Kalamazoo, Michigan, January 17, 1878. He was educated in the grammar
and high schools of Detroit, and was at Albion College, Albion,
Michigan, for a short time. Mr. Comfort was a newspaper reporter in
Detroit for a few months, but, in 1898, he did his first real
reporting on papers in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Covington, Kentucky.
During the Spanish-American War he served in the Fifth United States
Cavalry; and in 1899 he was war correspondent in the Philippines and
China for the "Detroit Journal Newspaper Syndicate;" and in 1904 he
was in Russia and Japan during the war for the "Pittsburgh Dispatch
Newspaper Syndicate." Thus he followed the war-god almost around the
world; and out of his experiences he wrote his anti-war novel,
_Routledge Rides Alone_ (Philadelphia, 1909). This proved to be one of
the most popular of recent American novels, now in its ninth edition.
It was followed by _She Buildeth Her House_ (Philadelphia, 1911), his
quasi-Kentucky novel. In order to get the local color for this book,
Mr. Comfort spent some months at Danville, Kentucky, the _Danube_ of
the story, and of his stay in the little town, together with his
opinion of the Kentucky actress in the book, Selma Cross, he has
written: "I always considered Selma Cross the real thing. I had quite
a wonderful time doing her, and she came to be most emphatically in
Kentucky. It was a night in Danville when some amateur theatricals
were put on, that I got the first idea of a big crude woman with a
handicap of beauty-lack, but big enough to win against every law. She
had to go on the anvil, hard and long. I was interested to watch her
in the sharp odor of decadence to which her life carried her. She
wabbles, becomes tainted a bit, but rises to shake it all off. I did
the Selma Cross part of _She Buildeth Her House_ in the Clemons
House, Danville.... I also did a novelette while I was in Kentucky.
The Lippincotts published it under the caption, _Lady Thoroughbred,
Kentuckian_." No critic has written nearer the truth of Selma Cross
than the author himself: "She was a bit strong medicine for most
people." Mr. Comfort has made many horseback trips through Kentucky,
and he has "come to feel authoritative and warmly tender in all that
concerns the folk and the land." His latest novel, _Fate Knocks at the
Door_ (Philadelphia, 1912), is far and away the strongest story he has
written. Mr. Comfort has created a style that the critics are calling
"new, big, but crude in spots;" and it certainly does isolate him from
any other American novelist of today. Whatever may be said for or
against his style, this much is certain: he who runs may read it--some
other time! His work is seldom clear at first glances. Mr. Comfort
devoted the year 1912 to the writing of a new novel, _The Road of
Living Men_, which will be issued by his publishers, the Lippincotts,
in March, 1913. He has an attractive home and family at Detroit.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Lippincott's Magazine_ (March, 1908); _Lippincott's
Magazine_ (March; April; August, 1912).
AN ACTRESS'S HEART[93]
[From _She Buildeth Her House_ (Philadelphia, 1911)]
Selma Cross was sick for a friend, sick from containing herself. On
this night of achievement there was something pitiful in the need of
her heart.
"New York has turned rather too many pages of life before my eyes,
Selma, for me to feel far above any one whose struggles I have not
endured."
The other leaned forward eagerly. "I liked you from the first moment,
Paula," she said. "You were so rounded--it seemed to me. I'm all
streaky, all one-sided. You're bred. I'm cattle.... Some time I'll tell
you how it all began. I said I would be the greatest living
tragedienne--hurled this at a lot of cat-minds down in Kentucky fifteen
years ago. Of course, I shall. It does not mean so much to me as I
thought, and it may be a bauble to you, but I wanted it. Its
far-away-ness doesn't torture me as it once did, but one pays a ghastly
price. Yes, it's a climb, dear. You must have bone and blood and
brain--a sort of brain--and you should have a cheer from below; but I
didn't. I wonder if there ever was a fight that can match mine? If so,
it would not be a good tale for children or grown-ups with delicate
nerves. Little women always hated me. I remember one restaurant cashier
on Eighth Avenue told me I was too unsightly to be a waitress. I have
done kitchen pot-boilers and scrubbed tenement-stairs. Then, because I
repeated parts of plays in those horrid halls--they said I was crazy....
Why, I have felt a perfect lust for suicide--felt my breast ache for a
cool knife and my hand rise gladly. Once I played a freak part--that was
my greater degradation--debased my soul by making my body look worse
than it is. I went down to hell for that--and was forgiven. I have been
so homesick, Paula, that I could have eaten the dirt in the road of that
little Kentucky town.... Yes, I pressed against the steel until
something broke--it was the steel, not me. Oh, I could tell you
much!"...
She paused but a moment.
"The thing so dreadful to overcome was that I have a body like a great
Dane. It would not have hurt a writer, a painter, even a singer, so
much, but we of the drama are so dependent upon the shape of our
bodies. Then, my face is like a dog or a horse or a cat--all these I
have been likened to. Then I was slow to learn repression. This a part
of culture, I guess--breeding. Mine is a lineage of Kentucky poor
white trash, who knows, but a speck of 'nigger'? I don't care now,
only it gave me a temper of seven devils, if it was so. These are some
of the things I have contended with. I would go to a manager and he
would laugh me along, trying to get rid of me gracefully, thinking
that some of his friends were playing a practical joke on him.
Vhruebert thought that at first. Vhruebert calls me _The Thing_ now. I
could have done better had I been a cripple; there are parts for a
cripple. And you watch, Paula, next January when I burn up things
here, they'll say my success is largely due to my figure and face!"
FOOTNOTE:
[93] Copyright, 1911, by J. B. Lippincott Company.
FRANK WALLER ALLEN
Frank Waller Allen, novelist, was born at Milton, Kentucky, September
30, 1878, the son of a clergyman. He spent his boyhood days at
Louisville, and, in the fall of 1896, he entered Kentucky (Transylvania)
University, Lexington, Kentucky. While in college he was editor of _The
Transylvanian_, the University literary magazine; and he also did
newspaper work for _The Louisville Times_, and _The Courier-Journal_.
Mr. Allen quit college to become a reporter on the Kansas City
_Journal_, later going with the Kansas City _Times_ as book editor. He
resigned this position to return to Kentucky University to study
theology. He is now pastor of the First Christian (Disciples) church, at
Paris, Missouri. Mr. Allen's first stories were published in _Munsey's_,
_The Reader_, and other periodicals, but it is upon his books that he
has won a wide reputation in Kentucky and the West. The first title was
a sketch, _My Ships Aground_ (Chicago, 1900), and his next work was an
exquisite tale of love and Nature, entitled _Back to Arcady_ (Boston,
1905), which has sold far into the thousands and is now in its third
edition. A more perfect story has not been written by a Kentuckian of
Mr. Allen's years. _The Maker of Joys_ (Kansas City, 1907), was so
slight that it attracted little attention, yet it is exceedingly
well-done; and in his latest book, _The Golden Road_ (New York, 1910),
he just failed to do what one or two other writers have recently done so
admirably. His Nature-loving tinker falls a bit short, but some
excellent writing may be found in this book. Mr. Allen has recently
completed another novel, _The Lovers of Skye_, which will be issued by
the Bobbs-Merrill Company in the spring of 1913.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Reader Magazine_ (October, 1905); _Who's Who in
America_ (1912-1913).
A WOMAN ANSWERED
[From _The Maker of Joys_ (Kansas City, Missouri, 1907)]
At this moment the servant lifted the tapestries and announced: "The
lady, sir."
This time, before he could stop her, she took his hand and kissed it.
"There was little use in my coming today," she said, "except to thank
you."
"Why, I do not quite understand you. What for?" asked the rector in
surprise.
"For answering my question."
"Tell me?" he replied.
"You've known me a long time," she answered, "and being Jimmy Duke, it
isn't necessary for me to tell you how I've lived. But you and
me--once youth is gone, sir, and people are a long time old. I've
thought of this a great deal lately, and I've been trying to decide
what's right and what's wrong.... Then I read in the papers about you.
About the things you preach and the like, and I knew you could tell
me. I knew you'd know whether good people are faking, and which life
is best. You see, I'd never thought of it in all my life before until
just a little while ago. Just a month or such a matter."
"And now?" asked the Shepherd of St. Mark's.
"I could have left the old life years ago if I had wanted to," she
continued, ignoring his question. "There is a man--well, there's several
of them--but this a special one, who, for years, has wanted me to marry
him. I always liked him better than anybody I knew, but I just couldn't
give up the life. He is a plain man in a little village in Missouri, and
I thought I'd die if I went. He offered to move to the city and I was
afraid for him. You see I just didn't know what was good and what was
bad, yet I didn't want this man to become like other men I knew."
"Tell me, what are you going to do?" he asked eagerly. He had almost
said, "Tell me what to do."
"Well," she answered, "since I have been thinking it all over, things
as they are have become empty. There is no joy in it, and I am weary
of it all.... Yesterday I came to you. I wanted to ask you whether it
was best or not to leave the old life. But I did not have to ask you.
I saw how it was when you told me what you had done. And O, how I
thank you for straightening it all out for me. Besides," she added
with hesitancy, "after I left you last night I telegraphed for the man
in the little village out west."
When she had gone he gazed out of the window after her as she walked
buoyant and happy through the night.
"Perhaps," softly said the Maker of Joys, "it is the memory of the old
days that is sweetest after all."
VENITA SEIBERT
Miss Venita Seibert, whose charming stories of German-American child
life have been widely read and appreciated, was born at Louisville,
Kentucky, December 29, 1878. Miss Seibert was educated in the
Louisville public schools, and almost at once entered upon a literary
career. She contributed short stories and verse to the leading
periodicals, her first big serial story being published in _The
American Magazine_ during 1907 and 1908, entitled _The Different
World_. This dealt with the life and imaginings of a little
German-American girl, a dreamy, sensitive child, and showing the
poetry of German home life and the originality of childhood. The story
was highly praised by Miss Ida M. Tarbell and other able critics.
Under the title of _The Gossamer Thread_ (Boston, 1910), Miss Seibert
brought these tales together in one volume. There "the chronicles of
Velleda, who understood about 'the different world,'" may be read to
the heart's desire. Miss Seibert, who resides at Louisville, Kentucky,
promises big for the future, and her next book should bring her a
wider public, as well as greater growth in literary power.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _McClure's Magazine_ (September, 1903); _Library of
Southern Literature_ (Atlanta, 1910, v. xv).
THE ORIGIN OF BABIES[94]
[From _The Gossamer Thread_ (Boston, 1910)]
Oh, it was a puzzling world. Not the least puzzling thing was babies.
Mrs. Katzman had come several times with a little brown satchel and
brought one to Tante--a little, little thing that had to be fed catnip
tea and rolled in a shawl and kept out of draughts. The advantage of
having a new baby in the house was that it meant a glorious period of
running wild, for of course one did not pretend to obey the girl who
came to cook. Also, there was much company who brought nice things to
eat for Tante, who naturally left the biggest part for the children.
Of course God sent the little babies, but how did he get them down to
Mrs. Katzman? She averred that she got them out of the river, but this
Velleda knew to be a fib, for of course they would drown in the river.
Tante said they fell down from Heaven, but of course such a fall would
kill a little baby. Gros-mamma Wallenstein said a stork brought them,
and for a time Velleda thought Mrs. Katzman must be a stork; but when
she saw a picture of one she knew that it was only a bird. Then she
decided that the stork carried the babies to Mrs. Katzman's and she
divided them around; but Mrs. Katzman's little boy, questioned in the
most searching manner, declared that he had never seen a sign of any
stork about the premises.
Just after Baby Ernest's coming, Velleda and Freddy went all the way
to Mrs. Katzman's house--and it was quite a long way, fully three
blocks--to beg her to exchange him for a girl.
"We've only used him two days and he's just as good as new," stated
Velleda, guiltily concealing the fact that he cried a great deal. But
Mrs. Katzman said she really couldn't think of it, as God settled all
those matters himself. It was on this occasion that Velleda had
cross-examined Mrs. Katzman's little boy regarding the stork. There
was no doubting the truth of Georgie's statements, for he told Velleda
dolefully that he himself had long desired a brother or a sister, but
never a baby had he seen in that house. Evidently Mrs. Katzman fetched
them from somewhere else in the brown satchel.
"You might have had ours," said Velleda. "We didn't want him. We
prayed for a girl."
"Oh, you'll soon find out _that_ don't do any good." Georgie kicked
gloomily at a stone. "I used to pray, too, but God's awful stubborn
when it comes to babies."
Velleda wondered at the strangeness of things. All the little girls
and some of the little boys who had no baby brother or sister to take
care of, thought it a great treat to be allowed to wheel the
baby-buggy up and down the square, really a most irksome task, as
Velleda could testify. At Velleda's house they believed with the poet
that "Time's noblest offspring is the last," so the baby reigned king,
which was not always pleasant for his smaller slaves. Therefore she
wondered at Georgie's taste. However, since he evidently regarded his
brotherless state as a deep misfortune, she was full of sympathy and
would do what she could for him.
"You just pray a little harder," she advised; "and," struck by a
brilliant thought, "look in the brown satchel every night! Maybe
you'll find one left over."
She and Freddy went home feeling very sorry for Georgie. He was only
another illustration of the old saying which Onkel often commented
on--the shoemaker's children wear ragged shoes, the painter's own
house is the last to receive a fresh coat, and the stork woman has no
baby of her own.
Regarding this great question there was one point upon which everybody
agreed. Velleda had her own system of deciding questions; she sifted
the versions of her various informants, retained those points upon
which all agreed, and upon this common ground proceeded to erect the
structure of her own reasoning. Grown-ups, she knew, had a weakness
for mild fibbing, which was not lying and not wrong at all, but was
naturally very disconcerting when one burned to learn the real truth
about a thing. The stork theory, the river theory, the falling from
Heaven theory--all possessed one mutual starting point: God sent the
little babies. There was of course no doubt in that regard, and
Velleda finally decided that God placed them in the woods in a certain
spot, marked where they were to go, and then vanished into Heaven (for
of course no one had ever seen God), whereupon Mrs. Katzman approached
with the brown satchel.
This was a most satisfactory theory, with no flaws in its logic,
reasonable and probable, and conflicting with no known law. The
question was shelved.
Velleda, going up to the third floor room of Nellie Johnson with a
pitcher of milk which the dairywoman had asked her to deliver, found the
girl huddled up before a small stove, looking so white and miserable
that Velleda's heart ached for her, although she knew that Nellie was a
very wicked person and nobody in the neighborhood spoke to her. Across
her knees lay a white bundle. Velleda considered the matter.
"I guess God loves you anyway, Nellie," she concluded. "He has sent
you a little baby."
The girl tossed the bundle upon the bed with a fierce gesture.
"God?" she said bitterly. "It ain't God sent that baby. The Devil sent
him!"
Velleda fled down the stairs.
It is indeed a puzzling world.
FOOTNOTE:
[94] Copyright, 1910, by Small, Maynard and Company.
CHARLES NEVILLE BUCK
Charles Neville Buck, novelist and short-story writer, was born near
Midway, Kentucky, April 15, 1879. He spent the first fifteen years of
his life at his birthplace, save the four years he was in South
America with his father, the Hon. C. W. Buck, who was United States
Minister to Peru from 1885 to 1889, and the author of _Under the
Sun_, a Peruvian romance. At the age of fifteen years, Charles Neville
Buck went to Louisville to enter the high school; and, in 1898, he was
graduated from the University of Louisville. He studied art and joined
the staff of _The Evening Post_, of Louisville, as cartoonist, which
position he held for a year, when he became an editorial writer on
that paper. Mr. Buck studied law and was admitted to the bar, but he
did not practice. In 1908 he quit journalism for prose fiction. His
short-stories were accepted by American and English magazines, but he
won his first real reputation with a novel of mental aberration,
entitled _The Key to Yesterday_ (New York, 1910), the scenes of which
were set against Kentucky, France, and South America. Mr. Buck's next
novel, _The Lighted Match_ (New York, 1911), was an international love
romance in which a rich young American falls in love with the
princess, and about-to-be-queen, of a bit of a kingdom near Spain.
Benton, hero, has a rocky road to travel, but he, of course,
demolishes every barrier and proves again that love finds a way. _The
Lighted Match_ is a rattling good story, and it contains many purple
patches between the hiss of the revolutionist's bomb and lovers'
sighs. Mr. Buck's latest novel, _The Portal of Dreams_ (New York,
1912), was a very clever story. His first Kentucky novel, and the
finest thing he has done, he and his publisher think, is _The Strength
of Samson_, which will appear in four parts in _The Cavalier_, a
weekly magazine, for February, 1913, after which it will be almost
immediately published in book form under the title of _The Call of the
Cumberlands_. Mr. Buck's home is at Louisville, Kentucky, but he
spends much of his time in New York, where he lives at the Hotel
Earle, in Waverly Place, a stone's throw from the apartments of his
friend, Thompson Buchanan, the Kentucky playwright.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Harper's Weekly_ (October 8, 1910); _Cosmopolitan
Magazine_ (August, 1911); _Who's Who in America_ (1912-1913).
THE DOCTRINE ACCORDING TO JONESY[95]
[From _The Lighted Match_ (New York, 1911)]
Despite the raw edge on the air, the hardier guests at "Idle Times"
still clung to those outdoor sports which properly belonged to the
summer. That afternoon a canoeing expedition was made up river to
explore a cave which tradition had endowed with some legendary tale of
pioneer days and Indian warfare.
Pagratide, having organized the expedition with that object in view, had
made use of his prior knowledge to enlist Cara for the crew of his
canoe, but Benton, covering a point that Pagratide had overlooked,
pointed out that an engagement to go up the river in a canoe is entirely
distinct from an engagement to come down the river in a canoe. He cited
so many excellent authorities in support of his contention that the
matter was decided in his favor for the return trip, and Mrs.
Porter-Woodleigh, all unconscious that her escort was a Crown Prince,
found in him an introspective and altogether uninteresting young man.
Benton and the girl in one canoe, were soon a quarter of a mile in
advance of the others, and lifting their paddles from the water they
floated with the slow current. The singing voices of the party behind
them came softly adrift along the water. All of the singers were young
and the songs had to do with sentiment.
The girl buttoned her sweater closer about her throat. The man stuffed
tobacco into the bowl of his pipe and bent low to kindle it into a
cheerful spot of light.
A belated lemon afterglow lingered at the edge of the sky ahead.
Against it the gaunt branches of a tall tree traced themselves
starkly. Below was the silent blackness of the woods.
Suddenly Benton raised his head.
"I have a present for you," he announced.
"A present?" echoed the girl. "Be careful, Sir Gray Eyes. You played
the magician once and gave me a rose. It was such a wonderful
rose"--she spoke almost tenderly--"that it has spoiled me. No
commonplace gifts will be tolerated after that."
"This is a different sort of present," he assured her. "This is a god."
"A what!" Cara was at the stern with the guiding paddle. The man
leaned back, steadying the canoe with a hand on each gunwale, and
smiled into her face.
"Yes," he said, "he is a god made out of clay with a countenance that
is most unlovely and a complexion like an earthenware jar. I acquired
him in the Andes for a few _centavos_. Since then we have been
companions. In his day he had his place in a splendid temple of the
Sun Worshipers. When I rescued him he was squatting cross-legged on a
counter among silver and copper trinkets belonging to a civilization
younger than his own. When you've been a god and come to be a souvenir
of ruins and dead things--" the man paused for a moment, then with the
ghost of a laugh went on "--it makes you see things differently. In
the twisted squint of his small clay face one reads slight regard for
mere systems and codes."
He paused so long that she prompted him in a voice that threatened to
become unsteady. "Tell me more about him. What is his godship's name?"
"He looked so protestingly wise," Benton went on, "that I named him
Jonesy. I liked that name because it fitted him so badly. Jonesy is
not conventional in his ideas, but his morals are sound. He has seen
religions and civilizations and dynasties flourish and decay, and it
has all given him a certain perspective on life. He has occasionally
given me good council."
He paused again, but, noting that the singing voices were drawing
nearer, he continued more rapidly.
"In Alaska I used to lie flat on my cot before a great open fire and
his god-ship would perch crosslegged on my chest. When I breathed, he
seemed to shake his fat sides and laugh. When a pagan god from Peru
laughs at you in a Yukon cabin, the situation calls for attention. I
gave attention.
"Jonesy said that the major human motives sweep in deep channels,
full-tide ahead. He said you might in some degree regulate their floods
by rearing abutments, but that when you tried to build a dam to stop the
Amazon you are dealing with folly. He argued that when one sets out to
dam up the tides set flowing back in the tributaries of the heart it is
written that one must fail. That is the gospel according to Jonesy."
He turned his face to the front and shot the canoe forward. There was
silence except for the quiet dipping of their paddles, the dripping of
the water from the lifted blades, and the song drifting down river.
Finally Benton added:
"I don't know what he will say to you, but perhaps he will give you
good advice--on those matters which the centuries can't change."
Cara's voice came soft, with a hint of repressed tears.
"He has already given me good advice, dear--" she said, "good advice
that I can't follow."
FOOTNOTE:
[95] Copyright, 1911, by W. J. Watt and Company.
GEORGE BINGHAM
George Bingham ("Dunk Botts"), newspaper humorist, was born near
Wallonia, Kentucky, August 1, 1879. He quit school at the age of ten
years to become "the devil" in a printing office at Eddyville,
Kentucky. Two years later he removed to Mayfield, Kentucky, and
accepted a position on _The Mirrow_. Shortly afterwards he wrote his
first ficticious "news-letter" from an imaginary town called Boney
Ridge, Kentucky, and submitted it to the critical eye of a tramp
printer. This nomad at once saw the boy's design: to burlesque the
letters received from the _Mirrow's_ crossroad correspondents; and he
encouraged him. Mr. Bingham remained at Mayfield until he was twenty
years of age, at which time he felt important enough to go out and see
the world. Like most prodigals homesickness seized him for its very
own; and he started home perched high on a freight train. Homeward
bound he first had the name of his future paper suggested to him.
Battling through a tiny town in Tennessee he enquired of the brakeman
as to its name.
"Walhalla," answered the "shack."
"Hogwallow?" repeated the young Kentuckian.
"Hell no! Who ever heard of a place called 'Hogwallow'?"