for her if this last hope fails her, too! Especially now, when she and
Hugh are to make a match of it."
Harry's face was turned away, or the bishop would have seen it suddenly
startled. "To make a match of it!" To hide the flush he felt staining
his cheek, Harry bent to close the safe. A something that had darkled in
some obscure depth of his being, whose existence he had not guessed, was
throbbing now to a painful resentment. Jessica to marry Hugh!
"A handsome fellow--Hugh!" said the bishop. "He seems to have returned
with a new heart--a brand plucked from the burning. You had the same
_alma mater_, I think you told me. Your influence has done the boy
good, Sanderson!" He laid his hand kindly on the other's shoulder.
"The fact that you were in college together makes him look up to
you--as the whole parish does," he added.
Harry was setting the combination, and did not answer. But through the
turmoil in his brain a satiric voice kept repeating:
"No, they don't call me 'Satan' now!"
FOOTNOTE:
[75] Copyright, 1907, by the Bobbs-Merrill Company.
EDWIN CARLILE LITSEY
Edwin Carlile Litsey, author of _The Love Story of Abner Stone_, was
born at Beechland, Kentucky, June 3, 1874. He was educated in public
and private schools, but he did not go to college. At the age of
seventeen years Mr. Litsey entered the banking business, and he is now
connected with the Marion National Bank, of his present home, Lebanon,
Kentucky. His first novel, _The Princess of Gramfalon_ (Cincinnati,
1898), was a daring piece of imagination, creating impossible lands
and peoples, and it has been forgotten by author and public alike. Mr.
Litsey's strongest and best work so far is a beautiful tale of Nature,
entitled _The Love Story of Abner Stone_ (New York, 1902). This
novelette made the author many friends, as it is a charming story. In
1904 he won first prize in _The Black Cat_ story-contest, over ten
thousand competitors, with _In the Court of God_. His stories of wild
animals in their haunts were brought together in _The Race of the
Swift_ (Boston, 1905). This contains some of his best work, the first
story being especially fine and strong. Mr. Litsey's latest novel,
_The Man from Jericho_ (New York, 1911), was not up to the standard
set in his earlier works, and in no sense is it a noteworthy
production. It shows a decided falling off, and it brought
disappointment to many admirers of _The Love Story of Abner Stone_ and
_The Race of the Swift_. In 1912 Mr. Litsey contributed several
short-stories to _The Cavalier_, and next year he will issue another
novel, to be entitled _A Maid of the Kentucky Hills_.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Book Buyer_ (July, 1902); _Munsey's Magazine_
(April, 1903).
THE RACE OF THE SWIFT[76]
[From _The Race of the Swift_ (Boston, 1905)]
The next morning, near midday, her merciless offsprings teased and
worried her so that the she-fox crept forth in spite of the warning of
the day before, and set her sharp muzzle towards the crest of the
range, with the intention of invading territory which hitherto her
feet had never pressed. There were wild turkeys back in the hills, and
wary and suspicious as she knew them to be, they were no match for her
wily woodcraft. But scarcely had her noiseless feet gone over the top
of the knob, when a sharp yelp immediately behind her caused her to
jump and turn quickly. They were there--her enemies--and their noses
were smelling out her trail, for as yet they had not seen her. Even as
she leaped for the nearest cover like a yellow flash, her first
thought was of the little ones biding at home. She must lead her foes
away from that cleft in the rocks where her love-children lay awaiting
her return. And though her life should be given up, yet would she die
alone, and far away, before she would sacrifice her young.
It was a hard and stubborn race which she ran for the next six hours.
At times her loyal, loving heart seemed ready to burst from the strain
she thrust upon it. At times fleet feet were pattering almost at her
heels, and pitiless jaws were held wide to grasp her; then again only
the echo of the stubborn cry of her pursuers reached her. She had
doubled time and again. Once a brief respite was granted her when she
dashed up a slanting tree-trunk which, in falling, had lodged in the
branches of another tree. Eight tawny forms dashed hotly, furiously
by, then she descended and took the back track. Only for a moment,
however, were the cunning dogs deceived. They discovered the artifice
almost as soon as it was perpetrated, and came harking back themselves
with redoubled zeal. So the long hours of the afternoon wore away. Not
a moment that was free from effort; not an instant that death did not
hover over the mother fox, awaiting the least misstep to descend. Back
and forth, around and across, and still the subtlety of the fox eluded
the haste and fury of the hounds. All were tired to the point of
exhaustion, but none would give up. The sun went down; tremulous
shadows, like curtains hung, were draped among the trees. The timid
stars came out again and the halfed moon arose, a little larger than
the night before. And still, with inveterate hate on the one side, and
the undying strength of despair on the other, the grim chase swept
through the night. At last the blood-rimmed eyes of the reeling quarry
saw familiar landmarks. Unconsciously, in her blind efforts, she had
come to the neighborhood of her den. Perhaps the love within her heart
had guided her back. She found her strength quickly failing, and with
a realization of this her scheming brain awoke as from a trance, and
drove her to deeper guile. Two rods away was the creek. To it she
staggered, splashed through the low water for a dozen yards, and hid
herself beneath the gnarled roots of a tree from the base of which the
stream had eaten away the soil. She listened intensely. She heard the
pack lose the scent, search half-heartedly for a few minutes, for
they, too, were weary to dropping, then withdraw one at a time,
beaten. But for half an hour the brave animal lay against the tree
roots, waiting and resting. Then she came out cautiously, looked
around her, and with difficulty gained the mouth of her den. Casting
one keen glance over her shoulder through the checkered spaces of the
forest, she glided softly within, and lying down, curled her tired
body protectingly around her sleeping little ones.
FOOTNOTE:
[76] Copyright, 1905, by Little, Brown and Company.
MILTON BRONNER
Milton Bronner, literary critic and journalist, was born at
Louisville, Kentucky, November 10, 1874. He was graduated from the
University of Virginia, in 1895, when he returned to his home to join
the staff of the old _Louisville Commercial_. In 1900 Mr. Bronner
removed to Covington, Kentucky, to become city editor of _The Kentucky
Post_, of which paper he is now editor-in-chief. Mr. Bronner's first
book, called _Letters from the Raven_ (New York, 1907), was a work
about Lafcadio Hearn with many of Hearn's hitherto unpublished
letters. His second and most important volume so far, _Maurice
Hewlett_ (Boston, 1910), is the first adequate discussion of the
novels and poems of the celebrated English author. His method was to
treat the works in the order of their publication, together with a
brief word upon Mr. Hewlett's life. His little book must have pleased
the novelist as much as it did the public. Mr. Bronner seems to have a
_flair_ for new writers who later "arrive." Thus years ago _Poet-Lore_
published his paper on William Ernest Henley, before Henley's fame was
so firmly established. Some years later _The Independent_ had his
essay on Francis Thompson, whom all the world now declares to have
been a great and true poet. Still later _The Forum_ printed his
criticism of John Davidson, in which high estimates were set upon the
unfortunate fellow's works; and _The Bookman_ has printed a series of
his critical appreciations of such men as John Masefield, Ezra Pound,
Wilbur Underwood, W. H. Davies, W. W. Gibson, and Lionel Johnson,
which introduced these now celebrated poets to the American public.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Forum_ (September, 1910); _The Bookman_
(August; November, 1911); _The Bookman_ (April; October, 1912).
MR. HEWLETT'S WOMEN[77]
[From _Maurice Hewlett_ (Boston, 1910)]
Mr. Hewlett is mainly interested in his women. They are the pivots
about whom his comedies and tragedies move. And his treatment of them
differs from all the great contemporary novelists. Kipling gives
snapshot photographs of women. He shows them in certain brief moments
of their existence, in vivid blacks and whites, caught on the instant
whether the subjects were laughing or crying. Stevenson's few women
are presented in silhouette. Barrie and Hardy give etchings in which
line by line and with the most painstaking art, the features are
drawn. But Meredith and Mr. Hewlett give paintings in which brush
stroke after brush stroke has been used. The reader beholds the
finished work, true not only in features, but in colouring.
* * * * *
Now Mr. Hewlett is purely medieval. The Hewlett woman is forever the
plaything of love. She is always in the attitude of the pursuing who
is pursued. She is forever the subject of passion, holy or unholy. Men
will fight for her, plunge kingdoms and cities in war or ruin for her,
die for her. Sometimes, as in "The Stooping Lady," she is the willing
object of this love and stoops to enjoy its divine benison; sometimes
she flees from it when it displays a satyr face as in "The Duchess of
Nona;" sometimes she is caught up in its tragic coil as in "The
Queen's Quair," and destroyed by it. Hewlett's women, like Hardy's,
are stray angels, but like Meredith's they are creatures of the chase.
And, note the difference from Meredith!--this, according to the gospel
of Mr. Hewlett, is as it should be.
Since it is woman's proper fate to be loved, it would seem to be
impossible for Mr. Hewlett to write a story in which there is not some
romantic love interest. And in each case there is a stoop on the part
of one. The stoop may be happy or the reverse, but it is there. He
recurs to the idea again and again, but each time with a difference
that prevents monotony.
In the main, Mr. Hewlett's women are good women. They are loyal and
loving, ready alike to take beatings or kisses. There is no ice in
their bosoms which must needs be thawed. Nor are Mr. Hewlett's women
"kind" after the manner of the Stendhal characters. They are not women
who make themselves common. For the most part, they are Rosalinds and
Perditas of an humbler sort, with the beauty of those immortal girls,
but without their supreme wit and high spirits. They are girls who are
stricken down with love's dart and who make no effort to remove the
dear missiles. They are true dwellers in romance-land, beautiful
creatures who give themselves to their chosen lords without thought of
sin or of the future.
FOOTNOTE:
[77] Copyright, 1910, by L. E. Bassett.
A. ST. CLAIR MACKENZIE
Alastair St. Clair Mackenzie, author of _The Evolution of Literature_,
was born at Inverness, Scotland, February 17, 1875. "Blue as a molten
sapphire gleams the Moray Firth below Culloden Moor, under whose
purple heather sleep some of the warrior ancestors of Alastair St.
Clair Mackenzie, near which he was born." The University of Glasgow
conferred the degree of Master of Arts upon him in 1892. He then did
graduate work in English at the University of Edinburgh for a year,
after which he studied for some months under Sir Richard C. Jebb of
the University of Cambridge, and Edward Caird of Oxford University.
Mackenzie met S. R. Crockett, Henry Drummond, William Black, Alfred
Tennyson, and many other distinguished men of letters, before he came
to America. After a brief residence in Philadelphia he came to the
State University of Kentucky, at Lexington, in September, 1899, as
head of the department of English, and under his supervision the
curriculum has been extended from three courses to thirty. Among
Kentucky educators he has been the pioneer in introducing Journalism,
Comparative Philology, and Comparative Literature. In 1911 he
received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from Kentucky Wesleyan
College, the only degree of the kind ever conferred by that
institution. In 1912 Dr. Mackenzie was Ropes Foundation lecturer at
the University of Cincinnati. He is now dean of the Graduate School of
the University of Kentucky. Besides contributing many articles to
periodicals, Dr. Mackenzie wrote, in 1904, the first history of
Lexington Masonic Lodge, No. 1, the earliest in the West; and, in
1907, the article on Hew Ainslie, the Scottish-Kentucky poet,
published in the _Library of Southern Literature_, and pronounced by
many competent critics to be the finest essay in that great
collection. His _The Evolution of Literature_ (New York, 1911), the
English edition of which was issued by John Murray, London, deals with
the origins of literature, as its title indicates, and it has placed
Dr. Mackenzie at the head of Southern students of this subject. Into
this work went the researches and deliberate judgments of a lifetime;
and that a scholar should produce such a work in the West or South,
without a great library near at hand, is in itself remarkable. Dr.
Mackenzie has done what will probably come to be regarded as the most
scholarly production of a Kentucky hand, although the work is more
suggestive than it is conclusive.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Library of Southern Literature_ (Atlanta, 1910, v.
xv); _Who's Who in America_ (1912-1913).
A KELTIC TALE[78]
[From _The Evolution of Literature_ (New York, 1911)]
Here is an old Keltic tale of farewell. It was a night of mist, a low
moon brooding over the braes, the heathery braes. The man sat by the
seashore, as he sang quaint ballads of a land across the water, where
men never see death. There was none to reveal the secrets of the
glens, nor could any one tell him what the eagle cried to the stag at
the corrie, while the burn wimpled on with its song of sobbing. He sat
and listened, but he was knowing naught of sadness. To his ears came
only the accents of the fairies of joy, and they called him to seek
the fountain where song had its birth. Away from the sea he climbed
till its voice came faint, faint across the bracken. At last, full
weary, he slept. The night passed, and a leveret stood up, gazing upon
his face without fear. A deer came to the stream, beheld the sleeping
figure, and fled not. A grey linnet perched upon the pale hand lying
across the bosom; it looked the sun in the face, and sang, but the man
did not awake. Again the shadows melted into the night of stars, and
the hills said to one another, "He has found Death and Life. For we
know, and God knows, all his dreams. He has found the secret of the
sea, the message of all the streams, and the fountain-head of song."
In quest of literary strivings and achievements, lowly as well as
exalted, we have journeyed through all the principal lands of the globe.
The forests of Africa have shaded us from the scorching sun, and the
tang of the salt sea has smitten us off Cape Horn. Visions of scenes
familiar have mingled with sights and sounds of cities that flourished
forty centuries ago. Wherever we have gone, we have noticed that
vitality is the quality which gives permanent value to all true art.
Popular opinion, blind perhaps to the qualities of art as art, caring
nothing about the more elusive charms of verse and prose, is quick to
detect the presence or absence of a vital relationship between
literature and humanity. Literary art voices life and gives life. The
higher the art the more effectively does it fill the onlooker with a
sense of life, personal and racial, dignified, wholesome, inexhaustible.
Apparently it is the ideal within the real that becomes ever more
manifest in the course of the evolution of literature.
FOOTNOTE:
[78] Copyright, 1911, by Thomas Y. Crowell and Company.
LAURA SPENCER PORTOR
Miss Laura Spencer Portor, poet and short-story writer, was born at
Covington, Kentucky, in 1875. She lived at Covington until ten years
old, when she was taken to Paris, France, where she attended private
schools for two years. She returned to Kentucky, and attended school
at Cincinnati, but she afterwards entered the old Norwood Institute,
Washington. Her education being finished, Miss Portor again made her
home at Covington, where she resided until a few years ago, when she
went to New York, her home at the present time. She has worked in many
literary fields. Children's work; essays; short-stories; feature and
editorial work of all kinds; and verse for children and "grown-ups."
Miss Portor is now children's editor of _The Woman's Home Companion_.
She has been so very busy with her magazine work that she has found
time to publish but one book, _Theodora_ (Boston, 1907), a little tale
for children, done in collaboration with Miss Katharine Pyle, sister
of the famous American artist, the late Howard Pyle, and herself an
artist and author of ability and reputation. The next few years will
certainly see several of Miss Portor's manuscripts published in book
form. Among her magazine stories and verse that have attracted
attention may be mentioned her purely Kentucky tales, such as "A
Gentleman of the Blue Grass," published in _The Ladies' Home Journal_;
"The Judge," which appeared in _The Woman's Home Companion_; "Sally,"
a Southern story, printed in _The Atlantic Monthly_; and "My French
School Days," an essay, also printed in _The Atlantic_, are thought to
be the best things in prose Miss Portor has written so far. Her poems,
"The Little Christ" (_Atlantic Monthly_), and "But One Leads South"
(_McClure's Magazine_), are her most characteristic work in verse. She
has written much for children in both prose and poetry. Miss Portor
is one of Kentucky's proudest hopes in fiction or verse, and the books
that are to be published from her pen will bring together her work in
a manner that will be highly pleasing to her admirers.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Harper's Magazine_ (August, 1900); _St. Nicholas
Magazine_ (October, 1912).
THE LITTLE CHRIST[79]
[From _The Atlantic Monthly_, December, 1905]
Mother, I am thy little Son--
Why weepest thou?
_Hush! for I see a crown of thorns,
A bleeding brow._
Mother, I am thy little Son--
Why dost thou sigh?
_Hush! for the shadow of the years
Stoopeth more nigh!_
Mother, I am thy little Son--
Oh, smile on me.
The birds sing blithe, the birds sing gay,
The leaf laughs on the tree.
_Oh, hush thee! The leaves do shiver sore
That tree whereon they grow,
I see it hewn, and bound, to bear
The weight of human woe!_
Mother, I am thy little Son--
The Night comes on apace--
When all God's waiting stars shall smile
On me in thy embrace.
_Oh, hush thee! I see black starless night!
Oh, could'st thou slip away
Now, by the hawthorn hedge of Death,--
And get to God by Day!_
BUT ONE LEADS SOUTH[80]
[From _McClure's Magazine_, December, 1909]
So many countries of the earth,
So many lands of such great worth;
So stately, tall, and fair they shine,--
So royal, all,--but one is mine.
So many paths that come and go,
Busy and freighted, to and fro;
So many that I never see
That still bring gifts and friends to me;
So many paths that go and come,
But one leads South,--and that leads home.
Oh, I would rather see the face
Of that dear land a little space
Than have earth's richest, fairest things
My own, or touch the hands of kings.--
I'm homesick for it! When at night
The silent road runs still and white,--
Runs onward, southward, still and fair,
And I know well it's going there,
And I know well at last 'twill come
To that old candle-lighted home,--
Though all the candles of heaven are lit,
I'm homesick for the sight of it!
FOOTNOTES:
[79] Copyright, 1905, by Houghton, Mifflin Company.
[80] Copyright, 1909, by S. S. McClure Company.
LEIGH GORDON GILTNER
Miss Leigh Gordon Giltner, poet and short-story writer, was born at
Eminence, Kentucky, in 1875. She is the daughter of the Rev. W. S.
Giltner, who was for many years president of Eminence College, from
which the future writer was graduated. She later pursued a course in
English at the University of Chicago, and studied Shakespeare and
dramatic art with Hart Conway of the Chicago School of Acting. Miss
Giltner's book of lyrics, _The Path of Dreams_ (Chicago, 1900), brought
her many kind words from the reviewers. This little book contained some
very excellent verse, but, shortly after its appearance, the author
abandoned poesy for the short-story. Her stories and sketches have
appeared in the _New England Magazine_, _The Century_, _Munsey's
Overland Monthly_, _The Reader_, _The Era_, and several other
periodicals. Within the last year or so she has had quite a number of
short-stories in _Young's Magazine_ "of breezy stories." At the present
time Miss Giltner has a Kentucky novel and a comedy in preparation, both
of which should appear shortly. She is one of the most beautiful of
Kentucky's writers: her frontispiece portrait in _The Path of Dreams_ is
said to have disarmed many carping critics who untied the little volume
with malice aforethought. But back of her personal loveliness, is a mind
of much power, cleverness, and originality.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Nation_ (September 6, 1900); _Munsey's
Magazine_ (October, 1902); _The Overland_ (October, 1910).
THE JESTING GODS[81]
[From _Munsey's Magazine_ (July, 1904)].
From the first it had been, in the nature of things, perfectly patent
to every member of the party gathered at Grantleigh for the shooting
that Tompkins' bride cared not a whit for Tompkins--which, if one
happened to know the man, was scarcely a matter for surprise.
Tompkins, though a good fellow on the whole, was an unmitigated idiot.
Not a mere insignificant unit in the world's noble army of fools, but
a fool so conspicuous and of so infinite a variety as to be at all
times the cynosure of the general gaze.
When a man is a fool and knows it, his folly not infrequently attains
the measure of wisdom. Let him but conceal his motley beneath a cloak
of weighty silence and he will presently acquire a reputation for
solid intelligence and a wise conservatism. But Tompkins was not one
of these. He joyously jangled his bells and flourished his bauble,
wholly unaware the while of the spectacle he was making of himself. If
he could have been persuaded to take on a neutral tint and keep
himself well in the background, inanity might, in time, have assumed
the dignity of intellectuality: but he lacked the sense of proportion,
of values. He was always in the foreground and always a more or less
inharmonious element in the _ensemble_.
Tompkins had published an impossible volume of prose, followed by a
yet more impossible volume of verse: his crudely impressionistic
essays at art made the judicious grieve: he dabbled in music and posed
as a lyric tenor, though he had neither voice nor ear. A temperament
essentially histrionic kept him constantly in the centre of the stage.
With no remote realization of his limitations, he aspired to play
leads and heavies, when Fate had inexorably cast him for a line of low
comedy. He contrived to make divers and sundry kinds and degrees of an
idiot of himself on all possible occasions--and even when there was no
possible occasion therefor. He had a faculty for doing the wrong thing
which amounted to inspiration.
We had been wont to speculate at the Club as to whether Tompkins would
ever find a woman the measure of whose folly should so far exceed his
own as to impel her to marry him. We wondered much when we heard that
he had at last achieved this feat. We wondered more when we saw the
woman who had made it a possibility.