[36] By permission of the author, and of the publisher, G. W. Dillingham, N. Y.
1836= ——.
Daniel Bedinger Lucas is a native of Charlestown, West Virginia, and has reputation as a lawyer, orator, and judge. He was a soldier in the Confederate Army and wrote his fine and best known poem, “The Land Where We Were Dreaming,” in 1865. He has served in the State Legislature. His sister was also a poet and her verses are included in the “Wreath of Eglantine.”
Memoir of John Yates Bell.
Maid of Northumberland.
Ballads and Madrigals.
Wreath of Eglantine, and other Poems.
(From The Land We Love.[37])
[37] By permission of the author.
1839= ——.
James Ryder Randall was born in Baltimore, and his fame rests upon his stirring war-song, “Maryland, my Maryland,” which has been called the “Marseillaise of the Confederacy.” It was written in 1861 and set by Mrs. Burton Harrison to the tune of the old college song “Lauriger Horatius,” on the wings of which it quickly flew all over the South.
His profession is that of an editor, and his delicate health has compelled his residence in a warmer latitude than his native city, in Louisiana and Georgia.
Fugitive Poems:
Maryland, My Maryland,
Sole Sentry,
Arlington,
Cameo Bracelet, and others.
Written 1861.
1839=1886.
Father Ryan, “the poet-priest,” was born in Norfolk, Virginia, but passed most of his life farther south. He lived in New Orleans, Knoxville, Augusta, and Mobile. His death occurred in Louisville, Kentucky. His patriotic poems are among the best known and most admired that the South has produced; his religious poems evince a sad view of human life together with an exalted adoration of the Divine Will.
Poems.
Life of Christ, [unfinished].
Some Aspects of Modern Civilization, [a lecture].
To our great regret, we have not been permitted by the publishers to copy any of Father Ryan’s poems. Every one is familiar with his “Conquered Banner,” and “Sword of Lee”; the “Song of the Mystic” is one of his most beautiful productions.
1841= ——.
William Gordon McCabe was born near Richmond, and educated at the University of Virginia. He was a captain in the Confederate service; and since the war he has had at Petersburg one of the best schools preparatory to the University. He is a poet, and has also edited several Latin authors for school use.
Ballads of Battle and Bravery.
Defence of Petersburg.
Petersburg Trenches, 1864.
[38] By permission of the author.
1842=1881.
Sidney Lanier was born in Macon, Georgia, descended from a line of artist ancestors, through whom he inherited great musical ability. He was educated at Oglethorpe College, being graduated in 1860. He and his brother Clifford entered the Confederate Army together in 1861 and served through the war; but the exposure and hardships and imprisonment developed consumption which finally caused his death.
After the war he lived for two years in Alabama as a clerk and a teacher; but his health failed and he was forced to return home where he practised law with his father till 1873. Then deciding to devote himself to music and poetry, he went to Baltimore where he was engaged as first flute in the Peabody Symphony Concerts and in 1879 as lecturer on English Literature in Johns Hopkins University. His dread disease never relaxed and he was often obliged to quit work and go to Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, and Pennsylvania in search of strength. His death occurred at Lynn, Polk County, North Carolina, on his last quest for strength and life with which to continue the work he so much loved.
His “Science of English Verse” is said to be a new and valuable addition to the study of poetry. His poems belong to the new order of thought and life. His “Tiger-Lilies” is a prose-poem, written in three weeks just after the war and laid in the mountains of Tennessee and on the eastern shore of Virginia where he was stationed. “Beauty is holiness, and holiness is beauty,” was his favorite remark on the subject of Art. His work and influence are growing in importance in the regard of students.
In 1876 he was invited to write the poem for the Centennial Exposition; and the “Meditation of Columbia,” composed with the musical expression always in mind,—and so too it should be read,—was the grand Ode that graced the opening day at Philadelphia. See under Waitman Barbe.
POEMS: Edited by his wife, Mary Day Lanier, with a Memorial by William Hayes Ward.
Tiger Lilies, [novel].
Florida: its Scenery, Climate, and History.
English Novel and Principles of Its Development.
Science of English Verse.
Boy’s Froissart.
Boy’s King Arthur.
Boy’s Mabinogion.
Boy’s Percy.
(From Poems.[39])
1877.
Music is Love in search of a word.
(From The Marshes of Glynn.[40])
1878.
[39] By permission of Mrs. Lanier, and Charles Scribner’s Sons, N. Y.
[40] By permission of Mrs. Lanier, and Charles Scribner’s Sons, N. Y.
James Lane Allen is one of the best and most successful of the living writers of the South. He is a Kentuckian, and his sketches and stories have so far all dealt with life in his native State.
Life in the Blue Grass.
White Cowl.
Flute and Violin, and other stories.
John Gray.
Sister Dolorosa.
A Kentucky Cardinal (1895).
(From John Gray, a Kentucky Tale of the Olden Time.[41])
A strange mixture of human life there was in Gray’s school. There were the native little Kentuckians, born in the wilderness—the first wild, hardy generation of new people; and there were the little folk from Virginia, from Tennessee, from North Carolina, and from Pennsylvania and other sources, huddled together, some rude, some gentle, and starting out now to be formed into the men and women of the Kentucky that was to be.
They had their strange, sad, heroic games and pastimes, those primitive children under his guidance. Two little girls would be driving the cows home about dusk; three little boys would play Indian and capture them and carry them off; the husbands of the little girls would form a party to the rescue; the prisoners would drop pieces of their dresses along the way; and then at a certain point of the woods—it being the dead of night now, and the little girls being bound to a tree, and the Indians having fallen asleep beside their smouldering camp-fires—the rescuers would rush in, and there would be whoops and shrieks, and the taking of scalps, and a happy return.
Or, some settlement would be shut up in a fort besieged. Days would pass. The only water was a spring outside the walls, and around this the enemy skulked in the corn and grass. But the warriors must not perish of thirst. So, with a prayer, a tear, a final embrace, the little women marched out through the gates to the spring, in the very teeth of death, and brought back water in their wooden dinner-buckets.
Or, when the boys would become men with contests of running, and pitching quoits, and wrestling, the girls would play wives and have a quilting in a house of green alder-bushes, or be capped and wrinkled grandmothers sitting beside imaginary spinning-wheels and smoking imaginary pipes.
Sometimes it was not Indian warfare, but civil strife. For one morning as many as three Daniel Boones appeared on the playground at the same moment; and at once there was a fierce battle to ascertain which was the genuine Daniel. This being decided, the spurious Daniels submitted to be the one Simon Kenton, the other General George Rogers Clarke.
This was to be a great day for what he called his class in history. Thirteen years before, and forty miles away, had occurred the most dreadful of all the battles—the disaster of the Blue Licks; and in town were many mothers who yet wept for sons, widows who yet dreamed of young husbands, fallen that beautiful August day beneath the oaks and cedars, or floating down the red-dyed river.
It was this that he had promised to tell them at noon; and a little after twelve o’clock he was standing with them on the bank of the Town Fork, in order to give vividness to his description. This stream flows unseen beneath the streets of the city [Lexington] now, and with scarce current enough to wash out its grimy channels; but then it flashed broad and clear through the long valley which formed the town common—a valley of scattered houses with orchards and corn-fields and patches of cane.
A fine poetic picture he formed as he stood there amid their eager upturned faces, bare-headed under the cool brilliant sky of May, and reciting to them, as a prose-minstrel of the wilderness, the deeds of their fathers.
This Town Fork of the Elkhorn, he said, must represent the Licking River. On that side were the Indians; on this, the pioneers, a crowd of foot and horse. There stretched the ridge of rocks, made bare by the stamping of the buffalo; here was the clay they licked for salt. In that direction headed the two ravines in which Boone had feared an ambuscade. And thus variously having made ready for battle, and looking down for a moment into the eyes of a freckly impetuous little soul who was the Hotspur of the playground, he repeated the cry of McGary, which had been the signal for attack:
“Let all who are not cowards follow me!”
[Hereupon the soldiers plunged through the river, not seeing the Indians nor even knowing where they were; and in a few minutes they were attacked and completely routed by the Indians who were concealed in the woods and ravines of the other bank, as Boone had feared. Boone’s son was killed, and he himself narrowly escaped by dashing through one of the ravines and swimming the river lower down. The slaughter in the river was great, and the pursuit was continued for twenty miles. Never had Kentucky experienced so fatal a blow as that at the Blue Licks.—L. M.]
[41] By permission of J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia.
1848= ——.
Joel Chandler Harris was born in Eatonton, Georgia, and is a lawyer: but he has devoted much time of late years to literature, and is now one of the editors of the “Atlanta Constitution.”
Arkansas Industrial University, Fayetteville, Washington County, Ark.
His dialect stories of “Uncle Remus” are a faithful reproduction of the popular tales of the old negroes of South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama; for the negro dialect varies in the different States. Mr. Harris’ books have made these tales known in England.
“On the Plantation” is said to be autobiographical; it is a story of a boy’s life during the war, well and simply told.
Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings.
Nights with Uncle Remus.
On the Plantation.
Little Mr. Thimblefinger.
Mingo, and other Sketches.
Free Joe, and other Georgian Sketches.
Daddy Jake, the Runaway, and Short Stories Told after Dark.
(From Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings.[42])
“Didn’t the fox never catch the rabbit, Uncle Remus?” asked the little boy the next evening.
“He come mighty nigh it, honey, sho’s you bawn—Brer Fox did. One day atter Brer Rabbit fool ’im wid dat calamus root, Brer Fox went ter wuk en got ’im some tar, en mix it wid some turkentine, en fix up a contrapshun w’at he call a Tar-Baby, en he tuk dish yer Tar-Baby en he sot ’er in de big road, en den he lay off in de bushes fer to see w’at de news wuz gwineter be. En he didn’t hatter wait long, nudder, kaze bimeby here come Brer Rabbit pacin’ down de road—lippity-clippity, clippity-lippity—dez ez sassy ez a jay-bird. Brer Fox, he lay low. Brer Rabbit come prancin’ ’long twel he spy de Tar-Baby, en den he fotch up on his behine legs like he wuz ’stonished. De Tar-Baby, she sot dar, she did, en Brer Fox, he lay low.
“‘Mawnin’!’ says Brer Rabbit, sezee—‘nice wedder dis mawnin’,’ sezee.
“Tar-Baby ain’t sayin’ nuthin’, en Brer Fox, he lay low.
“‘How duz yo’ sym’tums seem ter segashuate?’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee.
“Brer Fox, he wink his eye slow, en lay low, en de Tar-Baby, she ain’t sayin’ nuthin’.
“‘How you come on, den? Is you deaf?’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. ‘Kaze if you is, I kin holler louder,’ sezee.
“Tar-Baby stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low.
“‘Youer stuck up, dat’s w’at you is,’ says Brer Rabbit, sezee, ‘en I’m gwineter kyore you, dat’s w’at I’m a gwineter do,’ sezee.
“Brer Fox, he sorter chuckle in his stummuck, he did, but Tar-Baby ain’t sayin’ nuthin’.
“‘I’m gwineter larn you howter talk ter ’specttubble fokes ef hit’s de las’ ack,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. ‘Ef you don’t take off dat hat en tell me howdy, I’m gwineter bus’ you wide open,’ sezee.
“Tar-Baby stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low.
“Brer Rabbit keep on axin’ ’im, en de Tar-Baby, she keep on sayin’ nuthin’, twel present’y Brer Rabbit draw back wid his fis’, he did, en blip he tuck ’er side er de head. Right dar’s where he broke his merlasses jug. His fis’ stuck, en he can’t pull loose. De tar hilt ’im. But Tar-Baby, she stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low.
“‘Ef you don’t lemme loose, I’ll knock you agin,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, en wid dat he fotch ’er a wipe wid de udder han’, en dat stuck. Tar-Baby, she ain’t sayin’ nuthin’, en Brer Fox, he lay low.
“‘Tu’n me loose, fo’ I kick de nat’al stuffin’ outen you,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, but de Tar-Baby, she ain’t sayin’ nuthin’. She des hilt on, en den Brer Rabbit lose de use er his feet in de same way. Brer Fox, he lay low. Den Brer Rabbit squall out dat ef de Tar-Baby don’t tu’n ’im loose he butt ’er cranksided. En den he butted, en his head got stuck. Den Brer Fox, he sa’ntered fort’, lookin’ dez ez innercent ez wunner yo’ mammy’s mockin’-birds.
“‘Howdy, Brer Rabbit,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee. ‘You look sorter stuck up dis mawnin’,’ sezee, en den he rolled on de groun’, en laft en laft twel he couldn’t laff no mo’. ‘I speck you’ll take dinner wid me dis time, Brer Rabbit. I done laid in some calamus root, en I ain’t gwineter take no skuse,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee.”
Here Uncle Remus paused, and drew a two-pound yam out of the ashes.
“Did the fox eat the rabbit?” asked the little boy to whom the story had been told.
“Dat’s all de fur de tale goes,” replied the old man. “He mout, en den agin he moutent. Some say Jedge B’ar come ’long en loosed ’im,—some say he didn’t. I hear Miss Sally callin’. You better run ’long.”
[42] By permission of D. Appleton & Co, N. Y.
1850= ——.
Robert Burns Wilson was born in Washington County, Pennsylvania, but removed early to Frankfort, Kentucky, where he devoted himself to landscape painting. Some of his pictures attracted attention at the New Orleans Exposition, 1884. His poems have appeared in magazines and have been much admired for their musical flow of deep feeling and fancy.
Life And Love: Poems.
(From Life and Love.[43])
TO ELIZABETH, MY MOTHER.
[43] By permission of the author, and publishers, the Cassell Publishing Co., N. Y.
FRANCES C. TIERNAN.
Mrs. Tiernan has written many novels of Southern life. She is a daughter of Colonel Charles F. Fisher of Salisbury, North Carolina, who was killed in the battle of Manassas. Her best known book, “The Land of the Sky,” describes a summer tour through the grand mountains of her native State, taken before the railroads had penetrated them.
Valerie Aylmer.
Mabel Lee.
Nina’s Atonement.
Carmen’s Inheritance.
Hearts and Hands.
Land of the Sky.
Heart of Steel.
Summer Idyl.
Roslyn’s Fortune.
Morton House.
Ebb Tide.
Daughter of Bohemia.
A Gentle Belle.
A Question of Honor.
After Many Days.
Bonny Kate.
Armine.
Miss Churchill.
Land of the Sun (1895).