Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January 11, 1862, but she was brought to
Louisville, Kentucky, when but a few months old. Louisville has been her
home ever since. Miss Leonard was educated in private schools, and at
once entered upon her literary labors. She has published ten books for
girls from fourteen to sixteen years of age, but several of them may be
read by "grown-ups." The style of all of them is delightfully simple and
direct. _The Story of the Big Front Door_ (New York, 1898), was her
first story, and this was followed by _Half a Dozen Thinking Caps_ (New
York, 1900); _The Candle and the Cat_ (New York, 1901); _The Spectacle
Man_ (Boston, 1901); _Mr. Pat's Little Girl_ (Boston, 1902); _How the
Two Ends Met_ (New York, 1903); _The Pleasant Street Partnership_
(Boston, 1903); _It All Came True_ (New York, 1904); _On Hyacinth Hill_
(Boston, 1904); and her most recent book, _Everyday Susan_ (New York,
1912). These books have brought joy and good cheer to girls in many
lands, and they have been read by many mothers and fathers with pleasure
and profit. Miss Leonard has made for herself a secure place in the
literature of Kentucky, a place that is peculiarly her own. She has a
novel of mature life in manuscript, which is said to be the finest thing
she has done so far, and which will be published in 1913.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Munsey's Magazine_ (March, 1900); _Who's Who in
America_ (1912-1913).
GOODBY[33]
[From _The Candle and the Cat_ (New York, 1901)]
Trolley sat on the gate-post. If possible he was handsomer than ever,
for the frosty weather had made his coat thick and fluffy, besides
this he wore his new collar. His eyes were wide open to-day, and he
looked out on the world with a solemn questioning gaze.
He had been decidedly upset in his mind that morning at finding an
open trunk in Caro's room, and clothes scattered about on chairs and
on the bed. Of course he did not know what this meant, but to the cat
mind anything unusual is objectionable, and it made him unhappy.
Finally he stretched himself in the tray, where Caro found him.
"You darling pussie!" she cried, "Mamma do look at him. I believe he
wants to go home with us. I wish we could take him."
But Mrs Holland said one little girl was all the traveling companion
she cared for. "It wouldn't do dear, he would be unhappy on the
train," she added.
"I don't know what I should have done without him. He and my candle
were my greatest comforts--except grandpa," and Caro put her cheek
down on Trolley's soft fur.
"What am I to do without my little candle?" her grandfather asked.
"Why, you can have the cat," Caro answered merrily.
No wonder Trolley's mind was disturbed that morning with such a coming
and going as went on,--people running in to say goodby, and Aunt
Charlotte thinking every few minutes of something new for the traveler's
lunch, tickling his nose with tantalizing odors of tongue and chicken.
It was over at last, trunks and bags were sent off, Aunt Charlotte was
hugged and kissed and then Trolley had his turn, and the procession
moved, headed by the president.
"Goodby Trolley; don't forget me!" Caro called, walking backwards and
waving her handkerchief.
When they were out of sight Trolley went and sat on the gate-post and
thought about it. After a while he jumped down and trotted across the
campus with a businesslike air as if he had come to an important
decision. He took his way through the Barrows orchard to the Grayson
garden where there was now a well-trodden path through the snow.
Miss Grayson and her brother were sitting in the library. They had
been talking about Caro when Walter glancing toward the window saw a
pair of golden eyes peering in at him. "There is Trolley," he said,
and called Thompson to let him in.
Trolley entered as if he was sure of a welcome, and walking straight
to Miss Elizabeth, sprang into her lap; and from this on he became a
frequent visitor at the Graysons' dividing his time in fact about
evenly between his two homes.
And thus an unfortunate quarrel which had disturbed the peaceful
atmosphere of Charmington and separated old friends, was forgotten,
and as the president often remarked, it was all owing to the candle
and the cat.
FOOTNOTE:
[33] Copyright, 1901, by Thomas Y. Crowell and Company.
JOSEPH A. ALTSHELER
Joseph Alexander Altsheler, the most prolific historical novelist
Kentucky has produced, was born at Three Springs, Kentucky, April 29,
1862. He was educated at Liberty College, Glasgow, Kentucky, and at
Vanderbilt University. His father's death compelled him to leave
Vanderbilt without his degree, and he entered journalism at Louisville,
Kentucky. Mr. Altsheler was on the Louisville _Evening Post_ for a year,
when he went with _The Courier-Journal_, with which paper his remained
for seven years. During his years on _The Courier-Journal_ he filled
almost every position except editor-in-chief. He later went to New York,
and, since 1892, has been editor of the tri-weekly edition of _The
World_. Mr. Altsheler was married, in 1888, to Miss Sara Boles of
Glasgow, Kentucky, and they have an attractive home in New York. He
began his literary career with a pair of "shilling shockers," entitled
_The Rainbow of Gold_ (New York, 1895), and _The Hidden Mine_ (New York,
1896), neither of which did more than start him upon his real work. The
full list of his tales hitherto is: _The Sun of Saratoga_ (New York,
1897); _A Soldier of Manhattan_ (New York, 1897); _A Herald of the West_
(New York, 1898); _The Last Rebel_ (Philadelphia, 1899); _In Circling
Camps_ (New York, 1900), a story of the Civil War and his best work so
far; _In Hostile Red_ (New York, 1900), the basis of which was first
published in _Lippincott's Magazine_ as "A Knight of Philadelphia;" _The
Wilderness Road_ (New York, 1901); _My Captive_ (New York, 1902);
_Guthrie of the Times_ (New York, 1904), a Kentucky newspaper story of
success, one of Mr. Altsheler's finest tales; _The Candidate_ (New York,
1905), a political romance. The year 1906 witnessed no book from the
author's hand, but in the following year he began the publication of a
series of books for boys, as well as several other novels. His six
stories for young readers are: _The Young Trailers_ (New York, 1907);
_The Forest Runners_ (New York, 1908); _The Free Rangers_ (New York,
1909); _The Riflemen of the Ohio_ (New York, 1910); _The Scouts of the
Valley_ (New York, 1911); and _The Border Watch_ (New York, 1912). "All
the six volumes deal with the fortunes and adventures of two boys, Henry
Ware and Paul Cotter, and their friends, Shif'less Sol Hyde, Silent Tom
Ross and Long Jim Hart, in the early days of Kentucky." Mr. Altsheler's
latest historical novels are: _The Recovery_ (New York, 1908); _The Last
of the Chiefs_ (New York, 1909); _The Horsemen of the Plains_ (New York,
1910); and _The Quest of the Four_ (New York, 1911). He is at the
present time engaged upon a trilogy dealing with the Texan struggle for
independence against Mexico, the first of which has recently appeared,
_The Texan Star_ (New York, 1912). This tale, with the other two that
are to be issued in 1913, to be entitled, _The Texan Scouts_, and _The
Texan Triumph_, are written chiefly for the young. He will also publish
in 1913 a story to be called _Apache Gold_. "Joseph A. Altsheler has
made a fictional tour of American history," one of his keenest critics
has well said; and his work has been linked with James Fenimore Cooper's
by no less a judge of literary productions than the late Richard Henry
Stoddard.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Independent_ (August 9, 1900); _The Book Buyer_
(September, 1900); _The Bookman_ (February, 1903).
THE CALL OF THE DRUM[34]
[From _In Circling Camps_ (New York, 1900)]
Then I listened to the call of the drum.
Fort Sumter was fired upon, and the first cannon shot there set this
war drum to beating in every village; it was never silent; its steady
roll day after day was calling men up to the cannon mouth; it was
persistent, unsatisfied, always crying for more.
Its beat was heard throughout a vast area, over regions whose people
knew of each other as part of the same nation but had never met, calling
above this line to the North, calling below it to the South, summoning
up the legions for a struggle in which old jealousies and old quarrels,
breeding since the birth of the Union, were to be settled.
The drum beat its martial note in the great cities of the Atlantic,
calling the men away from the forges and the shops and the
wharves--clerks, moulders, longshoremen, the same call for all; it
passed on, and its steady beat resounded among the hills and mountains
of the North, calling to the long-limbed farmer boys to drop the
plough and take up the rifle, sending them on to join the moulders,
and clerks, and longshoremen, and putting upon all one stamp, the
stamp of the soldier, food for the cannon--and this food supply was to
be the largest of its time, though few yet dreamed it.
The roll of the drum went on, through the fields, along the rivers,
by the shores of the Great Lakes, out upon the plains, where the
American yet fought with the Indian for a foothold, and into the
interminable forests whose shades hid the pioneers; over levels and
acres and curves of thousands of miles, calling up the deep-chested
Western farmers, men of iron muscles and no pleasures, to whom
unbroken hardship was the natural course of life, and sending them to
join their Eastern brethren at the cannon mouth.
It was an insistent drum, beating through all the day and night, over
the mountains, through the sunless woods and on the burnt prairies,
never resting, never weary. The opportunity was the greatest of the
time, and the drum did not neglect a moment; it was without
conscience, and had no use for mercy, calling, always calling.
Another drum and yet the same was beating in the South, and those who
came at its call differed in little from the others who were marching
to the Northern beat, only the clerks and the mill hands were much
fewer; the same long-limbed and deep-chested race, spare alike of
figure and speech, brown-faced men from the shores of the Gulf, men of
South Carolina in whom the original drop of French blood still
tinctured the whole; brethren of theirs from Louisiana, gigantic
Tennesseans, half-wild horsemen from the Texas plains--all burning
with enthusiasm for a cause that they believed to be right.
This merciless drum rolling out its ironical chuckle noted that these
Northern and Southern countrymen gathering to their standards were alike
in their lack of pleasure; they were a serious race; life had always
been a hard problem for them, a fight, in fact, and this fight into
which they were going was merely another kind of battle, with some
advantages of novelty and change and comradeship that made it
attractive, especially to the younger, the boys. They had been hewers of
wood and drawers of water in every sense of the word, though for
themselves; generations of them had fought Indians, some suffering
torture and death; they had endured bitter cold and burning heat, eaten
at scanty tables, and lived far-away and lonely lives in the wilderness.
They were a rough and hard-handed race, taught to work and not to be
afraid, knowing no masters, accustomed to no splendours either in
themselves or others, holding themselves as good as anybody and thinking
it, according to Nature; their faults those of newness and never of
decay. These were the men who had grown up apart from the Old World, and
all its traditions, far even from the influence which the Atlantic
seaboard felt through constant communication. This life of eternal
combat in one form or another left no opportunity for softness; the
dances, the sports, and all the gaieties which even the lowest in Europe
had were unknown to them, and they invented none to take their place.
They knew the full freedom of speech; what they wished to say they
said, and they said it when and where they pleased. But on the whole
they were taciturn, especially in the hour of trouble; then they made
no complaints, suffering in silence. They imbibed the stoicism of the
Indians from whom they won the land, and they learned to endure much
and long before they cried out. This left one characteristic patent
and decisive, and that characteristic was strength. These men had
passed through a school of hardship, one of many grades; it had
roughened them, but it gave them bodies of iron and an unconquerable
spirit for the struggle they were about to begin.
Another characteristic of those who came at the call of the drum was
unselfishness. They were willing to do much and ask little for it.
They were poor bargain-drivers when selling their own flesh and bones,
and their answer to the call was spontaneous and without price.
They came in thousands, and scores of thousands. The long roll
rumbling from the sea to the Rocky Mountains and beyond cleared
everything; the doubts and the doubters were gone; no more committees;
an end to compromises! The sword must decide, and the two halves of
the nation, which yet did not understand their own strength, swung
forward to meet the issue, glad that it was obvious at last.
There came an exultant note into the call of the drum, as if it
rejoiced at the prospects of a contest that took so wide a sweep. Here
was long and happy work for it to do; it could call to many battles,
and its note as it passed from village to village was resounding and
defiant; it was cheerful too, and had in it a trick; it told the
long-legged boys who came out of the woods of victories and glory, of
an end for a while to the toil which never before had been broken, of
new lands and of cities; all making a great holiday with the final
finish of excitement and reasonable risk. It was no wonder that the
drum called so effectively when it mingled such enticements with the
demands of patriotism. Most of those who heard were no strangers to
danger, and those who did not know it themselves were familiar with it
in the traditions of their fathers and forefathers; every inch of the
land which now swept back from the sea three thousand miles had been
won at the cost of suffering and death, with two weapons, the rifle
and the axe, and they were not going to shun the present trial, which
was merely one in a long series.
The drum was calling to men who understood its note; the nation had
been founded as a peaceful republic, but it had gone already through
the ordeal of many wars, and behind it stretched five generations of
colonial life, an unbroken chain of combats. They had fought
everybody; they had measured the valour of the Englishman, the
Frenchman, the Spaniard, the Hessian, the Mexican, and the red man.
Much gunpowder had been burned within the borders of the Union, and
also its people had burned much beyond them. Those who followed the
call of the drum were flocking to no new trade. By a country with the
shadow of a standing army very many battles had been fought.
They came too, without regard to blood or origin; the Anglo-Saxon
predominated; he gave his characteristics to North and South alike,
all spoke his tongue, but every race in Europe had descendants there,
and many of them--English, Irish, Scotch, French, German, Spanish, and
so on through the list--their blood fused and intermingled, until no
one could tell how much he had of this and how much of that.
The untiring drumbeat was heard through all the winter and summer, and
the response still rolled up from vast areas; it was to be no common
struggle--great armies were to be formed where no armies at all
existed before, and the preparations on a fitting scale went on. The
forces of the North and South gathered along a two-thousand-mile line,
and those trying to look far ahead saw the nature of the struggle.
The preliminary battles and skirmishes began, and then the two
gathered themselves for their mightiest efforts.
FOOTNOTE:
[34] Copyright, 1900, by D. Appleton and Company.
OSCAR W. UNDERWOOD
Oscar Wilder Underwood, orator and magazine writer, was born at
Louisville, Kentucky, May 6, 1862. He is the grandson of Joseph Rogers
Underwood, a celebrated Kentucky statesman of the old _regime_. Mr.
Underwood was prepared for the University of Virginia at the Rugby
School of Louisville. In 1884 he was admitted to the bar and entered
upon the practice of his profession at Birmingham, Alabama, his
present home. He was prominent in Alabama politics prior to his
election to the lower house of Congress, in 1895, as the
representative of the Ninth Alabama district; and he has been
regularly returned to that body ever since. Mr. Underwood is chairman
of the committee on ways and means of the Sixty-second Congress, as
well as majority leader of the House. In the Democratic pre-convention
presidential campaign of 1912, the South almost unanimously endorsed
Mr. Underwood for the nomination. Led by Alabama he was hailed in many
quarters as the first really constructive statesman the South has sent
to Congress in more than twenty years; further, his friends said, he
has devoted his life to the study of the tariff and is now the
foremost exponent of the subject living; his tariff policy is simply
this: stop protecting the profits of the manufacturers; and that
Underwood is Democracy's best asset. Earlier in the year, Mr.
Underwood had been attacked by William J. Bryan, and his retorts in
the House were so severe and unanswerable, he being the only man up to
that time able to cope with the Colonel, that, of course, he had that
distinguished gentleman's influence against him at the Baltimore
convention. Nevertheless, every roll-call found him in third place,
just behind Champ Clark, who was also born in Kentucky, and Woodrow
Wilson, governor of New Jersey. He was running so strong as the
convention neared its close, that at least one Kentucky editor came
home and wrote a long editorial calling upon the Kentucky delegation
to change its vote from Clark to Underwood; but on the following day
the governor of New Jersey was nominated. A few of Mr. Underwood's
contributions to periodicals may be pointed out: two articles in _The
Forum_ on "The Negro Problem in the South;" "The Corrupting Power of
Public Patronage;" "What About the Tariff?" (_The World To-day_,
January, 1912); "The Right and Wrong of the Tariff Question" (_The
Independent_, February 1, 1912); and "High Tariff and American Trade
Abroad" (_The Century_, May, 1912). By friend and foe alike Mr.
Underwood is admitted to be the greatest living student of the tariff;
and his speeches in Congress and out of it on this subject have given
him a national reputation.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The World's Work_ (March, 1912); _Harper's Weekly_
(June 1, 1912); _North American Review_ (June, 1912).
THE PROTECTION OF PROFITS
[Delivered before the Southern Society of New York City (December 16,
1911)]
The kaleidoscope of political issues must and will continually change
with the changing conditions of our Republic but there is one question
that was with us in the beginning and will be in the end, and that is
the most effective, efficient and fairest way of equalizing the
burdens of taxation that are levied by the National Government. Of all
the great powers that were yielded to the Federal Government by the
States when they adopted the Constitution of our country, the one
indispensable to the administration of public affairs is the right to
levy and collect taxes. Without the exercise of that power we could
not maintain an army and navy; we could not establish the courts of
the land; the government would fail to perform its function if the
power to tax were taken away from it. The power to tax carries with it
the power to destroy, and it is, therefore, a most dangerous
governmental power as well as a most necessary one.
There is a very clear and marked distinction between the position of
the two great political parties of America as to how power to tax
should be exercised in the levying of revenue at the custom houses.
The Republican party has maintained the doctrine that taxes should not
only be levied for the purpose of revenue, but also for the purpose of
protecting the home manufacturer from foreign competition. Of
necessity protection from competition carries with it a guarantee of
profits. In the last Republican platform this position of the party
was distinctly recognized when they declared that they were not only
in favor of the protection of the difference in cost at home and
abroad but also a reasonable profit to American industries.
The Democratic party favors the policy of raising its taxes at the
custom house by a tariff that is levied for revenue only, which clearly
excludes the idea of protecting the manufacturer's profits. In my
opinion, the dividing line between the positions of the two great
parties on this question is very clear and easily ascertained in theory.
Where the tariff rates balance the difference in cost at home and
abroad, including an allowance for the difference in freight rates, the
tariff must be competitive, and from that point downward to the lowest
tariff that can be levied it will continue to be competitive to a
greater or less extent. Where competition is not interfered with by
levying the tax above the highest competitive point, the profits of the
manufacturer are not protected. On the other hand, when the duties
levied at the custom house equalizes the difference in cost at home and
abroad and in addition thereto they are high enough to allow the
American manufacturer to make a profit before his competitor can enter
the field, we have invaded the domain of the protection of profits. Some
men assert that the protection of reasonable profits to the home
manufacturer should be commended instead of being condemned, but in my
judgment, the protection of any profit must of necessity have a tendency
to destroy competition and create monopoly, whether the profit protected
is reasonable or unreasonable.
You should bear in mind that to establish a business in a foreign
country requires a vast outlay both in time and capital. Should the
foreigner manufacturer attempt to establish himself in this country he
must advertise his goods, establish selling agencies and points of
distribution before he can successfully conduct his business. After he
has done so, if the home producer is protected by a law that not only
equals the difference in cost at home and abroad, but also protects a
reasonable or unreasonable profit, it is only necessary for him to
drop his prices slightly below the point that the law has fixed to
protect his profits and his competitor must retire from the country or
become a bankrupt, because he would then have to sell his goods at a
loss and not a profit, if he continued to compete. The foreign
competitor having retired, the home producer could raise his prices to
any level that home competition would allow him and it is not probable
that the foreigner who had already been driven out of the country
would again return, no matter how inviting the field, as long as the
law remained on the Statute Books that would enable his competitor to
again put him out of business.