I said.
"That's it," said Aunt Jane, delightedly. "There ain't any religion in restin' unless you're tired, and work's jest as holy in his sight as rest."
Our faces were turned toward the western sky, where the sun was sinking behind the amethystine hills. The swallows were darting and twittering over our heads, a somber flock of blackbirds rose from a huge oak tree in the meadow across the road, and darkened the sky for a moment in their flight to the cedars that were their nightly resting place. Gradually the mist changed from amethyst to rose, and the poorest object shared in the transfiguration of the sunset hour.
Is it unmeaning chance that sets man's days, his dusty, common days, between the glories of the rising and the setting sun, and his life, his dusty, common life, between the two solemnities of birth and death? Bounded by the splendors of the morning and evening skies, what glory of thought and deed should each day hold! What celestial dreams and vitalizing sleep should fill our nights! For why should day be more magnificent than life?
As we watched in understanding silence, the enchantment slowly faded. The day of rest was over, a night of rest was at hand; and in the shadowy hour between the two hovered the benediction of that peace which "passeth all understanding."
Mrs. Kate Slaughter McKinney ("Katydid"), poet and novelist, was born at London, Kentucky, February 6, 1857. She was graduated from Daughters', now Beaumont, College, Harrodsburg, Kentucky, when John Augustus Williams was president. On May 7, 1878, Miss Slaughter was married at Richmond, Kentucky, to James I. McKinney, now superintendent of the Louisville and Nashville railroad. Mrs. McKinney's best work is to be found in her first book of verse, Katydid's Poems (Louisville, 1887). This slender volume was extravagantly praised by the late Charles J. O'Malley, but it did contain several lyrics of much merit, especially "The Little Face," a lovely bit of verse surely. Mrs. McKinney's first novel, The Silent Witness (New York, 1907), was followed by The Weed by the Wall (Boston, 1911). Both of these works prove that the author's gift is of the muses, and not of the gods of the "six best sellers." Neither of her novels was overly successful, making one wish she had held fast to her earlier love, verse-making. Besides these three volumes, Mrs. McKinney has published a group of songs which have attracted attention. She resides at Montgomery, Alabama.
Bibliography. Blades o' Bluegrass, by Fannie P. Dickey (Louisville, 1892); Who's Who in America (1912-1913).
A LITTLE FACE[18]
[From Katydid's Poems (Louisville, Kentucky, 1887)]
Charles J. O'Malley, the George D. Prentice of modern Kentucky literature, the praiser extraordinary and quite indiscriminately of all things literary done by Kentucky hands, and withal a poet of distinguished ability, was born near Morganfield, Kentucky, February 9, 1857. Through his father O'Malley was related to Father Abram J. Ryan, the poet-priest of the Confederacy; and his mother was of Spanish descent. He was educated at Cecilian College, in Hardin county, Kentucky, and at Spring Hill, a Jesuit institution near Mobile, Alabama, from which he returned to Kentucky and made his home for some years at Henderson. His contributions in prose and verse to the newspapers of southwest Kentucky made him well-known in the State. A series of prose papers included Summer in Kentucky, By Marsh and Pool, and The Poets and Poetry of Southwest Kentucky, attracted much favorable comment. His finest poem, Enceladus, appeared in The Century Magazine for February, 1892, and much of his subsequent work was published in that periodical. In 1893 O'Malley removed to Mt. Vernon, Indiana, to become editor of The Advocate, a Roman Catholic periodical. His first and best known book, The Building of the Moon and Other Poems (Mt. Vernon, Indiana, 1894), brought together his finest work in verse. From this time until his death he was an editor of Roman Catholic publications and a contributor of poems to The Century, Cosmopolitan, and other high-class magazines. For several years O'Malley was editor of The Midland Review, of Louisville, and this was the best periodical he ever edited. Many of the now well-known writers of the South and West got their first things printed in The Review. It did a real service for Kentucky authors especially. During his later life O'Malley seemed to realize that he had devoted far too much time in praising the literary labors of other writers, and he turned most of his attention to creative work, which was making him better known with the appearance of each new poem. O'Malley may be ranked with John Boyle O'Reilly, the Boston editor and poet, and he loses nothing by comparison with him. He was ever a Roman Catholic poet, and his religion marred the beauty of much of his best work. Besides The Building of the Moon, O'Malley published The Great White Shepherd of Christendom (Chicago, 1903), which was a large life of Pope Leo XIII; and Thistledrift (Chicago, 1909), a little book of poems and prose pastels. For several years prior to his passing, he planned a complete collection of his poems to be entitled Songs of Dawn, but he did not live to finish this work. At the time of his death, which occurred at Chicago, March 26, 1910, O'Malley was editor of The New World, a Catholic weekly. Today he lies buried near his Kentucky birthplace with no stone to mark the spot.
Bibliography. The Century Magazine (October, 1907); The New World (Chicago, April 2, 1910).
ENCELADUS[19]
[From The Building of the Moon and Other Poems (Mount Vernon, Indiana, 1894)]
NOON IN KENTUCKY
[From the same]
Langdon ("Denver") Smith, maker of a very clever and learned poem, was born in Kentucky, January 4, 1858. From 1864 to 1872 he attended the public schools of Louisville. As a boy Smith served in the Comanche and Apache Wars, and he was later a correspondent in the Sioux War. In 1894 Smith was married to Marie Antoinette Wright, whom he afterwards memorialized in his famous poem, and who survived him but five weeks. In the year following his marriage, he went to Cuba for The New York Herald to "cover" the conflict between Spain and Cuba; and three years later he represented the New York Journal during the Spanish-American War. Smith was at the bombardment of Santiago and at the battles of El Caney and San Juan. After the war he returned to New York, in which city he died, April 8, 1908. He was the author of a novel, called On the Pan Handle, and of many short stories, but his poem, Evolution, made him famous. The first stanzas of this poem were written in 1895; and four years later he wrote several more stanzas. Then from time to time he added a line or more, until it was completed. Evolution first appeared in its entirety in the middle of a page of want advertisements in the New York Journal. It attracted immediate and wide notice, but copies of it were rather difficult to obtain until it was reprinted in The Scrap-Book for April, 1906, and in The Speaker for September, 1908.
Bibliography. Evolution, a Fantasy (Boston, 1909), is a beautiful and fitting setting for this famous poem. In the introduction to this edition Mr. Lewis Allen Browne brings together the facts of Langdon Smith's life and work with many fine words of criticism for the poem. In 1911 W. A. Wilde and Company, the Boston publishers, issued an exquisite edition of Evolution. Thus it will be seen that Smith and his masterpiece have received proper recognition from the publishers and the public; the judgment of posterity cannot be hurried; but that judgment can be anticipated, at least in part. That it will be favorable, characterizing Evolution as one of the cleverest, smartest things done by a nineteenth century American poet, the present writer does not for a moment doubt.
EVOLUTION[20]
[From Evolution, a Fantasy (Boston, 1909)]
William James Lampton ("Will J. Lampton"), founder of the "Yawp School of Poetry," was born in Lawrence county, Ohio, May 27, 185-, within sight of the Kentucky line. (Being a bachelor, like Henry Cleveland Wood, he has hitherto declined to herald the exact date of his birth.) His parents were Kentuckians and at the age of three years he was brought to this State. His boyhood and youth was spent in the hills of Kentucky. He was fitted at private schools in Ashland and Catletsburg, Kentucky, for Ohio Wesleyan University, which he left for Marietta College. In 1877 Mr. Lampton established the Weekly Review—spelled either way!—at Ashland, Kentucky. Although he had had no prior training in journalism, he wrote eleven columns for his first issue. His was a Republican sheet, and the good Democrats of Boyd county saw to it that it survived not longer than a year. From Ashland Mr. Lampton went to Cincinnati and joined the staff of The Times. The Times was too rapid for him, however, and from Cincinnati he journeyed to Steubenville, Ohio, to take a position on The Herald. Mr. Lampton remained on that paper for three years, when he again came to Kentucky to join the staff of the Louisville Courier-Journal. Some time later his paper sent him to Cincinnati, which marked his retirement from Kentucky journalism. It will thus be seen that he "lapsed out of Kentucky for a time, and lapsed again at the close of 1882." Leaving Cincinnati he went to Washington and originated the now well-known department of "Shooting Stars" for The Evening Star. For some years past he has resided in New York, working as a "free-lance." For a long time he contributed a poem almost every day to The Sun, The World, or some other paper. In 1910 the governor of Kentucky created the poet a real Kentucky colonel; and this momentous elevation above earth's common mortals is heralded to-day upon his stationery. Colonel Lampton, then, has published six books, the editions of three of which are exhausted, and he is now happy to think that his works are "rare, exceedingly scarce." The first of them, Mrs. Brown's Opinions (New York, 1886), was followed by his chief volume hitherto, Yawps and Other Things (Philadelphia, 1900). The "other things" were poems, not yawps. Colonel Henry Watterson contributed a clever introduction to the attractive volume; and another form of verse was born and clothed. The Confessions of a Husband (New York, 1903), was a slight offset to Mary Adams's The Confessions of a Wife. Colonel Lampton's other books are: The Trolley Car and the Lady (Boston, 1908), being "a trolley trip from Manhattan to Maine;" Jedge Waxem's Pocket-Book of Politics (New York, 1908), which was "owned by Jedge Wabash Q. Waxem, Member of Congress from Wayback," bound in the form of an actual pocket-book; and his latest collection of cleverness, Tame Animals I Have Known (New York, 1912). The tall—and bald!—Kentuckian lives at the French Y. M. C. A., New York, in order, as he himself has said, "to give a Parisian tinge to his religion." His "den" is a delight to Bohemians, a replica of many a country newspaper office in Kentucky. He is one of the joys of life surely. And though he has turned out almost as much as Miss Braddon, he can recall but the four lines he wrote in 1900 upon Mr. James Lane Allen:
Bibliography. The Bookman (September, 1900); The Bookman (May, 1902); Cosmopolitan Magazine (November, 1907); Lippincott's Magazine (August, 1911).
THESE DAYS[21]
[From Pearson's Magazine (April, 1907)]
OUR CASTLES IN THE AIR[22]
[From Pearson's Magazine (September, 1908)]
CHAMPAGNE
[From The Bohemian]
Mrs. Mary Anderson de Navarro, the celebrated actress of the long ago, and a writer of much ability, is a product of Kentucky, although she happened to be born at Sacramento, California, July 28, 1859. When but six months old she was brought to Louisville, Kentucky, and there her girlhood days were spent. Miss Anderson was educated at the Ursuline Convent and the Presentation Academy, two Roman Catholic institutions of Louisville. At the age of seventeen years, or, on November 27, 1876, she made her debut as Juliet in "Romeo and Juliet," at Macauley's Theatre, Louisville, and her "hit" was most decided, both press and public agreeing that a brilliant career was before her. Miss Anderson's superb figure, her glorious hair, her magnificent voice, made her the great beauty she was, and thoroughly delightful. Leaving Louisville for a tour of the principal cities of the country, she finally arrived in New York, where she was seen in several Shakespearian roles. Some time later she put on "Pygmalion and Galatea," one of her greatest successes. In London Miss Anderson won the hearts of the Britishers with "The Lady of Lyons," "Pygmalion and Galatea," and other plays. Her second season on the stage saw a gorgeous production of "Romeo and Juliet" in London, with the American girl in her first role, Juliet. This "held the boards" for an hundred nights. She returned to the United States, but she was soon back in London, where "The Winter's Tale," her next play, ran for nearly two hundred nights. Short engagements on the continent followed, after which she came again to this country, and to her old home, Louisville, which visit she has charmingly related in her autobiography, A Few Memories (London and New York, 1896), which work Joseph Jefferson once declared would make permanent her stage successes. From Louisville "Our Mary," as she was called by Kentuckians, was seen in Cincinnati, from which city she went to Washington, where she forever rang down the curtain upon her life as an actress. That was in the spring of 1889, and in June of that year she was married to Antonio F. de Navarro, since which event she has resided in England. In recent years Mary Anderson, that was, has visited in New York, but she has not journeyed out to Kentucky. In 1911 she collaborated in the dramatization of Robert Hichens's novel, The Garden of Allah, and she was in New York for its premier.
Bibliography. A Few Memories is delightfully set down, and, though the author made no especial claims as a writer, her book will keep her fame green for many years; McClure's Magazine (July, 1908); Harper's Weekly (January 9, 1909); Century Magazine (March, 1910).
LAZY LOUISVILLE[23]
[From A Few Memories (London, 1896)]
After visiting many of the principal States, I was delighted to find myself again in quaint, charming Louisville, Kentucky. Everything goes along so quietly and lazily there that no one seems to change or grow older. Having no rehearsals I used my first free time since I had left the city soon after my debut to see the places I liked best. Many of my childhood's haunts were visited with our old nurse "Lou." At the Ursuline Convent, with its high walls, where music had first cast a veritable spell, and made a willing slave of me for life, most of the nuns looked much the same, though I had not seen them in nineteen years. The little window of the den where I had first resolved to go upon the stage, was as bright and shining as ever; and I wondered, in passing the old house, whether some other young and hopeful creature were dreaming and toiling there as I had done so many years before. At the Presentation Academy I found the latticed summer-house (where, as a child, I had reacted for my companions every play seen at the Saturday matinées, instead of eating my lunch) looking just as cool and inviting as it did then. My little desk, the dunce-stool, everything seemed to have a friendly greeting for me. Mother Eulalia was still the Superioress, and in looking into her kind face and finding so little change there, it seemed that the vortex I had lived in since those early years was but a restless dream, and that I must be a little child again under her gentle care. No one was changed but myself. I seemed to have lived a hundred years since leaving the old places and kindly faces, and to have suddenly come back again into their midst (unlike Rip Van Winkle) to find them as I had left them.
Many episodes, memorable to me, occurred in Louisville. Not the least pleasant was Father Boucher's acknowledgment (after disapproving of my profession for years) that my private life had not fallen under the evils which, at the beginning, he feared to be inevitable from contact with the theatre. Father Boucher was a dear old Frenchman, who had known and instructed me in matters religious since my childhood. My respect and affection for him had always been deep. When he condemned my resolution to go upon the stage quite as bitterly as did my venerated guardian, Pater Anton, my cup of unhappiness overflowed. All my early successes were clouded by the alienation of such unique friends. My satisfaction and delight may be imagined when, after years of estrangement, Father Boucher met me with the same trust with which he had honoured me as a child, and heartily gave me his blessing.
It was also at Louisville that the highly complimentary "resolutions" passed by the Senate of Kentucky, and unanimously adopted by that body, were presented to me. They were the State's crowning expression of goodwill to their grateful, though unworthy, country-woman.
Mrs. Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews, short-story writer and novelist, was born at Mobile, Alabama, in 1860, but she was brought to Lexington, Kentucky, in September, 1861, when her father, Rev. Jacob S. Shipman, an Episcopal clergyman, was chosen rector of Christ Church. When six years old she was sent to Christ Church Seminary, the church's school, conducted by Rev. Silas Totten and his daughters. One of these daughters tells with a smile to-day that "May" Shipman's first story, written at the age of seven, was upon her dog, "Shep." When thirteen years of age she discovered that the older girls in the school were studying French, when she was not, and she went to her father with the request that she be permitted to join the class. But the rector's question, "May, would you put in your furniture before you built your walls?" sent her back to her Latin and mathematics without further protest. She attended the school for eleven years, and at it received her education, never having attended any other institution. On November 26, 1877, when the future writer was seventeen years of age, her father accepted the rectorship of Christ Church, New York, and the family shortly afterwards removed to that city. She has been in Kentucky but twice since: five years after her departure, and about ten years ago. But that she has not forgotten her Kentucky home is evinced in the signed copies of her books which have found their way to the Blue Grass country and in her letters to former friends. On the last day of December, 1884, Miss Shipman married William Shankland Andrews, now associate justice of the supreme court of New York. Mrs. Andrews spends her summers in the Canadian woods, and the winters at her home in Syracuse, New York. Her first novel, Vive L'Empereur (New York, 1902), a story of the king of Rome, was followed by A Kidnapped Colony (New York, 1903), with Bermuda as the background. Bob and the Guides (New York, 1906), was the experiences of a boy, "Bob," with the French guides of the Canadian woods who pursue caribou. A Good Samaritan (New York, 1906), has been called the best story ever printed in McClure's Magazine, in which form it first appeared. The Perfect Tribute (New York, 1906), a quasi-true story of Lincoln and the lack of enthusiasm with which the crowd received his Gettysburg speech, adorned with a love episode at the end, is Mrs. Andrews's finest thing so far. This little tale has made her famous, and stamped her as one of the best American writers of the short-story. It was originally printed in Scribner's Magazine for July, 1906. Her other books are: The Militants (New York, 1907), a collection of stories, several of which are set in Kentucky, and all of them inscribed to her father in beautiful words; The Better Treasure (Indianapolis, 1908), is a charming Christmas story, with a moral attached; The Enchanted Forest and Other Stories (New York, 1909), a group of stories first told to her son and afterwards set down for other people's sons; The Lifted Bandage (New York, 1910), a most unpleasant, disagreeable tale as may well be imagined; The Courage of the Commonplace (New York, 1911), a yarn of Yale and her ways, one of the author's cleverest things; The Counsel Assigned (New York, 1912), another story of Lincoln, this time as the young lawyer, is not greatly inferior to The Perfect Tribute. Mrs. Andrews's latest volume, The Marshal (Indianapolis, 1912), is her first really long novel. It is a story of France, somewhat in the manner of her first book Vive L'Empereur, but, of course, much finer than that work of her 'prentice years. It has been highly praised in some quarters, and rather severely criticized in others. At any rate it has not displaced The Perfect Tribute as her masterpiece. That little story, with A Good Samaritan, The Courage of the Commonplace, and Crowned with Glory and Honor, fairly entitle Mrs. Andrews to the first and highest place among Kentucky women writers of the short-story. She has attained a higher note in a most difficult art than any other woman Kentucky has produced; and it is only right and just that her proper position be allotted her in order that she may occupy it; which she will do with a consensus of opinion when her Kentucky life is more widely heralded.
Bibliography. American Magazine (May, 1909); Scribner's Magazine (September, 1911; August, 1912).
THE NEW SUPERINTENDENT[24]
[From The Courage of the Commonplace (New York, 1911)]
Three years later the boy graduated from the Boston "Tech." As his class poured from Huntington Hall, he saw his father waiting for him. He noted with pride, as he always did, the tall figure, topped with a wonderful head—a mane of gray hair, a face carved in iron, squared and cut down to the marrow of brains and force—a man to be seen in any crowd. With that, as his own met the keen eyes behind the spectacles, he was aware of a look which startled him. The boy had graduated at the very head of his class; that light in his father's eyes all at once made two years of work a small thing.
"I didn't know you were coming, sir. That's mighty nice of you," he said, as they walked down Boylston Street together, and his father waited a moment and then spoke in his usual incisive tone.
"I wouldn't have liked to miss it, Johnny," he said. "I don't remember that anything in my life has ever made me as satisfied as you have to-day."
With a gasp of astonishment the young man looked at him, looked away, looked at the tops of the houses, and did not find a word anywhere. His father had never spoken to him so; never before, perhaps, had he said anything as intimate to any of his sons. They knew that the cold manner of the great engineer covered depths, but they never expected to see the depths uncovered. But here he was, talking of what he felt, of character, and honor, and effort.
"I've appreciated what you have been doing," the even voice went on. "I talk little about personal affairs. But I'm not uninterested; I watch. I was anxious about you. You were a more uncertain quantity than Ted and Harry. Your first three years at Yale were not satisfactory. I was afraid you lacked manliness. Then came—a disappointment. It was a blow to us—to family pride. I watched you more closely, and I saw before that year ended that you were taking your medicine rightly. I wanted to tell you of my contentment, but being slow of speech, I—couldn't. So"—the iron face broke for a second time into a whimsical grin—"so I offered you a motor. And you wouldn't take it. I knew, though you didn't explain, that you feared it would interfere with your studies. I was right?" Johnny nodded. "Yes. And your last year at college was—was all I could wish. I see now that you needed a blow in the face to wake you up—and you got it. And you waked." The great engineer smiled with clean pleasure. "I have had"—he hesitated—"I have had always a feeling of responsibility to your mother for you—more than for the others. You were so young when she died that you seem more her child. I was afraid I had not treated you right well—that it was my fault if you failed." The boy made a gesture—he could not very well speak. His father went on: "So when you refused the motor, when you went into engineers' camp that first summer, instead of going abroad, I was pleased. Your course here has been a satisfaction, without a drawback—keener, certainly, because I am an engineer, and could appreciate, step by step, how well you were doing, how much you were giving up to do it, how much power you were gaining by that long sacrifice. I've respected you through these years of commonplace, and I've known how much more courage it meant in a pleasure-loving lad such as you than it would have meant in a serious person such as I am—such as Ted and Harry are, to an extent, also." The older man, proud and strong and reserved, turned on his son such a shining face as the boy had never seen. "That boyish failure isn't wiped out, Johnny, for I shall remember it as the corner-stone of your career, already built over with an honorable record. You've made good. I congratulate and I honor you."
The boy never knew how he got home. He knocked his shins badly on a quite visible railing, and it was out of the question to say a single word. But if he staggered, it was with an overload of happiness, and if he was speechless and blind, the stricken faculties were paralyzed with joy. His father walked beside him and they understood each other. He reeled up the streets contented.
That night there was a family dinner, and with the coffee his father turned and ordered fresh champagne opened.
"We must have a new explosion to drink to the new superintendent of the Oriel mine," he said. Johnny looked at him, surprised, and then at the others, and the faces were bright with the same look of something which they knew and he did not.
"What's up?" asked Johnny. "Who's the superintendent of the Oriel mine? Why do we drink to him? What are you all grinning about, anyway?" The cork flew up to the ceiling, and the butler poured gold bubbles into the glasses, all but his own.
"Can't I drink to the beggar, too, whoever he is?" asked Johnny, and moved his glass and glanced up at Mullins. But his father was beaming at Mullins in a most unusual way, and Johnny got no wine. With that Ted, the oldest brother, pushed back his chair and stood and lifted his glass.
"We'll drink," he said, and bowed formally to Johnny, "to the gentleman who is covering us all with glory, to the new superintendent of the Oriel mine, Mr. John Archer McLean," and they stood and drank the toast. Johnny, more or less dizzy, more or less scarlet, crammed his hands in his pockets and stared and turned redder, and brought out interrogations in the nervous English which is acquired at our great institutions of learning.
"Gosh! are you all gone dotty?" he asked. And "is this a merry jape?" And "Why, for cat's sake, can't you tell a fellow what's up your sleeve?" While the family sipped champagne and regarded him.
"Now, if I've squirmed for you enough, I wish you'd explain—father, tell me!" the boy begged.
And the tale was told by the family, in chorus, without politeness, interrupting freely. It seemed that the president of the big mine needed a superintendent, and wishing young blood and the latest ideas, had written to the head of the Mining Department in the School of Technology, to ask if he would give him the name of the ablest man in the graduating class—a man to be relied on for character as much as brains, he specified, for the rough army of miners needed a general at their head almost more than a scientist. Was there such a combination to be found, he asked, in a youngster of twenty-three or twenty-four, such as would be graduating at the "Tech?" If possible, he wanted a very young man—he wanted the enthusiasm, he wanted the athletic tendency, he wanted the plus-strength, he wanted the unmade reputation which would look for its making to hard work in the mine. The letter was produced and read to the shamefaced Johnny. "Gosh!" he remarked at intervals, and remarked practically nothing else. There was no need. They were so proud and so glad that it was almost too much for the boy who had been a failure three years ago.
On the urgent insistence of every one, he made a speech. He got to his six-feet-two slowly, and his hand went into his trousers as usual. "Holy mackerel," he began—"I don't call it decent to knock the wind out of a man and then hold him up for remarks. They all said in college that I talked the darnedest hash in the class, anyway. But you will have it, will you? I haven't got anything to say, so's you'd notice it, except that I'll be blamed if I see how this is true. Of course I'm keen for it—Keen! I should say I was! And what makes me keenest, I believe, is that I know it's satisfactory to Henry McLean." He turned his bright face to his father. "Any little plugging I've done seems like thirty cents compared to that. You're all peaches to take such an interest, and I thank you a lot. Me, the superintendent of the Oriel mine! Holy mackerel!" gasped Johnny, and sat down.
Mrs. Elvira (Sydnor) Miller Slaughter, the "Tatler" of The Louisville Times in the old days, and a verse-writer of considerable reputation, was born at Wytheville, Virginia, October 12, 1860. When a child Miss Miller was brought to Kentucky, as her mother had inherited money which made necessary her removal to this State in order to obtain it. She was educated at the Presentation Academy, in Louisville, by the same nuns that had instructed Mary Anderson de Navarro, the famous actress. She was subsequently gold medalist at a private finishing school, but she still clings to the Catholicism instilled at the Presentation Academy. Shortly after having left school Miss Miller published her first and only book of poems, Songs of the Heart (Louisville, 1885), with a prologue by Douglass Sherley.[25] About this time her parents lost their fortune, and she secured a position on The Louisville Times, where she was trained by Mr. Robert W. Brown, the present managing editor of that paper. After three years of general reporting, Miss Miller became editor of "The Tatler Column," and this she conducted for fourteen years with cleverness and success, only resigning on the day of her marriage to Mr. W. H. Slaughter, Jr. Her second book, The Tiger's Daughter and Other Stories (Louisville, 1889), is a group of fairy tales, several of which are entertaining. The Confessions of a Tatler (Louisville, 1905), is a booklet of the best things she did for her department on The Times. She surely handled some men, women, books, and things in this brochure in a manner that even he who runs may read and—understand! From 1909 to 1912 she lived at Camp Dennison, near Cincinnati, Ohio, but at the present time she is again at Louisville, engaged in literary work.
Bibliography. Blades o' Bluegrass, by Fannie P. Dickey (Louisville, 1892); Dear Old Kentucky, by G. M. Spears (Cincinnati, 1900).
THE SOUTH AND SONG
[From The Midland Review (Louisville, Kentucky)]