Martin John Spalding, seventh archbishop of Baltimore, was born near Lebanon, Kentucky, May 23, 1810. His forebears were Maryland Catholics who had emigrated to Kentucky. He was graduated from St. Mary's College when but sixteen years of age. Spalding then spent four years at St. Joseph's College, Bardstown, Kentucky, and the same number of years in Rome, at the conclusion of which he is said to have made a seven hours' defense in Latin of 256 theological propositions. This exhibition won him a doctor's diploma, and his ordination as a priest. From 1834 to 1843 Dr. Spalding was president of St. Joseph's College in Bardstown. And from 1843 to 1848 he was in charge of the cathedral at Louisville. In 1848 he was consecrated Bishop of Lengone; and two years later Bishop of Louisville. Bishop Spalding served in this capacity until 1864 when, in the presence of four thousand people, he was installed as the seventh archbishop of Baltimore. This high office he held until his death, which occurred at Baltimore, February 7, 1872. Bishop Spalding was the greatest Roman Catholic reviewer and historian Kentucky has produced. He was one of the editors of the Catholic Magazine, and the author of the excellent Sketches of the Early Catholic Missions in Kentucky (Louisville, 1846); The Life, Times, and Character of the Rt. Rev. B. J. Flaget (Louisville, 1852). He also published Lectures on the General Evidences of Christianity (1844); Review of D'Aubigne's History of the Reformation (Baltimore, 1847); History of the Protestant Reformation (1860); and a posthumous volume, Miscellanea (1885). There is also a uniform five volume edition of his works, which is fortunate, as his books, especially the Sketches, and Flaget, are exceedingly scarce.
Bibliography. Life of Archbishop Spalding, by his nephew, John L. Spalding (New York, 1872); Adams's Dictionary of American Authors (Boston, 1905).
A BISHOP'S ARRIVAL
[From Sketches of the Life, Times, and Character of the Rt. Rev. Benedict Joseph Flaget (Louisville, Kentucky, 1852)]
Bishop Dubourg had sailed from Bordeaux on the 1st of July, 1817; and he had landed at Annapolis on the 4th of September. His suite consisted of five priests—of whom the present Archbishop of New Orleans was one—and twenty-six young men, some of whom were candidates for the ministry, and others were destined to become lay brothers to assist the missionaries in temporal affairs. Several of these youths were from Belgium; and among them was the V. Rev. D. A. Deparcq, of our Diocese. A portion of the company started directly for Baltimore with Bishop Dubourg; the rest, with the Rev. M. Blanc at their head, remained at Annapolis, where they were entertained with princely hospitality in the mansion of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, until the end of October.
Preparations were in the meantime made for crossing the mountains. The stage then ran westward only once a week; and no less than three weeks were consumed in transporting the missionary band to Pittsburgh. The Bishop and M. Blanc were in the last division; but after remaining in the stage for two days, during which time it had repeatedly upset, endangering their lives, they finally abandoned it altogether, and performed the remainder of the journey for five days on foot. About the middle of November, the missionary company embarked on a flatboat; and they reached Louisville on the last day of the month. Here they found the Rev. MM. Chabrat and Shaeffer, who had been sent on by Bishop Flaget to welcome them to Kentucky. Accompanied by them and by the Rev. M. Blanc, Bishop Dubourg started immediately for St. Thomas's, where he arrived in the evening of December 2d.
Bishop Flaget was rejoiced to meet his old friend. "I recognized him instantly," says he; "see! on meeting me, he has the humility to dismount, in order to present me the most affectionate salute that ever was given." Many and long were the "happy conversations" which he held with his former associate, and now distinguished guest. Bishop Dubourg officiated pontifically, and preached an admirable sermon in the church of St. Thomas,—the only cathedral which the Bishop as yet possessed.
On the 12th of December, the two prelates, accompanied by Father Badin, set out for St. Louis, by the way of Louisville. Here Bishop Dubourg preached in the chapel erected by M. Badin. On the 18th they embarked on the steamboat Piqua, and on the 20th reached the mouth of the Ohio, where they were detained five days by the ice. Their time was passed chiefly in religious exercises and pious conversations.
The following description of the Piqua and its passengers, from the pen of Bishop Flaget, may not be uninteresting to us at the present day, when steamboat building and navigation have so greatly changed for the better:
"Nothing could be more original than the medley of persons on board this boat. We have a band of seven or eight comedians, a family of seven or eight Jews, and a company of clergymen composed of a tonsured cleric, a priest, and two Bishops; besides others, both white and black. Thus more than thirty persons are lodged in an apartment (cabin), twenty feet by twelve, which is again divided into two parts. This boat comprises the old and the new testament. It might serve successively for a synagogue, a cathedral, a theatre, an hospital, a parlor, a dining room, and a sleeping apartment. It is, in fact, a veritable Noah's ark, in which there are both clean and unclean animals;—and what is more astonishing,—peace and harmony reign here."
They were still at the mouth of the Ohio on the morning of Christmas day. Not being able to say three Masses, they determined to make three meditations. At the conclusion of the second, the redoubtable Piqua resumed her course towards St. Louis. The Bishops and clergy made a kind of retreat on their Noah's ark. On the evening of Christmas day, the boat stopped near the farm of the widow Fenwick, a good Catholic, whom they were happy to visit. M. Badin continued his journey by land from this point, in order to be able to visit on the way many of his old friends, Catholic emigrants from Kentucky.
The Bishops returned to the boat, where they found the comedians performing a play,—that is, engaged in a general fight among themselves,—until they were separated by the captain. At midnight, on the 30th, they arrived at St. Genevieve; and early next morning they sent a messenger to announce their coming to M. De Andreis.
Two hours afterwards, "about thirty of the principal inhabitants came, with several young men on horseback and a carriage, to escort the Bishops into the town. We went to the presbytery to put on our pontifical robes: twenty-four choir-children with the cross at their head, and four citizens bearing a canopy, conducted us to the church, where after the installation of Bishop Dubourg, on a throne specially prepared for the purpose, we sang the Te Deum. The whole day was spent in receiving visits."
On the first day of the year 1818, Bishop Dubourg celebrated Pontifical Mass at St. Genevieve. The journey was then continued to Prairie du Rocher and Cahokias to St. Louis, where the prelates arrived on the 5th. They were received with great pomp, in the best French style; and Bishop Dubourg was no sooner known than he was universally esteemed and beloved. He professed himself much pleased with the dispositions and sentiments of his new flock,—so different from what he had been led to expect.
Bishop Flaget having now completed his mission, preached his farewell sermon to the Catholics of St. Louis on the feast of the Epiphany; and on the next day he turned his face homeward. He and M. Badin performed the journey on horseback, by the way of Kaskaskia and Vincennes. They were detained three days at the former place, not being able to cross the river in consequence of the running ice; and in traversing Illinois they passed three successive nights in the open air of the prairies. They reached Vincennes on the 27th of January; and after remaining here two weeks, attending to missionary duties, they continued their journey.
On the 21st of February, the Bishop found himself once more at his retired and pleasant home in the seminary of St. Thomas.
John Woodhouse Audubon, son of the great Audubon, was born at Henderson, Kentucky, November 30, 1812. At the time of his birth his father was ekeing out an existence in Henderson, with saw-mills and lumber ventures of various kinds, all of which finally failed. The nomadic life of the ornithologist was early forced upon his son. Their wanderings were chiefly confined to the country south of the Ohio river, and Louisiana. John Woodhouse Audubon was instructed by his mother in the useful field of learning; but from his father he learned to delineate birds and mammals, though it was the family's desire that he should become a portrait painter. He and his brother, Victor, who was three years his elder, were sent to school together, but, in 1826, they were separated, Victor becoming a clerk at Louisville, Kentucky, and John remaining in Louisiana with his mother, who was then conducting a school, while the father went to Europe to solicit subscriptions for his forthcoming Birds of America. John W. Audubon was at this time engaged in drawing from Nature, and in playing the violin, to which he was devoted throughout life. He was a clerk for a short time on a Mississippi river steamboat, but any kind of routine was distasteful to him, his whole life being absorbed in the study of birds and mammals. He accompanied his father on one of his European trips, and in England and Scotland he copied many of the masterpieces of the great painters. In 1863 the collection of new species demanded that father and son should go as far South as the Gulf of Mexico; and while passing through Charleston, South Carolina, the son met Maria Bachman, whom he married the following year. In 1840 the Audubon house near New York City was built, and there John W. Audubon spent the remaining years of his life. In 1849 he joined a California company to go to the gold fields, but he went not for gold but for new birds and mammals. He returned in the following year, and in 1851, his famous father died. The brothers were then occupied with the publication of The Quadrupeds, and the octavo edition of The Birds of America. In the summer of 1860 Victor Audubon died; and on February 21, 1862, his brother followed him into the silent country. John Woodhouse Audubon's forty-nine years were spent in collaborating with his father and brother, but his independent fame is founded upon the manuscript record of his 1849 journey from New York to California. This most interesting manuscript was edited by his daughter, Miss Maria R. Audubon, of Salem, New York, and published as Audubon's Western Journal: 1849-1850 (Cleveland, Ohio, 1906). A more charming book of travels, of Nature in many forms, would be difficult to name.
Bibliography. The several lives of the great Audubon contain much material for a study of his son. His daughter made an excellent sketch of him for her edition of his Western Journal: 1849-1850 (Cleveland, 1906).
LOS ANGELES[8]
[From Audubon's Western Journal, 1849-1850 (Cleveland, 1906)]
This "city of the angels" is anything else, unless the angels are fallen ones. An antiquated, dilapidated air pervades all, but Americans are pouring in, and in a few years will make a beautiful place of it. It is well watered by a pretty little river, led off in irrigating ditches like those at San Antonio de Bexar. The whole town is surrounded to the south with very luxuriant vines, and the grapes are quite delightful; we parted from them with great regret, as fruit is such a luxury with us. Many of the men took bushels, and only paid small sums for them.
TULARE VALLEY
[From the same]
One more day brought us to this great valley, and the view from the last hill looking to northwest was quite grand, stretching on one hand until lost in distance, and on the other the snowy mountains on the east of the Tulare valley. Here, for the first time, I saw the Lewis woodpecker, and Steller's jay in this country. I have seen many California vultures and a new hawk, with a white tail and red shoulders. During the dry season this great plain may be travelled on, but now numerous ponds and lakes exist, and the ground is in places, for miles, too boggy to ride over, so we were forced to skirt the hills. This compelled us sometimes to take three days when two should have been ample. Our journeys now are not more than twenty miles a day, and our nights are so penetrating and cold, that four blankets are not too many.
CHRISTMAS IN 'FRISCO IN 1849
[From the same]
Christmas Day! Happy Christmas! Merry Christmas! Not that here, to me at any rate, in this pandemonium of a city. Not a lady to be seen, and the women, poor things, sad and silent, except when drunk or excited. The place full of gamblers, hundreds of them, and men of the lowest types, more blasphemous, and with less regard for God and his commands than all I have ever seen on the Mississippi, [in] New Orleans or Texas, which give us the same class to some extent, it is true; but instead of a few dozen, or a hundred, gaming at a time, here there are thousands, and one house alone pays one hundred and fifty thousand dollars per annum for the rent of the "Monte" tables.
Sunday makes no difference, certainly not Christmas, except for a little more drunkenness, and a little extra effort on the part of the hotel keepers to take in more money.
Adrien Emmanuel Rouquette, Louisiana's most distinguished poet, was born at New Orleans, February 13, 1813, the scion of an old and honorable Creole family, and the brother of Francois Dominique Rouquette (1810-1890), who was also a poet of much merit. From his boyhood he had a great fancy for the American Indian, and among them he spent many of his early years. His academic training was begun at Transylvania University of Lexington, Kentucky, but as the old matriculation books have disappeared, it now seems quite impossible to definitely fix his period of residence. From Lexington Rouquette journeyed to Paris, France, where he studied at the Royal College and at Nantes and Remnes. He was graduated from Remnes, March 26, 1833, and at once returned to New Orleans. He had, however, developed into such an unconventional fellow his family decided that a law course in Paris was what he needed, so back to the capital of the French he went. He soon abandoned the law and again returned to New Orleans, where he took up his abode among the Indians. In 1841 Rouquette published his first and best book of poems, written wholly in French, entitled Les Savanes (Paris and New Orleans). Nearly all of the poems were upon Louisiana subjects, save the finest one, Souvenir de Kentucky, an exquisite memorial of his Kentucky days, written in 1838. As he was partly educated in Kentucky and in praise of Kentucky wrote his masterpiece, this State has a double claim upon him which, though secondary to that of Louisiana, is none the less legitimate. In 1842 the poet began his studies for the priesthood, and three years later he was ordained and attached to the Catholic cathedral at New Orleans. His subsequent works include Discours prononce a la Cathedral de Saint Louis (New Orleans, 1846); Wild Flowers (New Orleans, 1848); La Thebaide en Amerique (New Orleans, 1852); L'Antoniade (New Orleans, 1860), a long poem in which a solitary life is extolled; Poemes patriotiques (New Orleans, 1860); St. Catherine Tegehkwitha (New Orleans, 1873); and, La Nouvelle Atala (New Orleans, 1879). In 1859 the Abbé Rouquette established a mission for the Choctaw Indians on the Bayou Lacombe, to which work he gave the larger part of his life. Rouquette also turned into French the poems of Estelle Anna Lewis (1824-1880), the Baltimore woman whom Poe admired; and he edited Selections from the Poets of all Countries. The three great Louisiana writers, Rouquette, the poet, Fortier, the critic, and Gayarré, the historian, published pamphlets condemnatory of Mr. George W. Cable's conceptions of Creole life and history as set forth in his many books. The Abbé sent his out anonymously, entitled Critical Dialogue between Aboo and Caboo on a New Book, or a Grandissime Ascension, edited by E. Junius (Great Publishing House of Sam Slick Allspice, 12 Veracity street, Mingo City, 1880). From the Creole standpoint The Grandissimes most probably deserved to be satirized, but not in the cheap and easy manner of this little pamphlet. It was a very unhappy swan-song of senility for the Abbé Rouquette. He died at New Orleans, July 15, 1887, lamented by his city and state. Sainte-Beuve, though recognizing the influence of Chateaubriand in Rouquette's work, praised him highly, as did many of the other famous French critics of his day and generation.
Bibliography. Cyclopaedia of American Literature, by E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck (New York, 1856); Louisiana Studies, by Alcée Fortier (New Orleans, 1894); Literature of the Louisiana Territory, by A. N. DeMenil (St. Louis, 1904).
SOUVENIR DE KENTUCKY
[From Les Savanes, Poésies Americaines (Paris, 1841)]
Kentucky, the bloody land!
Le Seigneur dit à Osée: "Après cela, néanmoins, je l'attirerai doucement à moi, je l'amènerai dans la solitude, et je lui parlerai au coeur."—(La Bible Osee).
A portion of this famous poem was translated by a writer in The Southern Quarterly Review (July, 1854).
Miss Emily Virginia Mason, biographer and anthologist, was born at Lexington, Kentucky, October 15, 1815, the sister of Stevens Thompson Mason, first governor of Michigan. She was educated in Kentucky schools and in a female seminary at Troy, New York. From 1845 until 1861 Miss Mason lived in Fairfax county, Virginia, but when the Civil War began she left her home and volunteered in the Confederate States hospital service; and she was matron successively of hospitals in the Virginia towns of Greenbrier, White Sulphur Springs, Charlottesville, Lynchburg, and Richmond. Miss Mason won a wide reputation in this work, becoming one of the best loved of Southern women. Almost immediately after the war her first literary work was published, an anthology of The Southern Poems of the War (Baltimore, 1867) which was one of the first collection issued of verse which owed its origin to the war. Her second book was what she always said was the first life of Lee, though John Esten Cooke's account of the great soldier appeared about the same time, entitled A Popular Life of General Robert Edward Lee (Baltimore, 1871). This was followed by her edition of The Journal of a Young Lady of Virginia in 1798 (1871), which enjoyed wide popularity among Virginians of her generation. Miss Mason went to Paris, France, about 1870, and for the following fifteen years she was associate principal of an American school for young women. Upon her return to this country she established herself in an attractive old Southern home at Georgetown, D. C., in which she spent the remainder of her life. Miss Mason's last literary work was Memories of a Hospital Matron, which appeared in The Atlantic Monthly for September and October of 1902. She was an able writer and a most remarkable woman in many respects. Miss Mason died at Georgetown, D. C., February 16, 1909, at the great age of ninety-four years.
Bibliography. Southern Writers, by W. P. Trent (New York, 1905); The Washington Post (February 17, 1909).
THE DEATH OF LEE
[From A Popular Life of General Robert E. Lee (Baltimore, 1871)]
On the evening of this day, 28th of September [1870] after a morning of great fatigue, he attended the vestry meeting referred to, returned home, and seated at the tea-table, opened his lips to give thanks to God.
The family looked up to see the parted lips, but heard no sound. With that last thanksgiving his great heart broke.
For many days his weeping friends hung over him, hoping for a return of health and reason, but in vain. He murmured of battles and sieges; of guarded tents and fields just won. Among his last words were: "Strike my tent! Send for Hill!" Remarkably coincident with those of his great lieutenant, Jackson, whose words were: "Let A. P. Hill prepare for action! March the infantry rapidly to the front! Let us cross the river and rest under the shade of the trees."
At 9 o'clock on the morning of the 12th of October, the great soldier breathed his last.
The following day his body was borne to the college-chapel, escorted by a guard of honor composed of Confederate soldiers. Next the hearse was led General Lee's favorite horse "Traveller," who had borne him in so many battles. The Trustees and Faculty of the college, the cadets of the Military Institute, and the citizens, followed in procession.
Above the chapel floated the flag of Virginia, draped in mourning.
Through this and the succeeding day, the body, covered with flowers, lay in state, visited by thousands who came to look for the last time upon his noble features.
On the 15th, the last said rites were rendered, amid the tolling of the bells, the sound of martial music, and the thundering of artillery.
The students, officers and soldiers of the Confederate army, and about a thousand persons, assembled at the chapel. A military escort, with the officers of General Lee's staff, were in the front. The hearse followed, with the faithful "Traveller" close behind it. Next came a committee of the Virginia Legislature, with citizens from all parts of the State. Passing the Military Institute, the cadets made the military salute as the body appeared, then joined the procession, and escorted it back to the chapel.
It had been the request of General Lee that no funeral oration should be pronounced over his remains. His old and long-tried friend, the Rev. Wm. N. Pendleton, simply read the burial services of the Episcopal Church, after which was lowered into a tomb beneath the chapel all that was mortal of Robert E. Lee.
Edmund Flagg, traveler, journalist, and poet, was born at Wiscasset, Maine, November 24, 1815. Immediately upon his graduation from Bowdoin College, in 1835, he removed to Louisville, Kentucky, and became a teacher. His letters written to the Louisville Journal while traveling in the states of the Middle West, were afterwards collected, revised, and published anonymously, entitled The Far West, or a Tour beyond the Mountains (New York, 1838, two vols.). This work has been edited by Dr. Reuben Gold Thwaites and published as volumes 26 and 27 of Early Western Travels (Cleveland, 1906). In 1839 Flagg became associate editor of the Louisville Literary News-Letter, of which George D. Prentice was editor. All of his poems of merit were published in the Journal, and News-Letter. Flagg contributed both prose and verse to the Louisville papers for nearly thirty-five years. Ill-health compelled him to abandon journalism for law, and at Vicksburg, Mississippi, he formed a partnership with the celebrated Sargent Smith Prentiss. Two years later he became editor of the Gazette at Marietta, Ohio. Flagg's first two novels were issued about this time, entitled Carrero (New York, 1842), and Francois of Valois (New York, 1842). He was next editor of a publication at St. Louis; and in 1849 he was secretary of the American legation at Berlin. In 1850-1851 he was United States consul at Venice. He afterwards returned to St. Louis and to journalism. Two of his plays, Blanche of Artois, and The Howard Queen, were well received at Louisville, Cincinnati, and several other cities. In 1853 Flagg's Venice, the City of the Sea, appeared, and it won him a wide reputation. North Italy since 1849, issued some years later, resumed the story of Venice where his first work had left off, and brought it down to date. Flagg was afterwards connected with the State department in Washington, and under an order from Congress he prepared his famous Report on the Commercial Relations of the United States with all Foreign Nations (Washington, 1856-1857, four vols.). His final work was a novel, De Molai, the Last of the Military Templars (1888). Edmund Flagg died at Salem, Virginia, in 1890. He is most certainly a Kentucky poet, journalist, and traveler, but his fame as a dramatist, historian, and novelist belongs wholly to other states.
Bibliography. Literature of the Louisiana Territory, by A. N. DeMenil (St. Louis, 1904); Adams's Dictionary of American Authors (Boston, 1905).
THE ANCIENT MOUNDS OF THE WEST
[From The Louisville Literary News-Letter]
Ages since—long ere the first son of the Old World had pressed the fresh soil of the New—long before the bright region beyond the blue waves had become the object of the philosopher's reverie by day, and the enthusiast's vision by night—in the deep stillness and solitude of an unpeopled land, these vast mausoleums rose as they now rise, in lonely grandeur from the plain and looked down even as now they look, upon the giant floods rolling their dark waters at their base, hurrying past them to the deep. So has it been with the massive tombs of Egypt, amid the sands and barrenness of the desert. For ages untold have the gloomy pyramids been reflected by the inundations of the Nile; an hundred generations, they tell us, have arisen from the cradle, and reposed beneath their shadows, and like autumn leaves have dropped into the grave; but, from the midnight of bygone centuries, comes forth no darting spirit to claim these kingly sepulchres as his own! And shall the dusky piles, on the plains of distant Egypt affect so deeply our reverence for the departed, and these mighty monuments, reposing in dark sublimity upon our own magnificent prairies, vailed in mystery more inscrutable than they, call forth no solitary throb? Is there no hallowing interest associated with these aged relics—these tombs, and temples, and towers' of another race, to elicit emotion? Are they indeed to us no more than the dull clods we tread upon? Why then does the wanderer from the far land gaze upon them with wonder and veneration? Why linger fondly around them, and meditate upon the power which reared them, and is departed? Why does the poet, the man of genius and fancy, or the philosopher of mind and nature, seat himself at their base, and with strange and undefined emotions, pause and ponder, amid the loneliness that slumbers around? And surely, if the far traveler, as he wanders through this Western Valley, may linger around these aged piles, and meditate upon a power departed—a race obliterated—an influence swept from the earth forever—and dwell with melancholy emotions upon the destiny of man, is it not meet, that those into whose keeping they seem by Providence consigned, should regard them with interest and emotion?—that they should gather up and preserve every incident relevant to their origin, design, or history, which may be attained, and avail themselves of every measure, which may give to them perpetuity, and hand them down, undisturbed in form or character, to other generations?
That these venerable piles are of the workmanship of man's hand, no one, who with unprejudiced opinion has examined them, can doubt. But with such an admission, what is the cloud of reflections, which throng and startle the mind? What a series of unanswerable inquiries succeed! When were these enormous earth heaps reared up from the plain? By what race of beings was the vast undertaking accomplished? What was their purpose?—what changes in their form and magnitude have taken place?—what vicissitudes and revolutions have, in the lapse of centuries, rolled like successive waves over the plains at their base? As we reflect, we anxiously look around us for some tradition—some time-stained chronicle—some age-worn record—even the faintest and most unsatisfactory legend, upon which to repose our credulity, and relieve the inquiring solicitude of the mind. But our research is hopeless. The present race of Aborigines can tell nothing of these tumuli. To them as to us they are vailed in mystery. Ages since—long ere the white-face came—while this fair land was yet the home of his fathers—the simple Indian stood before the venerable earth-heap, and gazed, and wondered, and turned away.
Mrs. Catherine Ann Warfield, poet and novelist, was born at Natchez, Mississippi, June 6, 1816, the daughter of Nathaniel H. Ware. She was educated at Philadelphia with her sister, Eleanor P. Ware Lee (1820-1849), with whom she afterwards collaborated in her first two volumes. Catherine Ware was married at Cincinnati, in 1833, to Robert Elisha Warfield, of Lexington, Kentucky, and Kentucky was her home henceforth. The Wife of Leon, and Other Poems, by Two Sisters of the West (New York, 1844), and The Indian Chamber, and Other Poems (New York, 1846) were the works of the sisters. In 1857 Mrs. Warfield removed from Lexington to Pewee Valley, Kentucky, near Louisville, and some three years later her masterpiece appeared, entitled The Household of Bouverie (New York, 1860, two vols.). This work brought her into wide notice. During the Civil War Mrs. Warfield wrote some of the most spirited lyrics which that mighty conflict called forth. After the war she turned again to prose fiction, producing the following books: The Romance of the Green Seal (1867); Miriam Monfort (1873); A Double Wedding (1875); Hester Howard's Temptation (1875); Lady Ernestine (1876); Miriam's Memoirs (1876); Sea and Shore (1876); Ferne Fleming (1877); and her last novel, The Cardinal's Daughter (1877). Mrs. Warfield died at Pewee Valley, Kentucky, May 21, 1877, at the time of her greatest popularity. Of her books The Household of Bouverie is the only one that is generally known to-day, and is, perhaps, the only one that is at all readable and interesting. Mrs. Warfield was an early edition of "The Duchess" and Mary Jane Holmes, though she did write fine war lyrics and one good story, which is just a bit better than either of the other two women did.
Bibliography. Women of the South Distinguished in Literature, by Mary Forrest (New York, 1861); Library of Southern Literature (Atlanta, 1910, v. xii).
CAMILLA BOUVERIE'S DIARY
[From The Household of Bouverie (New York, 1860, v. ii)]
Another queer scene with little Paul, whose quaint ways divert and mystify me all the time. During Mr. Bouverie's absence of a week, I have nothing else to amuse me nor to write about. He has called me familiarly "Camilla" until now; but fearing that Mr. Bouverie might not like the appellation, or rather that it might make me appear too childish in his sight, I said to him recently:
"Paul, you are a little fellow, and I am your guardian's wife. Don't you think it would sound better if you were to add a handle to my name, as common folks say? Call me 'Cousin Camilla' or 'Aunt Camilla,' whichever you prefer; which shall it be, Quintil?"
"Neither," he replied, manfully, "for you are neither of those things to me, and I do not like to tell stories; but I will call you 'madam,' if you choose, as you are a 'madam;'" and something like a sneer wreathed his childish lips.
"A foolish little madam, you think, Paul!" I rejoined, half in pique, half in playfulness.
"Why that is the very name for you," he said, brightening with the thought. "'Little Madam!' I will call you so; but I will not put in the foolish," he added, gravely, "for, perhaps, you will change after a while and grow wiser."
He spoke very seriously, sorrowfully almost, and I was quite provoked for a moment to be set down in this fashion, by such a mere babe and suckling. I was glad of the opportunity presented to me of snubbing him by noticing a streak of molasses on his cheek.
"Go wash your face, Paul," I said, "it is dirty!"
He walked gravely to the glass and surveyed the stain. "Looking glasses are useful things, after all," he said; "they tell the truth—see 'Little Madam,' how you are mistaken! my face is not dirty, only soiled; food is not dirt—if it were, we should all starve."
He turned and smiled at me in his peculiar way, half mocking, half affectionate.
"Yet, as you bid me," he added, "I will wash it off; but isn't it a pity to waste what would keep a bee alive a whole day!"
Is this brat a humorist?
He has brought out of his funny little trunk the oddest present for me! It is a Medusa's head admirably carved in alabaster, and was broken from the side of a vase by accident, and given to him by a lady, at whose house he made a visit with Mr. Bouverie.
He considers it a priceless treasure. There is a vague horror to me in the face that is almost insupportable. The snaky hair, the sightless, glaring eyes, are so mysteriously dreadful. He says it will answer for a paper weight. No, Paul, I will lay it away out of sight forever.
A PLEDGE TO LEE
(Written for a Kentucky Company)
[From Southern Poems of the War, edited by Emily V. Mason (Baltimore, 1867)]
John Ross Browne, humorist and traveler, was born in Ireland, in 1817, but when an infant his father came to America and settled at Louisville, Kentucky. Browne was educated in the Louisville schools, and studied medicine for a time under several well-known physicians. When eighteen years old he went to New Orleans; and this journey kindled his passion for travel that ended only with his death. Browne took the whole world for his home. He first went almost around the globe on a whaling vessel, and on his return to this country, he published his first book, called Etchings of a Whaling Cruise (New York, 1846). Browne was private secretary for Robert J. Walker, Secretary of the Treasury, for a time, but, in 1849, he went to California as a government commissioner; and in 1851 he went to Europe as a newspaper correspondent. A tour of Palestine is described in Browne's most famous book, Yusef, or the Journey of the Frangi (New York, 1853). He shortly afterwards returned to the United States and became an inspector of customs on the Pacific coast; but the year of 1861 found him again in Europe, residing at Frankfort-on-the-Main. Browne's next work was Crusoe's Island (New York, 1864). His family's residence in Germany resulted in the author publishing An American Family in Germany (New York, 1866), one of his most delightful volumes. Browne's travels in northern Europe are described in The Land of Thor (New York, 1867). He now returned to America and made his home in California. He investigated the mineral resources of the country west of the Rocky Mountains, and his report was issued as Resources of the Pacific Slope (1869). Adventures in the Apache Country (1869), was his last book. Browne was appointed United States Minister to China on March 11, 1868, but he was recalled sixteen months later. He died at Oakland, California, December 9, 1875. Most of his volumes are very cleverly illustrated with his own comical sketches of characters and scenes. That J. Ross Browne was a man of very considerable ability in several directions admits of no argument.
Bibliography. Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York, 1887, v. i); National Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York, 1900, v. viii).
LAPDOGS IN GERMANY
[From An American Family in Germany (New York, 1866)]
One of the most remarkable sights is the dog-fancier—a strapping six-foot dandy, leading after him, with silken strings, a whole brood of nasty little poodles. This fellow is a type of the class; you meet them everywhere at every Continental city. There are thousands of them in Frankfort, men strangely infatuated on the subject of little dogs. Now pardon me if I devote some serious reflections to this extraordinary and unreasonable propensity, which, I fear, is rapidly taking root in the hearts of the American people, especially the female portion of our population. In men it is often excusable; they may be driven to it by unrequited affection. I never see a fine-looking fellow leading a gang of little poodle-dogs after him, that I don't imagine he has had some dreadful experience in the line of true love; but with the opposite sex the case is quite different. "If women have one weakness more marked than another," says Mrs. Beecher Stowe, in a very eloquent passage of the "Minister's Wooing," "it is toward veneration. They are born worshippers—makers of silver shrines for some divinity or other, which, of course, they always think fell straight down from heaven." And, in illustration of this very just remark, she refers to instances where celebrated preachers and divines have stood like the image that Nebuchadnezzar the king set up, "and all womankind, coquettes and flirts not excepted, have been ready to fall down and worship, even before the sound of cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, and so forth," where the most gifted and accomplished of the sex "have turned away from the flattery of admirers, to prostrate themselves at the feet of a genuine hero, who never moved them except by heroic deeds and the rhetoric of a noble life"—a most striking and beautiful trait in woman's character to which all homage should be rendered. She clingeth unto man, even as the ivy clingeth unto the oak. But does anybody pretend to tell me that man is always the lucky recipient of this devotion? Alas, no! Not always for him is it that women are burdened with this load of "fealty, faith, and reverence more than they know what to do with;" not always for him is it that "They stand like a hedge of sweet peas, throwing out fluttering tendrils everywhere for something high and strong to climb by." Alas! man is but a cipher among the objects of woman's heroic devotion. I have a lady in my eye who from early youth has bestowed the tenderest affections of her heart upon poll-parrots; another, who for years has wept over the woes of a little chicken; who would abandon her midnight slumber to minister to the afflictions of a lame turkey, and insensible to the appeals of her lover, only relax in her severity when moved by the plaintive mewing of a cat; another, who, in the bosom of her family, and tenderly adored by her husband, has long since yielded to the fascinating allurement of a sewing-machine, and wrapped around its cogwheels, cotton spools, and hammering needles the poetry of a romantic attachment; and, lastly, the particular case in point, at which I marvel most of all, three most bewitching young ladies, of acknowledged beauty, who are hopelessly and irrevocably gone in love with—what do you think? Not a man, erect and noble, with the brow of Jove and eye of Mars; not even a horse, the paragon of beautiful and intelligent animals, or a lion, the king of the forest; but a miserable, dirty, nasty, little lapdog; a snappish, foul-eyed inodorous, sneaking little brute, which even the very cats hold in contempt! And yet they love it; at least they say so, and I have no reason to dispute their word. Have I not heard them, morning, noon, and night, protest their devotion to the dear little Fidel—the precious, beautiful little Fidel—the adorable love of a little Fidel! Oh, it is enough to make the angels weep to see the grace and fondness with which this horrid little wretch is caught up in those tender white arms, and hugged to those virgin bosoms and kissed by those pouting and honeyed lips! Faugh! It drives me mad. What is the use of wasting so much sweetness when there are thousands of good, honest fellows actually pining away from unrequited affection? brave sons of toil, ready at a moment's notice to be caressed by these sweet-pea vines, who are throwing out their fluttering tendrils for something high and strong to cling to. I leave it to any honest miner, if it is not provoking to the last degree to see the noblest capacity of woman's nature thus cruelly and wastefully perverted—the choicest affections devoted to a miserable, disgusting, and unsympathizing little monster—the very honey of their lips lavished on that foul and mucous nose, which, if it knows anything, must know some thing not fit to be mentioned to polite ears. Heaven! how often have I longed to have a good fair kick at one of these pampered little brutes. Only think of the care taken of them, while widows and orphans are shivering in the cold and perishing of hunger. The choicest pieces of meat cut up for them, potatoes and gravy mixed, delicate morsels of bread; the savory mess put before them by delicate hands, and swallowed into their delicate stomachs, and too often rejected by those delicate organs, to the detriment of the carpet. And then, when this delectable subject of woman's adoration is rubbed, and scrubbed, and pitied, and physicked, and thoroughly combed out from head to foot, with every love-lock of his glossy hair filtered of its fleas, how tenderly he is laid upon the bed or clasped in the embraces of beauty! Shade of Cupid! what a happy thing it is to be a lapdog! Well might the immortal Bard of Avon prefer to be a dog that bayed the moon rather than an indifferent poet. For my part, I'd sooner be wrapped in the arms of beauty than be King of the Cannibal Islands. That strange infatuation of feminine instinct which lends to the head-dress, at an approaching bridal, a degree of importance to which the expected groom can never aspire; which sees the destinies of the whole matrimonial career centred in the fringe of a nightgown; which seeks advice and consolation in the pattern of a reception-dress; which would shrink from the fearful sacrifice of liberty but for the magic power of new bonnets, new gloves, and embroidered handkerchiefs—that we can all understand; these are woman's coy devices to tantalize mankind; these are the probationary tortures inflicted upon him through mere wantonness and love of mischief. But when the richest treasures of her affection, the most divine essence of her being, the Promethean spark warm from her virgin heart, for which worlds are lost and won—when these are cast away upon a nauseous little lapdog, ye gods! what can poor mortals do but abandon their humanity! It is shocking to think of such competition, but how can we help it if young ladies give themselves up to dog worship? I sincerely trust this Continental fashion may never take root in California. Should it do so, farewell all hope for the honest sons of toil; it will then be the greatest of good fortunes to be born a lapdog!
Robert Morris, who is generally bracketed with Albert Pike as the most distinguished writer and craftsman American Masonry has produced, was born near Boston, Massachusetts, August 31, 1818. He was made a Mason in Mississippi, in 1846, and this was the beginning of a Masonic career almost without parallel in the history of the fraternity. Morris, of course, received all of the higher degrees in Masonry, but the most momentous thing he did as a craftsman was to establish the Order of the Eastern Star in 1850—the year he became a Kentuckian. In September, 1854, while living in southern Kentucky, Morris wrote his most celebrated poem, entitled The Level and the Square, which was first published in his magazine, The American Freemason, of Louisville, Kentucky. Rudyard Kipling lifted a line from it for his equally famous poem, The Mother Lodge. Although Morris revised his lines many times, the original version is far and away the finest. In 1858 he was elected Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Kentucky; and two years later he removed his residence to La Grange, Kentucky, the little town with which his fame is intertwined. Morris wrote several well-known religious songs, Sweet Galilee, being the best of them. He was the author of many books upon Masonry, his Lights and Shadows of Freemasonry (Louisville, 1852), being the first work in Masonic belles-lettres. This was followed by his History of the Morgan Affair (New York, 1852); Life in the Triangle (1853); The Two Saints John (1854); Code of Masonic Law (Louisville, 1855), the pioneer work on Masonic jurisprudence; Masonic Book of American Adoptive Rights (1855); History of Freemasonry in Kentucky (Frankfort, 1859), his most important historical work; Synopsis of Masonic Laws (1859); Tales of Masonic Life (1860); Masonic Odes and Poems (New York, 1864); Biography of Eli Bruce (1867); Dictionary of Freemasonry (1872); Manual of the Queen of the South (1876); Knights Templar's Trumpet (1880); Freemasonry in the Holy Land (New York, 1882), an excellent work; The Poetry of Freemasonry (New York, 1884), upon the publication of which, the author was invited to New York City and crowned "The Poet Laureate of Freemasonry," December 17, 1884; and, Magnum Opus (1886). Morris was one of the foremost numismatics of his day and generation in America, his works on this science being The Twelve Caesars, and Numismatic Pilot. He was also the author of several works designed especially for the officers of a Masonic lodge; and he edited in thirty volumes The Universal Masonic Library, besides editing from time to time four Masonic magazines. Rob Morris, to give him the name by which he is best known, died at La Grange, Kentucky, July 31, 1888.
Bibliography. History of Kentucky, by R. H. Collins (Covington, Kentucky, 1882); Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York, 1888, v. iv).
THE LEVEL AND THE SQUARE
[From The American Freemason (Louisville, Kentucky, September 15, 1854)]