The Complete Works of James Whitcomb RileyPart 3 out of 3"Mrs. Miller," smilingly prompted the little woman. "Yes, ah, yes,--Mrs. Miller. Lovely morning, Mrs. Miller," said John, edging past her and backing toward his room. But as Mrs. Miller was laughing outright, for some mysterious reason, and gave no affirmation in response to his proposition as to the quality of the weather, John, utterly abashed and nonplused, darted into his room and closed the door, "Deucedly extraordinary woman!" he thought; "wonder what's her idea!" He remained locked in his room till the dinner- hour; and, when he promptly emerged for that occasion, there was a very noticeable improvement in his personal appearance, in point of dress, at least, though there still lingered about his smoothly- shaven features a certain haggard, care-worn, anxious look that would not out. Next his own at the table he found a chair tilted forward, as though in reservation for some honored guest. What did it mean? Oh, he remembered now. Told the boy to tell his mother he would have a friend to dine with him. Bert--and, blast the fellow!-- was, doubtless, dining then with a far preferable companion--his wife--in a palace-car on the P., C. & St. L., a hundred miles away. The thought was maddening. Of course, now, the landlady would have material for a new assault. And how could he avert it? A despairing film blurred his sight for the moment--then the eyes flashed daringly. "I will meet it like a man!" he said, mentally-- "yea, like a State's Attorney,--I will invite it! Let her do her worst!" He called a servant, giving some message in an undertone. "Yes, sir," said the agreeable servant, "I'll go right away, sir," and left the room. Five minutes elapsed, and then a voice at his shoulder startled him: "Did you send for me, Mr. McKinney? What is it I can do?" "You are very kind, Mrs.--Mrs.--" "Mrs. Miller," said the lady, with a smile that he remembered. "Now, please spare me even the mildest of rebukes. I deserve your censure, but I can't stand it --I can't positively!" and there was a pleading look in John's lifted eyes that changed the little woman's smile to an expression of real solicitude. "I have sent for you," continued John, "to ask of you three great favors. Please be seated while I enumerate them. First--I want you to forgive and forget that ill-natured, uncalled-for grumbling of mine this morning when you awakened me." "Why, certainly," said the landlady, again smiling, though quite seriously. "I thank you," said John with dignity. "And, second," he continued--"I want your assurance that my extreme confusion and awkwardness on the occasion of our meeting later were rightly interpreted." "Certainly--certainly," said the landlady with the kindliest sympathy. "I am grateful--utterly," said John, with newer dignity. "And then," he went on,--"after informing you that it is impossible for the best friend I have in the world to be with me at this hour, as intended, I want you to do me the very great honor of dining with me. Will you?" "Why, certainly," said the charming little landlady--"and a thousand thanks besides! But tell me something of your friend," she continued, as they were being served. "What is he like--and what is his name--and where is he?" "Well," said John warily,--"he's like all young fellows of his age. He's quite young, you know-- not over thirty, I should say--a mere boy, in fact, but clever--talented--versatile." "--Unmarried, of course," said the chatty little woman. "Oh, yes!" said John, in a matter-of-course tone --but he caught himself abruptly--then stared intently at his napkin--glanced evasively at the side- face of his questioner, and said,--"Oh, yes! Yes, indeed! He's unmarried.--Old bachelor like myself, you know. Ha! Ha!" "So he's not like the young man here that distinguished himself last night?" said the little woman archly. The fork in John's hand, half-lifted to his lips, faltered and fell back toward his plate. "Why, what's that?" said John in a strange voice; "I hadn't heard anything about it--I mean I haven't heard anything about any young man. What was it?" "Haven't heard anything about the elopement?" exclaimed the little woman in astonishment.-- "Why it's been the talk of the town all morning. Elopement in high life--son of a grain-dealer, name of Hines, or Himes, or something, and a preacher's daughter--Josie somebody--didn't catch her last name. Wonder if you don't know the parties-- Why, Mr. McKinney, are you ill?" "Oh, no--not at all!" said John: "Don't mention it. Ha--ha! Just eating too rapidly, that's all. Go on with--you were saying that Bert and Josie had really eloped." "What 'Bert'?" asked the little woman quickly. "Why, did I say Bert?" said John, with a guilty look. "I meant Haines, of course, you know-- Haines and Josie.--And did they really elope?" "That's the report," answered the little woman, as though deliberating some important evidence; "and they say, too, that the plot of the runaway was quite ingenious. It seems the young lovers were assisted in their flight by some old fellow-- friend of the young man's--Why, Mr. McKinney, you ARE ill, surely?" John's face was as ashen. "No--no!" he gasped painfully: "Go on--go on! Tell me more about the--the--the old fellow --the old reprobate! And is he still at large?" "Yes," said the little woman, anxiously regarding the strange demeanor of her companion. "They say, though, that the law can do nothing with him, and that this fact only intensifies the agony of the broken-hearted parents--for it seems they have, till now, regarded him both as a gentleman and family friend in whom"-- "I really am ill," moaned John, waveringly rising to his feet; "but I beg you not to be alarmed. Tell your little boy to come to my room, where I will retire at once, if you'll excuse me, and send for my physician. It is simply a nervous attack. I am often troubled so; and only perfect quiet and seclusion restores me. You have done me a great honor, Mrs."--("Mrs. Miller," sighed the sympathetic little woman)--"Mrs. Miller,--and I thank you more than I have words to express." He bowed limply, turned through a side door opening on a stair, and tottered to his room. During the three weeks' illness through which he passed, John had every attention--much more, indeed, than he had consciousness to appreciate. For the most part his mind wandered, and he talked of curious things, and laughed hysterically, and serenaded mermaids that dwelt in grassy seas of dew, and were bald-headed like himself. He played upon a fourteen-jointed flute of solid gold, with diamond holes, and keys carved out of thawless ice. His old father came at first to take him home; but he could not be moved, the doctor said. Two weeks of John's illness had worn away, when a very serious-looking young man, in a traveling duster, and a high hat, came up the stairs to see him. A handsome young lady was clinging to his arm. It was Bert and Josie. She had guessed the very date of their forgiveness. John awoke even clearer in mind than usual that afternoon. He recognized his old chum at a glance, and Josie-- now Bert's wife. Yes, he comprehended that. He was holding a hand of each when another figure entered. His thin white fingers loosened their clasp, and he held a hand toward the newcomer. "Here," he said, "is my best friend in the world--Bert, you and Josie will love her, I know; for this is Mrs.-- Mrs."--"Mrs. Miller," said the radiant little woman. --"Yes,--Mrs. Miller," said John, very proudly. AT ZEKESBURY The little town, as I recall it, was of just enough dignity and dearth of the same to be an ordinary county seat in Indiana--"The Grand Old Hoosier State," as it was used to being howlingly referred to by the forensic stump orator from the old stand in the court-house yard--a political campaign being the wildest delight that Zekesbury might ever hope to call its own. Through years the fitful happenings of the town and its vicinity went on the same--the same! Annually about one circus ventured in, and vanished, and was gone, even as a passing trumpet-blast; the usual rainy season swelled the "Crick," the driftage choking at "the covered bridge," and backing water till the old road looked amphibious; and crowds of curious townfolk struggled down to look upon the watery wonder, and lean awestruck above it, and spit in it, and turn mutely home again. The usual formula of incidents peculiar to an uneventful town and its vicinity: The countryman from "Jessup's Crossing," with the corn-stalk coffin- measure, loped into town, his steaming little gray- and-red-flecked "roadster" gurgitating, as it were, with that mysterious utterance that ever has commanded and ever must evoke the wonder and bewilderment of every boy; the small-pox rumor became prevalent betimes, and the subtle aroma of the asafetida-bag permeated the graded schools "from turret to foundation-stone"; the still recurring expose of the poor-house management; the farm-hand, with the scythe across his shoulder, struck dead by lightning; the long-drawn quarrel between the rival editors culminating in one of them assaulting the other with a "sidestick," and the other kicking the one down-stairs and thenceward ad libitum; the tramp, suppositiously stealing a ride, found dead on the railroad; the grand jury returning a sensational indictment against a bar-tender non est; the Temperance outbreak; the "Revival;" the Church Festival; and the "Free Lectures on Phrenology, and Marvels of Mesmerism," at the town hall. It was during the time of the last-mentioned sensation, and directly through this scientific investigation, that I came upon two of the town's most remarkable characters. And however meager my outline of them may prove, my material for the sketch is most accurate in every detail, and no deviation from the cold facts of the case shall influence any line of my report. For some years prior to this odd experience I had been connected with a daily paper at the state capital; and latterly a prolonged session of the legislature, where I specially reported, having told threateningly upon my health, I took both the advantage of a brief vacation, and the invitation of a young bachelor senator, to get out of the city for a while, and bask my respiratory organs in the revivifying rural air of Zekesbury--the home of my new friend. "It'll pay you to get out here," he said cordially, meeting me at the little station, "and I'm glad you've come, for you'll find no end of odd characters to amuse you." And under the very pleasant sponsorship of my senatorial friend, I was placed at once on genial terms with half the citizens of the little town--from the shirt-sleeved nabob of the county office to the droll wag of the favorite loafing- place--the rules and by-laws of which resort, by the way, being rudely charcoaled on the wall above the cutter's bench, and somewhat artistically culminating in an original dialect legend which ran thus: F'r instunce, now, when SOME folks gits To relyin' on theyr wits, Ten to one they git too smart And SPILE it all, right at the start! Feller wants to jest go slow And do his THINKIN' first, you know, 'F I CAST'T THINK UP SOMEPIN' GOOD, I SET STILL AND CHAW MY COOD! And it was at this inviting rendezvous, two or three evenings following my arrival, that the general crowd, acting upon the random proposition of one of the boys, rose as a man and wended its hilarious way to the town hall. "Phrenology," said the little, old, bald-headed lecturer and mesmerist, thumbing the egg-shaped head of a young man I remembered to have met that afternoon in some law office; "phrenology," repeated the Professor--"or rather the TERM phrenology--is derived from two Greek words signifying MIND and DISCOURSE; hence we find embodied in phrenology- proper, the science of intellectual measurement, together with the capacity of intelligent communication of the varying mental forces and their flexibilities, etc., etc. The study, then, of phrenology is, to simplify it wholly--is, I say, the general contemplation of the workings of the mind as made manifest through the certain corresponding depressions and protuberances of the human skull when, of course, in a healthy state of action and development, as we find the conditions exemplified in the subject before us." Here the "subject" vaguely smiled. "You recognize that mug, don't you?" whispered my friend. "It's that coruscating young ass, you know, Hedrick--in Cummings' office--trying to study law and literature at the same time, and tampering with 'The Monster that Annually,' don't you know?--where we found the two young students scuffling round the office, and smelling of peppermint?--Hedrick, you know, and Sweeney. Sweeney, the slim chap, with the pallid face, and frog-eyes, and clammy hands! You remember I told you 'there was a pair of 'em'? Well, they're up to something here to-night. Hedrick, there on the stage in front; and Sweeney--don't you see?-- with the gang on the rear seats." "Phrenology--again," continued the lecturer, "is, we may say, a species of mental geography, as it were; which--by a study of the skull--leads also to a study of the brain within, even as geology naturally follows the initial contemplation of the earth's surface. The brain, thurfur, or intellectual retort, as we may say, natively exerts a molding influence on the skull contour; thurfur is the expert in phrenology most readily enabled to accurately locate the multitudinous intellectual forces, and most exactingly estimate, as well, the sequent character of each subject submitted to his scrutiny. As, in the example before us--a young man, doubtless well known in your midst, though, I may say, an entire stranger to myself--I venture to disclose some characteristic trends and tendencies, as indicated by this phrenological depression and development of the skull proper, as later we will show, through the mesmeric condition, the accuracy of our mental diagnosis." Throughout the latter part of this speech my friend nudged me spasmodically, whispering something which was jostled out of intelligent utterance by some inward spasm of laughter. "In this head," said the Professor, straddling his malleable fingers across the young man's bumpy brow--"In this head we find Ideality large--abnormally large, in fact; thurby indicating--taken in conjunction with a like development of the perceptive qualities--language following, as well, in the prominent eye--thurby indicating, I say, our subject as especially endowed with a love for the beautiful--the sublime--the elevating--the refined and delicate--the lofty and superb--in nature, and in all the sublimated attributes of the human heart and beatific soul. In fact, we find this young man possessed of such natural gifts as would befit him for the exalted career of the sculptor, the actor, the artist, or the poet--any ideal calling; in fact, any calling but a practical, matter-of-fact vocation; though in poetry he would seem to best succeed." "Well," said my friend seriously, "he's FEELING for the boy!" Then laughingly: "Hedrick HAS written some rhymes for the county papers, and Sweeney once introduced him, at an Old Settlers' Meeting, as 'The Best Poet in Center Township,' and never cracked a smile! Always after each other that way, but the best friends in the world. SWEENEY'S strong suit is elocution. He has a native ability that way by no means ordinary, but even that gift he abuses and distorts simply to produce grotesque, and oftentimes, ridiculous effects. For instance, nothing more delights him than to 'loathfully' consent to answer a request, at The Mite Society, some evening, for 'an appropriate selection,' and then, with an elaborate introduction of the same, and an exalted tribute to the refined genius of the author, proceed with a most gruesome rendition of 'Alonzo The Brave and The Fair Imogene,' in a way to coagulate the blood and curl the hair of his fair listeners with abject terror. Pale as a corpse, you know, and with that cadaverous face, lit with those malignant-looking eyes, his slender figure, and his long thin legs and arms and hands, and his whole diabolical talent and adroitness brought into play-- why, I want to say to you, it's enough to scare 'em to death! Never a smile from him, though, till he and Hedrick are safe out into the night again-- then, of course, they hug each other and howl over it like Modocs! But pardon; I'm interrupting the lecture. Listen." "A lack of continuity, however," continued the Professor, "and an undue love of approbation, would, measurably, at least, tend to retard the young man's progress toward the consummation of any loftier ambition, I fear; yet as we have intimated, if the subject were appropriately educated to the need's demand, he could doubtless produce a high order of both prose and poetry--especially the latter--though he could very illy bear being laughed at for his pains." "He's dead wrong there," said my friend; "Hedrick enjoys being laughed at; he's used to it--gets fat on it!" "Is fond of his friends," continued the Professor, "and the heartier they are the better; might even be convivially inclined--if so tempted--but prudent --in a degree," loiteringly concluded the speaker, as though unable to find the exact bump with which to bolster up the last named attribute. The subject blushed vividly--my friend's right eyelid dropped, and there was a noticeable, though elusive sensation throughout the audience. "BUT!" said the Professor explosively, "selecting a directly opposite subject, in conjunction with the study of the one before us [turning to the group at the rear of the stage and beckoning], we may find a newer interest in the practical comparison of these subjects side by side." And the Professor pushed a very pale young man into position. "Sweeney!" whispered my friend delightedly; "now look out!" "In THIS subject," said the Professor, "we find the practical business head. Square--though small --a trifle light at the base, in fact; but well balanced at the important points at least; thoughtful eye--wide-awake--crafty--quick--restless--a policy eye, though not denoting language--unless, perhaps, mere business forms and direct statements." "Fooled again!" whispered my friend; "and I'm afraid the old man will fail to nest out the fact also that Sweeney is the cold-bloodedest guyer on the face of the earth, and with more diabolical resources than a prosecuting attorney; the Professor ought to know this, too, by this time--for these same two chaps have been visiting the old man in his room at the hotel,--that's what I was trying to tell you a while ago. The old chap thinks he's 'playing' the boys, is my idea; but it's the other way, or I lose my guess." "Now, under the mesmeric influence--if the two subjects will consent to its administration," said the Professor, after some further tedious preamble, "we may at once determine the fact of my assertions, as will be proved by their action while in this peculiar state." Here some apparent remonstrance was met with from both subjects, though amicably overcome by the Professor first manipulating the stolid brow and pallid front of the imperturbable Sweeney--after which the same mysterious ordeal was loathfully submitted to by Hedrick-- though a noticeably longer time was consumed in securing his final loss of self-control. At last, however, this curious phenomenon was presented, and there before us stood the two swaying figures, the heads dropped back, the lifted hands, with thumb and finger-tips pressed lightly together, the eyelids languid and half closed, and the features, in appearance, wan and humid. "Now, sir!" said the Professor, leading the limp Sweeney forward, and addressing him in a quick sharp tone of voice.--"Now, sir, you are a great contractor--own large factories, and with untold business interests. Just look out there! [pointing out across the expectant audience] look there, and see the countless minions toiling servilely at your dread mandates. And yet--ha! ha! See! see!-- They recognize the avaricious greed that would thus grind them in the very dust; they see, alas! they see themselves, half-clothed--half-fed, that you may glut your coffers. Half-starved, they listen to the wail of wife and babe, and with eyes upraised in prayer, they see YOU rolling by in gilded coach, and swathed in silk attire. But--ha! again! Look-- look! they are rising in revolt against you! Speak to them before too late! Appeal to them--quell them with the promise of the just advance of wages they demand!" The limp figure of Sweeney took on something of a stately and majestic air. With a graceful and commanding gesture of the hand, he advanced a step or two; then, after a pause of some seconds duration, in which the lifted face grew pale, as it seemed, and the eyes a denser black, he said: "But yesterday I looked away O'er happy lands, where sunshine lay In golden blots, Inlaid with spots Of shade and wild forget-me-nots." The voice was low, but clear, and even musical. The Professor started at the strange utterance, looked extremely confused, and, as the boisterous crowd cried "Hear, hear!" he motioned the subject to continue, with some gasping comment interjected, which, if audible, would have run thus: "My God! It's an inspirational poem!" "My head was fair With flaxen hair--" resumed the subject. "Yoop-ee!" yelled an irreverent auditor. "Silence! silence!" commanded the excited Professor in a hoarse whisper; then, turning enthusiastically to the subject--"Go on, young man! Go on!--'Thy head was fair with flaxen hair----' " "My head was fair With flaxen hair, And fragrant breezes, faint and rare, And, warm with drouth From out the south, Blew all my curls across my mouth." The speaker's voice, exquisitely modulated, yet resonant as the twang of a harp, now seemed of itself to draw and hold each listener; while a certain extravagance of gesticulation--a fantastic movement of both form and feature--seemed very near akin to fascination. And so flowed on the curious utterance:-- "And, cool and sweet, My naked feet Found dewy pathways through the wheat; And out again Where, down the lane, The dust was dimpled with the rain." In the pause following there was a breathlessness almost painful. The poem went on: "But yesterday I heard the lay Of summer birds, when I, as they With breast and wing, All quivering With life and love, could only sing. "My head was leant Where, with it, blent A maiden's, o'er her instrument: While all the night, From vale to height, Was filled with echoes of delight. "And all our dreams Were lit with gleams Of that lost land of reedy streams, Along whose brim Forever swim Pan's lilies, laughing up at him." And still the inspired singer held rapt sway. "It is wonderful!" I whispered, under breath. "Of course it is!" answered my friend. "But listen; there is more:" "But yesterday! . . . . O blooms of May, And summer roses-where away? O stars above; And lips of love, And all the honeyed sweets thereof!-- "O lad and lass, And orchard pass, And briered lane, and daisied grass! O gleam and gloom, And woodland bloom And breezy breaths of all perfume!-- "No more for me Or mine shall be Thy raptures--save in memory,-- No more--no more-- Till through the Door Of Glory gleam the days of yore." This was the evident conclusion of the remarkable utterance, and the Professor was impetuously fluttering his hands about the subject's upward- staring eyes, stroking his temples, and snapping his fingers in his face. "Well," said Sweeney, as he stood suddenly awakened, and grinning in an idiotic way, "how did the old thing work?" And it was in the consequent hilarity and loud and long applause, perhaps, that the Professor was relieved from the explanation of this rather astounding phenomenon of the idealistic workings of a purely practical brain--or, as my impious friend scoffed the incongruity later, in a particularly withering allusion, as the "blank- blanked fallacy, don't you know, of staying the hunger of a howling mob by feeding 'em on spring poetry!" The tumult of the audience did not cease even with the retirement of Sweeney, and cries of "Hedrick! Hedrick!" only subsided with the Professor's high-keyed announcement that the subject was even then endeavoring to make himself heard, but could not until utter quiet was restored, adding the further appeal that the young man had already been a long time under the mesmeric spell, and ought not be so detained for an unnecessary period. "See," he concluded, with an assuring wave of the hand toward the subject, "see; he is about to address you. Now, quiet!--utter quiet, if you please!" "Great heavens!" exclaimed my friend stiflingly; "just look at the boy! Get on to that position for a poet! Even Sweeney has fled from the sight of him!" And truly, too, it was a grotesque pose the young man had assumed; not wholly ridiculous either, since the dwarfed position he had settled into seemed more a genuine physical condition than an affected one. The head, back-tilted, and sunk between the shoulders, looked abnormally large, while the features of the face appeared peculiarly child- like--especially the eyes--wakeful and wide apart, and very bright, yet very mild and very artless; and the drawn and cramped outline of the legs and feet, and of the arms and hands, even to the shrunken, slender-looking fingers, all combined to convey most strikingly to the pained senses the fragile frame and pixy figure of some pitiably afflicted child, unconscious altogether of the pathos of its own deformity. "Now, mark the cuss, Horatio!" gasped my friend. At first the speaker's voice came very low, and somewhat piping, too, and broken--an eery sort of voice it was, of brittle and erratic timbre and undulant inflection. Yet it was beautiful. It had the ring of childhood in it, though the ring was not pure golden, and at times fell echoless. The SPIRIT of its utterance was always clear and pure and crisp and cheery as the twitter of a bird, and yet forever ran an undercadence through it like a low-pleading prayer. Half garrulously, and like a shallow brook might brawl across a shelvy bottom, the rhythmic little changeling thus began:-- "I'm thist a little crippled boy, an' never goin' to grow An' git a great big man at all!--'cause Aunty told me so. When I was thist a baby onc't I falled out of the bed An' got 'The Curv'ture of the Spine'--'at's what the Doctor said. I never had no Mother nen--fer my Pa runned away An' dassn't come back here no more--'cause he was drunk one day An' stobbed a man in thish-ere town, an' couldn't pay his fine! An' nen my Ma she died--an' I got 'Curv'ture of the Spine'!" A few titterings from the younger people in the audience marked the opening stanza, while a certain restlessness, and a changing to more attentive positions seemed the general tendency. The old Professor, in the meantime, had sunk into one of the empty chairs. The speaker went on with more gaiety:-- "I'm nine years old! An' you can't guess how much I weigh, I bet!-- Last birthday I weighed thirty-three!--An' I weigh thirty yet! I'm awful little fer my size--I'm purt' nigh littler 'an Some babies is!--an' neighbers all calls me 'The Little Man'! An' Doc one time he laughed an' said: 'I 'spect, first think you know, You'll have a little spike-tail coat an' travel with a show!' An' nen I laughed-till I looked round an' Aunty was a-cryin'-- Sometimes she acts like that, 'cause I got 'Curv'ture of the Spine'!" Just in front of me a great broad-shouldered countryman, with a rainy smell in his cumbrous overcoat, cleared his throat vehemently, looked startled at the sound, and again settled forward, his weedy chin resting on the knuckles of his hands as they tightly clutched the seat before him. And it was like being taken into a childish confidence as the quaint speech continued:-- "I set--while Aunty's washin'--on my little long-leg stool, An' watch the little boys an' girls a-skippin' by to school; An' I peck on the winder, an' holler out an' say: 'Who wants to fight The Little Man at dares you all to-day?' An' nen the boys climbs on the fence, an' little girls peeks through, An' they all says: 'Cause you're so big, you think we're 'feard o' you!' An' nen they yell, an' shake their fist at me, like I shake mine-- They're thist in fun, you know, 'cause I got 'Curv'ture of the Spine'!" "Well," whispered my friend, with rather odd irrelevance, I thought, "of course you see through the scheme of the fellows by this time, don't you?" "I see nothing," said I, most earnestly, "but a poor little wisp of a child that makes me love him so I dare not think of his dying soon, as he surely must! There; listen!" And the plaintive gaiety of the homely poem ran on:-- "At evening, when the ironin' 's done, an' Aunty's fixed the fire, An' filled an' lit the lamp, an' trimmed the wick an' turned it higher, An' fetched the wood all in fer night, an' locked the kitchen door, An' stuffed the ole crack where the wind blows in up through the floor-- She sets the kittle on the coals, an' biles an' makes the tea, An' fries the liver an' the mush, an' cooks a egg fer me, An' sometimes--when I cough so hard--her elderberry wine Don't go so bad fer little boys with 'Curv'ture of the Spine'!" "Look!" whispered my friend, touching me with his elbow. "Look at the Professor!" "Look at everybody!" said I. And the artless little voice went on again half quaveringly:-- "But Aunty's all so childish-like on my account, you see I'm 'most afeard she'll be took down--an' 'at's what bothers ME!-- 'Cause ef my good ole Aunty ever would git sick an' die, I don't know what she'd do in Heaven--till _I_ come, by an' by:-- Fer she's so ust to all my ways, an' ever'thing, you know, An' no one there like me, to nurse an' worry over so!-- 'Cause all the little childerns there's so straight an' strong an' fine, They's nary angel 'bout the place with 'Curv'ture of the Spine'!" The old Professor's face was in his handkerchief; so was my friend's in his; and so was mine in mine, as even now my pen drops and I reach for it again. I half regret joining the mad party that had gathered an hour later in the old law office where these two graceless characters held almost nightly revel, the instigators and conniving hosts of a reputed banquet whose MENU'S range confined itself to herrings, or "blind robins," dried beef, and cheese, with crackers, gingerbread, and sometimes pie; the whole washed down with anything but "----Wines that heaven knows when Had sucked the fire of some forgotten sun, And kept it through a hundred years of gloom Still glowing in a heart of ruby." But the affair was memorable. The old Professor was himself lured into it and loudest in his praise of Hedrick's realistic art; and I yet recall him at the orgie's height, excitedly repulsing the continued slurs and insinuations of the clammy-handed Sweeney, who, still contending against the old man's fulsome praise of his more fortunate rival, at last openly declared that Hedrick was NOT a poet, NOT a genius, and in no way worthy to be classed in the same breath with HIMSELF--"the gifted but unfortunate SWEENEY, sir--the unacknowledged author, sir 'y gad, sir!--of the two poems that held you spellbound to-night!" A CALLER FROM BOONE BENJ. F. JOHNSON VISITS THE EDITOR It was a dim and chill and loveless afternoon in the late fall of eighty-three when I first saw the genial subject of this hasty sketch. From time to time the daily paper on which I worked had been receiving, among the general literary driftage of amateur essayists, poets and sketch-writers, some conceits in verse that struck the editorial head as decidedly novel; and, as they were evidently the production of an unlettered man, and an OLD man, and a farmer at that, they were usually spared the waste-basket, and preserved--not for publication, but to pass from hand to hand among the members of the staff as simply quaint and mirth-provoking specimens of the verdancy of both the venerable author and the Muse inspiring him. Letters as quaint as were the poems invariably accompanied them, and the oddity of these, in fact, had first called attention to the verses. I well remember the general merriment of the office when the first of the old man's letters was read aloud, and I recall, too, some of his comments on his own verse, verbatim. In one place he said: "I make no doubt you will find some purty SAD spots in my poetry, considerin'; but I hope you will bear in mind that I am a great sufferer with rheumatizum, and have been, off and on, sence the cold New Years. In the main, however," he continued, "I allus aim to write in a cheerful, comfortin' sperit, so's ef the stuff hangs fire, and don't do no good, it hain't a-goin' to do no harm,--and them's my honest views on poetry." In another letter, evidently suspecting his poem had not appeared in print because of its dejected tone, he said: "The poetry I herewith send was wrote off on the finest Autumn day I ever laid eyes on! I never felt better in my life. The morning air was as invigoratin' as bitters with tanzy in it, and the folks at breakfast said they never saw such a' appetite on mortal man before. Then I lit out for the barn, and after feedin', I come back and tuck my pen and ink out on the porch, and jest cut loose. I writ and writ till my fingers was that cramped I couldn't hardly let go of the penholder. And the poem I send you is the upshot of it all. Ef you don't find it cheerful enough fer your columns, I'll have to knock under, that's all!" And that poem, as I recall it, certainly was cheerful enough for publication, only the "copy" was almost undecipherable, and the ink, too, so pale and vague, it was thought best to reserve the verses, for the time, at least, and later on revise, copy, punctuate, and then print it sometime, as much for the joke of it as anything. But it was still delayed, neglected, and in a week's time almost entirely forgotten. And so it was upon this chill and somber afternoon I speak of that an event occurred which most pleasantly reminded me of both the poem with the "sad spots" in it, and the "cheerful" one, "writ out on the porch" that glorious autumn day, that poured its glory through the old man's letter to us. Outside and in the sanctum the gloom was too oppressive to permit an elevated tendency of either thought or spirit. I could do nothing but sit listless and inert. Paper and pencil were before me, but I could not write--I could not even think coherently, and was on the point of rising and rushing out into the streets for a wild walk, when there came a hesitating knock at the door. "Come in!" I snarled, grabbing up my pencil and assuming a frightfully industrious air: "Come in!" I almost savagely repeated, "Come in! And shut the door behind you!" and I dropped my lids, bent my gaze fixedly upon the blank pages before me and began scrawling some disconnected nothings with no head or tail or anything. "Sir; howdy," said a low and pleasant voice. And at once, in spite of my perverse resolve, I looked up. I someway felt rebuked. The speaker was very slowly, noiselessly closing the door. I could hardly face him when he turned around. An old man, of sixty-five, at least, but with a face and an eye of the most cheery and wholesome expression I had ever seen in either youth or age. Over his broad bronzed forehead and white hair he wore a low-crowned, wide-brimmed black felt hat, somewhat rusted now, and with the band grease-crusted, and the binding frayed at intervals, and sagging from the threads that held it on. An old-styled frock coat of black, dull brown in streaks, and quite shiny about the collar and lapels. A waistcoat of no describable material or pattern, and a clean white shirt and collar of one piece, with a black string-tie and double bow, which would have been entirely concealed beneath the long white beard but for its having worked around to one side of the neck. The front outline of the face was cleanly shaven, and the beard, growing simply from the under chin and throat, lent the old pioneer the rather singular appearance of having hair all over him with this luxurious growth pulled out above his collar for mere sample. I arose and asked the old man to sit down, handing him a chair decorously. "No--no," he said--"I'm much obleeged. I hain't come in to bother you no more'n I can he'p. All I wanted was to know ef you got my poetry all right. You know I take yer paper," he went on, in an explanatory way, "and seein' you printed poetry in it once-in-a-while, I sent you some of mine--neighbors kindo' advised me to," he added apologetically, "and so I sent you some--two or three times I sent you some, but I hain't never seed hide-ner-hair of it in your paper, and as I wus in town to-day, anyhow, I jest thought I'd kindo' drap in and git it back, ef you ain't goin' to print it--'cause I allus save up most the things I write, aimin' sometime to git 'em all struck off in pamphlet-form, to kindo' distribit round 'mongst the neighbors, don't you know." Already I had begun to suspect my visitor's identity, and was mechanically opening the drawer of our poetical department. "How was your poetry signed?" I asked. "Signed by my own name," he answered proudly, --"signed by my own name,--Johnson--Benjamin F. Johnson, of Boone County--this state." "And is this one of them, Mr. Johnson?" I asked, unfolding a clumsily-folded manuscript, and closely scrutinizing the verse. "How does she read?" said the old man eagerly, and searching in the meantime for his spectacles. "How does she read?--Then I can tell you!" "It reads," said I, studiously conning the old man's bold but bad chirography, and tilting my chair back indolently,--"it reads like this--the first verse does,"--and I very gravely read:-- "Oh! the old swimmin'-hole!"-- "Stop! Stop!" said the old man excitedly--"Stop right there! That's my poetry, but that's not the way to read it by a long shot! Give it to me!" and he almost snatched it from my hand. "Poetry like this ain't no poetry at all, 'less you read it NATCHURL and IN JEST THE SAME SPERIT 'AT IT'S WRIT IN, don't you understand. It's a' old man a-talkin', rickollect, and a-feelin' kindo' sad, and yit kindo' sorto' good, too, and I opine he wouldn't got that off with a face on him like a' undertaker, and a voice as solemn as a cow-bell after dark! He'd say it more like this."-- And the old man adjusted his spectacles and read:-- "THE OLD SWIMMIN'-HOLE" "Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! whare the crick so still and deep Looked like a baby-river that was laying half asleep, And the gurgle of the worter round the drift jest below Sounded like the laugh of something we onc't ust to know Before we could remember anything but the eyes Of the angels lookin' out as we left Paradise; But the merry days of youth is beyond our controle, And it's hard to part ferever with the old swimmin'-hole." I clapped my hands in genuine applause. "Read on!" I said,--"Read on! Read all of it!" The old man's face was radiant as he continued:-- "Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! In the happy days of yore, When I ust to lean above it on the old sickamore, Oh! it showed me a face in its warm sunny tide That gazed back at me so gay and glorified, It made me love myself, as I leaped to caress My shadder smilin' up at me with sich tenderness. But them days is past and gone, and old Time's tuck his toll From the old man come back to the old swimmin'-hole. "Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! In the long, lazy days When the humdrum of school made so many "run-a-ways," How pleasant was the jurney down the old dusty lane, Whare the tracks of our bare feet was all printed so plane You could tell by the dent of the heel and the sole They was lots o' fun on hands at the old swimmin'-hole. But the lost joys is past! Let your tears in sorrow roll Like the rain that ust to dapple up the old swimmin'-hole. "Thare the bullrushes growed, and the cattails so tall, And the sunshine and shadder fell over it all; And it mottled the worter with amber and gold Till the glad lilies rocked in the ripples that rolled; And the snake-feeder's four gauzy wings fluttered by Like the ghost of a daisy dropped out of the sky, Or a wownded apple-blossom in the breeze's controle As it cut acrost some orchurd to'rds the old swimmin'-hole. "Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! When I last saw the place, The scenes was all changed, like the change in my face; The bridge of the railroad now crosses the spot Whare the old divin'-log lays sunk and fergot. And I stray down the banks whare the trees ust to be-- But never again will theyr shade shelter me! And I wish in my sorrow I could strip to the soul, And dive off in my grave like the old swimmin'-hole." My applause was long and loud. The old man's interpretation of the poem was a positive revelation, though I was glad enough to conceal from him my moistened eyes by looking through the scraps for other specimens of his verse. "Here," said I enthusiastically, "is another one, signed 'Benj. F. Johnson,' read me this," and I handed him the poem. The old man smiled and took the manuscript. "This-here one's on 'The Hoss,' " he said, simply clearing his throat. "They ain't so much fancy- work about this as the other'n, but they's jest as much FACT, you can bet--'cause, they're no animal a-livin' 'at I love better 'an "THE HOSS" "The hoss he is a splendud beast; He is man's friend, as heaven desined, And, search the world from west to east, No honester you'll ever find! "Some calls the hoss 'a pore dumb brute,' And yit, like Him who died fer you, I say, as I theyr charge refute, 'Fergive; they know not what they do!' "No wiser animal makes tracks Upon these earthly shores, and hence Arose the axium, true as facts, Extoled by all, as 'Good hoss-sense!' "The hoss is strong, and knows his stren'th,-- You hitch him up a time er two And lash him, and he'll go his len'th And kick the dashboard out fer you! "But, treat him allus good and kind, And never strike him with a stick, Ner aggervate him, and you'll find He'll never do a hostile trick. "A hoss whose master tends him right And worters him with daily care, Will do your biddin' with delight, And act as docile as YOU air. "He'll paw and prance to hear your praise, Because he's learnt to love you well; And, though you can't tell what he says He'll nicker all he wants to tell. "He knows you when you slam the gate At early dawn, upon your way Unto the barn, and snorts elate, To git his corn, er oats, er hay. "He knows you, as the orphant knows The folks that loves her like theyr own, And raises her and "finds" her clothes, And "schools" her tel a womern-grown! "I claim no hoss will harm a man, Ner kick, ner run away, cavort, Stump-suck, er balk, er 'catamaran,' Ef you'll jest treat him as you ort. "But when I see the beast abused, And clubbed around as I've saw some, I want to see his owner noosed, And jest yanked up like Absolum! "Of course they's differunce in stock,-- A hoss that has a little yeer, And slender build, and shaller hock, Can beat his shadder, mighty near! "Whilse one that's thick in neck and chist And big in leg and full in flank, That tries to race, I still insist He'll have to take the second rank. "And I have jest laid back and laughed, And rolled and wallered in the grass At fairs, to see some heavy-draft Lead out at FIRST, yit come in LAST! "Each hoss has his appinted place,-- The heavy hoss should plow the soil;-- The blooded racer, he must race, And win big wages fer his toil. "I never bet--ner never wrought Upon my feller man to bet-- And yit, at times, I've often thought Of my convictions with regret. "I bless the hoss from hoof to head-- From head to hoof, and tale to mane!-- I bless the hoss, as I have said, From head to hoof, and back again! "I love my God the first of all, Then Him that perished on the cross, And next, my wife,--and then I fall Down on my knees and love the hoss." Again I applauded, handing the old man still another of his poems, and the last received. "Ah!" said he, as his gentle eyes bent on the title; "this-- here's the cheerfullest one of 'em all. This is the one writ, as I wrote you about--on that glorious October morning two weeks ago--I thought your paper would print this-un, shore!" "Oh, it WILL print it," I said eagerly; "and it will print the other two as well! It will print ANYTHING that you may do us the honor to offer, and we'll reward you beside just as you may see fit to designate.-- But go on--go on! Read me the poem." The old man's eyes were glistening as he responded with the poem entitled "WHEN THE FROST IS ON THE PUNKIN" "When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock, And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin' turkey-cock, And the clackin' of the guineys, and the cluckin' of the hens, And the rooster's hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence O, it's then's the times a feller is a-feelin' at his best, With the risin' sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest, As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock, When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock. "They's something kindo' harty-like about the atmusfere When the heat of summer's over and the coolin' fall is here-- Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossums on the trees, And the mumble of the hummin'-birds and buzzin' of the bees; But the air's so appetizin'; and the landscape through the haze Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days Is a pictur' that no painter has the colorin' to mock-- When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock. "The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn, And the raspin' of the tangled leaves, as golden as the morn; The stubble in the furries--kindo' lonesome-like, but still A-preachin' sermuns to us of the barns they growed to fill; The strawstack in the medder, and the reaper in the shed; The hosses in theyr stalls below--the clover overhead!-- O, it sets my hart a-clickin' like the tickin' of a clock, When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock! "Then your apples all is getherd, and the ones a feller keeps Is poured around the celler-floor in red and yeller heaps; And your cider-makin' 's over, and your wimmern-folks is through With theyr mince and apple-butter, and theyr souse and saussage, too! . . . I don't know how to tell it--but ef sich a thing could be As the Angels wantin' boardin', and they'd call around on ME-- I'd want to 'commodate 'em-all the whole-indurin' flock-- When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock!" That was enough! "Surely," thought I, "here is a diamond in the rough, and a 'gem,' too, 'of purest ray serene'!" I caught the old man's hand and wrung it with positive rapture; and it is needless to go further in explanation of how the readers of our daily came to an acquaintance through its columns with the crude, unpolished, yet most gentle genius of Benj. F. Johnson, of Boone. THE OLD SOLDIER'S STORY AS TOLD BEFORE THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY IN NEW YORK CITY Since we have had no stories to-night I will venture, Mr. President, to tell a story that I have heretofore heard at nearly all the banquets I have ever attended. It is a story simply, and you must bear with it kindly. It is a story as told by a friend of us all, who is found in all parts of all countries, who is immoderately fond of a funny story, and who, unfortunately, attempts to tell a funny story himself--one that he has been particularly delighted with. Well, he is not a story-teller, and especially he is not a funny story-teller. His funny stories, indeed, are oftentimes touchingly pathetic. But to such a story as he tells, being a good-natured man and kindly disposed, we have to listen, because we do not want to wound his feelings by telling him that we have heard that story a great number of times, and that we have heard it ably told by a great number of people from the time we were children. But, as I say, we can not hurt his feelings. We can not stop him. We can not kill him; and so the story generally proceeds. He selects a very old story always, and generally tells it in about this fashion: I heerd an awful funny thing the other day--ha! ha! I don't know whether I kin git it off er not, but, anyhow, I'll tell it to you. Well!--le's see now how the fool-thing goes. Oh, yes!--W'y, there was a feller one time--it was during the army and this feller that I started in to tell you about was in the war and--ha! ha!--there was a big fight a-goin' on, and this feller was in the fight, and it was a big battle and bullets a-flyin' ever' which way, and bomb- shells a-bu'stin', and cannon-balls a-flyin' 'round promiskus; and this feller right in the midst of it, you know, and all excited and het up, and chargin' away; and the fust thing you know along come a cannon-ball and shot his head off--ha! ha! ha! Hold on here a minute!--no, sir; I'm a-gittin' ahead of my story; no, no; it didn't shoot his HEAD off-- I'm gittin' the cart before the horse there--shot his LEG off; that was the way; shot his leg off; and down the poor feller drapped, and, of course, in that condition was perfectly he'pless, you know, but yit with presence o' mind enough to know that he was in a dangerous condition ef somepin' wasn't done fer him right away. So he seen a comrade a-chargin', by that he knowed, and he hollers to him and called him by name--I disremember now what the feller's name was. . . . Well, that's got nothin' to do with the story, anyway; he hollers to him, he did, and says, "Hello, there," he says to him; "here, I want you to come here and give me a lift; I got my leg shot off, and I want you to pack me back to the rear of the battle" --where the doctors always is, you know, during a fight--and he says, "I want you to pack me back there where I can get med-dy-cinal attention er I'm a dead man, fer I got my leg shot off," he says, "and I want you to pack me back there so's the surgeons kin take keer of me." Well-- the feller, as luck would have it, ricko'nized him and run to him and throwed down his own musket, so's he could pick him up; and he stooped down and picked him up and kindo' half-way shouldered him and half-way helt him betwixt his arms like, and then he turned and started back with him--ha! ha! ha! Now, mind, the fight was still a-goin' on--and right at the hot of the fight, and the feller, all excited, you know, like he was, and the soldier that had his leg shot off gittin' kindo' fainty like, and his head kindo' stuck back over the feller's shoulder that was carryin' him. And he hadn't got more'n a couple o' rods with him when another cannon-ball come along and tuk his head off, shore enough!-- and the curioust thing about it was--ha! ha!--that the feller was a-packin' him didn't know that he had been hit ag'in at all, and back he went--still carryin' the deceased back--ha! ha! ha!--to where the doctors could take keer of him--as he thought. Well, his cap'n happened to see him, and he thought it was a ruther cur'ous p'ceedin's--a soldier carryin' a dead body out o' the fight--don't you see? And so he hollers at him, and he says to the soldier, the cap'n did, he says, "Hullo, there; where you goin' with that thing?" the cap'n said to the soldier who was a-carryin' away the feller that had his leg shot off. Well, his head, too, by that time. So he says, "Where you going with that thing?" the cap'n said to the soldier who was a-carryin' away the feller that had his leg shot off. Well, the soldier he stopped-- kinder halted, you know, like a private soldier will when his presidin' officer speaks to him--and he says to him, "W'y," he says, "Cap, it's a comrade o' mine and the pore feller has got his leg shot off, and I'm a-packin' him back to where the doctors is; and there was nobody to he'p him, and the feller would 'a' died in his tracks--er track ruther--if it hadn't a-been fer me, and I'm a-packin' him back where the surgeons can take keer of him; where he can get medical attendance--er his wife's a widder!" he says, " 'cause he's got his leg shot off!" Then CAP'N says, "You blame fool you, he's got his HEAD shot off." So then the feller slacked his grip on the body and let it slide down to the ground, and looked at it a minute, all puzzled, you know, and says, "W'y, he told me it was his leg!" Ha! ha! ha! DIALECT IN LITERATURE 'And the common people heard him gladly' Of what shall be said herein of dialect, let it be understood the term dialect referred to is of that general breadth of meaning given it to-day, namely, any speech or vernacular outside of the prescribed form of good English in its present state. The present state of the English is, of course, not any one of its prior states. So first let it be remarked that it is highly probable that what may have been the best of English once may now by some be counted as a weak, inconsequent patois, or dialect. To be direct, it is the object of this article to show that dialect is not a thing to be despised in any event --that its origin is oftentimes of as royal caste as that of any speech. Listening back, from the stand- point of to-day, even to the divine singing of that old classic master to whom England's late laureate refers as ". . . the first warbler, whose sweet breath Preluded those melodious bursts that fill The spacious times of great Elizabeth With sounds that echo still"; or to whom Longfellow alludes, in his matchless sonnet, as ". . . the poet of the dawn, who wrote The Canterbury Tales, and his old age Made beautiful with song"-- Chaucer's verse to us is NOW as veritably dialect as to that old time it was the chastest English; and even then his materials were essentially dialect when his song was at best pitch. Again, our present dialect, of most plebeian ancestry, may none the less prove worthy. Mark the recognition of its own personal merit in the great new dictionary, where what was, in our own remembrance, the most outlandish dialect, is now good, sound, official English. Since Literature must embrace all naturally existing materials--physical, mental and spiritual--we have no occasion to urge its acceptance of so-called dialect, for dialect IS in Literature, and HAS been there since the beginning of all written thought and utterance. Strictly speaking, as well as paradoxically, all verbal expression is more or less dialectic, however grammatical. While usage establishes grammar, it no less establishes so-called dialect. Therefore we may as rightfully refer to "so-called grammar." It is not really a question of Literature's position toward dialect that we are called upon to consider, but rather how much of Literature's valuable time shall be taken up by this dialectic country cousin. This question Literature her gracious self most amiably answers by hugging to her breast voluminous tomes, from Chaucer on to Dickens, from Dickens on to Joel Chandler Harris. And this affectionate spirit on the part of Literature, in the main, we all most feelingly indorse. Briefly summed, it would appear that dialect means something more than mere rude form of speech and action--that it must, in some righteous and substantial way, convey to us a positive force of soul, truth, dignity, beauty, grace, purity and sweetness that may even touch us to the tenderness of tears. Yes, dialect as certainly does all this as that speech and act refined may do it, and for the same reasons: it is simply, purely natural and human. Yes, the Lettered and the Unlettered powers are at sword's points; and very old and bitter foemen, too, they are. As fairly as we can, then, let us look over the field of these contending forces and note their diverse positions: First, THE LETTERED--they who have the full advantages of refined education, training, and association--are undoubtedly as wholly out of order among the UNLETTERED as the Unlettered are out of order in the exalted presence of the Lettered. Each faction may in like aversion ignore or snub the other; but a long-suffering Providence must bear with the society of both. There may be one vague virtue demonstrated by this feud: each division will be found unwaveringly loyal to its kind, and mutually they desire no interchange of sympathy whatever.--Neither element will accept from the other any PATRONIZING treatment; and, perhaps, the more especially does the UNLETTERED faction reject anything in vaguest likeness of this spirit. Of the two divisions, in graphic summary,--ONE knows the very core and center of refined civilization, and this only; the OTHER knows the outlying wilds and suburbs of civilization, and this only. Whose, therefore, is the greater knowledge, and whose the just right of any whit of self-glorification? A curious thing, indeed, is this factional pride, as made equally manifest in both forces; in one, for instance, of the Unlettered forces: The average farmer, or countryman, knows, in reality, a far better and wider range of diction than he permits himself to use. He restricts and abridges the vocabulary of his speech, fundamentally, for the reason that he fears offending his rural NEIGHBORS, to whom a choicer speech might suggest, on his part, an assumption--a spirit of conscious superiority, and therewith an implied reflection on THEIR lack of intelligence and general worthiness. If there is any one text universally known and nurtured of the Unlettered masses of our common country, it is that which reads, "All men are created equal." Therefore it is a becoming thing when true gentility prefers to overlook some variations of the class who, more from lack of cultivation than out of rude intent, sometimes almost compel a positive doubt of the nice veracity of the declaration, or at least a grief at the munificent liberality of the so-bequoted statement. The somewhat bewildering position of these conflicting forces leaves us nothing further to consider, but how to make the most and best of the situation so far as Literature may be hurt or helped thereby. Equally with the perfect English, then, dialect should have full justice done it. Then always it is worthy, and in Literature is thus welcome. The writer of dialect should as reverently venture in its use as in his chastest English. His effort in the SCHOLARLY and ELEGANT direction suffers no neglect-- he is SCHOOLED in that, perhaps, he may explain. Then let him be SCHOOLED in DIALECT before he sets up as an expounder of it--a teacher, forsooth a master! The real master must not only know each varying light and shade of dialect expression, but he must as minutely know the inner character of the people whose native tongue it is, else his product is simply a pretense--a wilful forgery, a rank abomination. Dialect has been and is thus insulted, vilified, and degraded, now and continually; and through this outrage solely, thousands of generous- minded readers have been turned against dialect who otherwise would have loved and blessed it in its real form of crude purity and unstrained sweetness-- Honey dripping from the comb. Let no impious faddist, then, assume its just interpretation. He may know everything else in the world, but not dialect, nor dialectic people, for both of which he has supreme contempt, which same, be sure, is heartily returned. Such a "superior" personage may even go among these simple country people and abide indefinitely in the midst of them, yet their more righteous contempt never for one instant permits them to be their real selves in his presence. In consequence, his most conscientious report of them, their ways, lives, and interests, is absolutely of no importance or value in the world. He never knew them, nor will he ever know them. They are not his kind of people, any more than he is their kind of man; and THEIR disappointment grieves us more than his. The master in Literature, as in any art, is that "divinely gifted man" who does just obeisance to all living creatures, "both man and beast and bird." It is this master only who, as he writes, can sweep himself aside and leave his humble characters to do the thinking and the talking. This man it is who celebrates his performance--not himself. His work he celebrates because it is not his only, but because he feels it to be the conscientious reproduction of life itself--as he has seen and known and felt it;--a representation it is of God's own script, translated and transcribed by the worshipful mind and heart and hand of genius. This virtue is impartially demanded in all art, and genius only can fully answer the demand in any art for which we claim perfection. The painter has his expression of it, with no slighting of the dialect element; so, too, the sculptor, the musician, and the list entire. In the line of Literature and literary material, an illustration of the nice meaning and distinction of the art of dialect will be found in Charles Dudley Warner's comment on George Cable's work, as far back as 1883, referring to the author's own rendition of it from the platform. Mr. Warner says: While the author was unfolding to his audience a life and society unfamiliar to them and entrancing them with pictures, the reality of which none doubted and the spell of which none cared to escape, it occurred to me that here was the solution of all the pother we have recently got into about the realistic and the ideal schools in fiction. In "Posson Jone," an awkward camp-meeting country preacher is the victim of a vulgar confidence game; the scenes are the street, a drinking-place, a gambling-saloon, a bull-ring, and a calaboose; there is not a "respectable" character in it. Where shall we look for a more faithful picture of low life? Where shall we find another so vividly set forth in all its sordid details? And yet see how art steps in, with the wand of genius, to make literature! Over the whole the author has cast an ideal light; over a picture that, in the hands of a bungling realist, would have been repellent he has thrown the idealizing grace that makes it one of the most charming sketches in the world. Here is nature, as nature only ought to be in literature, elevated but never departed from. So we find dialect, as a branch of literature, worthy of the high attention and employment of the greatest master in letters--not the merest mountebank. Turn to Dickens, in innumerable passages of pathos: the death of poor Jo, or that of the "Cheap John's" little daughter in her father's arms, on the foot-board of his peddling cart before the jeering of the vulgar mob; smile moistly, too, at Mr. Sleary's odd philosophies; or at the trials of Sissy Jupe; or lift and tower with indignation, giving ear to Stephen Blackpool and the stainless nobility of his cloyed utterances. The crudeness or the homeliness of the dialectic element does not argue its unfitness in any way. Some readers seem to think so; but they are wrong, and very gravely wrong. Our own brief history as a nation, and our finding and founding and maintaining of it, left our forefathers little time indeed for the delicate cultivation of the arts and graces of refined and scholarly attainments. And there is little wonder, and utter blamelessness on their part, if they lapsed in point of high mental accomplishments, seeing their attention was so absorbed by propositions looking toward the protection of their rude farm-homes, their meager harvests, and their half-stabled cattle from the dread invasion of the Indian. Then, too, they had their mothers and their wives and little ones to protect, to clothe, to feed, and to die for in this awful line of duty, as hundreds upon hundreds did. These sad facts are here accented and detailed not so much for the sake of being tedious as to indicate more clearly why it was that many of the truly heroic ancestors of "our best people" grew unquestionably dialect of caste --not alone in speech, but in every mental trait and personal address. It is a grievous fact for us to confront, but many of them wore apparel of the commonest, talked loudly, and doubtless said "thisaway" and "thataway," and "Watch y' doin' of?" and "Whur yi goin' at?"--using dialect even in their prayers to Him who, in His gentle mercy, listened and was pleased; and who listens verily unto this hour to all like prayers, yet pleased; yea, haply listens to the refined rhetorical petitions of those who are NOT pleased. There is something more at fault than the language when we turn from or flinch at it; and, as has been intimated, the wretched fault may be skulkingly hidden away in the ambush of OSTENSIBLE dialect--that type of dialect so copiously produced by its sole manufacturers, who, utterly stark and bare of the vaguest idea of country life or country people, at once assume that all their "gifted pens" have to do is stupidly to misspell every word; vulgarly mistreat and besloven every theme, however sacred; maim, cripple, and disfigure language never in the vocabulary of the countryman--then smuggle these monstrosities of either rhyme or prose somehow into the public print that is innocently to smear them broadcast all over the face of the country they insult. How different the mind and method of the true intrepreter. As this phrase goes down the man himself arises--the type perfect--Colonel Richard Malcolm Johnston, who wrote "The Dukesborough Tales"--an accomplished classical scholar and teacher, yet no less an accomplished master and lover of his native dialect of middle Georgia. He, like Dickens, permits his rustic characters to think, talk, act and live, Just as nature designed them. He does not make the pitiable error of either patronizing or making fun of them. He knows them and he loves them; and they know and love him in return. Recalling Colonel Johnston's dialectic sketches, with his own presentation of them from the platform, the writer notes a fact that seems singularly to obtain among all true dialect-writers, namely, that they are also endowed with native histrionic capabilities: HEAR, as well as read, Twain, Cable, Johnston, Page, Smith, and all the list with barely an exception. Did space permit, no better illustration of true dialect sketch and characterization might here be offered than Colonel Johnston's simple story of "Mr. Absalom Billingslea," or the short and simple annals of his like quaint contemporaries, "Mr. Bill Williams" and "Mr. Jonas Lively." The scene is the country and the very little country town, with landscape, atmosphere, simplicity, circumstance--all surroundings and conditions--VERITABLE--everything rural and dialectic, no less than the simple, primitive, common, wholesome-hearted men and women who so naturally live and have their blessed being in his stories, just as in the life itself. This is the manifest work of the true dialect writer and expounder. In every detail, the most minute, such work reveals the master-hand and heart of the humanitarian as well as artist--the two are indissolubly fused--and the result of such just treatment of whatever lowly themes or characters we can but love and loyally approve with all our human hearts. Such masters necessarily are rare, and such ripe perfecting as is here attained may be in part the mellowing result of age and long observation, though it can be based upon the wisest, purest spirit of the man as well as artist. With no less approval should the work of Joel Chandler Harris be regarded: His touch alike is ever reverential. He has gathered up the bruised and broken voices and the legends of the slave, and from his child-heart he has affectionately yielded them to us in all their eery beauty and wild loveliness. Through them we are made to glorify the helpless and the weak and to revel in their victories. But, better, we are taught that even in barbaric breasts there dwells inherently the sense of right above wrong-equity above law-and the One Unerring Righteousness Eternal. With equal truth and strength, too, Mr. Harris has treated the dialectic elements of the interior Georgia country-- the wilds and fastnesses of the "moonshiners." His tale of Teague Poteet, of some years ago, was contemporaneous with the list of striking mountain stories from that strong and highly gifted Tennesseean, Miss Murfree, or "Charles Egbert Craddock." In the dialectic spirit her stories charm and hold us. Always there is strangely mingled, but most naturally, the gentle nature cropping out amid the most desperate and stoical: the night scene in the isolated mountain cabin, guarded ever without and within from any chance down-swooping of the minions of the red-eyed law; the great man-group of gentle giants, with rifles never out of arm's- reach, in tender rivalry ranged admiringly around the crowing, wakeful little boy-baby; the return, at last, of the belated mistress of the house--the sister, to whom all do great, awkward reverence. Jealously snatching up the babe and kissing it, she querulously demands why he has not long ago been put to bed. "He 'lowed he wouldn't go," is the reply. Thomas Nelson Page, of Virginia, who wrote Meh Lady--a positive classic in the negro dialect: his work is veritable--strong and pure and sweet; and as an oral reader of it the doubly gifted author, in voice and cadence, natural utterance, every possible effect of speech and tone, is doubtless without rival anywhere. Many more, indeed, than may be mentioned now there are of these real benefactors and preservers of the wayside characters, times, and customs of our ever-shifting history. Needless is it to speak here of the earlier of our workers in the dialectic line--of James Russell Lowell's New England Hosea Biglow, Dr. Eggleston's Hoosier School-Master, or the very rare and quaint, bright prattle of Helen's Babies. In connection with this last let us very seriously inquire what this real child has done that Literature should so persistently refuse to give him an abiding welcome? Since for ages this question seems to have been left unasked, it may be timely now to propound it. Why not the real child in Literature? The real child is good enough (we all know he is bad enough) to command our admiring attention and most lively interest in real life, and just as we find him "in the raw." Then why do we deny him any righteous place of recognition in our Literature? From the immemorial advent of our dear old Mother Goose, Literature has been especially catering to the juvenile needs and desires, and yet steadfastly overlooking, all the time, the very principles upon which Nature herself founds and presents this lawless little brood of hers--the children. It is not the children who are out of order; it is Literature. And not only is Literature out of order, but she is presumptuous; she is impudent. She takes Nature's children and revises and corrects them till "their own mother doesn't know them." This is literal fact. So, very many of us are coming to inquire, as we've a right, why is the real child excluded from a just hearing in the world of letters as he has in the world of fact? For instance, what has the lovely little ragamuffin ever done of sufficient guilt to consign him eternally to the monstrous penalty of speaking most accurate grammar all the literary hours of the days of the years of his otherwise natural life? "Oh, mother, may I go to school With brother Charles to-day? The air is very fine and cool; Oh, mother, say I may!" --Is this a real boy that would make such a request, and is it the real language he would use? No, we are glad to say that it is not. Simply it is a libel, in every particular, on any boy, however fondly and exactingly trained by parents however zealous for his overdecorous future. Better, indeed, the dubious sentiment of the most trivial nursery jingle, since the latter at least maintains the lawless though wholesome spirit of the child-genuine.-- "Hink! Minx! The old witch winks-- The fat begins to fry; There's nobody home but Jumping Joan, Father and mother and I." Though even here the impious poet leaves the scar of grammatical knowledge upon childhood's native diction; and so the helpless little fellow is again misrepresented, and his character, to all intents and purposes, is assaulted and maligned outrageously thereby. Now, in all seriousness, this situation ought not to be permitted to exist, though to change it seems an almost insurmountable task. The general public, very probably, is not aware of the real gravity of the position of the case as even unto this day it exists. Let the public try, then, to contribute the real child to the so-called Child Literature of its country, and have its real child returned as promptly as it dare show its little tousled head in the presence of that scholarly and dignified institution. Then ask why your real child has been spanked back home again, and the wise mentors there will virtually tell you that Child Literature wants no real children in it, that the real child's example of defective grammar and lack of elegant deportment would furnish to its little patrician patrons suggestions very hurtful indeed to their higher morals, tendencies, and ambitions. Then, although the general public couldn't for the life of it see why or how, and might even be reminded that it was just such a rowdying child itself, and that its FATHER-- the Father of his Country--was just such a child; that Abraham Lincoln was just such a lovable, lawless child, and yet was blessed and chosen in the end for the highest service man may ever render unto man,--all--all this argument would avail not in the least, since the elegantly minded purveyors of Child Literature can not possibly tolerate the presence of any but the refined children--the very proper children--the studiously thoughtful, poetic children,--and these must be kept safe from the contaminating touch of our rough-and-tumble little fellows in "hodden gray," with frowzly heads, begrimed but laughing faces, and such awful, awful vulgarities of naturalness, and crimes of simplicity, and brazen faith and trust, and love of life and everybody in it. All other real people are getting into Literature; and without some real children along will they not soon be getting lonesome, too?
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