John Uri Lloyd, novelist and scientist, was born at West Bloomfield,
New York, April 19, 1849. He is the son of a civil engineer who came
West, in 1853, for the purpose of surveying a railroad between
Covington and Louisville, known as the "River Route." Mr. Lloyd was
thus four years old when his father settled at Burlington, Boone
county, Kentucky, near the line of the road. The panic of 1854 came
and the railroad company failed, but his parents preferred their new
Kentucky home to the old home in the East, and they decided to remain,
taking up their first vocations, that of teaching. For several years
they taught in the village schools of the three little Kentucky towns
of Burlington, Petersburg, and Florence. Mr. Lloyd lived at Florence
until he was fourteen years of age, when he was apprenticed to a
Cincinnati druggist, but he continued to be a resident of Kentucky
until 1876, since which time he has lived at Cincinnati. In 1878 he
became connected with the Cincinnati College of Pharmacy, and this
connection has continued to the present day. In 1880 he was married to
a Kentucky woman. Mr. Lloyd is one of the most distinguished
pharmaceutical chemists in the United States. He has a magnificent
library and museum upon his subjects; and he is generally conceded to
be the world's highest authority on puff-balls. Mr. Lloyd's scientific
works include _The Chemistry of Medicines_ (1881); _Drugs and
Medicines of North America_ (1884); _King's American Dispensatory_
(1885); _Elixirs, their History and Preparation_ (1892); and he, as
president, has edited the publications of the Lloyd Library, as
follows: _Dr. B. S. Barton's Collections_ (1900); _Dr. Peter Smith's
Indian Doctor's Dispensatory_ (1901); _A Study in Pharmacy_ (1902);
_Dr. David Schopf's Materia Medica Americana_ (1903); _Dr. Manasseh
Cutler's Vegetable Productions_ (1903); _Reproductions from the Works
of William Downey, John Carver, and Anthony St. Storck_ (1907);
_Hydrastis Canadensis_ (1908); _Samuel Thomson and Thomsonian Materia
Medica_ (1909). Dr. Lloyd has won his general reputation as a writer
of novels descriptive of life in northern Kentucky. His first work to
attract wide attention was entitled _Etidorpha, or the End of Earth_
(New York, 1895), a work which involved speculative philosophy. This
was followed by a little story, _The Right Side of the Car_ (Boston,
1897). Then came the Stringtown stories, which made his reputation.
"Stringtown" is the fictional name for the Kentucky Florence of his
boyhood. There are four of them: _Stringtown on the Pike_ (New York,
1900); _Warwick of the Knobs_ (New York, 1901); _Red Head_ (New York,
1903); and _Scroggins_ (New York, 1904). In these stories the
author's aim was not to be engaged solely as a novelist, "but to
portray to outsiders a phase of life unknown to the world at large,
and to establish a folk-lore picture in which the scenes that occurred
in times gone by, would be paralleled in the events therein narrated."
_Stringtown on the Pike_ is Mr. Lloyd's best known book, but _Warwick
of the Knobs_ is far and way the finest of the four.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Bookman_ (May, 1900); _The Outlook_ (November
16, 1901); _The Bookman_ (December, 1910).
"LET'S HAVE THE MERCY TEXT"[34]
[From _Warwick of the Knobs_ (New York, 1901)]
Warwick made no movement; no word of greeting came from his lips, no
softening touch to his furrowed brow, no sparkle to his cold, gray
eye. As though gazing upon a stranger, he sat and pierced the girl
through and through with a formal stare, that drove despair deeper
into her heart and caused her to cling closer to her brother.
"Pap, sister's home ag'in," the youth repeated.
"I know nothing of a sister who claims a home here."
Mary would have fallen but for the strong arm of her brother, who
gently, tenderly guided her to a great rocking-chair. Then he turned
on his father.
"I said thet sister's home agin, and I means it, pap."
Turning the leaves of the Book to a familiar passage, Warwick read
aloud:
"'The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life
is not of the Father, but of the world.' This girl has no home here.
She is of the world."
"Father, ef sister hes no home here, I hav'n't none, either. Ef she
must go out into the world, I'll go with her."
The man of God gazed sternly at the rebellious youth. Then he turned
to the girl.
"The good Book says, 'A fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the
earth.'"
Joshua stepped between the two and hid the child from her father.
"Pap, thet book says tough things to-night. The text you preached from
to-day was a better one. I remember et, and I'll leave et to you ef I
am not right. 'I am merciful, saith the Lord, and I will not keep my
anger forever.' Thet's a better text, and I takes et, God was in a
better humor when He wrote et."
"Joshua!" spoke the father, shocked at his son's irreverence.
"Listen, pap. I hate to say et, but I must. You preached one thing
this morning, and you acts another thing now. Didn't you say thet God
'retaineth not His anger forever, because He delighteth in mercy?' I
may not hev the words right, but I've got the sense."
"My son!"
"Pap, I axes the question on the square. Ain't thet what you preached?"
"That was the text."
"It ain't fair to preach one text in the meetin'-house and act another
text at home."
"Joshua!"
"Let's hev the mercy text to-night. Pap, sister's home ag'in. Let's
act the fergivin' text out."
Joshua stepped aside and the minister, touched in spite of himself,
glanced at his daughter, a softened glance, that spoke of affection,
but he made no movement. Then the girl slowly rose and turned toward
the door, still keeping her eyes on her father's face. She edged
backward step by step toward the door by which she had entered. Her
hand grasped the latch; the door moved on its hinges.
"Stop, sister," said Joshua. "Pap, ef sister opens thet door I go with
her, and then you will sit alone in this room ferever. You will be the
last Warwick of the Knob."
Warwick, with all his coldness and strength, could not stand the ordeal.
"Come back, my children," he said. "It is also written, 'I will be
merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities
will I remember no more.'" And then, as in former times, Mary's head
rested on her father's knee.