IN THE VIRGINIAS 
 
 WAITMAIi BARBS 
 
 I 
 
Glass. 
 Book. 
 
E Waitman barbe, 
 
 ASHES AND INCENSE: 
 POEMS, $1.25 
 
 In Mr. Waitman Barbe's volume of verse, "Ashes and Incense," 
 we note a true singing capacity, and an unlaboured strain like that 
 song of the thrush of which the poet sings in "An Old Love-Song." — 
 Saturday Review, London, England. 
 
 There is real poetry in the book — a voice worth owning and exercis- 
 ing. I am struck with the beauty and feeling of the lyrics which I have 
 read— such, for example, as the stanzas on Lanier and "The Comrade 
 Hills." — Edmund Clarence Stedman. 
 
 All the way through his poems we feel flashes of thrilling inspiration. 
 — The Indepejident. 
 
 A spirit of pure singing inspires these verses. — New York Christian 
 Advocate. 
 
 "Ashes and Incense" suggests a pyre and fragrance such as might 
 be made of old love-letters. Beauty is the true poet's theme, and beau- 
 tiful are the flowers of thought plucked from this garden of song. — The 
 Public Ledger, Philadelphia. 
 
 Mr. Waitman Barbe is distinctly a poet. His calling ;is sure and his 
 admission to the circle of the elect of the troubadours of .to-day is cer- 
 tain. — Commercial- Gazette, Cincinnati. 
 
 Like the voice of one crying in the wilderness, this true poet protests 
 against pessimism, against modern philistinisrn, and against the soul 
 starvation which attends upon our plutocratic age. His song is alive 
 with the warm enthusiasm and love of beauty of the youthful free-singer. 
 — The Republic, St. Louis. 
 
 A clear, cultured voice, whether it be mighty in volume or simply 
 sweet in tone. — The Transcript, Portland. 
 
 There is a strength, a beauty, an originality in his singing that are 
 exceedingly pleasing, and at times a depth of thought that is poetically 
 expressed in a style of rare excellence. — The Home Journal, Boston. 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS, $1.00. 
 
In the Virginias 
 
 STORIES AND 
 SKETCHES,^ 
 
 ♦ 
 
 By WAITMAN BARBED 
 Author of "Ashes and Incense" 
 
 •r 
 
 Illustrations by & 
 JOHN RETTIG 
 
 MANUFACTURED BY 
 
 The Werner Company 
 
 Akron, Ohio 
 
 J896 
 

 Copyright, 1896, by A. E. Kenney. 
 
 In BUchange 
 fktmv And Navy Club 
 Of WasliingtoB IXC 
 
 Jan. 14 K' 
 
TO 
 
 Clara Louise 
 
Tales in this Book. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 In the Virginias 9 
 
 The Preacher of the Three Churches . . 39 
 
 The King's Daughter 62 
 
 The Sketch Club Banquet 73 
 
 The Gypsy Trail 79 
 
 A Literary Atmosphere 88 
 
 His Last Campaign 108 
 
 A Tale of Fourth Street 124 
 
 Story of an Oil Strike 133 
 
 A Maiden of the Hills 145 
 
 The Artist's Story 147 
 
 In the Rue Royale 156 
 
 Martha 162 
 
 The Companions e 173 
 
 Hafed Ben Hafed 175 
 
 (vii) 
 
IN THE VIRGINIAS 
 
 THERE died a few years ago, in one 
 of the extreme eastern counties of 
 West Virginia, a gentleman whom I 
 shall call, for the purposes of this tale, 
 Henry Fairfax. 
 
 I am sure he would have been pleas- 
 ed with the name Fairfax himself, be- 
 cause of its intimate association with 
 so many things Virginian. His home 
 was but a short distance from the site 
 of Lord Thomas Fairfax's historic 
 "Greenway Court," where the haughty 
 old English lord had his horses and 
 his hounds and the finest estates in 
 Virginia; and, like that old Lord Fair- 
 fax, Baron of Cameron, he, too, lived 
 to a great age, as proud as Lucifer and 
 the soul of all things honorable. And 
 so I have called him a Fairfax. 
 
 During his lifetime Henry Fairfax 
 
 [9] 
 
IO IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 was a resident of two states, although he 
 had never moved from the old home 
 bearing the proud name of Fairfax 
 Hall, where he was born, and where his 
 father before him had lived and died. 
 
 When the sword of civil strife 
 dropped in '63 along the Blue Ridge 
 and severed the fair old state in twain, 
 Fairfax Hall fell on the western side. 
 This was the bitterest blow of its 
 owner's life, and he would never per- 
 mit any one in his presence to refer to 
 the fact that he no longer lived in the 
 Old Dominion. During the quarter 
 of a century of his enforced residence 
 in the new state, he never admitted 
 that he was a citizen of West Virginia 
 to anybody except the tax collector. 
 He continued to head his letters "Fair- 
 fax Hall, Virginia," and when he went 
 down to the National Capital, his name 
 always appeared on the register of the 
 National Hotel as "Henry Fairfax of 
 Virginia." 
 
 His wife died many years ago, long 
 
IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 II 
 
 before I knew him, and he lived with 
 his granddaughter, Virginia, a lovely 
 and beautiful girl, who was the pride 
 and consolation of his old age. The 
 name her mother had given her was 
 Mary, but her mother having died and 
 her father having gone to the bad and 
 to the West about the same time, the 
 old man took the child and changed 
 her name to Virginia. He said that in 
 his opinion every girl baby born in 
 Virginia should be called Virginia, and 
 he once cut the acquaintance of an old 
 friend who had named his daughter 
 Rhody (an abbreviation, as the old man 
 argued, of 
 Rhode Island) 
 when he had 
 asked him per- 
 sonally to call 
 her Virginia. 
 
 Fairfax Hall 
 was a roomy, rambling old house with 
 generous chimneys and wide porticos, 
 and about it were the fertile fields of the 
 
12 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 upper Shenandoah and not far away the 
 glassy Potomac. Many a distinguished 
 personage had sampled the famous 
 mint julep of Fairfax Hall. At least 
 four "Presidents had enjoyed the hospi- 
 tality of the place, besides senators 
 and distinguished authors, artists and 
 diplomats. Henry Fairfax, in his 
 younger days, had been Speaker of 
 the Virginia House for several terms, 
 and had served as consul at an important 
 European port. He was a gentleman of 
 liberal education, and, if he had been 
 financially able, would have been a 
 patron of literature and the arts. On 
 the walls were portraits by Gilbert 
 Stuart and Peale, and in the place of 
 honor, in the wide hall, stood a cane 
 which was originally the walking stick 
 of the old lord of Greenway Court. 
 
 In a bundle of old letters which 
 have come down as an heirloom, I find 
 frequent references to the gay times at 
 Fairfax Hall when the young people 
 gathered there from Winchester and 
 
IN THE VIRGINIAS. jo 
 
 all the upper Valley, and parties often 
 from Washington and Baltimore. 
 Those were the days of the old regime 
 when the world took time to be hos- 
 pitable and happy. These old brown 
 and yellow letters tell how the daughter 
 of a President danced with the young 
 master of the Hall, and how he kissed 
 her hand with something more than 
 gallant courtesy. They hint, too, of a 
 moonlight affair out on the banks of 
 the Potomac between this same young 
 scion of the House of Fairfax and a 
 young French army officer about this 
 same daughter of a President. 
 
 They tell of a visit of some weeks at 
 Fairfax Hall from Napoleon's Director 
 of the Treasury, who had negotiated 
 the sale of the Territory of Louisiana 
 to the United States government — the 
 Marquis Francois de Barb6-Marbois — 
 and who had become so much pleased 
 with this country that he spent much 
 of the remainder of his life here. 
 
 Yes, that was a gay and delightful 
 
IA IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 chapter in the history of the social life 
 of the old "Northern Neck" of Vir- 
 ginia, but at the time of the events 
 about to be related, all of these things 
 were but a tradition and a memory. 
 
 The old family portraits were still 
 on the walls, and now and then the 
 hounds followed a red fox across the 
 hills and far away towards Mt. Jackson, 
 but the gay parties and the merry 
 making at Fairfax Hall all belonged to 
 the days before Sheridan went down 
 into the Valley. The wide estate had 
 gone piece by piece to make small but 
 thrifty farms, until the biggest things 
 about the Hall were its name and its 
 memories. 
 
 Henry Fairfax had lost the keenness 
 of some of his faculties, as well as most 
 of his estate, and there were those who 
 called him childish, but he retained his 
 great love for his granddaughter (whom 
 he always called his daughter) and for 
 the old state of which he thought he 
 was still a citizen. 
 
IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 J 5 
 
 "Daughter, I am going down to the 
 capital to-day to watch the proceedings 
 of the legislature for a few days," and 
 he kissed her good-bye and set off for 
 Richmond on the James instead of 
 Charleston on the Kanawha, for Rich- 
 mond was still to him the capital of 
 his state. 
 
 Frequently he would inquire of vis- 
 itors from counties farther west about 
 the coal and the timber and the crops 
 "over in West Virginia." Virginia 
 humored his every wish, and loved the 
 kind hearted old man as much as he 
 loved her. 
 
 One day, sitting on the broad old 
 front portico where his ancestors and 
 their distinguished guests had sat and 
 smoked and talked European and 
 American politics, he called Virginia 
 to his side, and, after silently stroking 
 her soft chestnut hair for a long time 
 and looking vacantly out towards the 
 Potomac and the blue hills beyond, he 
 said: 
 
1 6 i\' THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 "Daughter." 
 "Yes, father." 
 
 "Daughter, how long is it that your 
 mother has been dead?" 
 
 "Twenty years." 
 
 "And how old are you?" 
 
 "Why, you know, father, don't you?" 
 
 "No, I cannot remember." 
 
 "You have often told me that I was 
 only a year old when my mother died." 
 
 "You are then just the age your 
 mother was when she was married to 
 that" 
 
 The old man did not finish the sen- 
 tence, but got up and walked back and 
 forth on the veranda, leaning on the 
 arm of Virginia. His hair was long 
 and thin and white, his smooth-shaven 
 face was furrowed and brown like a 
 winter hillside, and his voice was as 
 thin as the thread of life that bound 
 him to Fairfax Hall, but he was re- 
 markably erect, and, like all of his race, 
 he was tall and muscular. 
 
 After another long silence, broken 
 
IN THE VIRGINIAS, 
 
 *7 
 
 only by the steady stroke of his cane 
 on the old oak floor, he continued: 
 
 "Daughter, since the day when I 
 buried your mother out yonder on the 
 hill by the side of her mother, I have 
 had only you to live for." 
 
 "And have I not been kind and good 
 to you?" 
 
 The old man bent down and kissed 
 her lips. No other answer was needed. 
 
 Again he was silent; so long, this 
 time, that Virginia said: 
 
 "Father, I am sure there is some- 
 thingyou want to tell me. What is it?" 
 
 He sat down in the big old chair, 
 with Virginia at his feet, and continu- 
 ing to stroke her hair, he said: 
 
 "Your father, if still alive, is some- 
 where in the far West. I hope he will 
 never return; he will not dare. I was 
 always opposed to your mother's mar- 
 rying him. He was from up some- 
 where in New York, and I never wanted 
 to have anything to do with him, but 
 your mother, poor girl, thought she 
 2 
 
l8 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 loved him. It was a blessing to her 
 that she died when she did, and I 
 want you to profit by her sad expe- 
 rience. Will you make me a promise ?" 
 "What is it, father?" 
 "Bring me the family record." 
 Virginia went and fetched it. 
 "Promise me on this old family rec- 
 ord, out of which every trace of your 
 father's name has long since been 
 erased, that you will never marry 
 anybody but a Virginian." 
 
 This pledge was doubtless suggested 
 by the fact that among the young fel- 
 lows who sometimes called at Fairfax 
 Hall was one named Perry Blair, a 
 young man from Harrisburg, Pa., who 
 was connected with the second survey- 
 ing corps then engaged in laying out 
 the Shenandoah Valley (now the Nor- 
 folk & Western) railroad, after a delay 
 of ten years from the first survey, 
 caused by the panic of 1873. No hint 
 was given that Blair was meant, but if 
 the old man did not think of him, it is 
 
IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 J 9 
 
 certain that Virginia did. But she 
 promptly answered: "I promise/' 
 
 The railroad, the building of which 
 proceeded with reasonable rapidity 
 after so long delay, ran through a 
 corner of the Fairfax lands which still 
 belonged to the original estate. Henry 
 Fairfax, although in greatly reduced 
 circumstances, gladly gave the right of 
 way and prevailed upon many of his 
 neighbors to do likewise. He mani- 
 fested great interest in the building of 
 the road and said he hoped it would 
 never be charged of him that he had 
 ever impeded progress and improve- 
 ment. 
 
 It was about this time, also, that the 
 "boom-town" epidemic was sweeping 
 over some sections of the country, 
 leaving in its trail, a little later, destruc- 
 tion and desolation. It first prevailed 
 in the West and afterwards came to the 
 South where, in some sections, it spread 
 like the smallpox. In some parts of 
 
20 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 Virginia it was very virulent, and West 
 Virginia had a few sporadic cases. 
 The microbes of this dread disease were 
 carried in the mouths of land sharks 
 and in certain newspaper articles. 
 
 Instead of quarantining against it, 
 whole communities would strive to see 
 which could get the worst case of it 
 and keep it longest. Many of the at- 
 tacks proved fatal. 
 
 One day a stranger came to Fairfax 
 Hall, and told the venerable owner that 
 he wanted to purchase a tract of land 
 down on the railroad. He said he rep- 
 resented a "syndicate" who intended 
 to build a new town. He said he was 
 authorized to offer Mr. Fairfax enough 
 stock in the company to pay him 
 many times over the worth of the 
 land. They would "let him in on the 
 ground floor," and it would make him 
 once more a rich man. All he had to 
 do was to deed the company the land 
 and take the company's certificates of 
 stock in exchange. 
 
IN THE VIRGINIAS. 21 
 
 The old man was greatly pleased 
 with the proposition, and partially gave 
 his consent, but asked for a little time 
 to think about it. That afternoon 
 Perry Blair, whose duties still kept 
 him in that vicinity, came over and 
 Mr. Fairfax, who had taken a liking to 
 him, although he would not have ac- 
 knowledged it, told him all about the 
 plan to build a new town and make 
 money. Blair very promptly and very 
 earnestly urged him not to enter into 
 any such scheme. If he wanted to sell 
 the land, and the men would pay for 
 it, that was all right, but their propo- 
 sition was a treacherous one. 
 
 When the agent, who called himself 
 a "promoter," came again, Fairfax told 
 him that he would have nothing to do 
 with his enterprise. 
 
 But the glowing colors in which the 
 promoter had painted the picture of 
 the proposed new town, the rapidity 
 and profit at which the building lots 
 could be sold, had made a great 
 
22 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 impression on the old man, and he turned 
 it over and over in his mind, and, like a 
 snowball, it grew with the turning. 
 
 One day he announced to Virginia 
 that he intended to build a town and 
 call it Fairfax City. He had worked 
 out all the details of it. He was sure 
 that many of his old friends would be 
 glad of the opportunity to buy lots, 
 and he hoped to leave her in good cir- 
 cumstances when he died. 
 
 Virginia was afraid that the idea was 
 a little too large and not quite practi- 
 cable, but she agreed with him that it 
 would do no harm to try. 
 
 Fairfax sent at once for Perry Blair 
 to survey and lay off the proposed new 
 town. 
 
 Blair, glad of the opportunity to do 
 anything for Virginia or her grand- 
 father, staked off the ground and made 
 the necessary plat. Fairfax had 
 already selected names for the streets 
 of the new Fairfax City. The princi- 
 pal ones were to be called Virginia, 
 
IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 2 3 
 
 Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Pat- 
 rick Henry, Randolph, Berkeley, Lee, 
 Preston, Tyler, and Jackson. 
 
 The next step was to put the lots of 
 
 the future Fairfax City on the market. 
 
 One or two of Henry 
 
 Fairfax's old friends 
 
 promised to take two 
 
 or three lots each, on 
 
 condition that one 
 
 hundred lots were 
 
 sold. There the sales stopped. Not 
 
 a cent had been spent or received. 
 
 Blair, who was staying for a few 
 weeks at Fairfax Hall, at the earnest 
 request of the old man, "in order to 
 help along with the enterprise," spent 
 more time in attempting to further a 
 little plan of his own than he did in 
 building Fairfax City. Virginia was 
 courteous to him always, but he soon 
 found that instead of getting to be 
 with her as much as formerly, she 
 avoided him. Occasionally, however, 
 some word or act of hers, when she was 
 
2 4 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 off her guard, made him believe that 
 she was not anxious for him to leave 
 the place. She had all at once become 
 a mystery to him, a mystery which he 
 determined to solve. 
 
 Meantime the old gentleman paid 
 no attention whatever to the young 
 people. He had no thought save for 
 the success of his cherished scheme to 
 found a town which should bear his 
 name, and thereby be able, also, to 
 leave a good snug sum to his beloved 
 granddaughter. As the lots were not 
 selling, he got Virginia to write for 
 him one day the following letter: 
 
 Fairfax Hall, Virginia, 8 July, 1884. 
 To the Editor of the Post, Washington, D. C. : 
 
 My Dear Sir — It affords me very great pleasure 
 to write once more a communication for your ex- 
 cellent journal. Many years ago I was frequently 
 permitted to be heard through your columns on 
 questions of public concern, and, whilst what I am 
 now about to say is not on any subject of statecraft, 
 it is, I assure you, my dear sir, a question of pub- 
 lic interest and importance. 
 
 You and your many readers will be glad to hear 
 that I have had laid off a town site on a part of the 
 
IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 25 
 
 Fairfax estate, and that I am now in the process of 
 building a city to which I have given the name 
 (without undue egotism, I think) of Fairfax City. 
 Streets have been laid out and have been named as 
 follows: 
 
 Virginia, Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Pat- 
 rick Henry, Randolph, Berkeley, Lee, Preston, 
 Tyler, Jackson, etc., — names which you will be 
 glad to unite with me in honouring. I am allow- 
 ing the lots to be sold at $100 each, and expect to 
 dispose of at least one hundred of them during the 
 present summer. 
 
 No buildings have as yet been erected, and I 
 shall leave that matter entirely to the purchasers. 
 
 Mr. Perry Blair, an excellent young man and 
 competent civil engineer, has made a survey of the 
 grounds, and the plat may be seen by any so desir- 
 ing at my home, Fairfax Hall, in Virginia, where 
 you, my dear sir, and all others, whether interested 
 in the future of Fairfax City or not, will receive a 
 most cordial welcome. 
 
 I have had a large number of lots laid off by Mr. 
 Blair, so that as many of my friends as possible may 
 be accommodated. I assume that no description of 
 them or their location is necessary further than to 
 say that they are on the Fairfax estate, in the upper 
 Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. 
 
 With assurances of my sincere regards, I am, sir, 
 your obedient servant, 
 
 Henry Fairfax, of Virginia. 
 
 A few days later he was indignant 
 
26 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 beyond measure upon receiving the 
 
 following: 
 
 Washington, D. C, July io, '84. 
 Henry Fairfax, Esq. : 
 
 Dear Sir — Your favor at hand. Shall we insert 
 it as paid matter? Our rates are 25c a line, count- 
 ing eight words to the line. We await your reply. 
 Yours, etc., 
 
 Publishers the Post. 
 
 The old gentleman was wild with in- 
 dignation. He considered it a per- 
 sonal insult. 
 
 "It's a cowardly, base, infamous in- 
 sult," he said, as he threw the letter to 
 Perry Blair. "They know that I am 
 too old to resent it personally. Be- 
 fore the war any gentleman could have 
 a communication published, and would 
 receive the thanks of the editor instead 
 of an insult. It's an infamous pro- 
 ceeding, sir, infamous! I have a mind 
 to go to Washington immediately, and 
 make the cur apologize. I might have 
 known better than to expect courteous 
 treatment outside of Virginia. If I 
 only had a son to challenge the fellow, 
 
IN THE VIRGINIAS, 27 
 
 and wipe out this insult to the Fairfax 
 name! " 
 
 He was so wrought up that Virginia 
 was greatly alarmed, fearing that the 
 excitement might result seriously. 
 She tried to calm him, but the more 
 he thought of the matter the more 
 outrageous seemed the insult. At last, 
 in despair, she begged Blair to promise 
 to secure an apology or avenge the af- 
 front. 
 
 Perry saw the ridiculous nature of 
 the situation, but he would have done 
 anything for Virginia, even to thrash- 
 ing a dozen editors. So he promised 
 that he would demand an apology at 
 once. And this is how he did it: 
 
 Fairfax Hall, West Virginia, July 12, 1884. 
 Publishers the Post, Washington, D. C. : 
 
 Dear Sirs — Your note in reply to Mr. Henry- 
 Fairfax's letter, relating to the sale of certain town 
 lots, has been handed to me. Mr. Fairfax is a 
 very old gentleman, being now more than 80, and 
 he fully believes that your refusal to publish his let- 
 ter without pay is a personal insult. He is much 
 wrought up over it, and the effect on his feeble 
 
28 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 health may be serious. Please humor him and 
 relieve his family by writing a letter of apology and 
 explanation. It will greatly please him, and will 
 be appreciated by his family as an act of great 
 kindness. Yours very truly, 
 
 Perry M. Blair. 
 
 Two days later the mails brought to 
 Henry Fairfax a tender and gracious 
 letter from the editor of the Post, full 
 of apologies. 
 
 When Virginia read it to the old 
 man a great burden was lifted from 
 his heart, tears filled his eyes, and, 
 slapping Perry on the back, he ex- 
 claimed: "Blair, you're a noble fellow! 
 What a pity you are not a Virginian !" 
 
 Then, kissing Virginia on the cheek, 
 he said: 
 
 "Daughter, what can we do to repay 
 our young friend for wiping this stain 
 from the Fairfax escutcheon ?" 
 
 Virginia blushed red as the old fash- 
 ioned roses that grew down by the 
 gate, and, kissing the old man in return, 
 she said: 
 
 "I don't know, father/' 
 
IN THE VIRGINIAS. 2Q 
 
 "I do not want any reward for so 
 small a service," said Perry. "I would 
 do anything in my power to please 
 Virginia — or you, sir." 
 
 This was said to Virginia rather 
 than to her grandfather, but she stood 
 with her head down, and did not trust 
 herself to look at him. 
 
 Nothing further was said on the sub- 
 ject then, but that night, when Vir- 
 ginia kissed her grandfather goodnight, 
 he put his arm about her and said: 
 
 "Daughter, do you remember the 
 promise you once made to me?" 
 
 "Yes, father, I remember," and, go- 
 ing to her own room, she threw herself 
 on the bed and wept until she fell 
 asleep. 
 
 Perry did some serious thinking that 
 night, too, and the next day he watched 
 for an opportunity to speak to Vir- 
 ginia. She tried to avoid him, but he 
 would not be baffled, and, while her 
 grandfather slept in his big chair, he 
 walked down the lane and met her 
 
<20 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 coming home in the twilight from a 
 neighbor's house, whither she had gone 
 on an errand. 
 
 He told her in earnest words the 
 old, old story, which she had read in 
 his actions over and over again, and, 
 taking both her hands in his, he held 
 them as in a vice. 
 
 "Here we both stop in the path of 
 life," he said, "until my question is 
 answered. Have you avoided me lately 
 because you do not love me, Vir- 
 ginia?" 
 
 "No, that is not the reason, but I 
 can never marry you, Perry. I have 
 made a sacred promise which I cannot 
 break." 
 
 Perry's mind was filled with visions 
 of a rival suitor, but he was too much 
 in love with Virginia to abdicate in 
 favor of any man on the face of the 
 earth. Finally she told him frankly 
 and fully the whole story of her 
 mother's unfortunate marriage, how 
 her grandfather had been both father 
 
IN THE VIRGINIAS. ^j 
 
 and mother to her through all her life, 
 and how she had promised him that 
 she would not marry outside of their 
 own people. 
 
 "The promise may have been a fool- 
 ish one," she said, "but he intended it 
 only for my own happiness, and I 
 would not do anything to displease 
 him who has been as kind and good to 
 me as my mother could have been. 
 No, Perry, I cannot break my promise." 
 
 "But if the promise had never been 
 made — if you were free — " 
 
 "I cannot break my promise." 
 
 And they walked in silence to the 
 house, where the old man was still 
 sleeping like a child in the big easy 
 chair. 
 
 The next day Perry said good-bye to 
 Fairfax Hall, and left for his home in 
 Pennsylvania. Before going he told 
 Mr. Fairfax that if he could ever help 
 him in his Fairfax City enterprise, to 
 send for him. Virginia's good-bye was 
 not so brave as she struggled to make 
 
<22 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 it, and she watched him until he was 
 lost from view beyond a turn in the 
 road — watched him with mute lips and 
 a sinking heart, for Hope and Happi- 
 ness rode away from her with Perry 
 Blair that day down the lane, while 
 Love stayed by in the old house with 
 her and her childish and devoted 
 grandfather. 
 
 The failure of his cherished plan to 
 build a thriving town, and give to it 
 his name, had a pronounced effect up- 
 on the old man's spirits. For some 
 months his great interest in the enter- 
 prise had kept him up, but when the 
 collapse came he lost hope and heart, 
 and a few days after Perry's departure 
 he took to his bed. 
 
 A week later Perry rang the old 
 goblin-headed knocker at Fairfax Hall, 
 and Virginia opened the door. She 
 was so much surprised that she could 
 only say: 
 
 "Why, Perry!" 
 
 He was beaming all over with hap- 
 
IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 33 
 
 piness, and, taking her by the hand, im- 
 mediately led her, half forcibly, to the 
 bedside of her grandfather. Before 
 she could fully realize what he was do- 
 ing, he said: 
 
 "Mr. Fairfax, I have come back to 
 ask for the hand of your grand- 
 daughter/* 
 
 The old man, after two or three 
 efforts, raised himself up on one elbow, 
 and, looking at Virginia with an ex- 
 pression of unutterable grief, said in a 
 voice feeble with age and trembling 
 with emotion: 
 
 "Daughter, have you broken your 
 promise ?" 
 
 Virginia knelt down and kissed the 
 furrowed cheek and replied: 
 
 "No, father, I have not told Mr. 
 Blair that I would marry him — I have 
 told him I could not." 
 
 Perry sat down by the side of the 
 bed, took the old man's hand and 
 placed in it a piece of paper, saying as 
 he did so: 
 
34 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 "I know all about the promise which 
 Virginia has made, and I do not ask 
 her to violate it. I believe I am eligi- 
 ble." 
 
 "What is this, Virginia? I cannot 
 see. Read it to me, my child. I have 
 not meant to be unkind to you, but I 
 would rather take you with me to the 
 cold clay, out there on the hill, where 
 your mother sleeps, than that you 
 should suffer as she did. Read it, 
 daughter, read it!" 
 
 Virginia looked at it, and handed it 
 back to Perry. 
 
 "Have you anything against me per- 
 sonally?" asked Perry, as he laid the 
 bit of paper on the edge of the bed. 
 
 "Nothing," said Mr. Fairfax, "you 
 have been very kind to Virginia and 
 me, very kind." 
 
 "Then here are my credentials" — 
 and he read the memorandum: 
 
 "Perry Madison Blair, born at Harrisburg, Pa., 
 Jan. 23, 1862. Son of Henry M. Blair, also a 
 native of Harrisburg, Pa., whose father, Col. 
 
IN THE VIRGINIAS, 
 
 35 
 
 Perry Madison Blair, was born in Fauquier 
 County, Virginia, and married Betty Mason, 
 daughter of the Honorable Stuart Page Mason, of 
 Virginia." 
 
 "I got this out of the old Bible at 
 home. I was not born in Virginia, 
 neither was your granddaughter — she 
 was born in West Virginia. Her 
 grandparents were born in Virginia; 
 so were mine. I do not ask her to 
 break her promise. I am a Virginian 
 in blood as much as she." 
 
 Virginia had slipped her hand into 
 Perry's, and Henry Fairfax, laying his 
 thin skeleton hand across theirs, said: 
 
 "Daughter, I knew you would keep 
 your promise." 
 
THE PREACHER OF THREE CHURCHES. 
 
 39 
 
 THE PREACHER OF THE 
 THREE CHURCHES 
 
 In a little old town, west of the 
 Blue Ridge, there used to be a man 
 who, the people said, 
 worshipped the Lord 
 and served the devil. 
 He preached Calvinism 
 and eternal damnation 
 on Sundays, and drew a rosined bow 
 across an old violin behind closed 
 doors on week days. 
 
 The town also contained a bfood of 
 lawyers, an old doctor, and a young 
 one, a school teacher, some forty ex- 
 perienced gossips, a hundred or so 
 dogs, and about four hundred other 
 inhabitants. 
 
 The preacher didn't really live in 
 the village, but a mile out on the 
 
4° 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 country road, and preached for two 
 other congregations besides the one 
 in the village. 
 
 He was a young bachelor whom the 
 spinsters frequently invited to their 
 tea parties, and he made his home 
 with a family who loved him, and who 
 faithfully kept the secret of his violin 
 playing from the public. 
 
 The Reverend Balak Mather was a 
 New Englander, and had accepted the 
 call from the three churches in the 
 south without making any inquiry as 
 to the salary he was to receive or the 
 amount of work he would be expected 
 to do. He thought 
 the call was a di- 
 vine one, and, gath- 
 ering up his fiddle 
 and his Bible, he 
 put the former in 
 the bottom and the 
 latter in the top of 
 his trunk, and answered the call in 
 person, just as he would have obeyed 
 
THE PREACHER OF THREE CHURCHES. 
 
 4 1 
 
 a command from President Lincoln to 
 take a gun and go down and shoot 
 these same brethren at the three 
 churches. He never questioned a call 
 from his God or his country. 
 
 Arriving at the three churches, he 
 found a scattered membership of Pres- 
 byterians, hospitable and cordial, but 
 as firm in the faith and as strict in 
 the creed as the New Englander him- 
 self; and they would have been 
 shocked beyond expression if they 
 had known that their new pastor not 
 only played a fiddle, but had actually 
 brought it with him in the same box 
 with his Holy Bible. 
 
 Nor did the conscience of the Rev- 
 erend Balak Mather approve of his 
 conduct. He felt that he was barter- 
 ing his soul away little by little for 
 the string that intoxicates. All of his 
 life he had prayed earnestly but hope- 
 lessly to be delivered from the temp- 
 tation — prayed every morning that he 
 might be able to live that day with- 
 
A2 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 out touching the unclean thing. But 
 every evening when the twilight came 
 on and a loneliness came over him, such 
 as only the choice spirits of the world 
 are permitted to suffer, he would for- 
 get the vow of the morning, take the 
 old violin out of its old green case, 
 close the windows and the doors, get 
 down in the darkest corner of the 
 room, and, gently touching the strings, 
 call forth the souls of all the old loved 
 ones now dead and gone. All the 
 sweet voices, all the childhood tears, 
 and tales, and fancies, every kiss of 
 his mother's lips, every form of speech 
 that love had learned, seemed to him 
 to come out of that old violin. 
 
 And when the night was stormy 
 and the wind howled and moaned, he 
 would close his Bible, take up the 
 violin, and, with trembling hand and 
 guilty conscience, strike the strings 
 until all the sins that he had ever 
 committed came up out of the past, 
 and he could hear the wails and sobs 
 
THE PREACHER OF THREE CHURCHES. 
 
 43 
 
 of all those who had gone down, down 
 into the place of everlasting torment ; 
 and the soul of the violin seemed to 
 mingle with his own soul in an agony 
 of unutterable misery and woe, for he 
 felt that he loved the instrument with 
 an unholy passion, as a man may love 
 and be led to the depth of hell by a 
 wicked and beautiful woman. 
 
 His congregations knew nothing of 
 all this. Their pastor was a faithful 
 shepherd, leading his little flocks by 
 the pure waters of Calvinism and by 
 the green meadows of righteous living. 
 
 The more he yielded to the tempta- 
 tions of the siren fiddle the more he 
 atoned for it by preaching the doc- 
 trine of punishment and the law of 
 retribution. And the more he fiddled 
 the longer he preached to make up 
 for it, so that sometimes his sermons 
 would last an hour and a half or two 
 hours. But his congregations were 
 not made up of end-of-the-century 
 churchgoers, who tire at a fifteen- 
 
44 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 minutes sermon, and who ask for a 
 new pastor if the sermon lasts over 
 thirty minutes. The three little flocks 
 of the Rev. Balak Mather's keeping 
 believed in devoting the entire Sab- 
 bath — they never called it Sunday — 
 to the worship of the Lord, and, as 
 the preacher's sermons grew in length, 
 he grew in popularity. 
 
 One day, about a year and a half 
 after accepting the call to the three 
 churches, the minister was sent for to 
 go thirty miles or more into the moun- 
 tain to conduct the funeral of an old 
 man, who had once heard him preach 
 in the village. Of course he went, for 
 he never refused to go where he could 
 render a service. 
 
 On his return he stopped for the 
 night at a little log house in the moun- 
 tain, where the cracks in the walls were 
 not more conspicuous than the love 
 and cheer about the hearthstone. 
 
 One of the children was sawing 
 away on a fiddle when the preacher 
 
THE PREACHER OF THREE CHURCHES. 
 
 45 
 
 entered the house, but immediately 
 hid it when he saw the clerical coat of 
 the stranger. The minister's trained 
 and sympathetic ear had caught the 
 singularly rich and sweet notes of the 
 instrument, and he at once asked the 
 lad to get it for him. Taking it lov- 
 ingly in his hand, he pulled the bow 
 across the strings, held it close to his 
 ear, touched another chord or two, 
 looked at it critically, saw a dim and 
 blurred inscription on it, and read : 
 
 AWonius Slradivarius. 
 f Cremonen . 16 ^/. f 
 
 If Saul of Tarsus had appeared be- 
 fore him, he would not have been more 
 surprised than he was to fincT there, in 
 a hut in the mountain, an instrument 
 bearing the name of the great Italian 
 violin maker. 
 
 " Where did you get it?" he in- 
 quired of the boy. 
 
 " Don't know; guess we've always 
 had it." 
 
4 6 
 
 IX THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 Then the preacher-fiddler ran out 
 to the stable where the boy's father 
 was feeding the horses — rushed out 
 like an excited schoolboy — to ascer- 
 tain, if he could, something about the 
 wonderful instrument. 
 
 "That fiddle ?" said the mountain- 
 eer. "That's the finest fiddle in this 
 part of Virginy, I reckon. It's purty 
 old, but I guess it aint much the worse 
 for wear. Some feller has cut his name 
 on it there, but I guess that don't hurt 
 it none. Where did I git it? Oh, I 
 got that fiddle down in New Orleens 
 when I was down there with Ben But^ 
 ler's crowd, but you musn't ask me 
 how I got it, for I don't want to tell a 
 parson no lies." 
 
 " But, my good fellow," said the 
 parson, "don't you know that it is 
 worth a big sum of money?" 
 
 " How much'll ye give me fur 
 it?" 
 
 "I haven't enough money to buy it, 
 I'm afraid, but I'll give you all I have 
 
THE PREACHER OF THREE CHURCHES. Ah 
 
 in the world, which is about three 
 hundred dollars." 
 
 He could probably have bought 
 it for less than twenty-five, but he 
 was too honest to try to drive an 
 unfair bargain, even for a Stradi- 
 varius. 
 
 It was now the mountaineer's turn 
 to be amazed. He had never dreamed 
 that any fiddle in the world could be 
 worth half that much money. He 
 thought the preacher had lost his 
 senses. 
 
 " You may take the fiddle," he said, 
 "but I ain't agoin' to skin you that 
 way. You may know what hymn 
 books and catechisms cost, but you're 
 off on catgut, parson. I've played 
 'em all my life, and I never seen one 
 that was wuth over twenty-five or 
 thirty dollars. But if you want it, an' 
 bein's its you, an' you'll give me that 
 there hoss of yourn in the stable, why 
 I reckon you may take the fiddle. I 
 won't take no three hundred dollars 
 
4 8 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 of any parson's money for an old 
 fiddle. It ain't wuth it." 
 
 And so the bargain was made, the 
 honest preacher telling the owner that 
 if he ever sold the instrument for 
 more than he gave for it, he would 
 hunt him up and divide the profits 
 with him. 
 
 That night this servant of the Lord 
 forgot to ask the mountaineer's family 
 to join with him in prayer, and yet 
 his heart was full of thankfulness and 
 love for all things in heaven and on 
 earth. Out among the trees, under 
 the lonesome sky, he put the old 
 Italian violin to his shoulder, and tears 
 of love and joy filled his eyes as he 
 stroked its graceful neck as a lover 
 would stroke the tresses of his fair 
 bride. And the music that was made 
 that night in the mountain! The 
 sweetness and the richness and the 
 compass of it ! And the woe and the 
 terror of it ! For the player was a 
 true maestro, and this perfect Stradi- 
 
THE PREACHER OF THREE CHURCHES. 
 
 49 
 
 varius seemed to hold in its keeping 
 the tender love and the burning pas- 
 sion and the implacable hate of the 
 Italian race — that Italy which made 
 poets and painters and sculptors and 
 murderers. 
 
 He understood how it was that 
 when Paganini played they said he 
 was in league with the devil, exchange 
 ing smiles with a ghastly figure beside 
 him, and why the multitudes followed 
 him in wild frenzy through the streets 
 of Genoa ; for the two centuries be- 
 tween Antonio Stradiva- 
 rius, the fiddle-maker of 
 Cremona, and Balak 
 Mather, the preacher-fid, 
 dler of the three churches, 
 had crowded that old vio- 
 lin with memories of all 
 the victories and failures, 
 all the glory and all the 
 shame of the human race, 
 and the preacher -fiddler 
 evoked all of these memories and 
 
gO IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 heard, with his own ears, that night, 
 alone in the mountain, out under 
 the everlasting stars, the story of the 
 world's tragedy! 
 
 At least it seemed to him so, for he 
 was a true musician to the tips of his 
 long bony fingers. 
 
 To those who love not the divine 
 instrument, all this will appear absurd 
 and strained, but it is written for those 
 who know what it is to be overcome 
 by the mysterious and mighty power 
 of an Ole Bull, a Sarasate, a Eugene 
 Ysaye or a Cesar Thomson — an influ- 
 ence that has the power to intoxicate 
 like wine, like the rare old wines 
 which have in them the sunshine of 
 heaven and the fine virtues of the 
 soil. 
 
 But this has nothing to do with our 
 preacher, who was taken to the village 
 the next day by the mountaineer. The 
 Stradivarius stayed at the preacher's 
 boarding house, and the preacher's 
 horse went back to the mountain. 
 
THE PREACHER OF THREE CHURCHES. 
 
 51 
 
 Then came the fiercest battle of 
 Balak Mather's life, and the turning 
 point. Unconsciously and unwillingly, 
 he yielded, little by little, to the soft- 
 ening appeals of his musical nature, 
 and his sermons to the three churches 
 began to be more about love and less 
 about the law — more religion and less 
 theology. His congregations noticed 
 it, and liked it — in spite of them- 
 selves. Some of the sisters said he 
 must be in love, and they discussed 
 it at their quilting parties. His ac- 
 tions, as well as his words, became 
 more tender; he spent more time with 
 the poor and the sick, and, wherever 
 he went, he was a benediction. 
 
 Many of his flock followed the lead 
 of their shepherd, and the gospel of 
 love became the creed of the new 
 propaganda at the three churches. 
 
 But the upheaval was bound to 
 come sooner or later, and it was only 
 strange that it had been delayed so 
 long. 
 
52 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS 
 
 One day the report was started that 
 the preacher played the fiddle. By 
 the time it had reached the other end 
 of the village, which was less than an 
 hour, it said that he had lost his faith 
 in the teachings of the Bible ; that he 
 had his rooms full of fiddles, and that 
 he sometimes kept step to his own 
 playing. 
 
 Many of his flock said they didn't 
 believe a word of it, but they passed 
 the story on, and one of the good sis- 
 ters thought it her Christian duty to 
 ride over to the other two churches 
 and tell the news. 
 
 In the minds of these good men and 
 women the fiddle was inseparably asso- 
 ciated with the disreputable dance hall 
 and wicked actor-people, and was, in 
 short, the devil's own instrument. A 
 member of the church found guilty of 
 playing it would have been remon- 
 strated with gently but firmly, and, if 
 he persisted in his wicked ways, would 
 have been expelledc The report, there- 
 
THE PREACHER OF THREE CHURCHES. C^-7 
 
 fore, that their beloved pastor was a 
 fiddle player shocked and scandalized 
 them quite as much as if it had been 
 said that he had been seen drunk 
 in the public street. It was the 
 sole topic of conversation, and, in the 
 mouths of expert and long-experi- 
 enced gossips, it took on many artistic 
 embellishments. 
 
 Some of his friends, however, re- 
 fused to believe the story, and defended 
 him with such faithfulness that in a 
 few days there began to appear indi- 
 cations of a serious schism in the three 
 churches. 
 
 One Saturday afternoon a committee 
 of the elders waited upon the Rev. 
 Balak Mather at his boarding house. 
 They found him with his well-worn 
 Bible open before him, at work upon 
 the sermon for the morrow. The room 
 was not filled with fiddles — there was 
 not even one in sight — and the books 
 about him were not such as a servant 
 of the devil would revel in. Their 
 
U IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 courage began to fail them, and they 
 began to wish that they had shoul- 
 dered the unpleasant duty on a com- 
 mittee of the sisters. After talking 
 about the weather, the finances of the 
 church, the crop prospects, the ap- 
 proaching county election, and the 
 weather some more, until the situa- 
 tion became painfully embarrassing, 
 the brother who had been chosen 
 previously as spokesman plunged into 
 the subject by saying: "Ah — Brother 
 Mather, I suppose you have heard the 
 scandalous reports which have been 
 started about you by evil tongues — 
 about your indulging in the unholy 
 practice of fiddle-playing. Of course 
 none of us believe it for a moment — " 
 
 " Oh, of course, not for a moment ! " 
 put in the other members of the com- 
 mittee in chorus. 
 
 u But we wanted to be able to deny 
 it officially before it gets any further. 
 Brother Jones/' he said, turning to 
 another of the elders, " suppose you 
 
THE PREACHER OF THREE CHURCHES. CCj 
 
 draw up an official denial of the whole 
 infamous business, and we will all sign 
 it right here." 
 
 Then the spokesman stroked his 
 beard three times, and felt much re- 
 lieved. 
 
 Brother Jones got ready to write. 
 
 "My good friends," said the preacher, 
 " I do not know what you have heard, 
 but if it is that I play the violin, as 
 well as pray and preach, and try to 
 help the sick and the poor, I must 
 confess to my guilt. Up to within 
 the past few weeks I yielded to it as to 
 a besetting sin, and prayed against' it 
 every day of my life, but I no longer 
 consider it such. Next to the 'serv- 
 ice of my God and my fellowman, I 
 love an old violin which I have yon- 
 der in that trunk." 
 
 And he took out the instrument 
 and laid it before them. 
 
 His boldness and earnestness com- 
 pletely overwhelmed them, and they 
 sat speechless. 
 
56 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 Then the preacher played as even 
 he had never played before — played 
 as though pleading his own cause be- 
 fore God and man — the tones now 
 wailing and crying in despair, now 
 glorious with triumphant hope and 
 victory. The depths of his soul were 
 broken up, and he wept, and the eyes 
 of the elders were not dry. 
 
 When they left, they said one to 
 another, " verily he hath a devil/* 
 
 The rest is soon set down. 
 
 Shortly after the committee -of eld- 
 ers had presented to the three churches 
 their formal report of 
 what they had heard and 
 seen, the preacher-fiddler 
 put his Bible and his vio- 
 lin into his trunk — the 
 latter accidentally getting 
 uppermost this time — and 
 after visiting every sheep of his three 
 little flocks and saying to them he 
 
THE PREACHER OF THREE CHURCHES. 
 
 57 
 
 hoped they would, sometime, allow 
 themselves to believe that music, even 
 fiddle music, was not an unpardonable 
 sin, he went away. 
 
 One night, a little while ago, the 
 writer of this sat with one of the old 
 elders of the old church of the little 
 old village w r est of the Blue Ridge in 
 the Metropolitan Opera House in 
 New York, and, while the audience 
 came in, and the fine ladies in the 
 boxes on either side discussed the 
 dresses of the fine ladies in the boxes 
 on the other side, he related to me 
 the main facts of the story which I 
 have repeated here. 
 
 It was a great music-festival night, 
 and the Boston Symphony Company 
 was to give the first of a series of six 
 concerts. The house was crowded, 
 for it had been announced that with 
 the company there was to appear 
 Yriarte, a Belgian virtuoso, who had 
 
58 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 been turning the heads of the musical 
 people on the other side of the waters 
 — Paganini, they said, had come back 
 to earth. Of course Society, which al- 
 ways writes its name with a big S, was 
 there, but there were others, also. 
 There were pointed out to us in the 
 audience the great composers Dvorak 
 and DeKoven, Rafael Joseffy, the 
 beautiful Emma Eames, Emma Juch, 
 Lola Beeth, Melba, Jean de Reszke, 
 and others. 
 
 The concert began. The orchestra 
 played something which I have for- 
 gotten, but which made nearly as 
 much noise as Berlioz's " Requiem 
 Mass," and nearly took the breath 
 away from the people near the 
 stage. 
 
 Then there was a great flutter among 
 the beautiful birds in the boxes, a 
 craning of fair necks, a jabbering among 
 the foreign-looking long-haired musical- 
 appearing men near us, and, after what 
 seemed an interminable wait, the Bel- 
 
THE PREACHER OF THREE CHURCHES, 
 
 59 
 
 gian came on with an old tobacco-col- 
 ored fiddle in his hand. He had a face 
 like the pictures of Saint-Saens, and 
 he stood before the great audience 
 like one who had a message to deliver 
 of life or death. He held the violin 
 and bow both under his left arm, and, 
 before beginning to play, he reached 
 out his right hand and held it there 
 with his open palm down, as a 
 preacher might have done in asking 
 God's benediction on the human 
 race. Then the violin came out 
 from under his arm and the bow 
 fell across it — and even the boxes 
 were hushed. 
 
 Then a voice such as had never been 
 heard on sea or land filled the hall, and 
 all that was worth living for or dying 
 for, seemed to sanctify the place — it 
 was the voice of a Stradivarius in the 
 hands of a maestro. 
 
 When he had finished, and had again 
 held out his long thin hand in benedic- 
 tion, the audience broke into a wild 
 
60 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 frenzy, such as the young virtuoso of 
 Genoa is said to have produced in the 
 Italian towns and villages three quar- 
 ters of a century ago. People rushed 
 onto the stage in the wildest excite- 
 ment, among them being hundreds of 
 ladies. They snatched the flowers 
 from their bosoms and threw them at 
 him, and the excitement was so great 
 that it was totally impossible to go on 
 w r ith the concert that night. Only 
 once before had anything approach- 
 ing it been seen in this country on a 
 similar occasion, and that was when 
 New York went stark crazy over the 
 wonderful Bulgarian pianist the win- 
 ter before, when several women 
 were badly hurt in the frenzied 
 rush to touch the hem of his swal- 
 low-tail coat. 
 
 The two men from west of the Blue 
 Ridge were among the last to leave 
 the hall, and, as they did so, the old 
 Presbyterian elder said to the young 
 man by his side : 
 
THE PREACHER OF THREE CHURQHES. 6l 
 
 " That man was he whom we used 
 to know at the three churches as the 
 Rev. Balak Mather." And then, after 
 a long silence, "It is not a devil he 
 hath, but something divine." 
 
62 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 THE KING'S DAUGHTER 
 
 THERE used to be, in one of the 
 interior counties in the New Domin- 
 ion, an absolute monarchy. 
 
 This kingdom was about the size of 
 the realm of the Akoond of Mahoot, 
 and embraced nearly the whole of one 
 flourishing township. There was a 
 lean mountain in it which split the 
 evening cloud in two and divided the 
 morning mist. And the eastern bound- 
 ary of it was a river which made a 
 horseshoe with which the foot of the 
 mountain was shod. 
 
 Across the river from this realm the 
 land rolled away in peace, as was be- 
 coming to the home of free institutions. 
 
 The lean mountain carried a huge 
 boulder on the tip of its right shoul- 
 der, as if challenging the winds to 
 
THE KING'S DAUGHTER. 
 
 63 
 
 knock it off ; but the bald eagle nested 
 in the clefts of it and was not afraid, 
 and the wind gnawed at the alum rock 
 until it looked like a giant honeycomb, 
 made by the wind bees. 
 
 On the west the kingdom was 
 bounded by the finest red-fox trail 
 that a hound ever put a nose to, out- 
 side of the glade country. 
 
 On the south it was not bounded at 
 all, for the king's possessions straggled 
 away in that direction in triangles and 
 all sorts of geometrical curiosities. 
 
 At the northern end the king had 
 his home, and his dominion was 
 bounded there only by the will of his 
 wife. 
 
 It was, therefore, a unique kingdom, 
 and is not set down on the maps, and 
 the local chroniclers have failed to 
 write the history of its rise and fall. 
 
 The first monarch was the last, and 
 the royal household consisted of seven 
 stalwart sons and a fair daughter, be- 
 sides the queen of the king's bosom. 
 
6 4 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 Besides these there were of mules 
 and horses quite a number, a herd of 
 little mountain oxen, ring-streaked and 
 striped, and flocks of sheep scarcely 
 larger than mountain rabbits, and the 
 royal razor-back swine, which fed on 
 the corn fields of the citizens of the 
 realm. There were, also, of milch 
 cows, some seven or eight. 
 
 The standing army consisted of the 
 seven stalwart sons of the king. 
 
 The ruler was of the house of Good- 
 rich, and he became king by the divine 
 right of wanting to, and knowing how. 
 He came unto his kingdom from Penn- 
 sylvania, and his kingdom came unto 
 him little by little, excepting the pre- 
 rogatives of a local preacher, which he 
 brought with him. First, he bought 
 a large tract of land, paying for it 
 about the value of the squirrels that 
 frolicked in its woods. Then he was 
 elected a justice of the peace, and be- 
 came a 'squire — and a 'squire is, as 
 everybody knows, a very puissant man, 
 
65 
 
 To these he added the powers of mem- 
 ber of the school board, class leader, 
 undertaker, timber dealer, money 
 lender, mortgage holder, and Sunday- 
 school superintendent. When he took 
 a notion to add to his estates he fore- 
 closed a mortgage, or got himself ap- 
 pointed guardian of the minor children 
 of some sister in the church, or cor- 
 nered the coffin market. He married 
 the young people, buried their chil- 
 dren, attached their household goods. 
 
 He was authority on mountain the- 
 ology and the history of the Jews, and, 
 as a scientist, the teacher of the town- 
 ship school herself, although having 
 attained the ripe age of nineteen years 
 and some months, was not his superior. 
 
 Now the key to this kingdom was a 
 sway in the back of the mountain, from 
 which great sticks of timber, the chief 
 and only valuable product of the realm, 
 were slid down to the river where they 
 were rafted and sold. There was but 
 one road up to this hogback, and the 
 
 5 
 
66 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 king owned it, and, by means of this 
 monopoly, he was able to fix his own 
 price on every log that was laid at the 
 foot of the mountain. 
 
 Thus it was that he waxed rich off 
 of the labor and necessities of his 
 neighbors, for every stick of timber 
 intended for the market must of ne- 
 cessity be sold to him at the foot of 
 the mountain for whatsoever he was in 
 a mood to give for it. And being a 
 justice of the peace, and a Biblical 
 scholar, a local preacher, a Sunday 
 school superintendent, an undertaker, 
 and the head of a large family, he gen- 
 erally was in the mood to pay about 
 one-fourth as much as he could get for 
 the same log on the other side of the 
 mountain. 
 
 Thus it came about by a very plain 
 process that 'Squire Goodrich became 
 an absolute monarch in everything 
 but the title and the tinsel trappings. 
 
 His impoverished subjects had often 
 tried to find or make a road of their 
 
THE KING'S DAUGHTER. % (yh 
 
 own up the mountain side on land 
 which he had not yet come into pos- 
 session of, but every attempt had been 
 given up — the cliffs were too many 
 and too high, and so they were forced 
 to continue to pay tribute to Caesar 
 at the foot of the mountain. 
 
 Now, among the subjects of the king 
 there were, of course, certain young 
 men who had the audacity to aspire 
 to the hand of the king's daughter, 
 whose name was Mary, and who was 
 both good and rich, exactly as her 
 name said. To be truthful, I must ad- 
 mit that she had never been in a 
 boarding school, either at Staunton, 
 Winchester, Lexington, or Lewisburg, 
 and she (sad though the story be) was 
 not up in soirees and the gentle art of 
 murdering French, but she knew how 
 to "bake a pie or cast a killing eye." 
 She was the chief attraction at the 
 Sunday school and at funerals, and 
 she had the grace not to look with 
 contempt upon the young fellows 
 
68 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 because they had to pay tribute to her 
 father, the king, at the foot of the 
 lane leading up to the sway in the 
 hogback. 
 
 Half of the young fellows of the 
 neighborhood were, therefore, either in 
 love with the princess or thought they 
 were, which is much the same for all 
 practical purposes. Two or three of 
 them had gotten along so well with 
 her that they had ventured in their 
 rashness to speak to the king about it, 
 but he only laughed at them, and told 
 them that no suitor would even be 
 considered until he had first made a 
 timber road of his own to the top 
 of the mountain. This banter was 
 supposed to effectually settle the 
 matter. 
 
 Among these suitors was one John 
 Merrill, who was the proud owner of 
 five yoke of little steers and a few 
 acres of timber land, and who, like all 
 the rest, paid tribute to the king at 
 the foot of the mountain. He had 
 
THE KING'S DAUGHTER. 
 
 69 
 
 good reason to believe that he stood 
 well in the favor of the Princess Mary, 
 but there was the king's challenge in 
 the way. Love laughs at locksmiths 
 and other things of man's feeble make, 
 but it cannot look with contempt 
 upon a hogback. 
 
 He explained the difficulty to the 
 daughter of the king, and she hast- 
 ened to suggest that a tunnel be 
 digged or the mountain be blasted. 
 But these suggestions, though born of 
 love, were not eminently practical 
 from an engineering point of view. 
 
 John went over every foot of the 
 mountain, but it was of no avail. No 
 log road could be constructed, not 
 even for the hand of Mary, the king's 
 daughter. 
 
 Meanwhile, Mary sat all day long 
 by her chamber window with pencil 
 and paper in her hand. She had 
 lost interest in funerals and Sunday 
 schools. She was studying out a 
 great problem in civil engineering. 
 
7° 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 Then John went to the county seat 
 and stayed for the space of two days, 
 and, when he came home, there were 
 papers in his pocket tied about with 
 lawyers' tape. 
 
 His next step was to go to all of 
 the little timber dealers like himself 
 within hauling distance of the moun- 
 tain, and engage every stick of timber 
 they would have to sell for the next 
 ten years, delivered at the foot of the 
 king's road leading up the side of the 
 hogback, agreeing to pay a much 
 better price than the king had been giv- 
 ing. All this was done so quietly that 
 the king knew nothing of it. 
 
 But Mary knew. 
 
 When the logs began to arrive, and 
 the 'squire-king learned that they 
 were for John Merrill, he was amazed. 
 And when John told him that he held 
 a ten years' lease on the mountain, and 
 intended to haul the logs up himself 
 with his five yoke of little oxen, the 
 king's royal wrath was kindled. But 
 
THE KING'S DAUGHTER. 
 
 7* 
 
 not all of his authority as justice of 
 the peace, undertaker, Sunday-school 
 superintendent, local preacher, moun- 
 tain theologian and historian of the 
 Jews could overawe John, for John 
 had in his pocket the papers showing 
 that 'Squire Goodrich had never 
 bought that tract of land, leased it or 
 had any title to it whatever. He had 
 not even foreclosed a mortgage on it 
 or paid for it so much as the value of 
 the squirrels in its treetops. It be- 
 longed to some heirs living over in the 
 vicinity of Woodstock, and the king 
 had simply appropriated it as he had 
 appropriated many other things not 
 his own. 
 
 So John Merrill took legal posses- 
 sion of the road up the side of the 
 hogback and the key to the king's 
 domain, and, in due course of time, 
 grew rich, even as the king had done, 
 but with more honesty. Before the 
 lease had expired he bought the hog- 
 back in fee simple, and became the sole 
 
7 3 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 owner of the key to the old man's 
 kingdom. 
 
 By that time he was himself a jus- 
 tice of the peace and a Sunday-school 
 superintendent, and the king was de- 
 posed. 
 
 But the ex-king continued to hold 
 till his death his positions as under- 
 taker, local preacher and mountain 
 theologian. 
 
 And of course Mary, the king's 
 daughter — but it is well to take some 
 things for granted. 
 
THE SKETCH CLUB BANQUET. 
 
 73 
 
 THE 
 SKETCH CLUB BANQUET 
 
 The nuts and fruits had been fin- 
 ished, and the cigars and story tell- 
 ing had commenced. 
 
 The company was a 
 delightful one. Most 
 of the members of the 
 club had been abroad 
 more or less, and the 
 free and easy flow of anecdote and 
 sparkle of wit took on a foreign color. 
 There were bits of Paris, touches of 
 Munich, and breezes from the valley 
 of the Arno. 
 
 Doubtless there were better stories 
 told than the one which I wrote down 
 at three of the clock the next morn- 
 ing, but it was the only one remem- 
 bered at that hour or that I can recall 
 
74 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 now. It crowded all of the rest out of 
 my mind. 
 
 The story was told by F., one of the 
 club's distinguished gray-beards. 
 
 " It was in 1849," he said, " I think it 
 was '49. I was in Paris, trying to learn 
 to paint, along with a lot of other 
 American enthusiasts, among whom 
 was a young Virginian. He has won 
 great distinction since then, and I shall 
 call him simply Blank. 
 
 "All that we knew about him was 
 that he lived with amazing cheapness 
 and worked with prodigal extravagance, 
 and that he began to reach for the cov- 
 eted prizes. By and by he carried off 
 one of them, and in due time he had 
 captured everything in reach, and was 
 the talk of the American section of the 
 Parisian art world. 
 
 " His American fellow students, the 
 American legation in Paris, and some 
 other American citizens resident there 
 decided to pay tribute to his remark- 
 able success by giving a brilliant ban- 
 
THE SKETCH CLUB BANQUET. h C 
 
 quet in his honor. The American 
 Minister and his wife took great inter- 
 est in it, and insisted that they be 
 allowed to give the dinner at their 
 residence. 
 
 " It was a splendid affair — enough to 
 turn almost any young man's head. 
 The odor of a garden of roses pervaded 
 the spacious rooms, and the champagne 
 itself was not half so intoxicating as 
 the beauty and the brilliancy of the 
 ladies who had graciously lent their 
 presence to do honor to the young 
 painter of pictures from the hills of 
 Virginia. 
 
 "The guest of honor sat by the side 
 of the wife of the American Minister, 
 but all through the dinner it was 
 noticed, by those near him, that he 
 was silent and ate nothing. He was 
 so nervous that he spilled a glass of 
 water on the table. The hostess and a 
 pretty girl at his right tried in vain 
 to engage him in conversation. He 
 did not hear them. The young girl, 
 
7 6 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 feeling piqued, turned to her compan- 
 ion on the right, and did not again speak 
 to the young artist. 
 
 " From across the table I noticed the 
 embarrassing situation, and tried to 
 rally him with an attempt at a witti- 
 cism, but my attempted wit and my 
 effort to stir him up were alike unsuc- 
 cessful. He sat there pale, haggard, 
 bewildered, looking as though he were 
 at the funeral of his dearest friend 
 instead of being the guest of honor at 
 a brilliant banquet and sitting between 
 two of the fairest daughters that Colum- 
 bia ever sent to France. 
 
 " When the dinner was over, Mr. D., 
 Secretary of the American Legation, 
 began the toasts by proposing the 
 health of the young winner of the 
 Paris prizes, accompanying his toast 
 with a flattering eulogy. 
 
 " Mr. Blank, who had sat through the 
 evening like a statue, suddenly jumped 
 to his feet, not permitting Mr. D. to 
 finish. His frame shook with emotion, 
 
THE SKETCH CLUB BANQUET. hh 
 
 and he startled the guests by exclaim- 
 ing: 
 
 " ' I can endure this thing no longer. 
 You have sought to honor me, and I 
 ought to be thankful. I am thankful. 
 None of you can ever know how much I 
 appreciate it — but I cannot bear it any 
 longer. Away off yonder in the Vir- 
 ginia mountains is an old man who 
 has toiled his life away that I might be 
 here, and yet to-night there may not be 
 a loaf of bread in his mountain home. I 
 have often seen it so. That man is my 
 father, and I cannot drink your wine 
 while he has no bread. It would burn 
 my throat like fire. 
 
 "'There, too, is a young girl, fairer 
 to me than the fairest in all this French 
 capital, and yet the diamond in my 
 hostess' hair would buy her a hundred 
 gowns finer than she ever wore. That 
 girl is my sister. I cannot enjoy the 
 favor of your smiles and the benedic- 
 tion of your beauty while she sits there 
 in a homespun dress. 
 
7 8 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 "'And among those same blue Vir- 
 ginia hills I used to know a maiden — 
 but pardon me! I would serve any of 
 you ladies here to-night on my knees, 
 but I cannot take your praises — pardon 
 me — the odor of the roses has made 
 me faint ! ' 
 
 "And pressing his hands against his 
 temples, he staggered out of the room 
 and into the street before the astonished 
 company could recover their senses." 
 
THE GYPSY TRAIL. 
 
 79 
 
 THE GYPSY TRAIL 
 
 The white moth to the closing bine, 
 The bee to the opened clover, 
 
 The gypsy blood to the gypsy blood 
 Ever the wide world over. 
 
 — Kipling. 
 
 EVERY summer the gypsy band 
 made their camp on the trail which 
 wound like a snake from the pineries 
 of Maine to the orange groves of 
 Florida. 
 
 They were of the pure Romany 
 breed, who led the roving life of the 
 trail for the love of it, and 
 not a greasy band of loaf- 
 ers, come out of the city 
 because they were too lazy 
 to make a living in the 
 hive. Tall and dark and 
 straight were they, with regular fea- 
 tures and with long, black hair curling 
 
8o IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 to their shoulders under great-brimmed 
 hats — Romanies such as travellers say 
 make picturesque the villages and vint- 
 age-fields of Hungary. They some- 
 times traded horses and told fortunes, 
 but they didn't steal, and nothing was 
 too good for any visitor to their tents. 
 
 Their horses were as fleet as the 
 wind, and they were always ready 
 to race, for a good snug bet, with 
 any comer a-horse. The money they 
 picked up this way was not inconsid- 
 erable, but the pleasure they got out 
 of these trials of speed and mettle was 
 much more to them than the silver 
 pieces. 
 
 And they were always playing their 
 violins — playing when they came, play- 
 ing when they went away, and often 
 leaving a savory squirrel untouched 
 until it got cold because they had no 
 time to eat, they had an engagement 
 with their violins. Theirs was the 
 first orchestra I ever heard, and I still 
 think it was the best. 
 
THE GYPSY TRAIL. 8l 
 
 They used to pitch their tents in 
 the upper meadow by the big road 
 around the bend, above where the old 
 sugar-camp was, and sometimes they 
 would stay for two or three weeks, 
 and then, when the night was black, 
 they would creep away, playing their 
 low sad wails, plaintive beyond descrip- 
 tion, with a lad, not a gypsy, at least 
 in blood, following them sometimes 
 till the morning broke, wondering if 
 the golden harps, about which he had 
 heard, did not make some such music. 
 The thunder and roar of the great 
 bands and orchestras sound to his 
 grown-up ears like a hollow mockery 
 compared with his memory of the wail 
 of those three or four violins and a 
 flageolet by the sugar-camp when the 
 autumn night began to fall and those 
 wild creatures, with the light of un- 
 mixed Romany blood in their eyes, 
 bent low as though crooning to a babe 
 on the Hungary hills or the blue Dan- 
 ube, and caressed their instruments as 
 6 
 
82 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 though they were of their own flesh 
 and blood, while far away at some 
 farm house a dog howled and howled 
 as though his heart would break. 
 
 Sometimes they would sing words 
 like these, sitting with uncovered 
 heads w r hile the lights went out in the 
 tents: 
 
 The gypsy trail is over the earth, 
 And the winging bird his guide, 
 
 But like the stars his heart is true 
 Till back again at your side. 
 
 And if the night wind steals his soul, 
 
 And his body falls to clay, 
 His spirit wanders round the world, 
 „ And meets you at break of day. 
 
 O gypsy lass ! O gypsy lass ! 
 
 In the tent by the northern pine! 
 The sea gull waits for his mate in the cliff, 
 
 And the heart of the lad is thine. 
 
 Or sometimes a little song, of which 
 the following refrain only is remem- 
 bered — coming floating faintly back 
 accompanied by the low weird wail 
 
THE GYPSY TRAIL. 
 
 3 3 
 
 of the violin as the Romany put his 
 dark face down close to the bow : 
 
 The night is here, the horses wait, 
 
 O gypsy, come away ! 
 
 O gypsy, come away! 
 The time is here when wild birds mate, 
 
 O gypsy, come away ! 
 
 One evening there came to the tents 
 in the meadow a strange Romany on 
 a jaded horse, and wearing a costume 
 travel-stained, but finer than the rest, 
 and in the eyes of the lad who watched 
 him as he came galloping up to the 
 tents he rode like a prince. His som- 
 bre jacket was set off with a bit of rich 
 color, and there was gilt on his horse's 
 trappings. 
 
 His hair was long and black and 
 straight, and he was lithe and tall. 
 
 That night there was a gleam of 
 ugly knives out under the big sugar 
 trees, a death-grapple, and a sickening 
 thud on the earth — and the lad who 
 had heard and seen ran away to his 
 
8 4 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 home, frightened nearly to death, and 
 hid his head under the covers. 
 
 That night the dog at the farm 
 house on the hill far away howled all 
 the night long. 
 
 That night, also, the gypsies broke 
 camp and stole away, but there was 
 no sound of violin or flageolet ; and 
 with the rest, it was said, there rode, 
 tied to her saddle, a Romany lass who 
 had been called by the name of the 
 Gypsy Queen by the visitors to the 
 tents, because of her picturesque 
 beauty — rode with her hands bound 
 together and her limbs fastened to the 
 saddle, and the bridle of her horse 
 tied to another's saddle-girth. This 
 was the story told by a belated country- 
 man who claimed to have met them 
 far down the road beyond where the 
 little schoolhouse stood. 
 
 The next morning the strange horse- 
 man was found lying on his face under 
 the big sugars with three ugly gashes 
 in his side, his life having almost 
 
THE GYPSY TRAIL. 
 
 85 
 
 poured away in the rich blood that 
 soaked down into the black soil at the 
 roots of the trees. 
 
 He was picked up and carried to 
 the nearest house, and an effort made 
 to save his life. 
 
 On the third day the Romany lass, 
 who was known to the country people 
 
 thereabouts as the 
 Gypsy Queen, and 
 who had been car- 
 ried away tied to 
 her saddle, startled 
 the good people of 
 the farm house by 
 appearing at the door. She was made 
 welcome, and the tender touch of her 
 hand brought back to life the handsome 
 stranger, inch by inch, full strength 
 coming only with the coming spring. 
 When they went away the Romany 
 offered the household a handful of 
 gold, but they would accept only his 
 thanks over and over and his tears of 
 gratitude. 
 
86 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 The autumn came again, but the 
 gypsy tents were pitched no more in 
 the meadow by the sugar camp, and 
 since then the gypsy trail has been 
 deserted. The lad waited and waited 
 to hear the low sad wail of the Roman- 
 ies' violins and the moaning of the 
 lonesome hound on the distant hill, 
 but heard them no more save in mem- 
 ory, which catches the far away sound 
 now and then wafted on the air when 
 the twilight falls and memory sits 
 down and waits. 
 
 " For a boy's will is the wind's will, and the 
 thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." 
 
 Two or three years after the depart- 
 ure of the two gypsies, a letter was 
 received at the house where they had 
 been so tenderly cared for, bearing 
 a foreign stamp and the postmark of 
 Budapest. It contained a photograph 
 of two — yes, of three — and one was 
 a tiny Romany with hair and eyes and 
 mouth wondrous like thd lass who was 
 
THE GYPSY TRAIL. 
 
 87 
 
 called the queen of the gypsies by the 
 visitors to the tent on the old trail by 
 the sugar camp in the new Virginia. 
 The letter contained something of 
 much value besides the picture and 
 the words of tender affection and grat- 
 itude, and it was signed, 
 
 Louis Teleki. 
 
 And the mystic emblems at the 
 top of the paper made the people who 
 received it, and all the neighborhood, 
 hold even unto this day that they had 
 entertained unawares a genuine prince 
 of the old wandering and fighting 
 Magyar race. 
 
88 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 A LITERARY ATMOSPHERE 
 
 This is the story of a man who 
 undertook to follow 
 a Jekyll- and -Hyde 
 career of literature 
 and the law. 
 
 In the fall of 1891 
 a new sign was hung out in front of a 
 modest office in a West Virginia town, 
 reading : 
 
 Byrne Hillard, 
 
 Attorney-at-Law and Notary 
 
 Public. 
 
 Hillard was a young fellow who had 
 finished the law course a few months 
 before at the University, and had lo- 
 cated in a delightful old town in the 
 Ohio Valley, and was waiting for a 
 victim. But the town's population was 
 decorated with so many ex-governors, 
 
A LITERARY ATMOSPHERE. 
 
 89 
 
 and ex-judges, and ex-honorables, and 
 big railroad attorneys, that his name 
 was obscured by their brilliancy, and 
 the victims passed by on the other side. 
 
 Fortunately, he had inherited from a 
 long line of ancestors a marked talent 
 for taking things easy; indeed, there 
 had always been a streak of genius in 
 the family for sitting down and waiting, 
 and it had cropped out early in Byrne. 
 If all things come to him who waits, 
 there was no good reason why Hillard 
 should not have had a mortgage on the 
 earth in due time. But the ex-governor 
 across the street, the ex-judge around 
 on Court Square, and the big railroad 
 attorneys got the legal practice while 
 he got the practice in waiting, which 
 would probably prove very valuable to 
 him, as he seemed likely to have a good 
 deal of it to do. 
 
 One day it occurred to him that 
 while he was waiting for the big fellows 
 to die, and leave to him some of their 
 practice, he would write a novel — he 
 
gO IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 would follow in the footsteps of his dis- 
 tinguished fellow Virginian and fellow 
 lawyer, the writer of " Marse Chan," 
 and become an Author. (In his opin- 
 ion it ought always to be written with 
 a big A.) 
 
 Having once contracted the fever to 
 make a book, nothing but death or 
 matrimony will cure it, and, in Hillard's 
 case, neither of these physicians seemed 
 near at hand. Publishers sometimes 
 try to sweat the fever out of the patient 
 suffering with this dread disease, but 
 death is the only thing this side of 
 matrimony that will cure the malady. 
 
 It was a bad case with the poor 
 fellow from the start, and constantly 
 grew worse. In his feverish dreams he 
 could see his name in big letters on the 
 title page, and hear people introduce 
 him as " our rising young Author and 
 lawyer." 
 
 Perhaps he inherited a taint of this 
 disease, for his great, great uncle on 
 his mother's side (who was a Plympton 
 
A LITERARY ATMOSPHERE. gi 
 
 of Surry county, and related to the 
 Braxtons) had written "A Treatise on 
 the Culture of Mint." The manuscript 
 of this valuable work was found after 
 the old gentleman's death, and was 
 purchased by the Virginia legislature 
 and published at public expense for the 
 benefit of all of the gentlemen of the 
 Commonwealth. A few rare copies of it 
 may still be found. It contains that 
 celebrated declaration, which shares the 
 honors with the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, that " mint will grow to per- 
 fection only on the grave of a good 
 Virginian. " 
 
 Another ancestor (also a Plympton, 
 had written a poem in forty-two cantos 
 of blank verse on "The Pleasures of 
 Domestic Life on a Virginia Planta- 
 tion, with Some Reflections on the 
 Education of Youth." This disserta- 
 tion possessed the merit of having the 
 right number of syllables in each line, 
 and r moreover, each line began with a 
 capital letter. These two reasons justi- 
 
9 2 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 fied the author and her friends in calling 
 it poetry. Unfortunately, this great 
 poem was never published, for it was 
 not the proper thing in those days for 
 high ladies to become authors of any- 
 thing except the most charming and 
 lengthy letters, some of which were 
 equal to Jefferson's state papers in dig- 
 nity and in pureness of diction. 
 
 And so, possessing the inherited 
 genius of being able to wait patiently 
 for his law practice, and the likewise 
 inherited taste and talent for mint julep 
 and poetry, Hillard naturally fell an 
 early and easy victim to the literary 
 fever. 
 
 But taste and talent — even genius — 
 count for nothing in themselves. To 
 be able to turn a couplet or write an 
 acceptable story, one must have dilated 
 his nostrils for a reasonable length of 
 time in a literary atmosphere. Byrne 
 Hillard had read this in several Boston 
 publications and knew it was true, and 
 he further knew that a chemical test 
 
A LITERARY ATMOSPHERE. g<2 
 
 would reveal about every other ingre- 
 dient except the literary in the atmos- 
 phere of the town in which he was 
 preparing to begin his career as an able 
 lawyer and famous author — his dual 
 existence. 
 
 It was a desperate situation. There 
 were plenty of people in the town who 
 had good libraries and read them, who 
 took the magazines for the articles and 
 not for the pictures, and whose opinions 
 on a new book were likely to be true 
 and fresh; but as they had breathed 
 common West Virginia air all of their 
 lives, and not a literary atmosphere, 
 they, of course, could make no claim 
 to being even on the fringed edges 
 of the literary world. 
 
 Hillard realized that this was a diffi- 
 culty which must be overcome before 
 he could even venture to select a title 
 for his novel, and so he evolved an origi- 
 nal scheme. He proceeded to connect 
 himself with certain great literary cen- 
 tres by means of sympathetic currents ; 
 
94 
 
 IX THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 that is, he undertook to establish direct 
 communication between himself and a 
 dozen distinguished authors by means 
 of Uncle Sam's admirable postal service. 
 He thought that if he could not go to 
 the mountain he could bring the moun- 
 tain to him. 
 
 From an abundance of riches he se- 
 lected twelve towering names and ad- 
 dressed to each of them the following 
 letter : 
 
 W. Va., Dec. i, 1891. 
 
 Do you think it advisable for a young man who 
 lives far removed from the outer limits of the liter- 
 ary atmosphere to undertake any literary work ? 
 What can be done to overcome this disadvantage ? 
 Also, I beg you to do me the honor to glance at 
 the enclosed verses, which I wrote while in school, 
 and kindly tell me if there is any merit in them. 
 
 I have adopted the law as a profession, but find 
 time in the midst of my practice to devote an occa- 
 sional hour to the higher pursuit of literature. 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 Byrne Hillard. 
 P. S. — I enclose stamp for reply. 
 
 B. H. 
 
 The first answer received was not 
 
A LITERARY ATMOSPHERE. 
 
 95 
 
 especially encouraging. It was this, 
 printed on a neat little slip of paper : 
 
 Boston, Dec. 5, 1891. 
 Dr. Homos regrets that he is not able to answer 
 all of the inquiries that come to him from unknown 
 friends, and must beg to be excused. 
 
 Nor was the second any more inspir- 
 ing : 
 
 New York, Dec. 6, '91. 
 Mr. Byrne Hi I lard : 
 
 Dear Sir — In answer to your inquiry let me say 
 that I do not see why you might not be able to induce 
 the government rain -makers to turn their attention 
 to the problem which troubles you. If they can 
 produce rain they ought to be able to create at short 
 notice almost any kind of atmosphere desired. In- 
 deed, I think they may have in stock one that might 
 exactly suit the needs of your town. 
 Yours, etc., 
 
 Julius Haw Thorne. 
 
 The letter was written with a type- 
 writer, but was redeemed by an auto- 
 graph signature. Hillard clipped off 
 the name, and, making a little ball of 
 the rest of the letter, he threw it indig- 
 nantly into the fire. 
 
q6 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 The next was better : 
 
 New York, Dec. 6, '91. 
 Mr. Byrne Hillard — If you have the literary 
 taste and talent, the surroundings do not matter so 
 much. If it is in your brain and heart, 'tis better 
 than for your neighbor to have it or for it to be in 
 the atmosphere. 
 
 As for your verses, I find some promising lines in 
 them. Sincerely yours, 
 
 E. C. Steadyman. 
 
 Hillard read this letter a half dozen 
 times at least, and said to himself : " In 
 my opinion, Steadyman is the ablest 
 critic this country has produced. " 
 
 The next day he got the following: 
 
 Boston, Dec. 6, '96. 
 [Dictated.] 
 
 Dear Sir — I suppose your letter is another 
 autograph-hunting scheme. Not having courage 
 enough to ask for what you want, you try to obtain 
 it by false pretenses. 
 
 There was no signature to this, and, 
 as he had several Boston names on his 
 list, he was a little in doubt as to who 
 the writer was. 
 
A LITERARY ATMOSPHERE. Q>7 
 
 The next letter from Boston contained 
 the true Bostonic idea, and read : 
 
 Boston, 9 Dec, 
 
 Byrne Hillard, Esq.: 
 
 Dear Sir — The only remedy I zzm suggest is 
 for you to move to Boston. Yours, etc., 
 
 T. Baldrich. 
 
 Then the answers quit coming. He 
 was sure that he would get a reply from 
 Mr. Powells, for he had added a few 
 extra lines to the letter which he had 
 sent to the celebrated novelist, in which 
 he paid a compliment to that author's 
 "Fall of Simon Lapsus/' "A Choctaw 
 Winter," and " Hazardous Misfor- 
 tunes." 
 
 But Mr. Powells never answered . 
 likewise, Mr. Fawton and Mr. Stockett. 
 
 Hillard's attempt to connect himself 
 with the great literary centres by the 
 mail service had not proved to be a 
 brilliant success. He had made a col- 
 lection of three or four autographs, but 
 he could not notice that they added any 
 
 7 
 
g8 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 decided literary flavor to the atmos- 
 phere of the town. Perhaps it was 
 because he kept them carefully locked 
 up in his desk along with his diploma 
 and other sacred things. 
 
 Meanwhile, the ex-governors and the 
 ex-judges, and the ex-honorables, and 
 the big railroad lawyers continued to 
 carry off the law practice. 
 
 Hillard finally came to the conclusion 
 that a home-made literary atmosphere 
 would be much better than an imported 
 one anyhow, and that it didn't make a 
 bit of difference whether Powells and 
 the rest of them answered his letters or 
 not. He would proceed at once with 
 his novel, and at the same time would 
 attempt to organize a literary club in 
 the town. 
 
 He had no difficulty in getting a 
 dozen women and a half dozen men of 
 education and culture to compose a 
 club, which they called the Lanier 
 Circle, and which met every two weeks. 
 Hillard was elected president of it, and 
 
A LITERARY ATMOSPHERE. 
 
 99 
 
 held the office until — but that's later 
 on. 
 
 One of the members of the club was 
 Miss Stover, a most estimable lady, 
 born in Virginia and reared in West 
 Virginia, although she had always lived 
 in the same town, but thirty or thirty- 
 five years only ripen the mind for lit- 
 erary appreciation. Moreover, Miss 
 Stover had an aunt who was supposed 
 to be " connected " with one of the New 
 York magazines. 
 
 Miss Stover was elected secretary of 
 the Lanier Circle, attended regularly, 
 and manifested a sympathetic interest 
 in Hillard's effort to replace some of 
 the ordinary West Virginia ozone with 
 a more literary sort. 
 
 Very naturally, the first subject dis- 
 cussed was the great need of an organ- 
 ization of this character and the pov- 
 erty of the place in respect of these 
 things. Miss Stover and two or three 
 other members feared at first that a 
 breath might blow over from Bohemia, 
 
IOO IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 which, of course, would be very shock- 
 ing, but the decision of the Circle, 
 after mature deliberation, was that a 
 literary atmosphere did not necessar- 
 ily imply the odor of cigarettes and 
 cheese sandwiches and an acquaint- 
 ance with the soiled edges of society. 
 
 The Lanier Circle rolled along nicely, 
 and Hillard soon began to find breath 
 suitable for his nostrils. The waiting 
 for his law practice continued good, 
 and at last he began his novel. Of 
 course, the Lanier Circle knew of it, 
 and was full of delight and pride — and 
 suggestions. 
 
 Miss Stover hoped he would give it 
 plenty of local color, but there seemed 
 a good deal of uncertainty as to what 
 its complexion would be. 
 
 When the first five or six chapters 
 were finished, Hillard read them to 
 the Circle. It lacked "intensity," was 
 the only criticism. There was not 
 ardor and glow enough. There was 
 not feeling enough — not enough" soul- 
 
A LITERARY ATMOSPHERE. JOI 
 
 yearning/' as one of the members 
 put it. 
 
 But Miss Stover thought that it 
 was "perfectly lovely," adding that she 
 was sure the closing chapters would be 
 less cold. 
 
 A week or two later, Hillard received 
 the following mysterious letter: 
 
 Office of the Woman's Bloomer, 
 New York, Aug. 4. 
 Mr. Byrne Hillard : 
 
 Dear Sir — I am sure you will pardon this letter 
 when I tell you that I am much interested in the 
 success of the Lanier Circle, and have kept posted as 
 to its proceedings from the beginning. Its object is 
 a most worthy as well as a most delightful one, and 
 if I can be of any service to the Circle, please do not 
 hesitate to call upon me. 
 
 I am especially pleased to hear (you must not 
 ask how I heard it) that you are engaged in a crea- 
 tive literary work, and that it gives promise of such 
 great success. 
 
 Having said this much, you will permit me to pre- 
 sume on my age and experience in the literary life 
 to offer a little advice. I am firm in the belief that 
 no great novel or poem can be written by one who 
 has not been deeply moved by the divine passion 
 of love. It is a fundamental law of literature. 
 
102 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 There is no escaping it. No exception to this 
 rule worthy of consideration can be pointed out. 
 
 Art is not cold. The highest art burns like fire. 
 No author can write of love or life unless he knows 
 what it is — for love and life are one and the same 
 thing. 
 
 I am told that your story reveals remarkable 
 talent, but that one thing is lacking. 
 Think upon what I have said. 
 
 Your well-wisher, 
 (Mrs.) Anastasia Caroline Binner, 
 
 Associate editor Woman's Bloomer, 
 
 The budding young novelist didn't 
 quite know what to make of this. 
 Who was Mrs. Anastasia Caroline Bin- 
 ner, anyhow? And how did she know 
 anything about him? And so he must 
 either curb his literary ambitions or 
 hunt up a girl and proceed deliberately 
 and with malice aforethought to- fall 
 in love with her! 
 
 How was he to find her? He might 
 advertise in the town papers, stating 
 his wants and submitting plans and 
 specifications of the sort of girl desired. 
 
 And ought he to warn her of the 
 impending disaster when he met her? 
 
A LITERARY ATMOSPHERE. 
 
 I0 3 
 
 How long would it likely take him 
 to fall deeply enough in love so that 
 he could proceed safely with his novel ? 
 
 And having gotten in once, how was 
 he to get out? 
 
 He might stand it, but what was 
 the poor victim to do? 
 
 If he took this course of bichloride- 
 of-love treatment for literary coldness, 
 would he have to re-write the fftst 
 half-dozen chapters of his story, or 
 could he work enough soul-yearning 
 into the last half to make a good aver- 
 age for all? 
 
 Perhaps it would depend upon the 
 quantity of the medicine taken. 
 
 And while Mrs. Anastasia Caroline 
 Binner was so kind as to prescribe the 
 remedy, free of cost, why didn't she 
 pick out the victim for him while she 
 was at it ? 
 
 These, and many other questions, 
 occurred to him as he pondered this 
 problem of love and literature. 
 
 Suddenly he remembered that once 
 
104 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 upon a time he had heard somebody 
 say that Miss Stover had an aunt in 
 New York who was connected with a 
 woman's magazine. 
 
 And scales two inches thick fell 
 from his eyes ! 
 
 "Oh, ho ! This literary atmosphere 
 seems to be having its effect/' said 
 Hillard, as he threw Mrs. Anastasia 
 Caroline Binner's valuable autograph 
 letter into the waste basket. 
 
 Then he went to his desk, took out 
 the manuscript of his story and read 
 it critically, and came to the painful 
 conclusion that the Lanier Circle 
 critics were right. 
 
 "But I'm not going to fall in love 
 just for the literary value of it," he said. 
 
 "It would be like loving a girl for 
 her money. I'm getting disgusted 
 with this whole business, and guess I'll 
 go up to Dora's and have some music." 
 
 And Dora — who was Dora? 
 
 She wasn't a member of the Lanier 
 Circle, and wasn't worried at all about 
 
A LITERARY ATMOSPHERE. IOC 
 
 the atmosphere of the place, but she 
 was the prettiest girl in the town and 
 her — but that was enough distinction 
 for one girl, for that old town was 
 blest above the cities of the earth in 
 this particular. 
 
 During July and August the Circle 
 suspended operations, and Hillard's 
 manuscript was also allowed to rest un- 
 disturbed. He argued with himself 
 that the kind of warmth he would be 
 likely to work into it during the dog 
 days would hardly be the kind advised 
 by Mrs. Anastasia Caroline Binner, as- 
 sociate editor of the Woman s Bloomer. 
 
 And then lounging on the big broad 
 piazza at Dora's was a much more 
 agreeable occupation. 
 
 Miss Stover inquired of him fre- 
 quently about his novel, and assured 
 him of her great interest in his liter- 
 ary ambitions, but these ambitions 
 remained stuck away in a pigeonhole 
 with the manuscript. 
 
 Two miles below the town there is 
 
I06 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 an island, rich in romance and story. 
 Once it was the scene of a gigantic plot 
 against the government; now its soil 
 of marvelous richness yields treasures 
 of corn and wheat, and, in the balmy 
 summer nights, men and maidens dance 
 and swing and make love under the 
 great oaks that grow by the water's 
 edge. Art has not builded there 
 gravel walks nor luxuriant summer 
 houses, but the green willows wave a 
 welcome to the sun-scorched city and 
 the tall sycamores invite to swing from 
 their leopard branches. 
 
 Of the famous old mansion which 
 long years ago was presided over by a 
 mistress of celebrated beauty and cul- 
 ture, there remain only a few founda- 
 tion stones, some pieces of furniture, 
 and the deep old well, over which it is 
 said, if troth be plighted, fortune and 
 happiness will follow. 
 
 When the Lanier Circle began to re- 
 volve again in September, it had its 
 first meeting on this island, and cele- 
 
A LITERARY ATMOSPHERE. 
 
 I07 
 
 brated the event by inviting a number of 
 outsiders and making it a social affair. 
 There was dancing in the pavilion, 
 swinging and bowling. 
 
 Hillard and Dora strolled over to- 
 wards the old well, and were gone so 
 long that the literary feature of the 
 outing was delayed. 
 
 When they returned to the pavilion 
 Hillard directed the programme in a 
 distracted manner, and when it was 
 finished he announced to the Circle 
 his resignation as its president, giving 
 as his reason that he intended to begin 
 at once the earnest practice of the 
 law, giving it henceforth his entire 
 time and attention, adding that his 
 success in his first suit, during the re- 
 cent term of court, had encouraged 
 him to drop everything else. 
 
 And there was but one person on 
 the island who kn^w that he had ever 
 had a suit, and she blushed the color 
 of the sun which at that moment was 
 going down beyond the Ohio hills. 
 
ioS 
 
 IX THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 HIS LAST CAMPAIGN 
 
 I TAKE great pleasure in introduc- 
 ing to you the only real, live genius I 
 
 ever knew. And 
 he is dead. When 
 he died he had 
 the largest funer- 
 al ever given to a 
 private citizen in 
 the Vi r ginias. 
 His age was any- 
 where from sixty to one hundred and 
 ten, and those who had known him for 
 a generation said he had never been any 
 younger. He certainly never got any 
 older. In his earlier days he had pre- 
 tended to preach. In his later days 
 he had pretended to practice at the 
 law. He was always pretending to 
 run for office. But he never really 
 
HIS LAST CAMPAIGN. 
 
 IO9 
 
 preached, or practiced law, or held an 
 office — and his name was Uncle Billy 
 Stokes. 
 
 Uncle Billy was the great original 
 Office Seeker. There was never 
 known to be a convention of either 
 party in his county at which he 
 did not offer himself as a candidate 
 for some office. He always nominated 
 himself, dwelling at length upon his 
 imagined public services and his pecul- 
 iar fitness for the particular office to 
 which he aspired at that particular 
 time. If the office required a knowl- 
 edge of the law he would say : 
 
 " My Fellow Citizens — It does not become 
 me to speak of my own superior attainments, and 
 I need only remind you that I attended the Har- 
 vard Law School (he really never read a law book 
 in his life) they know everything there, they told 
 it to me and I remembered it." 
 
 If the office required executive abil- 
 ity, he would ask them to recall his 
 firm and brilliant administration of 
 the affairs of state when he " had the 
 
HO IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 honor to be governor of the common- 
 wealth." 
 
 If the particular office to which 
 Uncle Billy aspired was a legislative 
 one, he would button his old long coat 
 about him, mount the platform, and 
 begin by saying : 
 
 " My Countrymen — When your humble 
 servant and John Randolph had the honor of rep- 
 resenting this great commonwealth in the Senate 
 of the United States," etc. 
 
 Everybody humored the old man, 
 and a speech by him was a fixed fea- 
 ture of every political convention held 
 in the town of M — - for many years. 
 Some of his old friends usually gave 
 him two or three complimentary votes 
 in convention, which pleased him great- 
 ly, and he would talk of the " enthu- 
 siastic support/' which invariably came 
 to him and of the faithfulness and 
 firmness with which his friends stood 
 by him " regardless of party." 
 
 When there were no conventions to 
 attend in his own county, he would 
 
HIS LAST CAMPAIGN. I I I 
 
 often visit an adjoining county, and 
 deliver the same speeches there. And 
 he was always a welcome visitor, for 
 he was so unique and so pompous with 
 his long-tailed coat and his old silk hat 
 of the vintage of a former generation. 
 And so it came about that Uncle Billy 
 Stokes, the Office Seeker, was the 
 best known man in that part of the 
 State. 
 
 On one occasion, at a county con- 
 vention, he created something of a 
 sensation by announcing that he had 
 decided not to be a candidate for sher- 
 iff at that time although, he said, he 
 knew that the office was easily within 
 his reach, because, he said, " My old 
 friend Colonel Howe is a candidate, 
 and as he was my efficient clerk when 
 I was judge of this circuit many years 
 ago, I will not stand in his way. I 
 yield to the demands of my higher na- 
 ture and withdraw in favor of my old 
 and faithful friend, Colonel Howe." 
 And when Howe was nominated Uncle 
 
H2 EH THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 Billy was sure that his own magnanim- 
 ity had made it possible. 
 
 The opposing party held their con- 
 vention on the following Saturday, and 
 our old friend was there, of course. 
 When nominations for the office of 
 sheriff were called for, he took the 
 platform by the side of the chairman, 
 and begged leave to announce that he 
 had decided to decline to run, for the 
 reason that his old friend, Judge Wil- 
 son, with whom he had served in Con- 
 gress so many years, and with such 
 close and pleasant relations, was a can- 
 didate. He therefore hoped that it 
 would be the pleasure of the conven- 
 tion to nominate Judge Wilson, and 
 that both he and Colonel Howe might 
 be elected. It so happened, however, 
 that neither had that honor, for the 
 Populists run in a candidate and beat 
 both Wilson and Howe. 
 
 These were the only two occasions 
 on which he ever " declined to run." 
 On all others he was a candidate, and 
 
HIS LAST CAMPAIGN. 1 1 * 
 
 was always satisfied with the two or 
 three votes which he was certain to 
 receive. 
 
 Uncle Billy had his political head- 
 quarters, too, like all great statesmen, 
 all the year round, where he planned 
 his campaigns, and from which he sent 
 out orders to his lieutenants. These 
 headquarters were on a well-whittled 
 store-box in a dingy little general store 
 across the street from the courthouse, 
 and in Chancery Row, so called be- 
 cause two lawyers besides Uncle Billy 
 had their offices there. I say besides 
 Uncle Billy, for he had a sign out 
 over the side door of the store which 
 read : 
 
 Patrick Henry Stokes, 
 Attorney-at-Law. 
 
 Although, as I have said, he had 
 never read a law book, and, of course, 
 had never been admitted to the bar. 
 Nobody knew whether his name was 
 really Patrick Henry or William, but 
 8 
 
ii4 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 he always called himself the former, 
 and everybody else always called him 
 Uncle Billy. 
 
 This old store-box was the scene of 
 many an interesting event in the polit- 
 ical and social life of the village. Here 
 
 Judge B— , 
 Col. McG— , 
 Dr. K— and 
 other choice 
 spirits met 
 nightly in the 
 winter time 
 and talk politics 
 and with Uncle 
 Billy, who was the best spider player 
 of them all, and who was permitted 
 also by common consent to pass 
 final judgment on all questions of 
 political issue. Here it was, as I have 
 said, that he organized his political 
 campaigns. As soon as one election 
 was over he began to get ready for 
 the next. He would say to his friends 
 about him, from his seat on the store- 
 
 to play dominoes, 
 with one another 
 
HIS LAST CAMPAIGN. 
 
 IJ 5 
 
 box, while the game of dominoes pro- 
 gressed : 
 
 "My Friends — And I am happy to call 
 you all my friends — I have been approached 
 by a number of prominent gentlemen to-day, re- 
 gardless of party, and solicited to permit my name 
 to be used two years from now as a candidate for 
 the legislature, and whilst I appreciate the com- 
 pliment I have said to them that whilst I have no 
 political aspirations or ambitions, I am in the hands 
 of my friends, and would not refuse the call of my 
 countrymen to serve them. I do not think it be- 
 coming in one who has been so often honored with 
 the trust and confidence of his fellow citizens to 
 refuse to obey when duty calls, but I have said to 
 all my friends to-day that such a nomination must 
 come wholly unsolicited upon my part. A gentle- 
 man of my standing and services to his country 
 could not, of course, consent to become a candidate 
 in the vulgar sense for any office in the gift of the 
 people. At the earnest solicitation, therefore, of 
 many friends, representing all parties, I have re- 
 luctantly given my partial consent to represent this 
 county in the legislature two years hence." 
 
 Then everybody would stop playing 
 dominoes long enough to pledge him 
 his support. 
 
 Thus his campaign for the legisla- 
 
Il6 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 ture would be inaugurated, but it was 
 more than likely that before a week 
 had passed Uncle Billy would forget 
 that he was getting ready to run for 
 the house of delegates, and would 
 announce to his assembled friends 
 about the store-box that he was in 
 receipt of numerous letters from all 
 parts of the state urging him to accept 
 the nomination for governor, which he 
 had very reluctantly, and much against 
 his inclination, consented to do. 
 
 And everybody would stop playing 
 dominoes and crowd around him with 
 the usual pledges of support. 
 
 One evening Uncle Billy went as 
 usual to the store to resume his dom- 
 inoes, and his political discussions with 
 his friends Judge B — , Col. McG — , 
 Dr. K — , and the rest. The store was 
 closed, and the proprietor could not 
 be found. He had gone out of town, 
 and had taken the key with him. He 
 had not been courteous enough to leave 
 even an excuse or an apology. Uncle 
 
HIS LAST CAMPAIGN. ny 
 
 Billy was righteously indignant. Such 
 an outrage on the rights of the people 
 had never been committed or dreamed 
 of in the village. The audacity of the 
 act lay in the fact that the owner of 
 the store was also the mayor of the vil- 
 lage, and his closing the store for one 
 whole evening, without their knowl- 
 edge or consent, was considered by all 
 of the domino-politicians, and espe- 
 cially Uncle Billy, as an act of tyranny 
 which could not be endured in silence. 
 Some practical jokers fed the fires of 
 Uncle Billy's wrath with incendiary re- 
 marks, and proposed that an indigna- 
 tion meeting of the citizens of M — be 
 called at once. Some small boys caught 
 up the idea, and, with Uncle Billy's ap- 
 proval, they ran to the old courthouse 
 and began ringing the bell. 
 
 Now, the ringing of the courthouse 
 bell was a most significant and impor- 
 tant event in that town, and in ten 
 minutes half the population at least 
 had assembled at the square to see 
 
Il8 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 what the matter was. The practi- 
 cal jokers from about the foot of the 
 store-box throne of the Office Seeker 
 were mixed in the crowd, one of them 
 with a string of resolutions in his 
 pocket hastily scribbled down. Uncle 
 Billy called the house to order, and 
 made a speech in which he told the 
 people that their liberties were threat- 
 ened, and their rights were being 
 trampled under the feet of tyrants. 
 The storekeeper-mayor was compared 
 to Caesar, George III., Nero, Caligula, 
 the Czar of all the Russias, and the 
 rest of the tyrants of history. "When 
 I had the honor to be mayor of this 
 town," said the speaker, " every citizen 
 had his inalienable rights sacredly pre- 
 served, and I can see in the faces before 
 me a call to again assume the duties 
 of that high and responsible office. ,, 
 When he sat down, the joker, with 
 his resolutions in his pocket, pulled 
 them out, and read them and moved 
 that they be adopted. They resolved 
 
HIS LAST CAMPAIGN. ug 
 
 that the country was rapidly drifting 
 in a merciless current towards Csesar- 
 ism, and expressed the opinion that 
 the beheading of tyrants was the chief 
 end of man. 
 
 The crowd saw the joke, and adopted 
 the bloody resolutions unanimously. 
 It was a proud hour for Uncle Billy, 
 and one to which he often referred, 
 but the next evening he took his place 
 as usual on the store-box, and an- 
 nounced to his friends, the mayor in- 
 cluded, that he had yielded to the 
 demands of this crisis in the history of 
 the town, and had consented to allow 
 himself to be elected mayor at the 
 next election. 
 
 It was about a year after this epi- 
 sode that the Office Seeker made his 
 last campaign. He had not been able 
 to occupy his accustomed place in the 
 grocery with the regularity of former 
 times, but the game of dominoes went 
 on, and, whenever he was able to 
 be present, the "boys" showed him 
 
120 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 unusual attention, for they all liked the 
 half-witted, kind-hearted old man and 
 humored his every wish. He had an- 
 nounced to his own select circle, as 
 usual, that he had yielded to the earn- 
 est solicitations of his friends, and had 
 consented to run for the legislature. 
 
 Then the Domino Club laid a 
 scheme. They determined to humor 
 the poor old fellow by securing his 
 nomination. The nominating conven- 
 tion was to be a mass meeting of voters, 
 and the Domino Club went forth 
 quietly and visited every neighbor- 
 hood in the county, telling their friends 
 confidentially that they simply wanted 
 to give Uncle Billy enough com- 
 plimentary votes in convention to 
 please his vanity, as it was not proba- 
 ble that the old man would be able to 
 attend many more conventions. 
 
 When convention day came the old 
 courthouse was crowded. The first 
 order of business, after appointing the 
 usual committees, was the nomination 
 
HIS LAST CAMPAIGN. 121 
 
 of a candidate for the house of dele- 
 gates. The name of a young lawyer 
 was presented by a country school 
 teacher, in an eloquent speech, and 
 then Uncle Billy went tottering up to 
 the platform. His long coat was out 
 at the elbows more than usual and 
 fringed at the bottom, and his voice 
 was thin and cracked, but he was as 
 erect as any man in the house. He 
 made the same little speech which he 
 had made so many times on like occa- 
 sions, alluding to his great public serv- 
 ices and the demand of the people 
 that he consent to take up the bur- 
 den of office once more. 
 
 Judge B— and Col. McG— both 
 spoke in his behalf, and when the 
 ballots were counted, everybody ex- 
 cept the Domino Club, was amazed to 
 hear the chairman announce that 
 William Stokes was the nominee of 
 the Democratic party for the house of 
 
 delegates for the county of . 
 
 No, not everybody — Uncle Billy him- 
 
122 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 self seemed to take it as a matter of 
 course. He thanked the convention, 
 and assured them that Patrick Henry 
 Stokes would never betray the high 
 trust imposed. 
 
 That night he held a reception about 
 his political throne on the old store- 
 box in Chancery Row, and told mar- 
 velous stories of his public services as 
 governor, judge, senator, and legislator 
 — stories woven out of a disordered 
 mind, but patiently heard by pitying 
 friends. 
 
 He was not present at his usual 
 place the next night, nor the next, and 
 his old friends hunted him up in his 
 miserable quarters and found him un- 
 able to leave his bed. They gave him 
 every attention, and he lingered for 
 several weeks, talking constantly of 
 what he would do for the people of 
 his countv and commonwealth when 
 he got back to the legislature. 
 
 For the last day or two he lay un- 
 conscious, but on the evening when he 
 
HIS LAST CAMPAIGN. 
 
 123 
 
 stepped across the river, which for him 
 had narrowed down to a thread, they 
 heard him say : 
 
 "Mr. Speaker, when last I had the 
 honor to represent my county in this 
 body" — and the old Office Seeker slept. 
 
 His funeral was the largest ever seen 
 in that part of the State. The court- 
 house bell was tolled, the Domino 
 Club acted as pall bearers for their old 
 friend, and a stone was erected above 
 his grave by public subscription. The 
 other day, in strolling through the little 
 cemetery at M — , I found it, and read 
 thereon these words : 
 
 UNCLE BILLY, 
 
 HE HAS MADE HIS LAST CAMPAIGN. 
 
 
 ---=^gf^ 
 
124 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 A TALE OF FOURTH 
 STREET 
 
 FOURTH street is Cincinnati's stylish 
 promenade. Nowhere are there su- 
 perber women or 
 smarter turnouts. The 
 wealth of Clifton and 
 the elegance of Wal- 
 nut Hills may be seen 
 there any bright after- 
 noon. The thorough 
 gentleman feels like 
 walking hat in hand 
 from Main street to 
 Elm. But these fine 
 not notice him if he 
 glorious shops are on 
 
 ladies would 
 did, for the 
 Fourth street. 
 
 A few years ago a lad left his hard 
 and barren home in the Big Sandy 
 
A TALE OF FOURTH STREET. I2C 
 
 country and found his way to the 
 Queen City. He was upon no errand, 
 and he had no definite object in view, 
 but he felt that there must be better 
 things in the world than this starved 
 life of the hills. But his ideas were 
 very vague and uncertain. Books had 
 not been his, and the tender touches 
 of culture were not felt in his home. 
 But he knew that it could not be so 
 everywhere. There could not be so 
 much beauty in river and hill and sun 
 and sky and none in human life. So 
 with the next timber rise he went with 
 the raftsmen, and by and by found 
 himself in the great city. It was 
 night. The splendor of the lights, the 
 shops and the throngs dazzled him. 
 For half the night he tramped the 
 streets, lost in wonder. It was a new 
 world to him. He stood at the base 
 of the Cathedral and watched it rise 
 above him like one of his own hills 
 crowned with a giant poplar shorn of 
 its limbs. He heard the music from 
 
126 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 the concert halls. He saw the great 
 folks drive by in their carriages home 
 from the theaters. Then he went 
 back down to the river's edge, and slept 
 with the raftsmen till morning. His 
 companions left him, returning to their 
 homes and to the life in the Big Sandy 
 country with which they were full con- 
 tent, but he was not lonesome. Even 
 the odors from the gutters were sweet 
 to him. In the wild intoxication of 
 these new scenes he felt that even the 
 granite pavements and the great stone 
 buildings were his companions, and 
 these fine ladies on Fourth street his 
 friends. For was he not walking the 
 same street with them? Was he not 
 almost touching their soft garments? 
 Was he not enveloped with the per- 
 fume that blew from their lace hand- 
 kerchiefs? Was he not in the very 
 shadow of their white parasols? 
 Could he not hear their voices — voices 
 such as he had supposed were to be 
 heard only in dreams — voices sweeter 
 
A TALE OF FOURTH STREET. 
 
 127 
 
 than the thrush-song, to which he had 
 listened many a morning long? And 
 could he not feast his eyes on them 
 until he was drunk with delight ? 
 
 Surely they would not care, for they 
 would not notice him, they would not 
 even see him. 
 
 It was something more than the 
 completely satisfying of his great and 
 untutored love for the beautiful. He 
 felt for the first time in his life the 
 benediction that falls from a beautiful 
 woman's face. 
 
 Thus for days this lad from the 
 mountains was the happiest being in 
 all the city. He did not see the rag- 
 pickers and the beggars. He ate and 
 slept among rough men down by the 
 river, but he cared not for them, and it 
 cost but little. 
 
 At the end of a week he discovered, 
 however, that the little money he had 
 saved, with which to see the world, 
 was nearly all gone. Then he began 
 to look for work. 
 
128 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 The granite pavements and the 
 great stone buildings did not seem to 
 be his companions now, and the fine 
 ladies on Fourth street were not his 
 friends. He did not notice the per- 
 fumes from their lace handkerchiefs, 
 and, when their soft gowns brushed by, 
 they seemed to sweep him off the 
 street. He realized that he had not a 
 friend in the city, where six days be- 
 fore everybody and everything were 
 his friends. He asked for work street 
 by street, and from shop to shop. His 
 feet were sore and his heart was sick. 
 He tried the gardens in the suburbs 
 and the great stores in the city. No- 
 body wanted him. There was nothing 
 that he could do. He thought of go- 
 ing back to his old life among the 
 hills, but he would rather die than do 
 that, so he searched on. 
 
 One day, tired out with fruitless 
 search, he leaned against a post on 
 Fourth street, wondering what to do 
 next. The day was fair and the 
 
A TALE OF FOURTH STREET. I2Q 
 
 street was thronged. He felt now that 
 he hated all of these fine people, and 
 his hatred grew bitter and desperate. 
 What right had they to be so happy? 
 Was the world made for them alone ? 
 Was there no room in all this big town 
 for him ? 
 
 Two ladies passed by. One of them 
 dropped her handkerchief. He picked 
 it up, ran after her, and handed it to 
 her. She smiled and thanked him. 
 And such a smile ! He had never 
 seen anything so sweet before, 
 and her. voice was something to 
 remember. When she turned to 
 thank him, he saw a face fairer 
 than the flowers that grew by the 
 brook on the mountain side, and he 
 was almost sure that her gloved fin- 
 gers touched his great rough hand as 
 she took the dainty bit of lace. She 
 did not know that she had touched 
 his coarse hand, but it thrilled him 
 with a strange delight. 
 
 Then he said to himself: "No, 
 9 
 
i 3 o 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 I will not go back to the hills; I 
 would rather die here than to do 
 that." 
 
 Again he tramped the streets in 
 search of work — anything that rough 
 but willing hands could do, but every 
 day he went back to Fourth street, and 
 eagerly scanned the faces that crowded 
 by him. She was not among them. 
 The hope of seeing that face again had 
 given him strength to continue his 
 hunt for a place where he might earn 
 enough to pay for his miserable lodg- 
 
 ings. 
 
 Once he saw her step into a carriage 
 driven by a stiff coachman, and watched 
 them go down the street and become 
 lost in the crowd. 
 
 This was enough to nerve him for 
 another week's search, and, at the end 
 of it, he had succeeded in getting a 
 place with an old man who kept a 
 curious junkshop down at the west 
 end of Fifth street. Meanwhile he 
 had gone every day to his favorite 
 
A TALE OF FOURTH STREET 1^1 
 
 spot at Race and Fourth, and watched 
 and waited for the one face in the 
 world which any longer had any attrac- 
 tion for him. The other fine ladies 
 were now as unnoticed by him as he 
 was by them. Once he thought he 
 saw her coming, but a policeman made 
 him get away from the corner and he 
 lost sight of her. 
 
 For the last three days of his search 
 for employment he had had but one 
 meal, and had slept at night on the 
 ground in a little corner down by the 
 river. 
 
 It was Saturday morning when he 
 was to begin working for the old man 
 with the curious junkshop down on 
 Fifth street, and, exhausted and starved 
 though he was, he was happy in the 
 thought that at last his unceasing 
 search had resulted in something. 
 
 It had indeed resulted in more than 
 he thought. When he tried to rise 
 from his earthen bed he found himself 
 too weak to do so. He was no longer 
 
IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 I 3 2 
 
 hungry, but his head was burning, and 
 the earth on which he lay seemed to 
 hold him down. The hot sun came 
 down upon him, but it burned less 
 than the fever that had seized him. 
 It was late in the afternoon before he 
 was discovered and taken to a hospital. 
 By the next evening he was delirious. 
 
 Nobody knew who he was nor where 
 his home. They only knew that when 
 the fever was raging he would say: 
 
 "I wonder why she never comes any 
 more. I have been here every day, 
 and she has not gone by. Is there no 
 room for me on this sidewalk? May I 
 not stand here and wait? Maybe she 
 will come/' 
 
 Then he grew worse and weaker, 
 and the last they heard him say was: 
 
 "Stand aside ! She is coming now !" 
 
 And they buried him in the potters- 
 field. 
 
THE STORY OF AN OIL STRIKE. 
 
 x 33 
 
 THE STORY 
 OF AN OIL STRIKE 
 
 " I WILL give you a one-eighth 
 royalty for a five-years' lease of your 
 twenty-acre lot," said the agent to old 
 man Richards — John Richards — 
 whose little patch of land was sup- 
 posed to be within the oil belt. 
 
 The oil excitement which had struck 
 the neighborhood was about of the 
 usual virulence. Everybody expected 
 to become wealthy enough within the 
 next twelve months to own a railroad, 
 and within the next two years to be 
 able to run for office. 
 
 To be sure, there were no producing 
 wells nearer than fifteen miles away, 
 but it was easy enough for anybody to 
 
I 2J. IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 see that his own farm was directly on 
 the forty-five degree line. Anybody 
 who could draw a straight line could 
 see that much. 
 
 But John Richards couldn't draw a 
 straight line, and didn't seem likely to 
 take the oil fever with which his neigh- 
 bors were all afflicted. 
 
 " No," he said to the agent, " I won't 
 lease the place. I don't care whether 
 you strike oil or not. What good would 
 it do me ? Suppose I should get fifty 
 thousand dollars out of the lot, what 
 good would it do me? There's no- 
 body living that I care for or that cares 
 for me. No, the oil may stay down in 
 the ground where it belongs." 
 
 For at least forty years — nobody 
 seemed to know how long — John 
 Richards had lived almost the life of a 
 hermit, and he was now seventy years 
 of age. He had come out to this neigh- 
 borhood in West Virginia, bought the 
 twenty-acre lot, and had made neither 
 friends nor enemies. He lived alone, 
 
THE STORY OF AN OIL STRIKE. 
 
 J 35 
 
 did his own cooking, and attended 
 strictly to his own business. 
 
 Of course, there had been all sorts of 
 rumors about him. One said that he 
 had come from Philadelphia, where a 
 newly-made grave held the fair form of 
 his young wife. Another said that he 
 had stolen a horse, or a bank, or some- 
 thing. Several good people of the 
 neighborhood took an interest in him 
 when he came, and tried to find out 
 why he had settled among them to 
 lead the life of a recluse, but their re- 
 searches and investigations were not 
 rewarded with success. 
 
 He told them he thought that he was 
 able, perhaps, to manage his own affairs, 
 including the little cabin and the 
 twenty-acre lot, without assistance 
 from outside sources. And so, for forty 
 years, he had lived alone, without any 
 apparent interest in anybody or any- 
 thing and without any known object 
 except mere existence. 
 
 The oil excitement grew in intensity 
 
i 3 6 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 as the wells came nearer to the neigh- 
 borhood in which John Richards lived ; 
 but he paid no attention to it, except 
 to refuse all offers to lease or buy his 
 twenty-acre lot. 
 
 One day a derrick was erected on the 
 edge of a lot adjoining his, and pretty 
 soon the " bird of the walking-beam/* 
 so familiar to oil operators, began to 
 sing its monotonous song. As the drill 
 went down the excitement went up, for 
 only a short distance away men who, a 
 year before, were not worth a dollar, 
 now had an income of fifty or a hun- 
 dred dollars a day. 
 
 The strata were carefully examined, 
 and a log-book of the well was kept 
 by a geologist — Prof. W. — who had 
 located the well, and who was ex- 
 pecting it to extend the territory. At 
 last the third sand was reached, and 
 the well was "shot." It proved to 
 be a geniune " gusher," making 
 seven hundred barrels in twenty-four 
 hours. 
 
THE STORY OF AN OIL STRIKE. \T>1 
 
 Once more the principal operator 
 visited John Richards. This time he 
 offered him twenty thousand dollars 
 for his twenty acres. Still he refused, 
 and everybody said he was an old 
 f6ol. 
 
 The chief oil magnate of the field, 
 the one who had tried so hard to buy 
 out old man Richards, was Fleming R. 
 McDonald, known as Col. McDonald, 
 probably because he had been chief 
 marshal of a political parade in his 
 native town during the Hayes -Tilden 
 campaign. Many an innocent man 
 is given a military title for a less offense, 
 and compelled by a pitiless public to 
 wear it through life like a millstone 
 about his neck. 
 
 Col. McDonald had come out to 
 the oil field from New York state, and 
 had brought his family of three daugh- 
 ters with him. He had been very for- 
 tunate and had made a good deal of 
 money. Like all oil men, he lived 
 like a king, and his daughters like the 
 
1^8 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 daughters of a king, with their horses 
 and carriages and their guests from the 
 city for weeks at a time. 
 
 Col. McDonald had promised his 
 daughters that if they would come out 
 and make him a home while he made a 
 fortune, they should have everything 
 that money could buy, and he kept his 
 word. 
 
 His ambition was to get control of 
 the entire field, and, enraged at Rich- 
 ards' refusal to sell or lease his lot, 
 which was in the very heart of the 
 productive territory, he determined to 
 drive the old man out. He had not 
 been accustomed to being refused, and 
 he was not going to allow a crazy old 
 hermit to stand in his way now in the 
 day of his prosperity. 
 
 He threatened him and cursed him ; 
 he hired boys to stone his cabin by 
 night and taunt him by day with being 
 a fool for not leasing or selling his 
 land. He turned the course of a stream, 
 so that it would run over the old man's 
 
THE STORY OF AX OIL STRIKE. 
 
 J 39 
 
 lot and destroy his garden. He per- 
 mitted a great pool of stagnant water 
 to stand and grow green and fester in 
 the sun on his own land not five rods 
 from the hermit's cabin. 
 
 It was said, and generally believed, 
 that he even offered a big reward to 
 anyone who would fasten the door on 
 the outside and set fire to the cabin 
 while the old man was asleep, but there 
 was none fiendish enough to take his 
 gold for the old man's blood. 
 
 Finding that by none of these means 
 could he drive the hermit away, he 
 hired a pettifogging lawyer to get up 
 papers showing that Richards had 
 never obtained a clear title to the land, 
 and that it really belonged to the 
 survey which McDonald had bought. 
 The papers were prepared, and the oil 
 king at last felt sure of getting posses- 
 sion of the coveted prize, but fortu- 
 nately an honest court saw through 
 the scheme and refused to be a party 
 to it. 
 
140 
 
 IX THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 At last, after the most desperate 
 efforts had all failed, McDonald gave 
 up hope of getting possession of the 
 old man's land while its owner lived, 
 but his chagrin and anger showed them- 
 selves in a constant persecution of 
 Richards, hoping the while that the 
 old man would not live much longer to 
 be in his way. 
 
 But this oil field was like all others, 
 and by-and-by the collapse came. After 
 the excitement began to cool off, and 
 people began to get a business breath, 
 it was found that while there had been 
 a great many productive wells, there 
 were a great many more dry holes, and 
 that, for the past year or two, Col. 
 McDonald had been investing almost 
 exclusively in the latter. 
 
 Becoming desperate, he began "wild- 
 catting," that is, putting down wells in 
 territory far from any producing wells, 
 and the more money he lost the more 
 reckless and desperate he became, until 
 he was financially ruined. 
 
THE STORY OF AN OIL STRIKE, 
 
 I 4 I 
 
 An old habit of drink had been in- 
 dulged, and, when ruin came, he was 
 not in condition to meet it bravely; but 
 he succeeded in keeping his daughters 
 in ignorance of his losses until one 
 morning he was found in the stables 
 among his horses with a bullet hole in 
 his head and a revolver lying by his 
 right hand. 
 
 Broken-hearted, in poverty, and vir- 
 tually alone in the 'world, fallen from 
 luxury to pinching penury, crushed to 
 the earth by their fathers awful death, 
 the daughters of the late oil king saw 
 all of their possessions sold until they 
 had left to them only the grave of a 
 suicide father. 
 
 And John Richards, what had he to 
 do with all this? Nothing, except that 
 he surprised everybody one day, soon 
 after the true condition of the late 
 Col. McDonald's affairs was known, 
 by going to a driller and contracting 
 for the immediate drilling of a well on 
 his twenty-acre lot. He had caught 
 
142 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 the oil fever after everybody else had 
 had it, and everybody said : " I told 
 you so. I knew he'd come to it at 
 last. But what an old fool he was for 
 not taking that twenty thousand dol- 
 lars which Col. McDonald offered 
 him. I suppose the old miser has 
 enough money stuck away somewhere 
 to sink a dozen wells. ,, 
 
 But John Richards heard none of 
 this, and would not have cared if he 
 had heard it. His thoughts were en- 
 tirely taken up with his well. He took 
 more interest in it than he had shown in 
 anything before for forty years. Every 
 day the old man, with his long white 
 hair, could be seen watching the prog- 
 ress of the bit as it bored its way into 
 the earth. He even became com- 
 municative, and, as there began to 
 appear favorable signs of the right 
 kind and quantity of sand, his face 
 would light up and he would hob- 
 ble around and talk about his good 
 luck. 
 
THE STORY OF AX OIL STRIKE. 
 
 H3 
 
 When the oil sand was pierced, and 
 the oil spouted over the derrick, he 
 fairly danced for joy, and his old 
 wrinkled face seemed to lose its wrinkles 
 and to beam with delight. 
 
 It proved to be the best well in the 
 county, and before sundown the old 
 man was offered once more a big sum 
 of money for his little patch of ground. 
 But he replied: "Come around in the 
 morning." 
 
 The next day the men who had 
 made him the offer went to his cabin, 
 but it was empty. A note, written 
 with a trembling hand, was found lying 
 on the bare table in the corner. It 
 read : 
 
 " I am going away and will not return. Look 
 under the last plank in the floor. 
 
 John Richards." 
 
 They lifted the loose board, and, in 
 an old tin box, they found a piece of 
 paper, the last will and testament, 
 properly witnessed, of John Richards, 
 
i 4 4 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 written with his own hand an hour 
 after he had struck the big well. 
 
 The old man had bequeathed his 
 twenty-acre lot to the penniless daugh- 
 ters of his old enemy and persecutor. 
 
A MAIDEN OF THE HILLS. 
 
 H5 
 
 A MAIDEN OF THE HILLS 
 
 It was the proudest day of her life 
 
 — and the saddest. 
 
 He was to be grad- 
 uated that day at the 
 University, and she 
 had neither gown 
 nor gloves to wear. 
 
 He was her brother. 
 
 It had taken every dollar that he 
 could earn, that his sacrificing sister 
 could save, and that the father and 
 mother could get together, to put him 
 through college. 
 
 The day he was graduated the 
 father, the mother, and the sister were 
 not there. The father had said: 
 
 "Go, daughter, I will try to find 
 money to pay your fare." 
 
 But she had replied: "No; I can- 
 not look fine like the sisters of his 
 
 10 
 
4 6 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 classmates. I will not go and disgrace 
 him." 
 
 And she stayed at home, and her tears 
 were sweet with sacrifice. 
 
 [That day a great lady wept bitter 
 tears of disappointment, over a gown 
 for which she had paid $500, because 
 the train was not long enough.] 
 
 II. 
 
 The next summer her brother went 
 home to spend a week, and took wi'th 
 him a classmate. They had been em- 
 ployed together in a surveying corps. 
 
 The week soon became a month — 
 two months. 
 
 His friend was handsome, thought- 
 less, dashing. 
 
 When he went away he said to her: 
 
 "These little flirtations are forgotten 
 in a week. Good-bye." 
 
 And the heart of this maiden of the 
 hills — ah, me! 
 
 [That day a great lady cast aside, as 
 a trifle, a heart that had been laid at 
 her feet.] 
 
THE ARTIST'S STORY. 
 
 147 
 
 THE ARTIST'S STORY 
 
 "Give me a subject for a picture and 
 I will give you a subject for a story," 
 said Feemer to me one night as we sat 
 with our feet on my writing table, and 
 filled the room with smoke. 
 
 Feemer was a young fellow who had 
 gone to Italy from somewhere in Vir- 
 ginia, Page county, I think, and, after 
 three years of hard 
 work in Florence 
 and a few months 
 in Paris, had opened 
 a studio in Cincin- 
 nati. He had inher- 
 i t e d considerable 
 artistic instinct and talent from his 
 father, who was a sculptor of wide rep- 
 utation, and whose beautiful marbles 
 adorn many public and private 
 
148 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 galleries. Young Feemer wanted to 
 become a great painter, and he was 
 modest enough to admit that several 
 years might intervene before he could 
 lay claim to such distinction. 
 
 "Paint me a picture of the prettiest 
 girl in the world," I replied banter- 
 ingly to his proposition. 
 
 He got up, walked slowly back and 
 forth across the room two or three 
 times, and said: 
 
 "I can't do it, but I'll try; and some 
 day I'll give you a subject for a story." 
 
 I forgot all about the incident until 
 three or four months afterwards, when 
 I received a little portrait with Harry 
 Feemer's familiar signature in the 
 corner, accompanied by a note, which 
 said, simply: "This is the best that I 
 can do." 
 
 The portrait was that of a girl, cer- 
 tainly not over eighteen or nineteen 
 years of age, with wonderful brown 
 eyes and russet hair. As a bit of art 
 it was so far superior to anything 
 
THE ARTIST'S STORY. 
 
 I 49 
 
 Feemer had done before, that I at first 
 doubted if he had painted it, but upon 
 reflection, I knew 
 that he was too hon- 
 est to try to deceive, 
 and so I attributed 
 the excellence of the 
 work to the inspira- 
 tion of the subject. 
 I liked it and told 
 him so, but he would not talk about it. 
 
 Shortly afterwards I went East, and 
 Feemer and I lost sight of each other. 
 That was several years ago. 
 
 Last week I threw my work into the 
 corner and ran down into the beautiful 
 valley about Luray for a vacation of 
 ten days. Foolish are they who wear 
 themselves out pretending to seek rest 
 at the crowded seashore places, when 
 a peace that passeth understanding and 
 a joy that may not be told of in books, 
 await the tired soul that, led by some 
 good spirit, wanders into the beautiful 
 country of the Shenandoah and the 
 
*5° 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 valley of Luray. In these autumn 
 days the beggar here is richer than the 
 Fifth avenue plutocrat. The old 
 worm fences wind and struggle up the 
 hillside, broken here and there — wind- 
 ing and struggling and broken, but 
 still climbing, like life itself. And 
 these old silent lanes that invite to 
 wander on and forget the office and 
 the shop. And these cool caves in the 
 limestone hills — caverns more beauti- 
 ful than the palace of a king, resting 
 places in the bosom of old mother 
 earth. 
 
 To this peaceful spot I came, as I 
 had often come before, and if the busy 
 world still went on its way, I neither 
 knew nor cared. 
 
 One day I was invited to join a 
 party to visit the Luray cavern, and 
 gladly went, although I had often wan- 
 dered through its marvelous halls and 
 pillared chambers. In the party was a 
 young lady, whose name I did not 
 learn at first, but who I knew was a 
 
THE ARTIST'S STORY. i^i 
 
 resident of the neighborhood. I was 
 sure that I had seen her before; cer- 
 tainly I could not be mistaken; and 
 my curiosity soon found me a way to 
 a conversation with her. 
 
 "I used to know a young fellow from 
 this vicinity/' I said, "by the name of 
 Feemer — Harry Feemer — an artist" — 
 
 But I did not finish the sentence, for 
 I was as much surprised at what I had 
 discovered, as she had been at what I 
 had said. This young woman, whom 
 I was so sure I had seen before, was 
 the original of the little portrait which 
 Harry Feemer had painted for me 
 many years before in Cincinnati, and 
 had said in sending it to me: "This is 
 the best that I can do." There were 
 the same wonderful brown eyes and 
 russet hair. 
 
 She seemed greatly disturbed, and I 
 saw that I had blundered, but she said: 
 
 "Yes, he used to live here, but went 
 away several years ago, and has never 
 been back but once or twice." 
 

 J 5 2 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 a Do you know where he is now?" 
 I ventured to ask. 
 
 "I — I — , pardon me," she said, turn- 
 ing her face from me, and the very 
 heighth and depth of sorrow seemed to 
 me to be measured in that "pardon me." 
 
 I had become much interested by 
 this time, for I was anxious to know 
 what had become of my old friend, and 
 was determined to work out this 
 mystery. 
 
 That afternoon, while strolling up 
 the mountain with an old friend, I 
 said to him: "Tell me about Harry 
 Feemer. You certainly know what 
 has become of him." 
 
 "If you will walk with me up this 
 old turnpike leading from Rappahan- 
 nock to the Luray valley, I will tell 
 you." 
 
 We walked on slowly, and I waited 
 for my friend to begin, but he was 
 silent. On and on we tramped up the 
 old pike on the side of the Blue Ridge. 
 At last he said: 
 
THE ARTIST'S STORY. 
 
 J 53 
 
 "Harry was a noble fellow, and I 
 think he had great ability. I am sure 
 no artist was ever truer to his ideal. 
 Poor fellow !" 
 
 "Yes," I said, impatiently, "but where 
 is he? What has become of him?" 
 
 "It's a peculiar story. Listen: You 
 remember the young lady to whom 
 you were talking about him this morn- 
 ing in our cave party. Well, he wor- 
 shipped that girl. He cared for only 
 two things in the world: that girl and 
 his art, and a good deal of his painting 
 consisted of portraits of her. His 
 studio was full of her pictures, little 
 and big. You knew him in Cincinnati, 
 I believe. Well, after staying there a 
 year or two, he returned to Paris to 
 continue his studies, and, of course, he 
 stopped here a little while to see his 
 relatives and old friends before sailing. 
 In his Paris studio his walls and easels 
 were filled with portraits of his Vir- 
 ginia sweetheart. One day a fellow 
 student came in, and, seeing so many 
 
*54 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS, 
 
 portraits of the same person, inquired 
 who was the original. Feemer replied, 
 'The prettiest girl in the world.' 
 
 "The other student, who was a 
 Frenchman named Ribot, shrugged 
 his shoulders and said sneeringly: 
 
 " 'Where did you pick up your prize 
 beauty? Some little grisette, I sup- 
 pose, who needs all the paint you have 
 given her. I wonder if she would come 
 to my atelier! 
 
 "Ribot had hardly finished when 
 Feemer knocked him down. 
 
 " 'Oh, you want to fight for your 
 model, do you ! Well, you must fight 
 like a gentleman/ hissed Ribot. 
 
 "The next morning at sunrise there 
 was a duel in the Bois de Boulogne. 
 Before going to the field, Feemer 
 wrote home to her, at whom the insult 
 had been thrown by the thoughtless 
 Frenchman, telling her that for noth- 
 ing else in the world would he fight a 
 duel, but that he could never bear to 
 look upon her picture again, if he did 
 
THE ARTIST'S STORY. 
 
 *55 
 
 not resent the insult to it and to 
 her. 
 
 "The duel took place next day," 
 continued my friend as we crossed 
 over from the turnpike into a rough- 
 stone enclosure, on the very summit 
 of the Blue Ridge, "and here he lies, 
 and he would rather be here than 
 alive with that insult to her picture 
 unavenged." 
 
 The mountain winds stole out from 
 the forest and crept among the tall 
 grave-grass, then howled down the 
 hillside and away, as I stood by 
 Feemer's grave and recalled the night 
 many years ago, when he promised to 
 give me a subject for a story. 
 
 He had kept his word. 
 
i56 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 IN THE RUE ROYALE 
 
 When you step across Canal street 
 in New Orleans you cross over from 
 America t o Southern 
 Europe. A 1 1 rawness 
 and rush are left on the 
 other side of the Clay 
 statue. The old Creole 
 quarter — there is nothing 
 like it in any other Amer- 
 ican city, and its most 
 picturesque street is the 
 Rue Royale. From Conti street to 
 Esplanade it is the delight of the 
 painter, the poet, the romancer, and 
 collector of rare old odds and ends. 
 He who has taken time to let his 
 spirit loaf and laze in true companion- 
 ship with the soul of the place can 
 never quite forget it. 
 
IN THE RUE ROYALE. 
 
 157 
 
 The Rue Royale — I was its devoted 
 lover for two weeks, and the old flame 
 comes back again now and then like a 
 breath from the rose-hidden gallery of 
 la belle Creole. 
 
 The March mornings were balmy 
 and beautiful, and a romance seemed to 
 be woven about every cypress-covered 
 dormer window and every little wrought- 
 iron gallery. The ghosts of Madame 
 Delicieuse and Sieur George haunted 
 the place, and memories of the good 
 Pere Antoine lingered in the air. Still 
 "like an aged beggar fallen asleep/' the 
 residence of Madame Delphine squatted 
 down beside the banquette, and from 
 the site of the old Cafes des Refugies 
 came a chanson creole as plaintive as the 
 story of Tite Poulette, and as sweet as 
 the song of the mocking bird that 
 swung itself in the top of a date palm 
 in a courtyard near the Rue Saint 
 Pierre. 
 
 Every day T dropped into a dingy 
 old bookstore with crumbling walls 
 
i53 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 of stuccoed brick, one-storied and 
 musty. 
 
 The only cheery thing about the 
 place was a bit of chansonette that 
 came floating in from the lips of a girl 
 hid behind the vines on the gallery 
 across the narrow street. 
 
 Every day I found an old man, 
 
 gray and wrinkled, sitting like a 
 
 mourner in this burial place of 
 
 books holding an old volume in 
 
 his lap. He handled it as gently 
 
 and as lovingly as if it were the 
 
 most fragile thing in the world. I 
 
 noticed that he never seemed to be 
 
 reading, although he slowly turned the 
 
 leaves, and every touch was a caress. 
 
 He was blind. 
 
 The keeper of the store told me that 
 this old man with the sightless eyes 
 and gray beard had come to his place 
 every day for years, stayed an hour, and 
 then had gone out without saying a 
 word, and felt his way with his stick 
 down the street. 
 
IN THE RUE ROYALE. Kq 
 
 I noticed how the old man's face 
 lighted up as he took the same book 
 down from the shelf every day, and how, 
 each day, when he put it back in its 
 place, he seemed to give it a farewell 
 caress. 
 
 The keeper of the store, after I 
 had purchased " Souvenirs D'Amer- 
 ique et de France, Par Une Creole," 
 and Charles Gayarre's " Louisiana, " 
 to put him in a good humor, told 
 me this story of the old man and the 
 book : 
 
 " He came to New Orleans from the 
 province of Savoie, France, when a 
 young man and became a college pro- 
 fessor. He was a great student. Young, 
 brilliant, and ambitious, he gave himself 
 up entirely to his books. The result 
 was that he not only lost his eyesight 
 but also impaired his mind. He was 
 compelled to give up his place in the 
 college. His library and furniture were 
 sold a year or two later by his landlord, 
 but some of his old friends have seen 
 
l60 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 that he has attention and enough to 
 live on. 
 
 " One day directly after the landlord 
 had sold his books he came into my 
 place in the most excited manner, and, 
 with an expression on his face of 
 mingled hope and despair, asked me if 
 I had seen his sweetheart. I did not 
 know what he meant, but tried to calm 
 him. He went to the shelves and run 
 his hand over the books. At last in 
 delight he exclaimed, ! Here it is! Here 
 it is!' and, taking down the book, he 
 kissed it again and again and pressed it 
 to his heart as tears of joy filled his 
 sightless eyes. The book was one, as I 
 afterwards learned, which had belonged 
 to him, and the same which you have 
 seen him hold in his lap every day. 
 
 " I told him to take it home with him 
 and keep it, but he refused, and no 
 amount of persuasion on my part could 
 induce him to take it. From that hour 
 to this he has come here every day and 
 spent an hour caressing that old book, 
 
IN THE RUE ROYALE. jgj 
 
 which in his madness he calls his sweet- 
 heart. No lover could be more con- 
 stant, none more de- 
 voted, none more ten- 
 der. If I were to sell 
 that book it would 
 break his heart. Only 
 yesterday I asked him 
 again if he did not^ 
 want to take it home 
 with him, and he said: 'It would be 
 lonesome there. I must not be selfish 
 and take it from its companions. I 
 must wait/ 
 
 "And so he waits. But he is a tot- 
 tering shadow ; he will not have long to 
 wait, and, when they lay him away out 
 yonder in the old St. Louis Cemetery, 
 I shall see that his hands are crossed on 
 that old book. ,, 
 
 What is the name of the book? I 
 inquired. 
 
 " It is Haslam's Observations on Mad- 
 ness and Melancholy." 
 
 ii 
 
162 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 MARTHA 
 
 "Tell me a tale, heroic and sublime, 
 
 Of love and life and fields where heroes fell — 
 A tale full fit for this stupendous time, 
 That I may it to future ages tell." 
 
 Thus spoke I once to one who came from o'er 
 The ragged hills and sat beside my door. 
 
 "If thou wilt go with me," he said, "I'll lead thee 
 where 
 Life's greatest tragedy has grown so old 
 It seems as common as the common air — 
 So wonted that none thinks it need be told." 
 
 And far across the hills he led away, 
 
 And all the sky and all the fields were gray. 
 
 At length he stopped beside a cabin door, 
 Amid the rocks and hills of barren clay, 
 
 Where children crept upon the naked floor 
 
 And women toiled like slaves through all the 
 day. 
 
 " Behold," he said, "the story — writ in tears, 
 And starved and dwarfed lives through years and 
 years!" 
 
MARTHA. 
 
 l6 3 
 
 There is nothing whatever of interest 
 in the following story, because Martha 
 was only a poor girl of the hills, and 
 never had either good society or a good 
 gown. 
 
 Her home — you have seen it often if 
 you have taken time to look as you fol- 
 lowed the covey of Virginia quail — was 
 between two hills where nature had 
 spilt an unusual quantity of 
 sunshine, and where all sorts 
 of wild flowers came up and 
 blossomed, because so few 
 human beings were there 
 to make them afraid. They 
 did not know, perhaps, that 
 Martha was only a poor 
 mountain girl, or they might have 
 shunned her society ; as it was, they 
 knew no better than to love her, and 
 she loved them in return, even to the 
 tiniest bud of them. 
 
 She came up and grew in the sun as 
 they did ; toiled between the corn rows, 
 bound the wheat sheaves, and raked the 
 
164 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 hay on the hillside when the sun was 
 blistering. 
 
 Necessity: This is the word that is 
 written on every page of the life of the 
 hills. 
 
 She had heard twice or thrice, far, 
 far away, an echo like that of music and 
 laughter and the tripping of slippered 
 feet, and she had seen twice or thrice, 
 far, far away, faint gleams from the 
 windows of houses where there were 
 the gifts of luxury — she had heard and 
 seen these things in her dreams as she 
 lay with her face to the open window 
 and the stars. For even a poor girl of 
 the hills may dream when the shadows 
 fall, so she but toil while the daylight 
 last. 
 
 The little field where they planted 
 and ploughed and harvested the corn — 
 you have seen her there as you rode 
 by to the Springs, and you have noticed 
 how consecration to duty can beautify 
 everything it touches. But you did 
 not have time to stop at the little 
 
MARTHA. 
 
 165 
 
 house which Martha called her home. 
 Perhaps you did not care to ; you were 
 in a hurry to get on to the Springs to 
 boil out the rheumatism and gout 
 which high living had planted in your 
 system. Martha and the rest of the 
 family — there were nine or ten of them 
 — had no need to go to the Springs. 
 The evil effects of high living did not 
 trouble them. Even the barren life of 
 the hills has its compensations. 
 
 One day an old man with a gray 
 beard and a high hat, who was devot- 
 ing his life to what he called a ministry 
 of education, went that way and saw 
 the girl's bright face in the berry field 
 and gave her two or three books, the 
 first she had ever had except an old 
 speller and a reader or two that had 
 done service for the whole family. 
 
 She did not return home that day 
 until dark. Her bucket was only half 
 filled, and her father scolded her for 
 wasting her time. But it was one of 
 the great events in Martha's life, for 
 
l66 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 things are great or small only by com- 
 parison. 
 
 Another great event was when she 
 made a visit of four days with some 
 cousins across the big hill a few miles 
 away. The fixing up of an old hat, 
 the making of a new calico dress espe- 
 cially for the occasion, the putting on 
 of a bit of bright new ribbon — these 
 things were discussed in the family 
 circle for days before the visit. 
 
 Of course, it was very wrong for her 
 to be so much interested in her appear- 
 ance. Such things should be left to 
 fine ladies, but there was no one to tell 
 her all this. She may even have dared 
 to think the bit of bright ribbon quite 
 becoming, though certainly she had no 
 right to think so, being, as I have said, 
 only a poor, ignorant girl of the hills. 
 It was doubtless that touch of nature 
 which makes all femininity kin, though 
 they will not all admit the kinship. 
 
 At her cousin's house she met two 
 young men who were spending a fort- 
 
MARTHA. 
 
 167 
 
 night hunting in that neighborhood, 
 and one of them, Arthur Shore, was 
 much attracted by her simple beauty. 
 Being far from home, he thought it 
 entirely safe to say sweet things to her, 
 and, as he was on a hunting expedition, 
 he was quite willing to capture any 
 game in his power. She was no more 
 to him than a covey of partridges or a 
 fine young deer, but it was an easy 
 matter to make her believe otherwise. 
 
 After her return home, he and his 
 companion crossed the hill also and 
 soon made a friend of her father, who 
 was himself a lover of a gun and a dog, 
 and who acted as their guide during the 
 remainder of their stay in the moun- 
 tains. 
 
 Martha believed the words of the 
 young hunter; he was so frank and gal- 
 lant, and handsome, so unlike the 
 country lads whom she had met at the 
 singing schools and spelling bees, and, 
 when he went away, she thought it no 
 harm to give him the kiss he asked for, 
 
l68 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 for had he not told her that he would 
 return the next fall, when she was to 
 be his wife and go away with him to a 
 home such as she had dreamed of as 
 she lay with her face to the open window 
 and the stars ? 
 
 Then there were great preparations 
 in that simple home for the wedding 
 which was to take place in the fall. 
 Martha set to work at once to fit herself 
 as far as possible for the new sphere in 
 which she was to live. She borrowed 
 such books as the neighborhood af- 
 forded and read them with loving eager- 
 ness — a " Model Letter Writer/* an 
 old square leather-bound copy of 
 "Scottish Chiefs/' Pinneo's grammar, 
 and a few others. 
 
 Two or three letters were received 
 from Shore, in one of which he said 
 that he was very busy in the office and 
 that she must not expect to hear from 
 him very often. She answered them as 
 best she could, bestowing upon her let- 
 ters infinite care, following the forms in 
 
MARTHA. 
 
 169 
 
 the " Model Letter Writer," misspelling 
 half the words, and writing the address 
 diagonally across the envelope in blue 
 ink to make it look as pretty as pos- 
 sible. When his letters stopped she did 
 not lose faith in him for a moment, but 
 felt sure that he would come soon him- 
 self, and then the toiling in the fields 
 would end. 
 
 That summer was the one which the 
 people over at the Springs still speak of 
 with horror. It was the summer of the 
 black diptheria — you have heard them 
 tell of it over and over, and you have 
 always been thankful that chance or 
 Providence led you that year to the 
 White Mountains instead of to the 
 Virginia Springs where you had gone 
 every summer before. Those who could 
 get away did so as fast as the old rickety 
 stage-coach could carry them, but many 
 were left behind, some to die the awful 
 death. 
 
 Nurses could not be found, and 
 Death, who fears the white cap and 
 
170 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 hushed step of a faithful nurse more than 
 a dozen doctors, held his awful carnival 
 with none to dispute his reign. The 
 country round about was in a panic, 
 and no one would go near the scene of 
 death — none but Martha. As soon as 
 she learned that everybody else was 
 afraid to go she started. No entreaties 
 or commands could prevent her. 
 
 When she arrived at the Springs 
 hotel she was directed to go at once to 
 one of the little white private cottages 
 adjoining the main building, where a 
 lady, the wife of a man from Baltimore, 
 was thought to be dying. She went 
 without hesitation, and felt no fear. 
 Softly opening the door she saw lying 
 on the bed a young woman in great 
 agony, and by her side, heart broken, 
 knelt her husband. 
 
 He arose when she entered and turned 
 towards her as one who appeals for hope 
 and help when there is neither, and she 
 saw before her Arthur Shore ! 
 
 Neither spoke a word, and the agony 
 
MARTHA. 
 
 171 
 
 of the heart-broken husband as he stood 
 there by the side of his dying wife was 
 as nothing compared with the torture 
 of the poor girl who bravely walked 
 over to the bed, took the hand of the 
 dying woman, and did everything in 
 her power to relieve her sufferings. 
 Such remedies as the girl had heard of 
 were hastily tried, but the Angel of 
 Death had made his mark on the door- 
 post, and the sweet lady, who had never 
 dreamed of her husband's perfidy, died 
 with his kiss on her lips. 
 
 Martha helped to prepare her for 
 burial, and put a little bunch of flowers 
 in her grave when they buried her out 
 in the sandy earth under the clump of 
 chestnut trees to the east of the Lover's 
 Walk — you remember it — which winds 
 that way from the Springs. 
 
 As they turned again towards the 
 empty little white cottage, Arthur said : 
 " Can I ever be forgiven ? " "Ask of 
 her in the grave. She has much more 
 to forgive than I," was the only reply. 
 
172 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 When the contagion had died out, and 
 there was nothing more that she could 
 do, Martha returned to her home and 
 took up her old life with no word of 
 complaint, and next summer, as you go 
 by in the old rickety stage-coach on 
 your way to the famous old Springs, 
 you will see her again among the corn 
 rows as of old, but you will not know 
 her, and she will not look up and smile 
 and wave her hand to you as she used 
 to do. 
 
THE COMPANIONS, 
 
 J 73 
 
 THE COMPANIONS 
 
 In an old log house, among the Mo- 
 nongahela hills, there once lived a little 
 lame girl. She had no playmates, and 
 her friends and companions were such 
 as she might make of the inanimate 
 objects of nature around her. She was 
 too delicate to hunt the wild flowers in 
 the spring woodlands or coast on the 
 winter snows, and was forced to sit all 
 day long at her window or in the narrow 
 yard, and watch the shepherds of the 
 sky lead home their flocks, and hear 
 the winds make ardent love to the pines 
 and the poplars far away. 
 
 Every evening she threw a kiss from 
 her small blue fingers to the departing 
 sun, and every night she told her 
 troubles to her confessor star, which 
 
i74 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 looked down upon her little bed under 
 the clapboard roof. 
 
 But her dearest companion was a 
 great poplar tree, which stood alone on 
 a high hill, a mile from the house. It 
 
 was straight, gigan- 
 tic, magnificent. The 
 woodmen had left it 
 there because they 
 had not the heart 
 to cut it down, and 
 when the land was 
 sold by its original 
 owner, it was stated 
 in the deed that the great poplar was 
 not to be disturbed. In its branches the 
 bald eagles had nested ever since long 
 before the cabin was built in the valley 
 below, and the hawks that stood still in 
 the sky like ships on a becalmed sea, 
 dropped anchor in its topmost branches. 
 It lifted its arms to high heaven for 
 benedictions on all the lands, and gave 
 the petals of its big yellow blossoms as 
 love tokens to the winds. 
 
THE COMPANIONS. 
 
 175 
 
 The child looked upon this tree with 
 awe. She wondered what great secret 
 it held in its Titanic breast; what mes- 
 sages the winds and the birds carried to 
 it from the oaks and beeches far away, 
 and if it ever thought of her down 
 there watching it for hours at a time. 
 So much did its great strength and 
 majesty impress the little invalid, that 
 she lost all interest in the cloud-flocks 
 of the skyey pastures, and no longer 
 told her secrets to her starry confessor, 
 but made the poplar her only com- 
 panion and friend. ' 
 
 By and by her awe mellowed into 
 love, and she would implore her father 
 to carry her to the hilltop, that she 
 might lay her face against the tree's 
 mighty trunk. He told her she was 
 foolish, and that she must not think 
 about it again, but she continued to 
 weave fancy after fancy, and her 
 strange love grew stronger every day. 
 
 One night a terrific storm wrestled 
 for hours with the giant of the hill, and 
 
176 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 the next morning the child saw that a 
 limb had been torn from its side and 
 was lying on the ground. She cried 
 as though her heart would break, for 
 the great scar seemed to her childish 
 imagination a bleeding wound. She 
 must go to the tree at once and tell it 
 how sorry she was. They found her 
 at its foot exhausted and weeping. 
 She had never walked so far before and 
 the exertion, together with the excite- 
 ment and sorrow of her tender heart, 
 made her ill for days, and, in her 
 delirium, she would reach out her 
 hands towards the old poplar, and ask 
 if it was much hurt. 
 
 Not long after this incident the land 
 was sold again, and one of the first 
 things the new owner did, was to fell 
 the poplar for the purpose of rafting it 
 with other logs and floating it down 
 the river to Pittsburg. 
 
 The little child knew nothing of the 
 impending fate of her companion, until 
 she saw two sturdy axemen approach it 
 
THE COMPANIONS. 
 
 177 
 
 one morning, look admiringly at its 
 huge trunk, decide which way it ought 
 to fall, and then begin chopping. 
 
 In terror she started at once for the 
 hill, which she climbed with great 
 effort, but hoping only that she might 
 not be too late to save her friend. She 
 threw herself between the men and the 
 tree, and commanded them not to 
 touch it, for it belonged to her. But 
 the men laughed at her commands, 
 entreaties, and tears, and, in order to 
 get rid of her, one of them carried her 
 back to her home. 
 
 They felled the poplar, 
 and every blow they struck 
 seemed to sink into the 
 heart of the child. Her 
 agony was pitiful, and 
 there was great fear that 
 she would lose her mind. 
 But she grew calm, and, 
 without saying a word, 
 watched the men saw the 
 trunk into logs of the proper length, 
 12 
 
1^8 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 hitch their oxen to them, and haul 
 them down the hillside and away 
 towards the river. 
 
 The day that the last log was 
 taken away, the child was missing. 
 Search was made everywhere about the 
 place, but she could not be found. 
 Then the neighbors were summoned, 
 and a systematic hunt was made. 
 
 Little tracks were discovered in the 
 broad, soft furrows made by the severed 
 and prostrate trunk of her giant friend, 
 as the oxen had dragged it to the 
 river's edge. The searchers followed 
 with anxious hearts and rapid steps, 
 hoping and fearing. 
 
 The footprints led to the river, and 
 there they found the dead body of the 
 child with her arms about her old com- 
 panion, and her pallid face resting 
 against its shaggy trunk. 
 
HAFED BEX HAFED. 
 
 179 
 
 HAFED BEN HAFED 
 
 A LEGEND OF PERSIA 
 
 It was in the reign of Malik Shah — 
 may Allah rejoice his soul — 
 that a mysterious rider, on a 
 white horse, galloped across 
 the salt sands from Naishapur 
 in Khorasan to the tent of 
 Hafed Ben Hafed. The 
 stranger sat by the door of the 
 tent, silent, till the sun went down. 
 Then mounting his horse he said: 
 
 " Hafed Ben Hafed, art thou content?" 
 
 And he rode away like an arrow into 
 the night. 
 
 Hafed Ben Hafed sat in his tent and 
 pondered the words of the mysterious 
 messenger, till the morning broke. 
 Then he said to himself: 
 
 "No, I cannot be content until I 
 
l8o IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 shall have slain mine enemy and the 
 enemy of my clan." 
 
 And he arose and went into the 
 mountains of Khorasan. When he 
 returned to his tent there was one less 
 enemy of Allah and his Prophet. 
 
 Again the mysterious rider galloped 
 across the salt sands from Naishapur 
 and stopped by the door of Hafed Ben 
 Hafed's tent till the sun went down. 
 Then mounting his horse he said: 
 
 "Hafed Ben Hafed, art thou content?" 
 
 And he rode away like an arrow into 
 the night. 
 
 Hafed Ben Hafed sat in his tent and 
 pondered the words of the mysterious 
 messenger, till the morning broke. 
 Then he said to himself: 
 
 "No, I cannot be content until I 
 shall have become the ruler of the 
 province." 
 
 And he arose and went towards the 
 north and organized a band of soldiers. 
 And when he returned to his tent he 
 was accompanied by shoutings of 
 
HAFED BEN HAFED. 
 
 181 
 
 triumph. But he refused to give up 
 his tent on the edge of the desert for a 
 palace in the city. 
 
 And he continued to rule over the 
 province and became a great favorite 
 with Malik Shah. 
 
 Again the mysterious rider came 
 across the salt sands and sat beside 
 Hafed Ben Hafed's door till the sun 
 went down. Then mounting his horse 
 he said: 
 
 "Hafed Ben Hafed, art thou content ?" 
 
 And he rode away like an arrow into 
 the night. 
 
 Hafed Ben Hafed 
 sat in his tent and 
 pondered the words 
 of the mysterious 
 messenger, till the 
 morning broke. Then 
 he said to himself: 
 
 "No, I cannot be 
 content until I shall 
 have founded a dynasty and planted 
 a throne for my descendants/' 
 
l82 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 Then he arose and went to Teheran. 
 And there began the bloodiest chapter 
 in Persia's history, when the thirsty 
 desert drank blood like water, when all 
 the roses that bloomed in the valley 
 were red like blood, and when, for the 
 space of a year, there was not heard the 
 note of a nightingale from the valley of 
 the Tigris, east to CabooL 
 
 But when the white roses began to 
 bloom again, and the nightingales to 
 sing in the gardens of 
 Persepolis, the people 
 saluted H a f e d Ben 
 Hafed as ruler and 
 king. 
 
 But he continued to 
 live in his tent by the 
 edge of the salt desert, 
 with the door opening 
 towards the rising sun. 
 Again the myste- 
 rious rider galloped 
 across the salt sands 
 from Naishapur, and sat before the 
 
HAFED BEN HAFED. 
 
 183 
 
 door of Hafed Ben Hafed till the sun 
 went down. Then mounting his horse 
 he said: 
 
 "Hafed Ben Hafed, art thou content?" 
 
 And he rode away like an arrow into 
 the night. 
 
 Hafed Ben Hafed sat in his tent and 
 pondered the words of the mysterious 
 messenger, till the morning broke. 
 
 Then he arose and went to the door 
 of his tent, and there he found a poor 
 child of the desert, son of the en- 
 emy of his youth, whom he had 
 slain with all his clan, in the 
 mountains of Khorasan. 
 
 Hafed Ben Hafed took the child 
 into his tent and gave him dates 
 and pomegranates and choice 
 wine, and said unto him: 
 
 "Thou son of mine ancient enemy, 
 thou shalt be in future mine own son." 
 
 And the child of the desert went and 
 fetched a white rose and gave it to his 
 benefactor. And Hafed Ben Hafed 
 said: 
 
184 
 
 IN THE VIRGINIAS. 
 
 "Now I am content. For every 
 drop of blood that I have shed, there 
 shall be planted a white rose tree 
 throughout the land of my kingdom/' 
 
 And from that day Persia has been 
 called the land of the white rose and 
 the nightingale. 
 
 And the mysterious rider from across 
 the salt sands stopped no more before 
 the door of Hafed Ben Hafed's tent. 
 
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