within a few years of his death was to be a mixture of hardships and
happiness. The hardships concerned money, except those physical hardships
he endured out of doors in what were undoubtedly the happiest hours of
his life. Out of doors journalism took him into almost every State of the
Union and almost every Province of Canada; to Alaska, also. Sometimes he
used to wonder if he had ever slept thirty consecutive nights under one
roof. Desperately worried at times, he would say with a sigh of relief:
“It is impossible to fret over things when you are wading a trout stream,
following a good dog, or riding a good horse.” Within five years of his
death intimate friends saw him, suffering from ill health, in tears over
uncertainties regarding his work and discouraging certainties regarding
his income; yet he lived through the swift, dramatic turn of his fortunes
to taste the satisfaction of his very great ambition and to reap a
substantial part of the money reward.
[Illustration: EMERSON HOUGH
_Photograph by Moffett, Chicago._]
In 1895 he explored the Yellowstone Park in winter, going on skis, and an
Act of Congress protecting the Park buffalo was due to this adventure. By
speech and by his writings he did much all his life to aid the protection
and study of wild life and to support the system of national parks. The
America he had known in the flush of his youth was really a passion with
him. One day after he had finished a series of short stories on the old
trails for his out of doors department in the Saturday Evening Post the
editor, George Horace Lorimer, suggested that he take either the Overland
or the Oregon trail as the subject of a novel. The suggestion was in
itself the most magnificent of trails to such a mind as Hough’s. He
wrote, then, _The Covered Wagon_.
His first book, _The Singing Mouse Stories_, which had to do with out of
doors, appeared when he was 38; he was forty when, in 1897, he married
Charlotte A. Cheesbro, of Chicago, and published _The Story of the
Cowboy_, praised by Theodore Roosevelt. His first novel came three years
later, and with his second, _The Mississippi Bubble_ (1902), he attracted
nation-wide attention. It is amusing to recall that he made five copies
of _The Mississippi Bubble_ and despatched them simultaneously to five
publishers, each of whom sent an acceptance.
When he died, Mr. Hough left several completed books. Three of them were
novels and the first of these, _Mother of Gold_, has just been published.
A story of the present day, woven around the old legend of the lost mine
of Montezuma, it has to a curious degree the pioneer zest and spirit of
Hough’s romances of earlier times.
Of his earlier novels, _The Mississippi Bubble_ and _Fifty-four Forty or
Fight_ are the ones that seem likely to be read longest; of his later
novels probably _The Magnificent Adventure_ (1915), dealing with the
Lewis and Clark expedition and with Aaron Burr’s daughter as its heroine,
_The Covered Wagon_, and _North of 36_, the story of the Texas cattle
trail, have the best chance of permanence—always premising that work as
yet unpublished may take its place with these.
II. JOSEPH A. ALTSHELER
To Anne Carroll Moore, supervisor of work with children in the New York
Public Library, I am indebted for the best picture of what Joseph A.
Altsheler’s work signifies. Both at the time of his death and since, he
was and has been and is the most popular author of books for boys in
America. He is more popular than James Fenimore Cooper, to whose work his
own is probably most closely allied. He wrote over again, as Miss Moore
has pointed out, the tales of our pioneer life and struggle “with a fresh
sense of their reality.” His “deep love of nature, the ability to select
from historical sources subjects of strong human interest, a natural
gift for storytelling, and great modesty” were other qualities which the
youthful reader senses and appreciates. “Boys who clamor for Altsheler,”
says Miss Moore, “read history and biography as a natural and necessary
accompaniment. Nor do they neglect _Tom Sawyer_ and _Huckleberry Finn_,
or _The Boys’ Life of Mark Twain_. Never in the history of writing for
boys has an author attained universal popularity on so broad a foundation
of allied interests in reading.”[77]
Cooper wrote when American history was brief; another century and the
breadth of a continent unrolled itself before Altsheler, who set about
in quiet patience to make all that spaciousness and all those crowding
events intelligible for the American boy. And because in modesty and
patience he had gone far to achieve just that—taking the average boy
into the wilderness, as Miss Moore says, “so that he may realize his
heritage in the history of his country and take his place there more
intelligently”—his death is a sharp loss. Miss Moore has told how, on 7
June 1919, boys came all day long to the New York Public Library, some
with clippings from the newspapers telling of their favorite’s death.
There they could look upon a full set of all his works, and his picture.
Said a 17-year-old:
“He looks young in that picture but he could have lived all through
American history—he makes it so true. You couldn’t do better than to
read his books. You can even answer some of the Regents’ questions out
of Altsheler’s books. I read every one of them and I got an A-1 mark for
history.”
Eyes roved along the shelves over the volumes of the Young Trailers’
Series, the Texan Series, the French and Indian War Series, the Civil War
Series, and the rest. They picked out individual titles—always simple
and always touched with the imagination of a man who knew supremely how
to kindle the youthful mind. Altsheler, indeed, surpassed himself in the
titles of the eight books of his Civil War Series, a beautiful crescendo:
_The Guns of Bull Run_
_The Guns of Shiloh_
_The Scouts of Stonewall_
_The Sword of Antietam_
_The Star of Gettysburg_
and then the point of rest, on a great chord, followed by a resolution
and a final cadence:
_The Rock of Chickamauga_
_The Shades of the Wilderness_
_The Tree of Appomattox_
—guns, scouts, sword, star, rock! The words sing. Then the shades of
anguish, weariness, impending defeat, and at last the peace of the
spreading tree....
Joseph Alexander Altsheler was born at Three Springs, Kentucky, 29 April
1862. As a boy he would lie on his back in the woods of the Daniel Boone
country and dream of the pioneers until they came to have as strong a
fascination for him as the myths of Greece have had for other minds.
There were not many books, but he heard over and over again the stories
of woodsmen and fighters, for he was descended on his mother’s side from
Virginia and Kentucky borderers. And as a boy he knew personally Civil
War veterans, both blue and gray, such as General Simon Bolivar Buckner,
General Don Carlos Buell, and General Frank Wolford. The one writer who
captivated him completely and to whom he afterward said he owed the most
was Francis Parkman.
He was educated at Liberty College, Glasgow, Kentucky, and at Vanderbilt
University, Nashville, Tennessee. Then he went to work on the Louisville
Evening Post. A year later he moved over to Henry Watterson’s
Courier-Journal, for which he became the political reporter and
legislative correspondent at Frankfort, the State capital.
After service as city editor of the Courier-Journal and as an editorial
writer, he joined the staff of the World, New York. He covered the
World’s Fair in Chicago and the events attending the dethronement of
Liliuokalani in Hawaii, and then became editor and manager of the
tri-weekly edition of the World, a job he continued to hold until his
death. His first book of consequence was _The Sun of Saratoga_ (1897),
which still sells. The first of his boys’ books, so-called, was _The
Young Trailers_ (1906), written when his own son was eleven or twelve
years old. But he made it a practice never to allow thought of the age of
his readers to affect his treatment of a subject; and while this accounts
for the number of older readers who enjoy his books, it probably also
goes far to account for the success of his books with boys. He never
wrote down to them.
His accuracy and his sense of reality are beyond praise. But the finest
tribute to him is the fact that, as Miss Moore testifies, he is the only
author whom older boys absolutely insist on having, for whose books they
wait in line in the library, refusing to be put off with other titles.
III. THOMAS DIXON
Although Thomas Dixon’s new novel, _The Black Hood_ (1924), is a story
of the Ku Klux Klan of 1870, and so a companion volume to _The Clansman_
(1905), it is customary to speak of _The Leopard’s Spots_ (1902), _The
Clansman_, and _The Traitor_ (1907) as a trilogy of the Reconstruction
period at the South. Of those who admired this series perhaps the best
known and certainly the most unqualifiedly enthusiastic was Max Nordau,
who hailed the novels as undoing the work of Harriet Beecher Stowe and
giving the deferred answer to _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_. Similarly, _The One
Woman_ (1903), _Comrades_ (1909), and _The Root of Evil_ (1911) are
grouped together as a trilogy of Socialism, pleading for the development
of individual character and opposing the Socialistic remedies for the
ills of society.
Thomas Dixon was born at Shelby, North Carolina, 11 January 1864, the
son of the Reverend Thomas Dixon and Amanda Elizabeth (McAfee) Dixon.
The father was a Baptist clergyman. At 19 the son was graduated from
Wake Forest College, North Carolina, with a scholarship admitting him as
a special student in history and politics at Johns Hopkins University.
A year later he became a student at the Greensboro (North Carolina)
Law School. About the same time he was elected to the North Carolina
legislature. He got his law degree, dabbled in politics, was admitted to
practice in the North Carolina and United States courts, including the
United States Supreme Court, had a part in two conspicuous murder trials
of the day, and then, before he was 23, and some months after marrying
Harriet Bussey, of Columbus, Georgia, resigned from the legislature to
enter the Baptist ministry.
He held a pastorate for a year in Raleigh, North Carolina, and for a year
in Boston before coming to the People’s Temple in New York. He preached
in New York for ten years, 1889-1899. At the same time he became a lyceum
lecturer and he continued to lecture until 1903. His outspokenness in
the pulpit was coupled with a certain disregard of clerical custom; for
example, he enjoyed going hunting. He began to publish books of sermons
at least as early as 1891. He was 35 when he quitted the pulpit and
turned to fiction.
Three of his novels are centered upon outstanding figures of the Civil
War. _The Southerner_ (1913) is constructed about Lincoln, _The Victim_
(1914), about Jefferson Davis; _The Man in Gray_ (1921), about Robert
E. Lee. _A Man of the People_ is a Lincoln play; _The Fall of a Nation_
depicts the conquest of the United States by the Imperial Nation. Such a
novel as _The Way of a Man_ is more or less related to the novels dealing
with Socialism; _The Sins of the Father_, a study of the results of
miscegenation, belongs with _The Clansman_ group.
It was in 1915, ten years after the sensational success of _The
Clansman_, that David Wark Griffith produced his film based on the novel
under the title, “The Birth of a Nation.”
The new novel of the Klan, _The Black Hood_, is concerned with the time
when the original Ku Klux Klan had accomplished the work for which it was
organized and was becoming more or less of a menace to the liberty of the
Southerners among whom it flourished. Mr. Dixon’s hero opposes the Klan’s
methods as being false to the spirit in which the Klan was founded. He
is successful in his stand after many exciting adventures. There is a
romantic interest interwoven in the story.
IV. STEPHEN CRANE
The author of _The Red Badge of Courage_ has lately been the subject
of a brilliant biography. Mr. Thomas Beer’s _Stephen Crane: A Study
in American Letters_ has the color and the abiding fascination of its
subject, if sometimes a trifle too cryptic and oracular. The point of
_The Red Badge of Courage_ is its record of war as the experience of the
individual, any war in any age. The book, a product of purely imaginative
experience by a youth of twenty-two to twenty-four, lights up its single
theme as completely as a Verrey flare exposes some small corner of a
battle. Reading either Crane’s work or Mr. Beer’s study, one can no more
doubt that Crane was a genius. He had the intense, piercing, personal
vision of the isolated, unexplained (and unexplainable) artist. Such a
figure is not to be produced by any sedulous process of education; it
is not a triumphant burbank of literary cultivation. Although people
remember, or, at least, generally have heard of, _The Red Badge of
Courage_, there is a sharp need for republication of most of Crane’s work
in a good edition; for _The Open Boat_ and _The Bride Comes to Yellow
Sky_ are of the utmost importance, the first on the evidence of Joseph
Conrad, the second on the evidence of Stephen Crane. If one were asked to
pick the American authors of most interesting significance to literature
at large, one would do well, I think, to let both Poe and Hawthorne wait
at one side while one weighed carefully Herman Melville, Walt Whitman,
and Stephen Crane.
* * * * *
Other authors whose use of American history in fiction has interested
huge audiences are Everett T. Tomlinson, Elmer Russell Gregor, Frederick
Trevor Hill and Bernard Marshall. It is perhaps natural that their
fiction should be spoken of, as Altsheler’s is often spoken of, as
“stories for boys.” There is conclusive evidence, however, that about
half of the readers of Altsheler are adults; and the percentage of adult
readers for the books by Mr. Tomlinson, Mr. Gregor, Mr. Hill and Mr.
Marshall is heavy. This might be inferred easily enough from the simple
fact that between 1,250,000 and 1,500,000 copies of Mr. Tomlinson’s books
have been sold.
Everett T. Tomlinson, born in 1859, had a boyish passion for natural
history and another for baseball. From Williams College he went into
teaching, becoming headmaster of a boys’ school, where he still played
ball. For twenty-three years he was pastor of a church in Elizabeth,
New Jersey. He was appointed a member of the New Jersey Public Library
Commission when it was formed in 1901, and became its chairman in 1921.
His first book appeared thirty years ago. Besides many fictions, such as
_The Mysterious Rifleman_ and _Scouting on the Border_, he is the author
of a _Young People’s History of the American Revolution_ and such books
as _Places Young Americans Want to Know_ and _Fighters Young Americans
Want to Know_. His new book (1924) is called _Pioneer Scouts of Ohio_.
Elmer Russell Gregor, born in 1878, was graduated from a military academy
and spent twenty-four hours in the drygoods business, six months in
real estate, and more successful periods as a farmer and stock raiser,
and in lumbering, quarrying and mining. His real job since 1910 has
been writing, but, as he says, his hobbies are Indians (foremost),
ornithology, natural history, forestry, hunting and fishing, and breeding
prize-winning dogs, chickens and pigeons, so “you see I don’t have much
time for work.” He lives in Southport, Connecticut, but has traveled much
and “my circle of intimate acquaintances includes cowboys, ‘sour-doughs’
(miners), Injuns, mountaineers, and lumberjacks—all good fellows.” The
books that have been most popular with his readers are stories of young
Indian chiefs, divided into two series, the Western Indian Stories and
the Eastern Indian Stories, and, most recently, the Jim Mason series,
which follows the fortunes of a white frontiersman in the days of the
French and Indian wars. _Captain Jim Mason_ (1924) is his latest work.
Frederick Trevor Hill, born in 1866, a graduate of Yale and a graduate in
law at Columbia, on the staff of General Pershing and cited by Pershing,
is the author of very widely-known books on the law, both as fact and
as material for fiction. His interest in American history has led him
to study the three or four outstanding figures in such books as _On the
Trail of Grant and Lee_, _On the Trail of Washington_, and _Washington
The Man of Action_. Why, it may be asked, two books on the Father of
his country? And the response must be that _On the Trail of Washington_
is, as the subtitle explains, “a narrative of Washington’s boyhood and
manhood, based on his writings and other authentic documents,” and is
concerned with the growth of early years; whereas _Washington The Man of
Action_ is an attempt to portray the mature man as he really was, not as
the plaster saint of his earliest biographers.
Bernard Marshall was born on a farm twenty miles south of Boston, one
of a family fond of books and music. Having resolved to be a writer, he
thought he could play in orchestras and make a living until he had his
foothold as an author. Thereupon twenty years were passed as a musician,
a legal stenographer, a writer of technical articles and in advertising
work. Then, after trying to help build ships to win the war, Mr. Marshall
settled in Berkeley, California, a half mile from the university, and
began to write historical romances, _Walter of Tiverton_, _Cedric the
Forester_, and _The Torch Bearers_. The last two and his new American
historical romance, _Redcoat and Minute Man_, form a Liberty Series,
showing three crucial points in the history of the Anglo-Saxon struggle
for popular liberties, Magna Charta (_Cedric the Forester_), Oliver
Cromwell (_The Torch Bearers_), and the American Revolution (_Redcoat and
Minute Man_).
BOOKS BY EMERSON HOUGH
1895 _The Singing Mouse Stories_
1897 _The Story of the Cowboy_
1900 _The Girl at the Half-Way House_
1902 _The Mississippi Bubble_
1903 _The Way to the West_
1904 _The Law of the Land_
1905 _Heart’s Desire_
1906 _The King of Gee Whiz_
1906 _The Story of the Outlaw_
1907 _The Way of a Man_
1909 _Fifty-Four Forty or Fight_
1909 _The Sowing_
1910 _The Young Alaskans_
1911 _The Purchase Price_
1912 _John Rawn—Prominent Citizen_
1913 _The Lady and the Pirate_
1913 _The Young Alaskans in the Rockies_
1914 _The Young Alaskans on the Trail_
1915 _The Magnificent Adventure_
1916 _The Man Next Door_
1917 _The Broken Gate_
1918 _The Young Alaskans in the Far North_
1918 _The Way Out_
1919 _The Sagebrusher_
1919 _The Web_
1922 _The Covered Wagon_
1923 _North of 36_
1924 _Mother of Gold_
SOURCES ON EMERSON HOUGH
_The Men Who Make Our Novels_, by George Gordon. Moffat, Yard and
Company. Page 140 _et seq._ This book now published by Dodd, Mead and
Company.
Autobiographical article in the American Magazine: 1918 or earlier.
Editorial article in the Saturday Evening Post, April or May, 1923.
“A Defense of the American Tradition,” by William MacLeod Raine, in the
Author and Journalist, Denver, Colorado, 1923.
BOOKS BY JOSEPH A. ALTSHELER
THE YOUNG TRAILERS SERIES: Frontier Life in the Revolution. Two boys,
Henry Ware and Paul Cotter, and three scouts are the chief characters:
_The Young Trailers_
_The Forest Runners_
_The Free Rangers_
_The Eyes of the Woods_
_The Keepers of the Trail_
_The Riflemen of the Ohio_
_The Scouts of the Valley_
_The Border Watch_
THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR SERIES. The period is from 1754 to 1763 and
the central characters are Robert Lennox, an American boy; Tayoga, an
Onondaga Indian; and David Willet, a hunter:
_The Hunters of the Hills_
_The Shadow of the North_
_The Rulers of the Lakes_
_The Masters of the Peaks_
_The Lords of the Wild_
_The Sun of Quebec_
THE TEXAN SERIES. Three stories of the Texas struggle for independence,
with an American boy, Ned Fulton, in the foreground:
_The Texan Star_
_The Texan Scouts_
_The Texan Triumph_
THE CIVIL WAR SERIES. The principal battles of the Civil War are covered.
In four of the stories Dick Mason, who fights for the North, is the
leading character; in the other four his cousin, Harry Kenton, fighting
on the Southern side, is featured:
_The Guns of Bull Run_
_The Guns of Shiloh_
_The Scouts of Stonewall_
_The Sword of Antietam_
_The Star of Gettysburg_
_The Rock of Chickamauga_
_The Shades of the Wilderness_
_The Tree of Appomattox_
INDIAN WARS OF THE WEST AND SOUTHWEST. Not a series:
_Apache Gold_
_The Last of the Chiefs_ (Custer’s defeat)
_The Quest of the Four_ (Mexican War)
THE GREAT WEST SERIES:
_The Great Sioux Trail_
_The Lost Hunters_
THE WORLD WAR SERIES. John Scott, a young American in Germany when the
war opens, and Phillip Lannes, a young French friend, are the central
figures:
_The Guns of Europe_
_The Hosts of the Air_
_The Forest of Swords_
HISTORICAL ROMANCES. More definitely for older readers. Not in series:
_A Soldier of Manhattan_ (French and Indian War)
_The Sun of Saratoga_ (Burgoyne’s surrender)
_The Wilderness Road_ (Pioneers west of the Alleghenies)
_My Captive_ (Revolutionary romance)
_A Herald of the West_ (War of 1812)
_In Circling Camps_ (Civil War)
_The Last Rebel_
_The Candidate_ (the romance of a political campaign)
SOURCES ON JOSEPH A. ALTSHELER
“Joseph A. Altsheler and American History,” by Anne Carroll Moore.
Pamphlet published by D. Appleton & Company.
Article by Anne Carroll Moore in The Bookman for November, 1918.
Reprinted in _Roads to Childhood_, by Anne Carroll Moore.
“Some Worthwhile Books,” by Robert Page Lincoln in The Review.
“A Kentucky Writer of Historical Novels,” by John Wilson Townsend, in the
Lexington (Kentucky) Leader for 18 May 1912.
BOOKS BY THOMAS DIXON
1891 _Living Problems in Religion and Social Science_
1894 _Sermons on Ingersoll_
1897 _The Failure of Protestantism in New York_
1902 _What Is Religion?_
1902 _The Leopard’s Spots_
1903 _The One Woman_
1905 _The Clansman_
1905 _The Life Worth Living_
1907 _The Traitor_
1909 _Comrades_
1911 _The Root of Evil_
1912 _The Sins of the Father_
1913 _The Southerner_ (Abraham Lincoln)
1914 _The Victim_ (Jefferson Davis)
1915 _The Foolish Virgin_
1916 _The Fall of a Nation_
1918 _The Way of a Man_
1920 _A Man of the People._ Play. (Abraham Lincoln)
1921 _The Man in Gray_ (Robert E. Lee)
1924 _The Black Hood_
SOURCES ON THOMAS DIXON
“The Men Who Make Our Novels,” by George Gordon, page 249. Moffat, Yard
and Company (now published by Dodd, Mead and Company).
Articles on the photoplay, “The Birth of a Nation,” made from _The
Clansman_ are too numerous to be cited. The reader may consult the
READERS’ GUIDE TO PERIODICAL LITERATURE for 1915-16.
BOOKS BY STEPHEN CRANE
1895 _The Red Badge of Courage_
SOURCES ON STEPHEN CRANE
_Stephen Crane: A Study in American Letters_, by Thomas Beer. Alfred A.
Knopf: 1923.
BOOKS BY EVERETT T. TOMLINSON
(For more complete list, see _Who’s Who in America_: 1924-25)
1908 _Scouting with Mad Anthony_
1915 _Places Young Americans Want to Know_
1916 _The Trail of the Mohawk Chief_
1917 _The Story of General Pershing_
1918 _Fighters Young Americans Want to Know_
1920 _The Pursuit of the Apache Chief_
1920 _Scouting on the Border_
1921 _The Mysterious Rifleman_
1921 _Young People’s History of the American Revolution_
1923 _Scouting on the Old Frontier_
1923 _Stories of the American Revolution_
1924 _Scouting in the Wilderness_
1924 _The Pioneer Scouts of Ohio_
SOURCES ON EVERETT T. TOMLINSON
“The Historical Story for Boys,” by Everett T. Tomlinson. Booklet
published by D. Appleton & Company.
_Who’s Who in America._
BOOKS BY ELMER RUSSELL GREGOR
JIM MASON STORIES. The hero is a young frontiersman.
1923 _Jim Mason, Backwoodsman_
1923 _Jim Mason, Scout_
1924 _Captain Jim Mason_
WESTERN INDIAN STORIES. The hero is White Otter, a young Sioux chief:
1917 _White Otter_
1920 _The War Trail_
1922 _Three Sioux Scouts_
EASTERN INDIAN STORIES. The hero is Running Fox, a young chief of the
Delawares:
1918 _Running Fox_
1920 _The White Wolf_
1922 _Spotted Deer_
BOOKS BY FREDERICK TREVOR HILL
(For more complete list, see _Who’s Who in America_)
1909 _On the Trail of Washington_
1911 _On the Trail of Grant and Lee_
1914 _Washington the Man of Action_
BOOKS BY BERNARD MARSHALL
1921 _Cedric the Forester_
1923 _The Torch Bearers_
1923 _Walter of Tiverton_
1924 _Redcoat and Minute Man_
15. The Fireside Theatre
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