at London, Kentucky, February 6, 1857. She was graduated from
Daughters', now Beaumont, College, Harrodsburg, Kentucky, when John
Augustus Williams was president. On May 7, 1878, Miss Slaughter was
married at Richmond, Kentucky, to James I. McKinney, now
superintendent of the Louisville and Nashville railroad. Mrs.
McKinney's best work is to be found in her first book of verse,
_Katydid's Poems_ (Louisville, 1887). This slender volume was
extravagantly praised by the late Charles J. O'Malley, but it did
contain several lyrics of much merit, especially "The Little Face," a
lovely bit of verse surely. Mrs. McKinney's first novel, _The Silent
Witness_ (New York, 1907), was followed by _The Weed by the Wall_
(Boston, 1911). Both of these works prove that the author's gift is of
the muses, and not of the gods of the "six best sellers." Neither of
her novels was overly successful, making one wish she had held fast to
her earlier love, verse-making. Besides these three volumes, Mrs.
McKinney has published a group of songs which have attracted
attention. She resides at Montgomery, Alabama.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Blades o' Bluegrass_, by Fannie P. Dickey
(Louisville, 1892); _Who's Who in America_ (1912-1913).
A LITTLE FACE[18]
[From _Katydid's Poems_ (Louisville, Kentucky, 1887)]
A little face to look at,
A little face to kiss;
Is there anything, I wonder,
That's half so sweet as this?
A little cheek to dimple
When smiles begin to grow;
A little mouth betraying
Which way the kisses go.
A slender little ringlet,
A rosy little ear;
A little chin to quiver
When falls the little tear.
A little face to look at,
A little face to kiss;
Is there anything, I wonder,
That's half so sweet as this?
A little hand so fragile
All through the night to hold;
Two little feet so tender
To tuck in from the cold.
Two eyes to watch the sunbeam
That with the shadow plays--
A darling little baby
To kiss and love always.
FOOTNOTE:
[18] Copyright, 1887, by the Author.
CHARLES J. O'MALLEY
Charles J. O'Malley, the George D. Prentice of modern Kentucky
literature, the praiser extraordinary and quite indiscriminately of
all things literary done by Kentucky hands, and withal a poet of
distinguished ability, was born near Morganfield, Kentucky, February
9, 1857. Through his father O'Malley was related to Father Abram J.
Ryan, the poet-priest of the Confederacy; and his mother was of
Spanish descent. He was educated at Cecilian College, in Hardin
county, Kentucky, and at Spring Hill, a Jesuit institution near
Mobile, Alabama, from which he returned to Kentucky and made his home
for some years at Henderson. His contributions in prose and verse to
the newspapers of southwest Kentucky made him well-known in the State.
A series of prose papers included _Summer in Kentucky_, _By Marsh and
Pool_, and _The Poets and Poetry of Southwest Kentucky_, attracted
much favorable comment. His finest poem, _Enceladus_, appeared in _The
Century Magazine_ for February, 1892, and much of his subsequent work
was published in that periodical. In 1893 O'Malley removed to Mt.
Vernon, Indiana, to become editor of _The Advocate_, a Roman Catholic
periodical. His first and best known book, _The Building of the Moon
and Other Poems_ (Mt. Vernon, Indiana, 1894), brought together his
finest work in verse. From this time until his death he was an editor
of Roman Catholic publications and a contributor of poems to _The
Century_, _Cosmopolitan_, and other high-class magazines. For several
years O'Malley was editor of _The Midland Review_, of Louisville, and
this was the best periodical he ever edited. Many of the now
well-known writers of the South and West got their first things
printed in _The Review_. It did a real service for Kentucky authors
especially. During his later life O'Malley seemed to realize that he
had devoted far too much time in praising the literary labors of other
writers, and he turned most of his attention to creative work, which
was making him better known with the appearance of each new poem.
O'Malley may be ranked with John Boyle O'Reilly, the Boston editor and
poet, and he loses nothing by comparison with him. He was ever a Roman
Catholic poet, and his religion marred the beauty of much of his best
work. Besides _The Building of the Moon_, O'Malley published _The
Great White Shepherd of Christendom_ (Chicago, 1903), which was a
large life of Pope Leo XIII; and _Thistledrift_ (Chicago, 1909), a
little book of poems and prose pastels. For several years prior to his
passing, he planned a complete collection of his poems to be entitled
_Songs of Dawn_, but he did not live to finish this work. At the time
of his death, which occurred at Chicago, March 26, 1910, O'Malley was
editor of _The New World_, a Catholic weekly. Today he lies buried
near his Kentucky birthplace with no stone to mark the spot.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Century Magazine_ (October, 1907); _The New
World_ (Chicago, April 2, 1910).
ENCELADUS[19]
[From _The Building of the Moon and Other Poems_ (Mount Vernon,
Indiana, 1894)]
I shall arise; I am not weak; I feel
A strength within me worthy of the gods--
A strength that will not pass in gray despair.
Ten million years I have lain thus, supine,
Prostrate beneath the gleaming mountain-peaks,
And the slow centuries have heard me groan
In passing, and not one has pitied me;
Yea, the strong gods have seen me writhe beneath
This mighty horror fixed upon my chest,
And have not eased me of a moment's pain.
Oh, I will rise again--I will shake off
This terror that outweighs the wrath of Jove!
Lo, prone in darkness I have gathered hope
From the great waters walking speaking by!
These unto me give mercy, thus forshown:
"We are the servants of a mightier Lord
Than Jupiter, who hath imprisoned thee.
We go forth at His bidding, laying bare
The sea's great floor and all the sheer abysms
That drop beneath the idle fathoms of man,
And shape the corner-stones, and lay thereon
The mighty base of unborn continents.
The old earth, when it hath fulfilled His will,
Is laid to rest, and mightier earths arise
And fuller life, and like unto God,
Fills the new races struggling on the globe.
"Profoundest change succeeds each boding calm,
And mighty order from the deep breaks up
In all her parts, and only Night remains
With all her starts that minister to God,
Who sits sublimely, shaping as He wills,
Creating always." These things do they speak.
"The mountain-peaks, that watch among the stars,
Bow down their heads and go like monks at dusk
To mournful cloisters of the under-world;
And then, long silence, while blind Chaos' self
Beats round the poles with wings of cloudy storm."
These things, and more, the waters say to me,
How this old earth shall change, and its life pass
And be renewed from fathomless within;
How other forms, and likelier to God,
Shall walk on earth and wing the peaks of cloud;
How holier men and maids, with comelier shapes,
In that far time, when He hath wrought His plan,
Shall the new globe inherit, and like us
Love, hope, and live, with bodies formed of ours--
Or of our dust again made animate.
These things to me; yet still his curse remains,
His burden presses on me. God! thou God!
Who wast before the dawn, give ear to me!
Thou wilt some day shake down like sifted dust
This monstrous burden Jove hath laid on me,
When the stars ripen like ripe fruit in heaven,
And the earth crumbles, plunging to the void
With all its shrieking peoples!--Let it fall!
Let it be sown as ashes underneath
The base of all the continents to be
Forever, if so rent I shall be freed!
Shall I not wait? Shall I despair now Hope
On the horizon spreads her dawn-white wings?
Ah, sometimes now I feel earth moved within
Through all its massive frame, and know His hand
Again doth labor shaping out His plan.
Oh, I shall have all patience, trust and calm,
Foreknowing that the centuries shall bring,
On their broad wings, release from this deep hell,
And that I shall have life yet upon earth,
Yet draw the morning sunlight in my breath,
And meet the living races face to face.
NOON IN KENTUCKY
[From the same]
All day from the tulip-poplar boughs
The chewink's voice like a gold-bell rings,
The meadow-lark pipes to the drowsy cows,
And the oriole like a red rose swings,
And clings, and swings,
Shaking the noon from his burning wings.
A flash of purple within the brake
The red-bud burns, where the spice-wood blows,
And the brook laughs low where the white dews shake,
Drinking the wild-haw's fragrant snows,
And flows, and goes
Under the feet of the wet, wood-rose.
Odors of may-apples blossoming,
And violets stirring and blue-bells shaken--
Shadows that start from the thrush's wing
And float on the pools, and swim and waken--
Unslaken, untaken--
Bronze wood-Naiads that wait forsaken.
All day the lireodendron droops
Over the thickets her moons of gold;
All day the cumulous dogwood groups
Flake the mosses with star-snows cold,
While gold untold
The oriole pours from his song-thatched hold!
Carol of love, all day in the thickets,
Redbird; warble, O thrush, of pain!
Pipe me of pity, O raincrow, hidden
Deep in the wood! and, lo! the refrain
Of pain, again
Shall out of the bosom of heaven bring rain!
FOOTNOTE:
[19] Copyright, 1894, by the Advocate Publishing Company.
LANGDON SMITH
Langdon ("Denver") Smith, maker of a very clever and learned poem, was
born in Kentucky, January 4, 1858. From 1864 to 1872 he attended the
public schools of Louisville. As a boy Smith served in the Comanche
and Apache Wars, and he was later a correspondent in the Sioux War. In
1894 Smith was married to Marie Antoinette Wright, whom he afterwards
memorialized in his famous poem, and who survived him but five weeks.
In the year following his marriage, he went to Cuba for _The New York
Herald_ to "cover" the conflict between Spain and Cuba; and three
years later he represented the New York _Journal_ during the
Spanish-American War. Smith was at the bombardment of Santiago and at
the battles of El Caney and San Juan. After the war he returned to New
York, in which city he died, April 8, 1908. He was the author of a
novel, called _On the Pan Handle_, and of many short stories, but his
poem, _Evolution_, made him famous. The first stanzas of this poem
were written in 1895; and four years later he wrote several more
stanzas. Then from time to time he added a line or more, until it was
completed. _Evolution_ first appeared in its entirety in the middle of
a page of want advertisements in the New York _Journal_. It attracted
immediate and wide notice, but copies of it were rather difficult to
obtain until it was reprinted in _The Scrap-Book_ for April, 1906, and
in _The Speaker_ for September, 1908.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Evolution, a Fantasy_ (Boston, 1909), is a
beautiful and fitting setting for this famous poem. In the
introduction to this edition Mr. Lewis Allen Browne brings
together the facts of Langdon Smith's life and work with many fine
words of criticism for the poem. In 1911 W. A. Wilde and Company,
the Boston publishers, issued an exquisite edition of _Evolution_.
Thus it will be seen that Smith and his masterpiece have received
proper recognition from the publishers and the public; the
judgment of posterity cannot be hurried; but that judgment can be
anticipated, at least in part. That it will be favorable,
characterizing _Evolution_ as one of the cleverest, smartest
things done by a nineteenth century American poet, the present
writer does not for a moment doubt.
EVOLUTION[20]
[From _Evolution, a Fantasy_ (Boston, 1909)]
I
When you were a tadpole and I was a fish,
In the Paleozoic time.
And side by side on the ebbing tide
We sprawled through the ooze and slime,
Or skittered with many a caudal flip
Through the depths of the Cambrian fen,
My heart was rife with the joy of life,
For I loved you even then.
II
Mindless we lived and mindless we loved,
And mindless at last we died;
And deep in a rift of the Caradoc drift
We slumbered side by side.
The world turned on in the lathe of time,
The hot lands heaved amain,
Till we caught our breath from the womb of death,
And crept into light again.
III
We were Amphibians, scaled and tailed,
And drab as a dead man's hand;
We coiled at ease 'neath the dripping trees,
Or trailed through the mud and sand,
Croaking and blind, with our three-clawed feet
Writing a language dumb,
With never a spark in the empty dark
To hint at a life to come.
IV
Yet happy we lived, and happy we loved,
And happy we died once more;
Our forms were rolled in the clinging mold
Of a Neocomian shore.
The eons came, and the eons fled,
And the sleep that wrapped us fast
Was riven away in a newer day,
And the night of death was past.
V
Then light and swift through the jungle trees
We swung in our airy flights,
Or breathed in the balms of the fronded palms,
In the hush of the moonless nights.
And oh! what beautiful years were these,
When our hearts clung each to each;
When life was filled, and our senses thrilled
In the first faint dawn of speech.
VI
Thus life by life, and love by love,
We passed through the cycles strange,
And breath by breath, and death by death,
We followed the chain of change.
Till there came a time in the law of life
When over the nursing sod
The shadows broke, and the soul awoke
In a strange, dim dream of God.
VII
I was thewed like an Auroch bull,
And tusked like the great Cave Bear;
And you, my sweet, from head to feet,
Were gowned in your glorious hair.
Deep in the gloom of a fireless cave,
When the night fell o'er the plain,
And the moon hung red o'er the river bed.
We mumbled the bones of the slain.
VIII
I flaked a flint to a cutting edge,
And shaped it with brutish craft;
I broke a shank from the woodland dank,
And fitted it, head and haft.
Then I hid me close to the reedy tarn,
Where the Mammoth came to drink;--
Through brawn and bone I drave the stone,
And slew him upon the brink.
IX
Loud I howled through the moonlit wastes,
Loud answered our kith and kin;
From west and east to the crimson feast
The clan came trooping in.
O'er joint and gristle and padded hoof,
We fought, and clawed and tore,
And cheek by jowl, with many a growl,
We talked the marvel o'er.
X
I carved that fight on a reindeer bone,
With rude and hairy hand,
I pictured his fall on the cavern wall
That men might understand.
For we lived by blood, and the right of might,
Ere human laws were drawn.
And the Age of Sin did not begin
Till our brutal tusks were gone.
XI
And that was a million years ago,
In a time that no man knows;
Yet here to-night in the mellow light,
We sit at Delmonico's;
Your eyes are as deep as the Devon springs,
Your hair is as dark as jet,
Your years are few, your life is new,
Your soul untried, and yet--
XII
Our trail is on the Kimmeridge clay,
And the scarp of the Purbeck flags,
We have left our bones in the Bagshot stones,
And deep in the Coraline crags;
Our love is old, our lives are old,
And death shall come amain;
Should it come to-day, what man may say
We shall not live again?
XIII
God wrought our souls from the Tremadoc beds
And furnished them wings to fly;
He sowed our spawn in the world's dim dawn,
And I know that it shall not die;
Though cities have sprung above the graves
Where the crook-boned men made war,
And the ox-wain creaks o'er the buried caves,
Where the mummied mammoths are.
XIV
Then as we linger at luncheon here,
O'er many a dainty dish,
Let us drink anew to the time when you
Were a Tadpole and I was a Fish.
FOOTNOTE:
[20] Copyright, 1909, by L. E. Bassett and Company.
WILL J. LAMPTON
William James Lampton ("Will J. Lampton"), founder of the "Yawp School
of Poetry," was born in Lawrence county, Ohio, May 27, 185-, within
sight of the Kentucky line. (Being a bachelor, like Henry Cleveland
Wood, he has hitherto declined to herald the exact date of his birth.)
His parents were Kentuckians and at the age of three years he was
brought to this State. His boyhood and youth was spent in the hills of
Kentucky. He was fitted at private schools in Ashland and Catletsburg,
Kentucky, for Ohio Wesleyan University, which he left for Marietta
College. In 1877 Mr. Lampton established the _Weekly Review_--spelled
either way!--at Ashland, Kentucky. Although he had had no prior
training in journalism, he wrote eleven columns for his first issue.
His was a Republican sheet, and the good Democrats of Boyd county saw
to it that it survived not longer than a year. From Ashland Mr.
Lampton went to Cincinnati and joined the staff of _The Times_. _The
Times_ was too rapid for him, however, and from Cincinnati he
journeyed to Steubenville, Ohio, to take a position on _The Herald_.
Mr. Lampton remained on that paper for three years, when he again came
to Kentucky to join the staff of the Louisville _Courier-Journal_.
Some time later his paper sent him to Cincinnati, which marked his
retirement from Kentucky journalism. It will thus be seen that he
"lapsed out of Kentucky for a time, and lapsed again at the close of
1882." Leaving Cincinnati he went to Washington and originated the now
well-known department of "Shooting Stars" for _The Evening Star_. For
some years past he has resided in New York, working as a "free-lance."
For a long time he contributed a poem almost every day to _The Sun_,
_The World_, or some other paper. In 1910 the governor of Kentucky
created the poet a real Kentucky colonel; and this momentous elevation
above earth's common mortals is heralded to-day upon his stationery.
Colonel Lampton, then, has published six books, the editions of three
of which are exhausted, and he is now happy to think that his works
are "rare, exceedingly scarce." The first of them, _Mrs. Brown's
Opinions_ (New York, 1886), was followed by his chief volume hitherto,
_Yawps and Other Things_ (Philadelphia, 1900). The "other things" were
poems, not yawps. Colonel Henry Watterson contributed a clever
introduction to the attractive volume; and another form of verse was
born and clothed. _The Confessions of a Husband_ (New York, 1903), was
a slight offset to Mary Adams's _The Confessions of a Wife_. Colonel
Lampton's other books are: _The Trolley Car and the Lady_ (Boston,
1908), being "a trolley trip from Manhattan to Maine;" _Jedge Waxem's
Pocket-Book of Politics_ (New York, 1908), which was "owned by Jedge
Wabash Q. Waxem, Member of Congress from Wayback," bound in the form
of an actual pocket-book; and his latest collection of cleverness,
_Tame Animals I Have Known_ (New York, 1912). The tall--and
bald!--Kentuckian lives at the French Y. M. C. A., New York, in order,
as he himself has said, "to give a Parisian tinge to his religion."
His "den" is a delight to Bohemians, a replica of many a country
newspaper office in Kentucky. He is one of the joys of life surely.
And though he has turned out almost as much as Miss Braddon, he can
recall but the four lines he wrote in 1900 upon Mr. James Lane Allen:
"The Reign of Law"--
Well, Allen, you're lucky;
It's the first time it ever
Rained law in Kentucky.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Bookman_ (September, 1900); _The Bookman_ (May,
1902); _Cosmopolitan Magazine_ (November, 1907); _Lippincott's
Magazine_ (August, 1911).
THESE DAYS[21]
[From _Pearson's Magazine_ (April, 1907)]
Pray,
What is it to-day
That it should be worse than the early days?
Are the modern ways
Darker for all the light
That the years have shed?
Is the right
Dead--
Under the wheels of progress
By the side of the road to success,
Bleeding and bruised and broken,
Left in forgetfulness?
Is truth
Stronger in youth
Than in age? Does it grow
Feeble with years, and move slow
On the path that leads
To the world's needs?
Does man reach up or down
To take the victor's crown
Of progress in science, art and commerce?
In all the works that plan
And purpose to accomplish
The betterment of man?
Does the soul narrow
With the broadening of thought?
Does the heart harden
By what the hand has wrought?
Who shall say
That decay
Marks the good of to-day?
Who dares to state
That God grows less as man grows great?
OUR CASTLES IN THE AIR[22]
[From _Pearson's Magazine_ (September, 1908)]
I builded a castle in the air,
A magical, beautiful pile,
As the wonderful temples of Karnak were,
By the thirsty shores of the Nile.
Its glittering towers emblazoned the blue,
Its walls were of burnished gold,
Which up from the caverns of ocean grew,
Where pearls lay asleep in the cold.
Its windows were gems with the glint and the gleam
Of the sun and the moon and the stars.
Like the eyes of a god in a Brahmin's dream
Of the land of the deodars.
It stood as the work of a master, alone,
Whose marvelous genius had played
The music of heaven in mortar and stone
With the tools of his earthly trade.
I builded a castle in the air,
From its base to its turret crown;
I stretched forth my hand to touch it there
And the whole darn thing fell down.
CHAMPAGNE
[From _The Bohemian_]
Gee whiz,
Fizz,
You shine in our eyes
Like the stars in the skies;
You glint and gleam
Like a jeweled dream;
You sparkle and dance
Like the soul of France,
Your bubbles murmur
And your deeps are gold,
Warm is your spirit,
And your body, cold;
You dazzle the senses,
Dispelling the dark;
You are music and magic,
The song of the lark;
O'er all the ills of life victorious,
You touch the night and make it glorious.
But, say,
The next day?
Oh, go away!
Go away
And stay!
Gee whiz,
Fizz! ! !
FOOTNOTES:
[21] Copyright, 1907, by the Pearson Publishing Company, New York.
[22] Copyright, 1908, by the Pearson Publishing Co., New York.
MARY ANDERSON DE NAVARRO
Mrs. Mary Anderson de Navarro, the celebrated actress of the long ago,
and a writer of much ability, is a product of Kentucky, although she
happened to be born at Sacramento, California, July 28, 1859. When but
six months old she was brought to Louisville, Kentucky, and there her
girlhood days were spent. Miss Anderson was educated at the Ursuline
Convent and the Presentation Academy, two Roman Catholic institutions
of Louisville. At the age of seventeen years, or, on November 27,
1876, she made her _debut_ as _Juliet_ in "Romeo and Juliet," at
Macauley's Theatre, Louisville, and her "hit" was most decided, both
press and public agreeing that a brilliant career was before her. Miss
Anderson's superb figure, her glorious hair, her magnificent voice,
made her the great beauty she was, and thoroughly delightful. Leaving
Louisville for a tour of the principal cities of the country, she
finally arrived in New York, where she was seen in several
Shakespearian roles. Some time later she put on "Pygmalion and
Galatea," one of her greatest successes. In London Miss Anderson won
the hearts of the Britishers with "The Lady of Lyons," "Pygmalion and
Galatea," and other plays. Her second season on the stage saw a
gorgeous production of "Romeo and Juliet" in London, with the American
girl in her first role, _Juliet_. This "held the boards" for an
hundred nights. She returned to the United States, but she was soon
back in London, where "The Winter's Tale," her next play, ran for
nearly two hundred nights. Short engagements on the continent
followed, after which she came again to this country, and to her old
home, Louisville, which visit she has charmingly related in her
autobiography, _A Few Memories_ (London and New York, 1896), which
work Joseph Jefferson once declared would make permanent her stage
successes. From Louisville "Our Mary," as she was called by
Kentuckians, was seen in Cincinnati, from which city she went to
Washington, where she forever rang down the curtain upon her life as
an actress. That was in the spring of 1889, and in June of that year
she was married to Antonio F. de Navarro, since which event she has
resided in England. In recent years Mary Anderson, that was, has
visited in New York, but she has not journeyed out to Kentucky. In
1911 she collaborated in the dramatization of Robert Hichens's novel,
_The Garden of Allah_, and she was in New York for its _premier_.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _A Few Memories_ is delightfully set down, and,
though the author made no especial claims as a writer, her book
will keep her fame green for many years; _McClure's Magazine_
(July, 1908); _Harper's Weekly_ (January 9, 1909); _Century
Magazine_ (March, 1910).
LAZY LOUISVILLE[23]
[From _A Few Memories_ (London, 1896)]