound.

Two sullen bullocks led the line,
Their great eyes shining bright like wine;
Two sullen captive kings were they,
That had in time held herds at bay,
And even now they crush’d the sod
With stolid sense of majesty,
And stately stepp’d and stately trod,
As if ’twere something still to be
Kings even in captivity.

FROM “_BYRON_”

In men whom men condemn as ill
I find so much of goodness still,
In men whom men pronounce divine
I find so much of sin and blot,
I do not dare to draw a line
Between the two, where God has not.

_Edward Rowland Sill_

Edward Rowland Sill was born at Windsor, Connecticut, in 1841. In
1861 he was graduated from Yale and shortly thereafter his poor
health compelled him West. After various unsuccessful experiments,
he drifted into teaching, first in the high schools in Ohio, later
in the English department of the University of California. His
uncertain physical condition added to his mental uncertainty. Unable
to ally himself either with the lethargic, conservative forces whom
he hated or with the radicals whom he distrusted, Sill became an
uncomfortable solitary; half rebellious, half resigned. During the
last decade of his life, his brooding seriousness was less
pronounced, a lighter irony took the place of his dark reflections.

_The Hermitage_, his first volume, was published in 1867, a later
edition (including later poems) appearing in 1889. His two
posthumous books are _Poems_ (1887) and _Hermione and Other Poems_
(1899).

Sill died, after bringing something of the Eastern culture to the
West, in 1887.

SOLITUDE

All alone—alone,
Calm, as on a kingly throne,
Take thy place in the crowded land,
Self-centred in free self-command.
Let thy manhood leave behind
The narrow ways of the lesser mind:
What to thee are its little cares,
The feeble love or the spite it bears?

Let the noisy crowd go by:
In thy lonely watch on high,
Far from the chattering tongues of men,
Sitting above their call or ken,
Free from links of manner and form
Thou shalt learn of the wingéd storm—
God shall speak to thee out of the sky.

DARE YOU?

Doubting Thomas and loving John,
Behind the others walking on:—

“Tell me now, John, dare you be
One of the minority?
To be lonely in your thought,
Never visited nor sought,
Shunned with secret shrug, to go
Thro’ the world, esteemed its foe;
To be singled out and hissed,
Pointed at as one unblessed,
Warned against in whispers faint,
Lest the children catch a taint;
To bear off your titles well,—
Heretic and infidel?
If you dare, come now with me,
Fearless, confident, and free.”

“Thomas, do you dare to be
Of the great majority?
To be only, as the rest,
With Heaven’s creature comforts blessed;
To accept, in humble part,
Truth that shines on every heart;
Never to be set on high,
Where the envious curses fly;
Never name or fame to find,
Still outstripped in soul and mind;
To be hid, unless to God,
As one grass-blade in the sod,
Underfoot with millions trod?
If you dare, come with us, be
Lost in love’s great unity.”

_Sidney Lanier_

Sidney Lanier was born at Macon, Georgia, February 3, 1842. His was
a family of musicians (Lanier himself was a skilful performer on
various instruments), and it is not surprising that his verse
emphasizes—even overstresses—the influence of music on poetry. He
attended Oglethorpe College, graduating at the age of eighteen
(1860), and, a year later, volunteered as a private in the
Confederate army. After several months’ imprisonment (he had been
captured while acting as signal officer on a blockade-runner),
Lanier was released in February, 1865, returning from Point Lookout
to Georgia on foot, accompanied only by his flute, from which he
refused to be separated. His physical health, never the most robust,
had been frightfully impaired by his incarceration, and he was
already suffering from tuberculosis, the rest of his life being
spent in an unequal struggle against it.

He was now only twenty-three years old and the problem of choosing a
vocation was complicated by his marriage in 1867. He spent five
years in the study and practice of law, during which time he wrote
comparatively little verse. But the law could not hold him; he felt
premonitions of death and realized he must devote his talents to art
before it was too late. He was fortunate enough to obtain a position
as flautist with the Peabody Symphony Orchestra in 1873 in
Baltimore, where he had free access to the music and literature he
craved. Here he wrote all of his best poetry. In 1879, he was made
lecturer on English in Johns Hopkins University, and it was for his
courses there that he wrote his chief prose work, a brilliant if not
conclusive study, _The Science of English Verse_. Besides his
poetry, he wrote several books for boys, the two most popular being
_The Boy’s Froissart_ (1878) and _The Boy’s King Arthur_ (1880).

Lanier’s poetry, charming though most of it is, suffers from his all
too frequent theorizing, his too conscious effort to bring verse
over into the province of pure music. He thought almost entirely,
even in his most intellectual conceptions, in terms of musical form.
His main theory that English verse has for its essential basis not
_accent_ but a strict musical _quantity_ is a wholly erroneous
conclusion, possible only to one who could write “whatever turn I
have for art is purely musical—poetry being with me a mere tangent
into which I shoot.” Lanier is at his best in his ballads, although
a few of his lyrics have a similar spontaneity. In spite of the fact
that he had rather novel schemes of rhythm and stanza-structure,
much of his work is marred by strained effects, elaborate conceits
and a kind of verse that approaches mere pattern-making. But such a
vigorous ballad as “The Song of the Chattahoochee,” lyrics like
“Night and Day” and “The Stirrup Cup,” and parts of the symphonic
“Hymns of the Marshes” are sure of a place in American literature.
Never a great figure, he was one of the most interesting and
spiritual of our minor poets.

Lanier died, a victim of his disease, in the mountains of North
Carolina, September 7, 1881.

SONG OF THE CHATTAHOOCHEE[4]

Out of the hills of Habersham,
Down the valleys of Hall,
I hurry amain to reach the plain,
Run the rapid and leap the fall,
Split at the rock and together again,
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,
And flee from folly on every side
With a lover’s pain to attain the plain
Far from the hills of Habersham,
Far from the valleys of Hall.

All down the hills of Habersham,
All through the valleys of Hall,
The rushes cried _Abide, abide_,
The willful waterweeds held me thrall,
The laving laurel turned my tide,
The ferns and the fondling grass said _Stay_,
The dewberry dipped for to work delay,
And the little reeds sighed _Abide, abide,
Here in the hills of Habersham,
Here in the valleys of Hall_.

High o’er the hills of Habersham,
Veiling the valleys of Hall,
The hickory told me manifold
Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall
Wrought me her shadowy self to hold,
The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine,
Overleaning, with flickering meaning and sign,
Said, _Pass not, so cold, these manifold
Deep shades of the hills of Habersham,
These glades in the valleys of Hall_.

And oft in the hills of Habersham,
And oft in the valleys of Hall,
The white quartz shone, and the smooth brook-stone
Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl,
And many a luminous jewel lone
—Crystals clear or acloud with mist,
Ruby, garnet and amethyst—
Made lures with the lights of streaming stone
In the clefts of the hills of Habersham,
In the beds of the valleys of Hall.

But oh, not the hills of Habersham,
And oh, not the valleys of Hall
Avail: I am fain for to water the plain.
Downward the voices of Duty call—
Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main,
The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn,
And a myriad flowers mortally yearn,
And the lordly main from beyond the plain
Calls o’er the hills of Habersham,
Calls through the valleys of Hall.

NIGHT AND DAY[5]

The innocent, sweet Day is dead.
Dark Night hath slain her in her bed.
O, Moors are as fierce to kill as to wed!
—Put out the light, said he.

A sweeter light than ever rayed
From star of heaven or eye of maid
Has vanished in the unknown Shade
—She’s dead, she’s dead, said he.

Now, in a wild, sad after-mood
The tawny Night sits still to brood
Upon the dawn-time when he wooed
—I would she lived, said he.

Star-memories of happier times,
Of loving deeds and lovers’ rhymes,
Throng forth in silvery pantomimes.
—Come back, O Day! said he.

FROM “THE MARSHES OF GLYNN”[6]

As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod, Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God: I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies In the freedom that fills all the space ’twixt the marsh and the skies: By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God: Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.

And the sea lends large, as the marsh: lo, out of his plenty the sea Pours fast: full soon the time of the flood-tide must be: Look how the grace of the sea doth go About and about through the intricate channels that flow Here and there, Everywhere, Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying lanes, And the marsh is meshed with a million veins, That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow In the rose-and-silver evening glow. Farewell, my lord Sun! The creeks overflow; a thousand rivulets run ’Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh-grass stir; Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr; Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run; And the sea and the marsh are one.

How still the plains of the waters be! The tide in his ecstasy. The tide is at his highest height: And it is night.

And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep Roll in on the souls of men, But who will reveal to our waking ken The forms that swim and the shapes that creep Under the waters of sleep? And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide comes in On the length and breadth of the marvellous marshes of Glynn.

_Charles Edward Carryl_

Charles Edward Carryl, father of Guy Wetmore Carryl (see page 142),
was born in New York City, December 30, 1842. He was an officer and
director in various railroads but found leisure to write two of the
few worthy rivals of the immortal _Alice in Wonderland_. These two,
_Davy and the Goblin_ (1884), which has gone through twenty
printings, and _The Admiral’s Caravan_ (1891), contain many lively
and diverting ballads as well as inspired nonsense verses in the
manner of his model who, in spite of the slight difference in
spelling, was also a Carroll.