Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Dead and bedamned, and the rest gone whist!
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
The skipper lay with his nob in gore
Where the scullion's axe his cheek had shore,
And the scullion he was stabbed times four.
And there they lay
And the soggy skies
Dreened all day long
In up-staring eyes--
At murk sunset and at foul sunrise--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Fifteen men of 'em stiff and stark--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Ten of the crew had the Murder mark--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
'Twas a cutlass swipe, or an ounce of lead,
Or a yawing hole in a battered head--
And the scuppers glut with a rotting red.
And there they lay--
Aye, damn my eyes!--
All lookouts clapped
On paradise,
All souls bound just the contra'wise--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Fifteen men of 'em good and true--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Every man Jack could ha' sailed with Old Pew--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
There was chest on chest full of Spanish gold,
With a ton of plate in the middle hold,
And the cabins riot of loot untold.
And they lay there
That had took the plum
With sightless glare
And their lips struck dumb,
While we shared all by the rule of thumb--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
_More was seen through the sternlight screen--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Chartings undoubt where a woman had been--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
A flimsy shift on a bunker cot,
With a thin dirk slot through the bosom spot,
And the lace stiff-dry in a purplish blot.
Or was she wench ...
Or some shuddering maid...?
That dared the knife
And that took the blade?...
By God! she was stuff for a plucky jade!--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!_
Fifteen men on the Dead Man's chest--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
We wrapp'd 'em all in a mains'l tight,
With twice ten turns of a hawser's bight
And we heaved 'em over and out of sight--
With a yo-heave-ho!
And a fare-you-well!
And a sullen plunge
In the sullen swell,
Ten-fathoms deep on the road to hell--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
HESTER HIGBEE GEPPERT
Mrs. Hester Higbee Geppert ("Dolly Higbee"), newspaper woman and
novelist, was born near Edina, Missouri, March 12, 1854. She was the
daughter of James Parker Higbee, a Kentuckian, and his second wife,
Martha Lane (Galleher) Higbee, a woman of Virginian parentage. Both of
Miss Higbee's parents died before she was fourteen years old, and she
came to Lexington, Kentucky, to live in the family of Dr. Samuel H.
Chew, who had married her half-sister. Dr. Chew's farm was situated
some seven miles from Lexington, and there Miss Higbee lived for ten
years. She was educated in Midway, Kentucky, and then taught for
several years. She detested teaching and, "in January, 1878, while it
was still quite dark, I stole down stairs with five dollars in my
pocket and such luggage as I could carry in a handbag, tiptoed into
the drizzle and 'lit out.'" The flip of a nickle determined that her
new home should be Louisville, and to that city she went. Miss Higbee
was the first woman in Kentucky, if not in the South, to adopt
journalism as a profession. The following fourteen years of her life
were spent in the daily grind of newspaperdom, she having held almost
every position on _The Courier-Journal_, save that of editor-in-chief.
In the four hottest weeks of the year, and in the brief intervals of
leisure she could snatch from her daily duties, Miss Higbee wrote her
now famous novel, _In God's Country_ (New York, 1890). After the
Lippincotts had refused this manuscript, _Belford's Monthly Magazine_
accepted it by telegram, paying the author two hundred dollars for it,
and publishing it in the issue for November, 1889; and in the
following May the story appeared in book form. Colonel Henry Watterson
wrote a review of _In God's Country_ that was afterwards published as
an introduction for it, and this did much to bring the tale into wide
notice. Miss Higbee went to Chicago in 1893 to accept a position on
_The Tribune_. On April 4, 1894, she was married to Mr. William
Geppert of Atlanta, and the first five years of their married life
were spent at Atlanta. It was during this time that Mrs. Geppert's
best story was written, _Burton's Scoop_, one of the first American
stories written upon hypnotism and related phenomena. The opening
chapters of this appeared in the author's little literary magazine,
_The Autocrat_, which she conducted at Atlanta for about two years,
but it has never been published in book form. Two musical romances,
entitled _The Scherzo in B-Flat Minor_ (Atlanta, 1895), and _Un Ze
Studio_ (Atlanta, 1895), attracted considerable attention, and a third
was announced as _Side Lights_, but was never published. _In God's
Country_ was dramatized, with Miss Catherine Gray cast in the role of
_Lydia_, and opened at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, New York, September
5, 1897, but the work of the playwright and actors was most
displeasing to the author. In 1900 Mr. Geppert became one of the
editors of the New York _Musical Courier_, and he and his wife have
since resided at Croton-on-the-Hudson. Mrs. Geppert has abandoned
literature, but _In God's Country_ has given her a permanent place
among the writers of Kentucky.[10]
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Confessions of a Tatler_, by Elvira M. Slaughter
(Louisville, 1905); _Lexington Leader_ (July 25, 1909).
THE GARDENER AND THE GIRL[11]
[From _In God's Country_ (New York, 1890)]
Her hair had come down and was tumbling about her neck; she whipped it
out and caught it back with a hairpin, took up the guitar, and
skirted the shadowy porch to the room over the kitchen. The window was
open and she could see Karl sitting in the middle of the room with his
head bowed upon his hands. She tapped lightly on the pane. He looked
up and saw her standing in the dim light with the guitar in her hand.
"Karl," she said, "I want you to sing me that song before you go--the
one you sung me that day for your dinner."
He came forward and took the instrument. He saw she had been crying, but
the experience of the summer had been so crushing, he was so subdued by
her past behavior, that he did not dream the tears were for him.
"You are grieved for someding," he said, with touching sympathy.
He opened the door and gave her a chair, and, sitting near her on the
sill of the window, began to sing the song with all the tenderness and
pathos his own yearning and bitter disappointment could put into it. It
brought back all the old tumult. She saw now, when it was too late, that
she had overestimated her strength. When he finished, she was sobbing;
and in an instant he was kneeling by her chair, raising to her a face
sad, searching, but shining with the tremulous glow of a hope just born.
"You weep. Liebchen, is it for me?"
She did not answer, but laid a hand gently on his head and looked at
him, with all the pent yearning of her full heart, all the agony of
that long, weary struggle, and all the pathos of defeat in her eyes.
It was no use. At that moment it seemed that there was nothing else in
the world but him. Everything else was remote, dim, and unreal.
He clasped her with a fierce, exultant joy.
"You love me in spite of dis?" he asked, looking down at his coarse
attire. "You love me in spite of dat I am your nigga?"
"In spite of all," she faltered.
It was out at last: the crest of victory sank in inglorious surrender.
Her humiliation was his triumph.
He looked at her with a face radiant, shining with a beauty not of
earth.
"Liebchen," he whispered, "it is divine."
"You vill gome mit me to mein gountry?" he asked presently.
She laid a finger on his lips. "Don't," she said; "I can't bear it."
"I vill not be a vagabond in mein own gountry; we vill be very happy.
Gome mit me, Liebchen."
He would not be a vagabond in his own country. The information that
would have been worth much to her once was worth nothing now. She
scarcely heard it.
"I can't do that," she said. "You must go, and I must stay here and do
as I have promised; but I wanted to tell you that I know I have been
very cruel, and that I am very sorry. It was hard for me, too, and I
could not trust myself to be kind."
It seemed but a moment she had been sitting there with his arms around
her and his head upon her breast, but the east was red and the sun was
almost up. Lydia rose wearily. The sense of defeat, that was more
fatiguing than the struggle, clung to her. "It's time you were gone,"
she said. He took her hands in his and asked, with searching
earnestness,
"If you love me, vy vill you not gome mit me?"
"I can't," she answered, too tired for explanation.
"Is it your fader?" he asked.
She nodded, and said good-bye, looking up at him with a tender glow on
her face. The hair streaming about her shoulders had caught the flame
of sunrise like a torch. He stooped and touched it with his lips as
reverently as he would have kissed the garment of a saint.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] Mrs. Geppert died at Scarsborough-on-the-Hudson, New York,
February 23, 1913. Her remains were not brought to Kentucky for
interment.
[11] Copyright, 1890, by the Belford Company.
HENRY C. WOOD
Henry Cleveland Wood, novelist and verse-maker, was born at
Harrodsburg, Kentucky, in January, 1855. His mother was a writer of
local reputation. In 1874 Mr. Wood's poems and stories began to appear
in English and American magazines; and he has continued his work for
them until this day. Seven of his novels have been serialized by the
following publications: _Pretty Jack and_ _Ugly Carl_ (_The
Courier-Journal_); _Impress of Seal and Clay_ (_New York Ledger_, in
collaboration with his uncle, Henry W. Cleveland, author of a
biography of Alexander H. Stephens); _The Kentucky Outlaw_, and _Love
that Endured_ (_New York Ledger_); _Faint Heart and Fair Lady_ (_The
Designer_); _The Night-Riders_ (_Taylor-Trotwood Magazine_); and _Weed
and War_ (_The Home and Farm_). Of these only one has been issued in
book form, _The Night Riders_ (Chicago, 1908). This was a tale of love
and adventure, depicting the protest against the toll-gate system in
Kentucky years ago, with a brief inclusion of the more recent tobacco
troubles. Mr. Wood's verse has been printed in _Harper's Weekly_,
_Cosmopolitan_, _Ainslee's Magazine_, _The Smart Set_, _The Youth's
Companion_, and other periodicals. Two of his librettos, _The Sultan's
Gift_ and _Amor_, have been set to music; and at least one of his
plays has been produced, entitled _The Pretty Shakeress_. Mr. Wood
conducts a little bookshop in his native town of Harrodsburg.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Blades o' Blue Grass_, by Fannie P. Dickey
(Louisville, 1892); _Illustrated Kentuckian_ (November, 1894).
THE WEAVER
[From _The Quiver_ (London, England)]
The sun climbed up the eastern hills,
And through the dewy land
Shot gleams that fell athwart the rills
That sang on every hand.
Upon the wood and in the air
There hung a mystic spell,
And on the green sward, every where,
Soft shadows lightly fell.
And in a cottage where the bloom
Of roses on the wall
Filled all the air, there was a loom
Well built of oak and tall.
All through the fragrant summer day
A maiden, blithe and fair,
Sat at the loom and worked away,
And hummed a simple air;--
"Oh! idle not, ye leafy trees,
Weave nets of yellow sun,
And kiss me oft, O! balmy breeze,
My task is but begun."
Still higher in the hazy sky
The sun climbed on and on,
And autumn winds came rushing by,
The summer's bloom was gone;
Now sat a mother at the loom,
The shuttle flew along,
With whirr that filled the little room
Together with her song;--
"O! shuttle! faster, faster fly,
For know ye not the sun
Is climbing high across the sky,
And yet my work's not done?"
The sun shot gleams of amber light
Along the barren ground,
And shadows of the coming night
Fell softly all around.
And in the little cottage room
From early dawn till night,
A woman sat before the loom
With hair of snowy white.
The hands were palsied now that threw
The shuttle to and fro,
While as the fabric longer grew
She sang both sweet and low;--
"Half hidden in the rosy west
I see the golden sun,
And I shall soon begin my rest,
My task is almost done!"
* * * * *
The spring again brought joy and bloom,
And kissed each vale and hill;
But in the little cottage room
The oaken beam was still.
The swaying boughs with rays of gold
Wove nets of yellow sun,
And cast them where a headstone told--
The weaver's task was done.
WILLIAM E. CONNELLEY
William Elsey Connelley, historian and antiquarian, was born near
Paintsville, Kentucky, March 15, 1855, the son of a soldier. At the
age of seventeen he became a teacher in his native county of Johnson;
and for the following ten years he continued in that work. John C. C.
Mayo, the mountain millionaire, was one of his pupils. In April, 1881,
Mr. Connelley went to Kansas; and two years later he was elected clerk
of Wyandotte county, of which Kansas City, Kansas, is the county-seat.
In 1888 he engaged in the lumber business in Missouri; and four years
thereafter he surrendered that business in order to devote himself to
his banking interests, which have hitherto required a considerable
portion of his time. In 1905 Mr. Connelley wrote the call for the
first meeting of the oil men of Kansas, which resulted in the
organization of an association that began a crusade upon the Standard
Oil Company, and which subsequently resulted in the dissolution of
that corporation by the Supreme Court of the United States. This is
set down here because Mr. Connelley is, perhaps, prouder of it than of
of any other thing he has done. He is well-known by students of
Western history, but, of course, his fame as a writer has not reached
the general reader. He is a member of many historical societies and
associations, including the American, Nebraska, Missouri, Ohio, and
Kansas, of which he was president in 1912. Mr. Connelley has made
extensive investigations into the language and history of several of
the Indian tribes of Kansas, his vocabulary of the Wyandot tongue
being the first one ever written. He has many original documents
pertaining to the history of eastern Kentucky; and the future
historian of that section of the state cannot proceed far without
consulting his collection. The novelist of the mountains, John Fox,
Jr., has sat at the feet of the historian and learned of his people.
Mr. Connelley lives at Topeka, Kansas. A complete list of his works
is: _The Provisional Government of Nebraska Territory_ (Topeka, 1899);
_James Henry Lane, the Grim Chieftain of Kansas_ (Topeka, 1899);
_Wyandot Folk-Lore_ (Topeka, 1899); _Kansas Territorial Governors_
(Topeka, 1900); _John Brown--the Story of the Last of the Puritans_
(Topeka, 1900); _The Life of John J. Ingalls_ (Kansas City, Missouri,
1903); _Fifty Years in Kansas_ (Topeka, 1907); _The Heckewelder
Narrative_ (Cleveland, Ohio, 1907), being the narrative of John G. E.
Heckewelder (1743-1823), concerning the mission of the United Brethren
among the Delaware and Mohegan Indians from 1740 to the close of
1808, and the finest book ever issued by a Western publisher,
originally selling for twenty dollars a copy, but now out of print and
very scarce; _Doniphan's Expedition_ (Topeka, 1907); _The Ingalls of
Kansas: a Character Study_ (Topeka, 1909); _Quantrill and the Border
Wars_ (Cedar Rapids, 1910), one of his best books; and _Eastern
Kentucky Papers_ (Cedar Rapids, 1910), "the founding of Harman's
Station, with an account of the Indian Captivity of Mrs. Jennie
Wiley." In 1911 Baker University conferred the honorary degree of A.
M. upon him. For the last three years Mr. Connelley has been preparing
a biography of Preston B. Plumb, United States Senator from Kansas for
a generation, which will be published in 1913.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Who's Who in America_ (1912-1913); letters from Mr.
Connelley to the writer.
KANSAS HISTORY
[From _History as an Asset of the State_ (Topeka, Kansas, 1912)]
Kansas history is like that of no other State. The difference is
fundamental--not a dissimilarity in historical annals. This fact has
been long recognized. A quarter of a century ago Ware wrote that--
Of all the States, but three will live in story:
Old Massachusetts with her Plymouth Rock,
And old Virginia with her noble stock,
And sunny Kansas with her woes and glory.
The south line of Kansas is the modified line between free soil and
slave territory as those divisions existed down to the abolition of
slavery. For almost half a century it was the policy of the Government
to send here the remnants of the Indian tribes pushed west by our
occupation of their country. The purpose in this was to make the
Western prairies the Indian country of America and thus prevent its
settlement until the slave-power was ready to utilize it for its
peculiar institution. Many things occurred which had not been counted
on, and the country was forced open before the South was ready to
undertake its settlement. While the crisis was premature, the
slave-power entered upon the contest with confidence. It had never
lost a battle in its conflict with the free-soil portion of the Union,
and it expected to win in Kansas. The struggle was between the two
antagonistic predominant ideas developed in our westward expansion,
and ended in a war which involved the entire nation and threatened the
existence of the Union. Politically, Kansas was the rock about which
the troubled waters surged for ten years. The Republican party grew
largely out of the conditions and influence of Kansas. When
hostilities began the Kansans enlisted in the armies of the Union in
greater proportion to total population than did the people of any
other State. Here the war was extremely bitter, and in some instances
it became an effort for extermination. Kansas towns were sacked, and
non-combatants were ruthlessly butchered. The border embraced at that
time all the settled portion of the State, and it would be difficult
indeed to make the people of this day comprehend what occurred here.
Kansas was founded in and by a bloody struggle, which, within her
bounds, continued for ten years. No other State ever fought so well.
Kansas was for freedom. She won, and the glory of it is that the
victory gave liberty to America. That is why we maintain that Kansas
history stands alone in interest and importance in American annals.
The history of a State is a faithful account of the events of its
formation and development. If the account is set out in sufficient
detail there will be preserved the fine delineations of the emotions
which moved the people. These emotions arise out of the experiences of
the people. And the pioneers fix the lines of their experiences. They
lay the pattern and mark out the way the State is to go, and this way
can never be altered, and can, moreover, be but slightly modified for
all time. These emotions produce ideals which become universal and the
common aim of the State, and they wield a wonderful influence on its
progress, growth, and achievement. A people devoid of ideals can
scarcely be found, but ideals differ just as the experiences which
produced the emotions from which they result differed. If there be no
particular principle to be striven for in the founding of a State,
then no ideals will appear, and such as exist among the people will be
found to have come over the lines from other and older States. Or, if
by chance any be developed they will be commonplace and ordinary, and
will leave the people in lethargy and purposeless so far as the
originality of the thought of the State is concerned. The ideals
developed by a fierce struggle for great principles are lofty, sublime
in their conception and intent. The higher the ideals, the greater the
progress; the more eminent the achievement, the more marked the
individuality, the stronger the characteristics of the people.
CHARLES T. DAZEY
Charles Turner Dazey, author of _In Old Kentucky_, was born at Lima,
Illinois, August 13, 1855, the son and grandson of Kentuckians. When a
lad the future dramatist was brought to Kentucky for a visit at the
home of his grandparents in Bourbon county, whom he was to visit again
before returning to Kentucky, in 1872, to enter the Agricultural and
Mechanical College of Kentucky University, where he studied for a
year. In the fall of 1873 young Dazey matriculated in the Arts College
of the University. Ill-health caused him to miss the following year,
but he returned in 1875 and remained a student in the University until
the summer of 1877. He was a member of the old Periclean Society, the
society of James Lane Allen and John Fox, Jr., while at the
University. When he left Lexington he lacked two years of graduation.
Mr. Dazey later went to Harvard University, where he was one of the
editors of the _Harvard Advocate_, and the poet of his class of 1881.
While a Senior at Cambridge he had begun dramatic composition, and
after leaving the University he became a full-fledged playwright. His
plays include: _An American King_; _That Girl from Texas_--first
called _A Little Maverick_--with Maggie Mitchell in the title-role;
_The War of Wealth_; _The Suburban_; _Home Folks_; _The Stranger_, in
which Wilton Lackaye played for two seasons; _The Old Flute-Player_;
and _Love Finds a Way_. In collaboration with Oscar Weil Mr. Dazey
wrote _In Mexico_, a comic opera, produced by The Bostonians; and with
George Broadhurst he wrote two plays: _An American Lord_, with William
H. Crane as the star; and _The Captain_, played by N. C. Goodwin.
The play by Mr. Dazey in which we are especially interested here, is,
of course, _In Old Kentucky_, a drama in four acts, first written to
order for Katie Putnam, a soubrette star, who was very popular a
quarter of a century ago. She, however, did not consider the play
suited to her, and it was then offered to several managers without
success, until it was finally accepted by Jacob Litt. When first
produced by Mr. Litt at St. Paul on August 4, 1892, it had a most
distinguished cast: Julia Arthur, the beautiful, appeared as _Barbara
Holton_; Louis James as _Col. Doolittle_; Frank Losee as _Joe Lorey_;
and Marion Elmore made a most alluring _Madge Brierly_. This was only
a trial production, and the play went into the store-house for a year,
when, in August, 1893, it began its first annual tour at the Bijou
Theatre (now the Lyceum), at Pittsburgh. In that first regular company
Bettina Gerard played _Madge_; Burt Clark, _Col. Doolittle_; George
Deyo, _Joe Lorey_; William McVey, _Horace Holton_; Harrison J. Wolfe,
_Frank Layson_; Charles K. French, _Uncle Neb_; Edith Athelston,
_Barbara_; and Lottie Winnett was _Aunt Alathea_. Mr. Litt and his
associate, A. W. Dingwall, have always mounted _In Old Kentucky_
handsomely, and this has been an important element in its great
success. For twenty years this drama of the bluegrass and the
mountains has held the boards, more than seven million people have
seen it, and even to-day it is being produced almost daily with no
signs of loss in popular interest. It is the only play Mr. Dazey has
written with a Kentucky background, and it would be "a hazard of new
fortunes" for him to attempt to do so; he could hardly improve upon
his masterpiece. In 1897 Mr. Litt had a small edition of _In Old
Kentucky_ privately printed from the prompt-books; and in 1910 Mr.
Dazey collaborated with Edward Marshall in a novelization of the play,
which was published as an attractive romance by the G. W. Dillingham
Company, of New York. With Mr. Marshall he also novelized _The Old
Flute-Player_ (New York, 1910). Mr. Dazey has recently dramatized
_Fran_, John Breckinridge Ellis's popular novel; and at the present
time he is engaged upon a new play, which he thinks, promises better
than anything he has so far written. Mr. Dazey was in Kentucky several
times between 1877 and 1898, the date of his most recent visit, at
which time he found John Fox, Jr., giving one of his inevitable
readings in Lexington, and James Lane Allen looking for the last time,
mayhap, upon the scenes of his books. He spent several weeks with
friends and relatives near Paris; and, like all good Kentuckians, he
"hopes to revisit the dear old state in the near future." Mr. Dazey
has an attractive home at Quincy, Illinois.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Who's Who in the Theatre_, by John Porter (Boston,
1912); letters from Mr. Dazey to the writer.
THE FAMOUS KNOT-HOLE[12]
[From _In Old Kentucky_ (1897)]
_Act III, Scene IV. The exterior of the race-track. Fence, tree, etc._