of decided performance, was born near Merry Oaks, Kentucky, February
12, 1872. When she was a child her parents removed to Louisville,
Kentucky, and in the public schools of that city she was educated,
after which she spent a half-year at old Eminence College, Eminence,
Kentucky. In July, 1894, Miss Greer was married to Dr. Hazel G.
Petrie, of Fairview, Kentucky, who, for the past ten years, has been
mine physician in various sections of eastern Kentucky. At the present
time he is serving six mines and making his home at Chenoa, near
Pineville, Kentucky. In her writings Mrs. Petrie has created a
character of great originality in Angeline Keaton, an unlettered
inhabitant of a remote Kentucky hamlet. "Of the original Angeline,"
Mrs. Petrie once wrote, "I know but little. She and her shiftless,
'no-erkount' husband, Lum, together with her son, Jeems Henry, lived
in Barren county, not far from Glasgow. Angeline supported the family
by working on the 'sheers,' 'diggin one half the taters fur tother
half!' She was very anxious for her boy to 'git an edjycation' and no
sooner would he get comfortably settled in a 'cheer' until she would
exclaim, 'Jeems Henry! Git up offen them britches, you lazy whelp! Git
yer book and be gittin some larnin in your head!' Without a word Jim
Henry would climb up the log wall and from under the rafters abstract
his blue back speller." Characterization is Mrs. Petrie's chief
strength; and she is a positive refutation of the masculine dictum
that women lack humor. With her friend, Miss Leigh Gordon Giltner, the
short-story writer, she collaborated on an Angeline sketch, entitled
"When the Bees Got Busy," which was published in the _Overland
Monthly_ for August, 1904; and the prize story reprinted at the end of
this note is the only other Angeline story that has been published so
far. She has won several prizes with other stories, but a group of the
Angeline sketches are in manuscript, and they will shortly appear in
book form. _Angeline Keaton_, "with her gaunt angular form clad in its
scant calico gown," is sure to "score" when she makes her bow between
the covers of a book. She is every bit as cleverly conceived as _Mrs.
Wiggs_, _Susan Clegg_, or any of the other quaint women who have
recently won the applause of the American public.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Letters from Mrs. Petrie to the Author; Miss Leigh
Gordon Giltner's study in _The Southern Home Journal_ (Louisville).
ANGELINE JINES THE CHOIR
[From _The Evening Post_ (Louisville, Kentucky)]
She sat upon the edge of the veranda, fanning herself with her "split"
sunbonnet, a tall, angular woman, whose faded calico gown "lost
connection" at the waist line. Her spring being dry, she came to our
well for water. Discovering that Angeline Keaton was a "character," I
invariably inveigled her to rest awhile on our cool piazza before
retracing her steps up the steep, rocky hillside to her cabin home.
"I missed you yesterday," I said as a starter.
"Yes'm," she answered in a voice harsh and strident, yet touched with
a peculiar sibilant quality characteristic of the Kentucky
backwoodsman, "and thar wuz others that missed me, too!"
Settling herself comfortably, she produced from some hidden source a
box of snuff and plied her brush vigorously.
"We-all have got inter a wrangle over at Zion erbout the church
music," she began. "I and Lum, my old man, has been the leaders ever
since we moved here from Lick-skillet. We wuz alluz on hand--Lum with
his tunin' fork and me with my strong serpraner. When it come to
linin' off a song, Lum wuz pintedly hard to beat. Why, folks come from
fur and near to hear us, and them city folks, at Mis' Bowles' last
summer, 'lowed thar warn't nothing in New York that could tech us. One
of 'em offered us a dollar to sing inter a phonygraf reckerd, but we
wuz afeerd to put our lives in jopperdy by dabblin' in 'lectricerty.
But even celebrerty has its drawbacks, and a 'profit is not without
honor in his own country,' as the saying is. A passel of 'em got
jellus, a church meeting was called, unbeknownst to us, and ermong 'em
they agreed to make a change in the music at old Zion. That
peaked-faced Betty Button wuz at the bottom of it. Ever since she tuk
that normal course at Bowling Green she's been endeverin' to push
herself inter promernence here at Bear Waller. Fust she got up a class
in delsarty, but even Bear Waller warn't dull ernough to take to that
foolishness! Then she canvassed the county with a cuttin' system and a
book called 'Law at a Glance.' Now she's teaching vokle culshure. She
orter know singers, like poits, is born, not made! Jest wantin' to
sing won't do it. It takes power. It's give up mine's the powerfullest
voice in all Bear Waller. I kin bring old Brindle in when she's
grazing in the woods, back o' Judge Bowles' medder, and I simply step
out on the portico and call Lum to dinner when he's swoppin' yarns
down to the store quarter o' mile away. Fur that matter, though, a
deef and dum man could fetch Lum to _vittles_.
"Do you know Bear Waller owes its muserkil educashun to me? Mine wuz
the fust accordyon brought to the place, and I wuz allus ready to play
fur my nabers. I didn't hafter be _begged_. I orgernized the Zobo
band, I lent 'em my ballads, but whar's my thanks? At the battin' of
an eye they're ready to drop me for that quavery-voiced Button gal and
them notes o' hern that's no more'n that many peryids and commers.
"When the committee waited on me and Lum we jest flew mad and 'lowed
we'd quit. Maybe we wuz hasty, but it serves 'em right. Besides, these
Bear Wallerites ain't compertent to appreshiate a voice like mine,
nohow. I decided I'd take my letter to Glasgow and jine that brag
choir of their'n. It did me good to think how it 'ud spite some folks
to see me leadin' the singin' at the county seat!
"Lum wuz dead set ergin it, but armin' myself with the rollin' pin and
a skillet o' bilin grease, I finally pervailed on him to give in. Lum
is of a yieldin' dispersishun if a body goes at 'im right.
"Jim Henry, that's my boy, an' I tuk a early start. We had tied up the
colt in the cow shed and I wuz congratulatin' myself on bein' shet of
the pesky critter when I heerd him nicker. Lookin' back, I saw him
comin' in a gallerp, his head turned to one side, while he fairly
obscured the landscape with great clouds o' pike dust!
"We wuz crossin' the railroad when old Julie heered that nicker, an'
right thar she balked. Neither gentle persuasion from the peach tree
switch which I helt in my hand, nor well-aimed kicks of Jim Henry's
boots in her flanks could budge her till that colt come up pantin'
beside her. We jest did clear the track when the accomerdashun whizzed
by. Well, sir, when old Julie spied them kyars she began buck-jumpin'
in a manner that would'er struck terror to a less experienced
hosswoman. Jim Henry, who wuz gazin' at the train with childlike
pleasure, wuz tuk wholly by suprise, and before he knowed what wuz up
he wuz precippytated inter the branches o' a red-haw tree. He crawled
out, a wreck, his face and hands scratched and bleedin' and his
britches hangin' in shreds, and them his Sundays, too! I managed to
pin 'em tergether with beauty pins, and cautionin' him not to turn his
back to the ordiance, we finally resumed our journey. That colt alluz
tries hisself, and jest as we reached the square, in Glasgow, his
appertite began clammerin', and Julie refused to go till the pesky
critter's wants wuz appeased. Them Glasgowites is dear lovers of good
hoss flesh, and quite a crowd gethered to discuss the good pints of
the old mare and that mule colt.
"Some boys mistook Jim Henry for somebody they knowed and hollered,
'Say, Reube!' 'Hey, Reube!' at him. Jim Henry wuz fur explainin' to
'em their mistake, till one of 'em began to sing, 'When Reuben comes
to town, he's shore to be done brown!' 'Jim Henry,' says I, sternly,
'you're no child o' mine ef you take _that_! Now, if you don't get
down and thrash him I'm agoin' to set you afire when I get you home.'
"Jim Henry needed no second biddin'. He wuz off that nag in a jiffy,
and the way he did wallerp that boy wuz a cawshun! He sellerbrated his
victry by givin' the Bear Waller war-whoop. Then crawlin' up behind
me, he said he wuz _now_ ready fur meetin'. That boy's a born fiter.
He gets it honest, for me and Lum are both experts, but then practice
makes perfect, as the sayin' is.
"Our arrival created considerable stir in meetin'. Why is it that when a
distinguished person enters a church it allus perduces a flutter? Owin'
to the rent in Jim Henry's britches, I shoved him inter the back seat.
Cautionin' him not to let me ketch him throwin' paper wads, I swept
merjestercally up the ile and tuk a seat by the orgin. A flood of
approvin' glances fastened themselves on my jet bonnet and fur-lined
dolman. I wuz sorry I didn't know the fust song. It must have been a new
one to that choir. Thar wuz four of 'em and each one wuz singin' it to a
different tune, and they jest couldn't keep tergether! The coarse-voiced
gal to my rear lagged dretfully. When the tall blonde, who wuz the only
one of 'em that knowed the tune, when she'd sing,
"'Wake the song!'
that gal who lagged would echo,
"'Wake the song!'
in a voice as coarse as Lum's. She 'peared to depend on the tall gal
for the words, for when the tall 'un would sing,
"'Song of Ju-ber-lee,'
the gal that lagged, and the two gents, would repeat, 'Of Ju-ber-lee.'
"I passed her my book, thinkin' the words wuz tore out o' hern, but,
la! she jest glared at me, and she and them gents, if anything,
bellered louder'n ever. I looked at the preacher, expecting to see him
covered with shygrin, but, la! he wuz takin' it perfectly cam, with
his eyes walled up at the ceilin' and his hands folded acrost his
stummick like he might be havin' troubles of his own.
"I kept hopin' that tryo would either ketch up with the leader or jest
have the curridge to quit. Goodness knows, I done what I could fur
'em, by beatin' time with my turkey wing.
"Somebody must have give 'em a tip, for the next song which the
preacher give out as 'a solo,' that tryo jest pintedly giv it up and
set thar is silent as clambs. The tall gal riz and commenced singin'
and that tryo never pertended to help her out! My heart ached in
symperthy fur her as she stood thar alone, singin' away with her voice
quaverin', and not a human bein' in that house jined in, not even the
_preacher_! But she had _grit_, and kept right on! Most people
would'er giv right up. She's a middlin' good singer, but is dretfully
handercapt by that laggin' tryo and a passel o' church members that
air too triflin' to sing in meetin'. The song wuz a new 'un to me, but
havin' a nacheral year for music, I soon ketched the tune and jined in
on the last verse with a vim. Of course I could only hummit, not
knowin' the words, but I come down on it good and strong and showed
them folks that Angeline Keaton ain't one to shirk a duty, if they
wuz. After the sermon the preacher giv out 'Thar Is a Fountain Filled
with Blood.' Here wuz my chanct to show 'em what the brag-voice of
Bear Waller wuz like!
"With my voice risin' and falling and dwellin' with extry force on the
fust syllerbles of foun-tin and sin-ners, in long, drawn-out meeter, I
fairly lost myself in the grand old melerdy. I wuz soarin' inter the
third verse when I discovered I wuz the only one in the house that
knowed it! The rest of 'em wuz singin' it to a friverlous tune like
them Mose Beasley plays on his fiddle! What wuz more, they wuz
titterin' like I wuz in errer! The very idy! That wuz too much fur me,
and beckernin' Jim Henry to foller, I marched outer meetin'!
"We found the old mare had slipped the bridle and gone home, so thar
wuz nothin' left fur us to do but foot it. The last thing I heered as
we struck the Bear Waller pike and set out fur home wuz that
coarse-voiced gal, still lagging behind, as she sang,
"'The Blood of the Lamb!'"
MARIA THOMPSON DAVIESS
Miss Maria Thompson Daviess, author of _The Melting of Molly_, was born
at Harrodsburg, Kentucky, in October, 1872, the descendant of the famous
Joseph Hamilton Daviess, the granddaughter of the historian of
Harrodsburg, whose full name she bears, and the niece of Mrs. H. D.
Pittman and Miss Annie Thompson Daviess, the Kentucky novelists. Miss
Daviess was graduated from Science Hill Academy, Shelbyville, Kentucky,
in 1891, after which she studied English for a year at Wellesley
College. She then went to Paris to study art at Julien's, and several of
her pictures have been hung in the Salon. As a miniature painter she
excelled. At the conclusion of her art course, Miss Daviess returned to
America, making her home at Nashville, Tennessee, where she resides at
the present time. She taught at Belmont College, Nashville, for a year
or more, and set up as a painter of miniatures for a public that
demanded values in their portraits that she could not see fit to grant,
so she finally decided to write. Miss Daviess's first book, and the one
that she is still best known by, was _Miss Selina Lue and the Soap-Box
Babies_ (Indianapolis, 1909). Miss Lue, spinster, tucks babies into a
row of soap-boxes, maintaining sort of a free day-nursery, and the
reader has much delicious humor from her duties. _Miss Selina Lue_ was
followed by _The Road to Providence_ (Indianapolis, 1910), dominated by
the character of Mother Mayberry, guide, philosopher, and friend to a
Tennessee town; _Rose of Old Harpeth_ (Indianapolis, 1911), was a love
story "as ingenuous and sweet as a boy's first kiss under a ruffled
sunbonnet." Selina Lue and Mother Mayberry were both past their bloom;
Rose possessed the power and glory of youth. _The Treasure Babies_
(Indianapolis, 1911), was a delightful children's story, which has been
dramatized and produced, but Miss Daviess's most charming novel, _The
Melting of Molly_ (Indianapolis, 1912), was "the saucy success of the
season," for eight months the best selling book in America. Molly must
melt from the plumpest of widows to the slenderest of maidens in just
three months because the sweetheart of her girlhood days, now a
distinguished diplomat, homeward bound, demands a glimpse of her in the
same blue muslin dress which she wore at their parting years ago. The
melting process, with the O. Henry twist at the end, is the author's
business to narrate, and she does it in the most fetching manner. The
little novel is "gay, irresistible, all sweetness and spice and
everything nice." Miss Daviess's latest story, _Sue Jane_ (New York,
1912), has for its heroine a little country girl who comes to Woodlawn
Seminary (which is none other than the author's _alma mater_, Science
Hill), is at first laughed at and later loved by the girls of that
school. She is as quaint and charming a child as one may hope to meet in
the field of juvenile fiction. _The Elected Mother_ (Indianapolis,
1912), the best of the three short-stories tucked in the back of the
Popular edition of _Miss Selina Lue_ (New York, 1911), was a rather
unique argument for woman's equal rights. It proves that motherhood and
mayoralties may go hand and hand--in at least one modern instance.
_Harpeth Roses_ (Indianapolis, 1912), were wise saws culled from the
pages of her first four books, made into an attractive little volume.
Just as the year of 1912 came to a close Miss Daviess's publishers
announced that her new novel, _Andrew the Glad_, a love story, would
appear in January, 1913. _Phyllis_, another juvenile, will also be
issued in 1913, but will first be serialized in _The Visitor_, a
children's weekly, of Nashville. That Miss Daviess has been an
indefatigable worker may be gathered at a glance. She has the "best
seller touch," which is the most gratifying thing a living writer may
possess. The present public demands that its reading shall be as light
as a cream puff and sparking as a brook, and, in order to qualify for
_The Bookman's_ monthly handicap, a writer must possess those two
requisites: deftness of touch and brightness. These Miss Daviess has.
And so, when the summer-days are over-long and the winter's day is dull,
Maria Thompson Daviess and her brood of books will be found certain
dispellers of earthly woes and bringers of good cheer.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Bookman_ (December, 1909); _The Bookman_ (July,
1912).
MRS. MOLLY MORALIZES[70]
[From _The Melting of Molly_ (Indianapolis, 1912)]
Why don't people realize that a seventeen-year-old girl's heart is a
sensitive wind-flower that may be shattered by a breath? Mine
shattered when Alfred went away to find something he could do to make
a living, and Aunt Adeline gave the hard green stem to Mr. Carter when
she married me to him. Poor Mr. Carter!
No, I wasn't twenty, and this town was full of women who were aunts
and cousins and law-kin to me, and nobody did anything for me. They
all said with a sigh of relief, "It will be such a nice safe thing for
you, Molly." And they really didn't mean anything by tying up a gay,
dancing, frolicking, prancing colt of a girl with a terribly ponderous
bridle. But God didn't want to see me always trotting along slow and
tired and not caring what happened to me, even pounds and pounds of
plumpness, so he found use for Mr. Carter in some other place but this
world, and I feel that He is going to see me through whatever happens.
If some of the women in my missionary society knew how friendly I feel
with God, they would put me out for contempt of court.
No, the town didn't mean anything by chastening my spirit with Mr.
Carter, and they didn't consider him in the matter at all, poor man.
Of that I feel sure. Hillsboro is like that. It settled itself here in
a Tennessee valley a few hundreds of years ago and has been hatching
and clucking over its own small affairs ever since. All the houses set
back from the street with their wings spread out over their gardens,
and mothers here go on hovering even to the third and fourth
generation. Lots of times young, long-legged, frying-size boys
scramble out of the nests and go off to college and decide to grow up
where their crow will be heard by the world. Alfred was one of them.
And, too, occasionally some man comes along from the big world and
marries a plump little broiler and takes her away with him, but mostly
they stay and go to hovering life on a corner of the family estate.
That's what I did.
I was a poor, little, lost chick with frivolous tendencies and they all
clucked me over into this empty Carter nest which they considered
well-feathered for me. It gave them all a sensation when they found out
from the will just how well it was feathered. And it gave me one, too.
All that money would make me nervous if Mr. Carter hadn't made Doctor
John its guardian, though I sometimes feel that the responsibility of me
makes him treat me as if he were my step-grandfather-in-law. But all in
all, though stiff in its knees with aristocracy, Hillsboro is lovely
and loving; and couldn't inquisitiveness be called just real affection
with a kind of squint in its eye?
And there I sat on my front steps, being embraced in a perfume of
everybody's lilacs and peachblow and sweet syringa and affectionate
interest and moonlight, with a letter in my hand from the man whose
two photographs and many letters I had kept locked up in the garret
for years. Is it any wonder I tingled when he told me that he had
never come back because he couldn't have me and that now the minute he
landed in America he was going to lay his heart at my feet? I added
his honors to his prostrate heart myself and my own beat at the
prospect. All the eight years faded away and I was again back in the
old garden down at Aunt Adeline's cottage saying good-by, folded up in
his arms. That's the way my memory put the scene to me, but the word
"folded" made me remember that blue muslin dress again. I had promised
to keep it and wear it for him when he came back--and I couldn't
forget that the blue belt was just twenty-three inches and mine
is--no, I _won't_ write it. I had got that dress out of the old trunk
not ten minutes after I had read the letter and measured it.
No, nobody would blame me for running right across the garden to
Doctor John with such a real trouble as that! All of a sudden I hugged
the letter and the little book up close to my breast and laughed until
the tears ran down my cheeks.
Then before I went into the house I assembled my garden and had family
prayers with my flowers. I do that because they are all the family I've
got, and God knows that all His budding things need encouragement,
whether it is a widow or a snowball-bush. He'll give it to us!
And I'm praying again as I sit here and watch for the doctor's light
to go out. I hate to go to sleep and leave it burning, for he sits up
so late and he is so gaunt and thin and tired-looking most time.
That's what the last prayer is about, almost always,--sleep for him
and no night call!
FOOTNOTE:
[70] Copyright, 1912, by the Bobbs-Merrill Company.
CALE YOUNG RICE
Cale Young Rice, poet and dramatist, was born at Dixon, Kentucky,
December 7, 1872. He graduated from Cumberland University, in
Tennessee, and then went to Harvard University, where he received his
Bachelor of Arts degree in 1895, and his Master's degree in the
following year. In 1902 Mr. Rice was married to Miss Alice Caldwell
Hegan, whose _Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch_ had been published the
year before. Mr. Rice has been busy for years as a lyric poet and
maker of plays for the study, though several of them, indeed, have
received stage presentation. His several books of shorter poems are:
_From Dusk to Dusk_ (Nashville, Tennessee, 1898); _With Omar_
(Lebanon, Tennessee, 1900), privately printed in an edition of forty
copies; _Song Surf_ (Boston, 1901), in which _With Omar_ was
reprinted; _Nirvana Days_ (New York, 1908); _Many Gods_ (New York,
1910); and his latest book of lyrics, _Far Quests_ (New York, 1912).
Mr. Rice's plays have been published as follows: _Charles di Tocca_
(New York, 1903); _David_ (New York, 1904); _Plays and Lyrics_ (London
and New York, 1906), a large octavo containing _David_, _Yolanda of
Cyprus_, a poetic drama, and all of his best work; _A Night in
Avignon_ (New York, 1907), a little one-act play based upon the loves
of Petrarch and Laura, which was "put upon the boards" in Chicago with
Donald Robertson in the leading _role_. It was part one of a dramatic
trilogy of the Italian Renaissance. Next came a reprinting in an
individual volume of his _Yolanda of Cyprus_ (New York, 1908); and
_The Immortal Lure_ (New York, 1911), four plays, the first of which,
_Giorgione_, is part two of the trilogy of one-act plays of which _A
Night in Avignon_ was the first part. The trilogy will be closed with
another one-act drama, _Porzia_, which is now announced for
publication in January, 1913. Mr. Rice has been characterized by the
_New York Times_ as a "doubtful poet," but that paper's recent and
uncalled for attack upon Madison Cawein, together with many other
seemingly absurd positions, makes one wonder if it is not a "doubtful
judge." After all is said, it must be admitted that Mr. Rice has done
a small group of rather pleasing lyrics, and that his plays, perhaps
impossible as safe vehicles for an actor with a reputation to sustain,
are not as turgid as _The Times_ often is, and not as superlatively
poor as some critics have held. Of course, Mr. Rice is not a great
dramatist, nor a great poet, yet the body of his work is considerable,
and our literature could ill afford to be rid of it. The Rices have an
attractive home in St. James Court, Louisville, Kentucky.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Critic_ (September, 1904); _The Atlantic
Monthly_ (September, 1904); _The Bookman_ (December, 1911);
_Lippincott's Magazine_ (January, 1912).
PETRARCA AND SANCIA[71]
[From _A Night in Avignon_ (New York, 1907)]
_Petrarca._ While we are in the world the world's in us.
The Holy Church I own--
Confess her Heaven's queen;
But we are flesh and all things that are fair
God made us to enjoy--
Or, high in Paradise, we'll know but sorrow.
You though would ban earth's beauty,
Even the torch of Glory
That kindled Italy once and led great Greece--
The torch of Plato, Homer, Virgil, all
The sacred bards and sages, pagan-born!
I love them! they are divine!
And so to-night--I--
(_Voices._)
They! it is Lello! Lello! Lello! Sancia!--