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JPrice 35 Cents, 
 
 
 By WALTER LECKY, 
 
 Author of "Green Graves in Ireland,'^ '■'■Adirondack Sketche.%" etc. 
 
 JOHN ]V1URF»HY & CO., PublisHers, 
 
 BAI^TIMORE. 
 
DOWN AT CAXTON'S. 
 
 By WALTER LECKY, \ \ 
 
 Author of *^Green Graves in Ireland" "Adirondack 
 
 \ 
 Sketches," etc. 
 
 
 V 
 
 
 % 
 
 
 BALTIMORE: 
 JOHN MURPHY & CO 
 1895. 
 
Copyright, 1895, by Wm. A. McDermott. 
 
 
 PRESS OF JOHN MURPHY & CO. 
 
\p 
 
 
 :? 
 
 ^ 
 ^ 
 
 I DEDICATE 
 
 TZr/^' SERIES OF SKETCHES 
 
 DONE AT ODD MOMENTS STOLICN FROM THE BUSY LIFE OF A COUNTRY 
 
 DOCTOR, IN THE WILDEST PART OP THE ADIRONDACKS, TO THAT 
 
 DEAR FRIEND, WHO WROTE FOR ME AND OTHER 
 
 WANDERERS — IDYLS OF A SUMMER SEA — 
 
 TO 
 
 CHAELES WAEKEN STODDARD 
 
 OF THE 
 
 Catholic University, Washington, D. C. 
 
MEN. 
 
RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON. 
 
 In that charming and dainty series of 
 books published under the captivating title 
 of " Fiction, Fact and Fancy," and edited 
 by the gifted son of the prince of American 
 literary critics, there is a volume with the 
 companionable name of Billy Downs. It 
 is as follows that Mr. Stedman introduces 
 the creator of Billy Downs and a host of 
 other characters, mostly types of Middle 
 Georgia life, that shall live with the lan- 
 iruao-e. "So we reach the tenth milestone 
 of our ramble, and while we are resting by 
 the wayside let us hail the gentleman who 
 is approaching and ask him for ' another 
 story.' We who have heard him before 
 know that he seldom fails to respond to 
 
 7 
 
8 RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON. 
 
 such a request, and always, too, in a man- 
 ner quite inimitable. As he comes nearer 
 you may observe the dignified, yet courteous 
 and kindly bearing of a gentleman of the 
 old school. The white hair and moustache, 
 the sober dress, betoken the veteran, al- 
 though they are almost contradicted by 
 eyes and an innate youthfulness in word 
 and thought. It is not difficult to recognize 
 in Colonel Richard Malcolm Johnston the 
 founder of a school of fiction and the dean 
 of Southern men of letters." The Colonel 
 is the founder of a school of fiction, if by 
 that school, we understand those, who are 
 depicting for us the Georgia life of the 
 ante-bellum davs. In no otherwise can 
 we assent to Mr. Stedman's phrase. For 
 American critics to claim the dialect school 
 of fiction as their own in origin, is on a par 
 with their other critical achievements. Di- 
 alect was born a long time before Columbus 
 took his way westward. The first wave of 
 
RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON.. » 
 
 mankind leaving the parent stock, in their 
 efforts to survive, carried with them the 
 germ of dialect. Fiction in its portrayal 
 of men and manners of a given period, 
 was bound to reproduce it faithfully — the 
 very least to give us a semblance of that 
 life. This could not be done in many in- 
 stances without the use of dialect. To 
 do so were to deprive the portraiture of 
 individuality. 
 
 Fiction produced on such lines would be 
 worthless. Of late there has been much 
 cavil against dialect writers. This cavil, 
 strange to say, emanates from the Realists. 
 
 They lay down the absurd code, that 
 Art is purely imitative. She plays but a 
 monkey part. Her sole duty is to depict 
 life, paying leading attention to the por- 
 trayal of corns, bunions, and other horny 
 excrescences, that so often accompany her. 
 Realists will not be persuaded that such 
 excrescences are abnormal. From a jaun- 
 
10 -RICHAED MALCOLM JOHNSTON. 
 
 diced introspection of their own little life, 
 they frame canons of criticism to guide the 
 world. With these congenial canons lying 
 before them, one is astonished, if such a 
 phrase may be used in the recent light of 
 that school's pyrotechnic display, that they 
 can condemn dialect. Granted, for the 
 sake of argument, that Art is merely imi- 
 tative, will not the first duty of the novel- 
 ist be to reproduce the exact language, 
 and that when done by the master-hand 
 of a Johnston carries with it not only the 
 speaker's tone, but the power of producing 
 a mental image of the speaker — the very 
 acme of the Realists' school? To paint 
 a Georgia cracker speaking the ordinary 
 Boston- English would be like crowning 
 the noble brow of a South Sea native with 
 a tall Boston beaver. The effort would 
 be unartistic, the effect ludicrous. Colonel 
 Johnston believes in the imitativeness of 
 Art, to the extent of reproducing for us 
 
RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON. 11 
 
 J 
 
 the peculiar dialect of Middle Georgia. 
 He has informed us that there is not a 
 phrase in his novels that he has not heard 
 amid the scenes of his stories. To repro- 
 duce these is a distinct triumph of the 
 novelist's art, but the Colonel has done 
 more ; into his every character has he 
 breathed a soul. His figures are not the 
 automaton skeletons of the Realists, but 
 living men and women who have earnestly 
 played life on the circumscribed stage of 
 Middle Georgia. 
 
 This life is fast passing away. Prof. 
 Shaler, a competent authority, tells us : 
 " At present the strong tide of modernism 
 is sweeping over the old slave-holding 
 States with a force which is certain to clccir 
 away a greater part of the archaic motives 
 which so long held place in the minds of the 
 people. With the death of this generation, 
 which saw the rebellion, the ancient regime 
 will disappear." It can never be lost as 
 
12 RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON. 
 
 long as the novels of Malcolm Johnston 
 are extant. There, in days to come, by the 
 cheery ingle-nook, will a new generation 
 live over in his delightful pages the curious 
 life of Georgia. Cuvier asked for a bone 
 to construct his skeleton. The readers of 
 the Dukesborough tales, Billy Downs, etc., 
 will not only have the skeleton, but live 
 men and women preserved for them by 
 the novelist's elixir. He has known his 
 country and kept close to mother earth, 
 having in his mind that " no language, 
 after it has faded into diction, none that 
 cannot suck up feeding juices secreted for 
 it in the rich mother earth of common folk, 
 can bring forth a sound and lusty book. 
 True vigor and heartiness of phrase do 
 not pass from page to page, but from man 
 to man. . . . There is death in the dic- 
 tionary." That the Colonel's language has 
 sucked up feeding juices secreted for it in 
 the rich mother earth of common folk will 
 
RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON. 13 
 
 •J 
 
 be seen on every page. Let us take at 
 random the communication of Jones Ken- 
 drick to his cousin Simeon Newsome, as to 
 S'phrony Miller. Sim is a farmer lad over- 
 shadowed by the overpowering " dictionary 
 use" of his Cousin Kendrick. Sim has gone 
 a-wooin' S'phrony. Kendrick hearing of 
 this and urged by his mother and sister, 
 comes to the conclusion that he would like 
 to have S'phrony himself. This important 
 fact he admits to Cousin Sim in the follow- 
 ing choice morsel : Sim is overseeing his 
 hands on the plantation ; Kendrick ap- 
 proaches and is met by Sim. Kendrick 
 speaks : 
 
 " Ma and sister Maria have been for 
 some time specified. They have both been 
 going on to me about S'phrony Miller in a 
 way and to an extent that in some circum- 
 stances might be called obstropolus, and to 
 quiet their conscience I've begun a kind of 
 a visitation over there, and mv miad has 
 
14 RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON. 
 
 arriv at the conclusion that she's a good, 
 nice piece of flesh, to use the expressions 
 of a man of the world, and society. What 
 do you think, Sim, of the matter under 
 consideration, and what would you advise ? 
 I like to have your advice sometimes, and 
 I'd like to know what it would be under all 
 circumstances and appearances of a case 
 which, as it stands, it seems to have, and 
 it isn't worth while to conceal the fact that 
 it does have, a tremendous amount of im- 
 mense responsibility to all parties, espe- 
 cially to the undersigned, referring as is 
 well known in books and newspaper adver- 
 tisements to myself. What would you 
 say to the above, Sim, in all its parts and 
 parties ? " It may interest the reader to 
 know that Sim acquiesced " in all its parts 
 and parties," and that S'phrony became 
 Mrs. Kendrick, while Sim took another 
 mate. Of further interest to the imagi- 
 nativeeyoung Avoman is the fact, that Mrs. 
 
RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON. 15 
 
 IN'ewsome and Mr. Kendrick perishing a 
 few years later by some sort of quasi- 
 involuntary but always friendly move- 
 ments, executed in a comparatively brief 
 time, S'phrony and Sim became one. In 
 calling Johnston the dean of Southern men 
 of letters, Stedman does not define his 
 position. Page, the creator of Marse Chan, 
 and one of the most talented of Southern 
 dialect writers, negatively does so. In an 
 article that has literary smack, but lacks 
 critical perception, he rates him below Miss 
 Murfree, James Lane Allen, and Cable. 
 These three writers Page places at the 
 head of Southern writers of fiction. Critics 
 nowadays will adduce no proof; they sim- 
 ply affirm. The text of this discrimination 
 should be the exactness of the character 
 drawing, the life-like reproduction of envi- 
 ronments, and the expertness of the dialect 
 as a vehicle to convey the local flavor. 
 It will hardly be gainsaid that Johnston 
 
16 RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON. 
 
 knows his Georgia no less than Cable 
 knows Louisiana. Johnston is a native of 
 Greorgia ; the time of life most suscepti- 
 ble to local impressions was spent there. 
 Cable's boyhood was otherwise. It will 
 not be thought of that in the painting of 
 Creole life, Cable has excelled the painter 
 of Georgia life. In the handling of dialect, 
 Johnston and Harris touch the high water 
 mark of Southern fiction. It was an old 
 critical dictum that an author to succeed 
 must be in sympathy with his subject ; 
 this may be affirmed of Johnston. It is 
 otherwise with Cable, and especially with 
 Lane, whose Kentucky pictures are often 
 caricatures. Cable poses as the friend of 
 the colored man. His pose is dramatic. 
 It lends a charm to his jS'ew England 
 recitations. We have a great love for 
 champions of every kind. The most of 
 Mr. Cable's pages deal with Creole life, 
 and for that life he has no sympathy. He 
 
RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON. 17 
 
 paints it as essentially pagan, albeit it was 
 essentially Catholic. A padre makes him 
 sniff the air and paw ungraciously. The 
 ceremonies of the church are so many 
 pagan rites. Cable belongs to the school 
 that contemns what it does not understand. 
 His pictures of Creole life are untrue, and 
 much as they were in vogue some years 
 ago, are passing to the bourne of the forgot- 
 ten. Johnston, although a living Catholic, 
 fond of his church, and wedded to her 
 every belief, draws an itinerant preacher 
 of the Methodists with as much enthusiasm 
 and sympathy as he would the clergy of 
 his own church. He has no dislikes, noth- 
 ing that is of man but interests this sunny- 
 hearted romancer of the old South. 
 
 Strange as it may seem, the knowledge 
 of his wonderful power of story-telling 
 came late and in an accidental way. It is 
 best described in his own words. " Story- 
 writing," said the Colonel, ''is the last 
 
18 EICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON. 
 
 thing for me in literature. I had pub- 
 lished two or three volumes on English 
 literature, and in conjunction with a friend 
 had written a life of Alexander Stephens, 
 and also a book on American and European 
 literature, but had no idea of story-writing 
 for money. Two or three stories of mine 
 had found their way into the papers before 
 I left Georgia. I had been a professor of 
 English literature in G-eorgia, but during 
 the war I took a school of boys. I re- 
 moved to Baltimore and took forty boys 
 with me and continued my school. There 
 was in Baltimore, in 1870, a periodical 
 called the Southern Magazine. The first 
 nine of my Dukesborough Tales were con- 
 tributed to that magazine. These fell into 
 the hands of the editor of Harper^ s Maga- 
 zine^ who asked me what I got for them. 
 I said not a cent, and he wanted to know 
 why I had not sent them to him. ' Neelers 
 Peeler's Conditions ' was the first story for 
 
KICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON. 19 
 
 which I got pay. It was published in the 
 Century^ over the signature of Philemon 
 Perch. Dr. Holland told Mr. Gilder to 
 tell that man to write under his own name, 
 adding that he himself had made a mistake 
 in writing under a pseudonym. Sydney 
 Lanier urged me to write, and said if I 
 would do so he would get the matter in 
 print for me. So he took ' Neelers Peeler's 
 Conditions,' and it brought me eighty dol- 
 lars. I was surprised that my stories were 
 considered of any value. I withdrew from 
 teaching about six years ago, and since 
 that time have devoted myself to author- 
 ship. I have never put a word in my 
 book that I have not heard the people use, 
 and very few that I have not used myself. 
 Powelton, Ga., is my Dukesborough. I 
 was born fourteen miles from there. 
 
 " Of the female characters that I have 
 created, Miss Doolana Lines was my fa- 
 vorite, while Mr. Bill Williams is my 
 
20 EICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON. 
 
 favorite among the male characters. I 
 started Doolana to make her mean and 
 stingy like her father, but I hadn't written 
 a page before she wrenched herself out of 
 my hands. She said to me, ' I am a woman, 
 and you shall not make me mean.' These 
 stories are all of Greorgia as it was before 
 the war. In the hill country the institu- 
 tion of slavery was very different from 
 what it was in the rice region or near 
 the coast. Do you know the Georgia ne- 
 gro has live times the sense of the South 
 Carolina negro ? Why ? Because he has 
 always been near his master, and their 
 relations are closer. My father's negroes 
 loved him, and he loved them, and if a 
 negro child died upon the place my mother 
 wept for it. Some time ago I went to the 
 old place, and an old negro came eight 
 miles, walked all the way, to see me. 
 
 " He got to the house before five o'clock 
 in the morning, and opened the shutters 
 
RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON. 21 
 
 while I was asleep. With a cry he rushed 
 into the room. ' Oh, Massa Dick.' We 
 cried in each other's arms. We had been 
 boys together. One of my slaves is now 
 a bishop — Bishop Lucius Holsey, one of 
 the most eloquent men in Georgia." 
 
 These charming bits of autobiography 
 show us the sterling nature of Malcolm 
 Johnston, a nature at once cheerful, kind 
 and loving. It is the object of such na- 
 tures, in the pessimistic wayfares of life, 
 to make friends, illuminating them with 
 sunshine and tickling them with laughter. 
 
 MARION CRAWFORD. 
 
 In front of the Ara Coeli I stood. A 
 
 swarthy Italian was telling of the dramatic 
 
 death of Cola di Rienzi. His English was 
 
 lightly worn, but it seemed to please his 
 
 3 
 
22 MAEION CRAWFORD. 
 
 audience, and it was for that purpose they 
 had paid their lire. The crazy-quilt lan- 
 guage of the cicerone and his audacious 
 way of handling history, made him cut an 
 attractive figure in the eyes of most tour- 
 ists, whose desires are amusement rather 
 than study. As a type, to use a phrase 
 borrowed from the school of psychological 
 novelism, he was a study. To the student 
 Rome is a city of absorbing interest, to the 
 ordinary American bird of passage a dull 
 place. It all depends on your point of 
 view. If you are a scholar, a collector of 
 old lace, or a vandal, Rome is your happy 
 hunting ground. If these pursuits do not 
 interest you, Roman beggars with all sorts 
 and conditions of diseases, sometimes by 
 nature, mostly by art, Roman fleas, and 
 the gaunt ghosts of the Campagna quickly 
 drive you from the capital of the Caesars 
 and Popes. A few other annoyances might 
 be added, such as sour wine, whose mist 
 
MARION CRAWFORD. 23 
 
 fumes are not to be shriven by your bottle- 
 let of eau de Cologne, garlic on the fringe 
 of decay, and the provoking smell of salt 
 fish in the last stage of decomposition. 
 But you have come to Rome ; it is a name 
 to conjure with, and despite the drawbacks, 
 you must have a glimpse, an ordinary 
 bowing acquaintance, with the famed old 
 dame. At the office, an English office, in 
 the Piazza di Spagna, you have asked for 
 a " droll guide." Who could listen to a 
 scholarly one amid such active drawbacks 
 as wine, fleas and fish ? Michael Angelo 
 Orazio Pantacci is your man. What do 
 you care for good English ? Did you not 
 leave New York to leave it behind ? What 
 do you care for Roman history ? Pantacci 
 is your man, and his lecture on Cola di 
 Rienzi is a masterpiece. A stranger joined 
 our little crowd. Pantacci at that moment 
 had attained his descriptive high-water 
 mark. His pose and voice were touchingly 
 
24 MARION CRAWFORD. 
 
 dramatic. Cola was, as he expressed it, "to 
 perish." The stranger smiled and passed 
 on. His smile was a composite affair. It 
 was easy to see in it Michael Angelo's 
 historical duplicity and our ignorant sim- 
 plicity. The stranger was tall, with the 
 shoulders slightly stooping, a nose as near 
 an approach to the Grecian as an American 
 may come, a heavy black mustache, ruddy 
 cheeks, that whispered of English food 
 mellowed with the glowing Chianti. Who 
 is that man ? I said to my companion, 
 whose eyes had followed the stranger 
 rather than Pantacci. " That," said he, 
 "is Marion Crawford, the author of the 
 Saracenesca books. You remember read- 
 ing them at Albano." Tell me something 
 about him. He is a very clever man. 
 Cola has perished ; let us leave Pantacci. 
 On the way to Cordietti's tell me something 
 of his life. He knows how to tell a story, 
 an art hardly to be met with in contem- 
 
MARION CRAWFORD. 25 
 
 porary fiction. Fiction has abrogated to 
 herself the whole domain of life, and thus 
 the art of telling a story for the story's 
 sake is lost. Fiction has a mission. She 
 freights herself with all isms. Scott, Man- 
 zoni, even the great wizard of Spanish 
 fiction, could they live again, were failures. 
 Introspection is the cult, and,' happily for 
 their fame, they knew nothing of it. These 
 great masters told us how scenes of life 
 were enacted. Why, they left to the in- 
 quisitive and later-day brood of commenta- 
 tors. Since then the all absorbing scientific 
 spirit prevails, and we moderns brush away 
 the delightful humor of Dickens for the 
 analytical puzzles of Henry James ; the 
 keen satire of Thackerav for the coxcombe- 
 ries of George Meredith. Fairy cult in- 
 terests none, modern children are ancient 
 men. Scepticism is rampant, and the cause 
 of it is, in a great manner, due to the 
 modern novelist. This product of the 19th 
 
26 MARION CRAWFORD. 
 
 century world-spirit coolly tells us that 
 romance lies dead. Realism has taken her 
 place. If we are to believe the theories 
 of its votaries, it is without an ideal — a 
 mere anatomical transcript of man. What 
 this theory leads to is well illustrated by 
 the gutter filth of Zola and Catulle Mendes. 
 It makes novel writing a trade. One ceases 
 to be astonished at the output, if he thor- 
 oughly grasps the difference between a 
 tradesman and an artist. Trade is a word 
 much used by realists. G-rant Allen, writ- 
 ing of that realistic necromancer, Guy de 
 Maupassant, has nothing apter to define 
 his position than the phrase " he knows 
 his trade.'* In point of fact. Grant Allen 
 enunciates a truth in this phrase, one that 
 might be carried still further, by saying 
 that his whole school are journeymen la- 
 borers, tradesmen, if you prefer, turning 
 out work, tasteless and crude, at the bid- 
 ding of the erubescent young person of the 
 
MAKION CRAWFORD. 27 
 
 period It is readily assumed that work of 
 this kind is not, despite the word-jugglery 
 of their school, realism. It does not deal 
 with the true man, but with a phrase, and 
 that abnormal. A better phrase in use in 
 speaking of the works of this school is, 
 '' literature of disease." The artist who 
 lives must have a model, and that we 
 call the ideal. The nearer he approaches 
 this the more lasting his work. All the 
 great artists had ideals. Workmen may 
 be guided by the rule of thumb. The first 
 lesson a great artist learns is, " The art 
 that merely imitates can only produce a 
 corpse ; it lacks the vital spark, the soul, 
 which is the ideal, and which is necessary 
 in order to create a living organic reality 
 that will quicken genius and arouse en- 
 thusiasm throughout the ages." The gulf 
 between the trade- novelist and the artist- 
 novelist is of vital importance. The former 
 believes that art is simply imitation, the 
 
28 MARION CRAWFORD. 
 
 latter, that art is interpretation. One is a 
 stone-cutter, the other a sculptor. 
 
 Crawford's canon is that art is inter- 
 pretative, not imitative, and, moreover, he 
 has a story to tell and tells it for the story's 
 sake. He has no affinity with that school 
 so pointedly described by the Scotch nov- 
 elist, Barrie, as the one " which tells, in 
 three volumes, how Hiram K. Wilding 
 trod on the skirt of Alice M. Sparkins 
 without anything coming of it." *' Cordi- 
 etti's," said my friend, " give the order and 
 I will tell vou what I know of Crawford." 
 Paulo, said I to the waiter, some Chianti, 
 and — well, a pigeon. " Crawford," said my 
 friend, " was born in Rome about thirty - 
 five years ago. His career has been a 
 strange one, full of life. His earl}^ years 
 were spent in Rome, where his father was 
 known as a sculptor, his boyhood in the 
 vicinity of Union Square, his early man- 
 hood in England and India. In the latter 
 
MARION CRAWFORD. 29 
 
 country he was the editor, proof-reader, 
 typesetter of a small journal in the natives' 
 interest. As such he was a thorn to the 
 notorious freak, Blavatskv. Crawford is 
 an American by inheritance, an Italian by 
 breeding, an Englishman by training, an 
 Indian by virtue of writing about India 
 with the knowledge of a native. In 1873, 
 by the financial panic, Mrs. Crawford lost 
 her large fortune, and Marion was forced to 
 shift for himself. He became a journalist, 
 and as such wandered over most of the in- 
 teresting part of the globe. On his return 
 to New York, at the request of his uncle, 
 Sam Ward, the epicurean, who had dis- 
 cerned his kinsman's rare power of story- 
 telling, he wrote his first book, Mr. Isaacs. 
 It was a success. Of the writing of that 
 book, Crawford has told us it was ''very 
 curious. I did not imagine that I pos- 
 sessed a faculty for story- writing, and I 
 prepared for a career very diff*erent from 
 
30 MARION CRAWFORD. 
 
 the career of a novelist. Yet I have found 
 that all my early life was an unconscious 
 preparation for that work. My boyhood 
 was spent in Rome, where my parents had 
 lived for many years. There I was put 
 through the usual classical training — no, it 
 was not the usual one, for the classics are 
 much better taus'ht in Italv than in this 
 country. A boy in Italy by the time he is 
 twelve is taught to speak Latin, and his 
 training is so thorough that he can read it 
 with ease. From Rome I went to Cam- 
 bridge, England, and remained at the uni- 
 versity several years. Then I studied for 
 a couple of years at the German univer- 
 sities. During this time I went in for the 
 sciences, and I expected to devote myself 
 to scientific work. Finally I went off to 
 the East, where I did a good deal of ob- 
 serving, and continued my studies of the 
 Oriental languages, in which I had taken 
 considerable interest. It was while I was 
 
MARION CRAWFORD. 31 
 
 in the East that I met Jacobs, the hero of 
 Mr. Isaacs. Many of the events I have 
 recorded in Mr. Isaacs were the actual 
 experiences of Jacobs." 
 
 The writing of his first novel occupied 
 the months of May and June, 1882 ; it was 
 published the same year, and at once es- 
 tablished its author in the front rank of 
 living American writers of fiction. Since 
 then Crawford has written twenty volumes 
 of fiction. Crawford is frank and he tells 
 us how he manages to produce in a few 
 years the amount of an ordinary lifetime. 
 "By living in the open air, by roughing it 
 among the Albanian mountaineers, wan- 
 dering by the sunny olive slopes and vine- 
 yards of Calabria, and by taking hard work 
 and pot luck with the native sailors on 
 long voyages in their feluccas," are the 
 means of the novelist to hold health and 
 make his penwork a laxative employment. 
 In these picturesque journeys, he lays the 
 
32 MARION CRAWFORD. 
 
 foundation of his stories, makes the plots 
 and evolves the characters. He does not 
 believe in Trollope's idea of sitting down, 
 pen in hand, and keep on sitting until at 
 its own wild will the story takes ink. The 
 story in these excursions has been fully 
 fashioned, and it becomes but a matter of 
 penmanship to record it. How quickly 
 this is done may be seen from the rapid 
 writing of the novelist, which averages 
 6,000 words the working day. This rapid 
 composition has its defects, defects that are 
 in some measure compensated by the pho- 
 tographic views of the life and manners of 
 the people. These views are in the rough, 
 but they are truer than when toned down. 
 Poetry needs paring. The greatest novels 
 have been those that came like Crawford's, 
 fresh from the brain, and were hastily 
 despatched to the printer. Scott did not 
 mope over the sheets. Thackeray's were 
 written to the tune of "more copy." Your 
 
MARION CRAWFORD. 33 • 
 
 American critic, Stoddard, says : — " That 
 Crawford is a man with many talents, and 
 with great fertility of invention', is evident 
 in every story that he has written. He 
 has written more good stories and in more 
 diverse ways than any English or Ameri- 
 can novelist. It does not seem to matter 
 to him what countries or periods he deals 
 with, or what kind of personages he draws, 
 he is always equal to what he undertakes." 
 It may interest you, in ending this bio- 
 graphic sketch, to add that he is a convert 
 to the Catholic Church, and with the Ameri- 
 can critic's idea in view, a cosmopolitan. 
 I was not astonished by the former infor- 
 mation. To those who know Italy and Mr, 
 Crawford's wonderful drawing of it, there 
 could be but one opinion, that the faith of 
 the novelist was the same as that of his 
 characters. No Protestant novelist, no 
 matter how many years he had lived in 
 Italy, could have drawn the portraits that 
 
34 MARION CRAWFORD. 
 
 play in the Saracenesca pages. One of his 
 friends had this in his mind's eye when he 
 wrote of the superiority of the novelist's 
 writings on Italy over those of his country- 
 men. This writer tells us that " Crawford 
 added the indispensable advantage of being 
 a Catholic in religion, a circumstance that 
 has not only allowed him a truer sympathy 
 with the life there, but has afforded him 
 an open sesame to many things which must 
 be sealed books to Protestants." As to my 
 friend's summing up Crawford as a cosmo- 
 politan, in the every-day meaning of that 
 word, I take issue. Cosmopolitan novelist 
 is one w^ho can produce a three- volume 
 novel, whose scenes are laid in all the great 
 centers of commerce, while he sits calmly in 
 his library. No previous study of his nov- 
 elistic surroundings are necessary. Does 
 the age want the beginning of the plot in 
 Cairo or Venice, half-way at Tokio, and a 
 grand finale bevond the Grates Ajar ? Your 
 
MARION CRAWFORD. 35 
 
 novelist is ready to turn out the regulation 
 type with the greatest ease. Cosmopolitan 
 novel-writing is simply a trade. The living- 
 through of local and artistic impressions, 
 the study of types in their environment, 
 the color of surroundings are unnecessary. 
 Imagination, divorced from nature study, 
 is left to guide the way. 
 
 Once Crawford followed this school, and 
 the result was " An American Politician," 
 the "worst novel ever produced by an 
 American." Had Crawford been a trades- 
 man he might have produced a passable 
 book, but being an artist, he failed, not 
 knowing what paint to mix in order to get 
 the coloring. The difference between an 
 artist and tradesman, the one must go to 
 nature direct, the other takes her second- 
 hand. No artist can catch the lines of an 
 Italian sunset from a studio window in 
 London. " Art is interpretive, not imita- 
 tive." Crawford is only a novelist in the 
 
36 MARION CRAWFORD. 
 
 true sense when he knows his characters 
 and their surroundings. This is amply 
 proven in the charming volumes that make 
 his Saracenesca series. Here he is at home, 
 so to speak. The Rome of Pius IX, with 
 its struggles, its ambitions, the designs of 
 wily intriguers, the fall of the temporal 
 power^of the Papacy, the rise of an united 
 Italy, the flocking to Rome of the scour- 
 ings and outcasts of the provincial cities, 
 the money-mad schemes of daring but igno- 
 rant speculators, and over all the lovely 
 blue Italian sky, rise before us in all their 
 minuteness at the biddance of Marion 
 Crawford. His work is hardlv inferior to 
 genuine history ; " for it affords that in- 
 sight into the human mind, that acquaint- 
 ance with the spirit of the age, without 
 which the most minute knowledge is only 
 a bundle of dry and meaningless facts." 
 Who that knows Rome of the Popes and 
 
MARION CRAWFORD. 37 
 
 Rome of the Vandals will not feel heav}^- 
 hearted at these lines ? 
 
 " Old Rome is dead, too, never to be old 
 Rome again. The last breath has been 
 breathed, the aged eyes are closed forever, 
 corruption has done its work and the grand 
 skeleton lies bleaching on seven hills, half 
 covered with the piecemeal stucco of a 
 modern architectural body. The result is 
 satisfactory to those who have brought it, 
 if not to the rest of the world. The sep- 
 ulchre of old Rome in the new capital 
 of united Italy." The exclusiveness of 
 the patrician families of Rome, families 
 that a brood of novelists pretend to draw 
 life-like, is happily hit by the painter 
 Gouache. 
 
 Gouache, long resident in Rome, being 
 asked what he knows of Roman families, 
 replies, " Their palaces are historic. Their 
 equipages are magnificent. That is all 
 foreigners see of Roman families." Who 
 4 
 
38 MABION CRAWFORD. 
 
 that has seen the great Leo carried through 
 the grand sala, a vision of intellectual 
 loveliness, will not recall it as he reads? 
 " The wonderful face that seemed to be 
 carved out of transparent alabaster, smiled 
 and slowly turned from side to side as it 
 passed by. The thin, fragile hand moved 
 unceasingly, blessing the people." " True," 
 said my friend, "his pages are delicious 
 bits of the dead past. At every sentence 
 we halt and find a memory. He has the 
 sense of art, if Maupassant's definition 
 of it as 'the profound and delicious en- 
 joyment which rises to your heart before 
 certain pages, before certain phrases ' be 
 correct." 
 
 Dinner was finished. A check, Paulo. 
 We rose and went. 
 
CHARLES WARREN STODDARD. 39 
 
 CHARLES WARREN STODDARD. 
 
 Venice, that lovely city by the sea, has 
 been described a thousand times by the 
 painter's brush, by the poet's pen. It is 
 the last bit of poetry left to us, in the ever 
 increasing dulness of this world — the only 
 place that one would expect to meet a 
 goblin or a genial Irish fairy. It is not 
 the intention of this paper to describe the 
 queenly city. More than a thousand kodak 
 fiends are daily doing that work, with the 
 eagerness of a money-lender and the ar- 
 tistic sense of a fence painter. A city may, 
 however, have many attractions, other than 
 its magic beauty ; nay, even a dull uninter- 
 esting place may become interesting from 
 some great historic event that happened 
 
40 CHARLES WARREN STODDARD. 
 
 there, or from some impression caught and 
 treasured in memory's store-house. Venice 
 has a charm for me other than the poetry 
 that lurks in its every stone ; it was there 
 that I first dipped into one of those rare 
 books whose charms grow around the heart 
 soft and green as a vine-tendril. 
 
 A professor of mine, one of those men 
 who hugs one saying in life, thereon build- 
 ing a false reputation for wisdom, was in 
 the habit of saying, " Accidents are the 
 spice of life." As it is his only contribu- 
 tion approaching the threshold of the phi- 
 losopher's goddess that I heard in the five 
 years of his weary cant, I willingly record 
 it. To me it expresses a truth, albeit five 
 years is a long hunt. Illustrations some- 
 times improve the text, and this brief 
 paper, by the way, is but a design to en- 
 hance the professor's. It was an accident, 
 pure and simple, that made me wend my 
 way to the Rial to, there to lean against the 
 
CHARLES WARREN STODDARD. 41 
 
 parapet watching some probably great un- 
 known painting, something that might be 
 anything the imagination cared to conjure 
 up. It was an accident that made an Eng- 
 lish divine ask me in sputtering French 
 what the painter was working on. It was 
 an accident that made me inform him in 
 common American English that my tele- 
 scope, by some accidental foresight, was at 
 my lodgings. The divine was a genial 
 man, one of those breaths of spring that 
 we sometimes meet in life. Invited to my 
 lodgings, he fancied a few tiny volumes of 
 the apostle of " sweetness and light " to 
 pass those hours that hang heavily, in all 
 lands save Eden. In my pocket he thrust, 
 as he remarked, " a no ordinary book, one 
 that will hold you as in a vice." This pro- 
 ceeding was rather remarkable, had he not 
 in the same breath invited me to take a 
 gondola to one of the isles, and there enjoy 
 the pocketed volume. It is delightful to 
 
42 CHARLES WARREN STODDARD. 
 
 meet a genuine man, speaking your mother- 
 tongue, after weary months of Italian delv- 
 ing. To the little isle we went, an isle 
 known to readers of Byron, as the place 
 where he labored long under Armenian 
 monks to learn their guttural tongue, the 
 monks say " with success." I knew noth- 
 ing, in those days, of destructive criticism. 
 After a tour in the monastery, of the ordi- 
 nary Italian type, I lay down on the green 
 sward under the beneficent shade of a huge 
 palm, wrapped in the odors of a thousand 
 flowers that sleepily nodded to the music 
 of the creamy breakers on the rocky shore. 
 Books have their atmosphere as well as 
 men. Deprive them of it, and many a 
 charm is lost. I drew the little volume 
 from my pocket, and there in that atmos- 
 phere, akin to the one in which it was 
 begot, I read of life in summer seas, life 
 that floats along serene and sweet as a 
 bell- note on a calm, frosty night, life 
 
CHARLES WARREN STODDARD. 43 
 
 ** Where the deep blue ocean never replies 
 To the sibilant voice of the spray." 
 
 My Anglican friend was unable to give 
 any clue to the author's identity, other 
 than what the meagre title-page afforded. 
 The title-page was of that modest kind that 
 says, " Enter in and see for yourself." It 
 had none of the tricks of book-making, and 
 none of the airs of a parvenu. Under other 
 skies than Italian I learned that the author 
 of "South Sea Idyls," Charles Warren 
 Stoddard, poet and traveller, was one of 
 the kindest and most modest of men. In 
 truth, that it was the combination of these 
 rare qualities that had kept him from the 
 crowd when lesser men made prodigious 
 sales of their wares. To the man of me- 
 diocrity, it is a tickling sensation to float 
 with the current to the music of the shore- 
 rabble, who shout from an innate desire to 
 hear their voices. With the possessor of 
 that rare gift, genius, the mouthings of the 
 
44 CHARLES WARREN STODDARD. 
 
 present count little ; it is for a future hold 
 on man, that he toils. It is to do some- 
 thing, to paint a face, to carve a bust whose 
 glorious shape shall hand to the ages a 
 form of beauty, to weave a snatch of melody 
 that shall go down the stream of time con- 
 soling dark souls. Mediocrity is mortal, 
 genius immortal. The common mind, with- 
 out bogging in metaphysics or transcen- 
 dentalism, subjects so dear to American 
 critics, may readily grasp the destination 
 by a comparison in poetry of the " Pro- 
 verbial Philoso]3hy" with " In Memoriam," 
 in prose " Barriers Burned Away," with 
 " Waverly." Another point for medio- 
 crity, perhaps from its possessor's view the 
 best : it is well recompensed in this life. 
 The very reverse is the case with genius. 
 If then the author of the " South Sea Idyls " 
 is not as popular with the crowd as the 
 writers of short stories who revel in analy- 
 sis, whether it be a gum-boil or the falling 
 
CHARLES WARREN STODDARD. 45 
 
 of my lady's fan, he can have no fear. It 
 is but his badge of superiority. The few 
 great men, who are the literary arbiters of 
 each century, have spoken, and their ver- 
 dict is the verdict of posterity. " One does 
 these things but once," say they, " if one 
 ever does them, but you have done them 
 once for all ; no one need ever write of the 
 South Sea again." Here, it is well to im- 
 press on the casual reader, in the light of 
 this verdict, a great historic truth cobwebbed 
 over by critical spiders ; that it was not 
 the Italians that gave the chaplet to Dante, 
 nor the Spaniards to Cervantes, nor the 
 Portuguese to Camoens, nor the Germans 
 to Groethe, but the great cosmopolitan few, 
 scattered over the world, guardians of the 
 garden of immortality. 
 
 Charles Warren Stoddard was born in 
 Rochester, N. Y., 7th August, 1843. At 
 an early age he left his native state, with 
 his family and emigrated to California, 
 
46 CHARLES WARREN STODDARD. 
 
 that fertile foster-mother of American lit- 
 erary men. In that delightful state, region 
 of plants and flowers, was passed his boy- 
 hood, a boyhood rich in promise, strength- 
 ened by a good education. With a natural 
 bent for travel, fed by the tales of travellers 
 and the waters of romance, it was his happy 
 luck, at the age of twenty-three to find 
 himself appointed to that really bright 
 journal, the San Francisco Chronicle^ as its 
 correspondent. The commission was a rov- 
 ing one, and the young correspondent was 
 left free to contribute sketches in his own 
 inimitable way. Let us believe that the 
 editor well knew the choice mind he had 
 secured in the young writer, and so know- 
 ing was unwilling to put restrictions of the 
 common newspaper kind in his way. How 
 could such a correspondent be harnessed 
 in the dull statistics and ribald gossip of 
 these days? It was otherwise, as we his 
 debtors know. He was to wander at his 
 
CHARLES WARREN STODDARD. 47 
 
 own sweet will. The slight vein of sweet 
 melancholy that came with his life, drove 
 him far from the grimy haunts of civili- 
 zation, far from the sickening thud of men 
 thrown against the cobble-stones of poverty. 
 He sailed away with not a pang of sorrow 
 to those golden isles embedded in summer 
 seas, where the moon 
 
 " Seems to shine with a sunny ray, 
 And the night looks like a mellowed day. 
 
 Isles where all things save man seem to have grown 
 
 hoar in calm. 
 In calm unbroken since their luscious youth." 
 
 To a man of Stoddard's genius and deli- 
 cate perception, one thing could have been 
 foreseen. These lands yet warm with the 
 sunshine of youth would play melodies on 
 his soul, as the winds on ^olian harps ; 
 melodies hitherto unknown to the jaded 
 working world. That he could catch these 
 airs and give them a tangible form, w^as 
 
48 CHARLES WARREN STODDARD. 
 
 not SO sure. Others had heard these siren 
 airs, but failed to yoke them to speech. 
 Melville, now and then, had reproduced 
 a few notes ; notes full of dreamy beauty, 
 making us long for the master who was 
 to give the full and perfect song. That 
 master was found in Stoddard. He pro- 
 duced, as Howells so finely has said, " the 
 lightest, sweetest, wildest, freshest things 
 that ever were written about the life of that 
 summer ocean," things " of the very make 
 of the tropic spray," which " know not if 
 it be sea or sun." Whether you open with 
 a prodigal in Tahiti and see for yourself 
 " that there are few such delicious bits of 
 literature in the language," or follow the 
 writer, who, thanking the critics, prefers to 
 find out for himself the worth of a writer, 
 commences at the beginning with the 
 charming tale of " Kana-ana," you will be 
 in company with the acute critic who has 
 pronounced the life of the summer sea. 
 
CHARLES WARREN STODDARD. 49 
 
 '' once done," by Stoddard, " and that for 
 all time." What should we look for in 
 such a book ? " Pictures of life, for melody 
 of language, for shapes and sounds of 
 beauty ; " and these are to be found with- 
 out stint in the " South Sea Idyls." The 
 form of Kana-ana haunts me, " with his 
 round, full girlish face, lips ripe and ex- 
 pressive, not quite so sensual as those of 
 most of his race ; not a bad nose, by any 
 means ; eyes perfectly glorious — regular 
 almonds — with the mythical lashes that 
 sweep." Kana-ana, who had tasted of civ- 
 ilization, finding it hollow, pining for his 
 own fair land, and when restored to the 
 shade of his native palms, wasting away, 
 dying delirious, in his tiny canoe, rocked 
 to death by the spirit of the deep. Or is 
 it Taboo — " the figure that was like the 
 opposite halves of two men bodily joined 
 together in an amateur attempt at human 
 grafting, whose trunk was curved the wrong 
 
50 CHARLES WARREN STODDARD. 
 
 way ; a great shoulder bullied a little 
 shoulder, and kept it decidedly under ; a 
 long leg walked right around a short leg 
 that was perpetually sitting itself down on 
 invisible seats, or swinging itself for the 
 mere pleasure of it," meeting him by the en- 
 chanting cascade. Or is it Joe of Lahaina, 
 whose young face seemed to embody a 
 whole tropical romance. Joe, his bright 
 scape-grace, met with months after in that 
 isle of lost dreams and salty tears, the 
 leper-land of Molokai. Who shall forget 
 the end of that tale, where the author steals 
 away in the darkness from the dying boy? 
 " I shall never see little Joe again, with 
 his pitiful face, growing gradually as dread- 
 ful as a cobra's, and almost as fascinating 
 in its hideousness. I waited, a little way 
 off in the darkness, waited and listened, 
 till the last song was ended, and I knew 
 he would be looking for me to say good 
 night. But he did not find me, and he 
 
CHARLES WARREN STODDARD. 61 
 
 will never again find me in this life, for 
 I left him sitting in the dark door of his 
 sepulchre — sitting and singing in the mouth 
 of his grave — clothed all in Death." 
 
 It matters little whether it be Kana-ana, 
 Taboo or Joe of Lahaina, the hand of a 
 master was at their birth, the spell of the 
 wizard is around them. The full develop- 
 ment of Stoddard's genius is not found in 
 character-drawing, great as that gift un- 
 doubtedly is, but in his wonderful repro- 
 duction of the ever-changing hues of land 
 and sea, under the tropical sun. What 
 description is better fitted to fill the eye 
 with beauty, the ear with melody, than 
 these lines from the very first page of his 
 "South Sea Idyls?" 
 
 " Once a green oasis blossomed before us 
 — a garden in perfect bloom, girdled about 
 with creamy waves ; within its coral cinc- 
 ture pendulous boughs trailed in the glassy 
 waters ; from its hidden bowers spiced airs 
 
52 CHARLES WARREN STODDARD. 
 
 stole down upon us ; above all the triumph- 
 ant palm trees clashed their melodious 
 branches like a chorus with cymbals ; yet 
 from the very gates of this paradise a 
 changeful current swept us onward, and 
 the happy isle was buried in night and 
 distance." 
 
 It is not easy to make extracts from this 
 charming book. It is a mosaic, to be read 
 as a whole. A tile, no matter how beauti- 
 ful it may be, can give no adequate con- 
 ception of the mosaic of which it forms a 
 part. It may, however, stimulate us to 
 procure it. These extracts taken at ran- 
 dom, would that they might have the same 
 effect. The book, once so rare, is now 
 within the easy reach of all. The new 
 edition lately published by the Scribners 
 is all that one could ask, and is a fitting- 
 home for the undying melodies of the sum- 
 mer seas. To read it is to be reminded of 
 the opening lines of Eudymion. 
 
CHARLES WARREN STODDARD. 53 
 
 " A thing of beauty is a joy forever, 
 Its loveliness increases ; it will never 
 Pass into nothingness ; but will keep 
 A bower quiet for us and a sleep, 
 Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing." 
 
 Stoddard's other works are a volume of 
 poems, San Francisco, 1867 ; " Mashallah," 
 a work that produces, as no other work 
 written in English, the Egypt of to-day. 
 In this work his touch is as light as that of 
 G-autier, while his eyes are as open as De 
 Amicis; and a little volume on Molokai. 
 At present he is the English professor at 
 the Catholic University. 
 
 With the quoting of a little poem, " In 
 Clover," a poem full of his delicate touches, 
 I close this sketch of a writer to whom I 
 am much indebted for happy hours under 
 Italian skies and in Adirondack camps. 
 
 " O Sun ! be very slow to set ; 
 Sweet blossoms kiss me on the mouth ; 
 O birds ! you seem a chain of jet, 
 Blown over from the south. 
 
 6 
 
54 MAUKICE FRANCIS EGAN, 
 
 O cloud ! press onward to the hill, 
 He needs you for his falling streams 
 The sun shall be my solace still 
 And feed me with his beams. 
 
 O little humpback bumble bee ! 
 
 smuggler ! breaking my repose, 
 I'll slily watch you now and see 
 Where all the honey goes. 
 
 Yes, here is room enough for two ; 
 I'd sooner be your friend than not ; 
 Forgetful of the world, as true, 
 
 1 would it were forgot." 
 
 MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN. 
 
 The poet-critic Stedman, in his book on 
 American poetry, gives a few lines to what 
 he terms the Irish- American school. His 
 definition is a little misleading, as some 
 of the poets he cites were more American 
 
MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN. 55 
 
 than the troop of lesser bards that grace 
 his polished pages. It is rather a strange 
 notion of American critics that Prof. Boye- 
 sen, having cast aside the language of 
 Norseland to sport in the larger waters 
 of our English tongue, is metamorphosed 
 into a true American, while the literary 
 sons and daughters of Irish parents, born 
 and striking root in American soil, are 
 marked with a foreign brand. It is the 
 old story of English literary prejudice re- 
 produced by American critics. American 
 modistes go to Paris for their fashions, 
 American critics to the Strand for their 
 literary canons. It is pleasant to know 
 that the bulk of the people stay at home. 
 In this Irish-American school one meets 
 with the name of Maurice Francis Egan. 
 "A sweet and true poet" is Stedman's 
 criticism. Coming from a master in the art 
 of literary interpretation, it must occupy a 
 place in all coming estimates of Mr. Egan's 
 
56 MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN. 
 
 poetry. This criticism is, nevertheless, short 
 and unsatisfactory, it gives no true idea of 
 the poet's place in the letters of his country. 
 It merely, if one is inclined to agree with 
 Stedman, establishes that Mr. Egan has a 
 place among the bards. In the hall of Par- 
 nassus, however, there are so many stalls 
 that the ordinary reader prefers to have 
 the particular place assigned to each bard 
 pointed out. The author of this sketch, 
 while not accredited to the theatre of Par- 
 nassus, may be able to give to those who 
 are not under the guidance of a uniformed 
 usher some hints whereb}^ Mr. Egan's par- 
 ticular place may be discerned ; that place 
 is among the minor poets. The major 
 stalls are all empty, waiting for the com- 
 ing men, so glibly prophesied about by the 
 little makers of our every-day literature. 
 Maurice Francis Egan, poet, essayist, 
 novelist, journalist, and all-round literary 
 man, was born in Philadelphia, Pa., May 
 
MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN. 57 
 
 24, 1852. His first instructors were the 
 Christian Brothers, at their well-known 
 La Salle College in that city. From La 
 Salle he went to Georgetown College, as 
 a professor of English. After leaving 
 Georgetown he edited a short-lived A^ent- 
 ure, Mc Gee's Weekly. In 1881 he became 
 assistant editor of the Freeman's Journal^ 
 and remained virtually at the head of that 
 paper until the death of its founder and 
 the passing of the property to other hands. 
 The founding of the Catholic University, 
 and the acceptance of its English professor- 
 ship by Warren Stoddard, made a vacancy 
 in the faculty of Xotre Dame University. 
 This vacancy was offered to and accepted 
 by Mr. Egan. 
 
 There are few places better fitted as a 
 poet's home than Notre Dame. Beautiful 
 scenery to fill the eye, brilliant society to 
 spur the mind, and a spacious library 
 freighted with the riches of the past. In 
 
58 MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN. 
 
 comparison with the majority of the Catho- 
 lic writers, the poet's journey in life has 
 been comparatively smooth, though far 
 from what it should have been. He has 
 published the following volumes : — " That 
 Girl of Mine," 1879; "Preludes," 1880; 
 " Song Sonnets," London, 1885 ; " Theatre," 
 1885; "Stories of Duty," 1885; "Garden 
 of Roses," 1886 ;- " Life Around Us," 1886 ; 
 "Novels and Novelists," 1888; "Patrick 
 Desmond," 1893 ; " Poems," 1893. To this 
 list must be added innumerable articles in 
 magazines and weekly journals. Judged 
 by the signed output, it is safe to write 
 that the English professor of Notre Dame 
 is a very busy man. The wonder is that 
 a mind so occupied by so many diverse 
 things can write entertainingly of each. 
 
 The poet's first book, a few sonnets and 
 poems, was for " sweet charity's sake," and 
 had but a limited circulation. It is safe to 
 say that every first book of a genuine poet, 
 
MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN. 59 
 
 despite its crudities, will show the seeker 
 signs of things to come. Egan's book was 
 not without promises, but in truth these 
 promises are only partly fulfilled in his 
 latest volume of verse. There may be 
 many reasons adduced for this disparity 
 between promise and fulfilment. One of 
 them is the haste with which poetry is pub- 
 lished. Horace's dictum of using the file 
 has been long since forgotten. The rabble 
 calls for poetry, and, like the Italian and 
 his lentils, care little for the quality. If 
 the poet barkens to the calls (and who 
 among the contemporary bards has laughed 
 it to scorn?) he exchanges perpetuity for 
 the present, notoriety for fame. Nor will 
 the rabble leave the poet freedom in choos- 
 ing his material. He is simply a trades- 
 man, and must use what is placed at his 
 disposal. Things great and grand must be 
 left unto that day when the poet, untram- 
 melled bv worldly care, shall write his 
 
60 MAUEICE FRANCIS EGAN. 
 
 heart's dream. If the time ever comes, 
 the poet learns in sorrow that his dreams 
 will never float into human speech, for the 
 hand has lost its cunning. So the days of 
 youth and manhood pass, blowing bubbles 
 or decorating platitudes. Death snatches 
 the poetling, and oblivion is his coverlid. 
 The songs he sang died with the rabble. 
 The new generation asked for a poet that 
 could drill into the human heart and bring- 
 forth its secrets — a listener to nature, her 
 interpreter to man. To such a one the 
 vocabulary of a minor bard is useless. 
 Another reason, more applicable to our 
 author, is that he has been unfortunate to 
 be a pioneer in Catholic American litera- 
 ture. His poems, appealing, as they do, 
 to a distinct class, and that far from being 
 a book-buying one, will fail to attract the 
 lynx-eyed critic who cares only for the 
 general literary purveyor. From such a 
 source, the poet's chance of corrective criti- 
 
MAURICE FRANCIS EG AN. 61 
 
 cism has been slight. The class to which 
 Mr. Egan belongs has no criticism to oifer 
 its literary food givers. If an author's book 
 sells, his name is blazoned forth in half a 
 hundred headless petty journals. His most 
 glaring defects become through their glasses 
 mystic beauty spots. He is invited to lec- 
 ture on all kinds of subjects. A clique 
 grows around him, whose duty it is to puff 
 the master. The reasons, frankly adduced, 
 have limited the scope and dwarfed the 
 really tine genius of Maurice Egan. His 
 latest volume, while containing many poems 
 that reveal hidden powers, has much of the 
 crudity and faults of earlier work. These 
 poems speak of better things that will be 
 fulfilled by the poet if he will consecrate 
 himself wholly to his art, shutting his mind 
 to the rabble shout and eulogious criticism. 
 Then may he hear the rhythms and ca- 
 dences of that music whose orchestra com- 
 prises all things from the shells to the 
 
62 MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN. 
 
 stars, all beings from the worm to man, 
 all sounds from the voice of the little bird 
 to the voice of the great ocean. To these 
 translations men will cling to the last, and 
 in their clinging is the poet's fame. In his 
 shorter poems, and notably in his sonnets, 
 Mr. Egan is at his best. Here his scope is 
 broader, his touch is firmer. The mastery 
 of musical expression, lacking in his longer 
 poems, is here to be met with in the ful- 
 ness of its beauty. As a writer of sonnets, 
 Mr. Egan has had great success. In this 
 line of writing he is easily at the head of 
 the younger American school of poets. "A 
 Night in June " is a charming piece of 
 word painting, full of beauty and power. 
 The reader of this exquisite sonnet will feel 
 how deftly the poet has put in words the 
 silent magic of such a night, when air and 
 earth have songs to sing. In the sonnet to 
 the old lyric master Theocritus, the poet's 
 graceful interpretative touch is equally felt. 
 
MAUKICE FRANCIS EGAN. 63 
 
 Daphnis is mute, and hidden nymphs complain, 
 
 And mourning mingles with their fountain's song ; 
 
 Shepherds contend no more, as all day long 
 
 They watch their sheep on the wide, Cyprus plain : 
 
 The master-voice is silent, songs are vain ; 
 
 Blithe Pan is dead, and tales of ancient wrong 
 
 Done by the gods, when gods and men were strong. 
 
 Chanted to reeded pipes, no prize can gain. 
 
 O sweetest singer of the olden days. 
 
 In dusty books your idyls rare seem dead; 
 
 The gods are gone, but poets never die ; 
 
 Though men may turn their ears to newer lays, 
 
 Sicilian nightingales enraptured 
 
 Caught all your songs, and nightly thrill the sky. 
 
 The sonnet "Of Flowers " gives a happy 
 setting to a beautiful thought : 
 
 There were no roses till the first child died, 
 No violets, no balmy-breathed heartsease, — 
 No heliotrope, nor buds so dear to bees, 
 The honey-hearted suckle, no gold-eyed 
 And lowly dandelion, nor, stretching wide 
 Clover and cowslip cups, like rival seas. 
 Meeting and parting, as the young spring breeze 
 Runs giddy races, playing seek and hide. 
 
64 MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN. 
 
 For all Flowers died when Eve left Paradise, 
 
 And all the world was flowerless awhile, 
 
 Until a little child was laid in earth. 
 
 Then, from its grave grew violets for its eyes. 
 
 And from its lips rose-petals for its smile ; 
 
 And so all flowers from that child's death took birth. 
 
 To those who have lovingly lingered 
 over the pages of Maurice de Guerin, 
 pages that breathe the old Grreek world of 
 thought, the following sonnet, that paints 
 that modern Grrecian with a few masterlv 
 strokes, will be keenly relished. It is the 
 fine implications of these lines that is the 
 life of our hope for the poet and the future. 
 
 Maurice de Guerin. 
 
 The old wine filled him, and he saw, with eyes 
 Anoint of Nature, fauns and dryads fair, 
 Unseen by others ; to him maiden-hair 
 And waxen lilacs and those birds that rise 
 A-sudden from tall reeds, at slight surprise, 
 Brought charmed thoughts ; and in earth ever^'^where, 
 He, like sad Jacques, found a music, rare 
 
MAURICE FRANCIS EG AN. 65 
 
 As that of Syrinx to old Grecians wise. 
 
 A Pagan heart, a Christian soul, had he, 
 
 He followed Christ, yet for dead Pan he sighed, 
 
 Till earth and heaven met within his breast! 
 
 As if Theocritus, in Sicily, 
 
 Had come upon the Figure crucified, 
 
 And lost his gods in . deep, Christ-given rest. 
 
 As an essayist, Mr. Egan has touched 
 many subjects, and always in an enter- 
 taining vein. Some of his essays are re- 
 markable for their plain speaking. He 
 has studied his race in their new surround- 
 ings, knows equally well their virtues and 
 failings. If he can take an honest delight 
 in the virtues, he is capable of writing 
 with no uncertain sound on the failings, 
 failings that have been so mercilessly used 
 by the vulgarly comic school of American 
 playwrights. His essays are corrective 
 and should find their way into every Irish- 
 American home. They would tend to cor- 
 rect many abuses and aid in the detection 
 
66 MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN. 
 
 of those bunions so sacredly kept on the feet 
 of the Irish race — last relic of the Penal 
 times. A recent essay throws a series of 
 blue lights — the color so well liked by 
 Carlyle — on our shallow collegiate system. 
 Will it be read by our Catholic educators ? 
 That is a question that time will answer. 
 If they read it aright they will be apt to 
 change their system of teaching the classics 
 parrot-like, an empty word translation. 
 They will transport their pupils from the 
 bare class-room to the sunny skies of Greece 
 and Rome, and under these skies see the 
 religious dogmas, the philosophical sys- 
 tems, the fine arts, the entire civilization 
 of those ancient thought giving nations. 
 "What professor," says de Guerin, "read- 
 ing Virgil and Homer to his pupils, has 
 developed the poetry of the Iliad or ^neid 
 by the poetry of nature under the Grecian 
 and Italian skies. Who has dreamt of 
 showing the reciprocal relation of the poets 
 
MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN. 67 
 
 to the philosophers, the philosophers to the 
 poets, and these in turn to the artists — 
 Plato to Homer, Homer to Phidias ? It is 
 a want of this that makes the classics so 
 dull to youth, so useless to manhood." 
 
 Mr. Egan, as a novelist, has written 
 many books, dealing mostly with Irish- 
 American life. These novels are filled 
 with strong, manly feeling, and Catholic 
 pictures beautiful enough to arrest the 
 attention of the most fastidious. In these 
 days of romance readers such books must 
 serve as an antidote to the subtle poison 
 that permeates the Active art. They are 
 pleasant and instructive, and that is a high 
 tribute in these days of dulness and spiced 
 immorality. Take him all in all, perhaps 
 the most acceptable tribute is, that what- 
 ever may be his gifts in the various roles 
 he has essayed, heavy or slight, they have 
 been ungrudgingly used for his race and 
 religion. 
 
68 JOHN B. TABB. 
 
 JOHN B. TABB. 
 
 A friend once wrote to me : " What do 
 you know about a poet who signs his name 
 John B. Tabb, his poems are delicious?" 
 My answer was, that I knew nothing of his 
 personal history, but that his poems had 
 found their way into my aristocratic scrap- 
 book. Here I might pause to whisper that 
 the adjective aristocratic, in my sense, has 
 nothing haughty about it. When joined to 
 the noun scrap-book, a good commentator 
 — they are scarce — would freely translate 
 the phrase the indwelling of good poetry. 
 Since then my personal knowledge of the 
 poet has grown slowly, a slight stock and 
 no leaves. Even that, like my old coat, is 
 second-handed. Such material, no matter 
 how highly recommended by the keepers of 
 
JOHN B. TABB. 69 
 
 the golden balls, is usually found to be a 
 poor bargain. But here it is, keeping in 
 mind that rags are better than no clothing, 
 and that older proverb — half a loaf is better 
 than no bread. 
 
 " John B. Tabb, (I quote) was born in 
 Virginia, when or where I know not. Be- 
 coming a Catholic he studied for the priest- 
 hood and was ordained." Here my data 
 fails me. At present he is the professor of 
 literature in St. Charles' College, Maryland. 
 It is something in his favor, this scanty 
 biographical fare. Where the biography 
 is long, laudatory, and in rounded periods, 
 it is approached as one would a snake in 
 the grass, with a kind of fear that in the 
 end you may be bitten. " May I be skinned 
 alive," said that master of word-selection 
 and phrase-juggler, Flaubert, " before I 
 ever turn my private feelings to literary 
 account." And the reader, with the stench 
 of recent keyhole biography in his nostrils, 
 6 
 
70 JOHN B. TABB. 
 
 shouts " bravo." Flaubert's phrase might 
 easily have hung on the pen of the retiring- 
 worshipper of the beautiful, "the Roman 
 Catholic priest, who drudges through a 
 daily round of pedagogical duties in St. 
 Charles' College." This quoted phrase may 
 stand. Pedagogy, at best, is a dull pursuit 
 for a poet. It is not congenial, and I have 
 held an odd idea that whatever was not con- 
 genial, disguise it as you may, is drudgery. 
 And all this by way of propping the quoted 
 sentence. The strange thing is that in the 
 midst of this daily round of drudgery the 
 poet finds time to produce what a recent 
 critic well calls " verse-gems of thought." 
 These verse-gems, if judged by intrinsic 
 evidence, would argue an environment other 
 than a drudgery habitation. In truth, it 
 is hard to desecrate them by predicating 
 of them any environment other than a 
 spiritual one. 
 
 This brings us to write of Fr. Tabb's 
 
JOHN B. TABB. 71 
 
 poetry that it is elusive, from a critical 
 point of view. When you bring your pre- 
 conceived literary canons to bear upon it, 
 they are found wanting — too clumsy to test 
 the delicacy, fineness of touch, and the 
 permeated spiritualism embodied in the 
 verse-gem. It is well summarized in the 
 saying that " it possesses to the full a white 
 estate of virginal prayerful art." One 
 might define it by negatives, such as the 
 contrary of passion poetry. The point of 
 view most likely to give the clearest con- 
 ception would be found in the sentence: 
 an evocation from within by a highly spir- 
 itualized intelligence. The poet has caught 
 the higher music, the music of a soul in 
 which dwell order and method. In other 
 words, he has assiduously cultivated to its 
 fullest development both the spiritual sense 
 and the moral sense. 
 
 It is easy to trace in Fr. Tabb's poetry 
 the influence of Sidney Lanier. It has 
 
72 JOHN B. TABB. 
 
 been asserted, and with much truth, that 
 Lanier's influence has strangely fasci- 
 nated the younger school of Southern 
 poets. Sladen, in his book on Younger 
 American Poets, tells us that " Lanier 
 differs from the other dead poets included 
 in his book, in that he was not only a 
 poet but the founder of a school of 
 poetry." To his school belongs Fr. Tabb, 
 a school following the founder whose aim 
 is to depict 
 
 "All gracious curves of slender wings, 
 Bark mottlings, fibre spiralings, 
 Fern wavings and leaf flickerings. 
 
 Yea, all fair forms and sounds and lights, 
 And warmths and mysteries and mights, 
 Of Nature's utmost depths and heights." 
 
 The defects of this school are best seen in 
 the founder. He was a musician before a 
 poet, and helplessly strove to catch shades 
 by words that can only be rendered by 
 
JOHN B. TABB. 73 
 
 music. Fr. Tabb has learned this limita- 
 tion of his school. For the glowing semi- 
 pantheism of Lanier he has substituted 
 the true and no less beautiful doctrine 
 of Christianity. All his verse-gems are 
 redolent of his faith. They are religious 
 in the sense that they are begotten by 
 faith and breathe the air of the sanctuary. 
 To read them is to leave the hum and 
 pain of life behind, and enter the cloister 
 where all is silent and peaceful, where 
 dwelleth the spirit of God. Of them it 
 is safe to assert that their white estate 
 of virginal, prayerful art shall constitute 
 their immortality. Fr. Tabb has not, as 
 yet, thought fit to give them a more per- 
 manent form than they have in the current 
 magazines. Catholic literature, and espe- 
 cially poetry, is so meagre that when a 
 true singer touches the lyre it is not to be 
 wondered at that those of his household 
 should desire to possess his songs in a 
 
74 JOHN B. TABB. 
 
 more worthy dwelling than that of an 
 ephemeral magazine. In the absence of 
 the coming charming volume I quote from 
 my scrap-book a few of the verse-gems, 
 thereby trusting to widen the poet's audi- 
 ence and in an humble way gain lovers 
 for his long-promised volume. 
 
 What could illustrate the peculiar genius 
 of our poet better than the delicious gem 
 that he has called 
 
 " The White Jessamine." 
 
 I knew she lay above me, 
 Where the casement all the night 
 
 Shone, softened with a phosphor glow 
 Of sympathetic light, 
 
 And that her fledgling spirit pure 
 Was pluming fast for flight. 
 
 Each tendril throbbed and quickened 
 
 As I nightly climbed apace. 
 And could scarce restrain the blossoms 
 
 When, anear the destined place, 
 Her gentle whisper thrilled me 
 
 Ere I gazed upon her face. 
 
JOHN B. TABB. 75 
 
 I waited, darkling, till the dawn 
 
 Should touch me into bloom. 
 While all my being panted 
 
 To outpour its first perfume. 
 When, lo ! a paler flower than mine 
 
 Had blossomed in the gloom ! 
 
 " Content " is another gem of exquisite 
 thought and workmanship. 
 
 Content. 
 
 Were all the heavens an overladen bough 
 
 Of ripened benediction lowered above me, 
 What could I crave, soul-satisfied as now. 
 That thou dost love me ? 
 
 The door is shut. To each unsheltered blessing 
 
 Henceforth I say, " Depart ! What wouldst thou of 
 me?" 
 Beggared I am of want, this boon possessing, 
 That thou dost love me. 
 
 " Photographed " may well make the 
 trio in the more fully illustrating his 
 genius : — 
 
76 JOHN B. TABB. 
 
 Photographed. 
 
 For years, an ever-shifting shade 
 The sunshine of thy visage made ; 
 Then, spider-like, the captive caught 
 In meshes of immortal thought. 
 
 E'en so, with half-averted eye, 
 Day after day I passed thee by. 
 Till, suddenly, a subtler art 
 Enshrined thee in my heart of heart. 
 
 "Not even the infinite surfeit of Colum- 
 bus literature of the last six months can 
 deprive Fr. Tabb's tribute in Lippincott's 
 of its sweetness and light," says the Re- 
 view of Reviews : 
 
 With faith unshadowed by the night, 
 
 Undazzled by the day, 
 With hope that plumed thee for the flight 
 
 And courage to assay, 
 God sent thee from the crowded ark, 
 
 Christ bearer, like the dove, 
 To find, o'er sundering waters dark, 
 
 New lands for conquering love. 
 
JOHN B. TABB. 77 
 
 As a final selection, we may well conclude 
 these brief notes on a poet with staying- 
 powers by quoting a poem, contributed to 
 the Cosmopolitan^ called " Silence; " a poem 
 permeated with his fine spiritual sense : 
 
 Temple of God, from all eternity 
 
 Alone like Him without beginning found ; 
 Of time, and space, and solitude the bound. 
 
 Yet in thyself of all communion free. 
 
 Is, then, the temple holier than he 
 
 That dwells therein ? Must reverence surround 
 With barriers the portal, lest a sound 
 
 Profane it ? Nay ; behold a mystery ! 
 
 What was, remains ; what is, has ever been : 
 
 The lowliest the loftiest sustains. 
 A silence, by no breath of utterance stirred — 
 
 Virginity in motherhood — remains. 
 Clear, midst a cloud of all-pervading sin. 
 
 The voice of Love's unutterable word. 
 
78 JAMES JEFFREY ROCHE. 
 
 JAMES JEFFREY ROCHE. 
 
 In this age of rondeaus and other feats 
 in rhyme, it is pleasant to meet with a 
 little book that abhors all verse tricks of 
 the fin-de-siecle poets, and judiciously 
 follows the old masters. Such a little 
 book peeps at me from a corner in 
 my library, marked in capitals, " Poems 
 Worth Reading." It was given to me 
 years ago by its author, and as a remem- 
 brance, a few lines from the poem that 
 appealed most to my intellect in those 
 days, was written on its ily-leaf. It 
 was its author's first book, and was put 
 forth with that shrinking modesty that 
 has heralded all meritorious work. Of 
 preface, that relic of egotism, there was 
 none. 
 
JAMES JEFFREY ROCHE. 79 
 
 It was dedicated to one who was close 
 to his heart, to 
 
 " John Boyle O'Reilly, 
 My very dear friend, and an honorable gentleman." 
 
 It had O'Reilly's warm word to speed and 
 gain it a hearing, a word that would have 
 remained unwritten were it not that the 
 little volume, of its own worth, demanded 
 that the word but expressed its merit. 
 Since those days, it has travelled and 
 found a ready home. Its gentle humor 
 has made it quotable in the fashionable 
 salons, its quaintness tickled the lonely 
 scholar, stinging notes against wrong and 
 its brilliant biting to the very core of silk- 
 dressed sham, bespoke a hearty welcome 
 in the haunts of the poor and oppressed. 
 The volume was one of promise and 
 large hope. Of it O'Reilly wrote : " Not 
 for years has such a first book as this 
 appeared in America." This recognition 
 
80 JAMES JEFFREY ROCHE. 
 
 was but a truth. The author is a true 
 poet, not a rhyme trickster or a cherry- 
 stone filer, that brood so thoroughly de- 
 tested by O'Reilly. He has something 
 to say, a genuine, poetical impression to 
 give in each poem. His genius, as that 
 of most poets of Celtic blood, is essen- 
 tially dramatic. This may best be seen in 
 that fine, man-loving poem, " Netchaieff." 
 Netchaieff, a Russian Nihilist, was con- 
 demned to prison for life. Deprived of 
 writing materials, he allowed his finger- 
 nail to grow until he fashioned it into a 
 pen. With this he wrote, in his blood, 
 on the margin of a book, the story of his 
 sufferings. Almost his last entry was a 
 note that his jailer had just boarded up 
 the solitary pane which admitted a little 
 light into his cell. The " letter written 
 in blood" was smuggled out of prison and 
 published, and Netchaieff died very soon 
 after. The poet's opening lines, relating 
 
JAMES JEPFKEY ROCHE. 81 
 
 to the Czar, Netchaieff's death in prison, 
 show that the human interest of this poet 
 swallows up all other interests. The human 
 alone can heat his blood and rouse in 
 impassioned verse his indignation. How 
 finely conceived is the satire in these lines : 
 
 " NetchaiefF is dead, your Majesty. 
 You knew him not. He was a common hind, 
 Who lived ten years in hell, and then he died — 
 To seek another hell, as we must think. 
 Since he was rebel to your Majesty." 
 
 There are many startling lines in this 
 poem, lines that would give our fairy- airy 
 school of poets material for a dozen son- 
 nets. "For the People" is another poem 
 that shows the ink was not watered. It 
 is full of truth, unpleasant to the ears of 
 the well-fed and easy living, but truth 
 nevertheless, painted with a bold and mas- 
 terly hand. It is the critic's way to call 
 poems of this kind passionate unreason- 
 ableness, while an irregular ode to a cat 
 
82 JAMES JEFFKEY ROCHE. 
 
 or a ballade of the shepherdess is filled 
 with passionate reasonableness. All which 
 proves that these amusing gentlemen are 
 unconsciously sitting by the volcano's side. 
 They have eyes and they see not; they 
 have ears and they hear not. The pro- 
 phetic voice of the poets who will sing 
 from their inner seeing, caring not whether 
 the age listens or hurries on, is lost on 
 these so-called literary interpreters. The 
 tocsin blast dies on the breeze, or speaks 
 to a few lonely thinkers who catch its 
 notes for future warning; the reed's soft 
 sensuous music is hugged and repeated by 
 the critics and the commonplace. When 
 the lava tumbles forth, then the singer 
 whose songs were a part of him, passion- 
 ate, conceived in the white heat of truth, 
 may have the diviner's crown. The critics 
 and commonplace, in their suffering, re- 
 member the warning in these burning 
 lines : 
 
JAMES JEFFREY ROCHE. 83 
 
 " There's a serf whose chains are of paper ; there's a 
 
 king with a parchment crown, 
 There are robber knights and brigands in factory, field 
 
 and town ; 
 But the vassal pays his tribute to a lord of wage 
 
 rent ; 
 And the baron's toll is Shylock's, with a flesh and blood 
 
 per cent. 
 
 "The seamstress bends to her labor all night in a 
 
 narrow room, 
 The child, defrauded of childhood, tiptoes all day at 
 
 the loom, 
 The soul must starve, for the body can barely on husks 
 
 be fed ; 
 And the loaded dice of a gambler settle the price of 
 
 bread. 
 
 " Ye have shorn and bound the Samson, and robbed 
 
 him of learning's light ; 
 But his sluggish brain is moving, his sinews have all 
 
 their might. 
 Look well to your gates of Gaza, your privilege, pride 
 
 and caste ! 
 The Giant is blind and thinking, and his locks are 
 
 growing fast." 
 
84 JAMES JEFFREY ROCHE. 
 
 "JSTetchaieif" and "For the People" are 
 poems with a meaning. Their author is 
 a thinker, a keen student of the social 
 problems that convulse our every- day life. 
 He walks the city's streets, and sees sights 
 and hears ominous murmuring. He uses 
 the poet's right to translate these scenes 
 and sights into his own impassioned verse. 
 This done, his duty done. The Creator 
 must give brains to the reader. If that 
 has been done, the poet's lines will fall 
 fresh and thought-provoking on his ears. 
 It will take him from Mittens, Marjorie's 
 Kisses, April Maids and the school of fan- 
 tastic littleness, to man's inhumanity to 
 man, the burning wrong of our day. An 
 Adirondack climb, but then the point of 
 view repays the exertion. It is generally 
 written that the author of Songs and Satires 
 is a comic poet. A half-way truth is ex- 
 pressed. If by comic is meant humor, 
 yes ; all poets who are worth looking into 
 
JAMES JEFFREY ROCHE. 86 
 
 have in a greater or less degree that pre- 
 cious gift. It is a distinct gain if the 
 author is an artist and knows how to use 
 it, dangerous to the commonplace, who put 
 it on with a white-wash brush. It is a 
 nice line that divides humor from buf- 
 foonery. Our author is a humorist of that 
 school whose genius has been used to 
 alleviate human suffering. Its shafts are 
 not forged by the hammer of spleen on 
 the anvil of malice', but the workmanship 
 of love mourning for misery. His spirit 
 is akin to Hood's. His touch is light, 
 but his poniard is a Damascene blade 
 well pointed. Cant has no foil to set it 
 off. "A Concord Love Song" is a charm- 
 ing bit of satire. I can well remember 
 the effect it had on a teacher of mine, a 
 proud sage of that school of word-twisting 
 and transcendental gush. He sniffed and 
 pawed viciously, a sure sign that the poet's 
 dart was safely lodged in the bull's eye. 
 7 
 
86 JAMES JEFFREY ROCHE. 
 
 Those who have, as a sleep seducer, read 
 some of the Concord fraternity's vapid 
 musings on the pensive Here and the 
 doubtful Yonder, will deliciously relish 
 such lines as these: 
 
 "Ah, the joyless fleeting 
 Of our primal meeting, 
 And the fateful greeting 
 
 Of the How and Why ! 
 Ah, the Thingness flying 
 From the Hereness, sighing 
 For a love undying 
 
 That fain would die. 
 
 "Ah, the Ifness sadd'ning. 
 The Whichness madd'ning. 
 And the But ungladd'ning 
 
 That lie behind ! 
 When the signless token 
 Of love is broken 
 In the speech unspoken, 
 
 Of mind to mind." 
 
 It is to his later and serious poems that 
 the critic must go to find the poet at his 
 
JAMES JEFFREY ROCHE. 
 
 87 
 
 best. "At Sea" is a poem with a memory, 
 inasmuch as it is the " embodiment of as 
 beautiful a story of brotherly love as the 
 world makes record." The poet's brother, 
 Mr. John Roche, pay-clerk in the United 
 States Navy, died a hero's death in the 
 Samoan disaster of March, 1889. Doubt- 
 less it was from this loved brother that 
 the poet took his love for the sea, and the 
 gallant deeds of our young navy. Here 
 he is in his own field. " The Fight of the 
 Armstrong Privateer" shows genuine in- 
 spiration. It has color and passion. The 
 reader feels the swing of the graphic lines 
 and a quickness in his own blood, while 
 the tale of daring rapidly and gracefully 
 unfolds itself. 
 
 James Jeffrey Roche was born at Mount 
 Mellick, Queens county, Ireland, forty-six 
 years ago. His father was a schoolmaster, 
 and to him the poet is indebted for his 
 early education. At a suitable age he 
 
88 JAMES JEFFREY ROCHE. 
 
 entered St. Dunstan's College, Charlotte- 
 town, Prince Edward's Island, the family 
 having emigrated there in the poet's 
 infancy. Here he finished his classics and 
 showed his literary bent by the publishing 
 of a college journal. Having the valedic- 
 tory assigned to him, he hopelessly broke 
 down. The present year he returned to 
 St. Dunstan's the orator of Commence- 
 ment day, as he wittily remarked, to finish 
 the valedictory that had overtaxed his 
 strength as a small boy. After leaving 
 college the poet came to Boston, entered 
 commercial life, remaining in that hardly 
 genial business for sixteen years. During 
 these years his pen was busy at the real 
 vocation of his life. He was for several 
 years the Boston correspondent of the 
 Detroit Free Press, and had been long an 
 editorial contributor to the Pilot, before 
 he took the position of assistant editor on 
 it, in 1883. As a journalist Mr. Roche 
 
JAMES JEFFREY ROCHE. 89 
 
 has few equals. His keen mind easily 
 grapples the questions of the day, while 
 his good sense in their discussion never 
 deserts him. In a few lines he goes to the 
 core. If his trenchant sarcasm punctures 
 the bubble, his humor will not fail to 
 make it ridiculous. It is not the windy 
 editorial in our day that tortures the 
 quacks, but the bright, pointed dart of a 
 paragraph. It is so easy to remember, 
 may be stored in the reader's brain so 
 readily, and used with deadly effect at any 
 moment. A writer who knows him well 
 has this to say: "As a journalist he 
 combines two qualities not often found 
 together, discretion and brilliancy. The 
 former quality was well exemplified in his 
 editorial course during the recent crisis 
 in the history of the Irish National move- 
 ment. He handles political topics ably, 
 and in the treatment of the still broader 
 social and economic questions, writes with 
 
90 JAMES JEFFREY ROCHE. 
 
 the strength and spirit worthy of the asso- 
 ciate and successor of that apostle of 
 human liberty and human brotherhood, 
 John Boyle O'Reilly." 
 
 In truth, the one thing most essentially 
 felt in this writer, whether in prose or 
 poetry, is his sanity. There is no bun- 
 combe in the former, no mawkishness 
 nor pedantic prettiness in the latter. His 
 genius has no pose. So much the better 
 for his fame and future. Mr. Roche's 
 prose works are: "The Story of the Fili- 
 busters," a subject dear to a poet's heart, 
 and the " Life of John Boyle O'Reilly," 
 his chief and friend. This volume was the 
 work of ten weeks, and that in the hours 
 free from his editorial charge. It was a 
 feat that few men could so successfully 
 achieve. It had to be done. ISTo sacrifice 
 was too great for Roche to make for his dead 
 friend. That his health did not give way 
 after the sleeplessness, work and worry of 
 
JAMES JEFFREY ROCHE. 91 
 
 those ten weeks, is the wonder of those who 
 stood near to him. Despite the limited 
 time allowed to Mr. Roche, his biography 
 shows few signs of haste. It is well and 
 interestingly written, a lasting memorial 
 and a deep tribute of affection to one of 
 the most lovable characters of the century. 
 O'Reilly rises from this book as he was. 
 Friendship, while giving what was his due, 
 restrains all aifections that might mar the 
 truth of the portrait. His stature was felt 
 to be large enough, without any additions 
 that crumble to time. 
 
 There are those of us who hope that the 
 poet, with greater leisure, will give to 
 O'Reilly's race a monograph to be treas- 
 ured and read by each household, a mono- 
 graph where the best in O'Reilly's char- 
 acter shall be emphasized, and so lovingly 
 set that those who read shall take heed 
 and learn, while blessing him who gave 
 the setting. The book as it is costs too 
 
92 JAMES JEFFREY ROCHE. 
 
 much and is hardly compact enough for 
 those who need the strong lessons of such 
 a life as O'Reilly's. In a smaller compass 
 and at less cost, done in that delightful 
 way so thoroughly shown in his art of 
 paragraphing, the little book would be a 
 guide-post to many a struggling lad and 
 lass. And to the young of our race must 
 we look and to the exiled part for the full 
 flowering. As the poet, so is the man, 
 cheery, unaffected, kindly and man-loving. 
 He has no airs, lacks the melodramatic of 
 the airy-fairy school. He does not pre- 
 tend that the gift of prophecy is his, nor 
 hint that it sleeps amid verbal ingenui- 
 ties. He has a song to sing, a tale to tell, 
 and he does it with all the craft that is 
 in him. In person Mr. Roche is of the 
 medium height, well-built, rather dark 
 complexioned, with abundant jet-black 
 hair and brilliant hazel eyes. 
 
 In concluding this sketch of a genuine 
 
JAMES JEFFREY ROCHE. 93 
 
 man and true poet, I am tempted to quote 
 the little poem he so graciously wrote in 
 the fly-leaf of his " Songs and Satires : " 
 
 " They chained her fair young body to the cold and 
 
 cruel stone ; 
 The beast begot of sea and slime had marked her for 
 
 his own ; 
 The callous world beheld the wrong, and left her there 
 
 alone, 
 Base caitiffs who belied her, false kinsmen who denied 
 
 her, 
 
 Ye left her there alone ! 
 
 " My Beautiful, they left thee in thy peril and thy 
 pain ; 
 
 The night that hath no morrow was brooding on the 
 main ; 
 
 But lo ! a light is breaking, of hope for thee again ; 
 
 'Tis Perseus' sword a-flaming, thy dawn of day pro- 
 claiming. 
 
 Across the Western main. 
 
 O Ireland ! O my country ! he comes to break thy 
 chain." 
 
94 GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP. 
 
 GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP. 
 
 In the footsore journey through Mexico, 
 when dinner gladdened our vision, poor 
 Read would solemnly remark, " dinners 
 are reverent things." Society accepted this 
 definition. I use society in the sense that 
 Emerson would. " When one meets his 
 mate," writes the Concord sage, " society 
 begins." Read was mine, and to-day his 
 quaint remark haunts me with melancholy 
 force. Thoughts of a dinner with the sub- 
 ject of this sketch, George Parsons Lathrop, 
 and one whose fair and forceful life has 
 been quenched, flit through my mind. It 
 was but yesterday that I bade the gentle 
 scholar farewell, unconsciously a long fare- 
 well, for Azarias has fled from the haunts 
 of mortality. 
 
GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP. 95 
 
 " This is the burden of the heart, 
 The burden that it always bore ; 
 We live to love, we meet to part. 
 And part to meet on earth no more." 
 
 Colonel Johnson had read one of his 
 charming essays. Brother Azarias and 
 George Parsons Lathrop had listened with 
 rapt attention to the most loveable writer 
 of the 'New South. After the lecture I 
 was asked to join them, for, as the author 
 of Lucille asks, "where is the man that 
 can live without dining?" That dinner, 
 now that one lies dead, enters my memory 
 as reverent and makes of Read's remark a 
 truth. Men may or may not appear best 
 at dinner. Circumstances lord over most 
 dinners. As it was the only opportunity 
 I had to snap my kodak, you must accept 
 my picture or seek a better artist. Kodak- 
 pictures, when taken by amateurs, are 
 generally blurred. And now to mine. 
 
 A man of medium height, strongly built, 
 
96 GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP. 
 
 broad shouldered, the whole frame betoken- 
 ing agility; face somewhat rounded giving 
 it a pleasant plumpness, with eyes quick, 
 nervous and snappy, lighting up a more 
 than ordinary dark complexion — such is 
 Parsons Lathrop, as caught by my camera. 
 His voice was soft, clear as a bell-note, and, 
 when heard in a lecture hall, charming ; a 
 slight hesitancy but adds to the pleasure of 
 the listener. In reading he affects none of 
 the dramatic poses and Delsarte movements 
 that makes unconscious comedians of our 
 tragic-readers. It is pleasant to listen to 
 such a man, having no fear that in some 
 moving passage, carried away by some 
 quasi-involuntary elocutionary movement, 
 he might find himself a wreck among the 
 audience. The lines of Wordsworth are 
 an apt description of him : 
 
 " Yet he was a man 
 Whom no one could have passed without remark, 
 Active and nervous was his gait ; his limbs, 
 And his whole figure, breathed intelligence." 
 
GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP. 97 
 
 Mr. Lathrop was born in Honolulu, 
 Hawaiian Islands, August 23, 1851. It 
 was a fit place for a poet's birthplace, 
 " those gardens in perfect bloom, girded 
 about with creaming waves." He came of 
 Puritan stock, the founder of his family 
 being the Rev. John Lathrop, a Separatist 
 minister, who came to Massachusetts in 
 1634. Some of his kinsmen have borne a 
 noble part in the creation of an American 
 literature, notably the historian of the 
 Dutch and the genial autocrat, Wendell 
 Holmes. His primary education was had 
 in the public schools of JSfew York ; from 
 thence he went to Dresden, Grermany, 
 returning in 1870 to study law at Columbia 
 College. Law was little to his liking. The 
 dry and musty tomes, wherein is written 
 some truth and not a little error, sanctioned 
 by one generation of wiseacres to be whit- 
 tled past recognition by another generation 
 of the same species, could hardly hope to 
 
98 GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP. 
 
 hold in thraldom a mind that had from 
 boyhood browsed in the royal demesne of 
 literature. Law and literature, despite the 
 smart sayings of a few will not run in the 
 same rut. In abandoning law for literature, 
 he but followed the law of his being. What 
 law lost literature gained. On a trip 
 abroad a year later he met Rose Hawthorne, 
 the second daughter of the great Nathaniel, 
 wooed, and won her. This marriage was 
 by far the happiest event in his life, the 
 crowning glory of his manhood, a fountain 
 of bliss to sustain his after life. Years 
 later, in a little poem entitled, " Love that 
 Lives," referring to the woman that was his 
 all, he addresses her in words that needed 
 no coaxing by the muses, but had long 
 been distilled by his heart, ready for his 
 pen to give them a setting and larger life. 
 
 " Dear face — bright, glinting hair — 
 Dear life, whose heart is mine — 
 The thought of you is prayer. 
 The love of you divine. 
 
GEOKGE PARSONS LATHROP. 99 
 
 In starlight, or in rain ; 
 
 In the sunset's shrouded glow ; 
 Ever, with joy or pain, 
 
 To you my quick thoughts go." 
 
 And summing up, he tells us the kind of 
 a bond that holds them. It is the 
 
 " Love that lives ; ' 
 
 Its spring-time blossoms blow 
 'Mid the fruit that autumn gives ; 
 And its life outlasts the snow." 
 
 In 1875 he became assistant editor of 
 that staid and stately magazine the Atlantic 
 Monthly^ thereby adding to his fame, while 
 it brought him into intimate relationship 
 with the best current thought of the time. 
 Few American literary men have not, at 
 some time of their career, been closely 
 allied with the press. Mr. Lathrop has 
 been no exception. For two years, from 
 '77 to '79, his brilliant pen guided the 
 destinies of the Boston Courier. In 1879 
 he purchased Hawthorne's old home, " The 
 
100 GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP. 
 
 Wayside," in Concord, Mass., making it 
 his home until his removal to New York 
 in 1883. His present residence is at New 
 London, Conn., where a beautiful home, 
 with its every nook consecrated to books 
 and paintings, tells of an ideal literary 
 life and companionship. Mr. Lathrop's 
 genius is many sided. This is often a sign 
 of strength. Men, says a recent critic, 
 with a great and vague sense of power in 
 them are always doubtful whether they 
 have reached the limits of that power, and 
 naturally incline to test this in the field in 
 which they feel they have fewer rather 
 than more numerous auguries of success. 
 Into many fields this brilliant writer has 
 gone, and with success. In some he has 
 sowed, in others reaped a golden harvest. 
 He was a pioneer in that movement which 
 rightfully held that an author had some- 
 thing to do with his brain -work. It seems 
 strange that in this nineteenth century such 
 
GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP. 101 
 
 a proposition should demand a defender. 
 Sanity, however, is not so widespread as 
 the optimists tell. The contention of those 
 that denied copyright was, "Ideas are 
 common property." So they are, says our 
 author, but granting this, don't think you 
 ha^ve bagged your game ? How about the 
 form in which those ideas are presented ? 
 Is not the author's own work, wrought out 
 with toil, sweat and privation — is not the 
 labor bestowed upon that form as worthy 
 of proper wage as the manual skill devoted 
 to the making of a jumping jack ? Yet no 
 one has denied that jumping-jacks must be 
 paid for. This was sound reasoning and 
 would have had immediate effect, had 
 Congress possessed a ha'penny worth of 
 logic. As it was, years were wasted agita- 
 ting for a self-evident right, men's energies 
 spent, and at length a half-loaf reluctantly 
 given. 
 
 In another field Mr. Lathrop has been a 
 8 
 
102 GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP. 
 
 worker almost single-hancled, that of en- 
 couraging a school of American art. A 
 few years ago a daub from France was 
 valued more than a marvellous color-study 
 of John La Farge, or a canvas breath- 
 ing the luminous idealism of Waterman. 
 Critics sniffed at American art, while they 
 went into rhapsody over some foreign little 
 master. Our author, whose keen percep- 
 tion had taught him that the men who 
 toiled in attics, without recompense in 
 the present, and dreary prospects for the 
 future, for the sake of art, were not to be 
 branded as daubers, but as real artists, 
 the fathers of American art, became their 
 defender. He pointed out the beauties of 
 this new school, its strength, and above 
 all, that whatever it might have bor- 
 rowed from foreign art, it was American 
 in the core. Men listened more for the 
 sake of the writer than interest in his 
 theme. Gradually they became tolerant 
 
GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP. 103 
 
 and admitted that there was such a thing 
 as American art. 
 
 It was natural that the son-in-law of 
 America's greatest story-teller should try 
 his strength in fiction. His first novels 
 show a trace of Hawthorne. They are 
 romantic, while the wealth of language 
 bewilders. This, as a critic remarks, was 
 an ''indication of opulence and not of 
 poverty." The author was feeling his 
 way. His later works bear no trace of 
 Hawthorne ; they are marked by his own 
 fine spiritual sense. The plots are in- 
 genious, poetically conceived and worked 
 out with a deftness and subtlety that 
 charms the reader. There is an air of 
 fineness about them totally foreign to the 
 pyrotechnic displays of current American 
 fiction. The author is an acute observer, 
 one who looks below the surface, an ardent 
 student of psychology. His English is 
 scholarly, has color and dramatic force. 
 
104 GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP. 
 
 His novels are free from immoral sug- 
 gestions, straining after effect, overdoing 
 the pathetic and incongruous padding, the 
 ordinary stock of ovly fin de siecle novelists. 
 The reading of them not only amuses, a 
 primary condition of all works of fiction, 
 but instructs and widens the reader's 
 horizon on the side of the good and true. 
 In poetry Mr. Lathrop has attained his 
 greatest strength. Some of his war- poems 
 are full of fine feeling and manly vigor. 
 He is no carver of cherry-stones or singer 
 of inane sonnets and meaningless ron- 
 deaus, but a poet who has something to 
 say ; none of your humanity messages, 
 but songs that are human, songs that find 
 root in the human heart. Of his volumes 
 " Rose and Rooftree," " Dreams and Days," 
 a critic writes : 
 
 " There are poems in tenderer vein 
 which appeal to many hearts, and others 
 wrought out of the joys and sorrows of 
 
GEOEGE PARSONS LATHROP. 105 
 
 the poet's own life, which draw hearts to 
 him, as "May Rose" and the "Child's 
 Wish Granted " and " The Flown Soul," 
 the last two referring to his only son, 
 whose death in early childhood has been 
 the supreme grief of his life. The same 
 critic notes the exquisite purity and deli- 
 cacy of these poems, and that " in a day 
 when the delusion is unfortunately wide- 
 spread that these cannot co-exist with 
 poetic fervor and strength.'' 
 
 In March of 1891 Mr. Lathrop, after 
 weary years of aimless wandering in the 
 barren fields of sectarianism found, as 
 Newman and Brownson had found, that 
 peace which a warring world cannot give, 
 in the bosom of the Catholic Church. 
 Where Emerson halted, shackled by 
 Puritanism and its traditional prejudice 
 towards Catholicism, Lathrop, as Brown - 
 son, in quest of new worlds of thought, 
 critically examined the old church and her 
 
106 GEOEGE PARSONS LATHROP. 
 
 teachings, finding therein the truth that 
 makes men free. This step of Lathrop's, 
 inexplicable to many of his friends, is 
 explained in his own way, in the manly 
 letter that concludes this sketch. Such a 
 letter must, by its truthfulness, have held 
 his friends. " May we not," says Kegan 
 Paul, " carry with us loving and tender 
 memories of men fi'om whom we learn 
 much, even while we difi^er and criticise ? " 
 " Humanly speaking, I entered into 
 Catholicity as a result of long thought 
 and meditation upon religion, continuing 
 through a number of years. But there 
 must have been a deeper force at work, 
 that of the Holy Spirit, by means of what 
 we call grace, for a longer time than I sus- 
 pected. Certainly I was not attracted by 
 'the fascinations of Rome,' that are so 
 glibly talked about, but which no one has 
 ever been able to define to me. Perhaps 
 those that use the phrase refer to the out- 
 
GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP. 107 
 
 ward symbols of ritual, that are simply the 
 expressive adornment of the inner meaning 
 — the flower of it. I, at any rate, never 
 went to Mass but once with any comprehen- 
 sion of it, before my conversion, and had 
 seldom even witnessed Catholic services 
 anywhere ; although now, with knowledge 
 and experience, I recognize the Mass — 
 which even that arch, unorthodox author, 
 Thomas Carlyle, called ' the only genuine 
 thing of our times ' — as the greatest action 
 in the world. Many Catholics had been 
 known to me, of varying merit ; and some 
 of them were valued friends. But none of 
 these ever urged or advised or even hinted 
 that I should come into the Church. The 
 best of them had (as large numbers of my 
 fellow- Catholics have to-day) that same 
 modesty and reverence toward the sacred 
 mysteries that caused the early Christians 
 also to be slow in leading catechumens — or 
 those not yet fully prepared for belief — 
 
108 GEOEGE PAESONS LATHEOP. 
 
 into the great truths of faith. My observa- 
 tions of life, however, increasingly con- 
 vinced me that a vital, central, unchanging 
 principle in religion was necessary, together 
 with one great association of Christians in 
 place of endless divisions — if the promise 
 made to men was to be fulfilled, or really 
 had been fulfilled. When I began to ask 
 questions, I found Catholics quite ready to 
 answer everything with entire straight- 
 forwardness, gentle good-will, yet firmness. 
 Neither they nor the Church evaded any- 
 thing. They presented and defended the 
 teaching of Christ in its entirety, unex- 
 aggerated and undiminished ; the complete 
 faith, without haggling or qualification or 
 that queer, loose assent to every sort of 
 individual exception and denial that is 
 allowed in other organizations. I may 
 say here, too, that the Church, instead of 
 being narrow or pitiless toward those not 
 of her communion, as she is often mis- 
 
GEORGE PAESONS LATHROP. 109 
 
 takenly said to be, is the most compre- 
 hensive of all in her interpretation of 
 God's mercy as well as of his justice. And, 
 instead of slighting the Bible, she uses it 
 more incessantly than any of the Protestant 
 bodies ; at the same time shedding upon it 
 a clear, deep light that is the only one that 
 ever enabled me to see its full meaning and 
 coherence. The fact is, those outside of the 
 Church nowadays are engaged in talking 
 so noisily and at such a rate, on their own 
 hook, that they seldom pause to hear what 
 the Church really says, or to understand 
 what she is. Once convinced of the true 
 faith, intellectually and spiritually, I could 
 not let anything stand in the way of affirm- 
 ing my loyalty to it." 
 
110 REV. BROTHER AZARIAS. 
 
 REV. BROTHER AZARIAS. 
 
 It is delicious in this age of hurried 
 bookmaking, to run across a thinker. It 
 gives one the same kind of sensation that 
 comes to the sportsman, when a monarch 
 of the glen crosses his path. Bookmakers 
 are as many as leaves of the Adirondacks 
 after the hasty gallop of a mountain storm ; 
 thinkers are scarce. When, then, amid 
 the leafy mass, one discovers the rare bird 
 hiding from vulgar gaze, an irresistible 
 desire to find his lurking place seizes the 
 observer. This lurking place may be old 
 to many ; it was only the other day that I 
 discovered it, — when a friend placed in 
 my hands " Phases of Thought and 
 Criticism," by Brother Azarias. This book, 
 the sale of which has been greater in 
 
REV. BROTHER AZARIAS. Ill 
 
 England than on this side of the water, is 
 one of suggestive criticism — a criticism 
 founded on faith. The author holds with 
 another thinker, that " Religion is man's 
 first and deepest concern. To be indifferent 
 is to be dull or depraved, and doubt is 
 disease." Each chapter of his book ex- 
 presses a distinct social and intellectual 
 force. Each embodies a verifying ideal ; 
 for, continues the author, "the criticism 
 that busies itself with the literary form is 
 superficial, for food it gives husks." 
 
 While the author will not concede that 
 mere literary form is the all in all that our 
 modern masters claim, yet he would not 
 be found in the ranks of M. de Bonniers, 
 who declares that an author need not 
 trouble himself about his grammar; let 
 him have original ideas and a certain style, 
 and the rest is of no consequence. The 
 author of " Phases of Thought," believes 
 first in the possession of ideas, for without 
 
112 EEV. BROTHER AZARIAS. 
 
 them an author is a sorry spectacle. He 
 also believes that an attractive style will 
 materially aid in the diffusion of these 
 ideas. Many good books fall still-born 
 from the press, for no other reasons than 
 their slovenly style. Readers now-a-days 
 will not plod along poor roads, when a 
 turnpike leads to the same destination. 
 The grammar marks the parting of ways. 
 Brother Azarias rightfully holds that good 
 grammar is an essential part of every 
 great writer's style. Classics are so, by 
 correct grammar as well as by original 
 ideas. This easy dictum of the slipshod 
 writers — that if an idea takes you off your 
 feet you must not trouble yourself about 
 the grammar that wraps it, is but a spe- 
 cious pleading for their ignorance of what 
 they pretend to despise. 
 
 The great difference between this book 
 and the many on similar subjects is in the 
 manner of treatment. It starts from a 
 
REV. BROTHER AZARIAS. 113 
 
 solid basis; that basis the creed of the 
 Catholic Church. The superstructure of 
 lofty thought reared on this basis is in a 
 style at once pellucid and crisp. The 
 author is not only a thinker rare and 
 original; he is a scholar broad and mas- 
 terly. 
 
 Believing that his Church holds the keys 
 of the "kingdom come," and as a conse- 
 quence, a key to all problems moral and 
 social that can move modern society, he 
 grapples with them, after the manner of a 
 knight of old, courteously but convincingly. 
 His teaching is that, outside the bosom 
 of the Catholic Church jostle the warring 
 elements of confusion and uncertainty. In 
 her fold can man find that rest, that sweet 
 peace promised by the Redeemer. Her 
 philosophy is the wisdom worth cherishing, 
 the curing balm that philosophers vainly 
 seek outside her pale. To the weary and 
 thought-stricken would this great writer 
 
114 REV. BROTHER AZARIAS. 
 
 bring his often and beautifully taught les- 
 son, that the things of this world are not the 
 puppets of chance, nor lots of the panthe- 
 istic whole, but parts of a well-ordered 
 system, governed by a paternal being, 
 whom we. His children, address in that 
 touching prayer, " Father, who art in 
 Heaven.'' From that Father came a Son, 
 not mere man, not only a great prophet, 
 not only a law-giver, but the true Son of 
 God, equal to the Father, from all eternity, 
 whose mission was, to teach all men that 
 would listen, the way that leads to light. 
 That this identical mission is, and will be 
 continued to the consummation of the ages 
 by the Catholic Church. That in the 
 truth of these things, all men, who lovingly 
 seek, will be confirmed, not that mere 
 intellect alone could be the harbinger of 
 such truths, for, as he has so well put 
 it: — "Human reason and human know- 
 ledge, whether considered individually or 
 
REV. BROTHER A Z ARIAS. 115 
 
 collectively in the race are limited to the 
 natural. Knowledge of the supernatural 
 can come only from a Divine Teacher." 
 
 One may be convinced of every truth of 
 revealed religion, and yet not possess the 
 gift of faith. That gift is purely gratui- 
 tous. If, however, the seeker humbly and 
 honestly desires the acquisition of these 
 truths, and knocks, the door of the chamber 
 of truth shall be opened unto him, for this 
 has the Saviour promised. That door once 
 opened, the Spirit of God breathes on the 
 seeker, it opens the eyes of the soul, it 
 reveals beyond all power of doubt or cavil, 
 or contradiction, the supernatural as a fact, 
 solemn, universal, constant throughout the 
 vicissitudes of the age. While the author 
 fashions these lofty truths on the anvil 
 of modern scholarship, the reader finds 
 himself, like the school children, in 
 Longfellow's poem, looking in through 
 the artist's open door full of admiration, 
 
116 REV. BROTHER AZARIAS. 
 
 fascinated by burning sparks. Pages have 
 been written about the ideal, defining it, in 
 verbiage fatiguing and elusive. 
 
 It is a trick of pretended scholarship, to 
 hide thought with massive word-boulders. 
 What a difference in the process of this 
 rare scholar ? 
 
 A flying spark from his anvil lights up 
 the dullest intellect. It is a stimulus to 
 the weary brain, after wading through 
 essays as to what constitutes an ideal, to 
 have the gentle scholar, across the blazing- 
 pine logs, on a winter's night, say : " A 
 genius conceives and expresses a great 
 thought. The conception so expressed 
 delights. It enters men's souls ; it compels 
 their admiration. They applaud and are 
 rejoiced that another masterpiece has been 
 brought into existence to grace the world 
 of art and letters. The genius alone is 
 dissatisfied. Where others see perfection, 
 he perceives something unexpressed ; be- 
 
EEV. BROTHER AZARIAS. 117 
 
 yoncl the reach of his art. Try as best he 
 may, he cannot attain that indefinable 
 something. Deep in his inner conscious- 
 ness he sees a type so grand and perfect 
 that his beautiful production appears to 
 him but a faint and marred copy of that 
 original. That original is the ideal ; and 
 the ideal it is that appeals to the aesthetic 
 and calls forth men's admiration." What 
 a divining power has this student, in 
 plummeting the vagaries of modern cul- 
 ture! 
 
 " Every school of philosophy has its dis- 
 ciples, who repeat the sayings of their 
 masters with implicit confidence, without 
 ever stopping to question the principles 
 from which those sayings arise or the 
 results to which they lead." These chat- 
 tering disciples will afi*ect to sneer at the 
 Christian belief, while they lowly sit at 
 the feet of one of their mud gods singing 
 "thou art the infallible one." They will 
 9^ 
 
118 REV. BROTHER AZARIAS. 
 
 not question their position simply because 
 "these systems are accepted not so much 
 for truth's sake as because they are the 
 intellectual fashions of the day." Such men 
 change their philosophy as quickly as a 
 Parisian dressmaker his styles. It may 
 yet be shown by some mighty Teuton 
 that vagaries in philosophy and dress are 
 closely allied, and that the synthetic phi- 
 losophy of Herbert Spencer is responsible 
 for the coming of crinoline. What a de- 
 lightful thrust at that school of criticism 
 that singles out an author or a book as 
 the very acme of perfection, seeing wisdom 
 in absurdities and truth in commonplace 
 fiction, is given in these lines : " Paint a 
 daub and call it a Turner, and forthwith 
 these critics will trace in it strokes of 
 genius." With a twinkle in his eye he 
 asks, "Think you they understand the real 
 principles of art criticism?" You will be 
 easily able to answer that question when 
 
REV. BROTHER AZARIAS. 119 
 
 you have mastered this pithy definition 
 of true criticism, be it of literature or of 
 art, " that it is all-embracing." It has 
 no antagonism to science so long as she 
 travels in her rightful domain. When 
 " science has her superstitions and her 
 romancings as unreal and shadowy as 
 those of the most ephemeral literature, 
 then it is the duty of criticism to adminis- 
 ter the medicine of truth and purge the 
 wayward jade of her humors." 
 
 To such a mind as that of the author 
 of "Phases of Thought," with its thorough 
 knowledge of the art of criticism and its 
 perfect equipment, the separating of the 
 chaff from the meal of an author becomes 
 not only a pleasure but a duty. This is 
 best seen by a perusal of Chapter III, 
 dealing with Emerson and Newman as 
 types. With a few masterly strokes the 
 real Emerson, not the phantom or brain 
 figment of Burroughs and Woodberry and 
 
120 REV. BROTHER AZARIAS. 
 
 the long line of fad disciples, passes before 
 us. Not an inch is taken from his stature. 
 His intellectual beauties and defects, so 
 strongly drawn, but confirm the reader in 
 the truth of the portraiture. One catches 
 not only a glimpse of the man, but the 
 springs of his soul-struggles. Emerson 
 in his hungry quest for intellectual food, 
 ranged through the philosophies of the 
 east and west, purposely ignoring that of 
 the Catholic Church, This sin cost him 
 whole worlds of thought hidden from his 
 vision. Newman had the same hunger to 
 aj^pease, but where Emerson turned away 
 Newman, ever in search for truth, kept 
 on, and found it in the Catholic Church. 
 The analysis of these two minds is done in 
 a masterly way. Azarias has no preju- 
 dices. If he puts his fingers on defects 
 and descants on their nature and treat- 
 ment, he will, no less, point out beauties 
 and lovingly linger among them. He is a 
 
KEV. BROTHER AZARIAS. 121 
 
 knight in the cause of truth, and would 
 not herd with the carping critics. He will 
 tell you that Emerson's mind was like an 
 ^olian harp. " It was awake to the most 
 delicate impressions, and at every breath 
 of thought it gave out a music all its own," 
 and that the reading of him with under- 
 standing "is a mental tonic bracing for 
 the cultured intellect as is Alpine air 
 for the mountaineer." The pages of this 
 book teem with thought clothed in lan- 
 guage whose sparkling beauty is all the 
 author's own. From such a book it is 
 difficult to select. Emerson has well said, 
 " No one can select the beautiful passages 
 of another for you. Do your own quarry- 
 ing." I abide by this quotation, and should 
 ask every lover of the beautiful and true 
 to buy this fecund book. 
 
 Patrick Francis Mullaney, better known 
 as Brother Azarias, was born in Kil- 
 lenaule County, Tipperary, Ireland, June 
 
122 EEV. BROTHEB AZARIAS. 
 
 29th, 1847. Like the majority of eminent 
 men that his country has given birth to, 
 he came of its noble peasantry. The old 
 tale was here enacted. The parents left 
 the land of their birth in search of a home 
 in our better land. This found, Azarias 
 joined them. At the age of fifteen he 
 joined the Christian Brothers. That great 
 Order gave free scope to his fine abilities. 
 In 1866 he was chosen professor of mathe- 
 matics and English literature at Rock Hill 
 College, Maryland. He continued in this 
 position for ten years. At the expiration 
 of his professorship he travelled a year 
 through Europe, collecting materials and 
 writing his "Development of Old English 
 Thought." On his return he became presi- 
 dent of Rock Hill College, holding that 
 position until recalled to Paris by his 
 Superior in 1866. After an absence of 
 three years Brother Azarias returned to 
 the States as professor of English litera- 
 
BEV. BROTHER AZARIA8. 123 
 
 ture at the De La Salle Institute, New 
 York. This is not only an important posi- 
 tion, but it gives leisure, and that ready 
 access to the great libraries, so prized by 
 literary men. 
 
.WOMEN. 
 
KATHERINE ELEANOR CONWAY. 
 
 " ISText room to that of Roche's," said 
 the dear O'Reilly, showing me his nest of 
 poets, "is a gentle poetess." 
 
 The door was wide open. It is a ques- 
 tion with my mind if the room ever 
 knew a door. Be this as it may, there 
 sat, with her chair close drawn to her 
 desk, a frail, delicate-looking woman. 
 The ordinary eye might see nothing in a 
 face that was winsome, if not handsome ; 
 yet, let the dainty mouth curve in 
 speech, and at once a subtle attraction, 
 lit up by lustrous eyes, permeated the 
 face. One characteristic that made itself 
 felt, in the most sparse conversation with 
 this woman, was her humility, a rare 
 virtue among American literary women. 
 
 127 
 
128 KATHERINE ELEANOR CONWAY. 
 
 I have known not a few among that 
 irritable class who, no sooner had they 
 sipped the most meagre draught of fame, 
 than they became intoxicated with their 
 own importance, and for the balance of 
 life wooed that meretricious goddess, No- 
 toriety. In fiery prose and tuneful song 
 they told of the dire misfortunes that 
 had been heaped upon their sex by that 
 obstinate vulgar biped, man. Their litera- 
 ture — for that is the name given to 
 the crudest offspring of the press in 
 these days — is noisy, and, says a witty 
 writer, a noisy author is as bad as a 
 barrel organ, — a quiet one is as refresh- 
 ing as a long pause in a foolish sermon. 
 Clergymen, who have listened to a brother 
 divine on grace, will be the first to see 
 the point. Our authoress— (a female filled 
 with the vanity that troubled Solomon 
 says I should write female author) — is a 
 quiet and unobtrusive writer. Of the 
 
KATHERINE ELEANOR CONWAY. 129 
 
 tricks that catch and the ways that are 
 crooked in literature, she knows nothing, 
 and what is better, no amount of tawdry 
 fame could induce her to swerve a jot from 
 the hard stony road that leads to enduring- 
 success, the only goal worth striving for 
 in the domain of letters. I am well aware 
 that in the popular list of women-writers 
 mouthed by the growing herd of flippant 
 readers that have no other use for a book 
 than as a time-killer, — a herd to whom 
 ideas are as unpalatable as disestablish- 
 ment to an English parson — you will fail 
 to find the name of Katherine Conway. 
 The reason is simple. She has no fads to 
 air in ungrammatical English, no fallacies 
 to adduce in halting metre. It was a 
 Boston critic who echoed the dictum of the 
 French critic — that grammar has no place 
 in the world of letters. Only have ideas, 
 that is, write meaningless platitudes, gran- 
 diose nothings, something that neither 
 
130 KATHERINE ELEANOR CONWAY. 
 
 man, the angels above nor the demons 
 down under the sea, may decipher, and 
 this illusive verbiage will make you famous. 
 A school of critics will herald your work 
 with such adjectives as " noble, lofty, ab- 
 sorbing, soul-inspiring ; " nay, more, a 
 pious missionary friend may be found to 
 to translate the verbiage into Syriac, as a 
 present for converts. Borne on the tide of 
 such criticism, not a few women writers 
 have mistaken the plaudits of notoriety, 
 that passing show, for fame. It was a 
 saying of De Musset's that fame was a 
 tardy plant, a lover of the soil. Be this 
 as it may, it is safe to assert that its coming 
 is not proclaimed by far-fetched similes, 
 frantic metaphors, sensuous images, ranting 
 style, ignorance of metre, want of gram- 
 mar ; the dishes are not of the voluptuous, 
 morbid or the monstrous kind. Its thirst 
 is not slaked at sewers of dulness spiced 
 with immorality. These symptoms savor 
 
KATHERINE ELEANOR CONWAY. 131 
 
 of one disease known to all pathologists as 
 notoriety. In an age of this dreaded 
 disease it is surely refreshing to meet with 
 works that breathe gentleness and repose, 
 — a beautiful trust in religion, and a warm, 
 natural heart for humanity. These traits 
 will the reader find in abundance in the 
 pages of Katherine Conway. " What kills 
 a poet," says Aldrich, " is self-conceit." Of 
 all the forms self-conceit may assume none 
 is more foolish or detrimental, especially 
 to a woman-poet, than the pluming of 
 oneself as the harbinger of some renova- 
 ting gospel, some panacea for human in- 
 firmities. What is the burden of your 
 message ? says the critic to the young poet. 
 Straightway the poet evolves a message, 
 and as messages of this kind ought to be 
 mysterious, the poet wraps them in a jar- 
 gon as unintelligible as Garner's monkey 
 dialect. Thus in America has risen a 
 school of woman poetry, deluded by false 
 
132 KATHERINE ELEANOR CONWAY. 
 
 criticism, calling itself a message to hu- 
 manity, dubbed rightly the school of 
 passion, and one might add, of pain. This 
 school may ask, " Am I to be debarred 
 from treating of the passions on the score 
 of sex." By no means ; the passions are 
 legitimate subjects. Love, one of them, is 
 your most attractive theme, but as Lilly 
 has it, love is not to you what it is to the 
 physiologist, a mere animal impulse which 
 man has in common with moths and 
 molluscs. Your task is to extract from 
 human life, even in its commonest aspects, 
 its most vulgar realities, what it contains of 
 secret beauty ; to lift it the level of art, not 
 to degrade art to its level. Few Ameri- 
 can writers more fully realized these great 
 artistic truths than the master under 
 whose fatherly tuition Miss Conway had 
 long been placed. Boyle O'Reilly was a 
 Grecian in his love for nature. As such it 
 was his aim to seek the beautiful in its com- 
 
KATHERINE ELEANOK CONWAY. 133 
 
 monest aspects, its most vulgar realities. 
 JSTo amount of claptrap or fine writing 
 could make him mistake a daub for a 
 Turner. In the bottom of his soul he 
 detested the little bardlings who had 
 passed nature by, without knowing her, 
 who wove into the warp and woof of 
 their dulness the putridity of Zola and 
 morbidity of Marie Bashkirtseif. Under 
 such a guide, the poetic ideal set before 
 Miss Conway has been of the highest, 
 and the highest is only worth working 
 for. This ideal must be held unswerv- 
 ingly, even if one sees that books that 
 are originally vicious are "placarded 
 in the booksellers' windows ; sold on the 
 street corners ; hawked through the rail- 
 road trains ; yea, given away, with pack- 
 ages of tea or toilet soap, in place. of the 
 chromo, mercifully put on the superan- 
 nuated list." These books are but foam 
 upon the current of time, flecking its sur- 
 10 
 
134 KATHERINE ELEANOR CONWAY. 
 
 face for a moment, and passing away into 
 oblivion, while what Miss Conway happily 
 calls the literature of moral loveliness, or 
 what might as aptly be called the litera- 
 ture of all time, remains our contribution 
 to posterity. Its foundations, to follow the 
 thought of Azarias, are deeply laid in 
 human nature, and its structure withstands 
 the storms of adversity and the eddies of 
 events. For such a literature O'Reilly 
 made a life struggle ; his pupil has closely 
 followed his footsteps in the charming, 
 simple, melodious volume that lies before 
 me, " A Dream of Lilies." Rarely has a 
 Catholic book had a more artistic setting, 
 and one might add, rarely has a volume of 
 Catholic verse deserved it more. Here the 
 poetess touches her highest point, and 
 proves that years of silence have been 
 years of study and conscientious workman- 
 ship. In her poem "Success" may be 
 found the key to this volume ; 
 
KATHERINE ELEANOR CONWAY. 135 
 
 " Ah ! know what true success is ; young hearts dream, 
 Dream nobly and plan loftily, nor deem 
 That length of years is length of living. See 
 A whole life's labor in an hour is done ; 
 Not by world -tests the heavenly crown is won , 
 To God the man is what he means to be." 
 
 ^' Dream nobly and plan loftily" has 
 been the guiding spirit of this volume. 
 It is a book of religious verse in the true 
 sense, not in the general acceptance of 
 modern religious verse, which is gener- 
 ally dull twaddle, egotism, mawkishness, 
 blind gropings and haunting fears. The 
 gentle spirit of Christ breathes through 
 it, making an atmosphere of peace and 
 repose. There is no bigotry to jar, no 
 narrowness to chafe us, but the broad 
 upland of Christian charity and truth. 
 Nor has our author forgotten that even 
 truth if cast in awkward mould may 
 be passed over. To her poems she has 
 given a dainty setting without sacrificing 
 
136 KATHERINE ELEANOR CONWAY. 
 
 a jot of their strength. After reading 
 such a book a judicious bit of Miss Con- 
 way's prose comes to my mind. "And as 
 that Catholic light, the only true vision, 
 brightens about us, we realize more and 
 more that literary genius, take it all and 
 all, has done more to attract men to good 
 than to seduce men to evil ; that the best 
 literature is also the most fascinating, and 
 even by its very abundance is more than 
 a match for the bad ; that time is its best 
 ally ; that it is hard, if not impossible, 
 to corrupt the once formed pure literary 
 taste ; and, finally, that as makers of litera- 
 ture or critics or disseminators of it, it is 
 our duty to believe in the best, hope in the 
 best, and steadfastly appeal to the best in 
 human nature; for we needs must love the 
 highest when we see it." 
 
 Katherine Eleanor Conway was born of 
 Irish parents, in Rochester, on the 6th of 
 Sept., 1853. Her early studies were made 
 
KATHERINE ELEANOR CONWAY. 137 
 
 in the convent schools of her native city. 
 From an early age she had whisperings of 
 the muse. These whisperings at the age of 
 fifteen convinced her that her true sphere 
 of action was literature. In 1875 she 
 commenced the publication of a modest 
 little Catholic monthly, contributing poems 
 and moral tales, under the nom-de-plume of 
 " Mercedes," to other Catholic journals, in 
 the spare hours left from editing her little 
 venture and teaching in the convent. In 
 1878 she became attached to the Buifalo 
 Union and Times. To this journal she con- 
 tributed the most of the poems to be found 
 in her maiden volume, — " On the Sunrise 
 Slope," — a volume whose rich promise has 
 been amply fulfilled in the "Dream of 
 Lilies." Her health failing, she sought a 
 needful rest in Boston. Her fame had 
 preceded her, and the gifted editor of the 
 Pilots ever on the lookout for a hopeful 
 literary aspirant of his race, held out a 
 
138 KATHERINE ELEANOR CONWAY. 
 
 willing hand to the shy stranger. " Come 
 to us," he said, in a voice that knew no 
 guile, " and help us in the good fight." 
 That fight — the crowning glory of O'Reilly's 
 noble life — was to gain an adequate position 
 for his race and religion from the puritan - 
 ism of Xew England. How that race and 
 religion were held before his coming, may 
 be best told in the language of Miss 
 Conway, taken from a heart-sketch of her 
 dead master and minstrel : — 
 
 " Notwithstanding Matignon and Cheve- 
 rus, and the Protestant Governor Sullivan, 
 Catholic and Irish were, from the outset, 
 simply interchangeable terms — and terms of 
 odium both — in the popular JN'ew England 
 mind; in vain the bond of a common lan- 
 guage, in vain the Irishman's prompt and 
 affectionate acceptance of the duties of 
 American citizenship. To but slight soft- 
 ening of prejudice even his sacrifice of blood 
 and life on every battle-field in the Civil 
 
KATHERINE ELEANOR CONWAY. 139 
 
 War, in proof of the sincerity of his politi- 
 cal profession of faith. He and his were 
 still hounded as a class inferior and apart. 
 They were almost unknown in the social 
 and literary life of New England. Their 
 pathetic sacrifices for their kin beyond the 
 sea, their interest in the political fortunes 
 of the old land, were jests and by-words. 
 Their religion was the superstition of the 
 ignorant, vulgar and pusillanimous ; or, at 
 best, motive for jealous suspicion of divided 
 political allegiance and threatened "for- 
 eign " domination. Their children suffered 
 petty persecutions in the public schools. 
 The stage and the press faithfully reflected 
 the ruling popular sentiment in their cari- 
 catures of the Catholic Irishman." 
 
 She accepted O'Reilly's call and stood 
 by his side with Roche, Guiney, Blake, 
 until the hard fought battle against the 
 prejudice to Irishism and Catholicism, 
 planted in New England by the bigoted 
 
140 KATHERINE ELEANOR CONWAY. 
 
 literature of Old England, was abated, if 
 not destroyed ; until its shadows, if cast 
 now, are cast by the lower rather than 
 the higher orders in the world of intellect 
 and refinement. " And the shortening of 
 the shadow is proof that the sun is rising," 
 proof that her work has been far from 
 vain. And when from the grey dawn of 
 prejudice will come forth the white morrow 
 of charity and truth, the singer and her 
 songs will not be forgotten. 
 
 LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY. 
 
 In speaking with the author of a " Dream 
 of Lilies," I casually mentioned the name 
 of another Boston poetess, "one of the Pilot 
 poets," as the gifted Carpenter was wont to 
 speak of those whose genius was nursed by 
 Boyle O'Reilly. For a few years previous 
 
LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY. 141 
 
 to my coming, little waif poems, suggestive 
 of talent and refinement, had seen light 
 in the columns of that brilliant journal. 
 They had about them that something which 
 makes the reader hazard a bet that the 
 youngster when fully fledged would some 
 day leave the lowlands of minor minstrelsy 
 for a height on Parnassus. From this 
 singer Miss Conway had that morning 
 received a notelet. It was none of the 
 ordinary kind, a little anarchistic, if one 
 might judge from the awkward pen-sketch 
 of a hideous grinning skeleton-skull held 
 by cross-bones which served as an illustra- 
 tion to the bantering text that followed, in 
 a rather cramped girlish hand. The note- 
 let was signed Louise Imogen Guiney. 
 
 "Are you not afraid, Miss Conway," said 
 I, "to receive such warning notes?" "It 
 is from the best girl in America," was the 
 frank reply ; ' ' read it . " A perusal of the few 
 dashing lines was enough, and my gener- 
 
142 LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY. 
 
 ous host, reading my eyes, gave me the 
 coveted notelet. That notelet begot an 
 interest in the writer ; an interest fully 
 repaid by the strong, careful work put 
 forth under her name. Louise Imogen 
 Guiney, poet, essayist, dramatist, was born 
 in Boston, that city of " sweetness and 
 light," in January, 1862. Her parents 
 were Irish. Her father, Patrick Guiney, 
 came from the hamlet of Parkstown, 
 County Tipperary, at an early age. He 
 was a man of the most blameless and 
 noble character. During the civil war, 
 as Col. Guiney of the Irish Ninth Massa- 
 chusetts Volunteers, his heroism on behalf 
 of his adojDted country won him the grate- 
 ful admiration of all lovers of fi-eedom. 
 This admiration at the close of the war 
 was substantially shown by his election as 
 Judge of Probate. Constant suffering from 
 an old wound, received at the battle of the 
 Wilderness, gave the old soldier but few 
 
LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY. 143 
 
 years to enjoy honors from his fellow-citi- 
 zens. His death was mourned by all who 
 loved virtue and honor. Of him a Boston 
 poet sang : 
 
 " Large heart and brave ! Tried soul and true ! 
 
 How thickly in thy life's short span, 
 All strong sweet virtues throve and grew, 
 
 As friend, as hero, and as man. 
 Unmoved by thought of blame or praise, 
 
 Unbought by gifts of power and pride. 
 Thy feet still trod Time's devious ways 
 
 With Duty as thy law and guide." 
 
 Good blood, you will say, from whence 
 our poet came, and blood counts even in 
 poetry. I have no anecdotes to relate of 
 Miss Guiney's early years. I am not 
 sure that there were any. Anecdotes are 
 usually manufactured in later life, if the 
 subject happens to become famous. Her 
 education was carefully planned, and in- 
 telligently carried out. She was not held 
 in the dull routine of the school-room, but 
 
144 LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY. 
 
 was allowed to emancipate herself in the 
 works of the poets. What joy must have 
 been her's, scampering home after the 
 study of de omni scibili, the ordinary curri- 
 culum of any American school, to a quiet 
 nook and the dream of her poets. Amid 
 these dreams came the siren whisperings 
 of the muse, telling her of the poet within 
 struggling for life and expression. These 
 struggles begot a tiny little volume happily 
 named "Songs at the Start." The great 
 American reviewer, who, ordinarily, 
 
 " Bolts every book that comes out of the press, 
 Without the least question of larger or less," 
 
 on this occasion, by some untoward event, 
 stumbled on a truth when he informed us, 
 with the air of one who rarely touches 
 earth, that the book bore signs of promise. 
 The people, by all means a better critic, 
 were more apt in their judgment of the 
 young singer. A few years later they 
 
LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY. 
 
 145 
 
 asked her to write the memorial poem for 
 the services in commemoration of General 
 Grant. Thus honored by her native city, 
 in an easy way she was led to climb the 
 ladder of fame. In 1885 appeared her first 
 volume of essays, " Goose Quill Papers ; " 
 in 1887 a volume of poems bearing the 
 fanciful name of " White- Sail ; " in 1888 a 
 pretty book for children ; in 1892 '' Mon- 
 sieur Henri, a Foot-note to French His- 
 tory." It is something to be noted in 
 regard to a " Foot-note to French history," 
 that the novelist Stevenson, in his far-off 
 home in Samoa, was publishing at the 
 same time a work which bore a decided 
 likeness to her title. Stevenson's book was 
 published as "A Foot-Note to History." 
 In 1893 appeared her latest volume of 
 verse, being a selection of poems previously 
 published in American magazines. This 
 selection (the poet has a genuine knack 
 for tacking taking names to her volumes) 
 
146 LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY. 
 
 is quaintly named "A Wayside Harp," 
 and dedicated to a brace of Irish poets, the 
 Sigerson sisters. The graceful dedication 
 as well as many of its strongest and most 
 artistic poems, were the outcome of a trip 
 to Grreat Britain and Ireland. The author 
 travelled with open eyes, and brought back 
 many a dainty picture of the scenes she 
 had so lovingly witnessed. This volume 
 fulfils the early promise, and what is more, 
 gives indubitable signs that the poet pos- 
 sesses a reserve force. Not a few women 
 poets write themselves out in their first 
 volume. Not so with Miss Guiney, every 
 additional volume shows greater strength 
 and more complete mastery of technique. 
 After the surfeit of twaddle passing cur- 
 rent as poetry, such a book as "A Wayside 
 Harp " should find a waiting audience, 
 Miss Gruiney has the essentials of a poet, 
 which I take to be color, music, perfume 
 and passion. In their use she is an artist. 
 
LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY. 147 
 
 In her first book an excess of these every- 
 where prevailed; it was from this excess, 
 however, that the prudent critic would 
 have hazarded a doubt as to her fitness 
 to join the company of the bards. Since 
 then she has been an ardent student. 
 This study has not only taught her limita- 
 tions, a thing that saves so much after 
 pruning, but that other lesson, forgotten 
 by so many bardlets, that the greatest 
 poetic effects are the result of the master- 
 ful mixing of a few simple colors. It is 
 well that she has learned these lessons at 
 the outset of her career. Let not the fads 
 and fancies of this Jin de siecle and the 
 senseless worship of those poetasters who 
 scorn sense while they hug sound lead her 
 from the true road of song. No amount of 
 meaningless words airily strung together, 
 no amount of gymnastic rhyming feats can 
 produce a poet. They are the badges of 
 those wondrous little dunces that pass 
 
148 LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY. 
 
 nature with a frown, alleging in the lan- 
 guage of the witty Bangs that " Nature 
 is not art." Guiney's friend and faithful 
 mentor, O'Reilly, had taught her to abhor 
 all those who spent their waking hours 
 chiselling cherry stones. To him it was a 
 poet's duty to aim high, attune his lyre, 
 not to the petty, but the manly and hope- 
 ful ; never to debase the lyre by an utter- 
 ance of selfishness, but to consecrate it 
 with the strains of liberty and humanity. 
 If Guiney follows the teachings of her 
 early friend — ^teachings which are substan- 
 tially sound, she will yet produce poems 
 that the world will not willingly let die. 
 That Rosetti fad of hiding a mystic mean- 
 ing in a poem, now occupying the brains 
 of our teeming songsters, is now and then 
 to be met with in our poet. It is a trade- 
 trick. Poetry is sense — common-sense at 
 that, and you cannot rim common-sense 
 things with mystical hues. Abjuring these 
 
LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY. 149 
 
 trade-tricks, and shaking off the trammels 
 of her curious and extensive reading and 
 evolving from herself solely, she has, says 
 Douglas Sladen, a great promise before 
 her. As an instance of this promise let us 
 quote that fine poem, "The Wild Ride," 
 which is full of genuine inspiration, and 
 which may be the means of introducing to 
 some the most thoroughly gifted Catholic 
 woman writer of our country. 
 
 The Wild Kide. 
 
 I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses, 
 
 All day, the commotion of sinewy mane-tossing horses ; 
 
 All night from their cells the importunate tramping 
 
 and neighing. 
 Cowards and laggards fall back but alert to the saddle. 
 Straight, grim, and abreast, vault our weather-worn 
 
 galloping legion. 
 With a stirrup cup each to the one gracious woman 
 
 that loves him. 
 The road is thro' dolour and dread, over crags and 
 
 morasses ! 
 11 
 
160 LOtJISE IMOGEN GUINEY. 
 
 There are shapes by the way, there are things that 
 
 appall or entice us ! 
 What odds! We are knights, and our souls are but 
 
 bent on the riding ! 
 I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses, 
 All day, the commotion of sinewy, mane-tossing horses ; 
 All night from their cells the importunate tramping 
 
 and neighing. 
 We spur to a land of no name, outracing the storm 
 
 wind; 
 We leap to the infinite dark, like the sparks from the 
 
 anvil. 
 Thou leadest! O God! All's well with thy troopers 
 
 that follow. 
 
 It was only natural that the daughter of 
 an Irish patriot should sing of her father's 
 land, and that in a style racy of that land. 
 It was a hazardous experiment, as many 
 an Irish American singer has learned in 
 sorrow. That Miss Guiney has come out 
 of the trying ordeal successfully, may be 
 seen in the following little snatch, full of 
 the aroma of green Erin : 
 
LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY. 151 
 
 An Ikish Peasant Song. 
 
 I try to knead and spin, but my life is low the while ; 
 Oh, I long to be alone, and walk abroad a mile; 
 Yet when I walk alone, and think of naught at all, 
 Why from me that's young should the wild tears fall ? 
 
 The shower-stricken earth, the earth-colored streams. 
 They breathe on me awake, and moan to me in dreams ; 
 And yonder ivy fondling the broken castle wall. 
 It pulls my heart, till the wild tears fall. 
 
 The cabin-door looks down a furze-lighted hill, 
 And far as Leighlin cross the fields are green and still ; 
 But once I hear a blackbird in Leighlin hedges call, 
 The foolishness is on me, and the wild tears fall ! 
 
 Miss Guiney possesses a charming per- 
 sonality. Her manner is " unaffected, girl- 
 ish and modest." There is about her none 
 of the curtness and prudishness of the 
 blue-stocking. Success has not turned her 
 head, literary homage has not made her 
 forget that they who will build for time 
 must need work long and patiently, using 
 only the best material. By so doing may 
 
152 MES. BLAKE. 
 
 it be written of her work, as she has 
 written of Brother Bartholomew's: 
 
 " Wonderful verses ! fair and fine, 
 Rich in the old Greek loveliness ; ' 
 The seer-like vision, half divine ; 
 Pathos and merriment in excess, 
 And every perfect stanza told. 
 Of love and of labor manifold." 
 
 MRS. BLAKE. 
 
 Boston is a charming city. It is the 
 whim of the passing hour to sneer at the 
 modest dame. Henry James has done so. 
 Is not the author of "Daisy Miller" and 
 other interminable novels a correct person 
 to follow ? The disciples of the Mutual Ad- 
 miration Society in American Letters will 
 vociferously answer "yes." Old-fashioned 
 people may have another way. Scattered 
 
MRS. BLAKE. 153 
 
 here and there possibly a few there are 
 who hold that Hawthorne was a better 
 novelist than Howells is, that Holmes' 
 poetry is as good as Boyesen's, and that 
 Emerson's criticisms are more illuminative 
 than James'. Be this as it may, Boston is 
 a charming place to all those who had the 
 good fortune to have been welcomed by its 
 warm-hearted citizen, Boyle O'Reilly. To 
 those who knew his struggles, and the 
 earnest striving, until his weary spirit 
 sought its final home, for Catholic literature 
 in its true sense, the charm but increases. 
 It was owing to his kindness that I 
 found myself one blustery, raw day, ring- 
 ing the door-bell of an ordinary well to-do 
 brick house. Houses now and then carry 
 on their fronts an inkling of their occu- 
 pants. A door was opened, my card handed 
 to a feminine hand ; the aperture was not 
 as yet wide enough to catch a glimpse of 
 the face. The card was a power. " Come 
 
164 MRS. BLAKE. 
 
 in/' said a woman's voice, and the door 
 was wide open. I followed the guide, and 
 was soon in a plain, well furnished room, 
 in presence of a motherly-looking woman. 
 She was knitting ; at least that is part of 
 my memory's picture. Near her hung a 
 mocking-bird, whose notes now and then 
 were peculiarly sad. Despite the graceful 
 lines of the Cavalier Lovelace, iron bars 
 do a prison make for bird and man. And 
 the songs sung behind these bars are but 
 bits of the crushed-out life. I was wel- 
 comed, and during busy years have held 
 the remembrance of that visit with its 
 hour of desultory chat and a mocking- 
 bird's broken song. The motherly-look- 
 ing woman, with her strong Celtic face 
 freshly furrowed by sorrow in the loss of 
 beloved children, was a charming talker 
 and a good listener, things rarely found 
 in your gentle or fiery poetess. She had 
 just published, under the initials M. A. B., 
 
MEJS. BLAKE. 155 
 
 a volume of children's verse, and, as is 
 natural with an author who had finished 
 a piece of work, was full of it. The pre- 
 tense of some authors that they are bored 
 to speak of their own books is a sly sug- 
 gestion to praise them for their humility. 
 Mrs. Blake — for that is the motherly-look- 
 ing woman's name — spoke of her work 
 without any hiccoughing gush or false 
 modesty. Her eyes lit up, and the ob- 
 server read in them honesty. She was 
 deeply interested, as all thinking women 
 must be, in the solution of the social 
 problems that have arisen in our times, 
 and will not be downed at the biddance of 
 capitalist or demagogue. With her clear- 
 cut intellect she was able to grasp a salient 
 point, purposely hidden by the swarm of 
 curists with their panacea remedies, that 
 these problems must be solved in the light 
 of religion. Man must return to Christ, not 
 
156 MES. BLAKE. 
 
 the "cautious, statistical Christ " paraded 
 in the social show, not 
 
 " The meteor blaze 
 That soon must fail, and leave the wanderer blind, 
 More dark and helpless far, than if it ne'er had shined," 
 
 but the Christ of the Gospels, the Bringer 
 of peace and good-will — the Bearer of 
 burdens, the soul-guider — Christ, loving 
 and acting, as found in the Catholic Church. 
 Hecker had begun the preface of his won- 
 derful book with a truth, " The age is out 
 of joint." Problems to be solved, and 
 lying around them millions of broken 
 hearts. " The age is out of joint." Who 
 will bring the light and rightify the age ? 
 Mrs, Blake has but one answer. Bring 
 the employers and the employed nearer 
 the Christ of the Catholic Church. This 
 was O'Reilly's often expressed and worked- 
 for idea. It is the key-note of much of his 
 poetry. It is the germ of his " Bohemia." 
 
MRS. BLAKE. 157 
 
 It was impossible to live, as Mrs. Blake 
 did, on the most friendly terms with such a 
 man and not be smitten with his life- 
 thought. In not a few published social 
 papers Mrs. Blake has thrown out valuable 
 and suggestive hints as to the best means 
 of bringing the weary world under the 
 sweet sway of religion. Her voice, it is 
 true, is but one voice in the social wil- 
 derness, but individual efforts must not 
 be thwarted, for is not a fresh period 
 opening in which the individuality, the 
 personality, of souls acting under the 
 direct guidance of the Holy Ghost, will 
 take up all that is good in modern ideas, 
 and the cords of our tent be strengthened 
 and its stakes enlarged ? " What we have 
 to dread is neither ' historical rancor ' nor 
 ' philosophical atheism, ' " " nor the in- 
 stinct of personal freedom." It is, in the 
 words of Dr. Barry, that we should set 
 little store by that " freedom wherewith 
 
158 MRS. BLAKE. 
 
 Christ has made us free," and that being 
 born into a church where we may have the 
 grandest spiritual ideas for the asking, we 
 should fold our hands in slumber and 
 be found, at length, " disobedient to the 
 heavenly vision." Against such perils 
 Hecker, the noblest life as yet in our 
 American church, made a life-fight. On 
 his side was Boyle O'Reilly, Roche, Mrs. 
 Blake, Katherine Conway and Louise 
 Gruiney. Nor pass such lives in vain. 
 
 Mrs. Blake was born in Dungarvan, Co. 
 Waterford, Ireland. In childhood she was 
 brought to Massachusetts. In 1865 she 
 was married to Dr. J. G. Blake, a leading 
 physician of Boston. She has made that 
 city her home, and is highly esteemed 
 in its literary and social circles. Among 
 her published books may be mentioned 
 " Poems," Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1882, 
 dedicated to her husband; " On The Wing," 
 a pretty volume of Californian sketches ; 
 
MRS. BLAKE. 159 
 
 " Rambling Talk," a series of papers con- 
 tributed to the Boston journals. 
 
 Her sketches are the agreeable jottings of 
 a highly cultivated woman ; seeing nature 
 in the light of poetry rather than science, 
 she has made a series of charming pic- 
 tures out of her wanderings. They are 
 not free from sentiment, — illusions if you 
 will, but that is their greatest charm. 
 "The world of reality is a poor affair." 
 So many books of travel are annually 
 appearing,— books that have no excuse for 
 being other than to prove how widespread 
 dulness and incapacity is, that a trip with 
 a guide like Mrs. Blake has but one fail- 
 ing, — its shortness. Neither in her travels 
 nor in her literary articles does Mrs. Blake 
 body forth her best prose utterance. These 
 must be found in her earnest social papers, 
 where her woman's heart, saddened by the 
 miseries of its fellows, pours out its streams 
 of consolation and preaches (all earnest 
 
160 MRS. BLAKE. 
 
 souls must be preachers now-a-days) the 
 only and all sufficient cure — the Church. 
 
 An extract from one of these papers will 
 best show her power. She is portraying 
 the Church manifesting itself in the indi- 
 vidual as well as the family life, pleading 
 for the central idea of her system. " Jesus 
 Christ is the complement of man," — the 
 restorer of the race. The Catholic Church 
 is the manifestation of Jesus Christ. 
 
 " There are, alas ! too many weaknesses 
 into which thoughtlessness and opportunity 
 lead one class as well as the other. But 
 still there is to be seen almost without 
 exception, among practical Catholics, young- 
 wives, content and happy, welcoming from 
 the very outset of married life the blessed 
 company of the little ones who are to 
 guard them as do their angels in heaven ; 
 proud like Cornelia of their jewels; gladly 
 accepting comparative poverty and endless 
 care ; while their sisters outside the Church 
 
MRS. BLAKE. 161 
 
 buy the right to idleness and personal 
 adorning at the expense of the childless 
 homes which are a disgrace and menace 
 to the nation. There is the honor and 
 purity of the fireside respected ; the over • 
 powering sweetness and strength of family 
 ties acknowledged ; the reverential love 
 that awaits upon the father and mother 
 shown. There are sensitive and refined 
 women bearing sorrow with resignation and 
 hardship without rebellion ; combating pain 
 with patience and fulfilling harsh duty 
 without complaint. In a tremendous over- 
 proportion to those who attempt to live 
 outside its helpfulness, and in exact ratio 
 to their practical devotion to the obser- 
 vances of the Church, they find power of 
 resisting temptation in spite of poverty, 
 and overcoming impulse by principle. Can 
 the world afibrd to ignore an agency by 
 which so much is accomplished? 
 
 "So much for the practical side, which is 
 
162 MES. BLAKE. 
 
 the moral that particularly needs pointing 
 at this moment. Of the spiritual ampli- 
 tude and sustaining which the Church 
 gives there is little need to speak. Only 
 a woman can know what Faith means in 
 the existence of women. The uplift which 
 she needs in moments of great trial ; the 
 sustaining power to bear the constant 
 harassment of petty worries ; the outlet 
 for emotions which otherwise choke the 
 springs, the tonic of prayer and belief; 
 the assurance of a force sufficiently divine 
 and eternal to satisfy the cravings of 
 human longing — what but this is to make 
 life worth living for her? And where 
 else, in these days of scepticism, is she to 
 find such immortal dower? It is a com- 
 mentary upon worldly wisdom, that it has 
 attempted to ignore this necessity, and left 
 woman under the increased pressure of 
 her new obligations, to rely solely upon 
 such frail reeds as human respect and con- 
 
MES. BLAKE. 163 
 
 ventional morality. She needs the inspira- 
 tion of profound conviction and practical 
 piety a hundredfold more than ever before. 
 The woman of the old time, secluded within 
 the limits of the household, surrounded by 
 the material safeguard of custom, might 
 lead an untroubled existence even if devo- 
 tion and faith were not vital principles 
 with her. The woman of to-day, harassed, 
 beset, tempted, driven by necessity, drawn 
 this way and that by bad advice and worse 
 example, is attempting a hopeless task 
 when she tries the same experiment." 
 
 The poetry of Mrs. Blake is rational 
 and wholesome. She knows her gifts and 
 is content to use them at their best, giving 
 us songs in a minor key, that if they add 
 little to human thought, yet make the 
 world better from their coming. In the 
 poems of childhood she is particularly 
 happy. She knows children, their joys 
 and sorrows, has caught their ways. Her's 
 
164 MRS. BLAKE. 
 
 is a heart that has danced in the joy of 
 motherhood and been stricken when the 
 " dead do not waken." She is our only 
 intelligent writer of children's poems. 
 The assertion may be controverted. A 
 hundred Catholic poets for children may 
 be cited writers " of genius profound," of 
 "exquisite fancy," "whose works should 
 grace every parish library." I quote a 
 stereotyped criticism, a constant expres- 
 sion with Catholic reviewers. I laugh, in 
 my hermitage, and blandly suggest, to all 
 whom it may concern, that insanity in 
 jingles is not relished by sane children. 
 I speak from experience, having perpe- 
 trated a selection from the one hundred 
 on a class of bright boys and girls. Peace- 
 ful sleep, and, let us hope, pleasant dreams, 
 came to their aid. Shall I ever, Comus, 
 forget their faces in the transition moment 
 from dulness to delight? Let us cease 
 cant and rapturous criticism. Catholic 
 
MRS. BLAKE. 165 
 
 literature, to survive the time that gave 
 it birth, must be built on other founda- 
 tions. Hasty and unconscious productions 
 must be branded as such. We must have, 
 as the French so well put it, a horror of 
 "pacotille" and " camelotte." "If my 
 Avorks are good," said the sculptor Rude, 
 "they will endure; if not, all the lauda- 
 tion in the world would not save them 
 from oblivion." The same may well be 
 written of Catholic literature. Whether 
 for children or grown-up men or women, 
 as a Catholic critic, whose only aim has 
 been to gain an audience for my fellow 
 Catholic writers whose works can bear a 
 favorable comparison with the best con- 
 temporary thought, I ask that the best 
 shall be given, and that given, it shall be 
 joyfully received ; that trash shall not fill 
 the book-cases, lie on the parlor-tables, be 
 puifed in our weeklies, and genius and 
 sacrifice be forgotten. I ask that the works 
 12 
 
166 MRS. BLAKE. 
 
 of Stoddard, Johnston, Egan, Roche, Aza- 
 rias, Lathrop, Tabb, Miss Repplier, Guiney, 
 Katherine Conway, Mrs. Biake, find a 
 welcome in each Catholic household, and 
 that the Catholic press make their delight- 
 ful personalities known to our rising genera- 
 tion. Of their best they have given. Shall 
 they die before we acknowledge it ? 
 
 AGNES REPPLIER. 
 
 A friend of mine, a dweller in the city, 
 a lover of red bricks, one to whom the 
 sound of the dray-cart merrily grinding 
 on the pavement is sweeter music than a 
 burst of woodland song, has tardily con- 
 ceded that the Adirondacks, on a summer 
 day, is pleasant. I value his testimony 
 and record it with pleasure. Let us be 
 thankful for small favors when cynics are 
 
AGNES EEPPLIER. 167 
 
 the donors. For me these woods, lakes 
 and crystal streams hold an indescribable 
 charm. They are the true abode of man. 
 Here is liberty, while the city is but a cage, 
 with its thousands uttering the plaintive 
 cry of Sterne's prisoned starling, "I cannot 
 get out." For the hum of wheels we have 
 the songs of birds, the music of waterfalls, 
 the purr of mountain brooks and the 
 harmonies of the winds playing through 
 the thousand different species of trees, each 
 one differing in melody, but combining 
 in one grand symphony. Orchestras are 
 muffled music when compared to nature's 
 lute. The pipes of Pan is but a poet's 
 struggle to embody in speech such a 
 symphony. For the city's smells, that not 
 even a Ruskin could paint, albeit they are 
 far from elusive, we have the mountain air 
 that has dallied with the streams and stolen 
 the fragrance of a thousand clover fields. 
 Every man to his taste. There is no 
 
168 AGNES EEPPLIER. 
 
 disputing of this. Lamb loved bricks and 
 Wordsworth such scenes as ours ; yet, 
 Lamb would be as sadly missed from our 
 libraries as Wordsworth. Swing my ham- 
 mock in the shade of yonder pines, good 
 Patsy. A robin is piping his sweetest 
 notes to his brooding spouse, the Salmon 
 river runs at my feet, biting the sandy 
 shore, laughing loud when a saucy stone 
 falls in its current*. From over the hills 
 comes the scent of new-mown hay ; bless 
 me ! this is pleasant. To add to this enjoy- 
 ment you have brought a book — something 
 bright, you tell me. I'll soon see. And 
 gliding into my hammock, I said my first 
 good morning to Agnes Repplier. It was 
 a breezy good morning, one of those where 
 the hand unconsciously goes out as much as 
 to say : Old fellow, you don't know how glad 
 I am to see you. There was no friend with 
 a white cravat standing on the first page to 
 introduce us, and tell us that the authoress 
 
AGNES REPPLIER. 169 
 
 bore in her book a fecund message to 
 struggling humanity, and that the major 
 part of that same humanity could not see 
 it; hence it was his duty to stand at the 
 portal and solve the riddle. There was no 
 begging for recognition on the score of 
 ancestors, fads or isms. I am Agnes 
 Repplier, said the book ; how do you like 
 me? A few pages perused, and my own 
 voice amusingly fell on my ears, saying- 
 first class. Here was a woman who thought 
 — not the trivial thought that nauseates in 
 the books of so many literary women — but 
 virile aggressive thought, that provokes, 
 contradicts, and, like Hamlet's ghost, will 
 not be downed. This thought is folded in 
 a garment, whose many hues quicken the 
 curiosity and make her pages a continual 
 feast of wit, droll irony, and illuminative 
 criticism all curiously and harmoniously 
 blended. Her pages are rich in sugges- 
 tion, apt in quotation. You are constantly 
 
170 AGNES REPPLIER. 
 
 aroused, put on your guard, laughingly 
 disarmed, and that in a way that Lamb 
 would have loved. She has no awe in the 
 presence of literary gods. Lightly she 
 trips up to them with her poniard, shows 
 by a pass that they are made of mud, and 
 that the aureole that encircles them is but 
 the work of your crude imagination. Clear- 
 ing away your shreds and patches she puts 
 the author in a plain suit before you, and, 
 how you wonder, that with all your boasted 
 knowledge you have called for years a 
 jackdaw a peacock! 
 
 How delightful to watch this critic 
 armed cap-a-pie, demolishing some fad, that 
 has masqueraded for years as genuine 
 literature. Is it little Lord Fauntleroy, a 
 character sloppy, inane, impossible to real 
 life, yet hugged to the heart by the 
 commonplace. Miss Repplier keenly sur- 
 veys her ground, as an artist would the 
 statue of his rival, notes the foibles, cant, 
 
AGNES KEPPLIER. 171 
 
 false poses, and crazy-quilt jargon used 
 to deck pet characters. Experience has 
 taught her that you cannot combat seriously 
 the commonplace. " The statesman or the 
 poet," says Dudley Warner, " who launches 
 out unmindful of this, will be likely to 
 come to grief in his generation." Sly 
 humor, pungent sarcasm, are the weapons 
 eifectively used. The little Lord is un- 
 robed, and the life that seemed so full of 
 charity and virtue, becomes but a mixture 
 of hypocrisy and snobbery. Yet, if some 
 of our critics could, "all the dear old 
 nursery favorites must be banished from 
 our midst, and the rising generation of 
 prigs must be nourished exclusively on 
 Little Lord Fauntleroy, and other carefully 
 selected specimens of milk and water diet." 
 The dear land of romance, in its most 
 charming phase, that phase represented by 
 Red Riding Hood, Ali Baba, Blue Beard, 
 and the other heroes of our nurseryhood 
 
172 AGNES EEPPLIER. 
 
 must be eliminated, for children are no 
 longer children, in the old sense of believ- 
 ing "in such stuff" without questioning. 
 American children, at any rate, are too 
 sensitively organized to endure the unre- 
 deemed ferocity of the old fairy stories, we 
 are told, and it is added, " no mother 
 nowadays tells them in their unmitigated 
 brutality." These are the empty sayings 
 of the realists, who would have every 
 child break its dolls to analyze the saw^dust. 
 The most casual observer of American 
 homes knows that our children will not be 
 fed on such stuff as realists are able to 
 give, but will turn wistfully back to those 
 brave old tales which are their inheritance 
 from a splendid past, and of which no 
 hand shall rob them. As Miss Repplier 
 so well puts it, " we could not banish Blue 
 Beard if we would. He is as immortal as 
 Hamlet, and when hundreds of years shall 
 have passed over this uncomfortably en- 
 
AGNES REPPLIEB. 173 
 
 lightened world, the children of the future 
 — who, thank Heaven, can never, with all 
 our efforts, be born grown-up — will still 
 tremble at the blood-stained key, and re- 
 joice when the big brave brothers come 
 galloping up the road." Ferocity, brutal- 
 ity, if you will, may couch on every page, 
 but this is much better than the sugared 
 nothingness of Sunday school tales, and 
 beats all hollow, as the expression goes, 
 the many tricks perpetrated on children by 
 the school of analytical fiction. Children 
 will read Blue Beard, and thank Heaven, 
 as grown-up men, for such a childish 
 pleasure, adding a prayer for her who 
 wrote the " Battle of the Babies." Bunner 
 and others have accused Miss Repplier of 
 ignoring contemporary works, of rudely 
 closing in their face her library door and 
 saying he who enters here must have 
 outgrown his swaddling clothes, must have 
 rounded out his good half-century. This 
 
174 AGNES REPPLIEB. 
 
 may be one of Bunner's skits. Even if it 
 were not, there is more than one precedent 
 to follow. Hazlitt, in his delightful chat 
 on the " Reading of Old Books," begins 
 his essay, " I hate to read new books." 
 This author has the courage of his convic- 
 tions ; you do not grope in the dark to 
 know whv. Here is the reason, and it is 
 easier to assent to it than to deny it. 
 " Contemporary writers may generally be 
 divided into two classes — one's friends or 
 one's foes. Of the first we are compelled 
 to think too well, and of the last we are 
 disposed to think too ill, to receive much 
 genuine pleasure from the perusal, or to 
 judge fairly of the merits of either. One 
 candidate for literary fame, who happens 
 to be of our acquaintance writes finely, and 
 like a man of genius ; but unfortunately 
 has a foolish fad, which spoils a delicate 
 passage; — another inspires us with the 
 highest respect for his personal talents and 
 
AGNES REPPLIER. 175 
 
 character, but does not come quite up to 
 our expectation in print." All these con- 
 tradictions and petty details interrupt the 
 calm current of our reflections. These are 
 sound reasons ; as if to clinch them he 
 adds, " but the dust, smoke, and noise of 
 modern literature have nothing in common 
 with the ]3ure, silent air of immortality." 
 Miss Repplier, an admirer of Hazlitt, 
 and if one may hazard a guess, her master 
 in style, would not go so far. She believes 
 in keeping up with a decent portion of 
 current literature, and " this means per- 
 petual labor and speed," whereas idleness 
 and leisure are requisite for the true enjoy- 
 ment of books. To read all the frothings 
 of the press for the sake of being called a 
 contemporary critic were madness. She 
 concurs with another critic that reading is 
 not a duty, and that no man is under any 
 obligation to read what another man wrote. 
 When Miss Repplier stumbles across an 
 
176 AGNES REPPLIER. 
 
 unknown volume, picking it up dubiously, 
 and finds in it an hour of placid but 
 genuine enjoyment, although it is a modern 
 book, wanting in sanctifying dust, she will 
 use all her art to make in other hearts a 
 loving welcome for the little stranger. " A 
 By- Way in Fiction " tells in her own way, 
 of a recent book born of Italian soil and 
 sunshine, " The Chevalier of Pensieri 
 Vani." It is the essayist's right to read 
 those books, ancient or modern, that are to 
 her taste, and it is a bit of impertinence in 
 any writer to particularly recommend to 
 Miss Repplier a list of books, which she is 
 naturally indisposed to consider w^ith much 
 kindness, thrust upon her as they are, like 
 paregoric or porous plaster. " If there be 
 people who can take their pleasures medi- 
 cinally, let them read by prescription and 
 grow fat." Our authoress can do her own 
 quarrying. One of the darts thrown at 
 this charming writer is, that she would 
 
AGNES EEPPLIER. 177 
 
 have children pore through books at their 
 own sweet, wild will, unoppressed by that 
 modern infliction — foot-notes. That, when 
 a child would meet the word dog, an 
 asterisk would not hold him to a foot-note 
 occupying a page and giving all that science 
 knows about that interesting animal. This 
 is precisely the privilege that your modern 
 critic will not allow. He will have his 
 explanations, his margins, "build you a 
 bridge over a rain-drop, put ladders up a 
 pebble, and encompass you on every side 
 with ingenious alpen-stocks and climbing 
 irons, yet when perchance you stumble and 
 hold out a hand for help, behold! he is 
 never there to grasp it." What does a 
 boy, plunging into Scott or Byron, want 
 with these atrocities? The imagery that 
 peoples his mind, the music that sweeps 
 through his soul, these, and not your stilted 
 erudition, are the milk and honey of boy- 
 hood. " I once knew a boy," says Miss 
 
178 AGNES REPPLIER. 
 
 Repplier, in that sparkling defense, ' Op- 
 pression of Notes,' "who so delighted in 
 Byron's description of the dying gladiator 
 that he made me read it to him over and 
 over again. He did not know — and I 
 never told him — what a gladiator was. 
 He did not know that it was a statue, and 
 not a real man described. He had not the 
 faintest notion of what was meant by the 
 Danube, or the Dacian mother or a Roman 
 holiday; historically and geographically, 
 the boy's mind was a happy blank. There 
 was nothing intelligent, only a blissful 
 stirring of the heartstrings by reason of 
 strong words and swinging verse, and his 
 own tangle of groping thoughts." Had 
 the reader stopped the course of the swing- 
 ing verse to explain these unknown words, 
 boyish happiness would have flown, op- 
 pression become complete, and let us hope 
 sleep would have rescued the bored boy 
 from such an ordeal. 
 
AGNES REPPLIER. 179 
 
 Cowley, full of good sense, is on the side 
 of our essayist. In his essay " On Myself" 
 he relates the charm of verse, falling on 
 his boyish ear, without comprehending 
 fully its purport. "I believe I can tell the 
 particular little chance that filled my head 
 first with such chimes of verse as have 
 never since left ringing there. For I re- 
 member when I began to read, and to take 
 some pleasure in it, there was wont to lie 
 in my mother's parlor (I know not by what 
 accident, for she herself never in her life 
 read any book but of devotion), but there 
 was wont to lie Spenser's works ; this I 
 happened to fall upon, and was infinitely 
 delighted with the stories of the knights, 
 giants, and monsters, and brave houses, 
 which I found everywhere there (though 
 my understanding had little to do with all 
 this) , and by degrees with the tinkling of 
 the rhyme and dance of the numbers, so 
 that I think I had read him all over, before 
 
180 AGNES EEPPLIER. 
 
 I was twelve years old, and was thus made 
 a poet as immediately as a child is made 
 an eunuch." The charm of Miss Repplier's 
 pages lies in their good sense. She is a 
 lover of the good and beautiful, a hater 
 of shams and shoddies. Everything she 
 touches becomes more interesting, whether 
 it be Gastronomy, Old Maids, Cats, Babies, 
 or the New York Custom House. Like 
 Lamb and Hazlitt, a lover of old books, 
 finding in them the pure silent air of 
 immortality, she will welcome graciously 
 any new book whose worth is its passport. 
 Agnes Repplier was born in the city of 
 brotherly love more than thirty years ago. 
 Her father was John Repplier, a well- 
 known coal merchant. Her earliest play- 
 mates were books. Her mother a brilliant 
 and lovable woman, fond of books, and, as 
 a friend of her's informed me, a writer of 
 ability, watched over and directed the 
 education of her more brilliant daughter. 
 
AGNES KEPPLIER. 181 
 
 Under such a mother, amid scenes of cul- 
 ture, Agnes grew up, finding in books a 
 solace for ill-health that still continues to 
 harry her. When she entered the arena 
 of authorship, by training and study she 
 was well equipped. At once she was 
 reckoned as a sovereign princess of " That 
 proud and humble . . . Gripsey Land," 
 one of the very elect of Bohemia. She 
 came, as Stedman says, "with gentle satire 
 or sparkling epigram to brush aside the 
 fads and fallacies of this literary fin de 
 siecle, calling upon us to return to the 
 simple ways of the masters." Her charm- 
 ing volumes should be in the hands of 
 every student of literature as a corrective 
 against the debasing theories and tenden- 
 cies of modern book-making. The student 
 will find that if she does not know all 
 things in heaven and on earth, she may 
 plead in the language of Little Breeches : 
 13 
 
182 AGNES BEPPLIER. 
 
 " I never ain't had no show ; 
 But I've got a middlin' tight grip, sir 
 • On the handful o' things I know." 
 
A WORD. 
 
LITERATURE AND OUR CATHOLIC 
 POOR. 
 
 We are told, with some show of truth, 
 that this age shall be noted in history as one 
 given to the study of social problems. The 
 contemporary literature of a country is a 
 good index to what people are thinking 
 about. Magazines are, as a rule, for their 
 time, and deal with the forces upward in 
 men's minds. The most cursory glance at 
 their contents will show the predominance 
 of the Social Problem treated from some 
 phase or other. The best minds are en- 
 gaged as partisans. Social science may be 
 said to be the order of the day. It has 
 crushed poetry to the skirts of advertising, 
 romance is its happy basking ground. The 
 
 185 
 
186 LITERATURE AND OUR CATHOLIC POOR. 
 
 drama has made it its own. There are 
 some, fogies of course, so says your sapient 
 scientist, who believe that the social science 
 so spasmodically treated in current litera- 
 ture is but a passing fad, and that poetry 
 shall be restored to her old quarters, ro- 
 mance amuse as of old, and the drama be 
 winnowed of rant, scenic sensatioA, and 
 bestial morality. These dreams may be 
 vain, but then even fogies have their hopes. 
 A branch of this science — the tree is over- 
 shadowing — treats of the literature and the 
 masses. Anvthinp: about the masses in- 
 terests me. 
 
 When I read the other day, "Literature 
 and the Masses ; a Social Study,'* among 
 the contents of a fin de siecle magazine, I 
 would have pawned my wearing apparel 
 rather than go home without it. Its read- 
 ing was painful, as all reading must be 
 where the author knows less about his 
 subject than the ordinary reader. Later, 
 
LITERATURE AND OUR CATHOLIC POOR. 187 
 
 another article fell in my way, dealing>ith 
 the same subject. Its author had more 
 material, but his use of it was clumsy. It 
 was while reading this article, that I noted 
 the utter stupidity with which things 
 Catholic are treated by the ordinary lit- 
 erary purveyor. These ephemeral pen- 
 wielders seem to hold the most fantastic 
 notions of the Church. What Azarias says 
 of Emerson is true of them : " They seek 
 truth in every religious and philosophical 
 system outside of the teachings of the 
 Catholic Church." They will not drink 
 from Rome. To correct all this author's 
 errors is not my plan. In this paper I 
 restrict myself to a part of the same sub- 
 ject. Literature and Our Catholic Poor. I 
 prefer an independent study to patch- 
 work. It is the usual thing in such studies 
 to present credentials. I present mine. 
 Five years' life in the tenement districts of 
 New York and other great cities of the 
 
188 LITERATURE AND OUR CATHOLIC POOR. 
 
 Union, in full contact, from the peculiarity 
 of my position, with the poor. During 
 these years I was led to make a study of 
 their reading. This study, to be intelligible, 
 must be prefaced by a few hints on their 
 life and environment. It is useless to deny 
 the often -repeated assertion that their lot 
 in the great cities is hard and crushing. It 
 is a continual struggle for nominal ex- 
 istence. The children commence work at a 
 premature age. Their education is meagre 
 and broken. Marriage is entered in early 
 life, without the slightest provision. To 
 these marriages there is little selection. 
 The girls have been brought up in fac- 
 tories, household restraint frets their soul. 
 Of household economy, so necessary to the 
 city toiler, they know nothing. If ends 
 meet it is well. If not, there is trust and 
 sorrow. The day of their marriage means 
 a few stuffy rooms, badly ventilated, filled 
 with the most bizarre and useless furniture 
 
LITERATURE AND OUR CATHOLIC POOR. 189 
 
 put in by shylock, who will, in the coming 
 years, exact ten times their value. Thus 
 started, children are born, puny and sickly, 
 prey of physician and druggist. If these 
 children survive, at an early age they fol- 
 low the father and mother by entering 
 foundries and factories to toil life's weary 
 round away. When they die the family is 
 pauperized for years. It is a common 
 plaint of the tenements that '' I would have 
 been worth something if my boy had not 
 died." Every death is not only a drain on 
 the immediate family, but on their friends, 
 who are supposed to turn out and give 
 "the corpse a decent burial." The decent 
 burial means coaches, flowers and whiskey. 
 The most casual observer must notice the 
 giant part liquor plays, in the lives of the 
 poor. Liquor and its concomitant, tobacco, 
 in the deadly form of cigarettes, are known 
 to the boy. He has been brought up in 
 that atmosphere. His father has his cheap, 
 
190 LITERATURE AND OUR CATHOLIC POOR. 
 
 ill- smelling cigar and frothy pint for sup- 
 per. His mother and a few gossiping 
 friends have chased the heavy day with a 
 few pints "because they were dry." He 
 delights in being the Mercury of the 
 "growler." Hanging by the balustrade he 
 sips the beer, "just to taste it." That taste, 
 alas, lingers through life. As he grows 
 older it becomes more refined. His teach- 
 ers are the sumptuous, dazzling bar-rooms 
 guarding each city corner, while betraying 
 the nation. The owners of these vice 
 palaces are wise in their generation. For 
 his stuffy home, broken furniture and 
 cheerless aspects, they show him wide, airy 
 rooms, polished furniture, bevelled glass 
 mirrors, dazzling light, music, gaiety, com- 
 panionship, and the illusive charm of rev- 
 elry. The reading matter in such places 
 is on a par with the other attractions. It 
 is sensational. Its authors are skilled in 
 the base development of the passions. It 
 
LITERATURE AND OUR CATHOLIC POOR. 191 
 
 smacks obscenity, and early dulls the intel- 
 lect to finer things. To be enmeshed in its 
 threads is the greatest sorrow of a young 
 life. When the bar-room does not allure, 
 there is another siren to be taken into ac- 
 count. It is the promiscuous gathering at 
 the neighbor's house who has been so un- 
 fortunate as to find a music dealer to trust 
 him with a piano at three times its price. 
 Here gather the Romeos and Juliets to 
 
 " Sing and dance 
 And parley vous France, 
 Drink beer Alanna 
 And play on tlie grand piano." 
 
 The songs are of no literary value, some- 
 times comic, sometimes sentimental, more 
 often with an ambiguity that is more sug- 
 gestive than downright obscenity. Of the 
 so-called comic, "McGinty" was a great 
 hit, while "After the Ball" was its equal 
 in the sentimental line. It is a strange 
 sight to see pale, flaccid, worn-out Juliet 
 
192 LITERATURE AND OUR CATHOLIC POOR. 
 
 thrum the indifferent piano, while near her 
 in a dramatic posture, learned from some 
 melo- dramatic actor, stands twisted Romeo, 
 singing some sentimental song, balancing 
 his voice to the poor performer, and indif- 
 ferent piano. To hear such stuff — ^I speak 
 from auricular demonstration — is no small 
 affliction. After songs come dances, weary 
 night flies quickly away. Work comes 
 with the morrow. Sleepy and tired they 
 buckle on their armor and go out uncom- 
 plainingly to tear and wear the sickly body. 
 Thus generation after generation passes to 
 the tread-mill and beyond. It is not to be 
 expected that the literature of such people 
 would be of a high grade. To say that 
 they have no time to read were a fallacy, 
 inasmuch as they do read. Here the ques- 
 tion arises, what do they read ? I answer 
 that they possess a literature of their own, 
 both in weekly journals and published vol- 
 umes. They support, strange as it may 
 
LITERATURE AND OUR CATHOLIC POOR. 193 
 
 seem, a school of novelists for their delecta- 
 tion. These journals are a medley of Blood- 
 and- thunder stories, far-fetched jokes, 
 sporting news, etiquette as she is above 
 stairs, marriage hints, palmistry, dress 
 making, now and then a page of original 
 topical music hemmed with fake advertis- 
 ing. The point to be noted in these jour- 
 nals, a shrewd business one, they are never 
 beyond the reader's intelligence. Their 
 novels must be simple and amusing. That 
 is, their author must know how to spin a 
 story. He must amuse. Each weekly in- 
 stalment must have its comic as well as 
 tragic denouement. The hero must be a 
 villain of the most approved type, neither 
 wanting in courage nor in cunning. The 
 heroine must be on the side of the angelic, 
 mesmerized by the prowess of her hero. 
 A vast quantity of supers are constantly 
 on hand, in case of emergency. Murders, 
 suicides, broken hearts and lesser afflictions 
 
194 LITERATURE AND OUR CATHOLIC POOR. 
 
 are of frequent occurrence. The hero may 
 perish at any moment, provided a more 
 reckless devil takes his place. Half a dozen 
 heroines may come to grief in one serial. 
 An author must be lavish. Provided he is, 
 style is not reckoned, and bad grammar 
 but adds a taking flavor. Woe be to the 
 editor who would inflict on his readers a 
 novel of the school of Henry James or Paul 
 Bourget. The masses hold that the pri- 
 mary condition of fiction is to amuse. They 
 are right. TJiese journals are carried in 
 ladies' satchels, they stick out of young 
 men's pockets. On ferry-boats, in street 
 cars, in their stuffy rooms, in the few min- 
 utes snatched from the dinner hour they 
 are eagerly read. They may be crumpled 
 and thrust into the pocket at any moment. 
 No handwashing is necessary to handle 
 them. Their cost is light, five cents a week. 
 By a system of interchange a club of five 
 may for that cost peruse five different story 
 
LITERATtrRE AND OUR CATHOLIC POOR. 195 
 
 papers. This system is in general practice. 
 The greatest amount for the least money 
 strongly appeals to the poor. The novels 
 in book form are of a much lower grade 
 than the serials. Written by profligate men 
 and women, in a vile style, their only ob- 
 ject is to undermine morality. Falsity to 
 the marriage vows, deception, theft, the 
 catalogue of a criminal court, is strongly 
 inculcated as the right path. These novels, 
 generally in paper covers, are showy and 
 eye-catching. A voluptuous siren on the 
 cover, with an ambiguous title allures the 
 minor to his ruin. I have known not a 
 few book-sellers who passed as eminently 
 respectable, do a thriving trade in this class 
 of books. The fact that they kept the stock 
 in drawers in the rear of their stores told 
 of their conscious complicity in the destruc- 
 tion and degradation of our youth. These 
 novels are cheap, within the reach of the 
 poor, a point to be noted. The question 
 
196 LITERATURE AND OUR CATHOLIC POOR. 
 
 arises, what can be done to counteract this 
 spread of pernicious literature among our 
 Catholic poor? There is but one answer 
 on the lips of those who should be heard ; 
 fight it with good literature — yet literature 
 not beyond their understanding. Put in 
 their hands good novels, whose primary 
 purpose is to amuse. The good-natured 
 gentleman who would put into the hands 
 of the poor as a Christmas gift Fabiola, 
 Callista, Pauline Seward, etc., would make 
 a great mistake. These books would be- 
 come playthings for greasy babies or curled 
 paper to light the "evening smoke." The 
 bread winners will not be bored. They 
 have worked hard all day, and at evening 
 want some kind of amusement. The book 
 must be nervy, a tonic. Dictionaries are 
 scarce in the haunts of the poor. Foot-notes 
 are an abomination. The author must 
 whisk the reader along. A rapid canter, 
 only broken by hearty laughter or honest 
 
LITERATURE AND OUR CATHOLIC POOR. 197 
 
 pity. Have we any Catholic novels that 
 will do this? It is the plaint of the know- 
 nothing scribes, tossing their empty skulls, 
 to write a capital No. From experience I 
 answer yes. The novels of that true writer 
 of boys' stories, Father Finn, are just the 
 thing for the poor. They want to read of 
 boys that are not old men, none of your 
 goody-goody little nobodies. A boy is no 
 fool. In real life he would not chum with 
 your sweet little Toms, your praying, 
 psalm-singing Jamies, and your dying 
 angelic Marys. Nor shall he in books, 
 thank heaven. Father Finn has drawn the 
 boy as he is. His books would be joyfully 
 welcomed, if published in a cheap paper 
 form, say at twenty -five cents per copy. 
 List to the wail of the fattening Catholic 
 publisher, who will read that idea. It is, 
 however, a sane one. If Protestants can 
 make cheap books, thereby creating the 
 market, why not Catholics? Until this is 
 14 
 
198 LITERATURE AND OUR CATHOLIC POOR. 
 
 done it is useless to cry out, as authors do, 
 nobody will buy my books. Yes, your 
 books will be bought if they are reason- 
 able in price, and properly placed before 
 the public. As it is, your books are snuffed 
 out by the immense amount of trash 
 handled by the ordinary Catholic book- 
 seller, and you help this by writing deep- 
 dyed hypocrisy of the trash -makers. Aza- 
 rias mildly expresses my idea in one of his 
 posthumous papers: "Catholic reviewers 
 must plead guilty to the impeachment of 
 having been in the past too laudatory of 
 inferior work." The stories of that ster- 
 ling man, Malcolm Johnston, called Dukes- 
 borough Tales, I once gave to a wretched 
 family. On visiting them a week after, 
 what delight it was to hear the health - 
 giving laughter they had found in them. 
 To another family I gave Billy Downs. 
 Asking how they liked them, I was told 
 that they were as "fine as silk." A youth 
 
LITERATURE AND OUR CATHOLIC POOR. 199 
 
 of fourteen, his face decidedly humorous, 
 volunteered the criticism that "Billy had 
 no grit." During the illness of four or five 
 patients of mine I read the assembled 
 family " Chumming With a Savage," "Joe 
 of Lahaina." When I came to the final sen- 
 tence in Joe, where Charlie Stoddard leaves 
 him "sitting and singing in the mouth of 
 his grave — clothed all in death," two of the 
 youngsters burst into tears, while the father 
 much agitated, said, "Doctor, I don't see 
 how he had the heart to leave him." They 
 were so much attached to the book that, 
 although it had been my choice old chum 
 in many a land, I gave it to them. Lately 
 I gave "Life Around Us," a collection of 
 stories by Maurice F. Egan. It was a great 
 success. Egan has the true touch for the 
 masses when he wishes. Another little 
 story much prized was Nugent Robinson's 
 "Better Than Oold." To these might be 
 added in cheap form those of Marian 
 
200 LITERATURE AND OUR CATHOLIC POOR. 
 
 Bruiiowe, May Crowley, Helen Sweeney, a 
 promising young writer, and Lelia Bugg. 
 How to reach the poor with these books 
 presents few obstacles. Cardinal Vaughan 
 has solved the difficulty in England. At- 
 tach to every parish church in city and 
 country a library of well selected interest- 
 ing Catholic books. Let their circulation 
 be free of charge. The great majority of 
 Catholic poor attend some of the Sunday 
 Masses. If the library is open, they will 
 gladly take a book home. The reading of 
 this book will instil a taste. They will tell 
 their friends of it. It will be the subject 
 of many a chat. If it is cheap, not a few of 
 the neighbors will wish to purchase it. 
 Their criticism, always racy and generally 
 correct, will, as Birrell has pointed out in 
 one of his essays, be its sure pass to success. 
 After a year's friendly intercourse the 
 library will become a necessity, and they 
 will gladly pay a fee for their week's de- 
 
LITERATURE AND OUR CATHOLIC POOR. 
 
 201 
 
 light. The author that has won their hearts 
 will be on their lips, his new books, on 
 account of old ties, will be eagerly pur- 
 chased and loudly proclaimed. 
 
 Families that are shy and backward as 
 church-members, might be visited and 
 literature left. This I hold is priestly work. 
 If they come not to Christ, let us, as the 
 teachers of old, bring Christ to them. It 
 will be read. After your footsteps can be 
 no longer heard curiosity will come to your 
 assistance. The little maid will pick it up, 
 the parents will read. I have again and 
 again left those charming temperance 
 manifestoes of Father Mahony in homes of 
 squalor and misery, the outcome of weekly 
 drunks. These stray leaves, I am happy 
 to write, in many cases marked the begin- 
 ning of better things. 
 
 To counteract the serials is, to use an ex- 
 pression, a horse of another color. Our 
 weeklies are, as a general rule, dull. The 
 
202 J.ITERATURE AND OUR CATHOLIC POOR. 
 
 poor take a squint at some of the dailies. 
 This squint gives them the gist of their 
 world. They do not care, as they will tell 
 you, "to be reading the same thing over 
 twice." Our weeklies are too often a re- 
 hash of the dailies. Another remark that 
 I often heard among them is, "that our 
 weeklies have too much Irish news." They 
 are not wanting in patriotism to the home 
 of many of their fathers, yet what interest 
 could they be supposed to take in the long- 
 winded personal rivalries of Irish states- 
 men, or the rank rant of the one hundred 
 orators that strut that unhappy isle. A 
 bit of McCarthy, or Sexton, will be wel- 
 comed, but they rightly draw the line at 
 page after page of rhodomontade. If, in- 
 stead of this stuff, living articles were 
 written, short stories, poems, biographies 
 of eminent Catholics, their Church and her 
 great mission made known, then would the 
 poor read, and a powerful weapon against 
 
LITERATURE AND OUR CATHOLIC POOR. 203 
 
 the serials be placed in our hands. There 
 are some of our weeklies that cannot be 
 classed under this criticism. They are 
 few. 
 
 The Ave Maria, founded and conducted 
 by one who is thoroughly capable, could be 
 easily made a great favorite with the poor. 
 Its contents are varied and replete with 
 good things. I have used it with effect. 
 Another and later venture is the Young 
 Catholic, by the Paulists, which will fill a 
 want. Its editor is full of sane ideas. 
 Boys' stories, full of adventure, spirited 
 pictures, will win it a way to all young- 
 hearts. These papers may never reach the 
 poor, if folding our arms we stand idly 
 by, expecting the masses by intuition to 
 know their value. Could not parish libraries 
 have cheap editions for free distribution 
 among the poorer denizens ? To defray 
 expenses, a collection might be taken up 
 twice a year. No good Catholic will be- 
 
204 LITERATURE AND OUR CATHOLIC POOR. 
 
 grudge a few cents, when he knows that it 
 will go to brighten the hard life of his less 
 fortune-favored brother. The critic who 
 does nothing in life but sneer may call this 
 Utopian. It is the old cuckoo call, known 
 to every man that tries to help his fellows. 
 Newman, Barry, Lilly, Brownson, Hecker, 
 Ireland, Spalding, all the glittering names 
 on our rosary have heard it, and went their 
 way, knowing full well that if the finger of 
 God traces their path, human obstacles are 
 of little weight. The plan, however, is 
 eminently practical. In one of the poorest 
 parishes in the diocese of Ogdensburgh, 
 it has been tried and with abundant suc- 
 cess. I remember well last summer with 
 what pleasure I heard a mountain urchin 
 ask his pastor, *' Father, can I have the 
 Pilot 9^^ This urchin had made the ac- 
 quaintance of James Jeffrey Roche and 
 Katherine E. Conway. He was in good 
 company. Infidelity is going to our poor. 
 
LITERATURE AND OUR CATHOLIC POOR. 205 
 
 Her weapon is the printing press. The 
 pulpit is well, but its arm is too short. 
 
 Shall we stand idly by and lose our own, 
 or shall we buckle on the armor of intelli- 
 gent methods as mirrored in this paper, 
 thereby not only delivering our own from 
 its coarseness and petrifaction, but carry- 
 ing the kindly light to those who know us 
 not? Let us remember in these days, 
 when socialism claims the poor, that our 
 Church is not alone for the cultured, it is 
 pre-eminently her duty to lead and guide 
 the masses. This, to a great extent, must 
 be done by the newspaper and book-stall. 
 
 Our Church must man the printing 
 press with the same zeal which ani- 
 mated the Jesuit scholars, explorers and 
 civilizers of three hundred years ago; 
 " then will our enemies be as much sur- 
 prised as disheartened." 
 
GREEN GRAVES IN IRELAND. 
 
 By WALTER LECKY, 
 
 Authw of ^''Adirondack Sketches,'" "Down at Caxton's," etc. 
 
 PRESS COMMENTS: 
 
 A new beam, a new factor in American Literature. — 
 Maurice F. Egan. 
 
 Charming essays. — C Wai^en Stoddard. 
 
 They deserve book form. — Brother Azarias. 
 
 Destined to win early recognition, — B. Malcolm Johnston. 
 
 Lecky imitates himself. He is pungent, witty, humorous 
 and epigrammatic, with dashes of occasional eloquence. — 
 Eugene Davis in Western Watchman. 
 
 " Green Graves in Ireland," by Walter Lecky, is a delightful 
 little book. — Western Watchman. 
 
 It is a well written, and pathetic tribute to the heroes who 
 suffered in the holy cause of freedom. — Donahoe^s Magazine. 
 
 There is mingled pathos and humor in the volume. — 
 Ave Maria. 
 
 The author's style is bright and pungent ; and this literary 
 flavor he preserves throughout the pages of this very attractive 
 book. He understands the spirit and sparkle of the Irish 
 mind, and he has caught a good deal of it in his jaunting car 
 excursions about the Irish capital. — Catholic World. 
 
 A clever monograph. Walter Lecky has written exquisitely. 
 — Catholic News, N. Y. 
 
 The book will interest all who really love the country of the 
 bards, and will be an excellent stimulus to young persons in- 
 clined to forget the fame of their ancestors. — Boston Pilot. 
 
Large literary ability. — Union Times. 
 
 An important and valuable addition to the growing litera- 
 ture of America. — True Witness. 
 
 The paper and type of the little volume are excellent ; sur- 
 prisingly so, for the low price at which it may be procured. 
 For the rest we can say that Mr. Lecky's style invests his 
 subject with a charm which, we think, will induce the most 
 unwilling reader who has opened his little book to persevere 
 through its entire contents. — American Ecclesiastical Review. 
 
 Walter Lecky is comparatively a new name in literature, but 
 it is one destined to stand for good and beautiful things, 
 especially the Catholic readers. His Adirondack sketches in 
 the Catholic World are one of the brightest features of that 
 excellent magazine. — Boston Pilot. 
 
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