Kentucky In American Letters: Vol. II, by John Wilson Townsend--

Bell horses, Bell horses,
What time of day?
One o'clock! Two o'clock!
Three! and away.

I shall wait by the gate
To see you pass,
Closely press'd, three abreast,
Clanking with brass:

With your smart red mail-cart
Hard at your heels,
Scarlet ground, fleck'd around
With the Queen's seals.

Up the hills, down the hills,
Till the cart shrink
To a faint dab of paint
On the sky-brink,

Never stop till you drop,
On to the town,
Bearing great news of state
To Lords and Crown.

And down deep in the keep
Of your mail-cart,
There's a note that I wrote
To my sweetheart.

I had no words that glow,
No penman's skill,
And high-born maids would scorn
Spelling so ill;

But what if it be stiff
Of hand and thought,
And ink-blots mark the spots
Where kisses caught,

He will read without heed
Of phrases' worth,
That I love him above
All things on earth.

I must wait here, till late
Past Evensong,
Ere you come tearing home—
Days are so long!—

But I'll watch, till I catch
Your bell's chime clear ...
If you'll bring me something—
Won't you please, dear?

How does my Lady's garden grow?
How does my Lady's garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle-shells,
And pretty girls all in a row.

All fresh and fair, as the spring is fair,
And wholly unconscious they are so fair,
With eyes as deep as the wells of sleep,
And mouths as fragrant as sweet June air.

They all have crowns and all have wings,
Pale silver crowns and faint green wings,
And each has a wand within her hand,
And raiment about her that cleaves and clings.

But what have my Lady's girls to do?
What maiden toil or spinning to do?
They swing and sway the live-long day
While beams and dreams shift to and fro.

And are so still that one forgets,
So calm and restful, one forgets
To think it strange they never change,
Mistaking them for Margarets.

But when night comes and Earth is dumb,
When her face is veil'd, and her voice is dumb,
The pretty girls rouse from their summer drowse,
For the time of their magic toil has come.

They deck themselves in their bells and shells,
Their silver bells and their cockle-shells,
Like pilgrim elves, they deck themselves
And chaunting Runic hymns and spells,

They spread their faint green wings abroad,
Their wings and clinging robes abroad,
And upward through the pathless blue
They soar, like incense smoke, to God.

Who gives them crystal dreams to hold,
And snow-white hopes and thoughts to hold,
And laughter spun of beams of the sun,
And tears that shine like molten-gold.

And when their hands can hold no more,
Their chaliced hands can hold no more,
And when their bells, and cockle-shells,
With holy gifts are brimming o'er,

With swift glad wings they cleave the deep,
As shafts of starlight cleave the deep,
Through Space and Night they take their flight
To where my Lady lies asleep;

And there, they coil above her bed,—
A fairy crown above her bed—
While from their hands, like sifted sands,
Falls their harvest winnowèd.

And this is why my Lady grows,
My own sweet Lady daily grows,
In sorcery such, that at her touch,
Sweet laughter blossoms and songs unclose.

And this is what the pretty girls do,
This is the toil appointed to do,
With silver bells, and cockle-shells,
Like Margarets all in a row.

Little Blue Betty lived in a lane,
She sold good ale to gentlemen.
Gentlemen came every day,
And little Blue Betty hopp'd away.

A rare old tavern, this "Hand and Glove,"
That Little Blue Betty was mistress of;
But rarer still than its far-famed taps
Were Betty's trim ankles and dainty caps.

So gentlemen came every day—
As much for the caps as the ale, they say—
And call'd for their pots, and her mug to boot:
If it bettered their thirst they were welcome to't;

For Betty, with none of those foolish qualms
Which come of inordinate singing of psalms,
Thought kissing a practice both hearty and hale,
To freshen the lips and smarten the ale.

So gallants came, by the dozen and score,
To sit on the bench by the trellised door,
From the full high noon till the shades grew long,
With their pots of ale, and snatches of song.

While little Blue Betty, in shortest of skirts,
And whitest of caps, and bluest of shirts,
Went hopping away, rattling pots and pence,
Getting kiss'd now and then as pleased Providence.

How well I remember! I used to sit down
By the door, with Byronic, elaborate frown
Staring hard at her, as she whisk'd about me,—
Being jealous as only calf-lovers can be,

Till Betty would bring me my favourite mug,
Her lips all a-pucker, her shoulders a-shrug,
And wheedle and coax my young vanity back,
So I fancied myself the preferred of the pack.

Ah! the dear old times! I turn'd out of my way,
As I travell'd westward the other day,
For a ramble among those boy-haunts of mine,
And a friendly nod to the crazy old sign.

The inn was gone—to make room, alas!
For a railroad buffet, all gilding and glass,
Where sat a proper young person in pink,
Selling ale—which I hadn't the heart to drink.

There was an old woman lived under the hill,
And if she's not gone, she lives there still;
Baked apples she sold and cranberry pies,
And she's the old woman who never told lies.

A queer little body, all shrivelled and brown,
In her earth-colour'd mantle and rain-colour'd gown,
Incessantly fumbling strange grasses and weeds,
Like a rickety cricket, a-saying its beads.

In winter or summer, come shine or come rain,
When the bustles and beams into twilight wane,
To the top of her hill, one can see her climb,
To sit out her watch through the long night-time.

The neighbourhood gossips have strange tales to tell—
As they sit at their knitting and tongues waggle well
Of the queer little crone who lived under the hill
When the grannies among them were hoppy-thumbs still.

She was once, they say, a young lassie, as fair
As white-wing'd hawthorn in April air,
When under the hill—one fine evening—she met
A stranger, the strangest maid ever saw yet:

From his crown to his heels he was clad all in red,
And his hair like a flame on his shoulders was shed;
Not a word spake he, but clutching her hand,
Led her off through the darkness to Shadowland.

What befell her there no mortal can tell,
But it must have been things indescribable,
For when she returned, at last, alone,
Her beauty was dead, and her youth was gone.

They gather'd about her: she shook her head
—She had been through Hell—that was all she said
In answer to whens, and hows, and whys;
So they took her word, for she never told lies.

And now, they say, when the sun goes down
This queer little woman, all shrivell'd and brown
Turns into a beautiful lass, once more,
With gold-stranded hair and soft eyes of yore,

And out of the hills in the stills and the gloams
Her beautiful fabulous lover comes,
In scarlet doublet and red silken hose,
To woo her again—till the Chanticleer crows.

And she, poor old crone, sits up on her hill
Through the long dreary night, till the dawn turns chill,
And suffers in silence and patience alway,
In the hope that God will forgive, some day.

See-Saw! Margery Daw!
Sold her bed to lie upon straw;
Was she not a dirty slut
To sell her bed, and live in dirt?

And yet perchance, were the circumstance
But known, of Margery's grim romance,
As sacred a veil might cover her then
As the pardon which fell on the Magdalen.

It's a story told so often, so old,
So drearily common, so wearily cold:
A man's adventure,—a poor girl's fall—
And a sinless scapegoat born—that's all.

She was simple and young, and the song was sung
With so sweet a voice, in so strange a tongue,
That she follow'd blindly the Devil-song
Till the ground gave way, and she lay headlong.

And then: not a word, not a plea for her heard,
Not a hand held out to the one who had err'd,
Her Christian sisters foremost to condemn—
God pity the woman who falls before them!

They closed the door for evermore
On the contrite heart which repented sore,
And she stood alone, in the outer night,
To feed her baby as best she might.

So she sold her bed, for its daily bread,
The gown off her back, the shawl off her head,
Till her all lay piled on the pawner's shelf,
Then she clinch'd her teeth and sold herself.

And so it came that Margery's name
Fell into a burden of Sorrow and Shame,
And Margery's face grew familiar in
The market-place where they trade in sin.

What use to dwell on this premature Hell?
Suffice it to say that the child did well,
Till one night that Margery prowled the town,
Sickness was stalking, and struck her down.

Her beauty pass'd, and she stood aghast
In the presence of want, and stripped, at the last,
Of all she had to be pawned or sold,
To keep her darling from hunger and cold.

So the baby pined, till Margery, blind
With hunger of fever, in body and mind,
At dusk, when Death seem'd close at hand,
Snatch'd a loaf of bread from a baker's stand.

Some Samaritan saw Margery Daw,
And lock'd her in gaol to lie upon straw:
Not a sparrow falls, they say—Oh well!
God was not looking when Margery fell.

With irons girt, in her felon's shirt,
Poor Margery lies in sorrow and dirt,
A gaunt, sullen woman untimely gray,
With the look of a wild beast, brought to bay.

See-saw! Margery Daw!
What a wise and bountiful thing, the Law!
It makes all smooth—for she's out of her head,
And her brat is provided for. It's dead.

WILLIAM H. WOODS

William Hervey Woods, poet, was born near Greensburg, Kentucky, November 17, 1852, the son of a clergyman. He was educated at Hampden-Sidney College, in Virginia, after which he studied for the church at Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Virginia. Mr. Woods was ordained to the ministry of the Southern Presbyterian church in 1878; and since 1887 he has been pastor of the Franklin Square church at Baltimore. For the past several years he has contributed poems to Scribner's, Harper's, The Century, The Atlantic Monthly, The Youth's Companion, The Independent, and several other periodicals. This verse was collected and published in a pleasing little volume of some hundred and fifty pages under the title of The Anteroom and Other Poems (Baltimore, 1911). As is true of the purely literary labors of most clergymen, a few of the poems are somewhat marred by the homiletical tone—they simply must point a moral, even though that moral does not adorn the tale. Several of the poems reveal the author's love for his birthplace, Kentucky; and, taken as a whole, the book is one of which any of our singers might be proud.

They love no crowded forest dark,
They climb no mountains high,
But ranged along the pleasant vale
Where shining waters lie,
Their brown coats curling open show
A silvery undergleam,
Like the white limbs of laughing boys
Half ready for the stream.

What if they yield no harvests sweet,
Nor massive timbers sound,
And all their summer leafage casts
But scanty shade around;
Their slender boughs with zephyrs dance,
Their young leaves laugh in tune,
And there's no lad in all the land
Knows better when 'tis June.

They come from groves of Arcady,
Or some lost Land of Mirth,
That Work-a-day and Gain and Greed
May not possess the earth,
And though they neither toil nor spin,
Nor fruitful duties pay,
They also serve, mayhap, who help
The world keep holiday.

ANDREW W. KELLEY

Andrew W. Kelley ("Parmenas Mix"), poet preëminent of life on a country newspaper, was born in the state of New York about 1852. When twenty years of age he left Schenectady, New York, for Tennessee, but in 1873 he settled at Franklin, Kentucky, where he spent the remainder of his life. He was associate editor of Opie Read's paper, The Patriot, for some time, but when that sheet died, he drifted from pillar to post until a kindly death discovered him. The gossips of the quiet little town of Franklin will to-day tell the enquirer for facts regarding Kelley's life that he was engaged to a New York girl, all things were ready for the celebration of the ceremony, when the bride-to-be suddenly changed her mind, and poor Parmenas Mix was thus started in the drunkard's path. He planned to go East for several years prior to his death, to seek his literary fortunes, but he sat in his room and dreamed his life away. Kelley died at Franklin, Kentucky, in 1885. He was buried in the potter's field, a pauper and an outcast, which condition was wholly caused by excessive drinking. The very place of his grave can only be guessed at to-day. Kelley wrote many poems, nearly all of which celebrated some phase of life on a country newspaper, but his masterpiece is The Old Scissors' Soliloquy, which was originally published in Scribner's Monthly—now The Century Magazine—for April, 1876. It appeared in the "Bric-a-Brac Department," illustrated with a single tail-piece sketch of editorial scissors "lying at rest" upon newspaper clippings, with "a whopping big rat in the paste." Many of his other poems were also published in Scribner's. The New Doctor, Accepted and Will Appeal, and He Came to Pay, done in the manner of Bret Harte's The Aged Stranger, are exceedingly clever. A slender collection of his poems could be easily made, and should be. Opie Read wrote a tender tribute to the memory of his former friend, in which his merits were thus summed up: "The country has surely produced greater poets than 'Parmenas Mix,' but I doubt if we shall ever know a truer lover of Nature's divine impulses. He lightened the heart and made it tender, surely a noble mission; he talked to the lowly, he flashed the diamond of his genius into many a dark recess. He preached the gospel of good will; he sang a beautiful song."

I am lying at rest in the sanctum to-night,—
The place is deserted and still,—
To my right lie exchanges and manuscripts white,
To my left are the ink and the quill—
Yes, the quill, for my master's old-fashioned and quaint,
And refuses to write with a pen;
He insists that old Franklin, the editor saint,
Used a quill, and he'll imitate Ben.

I love the old fellow—together for years
We have managed the Farmer's Gazette,
And although I am old, I'm his favorite shears
And can crowd the compositors yet.
But my duties are rather too heavy, I think,
And I oftentimes envy the quill
As it lazily leans with its nib in the ink
While I'm slashing away with a will.

But when I was new,—I remember it well,
Though a score of long years have gone by,—
The heaviest share of the editing fell
On the quill, and I think with a sigh
Of the days when I'd scissor an extract or two
From a neighboring editor's leader,
Then laugh in my sleeve at the quill as it flew
In behalf of the general reader.

I am being paid off for my merriment then,
For my master is wrinkled and gray,
And seldom lays hold on his primitive pen
Except when he wishes to say:
"We are needing some money to run this machine,
And subscribers will please to remit;"
Or, "That last load of wood that Jones brought us was green,
And so knotty it couldn't be split."

He is nervous and deaf and is getting quite blind
(Though he hates to acknowledge the latter),
And I'm sorry to say it's a puzzle to find
Head or tale to the most of his matter.
The compositors plague him whenever they see
The result of a luckless endeavor,
But the darling old rascal just lays it to me,
And I make no remonstrance whatever.

Yes, I shoulder the blame—very little I care
For the jolly compositor's jest,
For I think of a head with the silvery hair
That will soon, very soon be at rest.
He has labored full long for the true and the good
'Mid the manifold troubles that irk us—
His only emolument raiment and food,
And—a pass, now and then, to the circus.

Heigho! from the past comes a memory bright
Of a lass with the freshness of clover
Who used me to clip from her tresses one night
A memorial lock for her lover.
That dear little lock is still glossy and brown,
But the lass is much older and fatter,
And the youth—he's an editor here in the town—
I'm employed on the staff of the latter.

I am lying at rest in the sanctum to-night—
The place is deserted and still—
The stars are abroad and the moon is in sight
Through the trees on the brow of the hill.
Clouds hurry along in undignified haste
And the wind rushes by with a wail—
Hello! there's a whooping big rat in the paste—
How I'd like to shut down on his tail!

In the sanctum I was sitting,
Engaged in thought befitting
A gentleman of letters—dunning letters, by the way—
When a seedy sort of fellow,
Middle-aged and rather mellow,
Ambled in and questioned loudly, "Well, sir, what's the news to-day?"

Then I smiled on him serenely—
On the stranger dressed so meanly—
And I told him that the Dutch had taken Holland, sure as fate;
And that the troops in Flanders,
Both privates and commanders,
Had been dealing very freely in profanity of late.

Then the stranger, quite demurely,
Said, "That's interesting, surely;
Your facilities for getting news are excellent, that's clear;
Though excuse me, sir, for stating
That the facts you've been narrating
Are much fresher than the average of items gathered here!"

YOUNG E. ALLISON

Young Ewing Allison, one of the most versatile of the Kentucky writers of the present school, was born at Henderson, Kentucky, December 23, 1853. He left school at an early age to become the "devil" in a Henderson printing office. At seventeen years of age Mr. Allison was a newspaper reporter. At different times he has been connected with The Journal, of Evansville, Indiana; city and dramatic editor of The Courier-Journal; editor of The Louisville Commercial; and from 1902 to 1905 he was editor of The Louisville Herald. Mr. Allison founded The Insurance Field at Louisville, in 1887, and has since edited it. He has thus been a newspaper man for more than forty years; and though always very busy, he has found time to write fiction, verse, literary criticism, history, and librettos. In prose fiction Mr. Allison is best known by three stories: The Passing of Major Kilgore, which was published as a novelette in Lippincott's Magazine in 1888; The Longworth Mystery (Century Magazine, October, 1889); and Insurance at Piney Woods (Louisville, 1896). In half-whimsical literary criticism he has published two small volumes which are known in many parts of the world: The Delicious Vice (Cleveland, 1907, first series; Cleveland, 1909, second series). These papers are "pipe dreams and adventures of an habitual novel-reader among some great books and their people." Mr. Allison's libretto, The Ogallallas, a romantic opera, was produced by the Bostonians Opera Company in 1894; and his Brother Francisco, a libretto of tragic opera, was presented at the Royal Opera House, Berlin, by order of Emperor William II. The music to both of these operas was composed by Mr. Henry Waller, Liszt's distinguished pupil. In history Mr. Allison has written The City of Louisville and a Glimpse of Kentucky (Louisville, 1887); and Fire Underwriting (Louisville, 1907). Of his lyrics, The Derelict, a completion of the four famous lines in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, has been printed by almost every newspaper and magazine in the English-speaking world, set to music by Mr. Waller, and an illustrated edition de luxe has recently appeared. The Derelict and The Delicious Vice have firmly fixed Mr. Allison's fame.

Fifteen men on the Dead Man's chest—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
—[Cap'n Billy Bones his song]

Fifteen men on the Dead Man's chest—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
The mate was fixed by the bos'n's pike,
The bos'n brained with a marlinspike,
And the Cookey's throat was marked belike
It had been gripped
By fingers ten;
And there they lay,
All good dead men,
Like break-o'-day in a boozin' ken—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

Fifteen men of a whole ship's list—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Dead and bedamned, and the rest gone whist!
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
The skipper lay with his nob in gore
Where the scullion's axe his cheek had shore,
And the scullion he was stabbed times four.
And there they lay
And the soggy skies
Dreened all day long
In up-staring eyes—
At murk sunset and at foul sunrise—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

Fifteen men of 'em stiff and stark—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Ten of the crew had the Murder mark—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
'Twas a cutlass swipe, or an ounce of lead,
Or a yawing hole in a battered head—
And the scuppers glut with a rotting red.
And there they lay—
Aye, damn my eyes!—
All lookouts clapped
On paradise,
All souls bound just the contra'wise—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

Fifteen men of 'em good and true—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Every man Jack could ha' sailed with Old Pew—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
There was chest on chest full of Spanish gold,
With a ton of plate in the middle hold,
And the cabins riot of loot untold.
And they lay there
That had took the plum
With sightless glare
And their lips struck dumb,
While we shared all by the rule of thumb—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

More was seen through the sternlight screen—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Chartings undoubt where a woman had been—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
A flimsy shift on a bunker cot,
With a thin dirk slot through the bosom spot,
And the lace stiff-dry in a purplish blot.
Or was she wench ...
Or some shuddering maid...?
That dared the knife
And that took the blade?...
By God! she was stuff for a plucky jade!—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

Fifteen men on the Dead Man's chest—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
We wrapp'd 'em all in a mains'l tight,
With twice ten turns of a hawser's bight
And we heaved 'em over and out of sight—
With a yo-heave-ho!
And a fare-you-well!
And a sullen plunge
In the sullen swell,
Ten-fathoms deep on the road to hell—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

HESTER HIGBEE GEPPERT

Mrs. Hester Higbee Geppert ("Dolly Higbee"), newspaper woman and novelist, was born near Edina, Missouri, March 12, 1854. She was the daughter of James Parker Higbee, a Kentuckian, and his second wife, Martha Lane (Galleher) Higbee, a woman of Virginian parentage. Both of Miss Higbee's parents died before she was fourteen years old, and she came to Lexington, Kentucky, to live in the family of Dr. Samuel H. Chew, who had married her half-sister. Dr. Chew's farm was situated some seven miles from Lexington, and there Miss Higbee lived for ten years. She was educated in Midway, Kentucky, and then taught for several years. She detested teaching and, "in January, 1878, while it was still quite dark, I stole down stairs with five dollars in my pocket and such luggage as I could carry in a handbag, tiptoed into the drizzle and 'lit out.'" The flip of a nickle determined that her new home should be Louisville, and to that city she went. Miss Higbee was the first woman in Kentucky, if not in the South, to adopt journalism as a profession. The following fourteen years of her life were spent in the daily grind of newspaperdom, she having held almost every position on The Courier-Journal, save that of editor-in-chief. In the four hottest weeks of the year, and in the brief intervals of leisure she could snatch from her daily duties, Miss Higbee wrote her now famous novel, In God's Country (New York, 1890). After the Lippincotts had refused this manuscript, Belford's Monthly Magazine accepted it by telegram, paying the author two hundred dollars for it, and publishing it in the issue for November, 1889; and in the following May the story appeared in book form. Colonel Henry Watterson wrote a review of In God's Country that was afterwards published as an introduction for it, and this did much to bring the tale into wide notice. Miss Higbee went to Chicago in 1893 to accept a position on The Tribune. On April 4, 1894, she was married to Mr. William Geppert of Atlanta, and the first five years of their married life were spent at Atlanta. It was during this time that Mrs. Geppert's best story was written, Burton's Scoop, one of the first American stories written upon hypnotism and related phenomena. The opening chapters of this appeared in the author's little literary magazine, The Autocrat, which she conducted at Atlanta for about two years, but it has never been published in book form. Two musical romances, entitled The Scherzo in B-Flat Minor (Atlanta, 1895), and Un Ze Studio (Atlanta, 1895), attracted considerable attention, and a third was announced as Side Lights, but was never published. In God's Country was dramatized, with Miss Catherine Gray cast in the role of Lydia, and opened at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, New York, September 5, 1897, but the work of the playwright and actors was most displeasing to the author. In 1900 Mr. Geppert became one of the editors of the New York Musical Courier, and he and his wife have since resided at Croton-on-the-Hudson. Mrs. Geppert has abandoned literature, but In God's Country has given her a permanent place among the writers of Kentucky.[10]

Her hair had come down and was tumbling about her neck; she whipped it out and caught it back with a hairpin, took up the guitar, and skirted the shadowy porch to the room over the kitchen. The window was open and she could see Karl sitting in the middle of the room with his head bowed upon his hands. She tapped lightly on the pane. He looked up and saw her standing in the dim light with the guitar in her hand.

"Karl," she said, "I want you to sing me that song before you go—the one you sung me that day for your dinner."

He came forward and took the instrument. He saw she had been crying, but the experience of the summer had been so crushing, he was so subdued by her past behavior, that he did not dream the tears were for him.

He opened the door and gave her a chair, and, sitting near her on the sill of the window, began to sing the song with all the tenderness and pathos his own yearning and bitter disappointment could put into it. It brought back all the old tumult. She saw now, when it was too late, that she had overestimated her strength. When he finished, she was sobbing; and in an instant he was kneeling by her chair, raising to her a face sad, searching, but shining with the tremulous glow of a hope just born.

She did not answer, but laid a hand gently on his head and looked at him, with all the pent yearning of her full heart, all the agony of that long, weary struggle, and all the pathos of defeat in her eyes. It was no use. At that moment it seemed that there was nothing else in the world but him. Everything else was remote, dim, and unreal.

"You love me in spite of dis?" he asked, looking down at his coarse attire. "You love me in spite of dat I am your nigga?"

It was out at last: the crest of victory sank in inglorious surrender. Her humiliation was his triumph.

"I vill not be a vagabond in mein own gountry; we vill be very happy. Gome mit me, Liebchen."

He would not be a vagabond in his own country. The information that would have been worth much to her once was worth nothing now. She scarcely heard it.

"I can't do that," she said. "You must go, and I must stay here and do as I have promised; but I wanted to tell you that I know I have been very cruel, and that I am very sorry. It was hard for me, too, and I could not trust myself to be kind."

It seemed but a moment she had been sitting there with his arms around her and his head upon her breast, but the east was red and the sun was almost up. Lydia rose wearily. The sense of defeat, that was more fatiguing than the struggle, clung to her. "It's time you were gone," she said. He took her hands in his and asked, with searching earnestness,

She nodded, and said good-bye, looking up at him with a tender glow on her face. The hair streaming about her shoulders had caught the flame of sunrise like a torch. He stooped and touched it with his lips as reverently as he would have kissed the garment of a saint.

HENRY C. WOOD

Henry Cleveland Wood, novelist and verse-maker, was born at Harrodsburg, Kentucky, in January, 1855. His mother was a writer of local reputation. In 1874 Mr. Wood's poems and stories began to appear in English and American magazines; and he has continued his work for them until this day. Seven of his novels have been serialized by the following publications: Pretty Jack and Ugly Carl (The Courier-Journal); Impress of Seal and Clay (New York Ledger, in collaboration with his uncle, Henry W. Cleveland, author of a biography of Alexander H. Stephens); The Kentucky Outlaw, and Love that Endured (New York Ledger); Faint Heart and Fair Lady (The Designer); The Night-Riders (Taylor-Trotwood Magazine); and Weed and War (The Home and Farm). Of these only one has been issued in book form, The Night Riders (Chicago, 1908). This was a tale of love and adventure, depicting the protest against the toll-gate system in Kentucky years ago, with a brief inclusion of the more recent tobacco troubles. Mr. Wood's verse has been printed in Harper's Weekly, Cosmopolitan, Ainslee's Magazine, The Smart Set, The Youth's Companion, and other periodicals. Two of his librettos, The Sultan's Gift and Amor, have been set to music; and at least one of his plays has been produced, entitled The Pretty Shakeress. Mr. Wood conducts a little bookshop in his native town of Harrodsburg.