thinly clad in dresses of worsted or dark calico, and a shawl or short
jacket or man's coat, with a sunbonnet or "fascinator" on their heads,
and men's shoes on their feet--the older ones stooped and thin, the
younger ones carrying babies, and all with weather-beaten faces and
bare hands; the men and boys without overcoats, their coarse shirts
unbuttoned, their necks and upper chests bared to the biting cold,
their hands thrust in their pockets as they stood about the fire, and
below their short coat sleeves their wrists showing chapped and red;
while to the little boys and girls had fallen only such odds and ends
of clothing as the older ones could spare. Quickly the doctor got his
party indoors and to work on the Christmas tree. Not one did he tell
of the impending danger, and the Colt's .45 bulging under this man's
shoulder or on that man's hip, and the Winchester in the hollow of an
arm here and there were sights too common in these hills to arouse
suspicion in anybody's mind. The cedar tree, shorn of its branches at
the base and banked with mosses, towered to the angle of the roof.
There were no desks in the room except the one table used by the
teacher. Long, crude wooden benches with low backs faced the tree,
with an aisle leading from the door between them. Lap-robes were hung
over the windows, and soon a gorgeous figure of Santa Claus was
smiling down from the very tiptop of the tree. Ropes of gold and
silver tinsel were swiftly draped around and up and down; enmeshed in
these were little red Santas, gaily colored paper horns, filled with
candy, colored balls, white and yellow birds, little colored candles
with holders to match, and other glittering things; while over the
whole tree a glistening powder was sprinkled like a mist of shining
snow. Many presents were tied to the tree, and under it were the rest
of the labeled ones in a big pile. In a semicircle about the base sat
the dolls in pink, yellow, and blue, and looking down the aisle to the
door. Packages of candy in colored Japanese napkins and tied with a
narrow red ribbon were in another pile, with a pyramid of oranges at
its foot. And yet there was still another pile for unexpected
children, that the heart of none should be sore. Then the candles were
lighted and the door flung open to the eager waiting crowd outside. In
a moment every seat was silently filled by the women and children, and
the men, stolid but expectant, lined the wall. The like of that tree
no soul of them had ever seen before. Only a few of the older ones had
ever seen a Christmas tree of any kind and they but once; and they had
lost that in a free-for-all fight. And yet only the eyes of them
showed surprise or pleasure. There was no word--no smile, only
unwavering eyes mesmerically fixed on the wonderful tree.
The young doctor rose, and only the sweetheart saw that he was nervous,
restless, and pale. As best he could he told them what Christmas was and
what it meant to the world; and he had scarcely finished when a hand
beckoned to him from the door. Leaving one of his friends to distribute
the presents, he went outside to discover that one vandal had come on
ahead, drunk and boisterous. Promptly the doctor tied him to a tree,
shouldered a Winchester, and himself took up a lonely vigil on the
mountainside. Within, Christmas went on. When a name was called a child
came forward silently, usually shoved to the front by some relative,
took what was handed to it, and, dumb with delight, but too shy even to
murmur a word of thanks, silently returned to its seat with the presents
hugged to its breast--presents that were simple, but not to those
mountain mites; colored pictures and illustrated books they were, red
plush albums, simple games, fascinators and mittens for the girls;
pocket-knives, balls, firecrackers, and horns, mittens, caps, and
mufflers for the boys; a doll dressed in everything a doll should wear
for each little girl, no one of whom had ever seen a doll before, except
what was home-made from an old dress or apron tied in several knots to
make the head and body. Twice only was the silence broken. One boy quite
forgot himself when given a pocket-knife. He looked at it suspiciously
and incredulously, turned it over in his hand, opened it and felt the
edge of the blade, and, panting with excitement, cried: "Hit's a shore
'nough knife!"
And again when, to make sure that nobody had been left out, though all
the presents were gone, the master of ceremonies asked if there was any
other little boy or girl who had received nothing, there arose a bent,
toothless old woman in a calico dress and baggy black coat, her gray
hair straggling from under her black sunbonnet, and her hands gnarled
and knotted from work and rheumatism. Simply as a child, she spoke:
"I hain't got nothin'."
Gravely the giver of the gifts asked her to come forward, and,
nonplussed, searched the tree for the most glittering thing he could
find. Then all the women pressed forward and then the men, until all
the ornaments were gone, even the half-burned candles with their
colored holders, which the men took eagerly and fastened in their
coats, clasping the holders to their lapels or fastening the bent wire
in their button-holes, and pieces of tinsel rope, which they threw
over their shoulders--so that the tree stood at last just as it was
when brought from the wild woods outside.
Straightway then the young doctor hurried the departure of the
merry-makers from the Gap. Already the horses stood hitched, and,
while the laprobes were being carried out, a mountaineer, who had
brought along a sack of apples, lined up the men and boys, and at a
given word started running down the road, pouring out the apples as he
ran, while the men and boys scrambled for them, rolling and tussling
in the snow. As the party moved away, the mountaineers waved their
hands and shouted good-by to the doctor, too shy still to pay much
heed to the other "furriners" in the wagon. The doctor looked back
once with a grateful sigh of relief but no one in the wagon knew that
there had been any danger that day. How great the danger had been not
even the doctor knew then. For the coming vandals had got as far as
the top of the Dividing Ridge, had there quarreled and fought among
themselves, so that, as the party drove away, one invader was at that
minute cursing his captors, who were setting him free, and high upon
the ridge another lay dead in the snow.
In time there was a wedding at the Gap, and long afterward the doctor,
riding by the little schoolhouse, stopped at the door, and from his
horse shoved it open. The Christmas tree stood just as he had left it
on Christmas Day, only, like the evergreens on the wall and over the
windows, it, too, was brown, withered and dry. Gently he closed the
door and rode on.
FOOTNOTES:
[39] When Mr. Fox followed the trail of the Goebel tragedy he was
poaching upon the especial preserves of Miss Eleanor Talbot Kinkead,
whose romance of the "autocrat," _The Courage of Blackburn Blair_ (New
York, 1907), was widely read and reviewed. Miss Kinkead was born in
Kentucky, and, besides the story mentioned above, is the author of
_'Gainst Wind and Tide_ (Chicago, 1892); _Young Greer of Kentucky_
(Chicago, 1895); _Florida Alexander_ (Chicago, 1898); and _The
Invisible Bond_ (New York, 1906).
[40] Copyright, 1909, by P. F. Collier and Son.
FANNIE C. MACAULAY
Mrs. Fannie Caldwell Macaulay ("Frances Little"), "the lady of the
Decoration," was born at Shelbyville; Kentucky, November 22, 1863, the
daughter of a jurist. She was educated at Science Hill Academy,
Shelbyville, a noted school for girls. Miss Caldwell was married to
James Macaulay of Liverpool, England, but her marriage proved unhappy.
From 1899 to 1902 Mrs. Macaulay was a kindergarten teacher in
Louisville, Kentucky; and from 1902 to 1907 she was engaged as
supervisor of kindergarten work at Hiroshima, Japan. From Japan she
wrote letters home which were so charming and clever that her niece,
Mrs. Alice Hegan Rice, the Louisville novelist, insisted that she make
them into a book. The result was _The Lady of the Decoration_ (New York,
1906), for more than a year the most popular book in America. This
little epistolary tale of heroic struggle for one's work and one's love,
was read in all parts of the English-speaking world. It set the
high-water mark, probably, for even the "six best sellers." Mrs.
Macaulay's second book, _Little Sister Snow_ (New York, 1909), was the
tender love story of a young American and a Japanese girl. The lad
sailed away to his American sweetheart, leaving "Little Sister Snow"
blowing him kisses from her native shore. Mrs. Macaulay's latest story,
_The Lady and Sada San_ (New York, 1912), was published in London under
the title of _The Lady Married_, which was clearer, as it is the sequel
to _The Lady of the Decoration_. The Lady's husband, Jack, sails away to
China in pursuit of his scientific duties, leaving her lonely in
Kentucky. She decides to make another journey to Japan; and on the way
over she falls in with a charming young American-Japanese girl, Sada
San, whom she subsequently saves from a most cruel fate. She then finds
her husband, ill and exhausted with his long trip, and returns with him
to Kentucky. The descriptions of the countries through which she passes
are very fine: the best writing the author has shown hitherto. The
little volume was reported as the best selling book in America at
Christmas time of 1912. Mrs. Macaulay has spent much of her life during
the last several years in Japan, but her home is at Louisville. She is a
prominent club woman, and a charming lecturer upon the beauties of
Nippon.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Bookman_ (June, 1906); _Who's Who in America_
(1912-1913).
APPROACHING JAPAN[41]
[From _The Lady of the Decoration_ (New York, 1906)]
Still on Board. August 18th.
DEAR MATE:
I am writing this in my berth with the curtains drawn. No I am not a
bit sea-sick, just popular. One of the old ladies is teaching me to
knit, the short-haired missionary reads aloud to me, the girl from
South Dakota keeps my feet covered up, and Dear Pa and Little Germany
assist me to eat.
The captain has had a big bathing tank rigged up for the ladies, and I
take a cold plunge every morning. It makes me think of our old days at
the cottage up at the Cape. Didn't we have a royal time that summer
and weren't we young and foolish? It was the last good time I had for
many a long day--but there, none of that!
Last night I had an adventure, at least it was next door to one. I was
sitting up on deck when Dear Pa came by and asked me to walk with him.
After several rounds we sat down on the pilot house steps. The moon
was as big as a wagon wheel and the whole sea flooded with silver,
while the flying fishes played hide and seek in the shadows. I forgot
all about Dear Pa and was doing a lot of thinking on my own account
when he leaned over and said:
"I hope you don't mind talking to me. I am very, very lonely." Now I
thought I recognized a grave symptom, and when he began to tell me
about his dear departed, I knew it was time to be going.
"You have passed through it," he said. "You can sympathize."
I crossed my fingers in the dark. "We are both seeking a life work in
a foreign field--" he began again, but just here the purser passed. He
almost stumbled over us in the dark and when he saw me and my elderly
friend, he actually smiled!
Don't you dare tell Jack about this, I should never hear the last of it.
Can you realize that I am three whole weeks from home! I do, every
second of it. Sometimes when I stop to think what I am doing my heart
almost bursts! But then I am so used to the heartache that I might be
lonesome without it; who knows?
If I can only do what is expected of me, if I can only pick up the
pieces of this smashed-up life of mine and patch them into a decent
whole that you will not be ashamed of, then I will be content.
The first foreign word I have learned is "Alohaoe," I think it means
"my dearest love to you." Anyhow I send it laden with the tenderest
meaning. God bless and keep you all, and bring me back to you a wiser
and a gladder woman.
FOOTNOTE:
[41] Copyright, 1906, by the Century Company.
JAMES D. BRUNER
James Dowden Bruner, editor of many masterpieces of French literature,
as well as an original critic of that literature, was born near
Leitchfield, Kentucky, May 19, 1864. He was graduated from Franklin
College, Franklin, Indiana, in 1888, and then taught French and German
at Franklin for two years. Professor Bruner studied a year in Paris
and Florence and, on his return to this country, in 1893, he was
elected professor of Romance languages in the University of Illinois.
Johns Hopkins University conferred the degree of Ph. D. upon him, in
1894, his dissertation being _The Phonology of the Pistojese Dialect_
(Baltimore, 1894, a brochure). From 1895 to 1899 Dr. Bruner was
professor of Romance languages and literatures in the University of
Chicago; from 1901 to 1909 he held a similar chair in the University
of North Carolina; and since 1909 he has been president of Chowan
College, Murfreesboro, North Carolina. Dr. Bruner has edited, with
introductions and critical notes, _Les Adventures du Dernier
Abencerage_, par Chateaubriand (New York, 1903); _Le Roman d'un Jeune
Homme Pauvre_, par Octave Feuillet (Boston, 1904); _Hernani_, par
Victor Hugo (New York, 1906); and _Le Cid_, par Pierre Corneille (New
York, 1908), his finest critical edition of any French classic
hitherto. His _Studies in Victor Hugo's Dramatic Characters_ (Boston,
1908), announced the advent of a new critic of the great Frenchman's
plays. It is an excellent piece of work.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Library of Southern Literature_ (Atlanta, 1910, v.
xv); _Who's Who in America_ (1912-1913).
THE FRENCH CLASSICAL DRAMA[42]
[From _Le Cid_, par Pierre Corneille (New York, 1908)]
Corneille in the _Cid_ founded the French classical drama. Before the
appearance of this masterpiece, a transition drama containing
characteristics of the tragi-comedy as well as of the regular
classical tragedy, of which Corneille's next three plays, _Horace_,
_Cinna_, and _Polyeucte_, were to be perfect examples, the
tragi-comedy prevailed in France. This tragi-comedy, or irregular
drama, was a Renaissance product, having a history and characteristics
of its own, being largely influenced by the tragedies of Seneca. Its
most important characteristics are non-historic subjects, serious or
tragic plots, the mixture of comic and tragic elements or tones, the
high rank of the leading characters, the _style noble_, looseness of
structure, the disregard of the minor or Italian unities of time and
place, the classical form of verse and number of acts, romanesque
elements, and a happy ending.
The most striking characteristic of the French classical drama of the
seventeenth century, as of the modern short story, is that of
compression. This statement is true both as to its form and its
content. The accidental accessories of splendid decorations,
magnificent costumes, subsidiary plots, and secondary characters that
might detract from the main situation or obscure the general
impression, are, as far as possible, sacrificed to the essential or
necessary interests of dramatic art. Improbable and irrational
elements are reduced to a minimum. Digressions, episodes, long
soliloquies, oratorical tirades, minute descriptions of external
nature, and complicated machinery that would encumber the plot or
destroy proportion, are largely eliminated. The classical dramatist is
too sensitive to the beautiful, the sublime, the essential, and the
universal to admit into his conception of fine art either moral and
physical deformity or the accidental and particular aspects of life.
Classical tragedy is furthermore narrow in its choice of subject and
form, in its number and range of characters, in its representation of
material and physical action on the stage, and in its number of
events, incidents, and actions. Its subjects and materials are taken
almost wholly from ancient classical and Hebrew sources. Mediaeval,
national, and modern foreign raw material, whether life, history,
legend, or literature, is seldom utilized. Its manners and ideas are
those of the court and the _salons_, and its religion is pagan. Its
language is general, cold, regular, and conventional, and its
versification is confined to rimed Alexandrine couplets, with the
immovable caesura and little _enjambement_.
The Frenchman's love of proportion, symmetry, restraint, and logical
order led him to the cult of form. In striving after perfection of form,
he naturally adopted compression as the best method of expressing this
innate artistic reserve. This compactness and concentration of form,
this compressed brevity, which the Frenchman inherited from the Latins,
is well illustrated by the following lines from Wordsworth:
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower;
Hold infinity in the palm of hand,
And eternity in an hour.
FOOTNOTE:
[42] Copyright, 1909, by the Author.
MADISON CAWEIN
Madison Cawein, whom English critics name the greatest living American
poet, was born at Louisville, Kentucky, March 23, 1865. He was
christened "Madison Julius Cawein," but he had not gotten far in the
literary lane before his middle name was dropped, though the "J." may be
found upon the title-pages of his earlier books. After some preparatory
work he entered the Louisville Male High School, in 1881, at the age of
sixteen years. At high school Madison Cawein began to write rhymes which
he read to the students and teachers upon stated occasions, and he was
hailed by them as a true maker of song. He was graduated in 1886 in a
class of thirteen members. Being poor in purse, Mr. Cawein accepted a
position in a Louisville business house, and he is one of the few
American poets who wrote in the midst of such commercialism. His was the
singing heart, not to be crushed by conditions or environment of any
kind. The year after his graduation he collected the best of his school
verse and published them as his first book, _Blooms of the Berry_
(Louisville, 1887). In some way William Dean Howells and Thomas Bailey
Aldrich saw this volume, praised it, and fixed the future poet in his
right path. _The Triumph of Music_ (Louisville, 1888), sounded after
_The Blooms of the Berry_, and since that time hardly a year has passed
without the poet putting forth a slender volume. The next few years saw
the publication of his _Accolon of Gaul_ (Louisville, 1889); _Lyrics and
Idyls_ (Louisville, 1890); _Days and Dreams_ (New York, 1891); _Moods
and Memories_ (New York, 1892); _Red Leaves and Roses_ (New York, 1893);
_Poems of Nature and Love_ (New York, 1893); _Intimations of the
Beautiful_ (New York, 1894), one of his longest poems; _The White Snake_
(Louisville, 1895), metrical translations from the German poets;
_Undertones_ (Boston, 1896), which contained some of the finest lyrics
he has done so far; _The Garden of Dreams_ (Louisville, 1896); _Shapes
and Shadows_ (New York, 1898); _Idyllic Monologues_ (Louisville, 1898);
_Myth and Romance_ (New York, 1899); _One Day and Another_ (Boston,
1901), a lyrical eclogue; _Weeds by the Wall_ (Louisville, 1901); _A
Voice on the Wind_ (Louisville, 1902). A glance at these titles,
following fast upon each other, convinces the reader that Mr. Cawein was
writing and publishing far too much, that he was not sufficiently
critical of his work. Edmund Gosse, the famous English critic, has
always been one of Mr. Cawein's most ardent admirers, and, in 1903, he
selected the best of his poems, wrote a delightful introduction for
them, and they were published in London under the title of _Kentucky
Poems_. This volume brought the poet many new friends, as it assembled
the best of his work from volumes long out of print and rather difficult
to procure. _The Vale of Tempe_ (New York, 1905), contained the best of
Mr. Cawein's work written since the publication of _Weeds by the Wall_
in 1901. _Nature-Notes and Impressions_ (New York, 1906), a collection
of poems and prose-pastels, was especially notable for the fact that it
contained the first and only short-story the poet has written, entitled
"Woman or--What?"
_The Poems of Madison Cawein_ (Indianapolis, 1907, five volumes),
charmingly illustrated by Mr. Eric Pape, the Boston artist, with Mr.
Gosse's introduction, brought together all of Mr. Cawein's work that
he cared to rescue from many widely scattered volumes. He made many
revisions in the poems, some of which (in the judgment of the writer)
tend to mar their original beauty. But it is a work of which any poet
may be proud; and it is not surpassed in quality or quantity by any
living American.
Mr. Cawein's _Ode in Commemoration of the Founding of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony_ (Louisville, 1908), which he read at
Gloucester in August, 1907, was rather lengthy, but it contained many
strong and fine lines; and a group of New England sonnets, some of the
best he has done, appeared at the end of the ode. His _New Poems_
(London, 1909), was followed by _The Giant and the Star_ (Boston,
1909), a small collection of children's verse, dedicated to his little
son, who furnished their inspiration. _Let Us Do the Best that We Can_
(Chicago, 1909), was a beautiful brochure; and _The Shadow Garden and
Other Plays_ (New York, 1910), was four chamber-dramas which have been
highly praised, and which contain some of the most delicate work the
poet has done. _So Many Ways_ (Chicago, 1911), was another
pamphlet-poem; and it was followed by _Poems_ (New York, 1911),
selected from the whole range of his work by himself, with a foreword
by William Dean Howells. Mr. Cawein's latest volume is entitled _The
Poet, the Fool and the Faeries_ (Boston, 1912). It brings together his
work of the last two or three years, both in the field of the lyric
and of the drama. And from the mechanical aspect it is his most
beautiful book. The poet will publish two books through a Cincinnati
firm in 1913, to be entitled _The Republic--a Little Book of Homespun
Verse_, and _Minions of the Moon_.
In March, 1912, literary Louisville celebrated the twenty-fifth
anniversary of the publication of _Blooms of the Berry_, and the
forty-seventh birthday of its author, Madison Cawein, the city's most
distinguished man of letters. This was the first public recognition Mr.
Cawein has received in the land of his birth, though it is now proposed
to place a bust of him in the public library of Louisville. He is better
known in New York or London than he is in Kentucky, but it will not be
long before the people of his own land realize that they have been
entertaining a world-poet, possibly, unawares. He is so far removed from
any Kentucky poet of the present school that to mention him in the same
breath with any of them is to make one's self absurd. Looking backward
to the beginnings of our literature and coming carefully down the slope
to this time, but two poets rise out of the mist of yesterday to greet
Cawein and challenge him for the laureateship of Kentucky makers of
song: Theodore O'Hara with his immortal elegy, and Daniel Henry Holmes
with his sheaf of tender lyrics. These three are the nearest approach to
the ineffable poets--who left the earth with the passing of
Tennyson--yet nurtured upon Kentucky soil.
Mr. Cawein is, of course, a poet of Nature, a landscape poet in
particular who paints every color on the palette into his work. Had he
been an artist he would have exhausted all colors conceived thus far
by man, and would fain have originated new ones. There are literally
hundreds of his poems in which every line is as surely a stroke as if
done with the brush of a painter. Color, color, is his
shibboleth-scheme, and he who would woo Nature in her richest robes
may read Cawein and be content.
Amazing as it may seem Mr. Cawein has thirty-four volumes to his
credit--almost one for every year of his life. This statement stamps
him as one of the most prolific poets of modern times, if not, indeed,
of all time. And that it is not all quantity, may be seen in the
recent declaration of _The Poetry Review_ of London: "He appears quite
the biggest figure among American poets; his _return to nature_ has no
tinge of affectation; it is genuine to the smallest detail. If he
suffers from fatigue, it is in him, at least, not through that
desperate satiety of town life which with so many recent poets has
ended in impressionism and death."
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Poets of the Younger Generation_, by William Archer
(London, 1901); _The Younger American Poets_, by Jessie B.
Rittenhouse (Boston, 1904); _History of American_ _Literature_,
by R. P. Halleck (New York, 1911); _The Poetry Review_ (London,
October, 1912).
CONCLUSION[43]
[From _Undertones_ (Boston, 1896)]
The songs Love sang to us are dead:
Yet shall he sing to us again,
When the dull days are wrapped in lead,
And the red woodland drips with rain.