Often had she read and heard of the old English ballad "Barbara Allen"; never had she thought to encounter it in the flesh. As she listened to the old song, long since forgotten by the rest of the world, but here a warm household possession; as she gazed at Beldora, so young, so fair against the background of ancient loom and gray log wall, she felt as one may to whom the curtain of the past is for an instant lifted, and a vision of dead-and-gone generations vouchsafed.
Beldora went off to fetch the nag, and Aunt Polly Ann accompanied the guest to the horse-block, laying an anxious hand on her arm.
"You heared the song-ballad Beldory sung to you. She knows dozens, but that's always her first pick. It's her favorrite, and why? Because it's similar to her own manœuvers. Light and cruel and leading poor boys on to destruction is her joy and pastime, same as Barbary's. Did you mind her eyes when she sung them words about
like it was something to take pride in, instead of sorrow for? Yes, woman, them words, 'Hard-hearted Barbary Allen,' is her living description, and will be to the end of time."
Ten days later the shocking news reached the school that Robert and Adriance Towles had fought on the summit of Devon Mountain for Beldora Wyant's sake, and Robert had fallen dead, with five bullets in him, Adriance being wounded, though not fatally. It was said that Beldora, pressed to choose between the two, had told them she would marry the best man; that thereupon, with their bosom friends, they had ridden to the top of Devon, measured off paces, and fired. Adriance had fled, but word came the next day that, weak from loss of blood, he had been captured and was on the way to jail in the county-seat near the school.
In the weeks until court sat and the trial came off there was much excitement. Sympathy for Adriance and blame for Beldora were everywhere felt. Most of the county and all of the school-women attended the trial, and interest was divided between the haggard, harassed young face of Adriance and the calm, opulent loveliness of Beldora. When she took the stand, people scarcely breathed. Yes, she had told the Towles boys she would marry the best man of them. She had had to tell them something,—they were pestering her to death,—and the law didn't allow her to marry both. She had had no notion they would be such fools as to try to kill each other. Miss Loring and the other women watched anxiously for some sign of pity or remorse in her, but there was not so much as a quiver of the lips or a tremor in her voice. As she sat there in the lone splendor of her beauty, somewhat scornfully enjoying the gaze of every eye in the court-room, one phrase of her "favorrite" song rang ceaselessly through Miss Loring's head—"Hard-hearted Barbary Allen." Her lack of feeling intensified the sympathy for Adriance, and, to everybody's joy, the light verdict of only one year in the penitentiary was brought in.
Half an hour later, Aunt Polly Ann, tragic in face and air, and with Beldora on the nag behind her, drew rein before the settlement school.
"Women," she said with sad solemnity on entering, "for four year' you have been bidding Beldory come and set down and partake of your feast of learning and knowledge; for four year' she has spurned your invite. At last she is minded to come. Here she is. Take her, and see what you can accomplish on her. My raising of her has requited me naught but tenfold tribulation. In vain have I watched and warned and denounced and prophesied; her inordinate light-mindedness and perfidity has now brung one pore boy to a' ontimely grave and another to Frankfort. Take her, women, and see if you can learn her some little demeanor and civility. Keep her under your beneficent and God-fearing roof, and direct her mind off of her outward and on to her inward disabilities! Women, I now wash my hands."
Receiving Beldora into the school was felt to be a somewhat hazardous undertaking, but affection and sympathy for Aunt Polly Ann moved the heads to do it. To the general surprise, Beldora settled down very adaptably to the new life, being capable enough about the industries, and passably so about books. But it was in music that she excelled. Miss Loring gave her piano lessons, and rarely had teacher a more gifted pupil.
Needless to say, when Beldora picked the dulcimer and sang song-ballads at the Friday night parties, all the children and grown-ups sat entranced. For three or four weeks, on these occasions, she had the grace to choose other ballads than "Barbara Allen"; but one night in early November, after singing "Turkish Lady" and "The Brown Girl," she suddenly struck into the haunting melody and tragic words of "Barbara Allen." A thrill and a shock went through all her hearers. Miss Loring saw Howard Cleves start forward in his chair with a look of horror, almost repulsion, on his fine, intelligent face.
Howard was the most remarkable boy in the school. Five years before, when not quite fifteen, he had walked over, barefoot, from his home on Millstone, forty miles distant, and presented himself to "the women" with this plea: "I hear you women run a school where boys and girls can work their way through. I am the workingest boy on Millstone, and have hoed corn, cleared new-ground, and snaked logs since I turned my fifth year. I have heard tell, over yander on Millstone, that there is a sizable world outside these mountains, full of strange, foreign folk and wonderly things. I crave to know about it. I can't set in darkness any longer. My hunger for learning ha'nts me day and night, and burns me like a fever. I'll pine to death if I don't get it. Women, give me a chance. Hunt up the hardest job on your place, and watch me toss it off."
They gave him the chance; and never had they done anything that more richly rewarded them. Not only were his powers of work prodigious, but his eager, brilliant mind opened amazingly day by day, progressing by leaps and bounds. The women set their chief hopes upon Howard, believing that in him they would give a great man to the nation. Promise of a scholarship in the law school of a well-known university had already been obtained for him, and in one more year, such was his astonishing progress, he would be able to enter it, if all went well. Miss Loring had observed that, in common with every other boy, big or little, in the school, Howard had been at first much taken with Beldora's looks, and it was with relief that she beheld his expression of repulsion at Beldora's complacent singing of "Barbara Allen."
The first real warning came at the Thanksgiving party. During a game of forfeits, Beldora was ordered to "claim the one you like the best." Miss Loring saw her first approach Howard with a dazzling and tender look in her splendid eyes, and even put out a hand to him; then suddenly, with a wicked little smile, she turned and gave both hands to Spalding Drake, a young man from the village. A deep flush sprang to Howard's face, his jaws clenched, his eyes blazed tigerishly. It might have been only chagrin at the public slight; still, it made Miss Loring anxious enough to have a long talk with Beldora next day and explain to her the hopes and plans for Howard's future and the tragedy and cruelty of interfering with them in any way.
One morning, three days before Christmas, Beldora's bed had not been slept in at all, and under the front door was a note in Howard's handwriting, as follows:
Dear Friends:
Beldora told me last week she aimed to marry Spalding Drake Christmas. Though he is a nice boy and I like him, I knew, if she did, I would kill him on the spot. Rather than do this, it is better for me to marry her myself beforehand. I have hired a nag, and we will ride to Tazewell by moonlight for a license and preacher.
I know a man is a fool that throws away his future for a woman, that Beldora is not worth it, and that I am doing what I will never cease to regret. It is like death to me to know I will never accomplish the things you set before me, and be the man you wanted me to be. I wish I had never laid eyes on Beldora. I have agonized and battled and tried to give her up; but she is too strong for me. I can fight no longer with fate. It would be better if women like Beldora never was created. She has cost the life of one boy, the liberty of another, and now my future. But it had to be.
Respectfully yours,
Howard.
Edward Bertrand Finck ("Bert Finck"), prose pastelist and closet dramatist, was born at Louisville, Kentucky, October 16, 1870, the son of a German father and American mother. His parents were fond of traveling and much of his earlier life was spent in various parts of this country and abroad. He was educated in the private schools of his native city, finishing his academic training at Professor M. B. Allmond's institution. Mr. Finck began to write at an early age, and he has published four books: Pebbles (Louisville, 1898), a little volume of epigrams; Webs (Louisville, 1900), being reveries and essays in miniature; Plays (Louisville, 1902), a group of allegorical dramas; and Musings and Pastels (Louisville, 1905). All of these small books are composed of poetic and philosophical prose, many passages possessing great truth and beauty. In 1906 Mr. Finck was admitted to the bar of Louisville, and he has since practiced there with success. He seemingly took Blackstonian leave of letters some years ago, but the gossips of literary Louisville have been telling, of late, of a new book of prose pastels that he has recently finished and will bring out in the late autumn of 1913.
Bibliography. Mr. Finck's letters to the Author; Who's Who in America (1912-1913).
BEHIND THE SCENES[64]
[From Webs (Louisville, 1900)]
Could we but lift the countenance which pleases or repels, what seems so sweet might thrust away, and what is repugnant charm or win our sympathy and aid. Is not indifference often a net to catch or to conceal? Modesty, diplomatic egotism? Wit, brilliant misery? Contentment, wallowing despair? Langor, shrewd energy? Frivolity, woe burlesquely masked by unselfishness or pride? Is not philosophy, at times, resignation in delirium? The enthusiastic are ridiculed as being self-conceited; the patient condemned for having no heart. We stigmatize them as idle whose natures are toiling the noblest toil of all, for not rarely do thought-gods drift through a spell of idleness; a butterfly-fancy may breed a spirit that turns the way of an age's career; there are sleeps that are awakenings; awakenings, sleeps; none so worthless as many who are busy all the time. Smiles are sometimes selfish triumphs; peace, the swine-heart's well-filled trough. Cheeks rich with the fire of fever are envied as glow of health; steps, eager to escape from a spectre, we laudingly call enthusiasm in work; and the brain's desperate efforts to stifle bitter thoughts sharpen tongues that fascinate with their brilliant gayety—the world dances to the music of its sighs.
Mrs. Olive Tilford Dargan, poet and dramatist, was born at Tilfordsville, near Leitchfield, Kentucky, in 1870. She attended the public schools, in which her parents were teachers, until she was ten years of age, when they left Kentucky and established a school at Donophan, Missouri. Three years later she was ready for college, but her mother's health broke, and the family settled in the Ozark Mountains, near Warm Springs, Arkansas, where another school was conducted, this time with the daughter as her father's assistant. For the following five years she taught the young idea of backwoods Arkansas how to shoot; and during these years she herself was always hoping and planning for a college education, which hopes and plans seemed to crumble beneath her feet when her mother died, in 1888, and she returned to Kentucky with her invalid father. She had purposed in her heart, however, and finally obtained a Peabody scholarship, which took her to the University of Nashville, Tennessee, from which institution she was graduated two years later. Miss Tilford then accepted a position to teach in Missouri, but the climate so affected her health that she was forced to resign and repair to Houston, Texas, to recuperate. She shortly afterwards took a course in a business college and, for a brief period, held a position in a bank. Teaching again called her and for two years she taught in the schools of San Antonio, Texas. In 1894 Miss Tilford did work in English and philosophy at Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts; and a year later she turned again to teaching, holding a position in Acadia Seminary, Wolfville, Nova Scotia. This was followed by a year spent in reading in the libraries of Boston, in which city she also worked as a stenographer. Several of her articles were accepted by the magazines about this time, which decided her to settle upon literature as her life work. She worked too hard at the outset, however, her health gave way, and she spent some months in the mountains of Georgia in order to regain her strength. Miss Tilford was married, in 1898, to Mr. Pegram Dargan, of Darlington, South Carolina, a Harvard man, whom she had met while at Radcliffe. Not long after she went to New York, and there resumed her literary labors with a high and serious purpose. Mrs. Dargan's first volume of dramas, Semiramis and Other Plays, was published by Brentano's in 1904, and taken over by the Scribner's in 1909. Besides the title-play, Semiramis, founded on the life of the famous Persian queen, this book contained Carlotta, a drama of Mexico in the days of Maximilian, and The Poet, which is Edgar Allan Poe's life dramatized. Mrs. Dargan's second volume of plays bore the attractive title of Lords and Lovers and Other Dramas (New York, 1906), the second edition of which appeared in 1908. This also contains three plays, the second being The Shepherd, with the setting in Russia, and the third, The Siege, a Sicilian play, the scene of which is laid in Syracuse, three hundred and fifty-six years before Christ. Mrs. Dargan's Lords and Lovers, set against an English background, is generally regarded as the best work she has done hitherto. Mr. Hamilton Wright Mabie has praised this play highly, placing the author beside Percy MacKaye and Josephine Preston Peabody Marks. Mrs. Dargan is Kentucky's foremost poetic dramatist, and the work she has so far accomplished may be considered but an earnest of what she will ultimately produce. Her beautiful masque, The Woods of Ida, appeared in The Century Magazine for August, 1907, and it has taken its place with the finest English work in that branch of the drama. She has had lyrics in Scribner's, McClure's, The Century, and The Atlantic Monthly, her most recent poem, "In the Blue Ridge," having appeared in Scribner's for May, 1911. Mrs. Dargan's home is in Boston, but for the last three years she has traveled abroad, spending much time in England, the background of her greatest work. Her third and latest volume contains three dramas, entitled The Mortal Gods and Other Plays (New York, 1912). This was awaited with impatience by her admirers on both sides of the Atlantic and read with delight by them.
"Mrs. Dargan has so recently achieved fame that it may seem premature to pronounce a critical judgment on her work," wrote Dr. George A. Wauchope, professor of English in the University of South Carolina, in claiming her for his State. "It is certain, however," he continued, "that it marks the high tide of dramatic poetry in this country, and is, indeed, not unworthy of comparison with all but the greatest in English literature. One is equally impressed by the creative inspiration and the mastery of technique displayed by the author. Each of her plays reveals a dramatic power and a poetic beauty of thought and diction that are surprising. The numerous songs, also, with which her plays are interspersed, yield a rich and haunting melody that is redolent of the charming Elizabethan lyrics. The dramas as a whole are audacious in plot and vigorous in characterization. In the handling of the blank verse, in the witty scenes of the sub-plots, in the splendor of the phrasing, in the strong undercurrent of reflection, and, above all, in their spiritual uplift and noble emotion, these dramas give evidence of a remarkably gifted playwright who not only possesses a deep feeling for art at its highest and best, but who also has command of all the varied resources of dramatic expression."
It would be difficult for a critic to say more in praise of an author, would it not?
Bibliography. The University of Virginia Magazine (January, 1909), containing Wm. Kavanaugh Doty's review of Mrs. Dargan's The Poet; Library of Southern Literature (Atlanta, 1909, v. iii); The Writers of South Carolina, by G. A. Wauchope (Columbia, S. C., 1910).
NEAR THE COTTAGE IN GREENOT WOODS[65]
[From Lords and Lovers (New York, 1906)]
Act IV, Scene I. Henry, with lute, singing.
[Enter Glaia. The king kneels as she approaches.]
Harry Lee Marriner, newspaper poet, was born at Louisville, Kentucky, March 24, 1871, the son of a schoolman. He was educated by his father and in the public schools of his native city. He engaged in a dozen different businesses before he suddenly discovered that he could write, which discovery caused him to accept a position on the now defunct Chicago Dispatch, from which he went to The Evening Post, of Louisville, remaining with that paper for several years. In 1902 Mr. Marriner went to Texas and became assistant city editor of the Dallas News; and he has since filled practically all the editorial positions, being at the present time Sunday editor of both the Dallas News and the Galveston News, which are under the same management. In 1907 Mr. Marriner originated a feature consisting of a daily human interest poem, printed on the front page of his two papers. For some time he concealed his identity under the title of "The News Staff Poet," but in 1909 he discarded his cloak and came out into the sunlight of reality in order that his hundreds of admirers throughout the Southwest might be content. Mr. Marriner's "poetry" is rather homely verse based upon the everyday things and thoughts and experiences of everyday people. This verse has had a wonderful vogue in Texas and Oklahoma, and the surrounding States. Dealing with dogs and "kids," with sore toes and sentiment, with joys and griefs, dolls and ball gowns, country stores and city life, street cars and prairie schooners, mint-fringed creeks and bucking bronchos, it is a medley of everything human. The cream of his verse has been brought together in three charming little books: When You and I Were Kids (New York, 1909); Joyous Days (Dallas, 1910); and Mirthful Knights in Modern Days (Dallas, 1911). Mr. Marriner has written the lyrics for two musical comedies; and he has had short-stories in the periodicals.
Bibliography. Letters from Mr. Marriner to the Author; The Dallas News (December 2, 1911).
WHEN MOTHER CUTS HIS HAIR[66]
[From When You and I Were Kids (New York, 1909)]
SIR GUMSHOO[67]
[From Mirthful Knights in Modern Days (Dallas, 1911)]
Lucien V. Rule, poet, was born at Goshen, Kentucky, August 29, 1871. He spent one year at State College, Lexington, when he went to Centre College, Danville, from which he was graduated in 1893. Mr. Rule studied for the ministry, but he later engaged in newspaper work, in which he spent six or seven years. During the last few years he has devoted his time to writing and speaking upon social and religious subjects. His first book of poems, entitled The Shrine of Love and Other Poems (Chicago, 1898), is his best known work. He is also the author of a small pamphlet of social and political satires, entitled When John Bull Comes A-Courtin' (Louisville, 1903). This contains the title-poem, the sub-title of which reads: "Sundry Meditations on the Rumored Matrimonial Alliance between J. Bull, Bart., and his cousin, Lady Columbia;" and several shorter poems. Those inscribed to Tolstoi, Whittier, and Walt Whitman are very strong. Mr. Rule's latest book is The House of Love (Indianapolis, 1910). In 1913 he will probably publish a group of poetic dramas-in-cameo for young people, and a brief collection of biographical studies. Mr. Rule resides at his birthplace, Goshen, Kentucky.
Bibliography. Southern Writers, by W. P. Trent (New York, 1905); letters from Mr. Rule to the Author.
WHAT RIGHT HAST THOU?[68]
[From When John Bull Comes A Courtin' (Louisville, Kentucky, 1903)]
THE NEW KNIGHTHOOD
[From the same]
Mrs. Eva Wilder (McGlasson) Brodhead, novelist and short-story writer, was born at Covington, Kentucky, in 187-. Her parents were not of Southern origin, her father having been born in Nova Scotia, and her mother at Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She was educated in New York City and in her native town of Covington. She began to write when but eighteen years of age, and a short time thereafter her first novel appeared, Diana's Livery (New York, 1891). This was set against a background most alluring: the Shaker settlement at Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, into which a young man of the world enters and falls in love with a pretty Shakeress. Her second story, An Earthly Paragon (New York, 1892), which was written in three weeks, ran through Harper's Weekly before being published in book form. It was a romance of the Kentucky mountains, laid around Chamouni, the novelist's name for Yosemite, Kentucky. It was followed by a novelette of love set amidst the salt-sea atmosphere of an eastern watering place, Ministers of Grace (New York, 1894). Hildreth, the scene of this little story, is anywhere along the Jersey coast from Atlantic City to Long Branch. Ministers of Grace also appeared serially in Harper's Weekly, and when it was issued in book form Col. Henry Watterson called the attention of Richard Mansfield to it as a proper vehicle for him, and the actor promptly secured the dramatic rights, hoping to present it upon the stage; but his untimely death prevented the dramatization of the tale under highly favorable auspices. It was the last to be published under the name of Eva Wilder McGlasson, as this writer was first known to the public, for on December 5, 1894, she was married in New York to Mr. Henry C. Brodhead, a civil and mining engineer of Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania. Mrs. Brodhead's next novelette, One of the Visconti (New York, 1896), the background of which was Naples, the hero being a young Kentuckian and the heroine of the old and famous Visconti family, was issued by the Scribner's in their well-known Ivory Series of short-stories. Her last Kentucky novel, Bound in Shallows (New York, 1896), originally appeared in Harper's Bazar. That severe arbiter of literary destinies, The Nation, said of this book: "No such work as this has been done by any American woman since Constance Fenimore Woolson died." It was founded on material gathered at Burnside, Kentucky, where Mrs. Brodhead spent two summers. Her most recent work, A Prairie Infanta (Philadelphia, 1904), is a Colorado juvenile, first published in The Youth's Companion. Aside from her books, Mrs. Brodhead won a wide reputation as a short-story writer and maker of dialect verse. More than fifty of her stories have been printed in the publications of the house of Harper, the publishers of four of her books; in The Century, Scribner's, and other leading periodicals. Many of her admirers hold that the short-story is her especial forte. Five of them may be mentioned as especially well done: Fan's Mammy, A Child of the Covenant, The Monument to Corder, The Eternal Feminine, and Fair Ines. She has written much dialect verse which appeared in the Harper periodicals, The Century, Judge, Puck, and other magazines. Neither her short-stories nor her verse has been collected and issued in book form. Since her marriage Mrs. Brodhead has traveled in Europe a great deal, and in many parts of the United States, traveled until she sometimes wonders whether her home is in Denver or New York, and, although she is in the metropolis more than she is in the Colorado capital, her legal residence is Denver, some distance from the mining town of Brodhead, named in honor of her husband's geological discoveries and interests. In 1906 she was stricken with a very severe illness, followed by her physician's absolute mandate of no literary work until her health should be reëstablished, which has been accomplished but recently. She has published but a single story since her sickness, Two Points of Honor, which appeared in Harper's Weekly for July 4, 1908. At the present time Mrs. Brodhead is quite well enough to resume work; and the next few years should witness her fulfilling the earnest of her earlier novels and stories, firmly fixing her fame as one of the foremost women writers of prose fiction yet born on Kentucky soil.
Bibliography. Harper's Weekly (September 3, 1892); The Book-buyer (September, 1896).
THE RIVALS[69]
[From Ministers of Grace (New York, 1894)]
As the days merged towards the end of August, Hildreth was packed to the very gates. The wiry yellow grasses along the neat walks were trampled into powder. The very sands, for all the effacing fingers of the tides, seemed never free of footprints, and by day and night the ocean promenade, the interior of the town, lake-sides, hotels, and the surf itself, were a press of holiday folk.
In these times Mr. Ruley seldom went forth in his rolling-chair, except early of a morning, when the beach was yet way-free, and the sands unfrequented save for a few barelegged men, who, with long wooden rakes, cleaned up the sea-verge for the day.
Sometimes Wade pushed the chair. But since the night when he gave Elizabeth the honeysuckles he had in some measure avoided the old preacher's small circle. There had been, on that occasion, a newness of impulse in his spirit which made him feel the advisability of keeping himself out of harm's way, however sweet that way might seem. Graham was the favored suitor. He, Wade, having no chance for the rose, could at least withhold his flesh from the thorn.
"So," said Gracie Gayle, "you're out of the running?"
"Ruled off," smiled Wade.
"Don't you make any mistakes," wisely admonished Miss Gayle. "I've seen her look at him, and I've seen her look at you."
"This is most surprising," indicated Wade, with a feigned accent. "You will pardon me, Gracie, if I scarcely credit your statement."
"Be sarcastic if you want to," said Gracie. "If you knew anything at all, you'd know that straws show which way the wind blows. When a woman regards a man with a kind of flat, frank sincerity, it's because her heart's altogether out of his reach. When she looks around him rather than at him, it's because——" Gracie lifted her shoulders suggestively.
"Grace," breathed Wade, gravely, "I am hurt to the quick to see you developing the germs of what painfully resembles thought. For Heaven's and your sex's sake, pause while there is yet time! Women who form the pernicious habit of thinking lose in time the magic key which unlocks the hearts of men."
Grace sniffed.
"Men's hearts are never locked," she said, sagaciously. "The heavier the padlock the smoother the hinges." She shook her crisp curls as she tripped away with her airy, mincing, soubrette tread.
Notwithstanding the inconsequent nature of this talk, it set Wade to thinking. Perhaps he had carried his principle of self-effacement too far. At all events, when he next saw Miss Ruley, he went up to her and stopped for a moment's conversation.
It chanced to be on the sands. Elizabeth was sitting by herself under the arch of a lace-hung sunshade, which cast shaking little shadows on her face, sprigging it with such delicate darkness as lurk in the misty milk of moss-agate.
"You are going in, then?" she asked, smiling up rather uncertainly, and noticing his flannel attire. "Mr. Graham is already very far out. That is he, I think, taking that big breaker. What a stroke!"
Wade, focussing an indulgent eye, saw a figure away beyond the other bathers, rising to the lift of a great billow. The man swam with a splendid motion. Whether he dived, or floated, or circled his arms in that whirling stroke of his, he seemed in subtle sympathy with the sea, possessed of a kinship with it, and in an element altogether his own.
Wade expressed an appropriate sentiment of admiration.
Just then Gracie Gayle came gambolling along, a childish shape, kirtled to the knee in bright blue, and turbaned in vivid scarlet. Among the loose-waisted figures on the sands she was like a humming-bird scintillating in a staid gathering of barnyard fowls. Bailey was with her, having returned after a fortnight's absence.
The two paused beside Elizabeth, and Wade went on, confused by the singular way in which that small fair face, shadow-streaked and faintly smiling, lingered in his vision. He was still perplexed with a half-pleasant, half-pained consciousness of it as he plunged into the pushing surf and felt a dizzy world of water heave round him. The surge was strong to-day, and the splashing and screaming of the shore bathers sent him farther and still farther out. Gradually their cries lessened in his ear, and there was with him presently only the hollow thud of the waves and the rushing hiss of the crestling foam.
Once, as he rose to a sea-lift, it seemed to him that he heard a sound that was not the boom of the breakers nor the song of the slipping froth. It came again, whatever it was, and as he gave ear he took in a human intonation, sharp and agonized. It was a cry for help.
Wade shook the brine from his hair, freeing his gaze for an outlook. In the glassy mound of water to his right a face, lean and white with alarm, gleamed and faded. That the sinking man was Graham came instantly to Wade's mind—Graham, a victim to some one of the mischances which the sea reserves for those who adventure too confidently with her.
Wade struck out instantly for the spot where Graham's appalled features had briefly glimpsed. Shoreward he could note an increasing agitation among the multitudes. Evidently the people had noticed the peril of the remote swimmer whose exploits had so lately won admiring comment. The beachguard no doubt was buckling to his belt the life-rope coiled always on the sands for such emergencies. Cries of men and women rang stifled over the water—exclamations of fear and advice and excitement, mingled in a long continuous wail.
Graham's head rose in sight, a mere speck upon the dense green of the bulging water. Wade, fetching nearer in wide strokes, suddenly felt himself twisted violently out of his course, and whirled round in a futile effort with some mysterious current. He was almost near enough to lay hold of Graham when this new sensation explained lucidly the cause of Graham's danger. They were both in the claws of an undertow, which, as Wade realized its touch, appeared as if wrenching him straight out to the purring distance of the farther sea.
Even in the first consternation of this discovery he felt himself thrust hard against a leaden body, and in the same instant Graham's hands snatched at him in a desperate reach for life.
"For God's sake don't hold me like this!" Wade expostulated. "Let go. Trust me to do what I can. You're strangling me, man!"
But Graham was past sanity. He only clutched with the more frenzy at the thing which seemed to keep him from the ravenous mouth of the snarling waters.
Wade, in a kind of composed despair, sent a look towards the beach. They were putting out a boat, a tiny sheel which frisked in the surf, and seemed motionless in the double action of the waves. Men laid hard at the oars. The little craft took the first big wave as a horse takes a hurdle. It dropped from the glassy height, and Wade saw it sink into a breach of the sea. Then flashing with crystal, it bore up again and outward.
The figures running and gesticulating on the beach had a marvellous distinctness to Wade's submerging eyes. He noticed the blue sky, flawed with scratches of white, the zigzag roof-lines of the great town, the twisting flags and meshes of the dark wire. Everything oppressed him with a sort of deadly clearness, as if a metal stamp should press in melting wax.
He was momently sinking, drawn ever outward by the undercurrent, and downward by the weighty burden throttling him in its senseless grasp. He looked once more through a blinding veil of foam, and saw the boat dipping far to the left. A phantasm of life flickered before him. Unsuspected trivialities shook out of their cells, and amazed him with the pygmy thrift of memory. Then came a sense of confusion, as if the spiritual and corporal lost each its boundary and ranged wild, and Wade felt the sea in his eyes, stroking them down as gently as ever any watcher by the dying.
Mrs. Cordia Greer Petrie, a talented writer of very great promise and of decided performance, was born near Merry Oaks, Kentucky, February 12, 1872. When she was a child her parents removed to Louisville, Kentucky, and in the public schools of that city she was educated, after which she spent a half-year at old Eminence College, Eminence, Kentucky. In July, 1894, Miss Greer was married to Dr. Hazel G. Petrie, of Fairview, Kentucky, who, for the past ten years, has been mine physician in various sections of eastern Kentucky. At the present time he is serving six mines and making his home at Chenoa, near Pineville, Kentucky. In her writings Mrs. Petrie has created a character of great originality in Angeline Keaton, an unlettered inhabitant of a remote Kentucky hamlet. "Of the original Angeline," Mrs. Petrie once wrote, "I know but little. She and her shiftless, 'no-erkount' husband, Lum, together with her son, Jeems Henry, lived in Barren county, not far from Glasgow. Angeline supported the family by working on the 'sheers,' 'diggin one half the taters fur tother half!' She was very anxious for her boy to 'git an edjycation' and no sooner would he get comfortably settled in a 'cheer' until she would exclaim, 'Jeems Henry! Git up offen them britches, you lazy whelp! Git yer book and be gittin some larnin in your head!' Without a word Jim Henry would climb up the log wall and from under the rafters abstract his blue back speller." Characterization is Mrs. Petrie's chief strength; and she is a positive refutation of the masculine dictum that women lack humor. With her friend, Miss Leigh Gordon Giltner, the short-story writer, she collaborated on an Angeline sketch, entitled "When the Bees Got Busy," which was published in the Overland Monthly for August, 1904; and the prize story reprinted at the end of this note is the only other Angeline story that has been published so far. She has won several prizes with other stories, but a group of the Angeline sketches are in manuscript, and they will shortly appear in book form. Angeline Keaton, "with her gaunt angular form clad in its scant calico gown," is sure to "score" when she makes her bow between the covers of a book. She is every bit as cleverly conceived as Mrs. Wiggs, Susan Clegg, or any of the other quaint women who have recently won the applause of the American public.
Bibliography. Letters from Mrs. Petrie to the Author; Miss Leigh Gordon Giltner's study in The Southern Home Journal (Louisville).
ANGELINE JINES THE CHOIR
[From The Evening Post (Louisville, Kentucky)]
She sat upon the edge of the veranda, fanning herself with her "split" sunbonnet, a tall, angular woman, whose faded calico gown "lost connection" at the waist line. Her spring being dry, she came to our well for water. Discovering that Angeline Keaton was a "character," I invariably inveigled her to rest awhile on our cool piazza before retracing her steps up the steep, rocky hillside to her cabin home.
"I missed you yesterday," I said as a starter.
"Yes'm," she answered in a voice harsh and strident, yet touched with a peculiar sibilant quality characteristic of the Kentucky backwoodsman, "and thar wuz others that missed me, too!"
Settling herself comfortably, she produced from some hidden source a box of snuff and plied her brush vigorously.
"We-all have got inter a wrangle over at Zion erbout the church music," she began. "I and Lum, my old man, has been the leaders ever since we moved here from Lick-skillet. We wuz alluz on hand—Lum with his tunin' fork and me with my strong serpraner. When it come to linin' off a song, Lum wuz pintedly hard to beat. Why, folks come from fur and near to hear us, and them city folks, at Mis' Bowles' last summer, 'lowed thar warn't nothing in New York that could tech us. One of 'em offered us a dollar to sing inter a phonygraf reckerd, but we wuz afeerd to put our lives in jopperdy by dabblin' in 'lectricerty. But even celebrerty has its drawbacks, and a 'profit is not without honor in his own country,' as the saying is. A passel of 'em got jellus, a church meeting was called, unbeknownst to us, and ermong 'em they agreed to make a change in the music at old Zion. That peaked-faced Betty Button wuz at the bottom of it. Ever since she tuk that normal course at Bowling Green she's been endeverin' to push herself inter promernence here at Bear Waller. Fust she got up a class in delsarty, but even Bear Waller warn't dull ernough to take to that foolishness! Then she canvassed the county with a cuttin' system and a book called 'Law at a Glance.' Now she's teaching vokle culshure. She orter know singers, like poits, is born, not made! Jest wantin' to sing won't do it. It takes power. It's give up mine's the powerfullest voice in all Bear Waller. I kin bring old Brindle in when she's grazing in the woods, back o' Judge Bowles' medder, and I simply step out on the portico and call Lum to dinner when he's swoppin' yarns down to the store quarter o' mile away. Fur that matter, though, a deef and dum man could fetch Lum to vittles.
"Do you know Bear Waller owes its muserkil educashun to me? Mine wuz the fust accordyon brought to the place, and I wuz allus ready to play fur my nabers. I didn't hafter be begged. I orgernized the Zobo band, I lent 'em my ballads, but whar's my thanks? At the battin' of an eye they're ready to drop me for that quavery-voiced Button gal and them notes o' hern that's no more'n that many peryids and commers.
"When the committee waited on me and Lum we jest flew mad and 'lowed we'd quit. Maybe we wuz hasty, but it serves 'em right. Besides, these Bear Wallerites ain't compertent to appreshiate a voice like mine, nohow. I decided I'd take my letter to Glasgow and jine that brag choir of their'n. It did me good to think how it 'ud spite some folks to see me leadin' the singin' at the county seat!
"Lum wuz dead set ergin it, but armin' myself with the rollin' pin and a skillet o' bilin grease, I finally pervailed on him to give in. Lum is of a yieldin' dispersishun if a body goes at 'im right.
"Jim Henry, that's my boy, an' I tuk a early start. We had tied up the colt in the cow shed and I wuz congratulatin' myself on bein' shet of the pesky critter when I heerd him nicker. Lookin' back, I saw him comin' in a gallerp, his head turned to one side, while he fairly obscured the landscape with great clouds o' pike dust!
"We wuz crossin' the railroad when old Julie heered that nicker, an' right thar she balked. Neither gentle persuasion from the peach tree switch which I helt in my hand, nor well-aimed kicks of Jim Henry's boots in her flanks could budge her till that colt come up pantin' beside her. We jest did clear the track when the accomerdashun whizzed by. Well, sir, when old Julie spied them kyars she began buck-jumpin' in a manner that would'er struck terror to a less experienced hosswoman. Jim Henry, who wuz gazin' at the train with childlike pleasure, wuz tuk wholly by suprise, and before he knowed what wuz up he wuz precippytated inter the branches o' a red-haw tree. He crawled out, a wreck, his face and hands scratched and bleedin' and his britches hangin' in shreds, and them his Sundays, too! I managed to pin 'em tergether with beauty pins, and cautionin' him not to turn his back to the ordiance, we finally resumed our journey. That colt alluz tries hisself, and jest as we reached the square, in Glasgow, his appertite began clammerin', and Julie refused to go till the pesky critter's wants wuz appeased. Them Glasgowites is dear lovers of good hoss flesh, and quite a crowd gethered to discuss the good pints of the old mare and that mule colt.
"Some boys mistook Jim Henry for somebody they knowed and hollered, 'Say, Reube!' 'Hey, Reube!' at him. Jim Henry wuz fur explainin' to 'em their mistake, till one of 'em began to sing, 'When Reuben comes to town, he's shore to be done brown!' 'Jim Henry,' says I, sternly, 'you're no child o' mine ef you take that! Now, if you don't get down and thrash him I'm agoin' to set you afire when I get you home.'
"Jim Henry needed no second biddin'. He wuz off that nag in a jiffy, and the way he did wallerp that boy wuz a cawshun! He sellerbrated his victry by givin' the Bear Waller war-whoop. Then crawlin' up behind me, he said he wuz now ready fur meetin'. That boy's a born fiter. He gets it honest, for me and Lum are both experts, but then practice makes perfect, as the sayin' is.
"Our arrival created considerable stir in meetin'. Why is it that when a distinguished person enters a church it allus perduces a flutter? Owin' to the rent in Jim Henry's britches, I shoved him inter the back seat. Cautionin' him not to let me ketch him throwin' paper wads, I swept merjestercally up the ile and tuk a seat by the orgin. A flood of approvin' glances fastened themselves on my jet bonnet and fur-lined dolman. I wuz sorry I didn't know the fust song. It must have been a new one to that choir. Thar wuz four of 'em and each one wuz singin' it to a different tune, and they jest couldn't keep tergether! The coarse-voiced gal to my rear lagged dretfully. When the tall blonde, who wuz the only one of 'em that knowed the tune, when she'd sing,