THE HOOSIERS THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD, TORONTO THE HOOSIERS BY MEREDITH NICHOLSON Netn THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. I9l6 All rights reserved COPYRIGHT, 1900, 1915, Bv THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. New edition published August, 19x5 Reprinted September, twice, 1915 ; January, February, twice, March, September, December, 1916, Nortoooti J. 8. Gushing Co. Berwick 122 THE HOOSIERS firmly established ; the natural and easy means of forming communities have been developed by your past experience. . . . New Harmony is now, therefore, literally surrounded by inde pendent communities, and applications are made almost daily by persons who come from far and near to be permitted to establish themselves in a similar manner." The eight communities referred to were probably little more than tentative colonies, planted on Owen's lands under lease. There is no evidence that a community organization was maintained for any length of time at Macluria or Feiba Peveli after the collapse at New Harmony village, and of the remainder of the eight to which Owen re- ferred there is no further record. They van- ished with the others, and presently passed to individual owners or lessees. Brown summa- rizes the disappearance of communism and the return of the old order in these words : " The greater part of the town was now resolved into individual lots; a grocery was established op- posite the tavern ; painted sign boards began to be stuck up on the buildings, pointing out places of manufacture and trade ; a sort of wax figure AN EXPERIMENT IN SOCIALISM 123 and puppet show was opened at one of the boarding-houses, charging twenty-five cents for adults and twelve and a half for children; and everything went on in the old style." Owen's teachings and example led to other experiments in America besides those he per- sonally conducted on the Wabash ; but American socialism of the Owen period was most fully expressed at New Harmony. Owen's ardor for social reforms continued unabated. He visited Mexico shortly after the New Harmony failure, to secure a concession of land for further ex- periments. The negotiations failed, and he is next heard of at Cincinnati, in April, 1829, de- bating religious questions with Alexander Camp- bell. He did not appear in America again until the fall of 1844, when he spent a short time on his New Harmony lands, lectured in many cities, established friendly relations with Brisbane and other Fourierites, and, in the spring of 1845, visited Brook Farm. He was last at New Harmony in the fall of 1846. It could hardly be expected that a village which had been the home of two orders of exiles could descend at once to the commonplace, and f24 THE BOOSTERS the subsequent history of New Harmony is not disappointing. Through many years scientists of distinction and radicals of all degrees visited the place ; Maclure made it his headquarters ; Say lived and died there ; the sons of Robert Owen became residents and gained honorable distinction in science and politics ; books that still have value were written and published in the village. Robert Dale Owen (1801-1877) turned from communism to politics and litera- ture, and few citizens of Indiana have lived lives more useful or memorable. He was edu- cated at Hofwyl, under Fellenberg, and after a few years of commercial experience at New Lanark, he joined the New Harmony commu- nity. He shared, in large measure, his father's interests in social and economic matters, and after the fall of New Harmony he and Frances Wright conducted a radical paper called the Free Enquirer at New York. In 1833 he re- turned to New Harmony and was soon launched upon a brilliant career. He was elected a representative to the Indiana General Assem- bly and to the National Congress, and he was an influential and active member of the con- AN EXPERIMENT IN SOCIALISM 12$ vention that revised the Indiana constitution. The Indiana laws granting independent prop- erty rights to women were largely due to his efforts, and he introduced in Congress, in December, 1845, the bill under which the Smithsonian Institute was organized. He was appointed charge d'affaires at Naples in 1853, and when the grade of the post was raised he was continued as minister until 1858. In 1863, he was chairman of a commission appointed by the Secretary of War to examine the condition of the freedmen. He had written to the President, urging emancipation before this step had been determined upon, and Secretary Chase said that Owen's letter to Lincoln had greatly in- fluenced the President to make his proclamation. Mr. Owen wrote often and well, and with a facility and force that gave him wide reputa- tion for learning and literary accomplishment. His books include " Pocahontas : A Dream " (1837); "Hints on Architecture" (1849); "Foot- prints on the Boundary of Another World" (1859); "Beyond the Breakers: A Novel" (1870); "Debatable Land Between this World and the Next" (1872); and "Threading my 126 THE HOOSIERS Way" (1874). He became deeply interested in spiritualism, and two of his books, as the titles indicate, are devoted to this subject. He travelled much and knew many of the men and women eminent in the early years of the nineteenth century, including La Fayette and Mrs. Shelley. His daughter Rosamund married Laurence Oliphant. David Dale, another son of Robert (1807- 1860), was educated at Hofwyl and Glasgow, and reached New Harmony in the year of the community's failure. He was employed by the Indiana legislature to make a geological sur- vey of the State, and in 1839 the general gov- ernment engaged him to examine Western mineral lands. He explored Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin under this appointment. Ten years later he made similar surveys in Minnesota. During all this time New Harmony was his home and headquarters, and the rendezvous of his associates, and his collections of specimens were assembled there. He was State geologist of Kentucky from 1854 to l &57> an d then turned to Arkansas, of which he made thorough geo- logical surveys. In 1859 he was appointed AN EXPERIMENT IN SOCIALISM 12? State geologist of Indiana, and held the office until his death. He was a skilled chemist and a doctor of medicine as well as a trained natural scientist and geologist. He knew the use of pencil and brush, and illustrated his reports with sketches that greatly enhanced their value. Military talent expressed itself in the Owen family in Richard, still another of Robert's sons (1810-1890), who was also a graduate of Hof- wyl. He came to America and engaged in busi- ness until the Mexican War, in which he served as captain, and later assisted his brother, David Dale, in his surveys of the Northwest. He taught the natural sciences in the Military Insti- tute of Kentucky, and when it was merged in the University of Nashville he continued in the same capacity with the new institution. Mean- while he had, with the energy and ambition characteristic of his family, earned the degree of Doctor of Medicine, though he never prac- tised. He served in the Civil War as colonel of the Sixtieth Indiana Regiment, principally in the Southwest, and was once taken prisoner. After the war he taught in the University of Indiana for fifteen years, retiring finally to New 128 THE HOOSIERS Harmony, where, in the old Rapp mansion, he continued his studies, writing constantly for the scientific periodicals. He married a daughter of Neef . William Owen, who had reached New Harmony in time to aid his brother, Robert Dale, in editing the Gazette, continued to live in Indiana, and became a successful financier. Descendants of Robert Owen still live at New Harmony, and the name is one to conjure with in all the lower Wabash Valley. The excellent work of the New Harmony press proves that good craftsmanship was encouraged and appreciated in the early days. The Gazette, and its successor, the Dissemina- tor, are models of accurate and tasteful typog- raphy, and the books published from this isolated village are even more creditable. Say's "American Conchology" was wholly printed at New Harmony, the title page bearing date 1830. Its copious illustrations are the work of New Harmony lithographers, and the tint- ing of the engravings, which was done by Mrs. Say, reproduces accurately the delicate shadings of the shells. Her colors are still fresh and true in copies of this work. Parts AN EXPERIMENT IN SOCIALISM 1 29 of Say's " American Entomology," which he had begun at Philadelphia, were finished at New Harmony. Maclure was an industrious writer, and the imprint of the New Harmony press is found in two substantial volumes, one dated 1831, the other 1837, in which he col- lected short essays on innumerable topics. Josiah Warren was for a time at least the New Harmony publisher, and Michaux's " North American Sylva " was reprinted by him from plates brought from Paris by Mac- lure, though the unbound sheets of the New Harmony edition were consumed by fire. Warren was a reformer as well as a publisher. He was connected with New Harmony for a short time in community days, but left, return- ing in 1842 to establish a "time store." In the "time store" he sold merchandise to none who could not return the actual cash cost, plus a profit which must be paid in a "labor note." This form of currency represented a specified number of hours of labor, pledged by mechanics or others. When a customer entered his shop and began discussing a purchase, Warren started a clock which marked the amount of 130 THE HOOSIERS time consumed in the sale : this was the basis for computing the merchant's profit. Warren could often be seen in the streets of New Har- mony with large amounts of labor currency. This medium of exchange required careful handling, as some would appraise their labor too high, and now and then depreciation fol- lowed an over-issue by some careless or un- scrupulous individual. Warren conducted this enterprise for about two years, departing to carry the gospel of " equitable commerce," as he called it, elsewhere. In 1838 the Workingmen's Institute and Library was organized at Maclure's sugges- tion and with money that he contributed. Later, Dr. Edward Murphy generously gave to this association a handsome building, which contains the library, an art gallery, largely Dr. Murphy's gift, a hall, and museum. The building stands in a pretty park and is ideally adapted to its purposes. The library contains 12,000 volumes, well selected and particularly rich in scientific works. It includes every avail- able book relating to American socialism, and many of the original New Harmony records AN EXPERIMENT IN SOCIALISM 131 are preserved there. Dr. Murphy has provided an endowment for it and for an annual course of lectures. The lecture course is greatly prized by the citizens, who have heard under its auspi- ces many of the learned men of the day. There was no church in the village for many years; indeed, with the passing of Rapp little attention was paid to religious matters at New Harmony until late in the century, and though there are Episcopal and Methodist organizations in the village now, the life of the people does not cen- tre about the churches as in most communities of the same size. An old citizen describes the attitude of the inhabitants toward religion as one of tolerance merely. Several branches of the Owen family are Episcopalians. Dancing as a feature of social life has survived from community times, and a first-of-May ball, fol- lowed by a dance for children, has long been fixed in the local calendar. Thus Robert Owen's brief experiment, fail- ing of his purpose, led to the founding of an American family whose members have shown unusual talents, creditable alike to their distin- guished progenitor and to the State which 132 THE HOOSIERS became, by chance, their home. He failed to establish an asylum for the oppressed, as he had intended, but he was responsible for the impulse that made of his village a centre of scientific inquiry and the home of men of renown. It is impossible to separate the New Harmony of to-day from the village of the past. At every turn, the buildings of the Rappites and the traces of Owen's disciples suggest the old times ; and descendants of the Owens, Fretageots, Beales, Fauntleroys, Dransfields, Wheatcrofts, and many others dating back to community times, still live there. New Har- mony is a pleasant place in May and June, when the great lines of maples in the broad streets are at their best, and all the quiet valley is fresh and green. It invites by its air of antiquity and peace ; the sheltered life is still possible there. In the present, it is the ideal Western village ; in its memories it marks the first high tide of cultivation at the West. CHAPTER V THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED THE rural type in Indiana has found notable interpretation at the hands of two writers who, working independently of each other and at different periods, have made records of great social and literary value and interest. As already indicated, country life at the West and Southwest has not varied widely in different communities. The same social conditions and peculiarities of speech have been observable in many regions deriving population from com- mon sources; but the type found in the Ohio Valley was best denned in Indiana, and it has gained its greatest fame through the interpre- tations of Edward Eggleston and James Whit- comb Riley. Their outlook on life has been wholly different, and their literary methods have been antipodal; but they have both been keen observers of the rural Indianians, though of different generations. They meet in a strong 133 134 THE HOOSIERS affection for their native soil, and in an appre- ciation of the essential domesticity and moral enlightenment of the people they depict. I. Edward Eggleston Switzerland County lies in the far southeast- ern corner of the State, and Vevay, its principal town and capital, is on the Ohio River. The name of the county is explained by the fact of its settlement by Swiss immigrants, who were drawn thither by the supposed adaptability of the soil to the growth of the grape. Vevay lies about midway between Louisville and Cincinnati, and the steamboats plying between these two cities are its only medium of communication with the world, as no railway touches it. It was to this pretty village that Joseph Gary Eggleston, the father of Edward and George Gary Eggleston, came in 1832. The impression has been abroad that the author of "The Hoosier Schoolmaster " was himself reared amid the squalor and ignorance which he described so vividly, but this is without foundation of fact. The Egglestons were of good Virginia stock, and the members of the Indiana branch of the THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 135 family were cultivated people. Joseph Gary was graduated from William and Mary College in his seventeenth year with high honors. He had studied law before he left Virginia, and the fourteen years of his life that remained to him after his removal to Indiana were spent in the successful practice of his profession. He was, moreover, popular in the community, for he sat in both branches of the General Assem- bly, and was nominated for representative in Congress, but failed of election. He married, soon after reaching Indiana, the daughter of George Craig, of Craig township, in Switzer- land County. The Craigs were of a dis- tinguished Kentucky family, and, like the Egglestons, looked back to a Virginia ancestry. Edward Eggleston was born at Vevay in 1837, and has never failed to speak with great cordial- ity and affection of the pretty river town whose chief distinction lies in his own attainments. He has even taken occasion in recent years 1 to rebuke "a certain condescension in New Eng- landers," which had prompted the Atlantic Monthly to comment on the hardship it must 1 The Forum, November, 1890. 136 THE HOOSIERS have been " to a highly organized man " to be born in southern Indiana in the crude early years of the nineteenth century. Dr. Eggleston declares that he has retained enough of local prejudice to feel that he would have lost more than he could have gained had Plymouth Rock or Beacon Hill been his birthplace rather than Vevay. He was sensitive to the loveliness of the Indiana spring and summer, and has paid tribute to it in words which it is a pleasure to repeat : " The sound of the anvil in the smithy, and the soft clatter of remote cow-bells on the 'commons,' linger in my mind as memories inseparable from my boyhood in Vevay. A certain poetic feeling which characterized me from childhood, and which, perhaps, finally determined my course toward literary pursuits, was nourished by my delight in the noble scenery about Vevay, Madison, and New Albany, in which places I lived at various times. My brother George and myself were walkers, partly because our father had been one before us. Nothing could be finer than our all-day excursions to the woods in search of hickory-nuts, wild grapes, blackberries, paw- paws, or of nothing at all but the sheer pleasure of wan- dering in one of the noblest forests that it ever fell to a boy's lot to have for a playground. Then, too, when we had some business five or twenty miles away, we scorned to take the steamboat, but just set out afoot along the THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 137 river bank, getting no end of pleasure out of the walk, and out of that sense of power which unusual fatigue, cheer- fully borne, always gives." 1 Dr. Eggleston's early life was full of vicissi- tude, but he has himself disclaimed credit for being what is called "a self-made man." It is true that he had his own way to make, in great measure, but he began with all the benefits of good ancestry, and he was, in his own phrase, " born into an intellectual atmosphere." Joseph Gary Eggleston, who died when Edward was only nine years old, provided in his will for the exchange of his law library for books of general interest, that his children might have good literature about them in their forma- tive years a direction that was followed faithfully by his widow. The boy Edward grew up with the ideal of a scholarly father before him, and with an ambition to know books and to read other languages than his own. He learned also the mystery of type- setting, and contributed items to the Vevay Reveille, duly " set up." Dr. Eggleston records that in his primary schooling, conducted by 1 The Forum, supra. 138 THE BOOSTERS his mother, he proved himself a dull scholar but that some kind of climacteric was passed in his tenth year, and that thenceforward he was the pride of his teachers. Manual train- ing was hardly dreamed of in those days, but Joseph Eggleston had an appreciation of its value and left what Edward has described as "a solemn injunction that his sons should be sent to the country every summer and taught manual labor on a farm." This injunc- tion was carefully obeyed, so that Edward Eggleston had an actual experience of farming and a contact with farm folk that was a part of his preparation for the writing of the tales that gave him his first fame. Judge Miles Eggleston, Joseph's brother, was more dis- tinctly an Indianian than any other member of the family by reason of his long residence in the State and his public services. Guilford Eggleston, Joseph Eggleston's cousin, was iden- tified with the family life at Vevay. He was a man of many accomplishments, and left a deep impression on Edward Eggleston, who has spoken of his brilliant talk as a perpetual inspiration : " He incessantly stimulated my love THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 139 for literature, guided my choice of books, taught me to make a commonplace book of my reading, and by his conversation and example made me feel that to lead an intellectual life was the most laudable pursuit of a human being." The direction thus given to the boyish impulse, and the atmosphere of his home, were of great importance to Edward, for of systematic schooling he was to know little. He was never but once in his life able to spend three consecutive months in school, and after he reached his tenth year the sum of his school- ing was only eighteen months. Joseph Eggleston had foreseen his own death and provided in various ways for the education of his sons. He purchased a scholarship in Asbury (DePauw) College, but continued ill health made it impossible for Edward to avail himself of its benefits, though his younger brother, George Gary, became a student there. Just what Edward Eggleston lost by his ir- regular schooling, which was almost wholly in- dependent of instructors in the usual sense of the term, is hardly a profitable subject for specu- lation. By following his own bent, be strength- I4O THE HOOSIERS ened himself along lines of natural preference, and he formed that habit of wise selection and rejection which in itself marks the educated man. Although schoolhouse doors were closed against him on account of his precarious health, he was nevertheless permitted to court death by close application in home study. He ac- quired, by the time he reached his twenty-fifth year, some knowledge of six or seven languages, and a familiar acquaintance with classical Eng- lish and French poetry. He knew both the English and French dramatic literature, though, having been bred in the strictest teaching of the Methodists of that day, he read few novels, and he gives his own testimony that he should have esteemed it "a damnable sin to see a play on the stage." When Edward Eggleston was in his twelfth year, his mother remarried, taking for her hus- band the Rev. William Terrell, a Methodist minister. This change brought with it a wider horizon for the boy, as his stepfather's duties led the family away from Vevay to Madison and New Albany, also on the Ohio, but larger towns than Vevay. When sixteen, he spent THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 14! more than a year with his father's family in Virginia. The sharp transition from the con- ditions in the newer to those of the older coun- try quickened his powers of observation. The tribulations of the Western pioneers had been discussed in his hearing by his elders during the most impressionable years of his childhood ; his grandfather Craig's stone house was a re- minder of times not remote when the Indians were a daily menace; and the recitals of the wandering apostles of Methodism in his mother's house had given him further contact with the adventure and romance of pioneer life. Vir- ginia opened new vistas, and the novel condi- tions of life that he found there extended his knowledge of men and manners, and afforded an opportunity for criticism and comparison that was of definite value. He found himself cousin to a considerable part of the population, and this wide relationship gave him an acquain- tance with the charming social life of old Vir- ginia; but he counted himself an abolitionist, he says, from the time of this visit. The abundant vitality of Dr. Eggleston's later years has been so strikingly character- 142 THE HOOSIERS istic that it is difficult to believe that ill health followed him from semi-invalid boyhood into manhood; but the year after his return from Virginia he was sent to Minnesota in the hope that the change might benefit him, and the kind fates thus threw him into still other and different experiences. He was in the new Northwest when the free-soil excitement in Kansas thrilled the country, and he set out afoot, with a dirk knife as his only weapon, for the scene of conflict. He has himself described the failure and result of this ex- cursion : " After weeks of weary walking and nights spent in the discomforts of frontier cabins, I grew sick at heart and longed for the companionship and refinements of home. I was rather glad to learn that men from the free States were entirely shut out of the besieged territory on the Iowa side. My moccasins were worn out, my feet were sore, my little stock of money was failing, and I was tired of husbanding it by eating crackers and cheese. I turned eastward at a point west of Cedar Falls, crossed the Mis- sissippi at Muscatine, and after walking in all three or four hundred miles, I at length boarded a railway train at a station near Galesburg, and reached my nearest relatives after an enforced fast of twenty-four hours, without a cent in my pocket, and looking, in my soiled and travel-worn THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 143 garments, like a young border ruffian. I had left home a pale invalid ; I returned sun-browned and well." But this gain in bodily strength was not to profit him long. He had been bred in the Methodist faith ; his stepfather was a minister of wide reputation in this denomination, and the youth, with his studious disposition and gift for speech, turned naturally to the min- istry. He has said of himself that an inward conflict between his predisposition to literary work and the tendency to religion and philan- thropy began in boyhood and has continued throughout his life. There were times in his youth when his love for literature seemed an idolatry, and once in a repentant mood he destroyed his youthful manuscripts and re- solved to abandon literature. He was now launched upon the Methodist circuit rider's life of hardship and peril, covering a four weeks' itinerary in the county of which New Albany is the capital, and performing his duties with such diligence that in six months he was again a wreck. He therefore removed to Minnesota, and continued in the ministry, save for intervals of physical prostration, until, 144 THE HOOSIERS in 1866, he accepted the editorship of Tht Little Corporal, a popular juvenile periodical published at Chicago, and from that beginning was irresistibly drawn to the business of making books. In 1874, he became pastor of a church in Brooklyn, to which he gave the name of the Church of Christian Endeavor, and which sought to make sunshine in shady places. It was, indeed, the "Church of the Best Licks," of the " Hoosier Schoolmaster," slightly con- ventionalized. Dr. Eggleston continued in the pastorate for five years, devoting himself to his work with his accustomed zeal and enthusi- asm, which resulted in another collapse. He then retired finally from the ministry ; but the phrase, " Christian Endeavor," first applied by Dr. Eggleston to his Brooklyn church, is widely known as the name of a society of young people. Unconscious preparation for a life-employ- ment has rarely been more clearly exemplified in American literature than in the case of Dr. Eggleston. This is not true as to his novels of Western life merely, but as to the later historical writing in which he has so success- THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 14$ fully detected and appraised various aspects of our social growth. His early experiences at the West were indelibly written in his memory, and though he did not at once transcribe them, his work as editor sharpened his instincts and helped him to an appreciation of his own material. His removal to New York in 1870 was another fortunate step of preparation, for it gave him a perspective which he could not have gained had he remained at the West. He wrote almost immediately " The Hoosier Schoolmaster," the first draft, designed for Hearth and Home, being in the form of a short story, which he extended to its present form at the suggestion of one of the proprietors of the periodical. The reading of Taine's " Art in the Netherlands " was the quickening influence that led to the writing of the story. Dr. Eggleston learned from Taine that an artist should paint what he sees, and he there- fore undertook to portray the illiterate people of southern Indiana. The story was published in book form and gained wide popularity, which has not diminished in the thirty years since its appearance. Dr. Eggleston has been criticised 146 THE HOOSIERS severely in Indiana for the series of novels that began with " The Hoosier Schoolmaster,' but this criticism has come largely from a new generation that does not view these tales in the light of history, and is, therefore, hardly competent to pass on their veracity. By the legal tests for expert witnesses Dr. Eggleston is certainly qualified to speak; his own experi- ence and the social evolution of the people of Indiana contribute to the creation of his competency ; and when we add to these con- siderations his instinctive interest in the begin- nings and tendencies of American life, it is not possible to reject him. He knew, as he says, "the antique Hoosier." The Indiana of 1850 was very different from that of 1870, and Dr. Eggleston was looking backward a score of years when he created Ralph Hartsook, the youthful schoolmaster, and threw about him an atmosphere of ignorance and vice. The story is an instructive footnote to the history of education in Indiana. " Bud Means" is of the second generation of Hoosiers the generation which, outside of the first social order, had little or no benefit of education, and THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 147 which sank to the condition of illiteracy that awakened presently the efforts of the faithful few who won the fight for free schools. Cour- age preceded knowledge as a requirement of pedagogues in the period of which Dr. Eggle- ston wrote. "' Lickin' and larnin' goes together; no lickin', no larnin',' declared Pete Jones." The student who may hereafter scan the educa- tional history of Indiana and read with dis- may the statistics compiled by Mills, will welcome this unadorned tale, that illuminates and con- firms the dry facts of the statistician. Eggle- ston, the novelist, kept Eggleston, the preacher, well in hand, and there is no tedious moralizing in the book. It is not difficult to understand the prompt recognition of the story or its long- continued attraction. The subject was novel, the characters were new, and the scene was set in a region that had nev^er before been seriously explored by the story-teller. It was, as an army officer put it, a cavalry dash into literature. The incidents were linked together with skill, and their air of entire credibility has not been lost in the years that have passed since it surprised and delighted its first readers. 148 THE HOOSIERS Enjoyment of the story was not limited to English readers. It was translated into French by Madame Blanc, and was published in con- densed form in the Revue des Deux Mondes with the title " Le Maitre d'Ecole de Flat Creek." German and Danish translations fol- lowed, so that "Bud Means" has enjoyed opportunities for foreign travel quite unusual among his neighbors. "The End of the World" (1872) continued the series of stories which Dr. Eggleston had begun in the " Schoolmaster." Religious phe- nomena were the most marked social expres- sion in the time and place of which he wrote. It was religion that offered to the isolated people of the new frontier the only relief that their lives knew from toil, hardship, and dan- ger ; and what appears now, at the distance of fifty years, to have been a mania was with them a grave and vital matter. "The End of the World " is a tale of the Millerite excite- ment, which swept the country in 1842-1843, and Dr. Eggleston adapted it very entertainingly to the purposes of fiction. "The Mystery of Metropolisville " (1873) led away from Indiana THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 149 into Minnesota, with which Dr. Eggleston had become acquainted as a minister. Against a background of the land-booming period, he illus- trates the dangers and temptations of the pioneers ; and while the tale is less satisfactory than any of the Indiana series, it remains after thirty years a readable novel. It was hardly possible for Dr. Eggleston to forget wholly the people he had known on the Ohio, and he introduces in " The Mystery of Metropolisville " a Hoosier poet, who had left the "Waybosh" because his literary efforts were not appreciated there. He carried his ambitions into Minne- sota, became a trapper and land speculator, and there, to quote from one of his own stanzas, " His Hoosier harp hangs on the wild water-wilier." Dr. Eggleston had been established at New York for eight years when he wrote " Roxy " (1878), one of the best of his books, and one which depicts even more vividly than " The Hoosier Schoolmaster " his early environment. He was now forty-one, and the years that had added to the sum of his experience had devet 150 THE HOOSIERS oped also his natural instinct for character The dramatic quality, too, shows strongly in this tale, which is, in its moral relation, a kind of Western " Scarlet Letter." There is more or less of Vevay in this novel, it is not impor- tant to inquire too curiously whether it be more or less, and the pretty river village, with its slight foreign color, which was derived from the Swiss residents, the mystery and novelty of the broad river highway, the sim- plicity of the life, its lazy gossip and its religious enthusiasms, are all depicted with fidelity. The Bonabys, father and son, the lurking figure of Nancy, Twonnet, and Roxy, possess the interest that attaches to fresh types. The introduction of the volatile Twonnet, a member of the Swiss Colony, in contrast with the sober Roxy, the unobtrusive presentation of the religious problems that held the attention of the community, and the blending of the threads of young Bonaby's destiny, are accom- plished with skill and power. In "The Circuit Rider" (1874) Dr. Eggle- ston crossed the Indiana boundary into southern Ohio, but for all critical purposes the type re- THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 151 mained the same. Political frontiers do not deter the novelist, who enjoys extra-territorial privileges. " The Circuit Rider " is not so entertaining a story as " Roxy." The char- acters do not take hold of the imagination here as in the later book, and those somewhat vague qualities that combine to the creation of atmosphere are not blended so effectively. But as a picture of the strenuous religious life of the Ohio Valley in the early half of the century, the story is most important. In " Roxy " the strife between Calvinism and Wesleyism is more strongly contrasted ; but " The Circuit Rider " gives a vivid impression of a period that was made remarkable by the heroism and sacrifice of the Methodist evan- gelists. After " Roxy " Dr. Eggleston did not return to the field of his early successes until he wrote " The Graysons " (1887). Like " The Circuit Rider " this story is not, geographically speaking, of Indiana, but it is nevertheless of that broader Hoosierdom which comprehended a small part of southern Ohio and consider- ably more of Illinois. This is one of the best of all the Hoosier cycle, and, indeed, one of 152 THE HOOSIERS the best of American novels. There is not an inartistic line in the book, and the manner in which Lincoln is introduced as a character, appearing as the attorney for a boy charged with murder, and winning his freedom by a characteristic resort to homely philosophy, is achieved so simply that the reader is left won- dering whether it could really have been the great Lincoln who participated in one scene, performed his part, and thereupon disappeared from the stage. A clumsy artist would have dwelt upon Lincoln, hinting at his future great- ness and reluctantly dismissing him ; Dr. Eggle- ston introduces the incident (which is based on fact) with an inadvertence that enhances its interest and increases its suggestiveness. The dialect in this tale is much more critical than that in any other novel of Dr. Eggleston's Western series. In his earlier stories, writ- ten before the scientific study of American folk-speech had been undertaken, the dialect is more general. Dr. Eggleston's other works of fiction are : " Mr. Blake's Walking Stick " (1869); "Book of Queer Stories" (1870); " The Schoolmaster's Stories for Boys and THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 153 Girls" (1874); "Queer Stories for Boys and Girls" (1884); "The Faith Doctor" (1891); "Duffels" (1893). "The Faith Doctor" is a novel of New York, in which the prevailing interest in what Dr. Eggleston called " aerial therapeutics" supplies the motive. "Duffels" is a collection of short stories written at inter- vals throughout his literary career, with scenes laid in many parts of the country, and illustrat- ing happily the versatility and the story-telling gift of the author. Dr. Eggleston began in 1880 researches for a history of life in the United States. He pur- sued his studies abroad, as well as in American libraries, and assembled at his summer home on Lake George a large collection of Ameri- cana. The only published result of these stud- ies thus far is " The Beginners of a Nation " (1896), the most serious, searching, and exhaust- ive essay in Kultur-Geschichte yet presented by an American. The mere politics of our history and its military incidents had long received the attention of students, to the exclu- sion of the social and domestic. A work such as Dr. Eggleston has undertaken is vastly 154 THE HOOSIERS more difficult and therefore more important, for it requires original research in the strictest sense. His other historical works so far com- pleted are: "A History of the United States and its People for the Use of Schools" (1888); "The Household History of the United States and its People" (1888); and "A First Book in American History " (1889). Dr. Eggleston's life makes in itself a delight- ful story of aspiration and achievement. Many Americans have experienced hardship and dis- couragement, but few have profited so richly as this novelist and historian by every whim of fortune. Ill health has menaced him all his days, but physical infirmity has never con- quered his ambition or diminished his mental vitality. There is about him an exuberance of spirits that is not only a distinguishing per- sonal trait, but a quality of all his stories. And if ill health in his youth and young manhood interrupted the orderly course of education, it also brought him opportunities for acquiring a broad knowledge of American provincial life that no school could have given him. When Dr. Eggleston began to write there was, out- THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 155 side of New England, little local literature, and the value of dialect in interpretative fiction was only beginning to be under- stood. Cable, Page, Harris, Murfree, " Octave Thanet/' were names unknown to the catalogues when 'The Hoosier Schoolmaster" appeared. Mark Twain and Bret Harte were well embarked upon their careers ; but the one was a humorist and the other a romanticist, and neither had undertaken to reproduce local speech accurately. Dr. Eggleston was the pioneer provincial realist; and if, as he says, the great American novel is being written in sections, he certainly contributed early chapters, and indicated the lines to be followed. His marriage, in 1891, to Frances E. Goode, a granddaughter of his father's cousin, Judge Miles Gary Eggleston, renewed ties with Indi- ana that had never been wholly broken during long years of absence. He has often been a visitor to Madison, which was Mrs. Eggle- ston's home, and he spent the winter of 1899 in that beautiful and tranquil town. Mr. Eggle- ston died September 4, 1902. 156 THE HOOSIERS II. James Whitcomb Riley Crabbe and Burns are Mr. Riley's fore- fathers in literature. Crabbe was the pioneer in what may be called the realism of poetry; it was he who rejected the romantic pastoral- ism that had so long peopled the British fields with nymphs and shepherds, and introduced the crude but actual country folk of England. The humor, the bold democracy, and the social sophistication that he lacked were supplied in his own day by Burns, and Burns had, too, the singing instinct and the bolder art of which there are no traces in Crabbe. Something of Crabbe's realism and Burns's humor and phi- losophy are agreeably combined in Mr. Riley. His first successes were achieved in the por- trayal of the Indiana country and village folk in dialect. He has rarely seen fit to vary his subject, and he has been faithful to the environ- ment from which he derived his inspiration. James Whitcomb Riley is an interesting in- stance perhaps, after Whittier, the most striking in our literature of a natural poet, taking his texts from the familiar scenes and THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 157 incidents of his own daily walks, and owing little or nothing to the schools. He was born at Greenfield, the seat of Hancock County, in 1849. His father, Reuben A. Riley, was a native of Pennsylvania, of Dutch antecedents, though there is a tradition of Irish ancestry in the family. He was a lawyer, who enjoyed a wide reputation as an advocate, and was long reckoned among the most effective political speakers in Indiana. He was a discriminating reader and an occasional writer of both prose and verse. The poet's mother was a Marine, of a family in which an aptness for rhyming was characteristic. The Greenfield schools have always been excellent, and young Riley was fortunate in having for his teacher Lee O. Harris, himself a poet, who tried to adapt the curriculum of the Hancock County schools to the needs of an unusual pupil in whom imag- ination predominated to the exclusion of mathe- matics. Learning is, as Higginson has aptly con- densed it, not accumulation, but assimilation ; and " the Hoosier poet " was born one of those fortunate men to whom schools are a mere inci- 158 THE HOOSIERS dent of education, but who walk through the world with their eyes open, adding daily to their stock of knowledge. Bagehot enlarges on this trait as he discovers it in Shakespeare, "throughout all whose writings," he says, " you see an amazing sympathy with com- mon people." The common people caught and held the attention of Mr. Riley, and as the annalist of their simple lives he established himself firmly in public affection. The half a dozen colleges within a radius of fifty miles of his home did not attract him ; he was bred to no business, but followed in a tentative way occupations that brought him into contact with people. He began to write because he felt the impulse, and not because he breathed a liter- ary atmosphere or looked forward to a literary career. His imagination needed some outlet, and he made verses just as he drew pictures or acquired a knack at playing the guitar, taking one talent about as seriously as the other. A Western county seat, with its daily advent of pilgrims from the farms, affords an entertain- ing panorama for a bright boy, and Mr. Riley began in his youth that careful observation of THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 159 the Indiana country folk, their ways and their speech, that was later to afford him a seemingly inexhaustible supply of material. He had in his younger days something of Artemus Ward's fondness for a hoax, and he wrote " Leonaine," in imitation of Foe's manner, with so marked success that several critics of discernment received the poem, and the story of its discovery in an old school reader, in good faith. In the experimental pe- riod of his career he read widely and to good purpose, learning the mechanics of prosody from the best models. His ear was naturally good, and he was distinctly original in his ideas of form. He delighted in the manipulation of words into odd and surprising combinations, and though the results were not always digni- fied, they were, nevertheless, curious and amus- ing, and brought him a degree of local fame, Mr. Riley's contributions were wholly to news- papers through many years, during which the more deliberate periodicals would have none of him. He printed poems in the Herald, an In- dianapolis weekly paper, in which the poems of Edith M. Thomas and others who have since 160 THE HOOSIERS gained a literary reputation first saw the light ; and having attracted the attention of E. B. Mar- tindale, the owner of the Indianapolis Journal, he was regularly employed on that paper, be- tween 1877 an d !885, printing many of his best pieces there. He had the pleasure of seeing his verses widely copied at that period, when the newspaper press was his only medium of communication, and before he had printed a volume. His first marked recognition followed the publication in the Journal of a series of poems signed "Benj. F. Johnson, of Boone," which not only awakened wide interest, but gave direction to a talent that had theretofore been without definite aim. He encouraged the idea that the poems were really the work of a countryman, and prefaced them with letters in prose to add to their air of authenticity, much as Lowell introduced the " Biglow Papers." This series included " Thoughts fer the Dis- curaged Farmer," "When the Frost is on the Punkin," and "To My Old Friend, William Leachman," which were winningly unaffected and simple, bearing out capitally the impres- sion of a bucolic poet celebrating his own joys THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED l6l and sorrows. The charm of the "Benj. F, Johnson " series lay in their perfect suggestion of a whimsical, lovable character, and wherever Mr. Riley follows the method employed first in those pieces, he never fails of his effect. It should be remembered, in passing from Riley masquerading as "Benj. F. Johnson" to Riley undisguised, that two kinds of dialect are represented. The Boone County poet's contributions are printed as the old farmer is supposed to have written them, not as reported by a critical listener. There is a difference between the attempt of an illiterate man to express his own ideas on paper, and a tran- script of his utterances set down by one trained to the business the vernacular as observed and recorded by a conscious artist. In every community there is a local humorist, a sayer of quaint things, whose oddities of speech gain wide acceptance and circulation, and Mr. Riley is his discoverer in Indiana. Lowell, with his own New England particularly in mind, said that " almost every county has some good die- sinker in phrase, whose mintage passes into the currency of the whole neighborhood " ; and [62 THE HOOSIERS this may be applied generally to the South and West. Mr. Riley writes always with his eye on a character; and those who question his dialect do not understand that there is ever present in his mind a real individual. The feeling and the incident are not peculiar to the type; they usually lie within the range of universal experience ; but the expression, the manner, the figure of the subject, are sug- gested in the poem, not by speech alone, but by the lilt of the line and the form of the stanza. Mr. Riley is more interested in odd characters, possessing marked eccentricities, than in the common, normal type of the farm or the country town, and the dialect that he employs often departs from the usual vocabu- lary of the illiterate in the field he studies, and follows lines of individual idiosyncrasy. The shrewdly humorous farmer who is a whimsical philosopher and rude moralist delights him. This character appears frequently in his poems, often mourning for the old times, now delight- ing in "noon-time an' June-time, down around the river " ; and again expressing contentment with his own lot, averring that "they's nothin' THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 163 much patheticker 'n just a-bein' rich." To these characters he gives a dialect that is fuller than the usual rural speech : ministratin' (ministering), resignated (resigned), artificialer (more artificial), competcnter (more competent), tractabler (more tractable), and familiously (familiarly), not being properly in the Hoosier lingua rustica, but easily conceivable as pos- sible deviations. Mr. Riley has been criticised for imputing to his characters such phrases as "when the army broke out" and "durin' the army," referring to the Civil War, and many careful observers declare that he could never have heard these phrases ; but very likely he has heard them from the eccentric countrymen for whom he has so strong an affinity; or he may have coined theni out- right as essential to the interpretation of such characters. In the main, however, he may be followed safely as an accurate guide in the speech of the Southeastern element of the population, and his questionable usages and in- consistencies are few and slight, as the phrase "don't you kno'.v," which does not always ring true, or " again " and " agin," used inter- 1 64 THE HOOSIERS changeably and evidently as the rhyme may hint. The abrupt beginning of a sentence, frequently noticed in Mr. Riley's dialect verses, is natural. The illiterate often experience dif- ficulty in opening a conversation, expressing only a fragment, to which an interlocutor must prefix for himself the unspoken phrases. There is no imposition in Mr. Riley's dialect, for his amplifications of it are always for the purpose of aiding in the suggestion of a char- acter as he conceives it ; he does not pretend that he portrays in such instances a type found at every cross-roads. " Doc Sifers " and " The Raggedy Man " are not peculiar to Indiana, but have their respective counterparts , in such characters as Mark Twain's "Pudd'n- head Wilson " .and the wayside tramp, who has lately been a feature of farce comedy rather than of our social economy. " Fessler's Bees," "Nothin' to say," "Down to the Capi- tal," "A Liz-town Humorist," and "Squire Hawkins's Story " show Mr. Riley at his hap- piest as a delineator of the rural type. In these sketches he gives in brief compass the effect of little dramas, now humorous, now THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 165 touched with simple and natural pathos, and showing a nice appreciation of the color of language which is quite as essential in dialect as in pure English. But it matters little that the dramatis persona change, or that the liter- ary method varies; the same kindliness, the same blending of humor and pathos, and the same background of "green fields and run- ning brooks " characterize all. " The crude man is," the poet believes, " generally moral," and the Riley Hoosier is intuitively religious, and is distinguished by his rectitude and sense of justice. Mr. Riley made his work effective through the possession of a sound instinct for apprais- ing his material, combined with a good sense of proportion. His touch grew steadily firmer, and he became more fastidious as the public made greater demands upon him; for while his poems in dialect gained him a hearing, he strove earnestly for excellence in the use of literary English. He has written many poems of sentiment gracefully and musically, and with no suggestion of dialect. Abundant instances of his felicity in the strain of retro- 1 66 THE HOOSIERS spect and musing might be cited. The same chords have been struck time and time again ; but they take new life when he touches them, as in " The All-Golden " : " I catch my breath, as children do In woodland swings when life is new, And all the blood is warm as wine And tingles with a tang divine. , . . O gracious dream, and gracious time, And gracious theme, and gracious rhyme When buds of Spring begin to blow In blossoms that we used to know, And lure us back along the ways Of time's all-golden yesterdays ! " It is not the farmer alone whose simple vir- tues appeal to him ; but rugged manhood any- where commands his tribute, and he has hardly written a more touching lyric than "Away," whose subject was an Indiana soldier: < I cannot say, and I will not say That he is dead He is just away ! " He has his own manner of expressing an idea, and this individuality is so marked that it might lead to the belief that he had little acquaintance with the classic English writers. But his series of imitations, includ- ing the prose of Scott and Dickens and THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 167 the characteristic poems of Tennyson and Longfellow, are certainly the work of one who reads to good purpose and has a feeling for style. When he writes naturally there is no trace of bookishness in his work ; he rarely or never invokes the mythologies, though it has sometimes pleased him to imagine Pan piping in Hoosier orchards. He is read and quoted by many who are not habitual readers of poetry who would consider it a sign of weakness to be caught in the act of reading poems of any kind, but who tolerate senti- ment in him because he makes it perfectly natural and surrounds it with a familiar atmos- phere of reality. The average man must be trapped into any display of emotion, and Mr. Riley spreads for him many nets from which there is no escape, as in " Nothin' to say, my daughter," where the subject is the loneliness and isolation of the father whose daughter is about to marry, and who faces the situation clumsily, in the manner of all fathers, rich or poor. The remembrance of the dead wife and mother adds to the pathos here. The old man turns naturally to the thought of her: 1 68 THE HOOSIERS " You don't rickollect her, I reckon ? No ; you wasn't \ year old then ! And now yer how old air you? W'y, child, not 'twenty' 11 . When? And yer nex' birthday's in Aprile ? and you want to git married that day ? I wisht yer mother was livin' ! but I hain't got nothin' to say ! Twenty year ! and as good a gyrl as parent ever found ! There's a straw ketched onto yer dress there I'll bresh it off turn round. (Her mother was jest twenty when us two run away.) Nothin' to say, my daughter ! Nothin' at all to say ! " The drolleries of childhood have furnished Mr. Riley subjects for some of his most original and popular verses. Here, again, he does not accept the conventional children of literature, whom he calls "the refined chil- dren, the very proper children the studiously thoughtful, poetic children " ; but he seeks " the rough-and-tumble little fellows ' in hodden gray,' with frowzly heads, begrimed but laughing faces, and such awful vulgarities of naturalness, and crimes of simplicity, and brazen faith and trust, and love of life and everybody in it ! " It is in this spirit that he presents now the naive, now the perversely erring, and THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 169 again the eerie and elfish child. He is a master of those enchantments of childhood that transfigure and illumine and create a world of the imagination for the young that is undiscoverable save to the elect few. He does not write patronizingly to his audience ; but listens, as one should listen in the realm of childhood, with serious attention, and then becomes an amanuensis, transcribing the chil- dren's legends and guesses at the riddle of existence in their own language. "The Rag- gedy Man " is not a romantic figure ; he is the shabby chore-man of the well-to-do folk in the country town, and the friend and oracle of small boys. His mind is filled with rare lore, he " Knows 'bout Giunts, an 1 Griffuns an' Elves An' the Squidgicum-Squees 'at swallers therselves ! " And he may be responsible, too, for " Little Orphant Annie's " knowledge of the " Gobble- uns," which Mr. Riley turned into the most successful of all his juvenile pieces. He repro- duces most vividly a child's eager, breathless manner of speech, and the elisions and varia- tions that make the child-dialect. Interspersed I/O THE HOOSIERS through " The Child World," a long poem in rhymed couplets, are a number of droll juvenile recitatives ; but this poem has a much greater value than at first appears. It presents an excellent picture of domestic life in a western country town, and the town is Mr. Riley's own Greenfield, on the National Road. This poem is a faithful chronicle, lively and humorous, full of the local atmosphere, and never dull. The descriptions of the characters are in Mr. Riley's happiest vein : the father of the house, a law- yer and leading citizen ; the patient mother ; the children with their various interests, leading up to " Uncle Mart," the printer, who aspired to be an actor " He joyed in verse-quotations which he took Out of the old ' Type Foundry Specimen Book.' " The poem is written in free, colloquial English, broken by lapses into the vernacular. It con- tains some of his best writing, and proves him to possess a range and breadth of vision that are not denoted in his lyrical pieces alone. " The Flying Islands of the Night, a fantastic drama in verse," his only other effort of length, was written earlier. It abounds in the curious THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED I Jl and capricious, but it lacks in simplicity and reserve qualities that have steadily grown in him. Humor is preeminent in Mr. Riley, and it suggests that of Dickens in its kinship with pathos. It seems to be peculiar to the literature of lowly life that there is heartache beneath much of its gayety, and tears are almost inevi- tably associated with its laughter. Mr. Riley never satirizes, never ridicules his creations ; his attitude is always that of the kindly and admiring advocate ; and it is by enlisting the sympathy of his readers, suggesting much to their feeling and imagination, and awakening in them a response that aids and supplements his own work, that Mr. Riley has won his way to the popular heart. The restraints of fixed forms have not interfered with his adequate expression of pure feeling. This is proved by the sonnet, "When She Comes Home Again," which is one of the tenderest of his poems. In the day that saw many of his contempo- raries in the younger choir of poets carving cherry stones of verse after French patterns he found old English models sufficient, and 1/2 THE HOOSIERS his own whim supplied all the variety he needed. Heroic themes have not tempted him ; he has never attained sonority or power, and has never needed them; but melody and sweetness and a singular gift of invention distinguish him. Many imitators have paid tribute to Mr. Riley's dialect verse, for most can grow the flowers after the seed have been freely blown in the market-place. Perhaps the best compli- ment that can be paid to Mr. Riley's essential veracity is to compare the verse of those who have made attempts similar to his own. He is, for example, a much better artist than Will Carleton, who came before him, and whose " Farm Ballads " are deficient in humor ; and he possesses a breadth of sympathy and a depth of sincerity that Eugene Field did not attain in dialect verse, though Field's versatility and fecun- dity were amazing. There is nowhere in Mr. Riley a trace of the coarse brutality with which Mr. Hamlin Garland, for example, stamps the life of a region lying farther west. There is no point of contact between Lowell and Mr. Riley in their dialectic performances, as civic THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 173 matters do not interest the Indianian ; and his view of the Civil War becomes naturally that of the countryman who looks back with wistful melancholy, not to the national danger and dread, but to the neighborhood's glory and sorrow, as in "Good-by, Jim." It might also be said that Mr. Riley has never put the thoughts of states- men into the mouths of countrymen, as Lowell did, consistency being one of his qualities. There has sprung up in Mr. Riley's time a choir of versifiers who are journalistic rather than liter- ary, and who write for the day, much as the reporters do. Mr. Riley, more than any one else, has furnished the models for these, and it would seem that verses could be multiplied interminably, or so long as such refrains as " When father winds the clock " and " The hymns that mother used to sing" can be found for texts. With the publication of the "Benj. F. John- son " poems in a paper-covered booklet, Mr. Riley's literary career began. The intervening years have brought him continuous applause ; his books of verse have been sold widely in this country and in England, and that, too, in " the THE HOOSIERS twilight of the poets," with its contemporaneous oblivion for many who have labored bravely in the paths of song. He early added to his repu- tation as a writer that of a most successful reader of his own poems, and on both sides of the Atlantic his work and his unique personal- ity have won for him the friendship of many distinguished literary men of the day. It is to be said that the devotion of the people of his own State to their poet, from first to last, has been marked by a cordiality and loyalty that might well be the envy of any man in any field of endeavor. No other Western poet has ever occupied a similar place ; and the reciprocal devotion, on the other hand, of the poet to his own people, is not less noteworthy or admirable. He has always resented the suggestion that he should leave Indiana for Boston or New York, where he might be more in touch with the makers of books; and in recent years he pur- chased the old family residence at Greenfield, to which he returns frequently for rest and inspiration. For fifteen years he has been the best-known figure in Indianapolis, studying with tireless attention the faces in the streets, THE HOOSIER INTERPRETED 175 nervously ranging the book-stores, and often sitting down to write a poem at the desk of some absentee in the Joiirnal office. His frequent reading and lecturing tours have been miserable experiences for him, as he is utterly without the instinct of locality, and has timidly sat in the hotels of strange towns for many hours for lack of the courage re- quisite for exploration. Precision and correct- ness have distinguished him in certain ways, being marked, for example, in matters of dress and in his handwriting; his manuscripts are flawlessly correct, and the slouch and negligence of the traditional poet are not observed in him. His long list of books includes " Afterwhiles " (1887); "Pipes of Pan at Zekesbury" (1888); "Old-fashioned Roses" (1889); "Rhymes of Childhood " ( 1 891 ) ; and " Poems Here at Home " (1897); and he has known the luxury of a cos- mopolitan edition of his writings in a series that embraced the definitive Stevenson. Fame came to Mr. Riley when he was still young, and it is only a fair assumption that he has not exhausted his field, but that he will grow 1/6 THE HOOSIERS more and more secure in it. Serious work it has not always been possible for him to do, for his audience learned to expect humor in all his verses, and refused to be disappointed ; but his ambition lies beyond humorous dialect, though he finds no fault with the public pref- erence. All that he writes is welcome, for he is a preacher of sound optimism and a sincere believer in the final good that comes to alL CHAPTER VI CRAWFORDSVILLE THERE is an ineffable charm about an old town that has outlived its ambition to be a great city, and Crawfordsville is a fine type of such a place. The region was settled in 1823, and the Montgomery County people, both farmers and townfolk, have long been counted among the sturdiest and most intelligent in the State. A cultivated society has always existed at Crawfordsville, and as the seat of Wabash College it acquired in its youth an academic air that it has never shaken off. The town has been called "The Hoosier Athens," by en- vious and less favored neighbors. The analogy is not wholly fortunate, as there are neither porticoes nor statues on the college campus, and no Cimon found occupation here, as at the elder Athens, in tree-planting. Nature had anticipated the need of " groves of academe," and the trees about the college and through N 177 1/8 THE HOOSIERS the town are truly of the forest primeval, giving the agreeable impression of a rus in urbe. Crawfordsville has often sent young men elsewhere to find occupation; but if its commercial attractions have been slight, its educational advantages have been proportion- ately great, and Wabash is able to point to a long list of successful alumni. The spirit of change has rarely invaded the college, and men are now holding chairs who have grown old in its service. Wabash has been content to do honest college work and has never made false pretensions as to its ability to do more. " Mere literature," as Bagehot fondly called it, has not been disregarded, and in no college of ampler endowment have the classics been taught more sympathetically or intelligently. It is one of the few colleges remaining at the West which close their doors to women, although importu- nate hands have long besought the wicket. The honor and dignity of learning have come to have a real meaning here, not only to those who seek instruction at the college, but to the people of the town as well. Wabash may not have directly influenced those who CRAWFORDSVILLE 179 made Crawfordsville a seat of authorship, but certainly a fortunate chance led makers of books to seek the congenial atmosphere created by the college. In such a place one may not grow rich, but one may dwell contented ; and while coarser commerce has not flour- ished greatly, much valuable manuscript has freighted the east-bound mails from Craw- fordsville. Authorship and scholarship alone have not engaged the inhabitants. Joseph E. McDonald, later a senator in Congress, once lived here, as did also John M. Butler, who became McDonald's law partner at Indianapo- lis and one of the ablest men of the Western bar. Butler's son, John Maurice Butler, was born at Crawfordsville, and his untimely death (1896) removed the man of most charming personality, and the keenest wit of his genera- tion at the capital. Henry Beebee Carrington had identified himself with Indiana's partici- pation in the War of the Rebellion before he became (1870-1873) professor of military science at Wabash. His stay at Crawfords- ville was brief, but the inhabitants prefer to believe that as he once breathed the Athenian 180 THE HOOSIERS air they are entitled to share with Connecticut, his native State and later home, in the credit for his writings. The Whitlocks and the Elstons were among the first settlers, and were prominent in all the earlier labors of the com- munity. Henry S. Lane, General Wallace's brother-in-law, was a senator in Congress (1860-1867), and lived and died here. I. General Lew Wallace General Lew Wallace, whose varied achieve- ments have contributed so largely to the town's fame, was not born at Crawfordsville, but at Brookville, in Franklin County, April 10, 1827. His father, David Wallace, had resigned from the regular army soon after his graduation from West Point in 1821. He studied law at Brook- ville, and soon began an interesting public career. He was one of the political giants of the State in his day, holding many offices and positions of honor. His first wife, General Wallace's mother, was the daughter of John Test, of a family long prominent in the State. General Wallace was an adventurous boy, impatient of all restraint, and fond of wandering, and he therefore received CRAWFORDSVILLE l8f little systematic education ; but his father owned, an excellent library, and, as has happened with other boys who have refused to submit to the schoolmaster, he found his own way to the book shelves. He was for a time a student at Hosh- our's school at Centerville ; and he once ran away to join an older brother at Wabash ; but he was either unwilling or unable to break his nomadic habits, and continued to roam the woods until, at sixteen, his school bills were audited for the last time. He was beset by several ambitions ; literature, art, and a military career invited him. He had some skill at sketch- ing, and painted a portrait of Black Hawk, the Indian chief, drawing on the family medicine chest for castor oil to use in mixing his colors. He also completed a novel, " The Man at Arms : A Tale of the Tenth Century," of which he re- members little ; but Sulgrove in one of his chron- icles darkly hints that it was of the school of G. P. R. James. Robert Duncan, clerk of Marion County, in which Indianapolis is situated, em- ployed him as copyist, and he varied this prosaic occupation by reading law in his father's office. The Mexican War now broke upon the country, 1 82 THE HOOSIERS and as Lewis the second syllable disappeared during the Civil War had painted a picture and written a romance, he now turned naturally to his third ambition. He organized a company and went south with the First Indiana Infantry. The regiment saw little of the war, but the cam- paign and his personal experience in military matters confirmed young Wallace's purpose to write a novel of Mexico, for which, by a kind of prevision and the inspiration of Prescott, he had already made tentative sketches. On his return to Indiana he again took up the law, and practised at Covington until 1852, when he re- moved to Crawfordsville, which has ever since been his home. He presently organized a mili- tary company, known as the " Montgomery Guards," and equipped it with the Zouave uni- form. This furnished an outlet for his ceaseless energy, and also for his pocket-book, as the State contributed nothing to the company's sup- port. He brought it to a high standard of efficiency, and at the outbreak of the Civil War it was one of the best-drilled military organiza- tions in the country. Governor Morton ap- pointed Mr. Wallace adjutant-general of the CRAWFORDSVILLE 183 State at the first sign of hostilities, but he served in this capacity for a short time only, and organized the Eleventh Indiana Regiment, with his original Crawfordsville company as nucleus, and began an active and brilliant career in the army. Almost immediately his regiment distinguished itself in West Virginia. He was a brigadier-general before the capture of Fort Henry, and was made major-general for gallantry at Donelson. A year after Shiloh, a friend called General Wallace's attention to the official reports of that engagement, and he learned for the first time that he had been cen- sured for his conduct on the first day of the battle. He asked at once for a court of in- quiry, which was denied, and a long controversy followed. This died out for a time, but was renewed when Grant began the serial publica- tion of his memoirs. It was always maintained by General Wallace's friends that Grant was unjust to Wallace ; that the Indiana officer faithfully obeyed orders actually given him ; and certainly no one who ever had any acquain- tance with General Wallace would believe him capable of intentionally taking a circuitous 1 84 THE HOOSIERS route to a battle-field. The effective service ot his command on the second day of the battle should forever have stilled criticism ; as it was, Grant wrote in his memoirs the last words that ever came from his pen a footnote to his account of Pittsburg Landing that fairly acquitted General Wallace of all blame. Much has been written, by participants and others, touching the incident, and it has been made the subject of an exhaustive study by George F. McGinnis. 1 While stationed at Baltimore, in 1 864, General Wallace prevented a Confederate descent upon Washing- ton by intercepting Jubal Early at Monocacy. He threw 6,000 men against Early's force of 28,000, suffering defeat, but detaining the enemy until Grant could send reinforcements from Virginia. This was one of the most important of all his military services, and he received for it Grant's cordial praise. General Wallace was a member of the court that tried the conspirators implicated in the assassination of Lincoln ; and he was president of the commission that tried and convicted Captain Henry Wirz, commandant of Andersonville Prison. 1 " War Papers," Indiana Commandery, Loyal Legion, i89& CRAWFORDSVILLE 1 8 $ When General Wallace returned to Craw fordsville at the close of the war he was thirty- eight ; he had served creditably in one war and with enviable distinction in a second, and he turned to the arts of peace from a military experience that had given him wide reputation and acquaintance among public men of the Civil War period. He began industriously to reestablish himself in his law practice, and varied his occupation with study and literary work. "The Man at Arms," his youthful at- tempt at " A Tale of the Tenth Century," had disappeared during his absence in Mexico ; but the ambition to write a romance of the invasion of Cortez, and his manuscript beginnings of it, had survived two wars, and he now set about finishing the story. He had at this time no definite ambition to become an author, and he gave his evenings to the writing of " The Fair God " with little idea of ever publishing it. Af- ter its completion he carried it East with him on a business journey. Whitelaw Reid gave him an introduction to a Boston publisher, and the result was the appearance of the tale in 1873. He had spent in all about twelve years 1 86 THE HOOSIERS on the book, part having been written, as al ready stated, in his boyhood ; and the author's faithfulness to his early purpose through many years that had brought new duties and obliga- tions is in keeping with his whole character. The scenes of "The Fair God" were unfamil- iar to the novel reader, and the very names in the book were somewhat disconcerting ; but the tale was received in the beginning with a fair degree of interest, and it has ever since enjoyed a steady sale. The subsequent success of " Ben Hur " directed attention anew to General Wal- lace's earlier tale, but the romance was some- thing more than an amateur effort, and time has not diminished its entertaining qualities. As a picture of Aztecan civilization it is accu- rate, and the incidents are related in an orderly and natural manner that holds the attention. The devotion of the people to their religion is impressive; but the tale is essentially a mili- tary romance. The battle scenes following the appearance of Cortez and his Spaniards are described with an animation and an amplitude that impart to the reader the sense of behold- ing a series of great spectacles. The book is CRAWFORDSVILLE 187 rich in those surprises which it is the business of the romancer to produce ; and the chapters descriptive of the battle towers (mantas) which were among the European's resources, and of the retreat of the invaders, are noisy with the clang of battle. The prophecies of the mystic priest Mualox, who sees through the eyes of a child the coming of the Spaniards, are interest- ing; and curiously enough they had their origin in an incident of General Wallace's own expe- rience in Indiana, showing how the imagination may play upon the commonplace. When he lived at Covington, he formed the acquaintance of a tailor who was deeply interested in the occult sciences, and who once invited General Wallace to his shop to witness manifestations of his powers. The tailor placed his appren- tice under a kind of hypnotic influence, and told General Wallace to take the boy's hand and to follow in his own mind some route with whose details he was familiar. General Wallace obeyed, mentally reviewing a high- way that led to the house of a farmer client. The boy's lips moved, and he coherently described the road, and presently the farm- 1 88 THE HOOSIERS house, just as General Wallace saw them ; then he abruptly ceased to follow the leader's train of thought. He said that it was night; that some one came out of the house with a light, walked about inspecting the barnyard, and then returned to the house. The boy had now be- come exhausted ; the tailor revived him, and General Wallace went on to his home. A few days later, when the countryman whose farm had figured in the incident came to town, Gen- eral Wallace asked him if he had been at home at the hour mentioned ; he replied that he had been at home and asleep. Further questioning elicited the statement that at about the time of the experiment at the tailor shop he had been aroused by noises in the barnyard, and that, fearing some marauder was after his fowls, he had taken a light and gone out to see that all was secure. The friendly reception of " The Fair God " did not awaken any unusual interest in General Wallace as a writer. He continued at Craw- fordsville the life of a lawyer of polite tastes, keenly interested in politics. " The Fair God " out of the way, he began almost immediately CRAWFORDSVILLE 189 to cast about for some new literary employment In about 1874 it occurred to him to write a nov- elette, whose principal incident should be the meeting of the Wise Men in the Desert and the birth of Christ. The brief account in the Gos- pels had long appealed to his imagination, and he wrote what is now the first book of " Ben Hur," intending to offer it to some magazine for publication as a sketch, with illustrations. While the manuscript still lay in his desk, he met on a railway journey an old friend, Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, and in the course of conver- sation the famous sceptic touched on the subject of Christianity. General Wallace had always been indifferent in religious matters, neither denying nor affirming; but Ingersoll's down- right iconoclasm alarmed him. He determined to investigate the subject and form his own con- clusions ; and he began researches and studies which continued through five years. When he had concluded, he fully accepted the tenets of Christian faith, and he had amplified his sketch of the Wise Men into the novel " Ben Hur." Continuous labor had not been possible during the writing of this tale : he had been busy with IQO THE HOOSIERS everyday affairs; politics received a share ol his attention; and he became, in 1878, by ap- pointment of President Hayes, governor of New Mexico Territory. He lived at Santa Fe" for three years, and much of " Ben Hur " was written in the governor's house there. General Wallace had never visited Palestine when he wrote " Ben Hur," but there are points of resem- blance between the landscape of New Mexico and that of the Holy Land, and these were of assistance. He procured a profile map of Pal- estine, and was so attentive to topographical de- tail that later, when he visited the scenes of his story in company with a recognized authority in ancient history, every feature of the country as described in the book was verified. An immense amount of labor is represented in this novel. Many volumes were consulted in the search for antiquarian lore, that it might lack nothing that would aid in conveying an accurate impres- sion of the period. The book was capitally planned, striking epi- sodes falling into place naturally, and not too abundantly. The meeting of the Wise Men, the sea fight, and the chariot race are dramatic CRAWFORDSVILLE 191 to a degree; but the sombre picture of the crucifixion is unmarred by excess. The rever- ence which characterizes every mention of the Saviour is the author's happiest achievement in the story. The subject is difficult, but it is handled with admirable taste and refinement However, the book does not depend for con- tinued attention on its interest as a religious novel ; it is equally noteworthy for its compre- hensive grasp of the politics of the period, its pic- ture of the various peoples that flowed through the streets of Jerusalem and Antioch, and the sug- gestion of a romantic commerce whose exploits lay in strange seas and beyond the deserts. Noth- ing in the book is accomplished more skilfully than the slow extinction of the idea of the coming of a great ruler of the world, to rebuild the throne of Solomon, and the gradual acceptance of the spiritual significance of Christ's advent ; and it may be taken, in connection with the history of the novel, as a revelation of the growth in the author's own mind of a belief in the divine Sav- iour. Historical novels, particularly those that look to antiquity for subjects, follow necessa- rily certain traditions, and these are observed 192 THE HOOSIERS carefully by General Wallace. Scott, more than any other, helped him, and " Ivanhoe," in particular, was his model. The writing in " Ben Hur" is uniformly good, and the dialogue in archaic speech is well sustained. General Wallace wrote out of an ample vocabulary enriched by the constant reading of Oriental narrative, and in his descriptions the epithets are always ap- posite. The success of " Ben Hur " was not immediate. It sold slowly for several years, but it gained steadily in popularity and contin- ues in favor with the booksellers. It has been translated into all the European languages, into Arabic and Japanese, and it is accessible to the blind in raised-letter. The sale of the copyright edition in America (1900) exceeds 1,200,000, which is probably greater than that of " Uncle Tom's Cabin." Many playwrights and actors pro- posed to General Wallace from time to time the dramatization of " Ben Hur," but he feared that the spirit of reverence, which he had so consist- ently communicated to the novel, would be lost in any play founded upon its incidents. He declined all offers until, in 1 899, a plan was sub- mitted which met his approval, and in the fall CRAWFORDSVILLE 193 of that year the play was given its first presenta- tion at New York. When President Garfield appointed General Wallace minister to Turkey, he wrote across his commission " Ben Hur." General Wallace called at the White House, just before leaving for his post, to pay his respects to the President, and Garfield said to him : "I expect another book from you. Your official duties will not be so onerous that you cannot write it. Make the scene Constantinople." The opportunity thus presented for further literary work was a con- sideration in accepting the post. The Turkish occupation of Constantinople is an incident of great historical importance, and in his search for material for a new romance, General Wal- lace determined to write a tale that should pre- sent a picture of the fierce struggle between Christian and Moslem. His studies at Con- stantinople led to the writing of " The Prince of India." The Prince is "The Wandering Jew." He appears as a man of mysterious gifts, who wields great wealth and power. He has discovered what he believes to be common ground upon which all the spiritually minded 194 THE HOOSIERS may meet, irrespective of religion. He appears before the Emperor Constantine and presents his plan for a universal religious union, but he horrifies the theologians, and finding the Chris- tians unsympathetic, he turns to Mohammed, and bestows upon him the sword of Solomon, the sign of conquest, which he had found in the tomb of Hiram, King of Tyre. The tale has neither the interest of " Ben Hur " nor the novelty and military ardor of "The Fair God." The subject required deliberate treat- ment, and the hero, who is a scholar and a mystic, naturally deals in words oftener than in actions. General Wallace's other writings are "The Boyhood of Christ " (1889), and "The Wooing of Malkatoon : a Turkish Tale, with Commo- dus, a Play " (1898), both in blank verse. There is nothing in General Wallace's literary career to encourage hasty and careless work- manship. His methods have been, from the be- ginning, those of a conscientious artist, who strives for excellence and is capable of cheerfully casting aside the work of many days if, by addi- tional labor, he can gain better results. He CRAWFORDSVILLE 195 parleys with a sentence or debates with a syno- nym with a caution that is akin to Oriental di- plomacy. He has probably never written even a social letter carelessly, and if his correspond- ence were to be collected, it would prove to be of the same quality as his best printed work. There has always been a dignity in his ambi- tions. Military leadership came to him natu- rally, and when he took up literature, it was in a serious way, with subjects that were new and daring. By making every stroke count, and paying no heed to changing literary fashions, he has, in the intervals of unusually varied and exacting employments, cultivated the literary art with enviable success. Heredity and environment explain nothing in General Wallace. He is an estray from the Orient, whom Occidental conditions have influ- enced little. This is proved by all his imagina- tive writing, by his military tastes, by many qualities of his personality, and by his appear- ance and bearing. He has never written of American life, and the attraction of Mexico as a field for fiction lay in the splendor and re- moteness of the early civilization of the country, 196 THE HOOSIERS combined with the romance of its conquest by soldiers of Spain. In like manner, " Ben Hur " and " The Prince of India " are such subjects as would naturally appeal to him. His fancy has delighted always in the thought of pageantry, conquest, mystery, and mighty deeds; it has pleased him to contemplate the formal social life of the old heroic times. The beginning of his friendship with the Sultan illustrates a sympa- thy, native in him, with the Oriental character. General Wallace had reached Constantinople after his appointment as minister, but had not been formally received. On Friday, the Moslem Sunday, he went with the multitude to see the Sultan go to prayer. General Wallace was entitled, by act of Congress, to wear the uni- form of a major-general in the United States army, and he was clad in all the regalia of the rank. Between the gate of the imperial park and the Mosque which the Sultan attended was a small house, with a platform in front of it, set apart to strangers, and there General Wallace viewed the procession. The dark man in the rich uniform attracted the attention of the Sultan as he passed, and from the Mosque CRAWFORDSVILLE 197 he sent Osman Pasha, the hero of Plevna, then marshal of the palace, to learn the identity of the stranger. On finding that he was the new American minister awaiting audience, the Sul- tan sent an invitation to General Wallace to accompany him on his return to the palace, an honor never before accorded to a minister not yet received. A carriage was sent for the Ameri- can, who returned in the brilliant cortege next to the carriage of the Sultan. The reception at the palace was particularly distinguished, and thereafter the relations between the two were intimate and cordial. The Sultan often sum- moned the minister to the palace, sometimes requesting interviews at the dead of night. All their conversation was through an interpreter, as the Sultan knew no English and General Wallace did not speak French. There was early stamped upon General Wal- lace an air of authority that went well with the military profession; but later years have soft- ened this into a courtliness and grace of manner wholly charming. The Oriental strain in him has become more and more pronounced, sug- gesting that the years spent in the study of 198 THE HOOSIERS Eastern history, and his actual contact with Oriental peoples, have emphasized it 1 Mrs. Wallace (born Susan Arnold Elston) is a native of Crawfordsville. Her father was a pioneer of central Indiana. The homes of his descendants are grouped in Elston Grave, one of the prettiest spots in Crawfordsville. Gen- eral and Mrs. Wallace were married in 1852, and she is "the wife of my youth," to whom " Ben Hur " was dedicated. He received so many consolatory letters based on this inscrip- tion, which seemed to be misunderstood, that in later editions he changed it, adding "who still abides with me." Mrs. Wallace began writing at an early age, both prose and verse. She has never collected her poems, though sev- eral of them, as " The Patter of Little Feet," written years ago, are frequently brought to the .attention of a new audience by the newspapers. She has printed one book of fiction, " Ginevra " (1887), and three books of travel sketches, "The Storied Sea "(1884); "The Land of the Pue- blos" (1888); and "The Repose in Egypt" (1888). Mrs. Wallace has a happy manner of describing places and incidents, and the papers 1 General Wallace died at Crawfordsville, February 15, 1905, exactly four years after the death of his friend and fellow-towns- man, Maurice Thompson. CRAWFORDSVILLE 199 in these volumes show the spontaneity and ease of good letters, and are without the guide-book taint. They were intended, as the author stated in the preface to " The Storied Sea," for pa- tient, gentle souls seeking rest " from that weari- ness known in our dear native land as mental culture." Mrs. Wallace shares her husband's liking for Eastern subjects, and her Egyptian and Turkish papers, in particular, are delightful reading. 1 II. Maurice Thompson No other Indianian has lived so faithfully as Maurice Thompson a life devoted to literary ideals, and none of his contemporaries among writers of the West and South has been more loyally devoted to pure belles-lettres than he. Abstract beauty has appealed to him more strongly than to any other writer of the Indiana group, and he has expressed it in his poems, through media suggested by his own environ- ment, with charm and grace. He is a native of Indiana, having been born at Fairneld, near Brookville, September 9, 1844. His father was of Scotch-Irish ancestry ; his maternal grand- 1 Mrs. Wallace's life, singularly blessed, and filled with love and honor, ended October I, 1907. 200 THE HOOSIERS father was of Dutch origin; and both lines were represented in the Southwestern migra- tion at the beginning of the century. In Maurice's childhood his father, who was a Baptist clergyman, made several changes of residence, all tending southward, removing first to southeastern Missouri, then to Kentucky, and again within a few years to the valley of the Coosawattee in northern Georgia. Here the senior Thompson became a planter, and Maurice enjoyed thereafter, until he reached manhood, a life in which the study of books was ideally blended with the freedom of the country. He has always expressed great obliga- tions to his mother's influences during these years; her literary tastes were sound, and she imparted to her children the love of good books, overcoming by her own encouragement and guidance the absence of schools in their neighborhood. Tutors were procured for higher mathematics and the languages ; but the chief impulse to the study of the old litera- tures lay in the youth's own taste and tem- perament. Like Lanier, Hayne, Esten Cooke, John B. Tabb, and others who were to become CRAWFORDSVILLE 2O1 known in literature, he entered the Confederate army (1862), and saw hard service until the surrender. Even these years of soldier expe- rience did not interrupt wholly his studies, for he usually managed to carry with him some book worth reading, the essays of De Quincey and Carlyle belonging to this period. Mr. Thomp- son returned to his father's plantation at the close of the war, and remained there for three years, continuing his studies as before, but sub- stituting hard manual labor for the life of pleas- ant adventure by field and flood that had given him from boyhood into early manhood an intimate acquaintance with wild things. He now began, of necessity, to accommodate him- self to the changed conditions of the community and of his own family. He had studied engi- neering, and he perfected himself in it, and read law. Reconstruction moved forward slowly, and wishing to get as quickly as possible into a region where his material prospects could be improved, he went to Crawfordsville, without fixed purpose, and found employment with a railway surveying party. He supported himself by engineering until he felt justified in taking 2O2 THE HOOSIERS up the law, in which he was successful, and U which he was constant until the increase of literary reputation and steady employment in more congenial labor made it possible for him to abandon it. His marriage to a daughter of John Lee, an influential citizen of the county, fixed him as a resident of Crawfordsville, which has since remained his home. For a number of years he was prominent in local politics. He sat once in the State legislature, and he was appointed State geologist in 1885. Mr. Thompson had written experimentally in boyhood, and after his removal to Indiana he continued the cultivation of his gifts, and begin- ning slowly, attained to an abundant produc- tion, in both prose and poetry, that made him through many years the Western author whose name most frequently occurred in the indices of the best magazines. During his youth in the Cherokee country he had been initiated into the mysteries of archery by a hermit who lived in the midst of a pine forest near his home. Mr. Thompson and his brother, Will H. Thompson, were both enthusiastic archers and hunters, and their adventures in the wilds of Florida were f uli CRAWFORDSVILLE 2O3 of romantic interest. The bow was with them a kind of protest against the shot-gun, and assured a less murderous extirpation of game. Their own skill with the primitive weapon was remarkable, and as a recurrence of interest in the bow in this country is not imminent, they may be considered the last of American archers. Proficiency in this sport and the acquaintance with woodcraft to which it led were important influences in Mr. Thompson's first literary work. In the seventies, a great revival in archery swept the country, and this was wholly due to a series of articles on archery and on hunting with the long bow which Mr. Thomp- son printed in the periodicals. These papers were gathered into a book (1878), and although he had published three years before a volume of sketches called " Hoosier Mosaics," his writings on this subject, with the attractive title " The Witchery of Archery," gave him his first footing as an author. The long bow has again fallen into disuse, but the freshness and zest of those sketches have not passed away. However, the archer had found in his wood- lands more important material than he had yet 2O4 THE HOOSIERS made use of ; for while he was following Robin Hood, he was also the servant of Theocritus and Meleager, and he wrote at this period many lyrics that suggested, by their spirit at least, the Greek pastoral poetry more than anything in English. They were published under the de- scriptive title " Songs of Fair Weather " (1883), and are included also in a larger volume of Mr. Thompson's verse, "Poems" (1892). E. S. Nadal writes 1 that he has never known any scenery so classical as the glades which border the forests of Ohio and Indiana. In fancy, he is able to people them with figures of mythology, and in no other spots, he says, has his imagi- nation been equal to this task. It is pleasant to find this comment running into a reference to Mr. Thompson : " When I was the literary reviewer of a New York daily," says Mr. Nadal, " I was always on the lookout for the verses of a young poet who lived in this part of the world. I remember that one of his poems related how that once when Diana was at her bath in some clear spring, no doubt known to the poet, a sort of sublimated Hoosier of the 1 " Essays at Home and Elsewhere," p. 211. CRAWFORDSVILLE fancy, himself quite nude and classic, passed near by. He quickly, however, ran away far through the green thick groves of May, " ' Afeard lest down the wind of Sprinp He'd hear an arrow whispering.' " There is a great deal of the Indiana land- scape to be found through Mr. Thompson's poems, though he often looks southward to the north Georgia hills and to Florida. Ser- vile descriptions he does not give, but against backgrounds traced with great delicacy and beauty he throws suddenly and for a moment only some fleeting spirit of the woodland. There is in his language "the continual slight novelty" which is indispensable in poetry that is to haunt and taunt the memory. As an in- stance of his felicity a poem called " Before Dawn" may be cited: u A keen, insistent hint of dawn Fell from the mountain height ; A wan, uncertain gleam betrayed The faltering of the night. " The emphasis of silence made The fog above the brook Intensely pale ; the trees took on A haunted, haggard look. 206 THE HOOSIERS '' Such quiet came, expectancy Filled all the earth and sky : Time seemed to pause a little space ; I heard a dream go by ! " Such subjects he always handles finely, leav- ing the thought in a spell of mild wonder and awe, as if something beautiful had passed and vanished. Similar effects were often possible with him in his younger days; and it is a question whether the moods from which such work proceeds recur after youth, the dream, has departed and taken that from the heart which "never comes again." Those early pieces could not have been written by an in- doors man ; there is a refreshing quality of the open air in every line of them. The note is unusual, and is perhaps best sounded rarely ; lightness and deftness are necessary to him who would evoke its entire purity and melody. In "The Death of the White Heron," "A Flight Shot," " Diana," " The Fawn," and " In the Haunts of Bass and Bream," he trusted his fortunes to rhymed couplets of eight syl- lables, which are particularly well adapted to his purposes. The last-named poem relates CRAWFORDSVILLE 2O? with tantalizing deliberation the taking of a bass; the life of the stream pending the cap- ture is described in musical, transitional pas- sages to the refrain, " Bubble, bubble, flows the stream, Like low music through a dream." He again emplovs couplets in one of the most appealing or all this series, " In Exile," which is the prayer of an archer of the new world that England, the mother of archers, will call him home. Later Mr. Thompson essayed a number of poems in a flexible ode form, showing a broadening of his powers and a widening of his personal horizons. The flight in such pieces as " In Captivity " an J. "Before Sunrise" is longer than in the ear- lier poems. It is a pleasure to find a poet to whom America is so satisfactory as a field that he dares to set up the mocking-bird against the nightingale. Mr. Thompson makes the home-songster a medium for communicating the spirit and significance of our democracy to our friends overseas. The movement through all these poems is free and vigorous, and the irregular lines please by the happy chance of 208 THE HOOSIERS the rhymes. The pleasant winds of which the poet writes so refreshingly creep often into his measures. Patriotic subjects he touches with nobility and fervor; and he became the lau- reate of reconstruction when he penned his ringing poem "To the South," the conclusion of which must not be omitted here: " I am a Southerner ; I love the South ; I dared for her To fight from Lookout to the Sea, With her proud banner over me. But from my lips thanksgiving broke As God in battle thunder spoke, And that Black Idol, breeding drouth And dearth of human sympathy Throughout the sweet and sensuous South, Was, with its chains and human yoke, Blown hellward from the cannon's mouth, While Freedom cheered behind the smoke ! " Again, when invited to read a poem before the Phi Beta Kappa, of Harvard, in 1893, he chose for his subject " Lincoln's Grave," ex- pressing, with greater care, similar feelings of loyalty, and recounting Lincoln's high qualities with eloquent appreciation. Mr. Thompson has published a number of novels: "A Tallahassee Girl" (1882); "His CRAWFORDSVILLE Second Campaign" (1882); "At Love's Ex- tremes" (1885); "A Banker of Bankersville " (1886); "A Fortnight of Folly" (1888); and "Stories of the Cherokee Hills ' ; (1899), a volume of short tales reminiscent of slave days and the author's boyhood. "A Tallahassee Girl " is a graceful and pretty story, the scene of which is laid at the South, as is true also of the two tales that immediately followed it. They convey distinct impressions of phases of South- ern life in the early post-bellum period, and abound in romantic color. " Alice of Old Vin- cennes" (1900), is a captivating tale of the French period of Indiana history, closing with the surrender of Vincennes to Clark. The heroine is delightful, and Father Beret is a character worthy of Dumas. The book shows in all ways a marked advance over any previous prose work of this author. He has also written "The Boys' Book of Sports" (1886); and " Louisiana" (1888), in the Stories of the States series, and "The Ocala Boy" (1885), all for juvenile readers. He has written many essays in which some phase of literature has been observed from the point of view of a nature- 210 THE HOOSIERS lover; and his touch in such instances is always light and his matter bright and stimu- lating. Two volumes of such papers have been collected, " By-ways and Bird Notes " (1885) and "Sylvan Secrets" (1887). The scientist and the litterateur meet in his dis- cussions of the mind and memory of birds, and the anatomy of bird-song; and his essay on Shakespeare, written within sound of the Gulf of Mexico, to the accompaniment of the songs of mocking-birds, is wholly characteristic of his independence in literary matters. He has been one of the most courageous champions of the romantic as against the analytic and realistic. He delivered at the Hartford Theo- logical Seminary, in 1883, a series of lectures dealing comprehensively with the question of morality in literature, and he embodied these in a volume, "The Ethics of Literary Art" (1883). Mr. Thompson became, in 1889, liter- ary editor of the New York Independent, re- serving, however, the privilege of continuing his residence at Crawfordsville. His home, " Sherwood Place," is on a quiet margin of the town, and the house has stood for CRAWFORDSVILLE 2 1 1 half a century shielded from the public eye by native beeches and alien pines. Mr. Thompson's life is wholly devoted to study and writing. His instincts are thoroughly scholarly, and in some directions, as in Greek poetry and Old French literature, where long and loving study have given him special knowl- edge, he is an authority. He has no com- plaints of the world's treatment of him or his work, and he declares that his writings have been received with much more cordiality than they have deserved. He is exceedingly kind to beginners in literature, and his criticisms have been of benefit to many young Western and Southern writers. Wabash College con- ferred upon him, in 1900, the degree of Doctor of Letters. 1 His brother, Will H. Thompson, was born in Missouri (1846), and the experiences of their youth and early manhood were similar. Will Thompson was a marvellous archer, and shared his brother's enthusiasm for hunting with bow and arrow. He has not been, in recent years, a resident of Crawfordsville, having removed to the State of Washington, but 1 Mr. Thompson died at his Crawfordsville home, February 15, 1901. 212 THE HOOSIERS he wrote while in Indiana his " High Tide at Gettysburg," one of the few poems of the Civil War that has adequately expressed the spirit of battle and the larger meaning of the conflict. III. Mary H. Krout Caroline V. Krout Mary H. Krout, another Crawfordsville author, has added to the distinction of an Indiana family in which an admiral, George Brown, and several scholars and scientists have appeared. In her girlhood she wrote the verses " Little Brown Hands," which have en- joyed a vitality not always relished by the author, whose later and longer flights are bet- ter deserving of recognition. Miss Krout has been an indefatigable traveller, and her books include "Hawaii and a Revolution" (1898), an account of her personal experiences in the Sandwich Islands during the political crisis that preceded annexation; also "A Looker-on in London" (1899), which describes novel phases of English life freshly. Miss Krout more recently penetrated to the interior of China, visiting cities remote from the beaten track of travel. Her sister, Caroline V. Krout, CRAWFORDSVILLE 213 a classical scholar of high attainment, has written, under the nom de plume " Caroline Brown," "Knights in Fustian" (1900), a novel of Indiana. The " knights in fustian " are " Knights of the Golden Circle," a treasonable society which menaced Indiana during the Civil War. The principal characters are the fatuous rustics, who indulge their crude taste for the mysterious in the secret meetings and sonorous ritual of the society. Miss Krout knows the people of her own soil thoroughly, and the particular type that has attracted her is set out in her pages with photographic accuracy. The tale is true to history and to the local life, and its literary excellence places the author's name high on the roll of Western writers. She has also written many short stories for the periodicals. CHAPTER VII "OF MAKING MANY BOOKS THERE IS NO END" THE multiplication of books by Indianians increased steadily during the last decade of the nineteenth century. Much of the production in prose is unimportant save as it is taken in connection with the general rise of cultivation in the State, and not a little derives interest principally from the personality of the writers. Fiction attracted many during the period indi- cated, and the impulse in this direction has been attended with notable successes. "The part played by Indiana in the Civil War has latterly received attention, and the newer phases of vil- lage life have also been treated. Local history has not, unfortunately, attracted the literary fledgling in Indiana so often as could have been desired, though the field is inviting, and thorough work of this kind is far likelier to enjoy per- manency than fair or indifferent fiction or medi- ocre verse. Criticism is naturally last to receive 214 "OF MAKING MANY BOOKS" 215 attention, and little critical writing can be cred- ited to the State. It is, however, remarkable that so much good work is done in the several departments, the inference being that where so many are moved to make experiments, the gen- eral average of cultivation must be high. Indiana has been a kind of way station for many who have gained their chief distinction else- where. Joaquin Miller and John James Piatt were born in Indiana, but left in childhood, and Mary Hart well Catherwood lived in the State for a number of years ; but these writers may hardly be numbered among Indiana authors. James Newton Matthews, an Indianian who has lived for many years in Illinois, has written much good verse, and is included in discrimi- nating anthologies. Lyman Abbott began his ministry in Indiana as pastor of the Congre- gational Church at Terre Haute. Both Charles Warren Stoddard and Maurice Francis Egan were members of the faculty of Notre Dame University at different periods. The Rev. Ar- thur Wentworth Eaton, a poet and writer on Acadian life, was once a resident of Indianapo- lis; and Henry F. Keenan, who wrote "Tra- 2l6 THE HOOSIERS jan" and other novels, edited the Indianapolis Sentinel before he became an author. The Rev. Bernard Harrison Nadal (1812-1870) held a professorship at Asbury University from 1854 to 1857, and was the father of E. S. Nadal, an essayist whose critical papers appeal to the admirers of a calm and pensive style of writing. Miss Lucy S. Furman's "Stories of a Sancti- fied Town "(1896) were written at Evansville, though the scenes are laid in Kentucky. The Rev. James Cooley Fletcher, of the well-known Indiana family of that name, is the author of " Brazil and Brazilians " (1868); and his daugh- ter, Julia Constance, wrote, under the pen- name " George Fleming," the novels " Kismet " (1877); "Mirage" (1878); "The Head of Medusa "(1880); "Vestigia "(1884); and "An- dromeda" (1885). Both have long been absent from the State, Mr. Fletcher in California and his daughter in Italy. "OF MAKING MANY BOOKS" 217 I. Fiction Booth Tarkington stands with Mr. Riley as the exponent of a Hoosier who is kindly, gen- erous, humorous, and essentially domestic. His novel, "A Gentleman from Indiana" (1899), depicts the semi-urban type that Mr. Riley so often celebrates in verse. Whitecapping as in- troduced in this story is only the coarse exploit of a vicious colony living on the outskirts of the town in which Mr. Tarkington's tale has its habitation. The author plainly states that his whitecaps are not to be confounded with vigi- lance committees that undertake to reform the morals of individuals, but that they are rowdies who masquerade as whitecaps merely for pur- poses of private mischief and vengeance. Their settlement resembles in some degree the " tough neighborhood " often found in cities. The hos- tility between the people of Plattville and the Cross Roads element dates back to the first movement of population on the long trail from North Carolina into the Ohio Valley. The Cross Roads folk had been evil and worthless in their early homes, and they carried their worst traits 2l8 THE HOOSIERS with them into Indiana. Mr. Tarkington has followed accurately the social history of the good stock and the bad, illustrating the antipa- thy existing between the prosperous and intelli- gent and the idle and ignorant. The distinction of Plattville as a county seat of the central West is well established, and its indolence, amiability, and pride are characteristic. The hero is a new type of Hoosier, who has little kinship with the earlier people of Eggleston, or with the Hoosier as Riley reports him ; he is a native, but has experienced at an Eastern col- lege an intellectual change " into something rich and strange," and after long absence becomes a pilgrim of light among his own people. Mr. Tarkington has a perfect appreciation of the strength of local affection in the Hoosier, and also of the thoroughly American absorp- tion in politics which seems to be more marked in county seats of a few thousand inhabitants than in large cities. History in towns like Plattville is not dated, anno urbis condita, but from a political incident or the visit of a President ; and a national campaign is a quad- rennial blessing that renews in the obscurest "OF MAKING MANY BOOKS" 2 19 inhabitant the sense of his individual respon- sibility to the government. Mr. Tarkington emphasizes the homogeneity of the Middle Western 'oik; and this is warranted fully by the statisticians. The people of his town live together like a great, kind family, who are suffi- cient unto themselves. He has thrown into the story the sincerity, affection, and loyalty that are their attributes ; and he adds, more- over, the atmosphere of the Indiana land- scape, with a nice appreciation of its loveliness, sometimes hinted and often charmingly ex- pressed. There is a crisp, bracing quality in the writing that fitly accompanies the story, which is, taken all in all, one of the most creditable novels yet written of life in the Ohio Valley. There is every reason why Mr. Tarkington should know his Indiana well, as his family has been prominent in the State for three generations, and he is a native, hav- ing been born at Indianapolis (1869). He was educated at Purdue and Princeton, receiv- ing from the latter the degree of A.M. in 1898. He has also written (1900) " Monsieur Beaucaire," a dramatic novelette of the eigh- 220 THE HOOSIERS teenth century, in which a few striking incidents are handled most effectively. The story has the charm of an exquisite miniature. Indiana village life has been made the sub- ject of careful study by Anna Nicholas, in a series of short stories collected under the title "An Idyl of the Wabash" (1899) Religious phenomena have greatly attracted Miss Nich- olas, and she has supplemented Dr. Eggle- ston's studies of an earlier period with her artistic sketches of contemporary life. The social importance of the church, the vagaries of belief in a typical Western village, and the intensity of the "revival" spirit are treated with sympathy and humor. Several of these tales are, between the lines, a tribute to that vigorous Protestant evangelization of Indiana, which triumphed over mud and malaria and carried the gospel far beyond the sound of church bells. Miss Nicholas has written with keen penetration of the suppressed tragic element in rural life, but without morbidity. Her characters are always inevitably related to the incidents, and she communicates with unfailing success a sense of the humble atmos- fc "OF MAKING MANY BOOKS" 221 phere of her farm and village. These stories are distinguished by the evident sincerity of their purpose to reflect life honestly, and they are written in a straightforward manner that aids the impression. They illustrate anew the possibilities of a local literature that follows progressively the formative years of a com- munity's life. It is even now difficult to per- suade the present generations of Indianians that Dr. Eggleston's Hoosiers ever lived ; and Miss Nicholas, Mr. Riley, and Mr. Tarkington have continued the story that was begun by their predecessor, adding chapters equally in- structive and valuable. Mary Jameson Judah's " Down Our Way " (1897) is not limited to a particular region, but combines with studies of the author's own Indiana, sketches of social life at the South. The allurements of those organizations for individual improvement and general reform that have enlisted the energies of so many women in recent years have appealed to Mrs. Judah's sense of humor; and her stories show a fine appreciation of the niceties of social perspective and proportion in Southern and 222 THE HOOSIERS ^ Western cities. The short story is happily adapted to the need of the casual observer of local life, and tales like these, which bear the stamp of fidelity, have an inestimable value for future students. An increasing attention to local historical matters has lately been marked, and an ex- cellent instance of this is afforded by Millard Cox ("Henry Scott Clark") in "The Legion- aries" (1899), a story of the Morgan raid into Indiana. The political and social condi- tions on the Indiana-Kentucky border during the Civil War were interesting, and worthy of the study that has been given to them in this novel. The military episode of which Morgan was the chief figure, though slight in comparison with the larger movements of the war, was dramatic and daring, and it lends itself well to this romantic setting. Mr. Cox is a native Indianian (1856). James A. Wickersham, an Indiana educa- tor, has analyzed certain religious conditions minutely in "Enoch Willoughby " (1900). This is a novel of character rather than of incident, and marks still another departure in "OF MAKING MANY BOOKS" 223 method among writers of the Indiana group. The tale is not wholly indigenous, as the char- acters belong as truly to one State as to another of the Middle West. The Willoughbys are studied as a family in which peculiarities have always been observed, and in Enoch an hereditary " queerness " is manifested in religious idiosyncrasies. The revival of interest in romantic fiction, that marked the closing years of the century, witnessed the unusual successes of a number of novels by American authors. One of the most popular romances of this period is " When Knighthood was in Flower" (1898), by Charles Major, a native of Indianapolis (1856), who is living at Shelbyville, twenty miles distant from the capital. 1 Mr. Major served no apprentice- ship as an author; this romance was his first book. He was educated in the Indiana public schools and at the University of Michigan, and was actively engaged in the practice of law when he wrote the novel, as a diversion, on his Sunday afternoons at home. The friendli- ness of the English-reading public to this tale is not difficult to understand. It is a love story 1 Mr. Major wrote a number of other books of wide popular- ity, including "The Bears of P.lue River" and "Dorothy Ver- non." He died 1'cbruary 13, 1913. 224 THE HOOS1ERS whose chief characters, Charles Brandon and Mary Tudor, possess those qualities of youth, vivacity, and spirit that so inevitably win the heart in fiction or the drama. The tale is told by Sir Edwin Caskoden, a master of the dance at the court of Henry VIII., and not by the author direct, a familiar trick of the his- torical novelist ; and it serves an excellent pur- pose, affording a valid excuse for the ostensible editor to render the sixteenth-century narra- tive of Caskoden into racy nineteenth-century English. This novel is one of the noteworthy achievements of Indianians in the field of romance, suggesting again what has been so true of General Wallace, that the imagination is superior to all laws, and that the romantic vision easily pierces barriers of circumstance. George Gary Eggleston, a brother of Edward, was born at Vevay (1839), received his prelim- inary education in the schools of Vevay and Madison, and attended Asbury University, but did not complete his course there. When still under seventeen he took charge of a school in a wild district of the State, but at the end of his engagement he went to Virginia to the old "OF MAKING MANY BOOKS" 22$ homestead of his father's family, completed his college course, studied law, and served in the Confederate army. He has for many years been a well-known New York journalist, and he is the author of many books. He has always maintained relations with his native State, and has utilized his knowledge of it in his writings. In his novel "A Man of Honor" (1873), the hero is an Indiana boy, the son of a Kentucky mother and a Virginia father, as was the case with Mr. Eggleston himself. Another novel, " Juggernaut " (1891), opens in Indiana. A Hoosier boy is the hero, and the description of his early life among the hills of southern Indi- ana is pleasantly reminiscent of the author's own experiences. In a number of juvenile stories, among them being " The Last of the Flat-boats" (1900), Mr. Eggleston has drawn upon his recollections of Hoosierdom, and there is, he says, something of Indiana in everything that he has written. Before Mr. Eggleston had seriously begun literary work the name of his brother Edward was so identified with Hoosier soil that the younger man could hardly invade it with literary intent without risking the charge 226 THE HOOSIERS of imitation ; yet it is significant of the tenacity of his early impressions that throughout his life the scenes of his childhood and youth have continued to invite his imagination. 1 II. History and Politics It is a pleasure to include George W. Julian (1817-1899) among those who have added lus- tre to Indiana's name. He was born at Center- ville, Wayne County, of Quaker parents who had followed the familiar line of march from North Carolina to Indiana. He worked in the fields, studied by the light of the fireplace, taught school, read law, and in general experienced those vicissitudes and embarrassments that beset so many ambitious American youths of his genera- tion. The law was a stepping-stone to politics, and from 1840 until the last years of his long life he was constantly an eager observer of political movements when not an active par- ticipant in campaigns. He was a founder and leader of the Free-soil party, and was its candi- date for the vice-presic'.ency on the ticket headed by John P. Hale in 1852. He was repeatedly elected a representative in Congress, first as a 1 He died April 14, 1911. "OF MAKING MANY BOOKS" 22? Free-soil candidate, and thereafter as a Republi- can, from what was known as "the burnt dis- trict" in eastern Indiana, serving through the Civil War. He was a vigorous opponent of slavery, and his " Speeches on Political Subjects" (1872), for which Lydia Maria Child wrote an introduction, is a record of his radical opposi- tion that began in 1850 and continued to the close of the rebellion. His integrity of opinion was unimpeachable. He was a laborious student, and, although without the graces of oratory, he was an impressive and effective speaker. He shared the ignominy that was visited upon Love- joy, Phillips, Giddings, and others of the early antislavery phalanx, and his Congressional cam- paigns were marked by bitter and violent abuse from his opponents. His powers of invec- tive made him a formidable antagonist. When his severity was criticised, he would say that "there is nothing in my speech but the truth that hurts." He was essentially a reformer and an independent, and broke fearlessly with his party when he could not conscientiously follow it. Thus he joined in the Liberal Republican movement, and supported Greeley. He then 228 THE HOOSIERS became, and remained to the end of his life, a Democrat, and was appointed by Mr. Cleveland surveyor-general of New Mexico. He made his home for thirty years at Irvington, a suburb of Indianapolis and the seat of Butler College, where he was the village Nestor. He delighted in literature, lived among books, contributed often to the periodical press, and wrote (1892) the " Life of Joshua R. Giddings." Civic interests have marked also the career of William Dudley Foulke, who was born in New York City (1848) and educated at Co- lumbia College, being graduated in 1869. Mr. Foulke's antecedents were Quakers, and he removed, in 1876, to Wayne County, one of the principal centres of the Society of Friends in Indiana. Mr. Foulke practised law and sat in the State senate (1883-1885) as a Repub- lican, but became an independent upon the nomination of Mr. Elaine, and thereafter gave his attention to various political reforms, nota- bly in the civil service, conducting investiga- tions and frequently delivering addresses. He published (1887) "Slav and Saxon," an essay on the future of the two races which are, "OF MAKING MANY BOOKS" 22Q in his belief, to contend finally for suprem- acy in the world. He gave many years to the study of the war period in Indiana, with a view to writing the life of Oliver P. Morton, Indiana's " War Governor," who had been a citizen of Wayne County ; and this biography (1899) is not only a thorough study of Mor- ton's public services, but of the period to which he belonged as well. Early associated with Mr. Foulke in civil service reform work in Indiana was Oliver T. Morton (1860-1898), the son of Governor Mor- ton, who was born in Wayne County and edu- cated at Yale and Oxford. His volume of essays, "The Southern Empire" (1892), con- tains, besides the title paper, an historical es- say on Oxford and an excellent discussion of civil service reform. The opening essay is a most suggestive presentation of the slavehold- ers' ambitions to found a vast tropical slave empire. It is of interest to read this, in the light of the senior Morton's herculean efforts against slavery ; but that one generation may easily differ from another is proved by the concluding essay in advocacy of the merit sys- 230 THE HOOSIERS tern, which found few friends in the period of which Senator Morton was a dominating figure. Mr. Foulke's brother-in-law, Arthur Middle- ton Reeves (18561891), found employment for his scholarly tastes in unusual channels. After his graduation from Cornell (1878), he devoted himself to the study of Icelandic lan- guage and lore, in which his interest had been aroused by Professor Willard Fiske; and he subsequently continued his studies abroad in Europe and Iceland. He was an industrious and painstaking student, with a passion for accuracy, and the volume of his letters col- lected and published for his friends shows him to have possessed unusually varied tal- ents. He wrote "The Finding of Wineland the Good : The History of the Icelandic Dis- covery of America" (1890); "Lad and Lass: Story of Life in Iceland" (1890); "Jan: A Short Story" (1892); and he had begun, with Dr. Valtyr Gudmundsson of Copenhagen, a trans- lation of the Laxckzla Saga when, on the occasion of a visit to his home in Indiana, he was killed in a railway accident. "OF MAKING MANY BOOKS" 231 The first Indiana Historian was John B. Dillon, who was born at Wellsburg, West Vir- ginia (1808), learneJ. the printer's trade, and removed to Indiana in 1834. While resi- dent at Logansport he studied law and was admitted to the bar ; but his auitt, studious habits and natural reserve unfitted him for the practice, and he never tested his powers. He turned, fortunately, to the study of Indi- ana's history; and appreciating the importance of assembling data before the death of wit- nesses and participants, began collecting ma- terial, and published (1859) a "History -of Indiana," covering the period from the first explorations to 1856. This work represents many years of laborious research in a field that was practically untouched. It is the point of departure for all who study Indiana history, and it is as exact as diligent care could make it. Dillon published " Notes on Historical Evidence in Reference to Adverse Theories of the Origin and Nature of the Government of the United States" (1871); and at his death left the manuscript of a work called " Oddities of Colonial Legislation." 232 THE HOOSIERS He received a number of minor appointments under the Federal government, residing at Washington from 1863 to 1875. He returned to Indianapolis at the termination of these employments and died there, in 1879. He was gentle, patient, modest, and industrious, a man of merit, faithful in all things. He never married, and had no interests save those of the student. His proper place was in the quiet alcoves of libraries ; and it must always be remembered to his credit that with little encouragement, and for the love of the labor, rather than for any reward, he gave many laborious years to the task of establishing the State's place in history. Jacob P. Dunn, who wrote "Indiana: A Redemption from Slavery," in the American Commonwealth series (1888), employed criti- cal methods that were not known in Dillon's day. His work deals with a brief period, and with events that had not previously been viewed in their proper perspective. He brought to bear upon his subject a scientific analysis and an exhaustive research that show especial fitness for historical writing. His descriptions "OF MAKING MANY BOOKS" 233 of the early French habitant are delightfully written, and give a distinct impression of the first white settlers of the Wabash. Mr. Dunn has written also " Massacres of the Mountains" (1886), an account of the Indian wars of the West, which is noteworthy for its thorough treatment of the Mountain Meadows incident. It is a standard work of reference, and one of the most popular books catalogued in Western libraries. Mr. Dunn served a term as State librarian, and has been for many years tireless in pro- moting interest in libraries for rural commu- nities. He was born at Lawrenceburg (1855), and was graduated (1874) from Earlham Col- lege. John Clark Ridpath (1840-1900), one of the most prolific of Indiana authors, was born in Putnam County and was graduated from Asbury University, with which he was subsequently connected in various teaching and administra- tive capacities for many years. He was a most successful teacher, particularly of history. Besides many text-books he published "A Cyclopaedia of Universal History" (1885); 234 THE HOOSIERS "Great Races of Mankind" (1894); "Life and Memoirs of Bishop William Taylor " 0895) ; and many monographs on historical and biographical subjects. Richard G. Boone's " History of Education in Indiana" (1892) is one of the most impor- tant books in the State's bibliography. Mr. Boone is also the author of " Education in the United States" (1894). He was for ten years identified with the common schools of Indiana, and for seven years held the chair of peda- gogics at Indiana University, resigning to become superintendent of schools at Cin- cinnati. "The Puritan Republic" (1899), by Daniel Wait Howe, shows further the grasp of newer methods in historical writing, and is distin- guished by thorough treatment and judicial temper. It would seem that nothing could be added to the literature of this subject, which has attracted so many skilled histo- rians ; but Judge Howe adduced much new material and presented the old and familiar in an orderly and attractive manner. This is a thorough and exact work, which has taken "OF MAKING MANY BOOKS" 235 rank with the accepted authorities. Judge Howe is entitled to his word on 'the Puritan, as his ancestors were among the pioneers of Sudbury, Massachusetts. He was born in Switzerland County (1839), was graduated from Franklin College, served four years in the Civil War as an Indiana soldier, and enjoyed the unusual distinction of sitting for fourteen years continuously as a judge of the Superior Court at Indianapolis. He has con- tributed valuable essays to the publications of the Indiana Historical Society. William H. English (1822-1896) gave many years to a study of the life and services of George Rogers Clark, and produced (1896) "Conquest of the Country Northwest of the River Ohio, and Life of George Rogers Clark," an elaborate work in two volumes, which is a veritable encyclopaedia of facts. As Clark had been one of the neglected figures in American history, the preparation of his biography was in the nature of a public service. Mr. English is also the author of an historical and biographi- cal work on the Indiana constitution. He was born in Scott County, and received his educa- 236 THE HOOSIERS tion in the public schools and at Hanover College. He served as a representative in Congress (1853-1861), and in 1880 was the Democratic candidate for vice-president on the ticket with Hancock. "Early Indiana Trials and Sketches" (1858) is a racy record of the personal experiences of Oliver H. Smith (1794-1859), who had a kind of Boswellian instinct for the interesting. As a lawyer he " rode circuit " with Miles Eggleston, David Wallace, James Rariden, John Test, and others famous in the early days; and no one has written of these men with nicer apprecia- tion of their high qualities. He was elected a senator in Congress in 1836, and served for one term. William Wesley Woollen (1828) has also added to the literature of local biography. His "Biographical and Historical Sketches of Early Indiana" (1883) contains information that is nowhere else accessible, and it is, more- over, a well-written and entertaining volume. David Demaree Banta (1833-1896) wrote often and well on subjects of local history, and his " Historical Sketch of Johnson County " "OF MAKING MANY BOOKS" 23? (1881) shines amid the dreary waste of Indiana County histories. It contains a rare fund of information touching pioneer life in general, and reflects in some degree the personality of the accomplished and versatile author, who was a fine type of the native Hoosier. III. Miscellaneous The press of Indiana has aided greatly in the State's intellectual advance. In the larger towns the newspapers have usually been well written, and many of them have extended sym- pathetic encouragement to beginners in author- ship. Many Western writers found their first friendly editors at the offices of the Herald or Journal at Indianapolis. John H. Holliday, G. C. Matthews, Anna Nicholas, Elijah W. Halford, Charles Richard Williams, A. H. Dooley, Lewis D. Hayes, Morris Ross and Louis Rowland are among those who, in the hurried labors of daily newspaper-making, have found time to preach the gospel of " sweetness and light " through the Indianapolis press. High on the roll of Indiana journalists whose talents are especially deserving of remembrance is Berry R. 238 THE HOOSIERS Sulgrove (1827-1890), who was born at Indian apolis, attended local schools, learned the sad- dler's trade, and worked for a short time as a journeyman. His aptness and love of learning had attracted attention, and in 1847 he was enabled to enter Bethany College, West Vir- ginia, then under the presidency of the famous Alexander Campbell. His preparatory studies at the " Old Seminary " of Indianapolis had been so thorough that he was graduated at the end of one year with all the honors of the col- lege, and delivered his commencement oration in Greek. He studied law and practised for a few years, but became connected with the Journal in 1854, and was thereafter identified with the press of Indianapolis. He possessed an extraordinary memory that was a source of constant amazement to his friends and associ- ates. His information in many departments of knowledge was both extensive and exact, and he retained, to the end of his life, his interest in public matters, foreign and domestic. He wrote with precision and grace, and his use of homely, local illustrations added to the interest and force of what he had to say. Now and "OF MAKING MANY BOOKS" 239 then a Macaulay-like roll would sound in his sentences ; and he would frequently imitate Macaulay's rhetorical tricks, as by declaring, with conscious humor, that some local event had "never been equalled between the old bridge and the bayou"; but he wrote usually without affectation, and his prodigious memory made possible a variety of suggestion and illus- tration that never failed to distinguish his work. During many years he was at different times a contributor of editorial matter to all of the Indianapolis newspapers, extending his field at intervals to the Chicago and Cincinnati dailies. He wrote usually at his home, and latterly had no desk in any newspaper office, though a member of the News staff to the end of his life. His manuscript was famous among West- ern printers, who encountered it at Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Chicago, and in the day of Mr. Sulgrove's greatest activity seemed unable to escape from it. He wrote habitually on the backs of old election tickets, on scraps of pro- grammes, on bits of paper picked up on his country walks, but never by any chance on a clean new sheet designed for the purpose. 240 THE HOOSIERS His handwriting was microscopic, but perfectly legible, carefully punctuated, and free from erasure. A slip the length and breadth of the hand might contain half a column. No more interesting figure than he ever appeared in Indiana journalism ; but his ambitions were not equal to his talents, and he was long an obscure figure in the city of his birth, whose intimate history he knew familiarly. His " History of Indianapolis and Marion County" (1884) con- tains only slight hints of his superior abilities. His contemporary, George C. Harding (1829- 1881), was a native of Tennessee, but gave the best years of his life to journalism at Indianapo- lis. He was a student of human nature rather than of books, but his literary instincts were true, and in the two weekly newspapers, the Herald and the Review, which he conducted, he was at once the inspiration and the terror of his contributors. Some of the sketches in a volume of his " Miscellaneous Writings" (1882) show an agreeably humorous turn. He had the trained journalist's appreciation of condensed wisdom. It was his habit to repeat, week after week, a satirical paragraph in which some indi- "OF MAKING MANY BOOKS" 24! vidual was pilloried until the victim's name became a by-word and a hissing in the com- munity. Sometimes this served a moral pur- pose ; again the intention was purely humorous. Years ago a candidate for constable, who was also a delegate to the nominating convention held at Indianapolis, received therein exactly one vote. The question, "Who voted for Dau- benspeck ? " was thereupon reiterated weekly in the Herald, until it passed permanently into a phrase of local speech. Angelina Teal's "John Thome's Folks" (1884), and "Muriel Howe" (1892); Margaret Holmes's "Chamber Over the Gate" (1886); Martha Livingstone Moody's "Alan Thorne " (1889); Harriet Newell Lodge's "A Bit of Finesse" (1894); many excellent short stories by Helen Rockwood Edson, literary essays by Harriet Noble and Kate Milner Rabb, and Ida Husted Harper's " Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony," emphasize the part that women have played in the State's literary achievement. The Rev. Charles R. Henderson, of Lafayette, a member of the faculty of Chicago University, has been a prolific writer on sociological sub- 242 THE HOOSIERS jects. John Augustine Wilstach, also of La- fayette, has busied himself with philological studies. He translated Virgil (1884) and Dante (1888), and coincidently with the publication of these versions issued critical reviews of the literature touching his subjects. The text of Lucian was edited for school use by Charles Richard Williams, author of the authoritative life of Rutherford B. Hayes; and Demarchus C. Brown translated selections of Lucian into English. George Ade, who ranks high among American humorists, was born at Kentland, February 9, 1866, educated at Purdue University, and began writing his " Fables in Slang " while connected with a Chicago newspaper. Mr. Ade's versatile talents have been manifested most strikingly as a playwright "The College Widow," "The County Chairman," " The Fair Co-Ed," " Father and the Boys," and " The Bad Samaritan " dis- play a shrewd and penetrating understanding of American character. He has distinguished him- self also as the librettist of a number of musical comedies. Hector Fuller, journalist and war correspon- "OF MAKING MANY BOOKS" 243 dent, is the author of poetry and fiction of merit. William P. Fishback, one of the founders of the Indianapolis Literary Club, has published (1895) his "Recollections of Lord Coleridge"; and another member of the club, Augustus Lynch Mason, wrote " Romance and Tragedy of Pioneer Life" (1883). Benjamin Harrison's public services cannot obscure the fact of his authorship of "This Country of Ours" (1899), a capital account of the functions of the several departments of the Federal government. Emma Carleton, R. D. Stevenson ("Wick- wire "), and Wood Levette Wilson are among Indiana humorists whose dialogues, paragraphs, and jingles have appeared in many publications. S. W. Gillilan, who wrote " Finnigan to Flanni- gan," the verses in Irish dialect which have become an American railway classic, is an Indianian. CHAPTER VIII AN INDIANA CHOIR I. Early Writers THE specific talent necessary to the expres- sion of local life is much rarer than the ability to write of life in the abstract. If the knack of writing accompanied a sensibility to the life that lay nearest, we should long ago have had an abundant American literature descriptive of conditions that have passed and will not, in the very nature of things, recur. But the line of impressionability may not be controlled ; and though many protests have been launched against minor American poets for looking be- yond the robin to the nightingale, the rejection of the near continues, though in a diminishing degree. The early poets of the Ohio Valley did not often approach closely to the Western soil , they lacked insight and courage and their work was usually not interesting. When they occa- sionally essayed a Western subject, they were 244 AN INDIANA CHOIR 245 unable to bring to bear upon it any novelty of treatment ; it was all " icily regular, splendidly null." William T. Coggeshall states in the preface to his " Poets and Poetry of the West " (1864) that in the early years of the nine- teenth century " soldiers, hunters, and boatmen had among them many songs descriptive of adventures incident to backwoods life, some of which were not destitute of poetic merit; but they were known only around campfires, or on ' broadhorns ' " (flat-boats), and tradition, he adds, preserved none worthy to be included in his anthology. But these racy songs would have been of greater value than much of the verse that he has preserved in his pages, though as a part of the history of development this, too, iz not to be spurned. Coggeshall' s work includes notices of ninety-seven men and fifty-five women. Twenty-three of the total he attributes to Indiana by reason of residence, and thirteen of the number were natives of the State. Only a small proportion of the poets named by Coggeshall survived, though the writers of the biographical notes accom- panying his selections were cordial and anxious 246 THE BOOSTERS to confer immortality. William D. Howells and John J. Piatt are included, and Mr. Howells wrote several of the sketches. It is diverting to read the opinion of Mr. Howells's biographer that "some of his prose sketches are quite equal in grace of conception and individuality of treatment to any of his poems." He was then twenty-seven. Cincinnati and Lexington, Kentucky, were early rivals for literary prominence at the West : one was the seat of Cincinnati College, the other of Transylvania University. Many books were published at Lexington before 1825, and The Medley, or Monthly Miscellany, which appeared there in 1803, is believed to have been the first magazine published west of the Alleghanies. Hunt's Western Review, which was formerly regarded as the pioneer, dated from 1819, and was also a Lexington publica- tion. Lexington dropped out, and Louisville fell into place as a defender of the literary faith with the advent of George D. Prentice, who became the ardent champion of the muses in the Ohio Valley. The headquarters of poets for this region was the office of the Louis- AN INDIANA CHOIR 247 ville Journal during Prentice's reign, and all of the Coggeshall poets laid the tribute of their song before him. To paraphrase Bishop Butler's remark about the strawberry, quoted by Walton, doubtless Prentice might have de- clined a poem or discouraged a poet, but doubtless he never did. He was not an exact- ing critic, and he encouraged many who were without talent ; but he took away the reproach of the neglected and unappreciated, and now and then he found a few grains in the chaff to pay him for his trouble. The Literary Gazette, which appeared 'at Cincinnati in 1824, with the motto "Not to display learning, but to excite a taste for it," numbered Mrs. Julia L. Dumont, of Vevay, among its contributors ; and she was the first Indiana writer to become identified with the group of aspirants that now began to appear along the Ohio. The prospectus of another Western Revieiv, published at Cincinnati for three years from May, 1827, declared that "we are a scribbling and forthputting people. Little as they have dreamed of the fact in the Atlantic country, we have our thousand 248 THE HOOSIERS orators and poets." However this may have been, "the Atlantic country" invaded the Ohio Valley in 1835, when the Western Messenger was begun at Cincinnati, under the auspices of the Western Unitarian Asso- ciation. It was edited first by the Rev. Ephraim Peabody, and later, at Louisville, by James Freeman Clarke. Clarke left Louisville in 1840, and the Messenger was continued at Cincinnati by the Rev. W. H. Channing. John B. Dillon represented Indiana in its table of contents, and found himself in good company, with Emerson, William Ellery Channing, Jones Very, and C. P. Cranch. The periodical was, as Venable calls it, "an exotic a Boston flower blooming on the Ohio," and it ceased to appear in 1841. In the same year, the Ladies' Repository made its appearance at Cin- cinnati, under Methodist auspices, and was pub- lished continuously for thirty-six years. Mrs. Dumont, Mrs. Sarah T. Bolton, Miss Mary Louise Chitwood, Mrs. Rebecca S. Nichols, Mrs. A. L. Ruter Dufour, Horace P. Biddle, and Isaac H. Julian were the principal Indiana contributors. The number of Indiana writers AN INDIANA CHOIR 249 increased steadily, and the Genius of the West, a Cincinnati magazine dating from 1855, ex- tended the list to include the names of Ben- jamin S. Parker, John B. Dillon, and Louise E. Vickroy. Peter Fishe Reed, also a con- tributor to the Genius of the West and similar magazines of the period, combined farming with literary experiments near Mount Vernon (Indiana), and lived for a time at Indianapolis. The majority of these pioneer periodicals lived only a short time, and the Civil War brought a final interruption to most of them ; they passed out with the "annuals," whose literary flavor was similar. Indiana's ante-bellum writ- ers usually looked to Louisville and Cincinnati for publicity, and no serious effort was made to establish literary magazines within the State. 1 It curiously happened, however, that Emerson Bennett, a voluminous producer of "penny dreadfuls," published a literary paper called the Casket, at Lawrenceburgh (1846), but soon abandoned it. The patient research of Ven- able discovered the Western Censor, published 1 " Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley," by W. H. Venable, LL.D., p. 58 et seq. 2 SO THE HOOSIERS at Indianapolis in 1823-1824, and The Family Schoolmaster, which had a brief existence at Richmond in 1839. The Querist was con- ducted by Mrs. Nichols for a few months at Cincinnati in 1844, and Henry Ward Beecher's Indiana Farmer and Gardener was begun at Indianapolis in 1845, but removed to Cincin- nati in the following year. Beecher's contri- butions to this paper were the nucleus of his book " A Pleasant Talk about Fruits, Flowers, and Farming." The Literary Messenger is credited to Versailles, 1854. Coggeshall included among the Indianians in his anthology William Wallace Harney, who was born (1832) at Bloomington, where his father was a professor in Indiana University ; and William Ross Wallace, born (1819) at Lexington, Ken- tucky, and educated at Bloomington and Han- over colleges ; but as the literary life of both began after they had left the State, they may hardly be catalogued as Indiana authors. The Rev, Sidney Dyer, a native of New York State (1814), was for a number of years (1852-1859), a Baptist minister at Indianapolis. He is the author of a number of books, and his writings AN INDIANA CHOIR 2$ I include many popular songs and poems. Isaac H. Julian, a native of Wayne County (1823), and the brother of George W. Julian, hardly added subsequently to the reputation he had gained prior to the publication of Coggeshall's book, and the same is true of Granville M. Ballard, who was born in Kentucky (1833), and after his graduation from Asbury Uni- versity became a resident of Indianapolis, where he is still living. Horace P. Biddle, born in Ohio (1818-1900), removed at an early age to Indiana, where he became prominent in affairs, and held many public offices before his retirement. He aided in the early efforts in behalf of common school education, and was a diligent student and writer. Noble Butler is placed in Kentucky's list of early writers, though his residence at Hanover gives Indiana a claim upon him. He frequently translated German poetry and wrote original verse occa- sionally ; but the fugitive essays of his nephew, Noble C. Butler, of Indianapolis, are better lit- erature. Coggeshall includes also Jonathan W. Gordon and Henry W. Ellsworth, of Indianapo- lis, whose contributions to the literature of the 2$2 THE HOOSIERS period were slight and without distinction. Ellsworth was a native of Connecticut and a graduate of Yale (1834). Amanda L. Ruter Dufour (1822-1899) and Laura M. Thurston (1812-1842) are properly included among In- diana's early poets. The latter wrote the lines "On Crossing the Alleghanies " and " The Green Hills of My Fatherland," which are above the average in the collection and were once much applauded. George W. Cutter, whose " Song of Steam," beginning, " Harness me down with your iron bands ; Be sure of your curb and rein, " was once in favor, lived in Indiana, and sat in the General Assembly. He died at Washing- ton in 1865. Rebecca S. Nichols was long associated with the little band of writers who printed verses and tales in Louisville and Cincinnati publications, and her literary in- stincts were truer than those of most of her con- temporaries. She is still living at Indianapolis. A mournful interest attaches to the work of Mary Louise Chitwood, who was born at Mount Carmel, October 29, 1832, and died there twenty-three years later, sincerely mourned AN INDIANA CHOIR 253 by the whole choir of Western poets. Prentice had encouraged her, and he wrote a memoir to accompany a volume of her verses that appeared in 1857. Her work promised well, though it shared the defects of most of the verse of the day. Sarah T. Bolton is one of the most interesting figures in Coggeshall, and though born in Ken- tucky (1820), her long life was spent principally in Indiana. Her husband, Nathaniel Bolton, edited the first newspaper ever published in Indianapolis. Mrs. Bolton began writing at an early age, and through many years it may be said that she stood for poetry in Indiana. Many of her poems are stiff and formal and show little originality ; but often her pieces are free and spontaneous, and she had humor, which most of the early poets of the West lacked. Her last volume (1891) is dedicated "To the poets of Indiana, my children after the spirit." She was known to Willis and Morris, of the Knickerbocker group contemporary with her. Her husband was appointed consul at Geneva in 1855, an d sne lived for a number of years abroad, finding fresh material for poems in hei 254 THE HOOSIERS travels. She died at Indianapolis in 1893. Her best-known poem is " Paddle Your Own Canoe." She was a loyal Indianian and wrote the lines : u The winds of Heaven never fanned, The circling sunlight never spanned The borders of a better land Than our own Indiana." Benjamin S. Parker, of all the poets dis- covered in Indiana by Coggeshall, acquired the greatest skill in versification, and wrote most comprehensively of the pioneer life. He was born on a farm near New Castle (1833), and is one, at least, to whom the phrase "racy of the soil" needs no explanation. He lived in a log-cabin, performing the hardest farm labor, and long observation of life at the West made him an authority in matters of customs and dialect. His volume "The Cabin in the Clearing " (1887) contains many poems in which the trials of the earlier set- tlers are graphically depicted, and it was his right, as one who had aided in the rough work of the pioneers, to urge the new gen- erations to use worthily the opportunities AN INDIANA CHOIR 2$ 5 which they inherited. Of the fauna and flora of his own woodlands Mr. Parker became the especial celebrant. The following lines from one of his most graceful pieces are character- istic of his happiest moods : " I had a dream of other days, In golden luxury waved the wheat; In tangled greenness shook the maize ; The squirrels ran with nimble feet, And in and out among the trees The hangbird darted like a flame ; The cat-bird piped his melodies, Purloining every warbler's fame : And then I heard triumphal song, 'Tis morning and the days are long." Mr. Parker felt, more than any other poet of the Ohio Valley, the grandeur of the vast woodlands as the pioneers found them, and he has touched upon it constantly in his writ- ings. He lived for several years in Canada, as a consular officer, and wrote a series of poems under Northern influences; but he has been most fortunate in subjects derived from home experiences. He is a connecting link between the earliest Indiana writers and their successors, and he has been one of the hum- 256 THE HOOSIERS blest and most devoted and sincere of all the servants of literature in his State. II. Forceythe Willson It is an abrupt transition from these pio- neers of poesy to Forceythe Willson, the only Indiana poet who ever came in contact with the New England group. Emerson, in the preface to his "Parnassus" (1874), says, " I have inserted only one of the remarkable poems of Forceythe Willson, a young Wis- consin poet of extraordinary promise, who died very soon after this was written." The poem chosen was " In State." This placing of Will- son in Wisconsin is, as Piatt says in his elo- quent sketch of the poet, 1 rather needless, for he was never connected with Wisconsin in any way. He was born at Genesee Falls, New York, April 10, 1837. In 1846 his father removed to Kentucky, and in 1852 to New Albany. Willson spent about a year at Anti- och College, in Ohio, and went afterward to Harvard, but left in his sophomore year, owing to ill health. His home was in Indi- 1 Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 35. AN INDIANA CHOIR 257 ana from 1852 to 1864. He wrote his best poems, indeed the greater part of his slender product, at New Albany, and his residence there, in immediate contact with the seat of war, colored his distinctive work. He married, in 1863, Elizabeth Con well Smith, whom he had met the preceding year at New Albany, and whose literary gifts created a bond of sympathy between them. They removed shortly to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where one of Willson's brothers was in school. He purchased a house on the Mount Auburn road, near Lowell's home, with an outlook on the Charles River. James R. Gilmore (Edmund Kirke) was his neighbor and saw much of him at Cambridge. He wrote, in 1895, his recollections, testifying to Willson's unusual qualities, and giving this description of his personal appearance: " Take him, all in all, he was the most lovable man I ever knew ; and as a mere specimen of physical manhood he was a joy to look at. A little above the medium height, he was perfectly proportioned and of a sinewy, symmetrical figure. His hair was raven black, wavy, and glossy as satin. His skin was a light olive, slightly tinged with red, and his features were regular, somewhat prominent, and exceed- s 258 THE HOOSIERS ingly flexible, showing an organization of a highly sensitive character. But his eyes were what riveted the observer's attention. Mr. Longfellow told me they were the finest type of the Oriental, but I never saw eyes Eastern or Western to compare with them in luminous power. They were full, large, and dark, with overhanging lashes ; but for the life of me I cannot tell their precise color. At times they seemed a deep blue, at other times an intense black, and then they were balls of fire, as he was stirred by some strong emotion. They spoke the ready language of a deep, strong, fiery, yet chastened, nature as it was moved by love, joy, sorrow or indignation." 1 Piatt remarks upon his "Oriental look and manner," and all who knew him were impressed by his distinguished appearance and grave cour- tesy. In 1858 New Albany became interested in spiritualism. Willson fell under the spell and began a study of the subject. Piatt says that Willson " soon abandoned the professors, but retained until his death a serious spiritual theory or faith of his own. He believed and he was absolutely honest and sincere, I am sure, in his faith that the spirits of the dead could, and at times do, have communication with the living." Willson seems not to have had an active occu- pation at any time. His father had been success- 1 Indianapolis News. March 2, 1895. AN INDIANA CHOIR 259 ful in business, and dying at New Albany in 1859, left a comfortable fortune to his children. The poet lived by himself for a number of years, at New Albany, in a small house where he sur- rounded himself with books and led the life of a student. Louisville is directly across the Ohio from New Albany, and Willson was known to a few of the literary people on the Kentucky side, particularly to Prentice. The approach of the Civil War aroused in him a deep interest in its great issues, and he wrote editorials in support of the Union cause for Prentice's Journal. He began in the first year of the war, and concluded later, his poem " In State," which, in spite of its occasional vagueness and its despairing view of the political situation, is written in an effective stanza and is splendidly imaginative. He gloom- ily assumed that the nation was dead hence his personification of it as a prone figure lying " in state," and he brings the rulers of Europe to look upon it, " The winds have tied the drifted snow Around the face and chin ; and lo, The sceptred giants come and go And shake their shadowy crowns and say : ' We always feared it would be so I ' " 260 THE HOOSIERS There is hardly a stanza in the poem that does not contain some striking image. It moves on in the mournful cadence of a miserere : " The Sisterhood that was so sweet, The Starry System sphered complete, Which the mazed Orient used to greet, The Four and Thirty fallen Stars glimmer arid glitter at her feet." He published, January i, 1863, as a carrier's address in the Louisville Journal, " The Old Sergeant," which Piatt believed to have been "the transcript of a real history > none of the names in it being fictitious, and the story being reported as exactly as possible from the lips of a Federal assistant surgeon named Austin, with whom Willson was acquainted at New Albany." The poem appeared anonymously, and for some reason, which was never explained, Willson seemed reluctant at first to admit its authorship. It attracted wide attention. Gilmore relates that early in 1863, in the office of the Atlantic Monthly, he met Dr. Holmes, who held in his hand a copy of the Louisville Joiirnal, containing "The Old Sergeant." " Read that," said he, " and tell me if it's not the finest thing since the AN INDIANA CHOIR 26 1 war began. Sit down and read it here ; you might lose it if I let you take it away." The ballad is found in " The Old Sergeant and Other Poems " (1867). It is a vivid narrative of sus- tained power and interest, deriving strength from the earnestness of the recital and the simple language, sometimes descending to army slang, of the soldier. The poem is historically accurate and is a fine celebration of the battle of Shiloh : "There was where Lew Wallace showed them he was of the canny kin, There was where old Nelson thundered, and where Rous- seau waded in ; There McCook sent 'em to breakfast, and we all began to win There was where the grapeshot took me, just as we began to win. " Now, a shroud of snow and silence over everything was spread ; And but for this old blue mantle and the old hat on my head, I should not have even doubted, to this moment, I was dead For my footsteps were as silent as the snow upon the dead ! " There is a suggestion of Poe, whom Willson greatly admired, in the repetition, with slight 262 THE HOOSIERS variation, of the third line of the stanza; but such points Willson always considered care- fully. He was certainly not servilely imitative, and he is an ungenerous critic who would pick flaws in a poem that is so fine as a whole. "The Old Sergeant" is entitled to a place with the best poems of the war with Mrs. Howe's " Battle Hymn," Brownell's stirring pieces, Will H. Thompson's "High Tide at Gettysburg," and Ticknor's " Little Giffen." These stand apart from Lowell's " Commemoration Ode" and simi- lar poems, which are civic rather than military. In " The Rhyme of the Master's Mate," Willson turned again to the heroic, and while the poem is less artistic than "The Old Sergeant," it has a swing and a stroke that fit his theme well. His volume contains a number of mystical pieces, colored by his belief in spiritualism, and a few lyrics, as "The Estray" and "Autumn Song," which have an elusive charm and increase admiration for his talents. Will- son was emphatically a masculine character. In literature and in life he liked what he called "muscle," and he certainly showed a sinewy grasp in his best poems. It is related AN INDIANA CHOIR 263 that once during the war he organized, and armed at his own expense, a home guard to protect New Albany in a dangerous crisis, and at other times he displayed great personal courage. If it had not been for his ill health he would undoubtedly have enlisted. Willson was not immediately identified at Cambridge as the author of "The Old Ser- geant." As Dr. Holmes said after Willson' s death, " He came among us as softly and silently as a bird drops into his nest," and it was not like him to call attention to his own performances. After the death of his wife and infant child, October 13, 1864, Willson was often at Gilmore's house, where he first saw Emerson. Gilmore relates that he re- turned home one day from Boston to find Lowell lying at full length on a lounge in the library, in animated conversation with Willson. On this occasion an incident occurred illustra- tive of Willson's gift of "second sight." Long- fellow was mentioned in the conversation, and Willson remarked that the poet would be there shortly. No one had an intimation of the visit, but Willson described the route that Longfel- 264 THE HOOSIERS low was then following toward the house; and when the poet presently arrived, he affirmed the statement of his itinerary as Willson had given it. Willson's interest in life ended with the death of his wife, whose few poems he pub- lished privately. She is remembered at New Albany as a girl of great beauty and refinement. Willson left Cambridge in the fall of 1866 for New Albany. While there he suffered hemorrhages of the lungs and was ill for a month. He never regained his strength, and his death occurred February 2, 1867, at Alfred, New York. His convictions as to spiritualism grew firmer after his wife's death, and toward the last, so one of his brothers wrote, " his wife and child seemed to be with him constantly, and he talked to them in a low voice." He was buried at Laurel, the home of Mrs. Will- son's family, in the White Water Valley. His wife and child lie in one grave beside him. The quiet hilltop cemetery commands a view of one of the loveliest landscapes in Indiana, and it is fitly touched with something of the peace, strength, and beauty that are associated with Willson's name. AN INDIANA CHOIR 265 III. Later Poets Willson marked the beginning of better things, and a livelier fancy and a keener criti- cal spirit is henceforward observable in the writings of a veteran like Parker, and in the new company of writers that was forming. The Civil War had profoundly moved the Central States, and Indiana had perhaps felt it more than her neighbors. Willson had lifted his voice for the Union while the war cloud still lay upon the land, and the Thompson brothers spoke for the South from Indiana soil on the arrival' of the era of better feeling. Ben D. House, who had served in the Federal armies, wrote with truth and spirit. He ran away frtim his home in Vermont when he was seventeen, and en- tered the army from Massachusetts. He saw hard service, and received wounds which were a constant menace for the remainder of his life. He was mustered out finally at Indianapolis, and lived there almost continuously until his death in 1887. His idiosyncrasies and affec- tations were many, and included the wearing of a great cloak, in which he sombrely wrapped 266 THE HOOSIERS himself in cold weather. His poems were printed privately by his friends in 1892. He had fair luck with the sonnet, and wrote, on the occasion of Grant's death, " Appomattox," which follows : u To peace-white ashes sunk war's lurid flame ; The drums had ceased to growl, and died away The bark of guns, where fronting armies lay, And for the day the dogs of war were tame, And resting on the field of blood-fought fame, For peace at last o'er horrid war held sway On her won field, a score of years to-day, Where to her champion forth a white flag came. O nation's chief, thine eyes have seen again A whiter flag come forth to summon thee Than that pale scarf which gleamed above war's stain, To parley o'er the end of its red reign The truce of God that sets from battle free Thy dauntless soul, and thy worn life from pain." Lee O. Harris, a native of Pennsylvania (1839), removed to the State in 1852, and was an Indiana soldier in the Civil War. His verse, as collected in "Interludes" (1893), shows little of the military feeling, but is strongly domestic, a forerunner of the work of Mr. Riley, whose teacher Mr. Harris had been at Greenfield. Dan L. Paine, an Indianapolis journalist AN INDIANA CHOIR . 267 (1830-1895), possessed a sound taste, and his occasional pieces were well executed. He wrote an elegy on the death of his friend and fellow-journalist, George C. Harding, which is a meditation on the courage of such spirits : " On Freedom's heights they stand as sentinels, Brave tropic suns, delve in earth's deepest caves, And climb the ladder of the parallels To sleep in icy graves." Such felicities were not uncommon with him. He was the friend and helpful critic of all the younger Indiana writers, and literary reputa- tions have been created from slighter talents than his. His poems were collected privately, under the title "Club Moss" (1890). So far nearly every name identified with the literary impulse in Indiana has been met south of a line drawn across the State at Crawford s- ville ; but Evaleen Stein carried it farther north, to Lafayette. Miss Stein's verse illustrates happily the growing emancipation of the younger generation of Western poets from bare didacticism, and an escape from the landscape of tradition. She finds her sub- jects in nature, and draws pictures for the 268 THE HOOSIERS pleasure of it, and not with the expectation of tacking a moral to the frame. Earnestness and conviction characterize her verses, and there is often a kind of exultance in the note when she sings of the rough hill pastures or the marshes and bayous that invite her study. She has something of Thoreau's genius for details, and her volume "One Way to the Woods" (1897) is an accurate calendar of the moods of nature. Her work marks really a new genera- tion, the change of fashion, and the passing of the ante-bellum poets of the region. Twenty years earlier no Ohio Valley poet would have explored a bayou, or could have written of it so musically as Miss Stein : u Ah, surely none would ever guess That through that tangled wilderness, Through those far forest depths remote, Lay any smallest path, much less A way wherein to guide a boat ! n A small volume of the poems of M. Gene- vieve Todd (1863-1896), of the order of Sis- ters of Providence, was published after her death. They are wholly devotional, and are marked by elevation of spirit wedded to cor- AN INDIANA CHOIR 269 rect taste. Sister Mary Genevieve was bora, at Vevay, of Protestant parents, and died at the convent of St. Mary's of the Woods neai Terre Haute. Albion Fellows Bacon, Mrs. D. M. Jordan, Richard Lew Dawson, and Will- iam R. Williams have also been creditable contributors to the Hoosier anthology. Indiana offers, on the whole, a fair field for poets. The prevailing note of the landscape is tranquillity. There is hardly a spot in the State that touches the imagination with a sense of power or grandeur, and yet there are countless scenes of quiet beauty. The Wabash gathers breadth and grace as it flows southward. Long curves here and there give to the eye the illusion of a chain of lakes, and the river's valley is a rich garden. The Tip- pecanoe is another beautiful river, famous among fishermen, and there are a number of charming lakes in the northern part of the State. The Kankakee marsh was long haunted by the migrant wild birds, and in recent years a wild goose was found there with the piece of an Eskimo arrow, made of reindeer bone, through its breast. Poets and 2/0 THE HOOSIERS novelists have found inspiration in the Kan kakee. Maurice Thompson and Evaleen Stein have celebrated the region in song ; and there is a tradition that the manuscript of "Ben Hur" visited both the Kankakee and Lake Maxinkuckee at certain crises in its prepara- tion. The possibilities of mixed forests are nowhere more happily illustrated than in Indiana, whether in the earliest wistful days of spring or in the full glory of autumn. The beech and the elm, the maple, the hickory and the walnut, and the humbler sassafras and pawpaw are companions of a royal order of forestry, from which the syca- more the self -constituted guardian of rivers and creeks is excluded by nature's decree confirmed by man's preference. The variety of cereals that may be grown saves the tilled areas from monotony. There are no vast plains of corn or wheat as in Kansas or the Dakotas, but the corn ripens between wheat stubble on one hand, and green pastures or remnants of woodland on the other. The transitional seasons bring more of delight to the senses than the full measure of winter AN INDIANA CHOIR 2/1 and summer, and have for the observer con- stant novelty and change. There are quali- ties in the spring of the Ohio Valley qualities of sweetness and wistfulness that are peculiar to the region ; and when the winds are all from the south, and the win- ter wheat is brilliant in the fields; when the sap sings beneath the rough bark of the old forest trees, and the young orchards are a blur of pink and white, spirits are abroad there with messages for the sons of men. CHAPTER IX A CENTENNIAL POSTSCRIPT IT is a pleasant experience to find a book that was cast upon the waters fifteen years ago brought back to shore by a friendly tide. As the preface of 1900 indicates, the preceding pages were written in exile an exile that ter- minated within a year or so after the book was published. I question whether, but for the home- yearning that afflicted me during that period, I should have spent upon my task the amount of time and labor I gave to it. While my original commission looked only to a report upon In- diana's adventures in literature, it seemed proper and necessary to show the many difficulties that beset the pioneers in their struggles to attain " sweetness and light," to indicate a background against which the story-tellers, poets, and chron- iclers might be limned. State pride covers, we are told, a multitude of sins. In perusing the foregoing pages for the 272 A CENTENNIAL POSTSCRIPT 2/3 first time since the proof left me, I am relieved to find that I have been guilty of so little that is vain and boastful ; and now that this postscript seems called for, I hope to avoid spoiling the effect I sought in the first instance by any ill- considered flourishes. Indiana now approaches her centenary, and the student of democracy may, I think, scruti- nize with a degree of satisfaction the movements and processes by which the State continues on her way as an enlightened member of the American sisterhood. It is not without regret that many of us who heard at the feet of our elders the story of early hardships, the austeri- ties of pioneer life and the meagre opportunities afforded to those who sought learning, realize that we have now climbed so far that the State is losing indeed, has lost much of its tang and native flavor. This was, of course, unavoidable, and we may only be grateful that so much of the color and spirit of the old times have been preserved by Indiana writers. The achievement of this end is the highest justification of a local literature. Many good and noble lives have gone to the making of a State that was literally 2/4 THE HOOSIERS hewn out of the wilderness, and it is to be hoped that the interest in Indiana history which pre- sumably will be aroused by the jubilee year, may turn the thoughts of the new generation upon the untableted and forgotten pioneers who never- theless are deserving of grateful remembrance. The newspaper paragraphers who have made merry at the expense of the Hoosier " group " of writers have not always appreciated fully the true significance of Indiana's literary activity. Certainly the elements and circumstances that favor the cultivation of the creative arts have rarely been so lacking anywhere as they were in early Indiana. As I have tried to show, it was not merely a question of overcoming natural difficulties, bu". of meeting obstinate hostility as well. Those who express at times their distrust of democracy may, I think, find much in In- diana's history to console them. I shall not pretend that in politics we have always been wise, nor attempt to extenuate errors of omis- sion and commission, but the spectacle of self- government offered by the Hoosiers has been, and remains, reassuring. The phenomena dis- cussed in these chapters have been succeeded A CENTENNIAL POSTSCRIPT 2/5 by others equally vital and important. I at- tempted to describe the coming of the light when " light " connoted generous fireplaces and tallow candles. Now that electricity illuminates the smallest town, the student must not too con- descendingly look back upon those of the elder day who " lived lean " that we of these later times might dwell in contented ease upon the soil they won for us. When I wrote my chapter on " The Rural Type and the Dialect" I hoped that some hos- tile critic would feel moved to point out my errors and lay the groundwork for a thorough study of Hoosier folk speech. The trolley and the automobile are so rapidly breaking down the old community barriers that many of the local peculiarities I knew as a boy are already vanishing. As I write these lines I learn that Guido H. Stempel, associate professor of Com- parative Philology in Indiana University, has initiated what promises to be the most scientific study of Indiana dialect that has yet been un- dertaken. The preliminary inquiry looks to the definition of zones in which marked influences are apparent, as the Western reserve, the main 2/6 THE HOOSIERS current of Western immigration from New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, and the Pied- mont "thrust" from the South. The active work is in charge of Myrtle Emmert Stempel, with the cooperation of many scholars and teachers throughout the State. The " social consciousness " with which we were not concerned in old times is now a factor in the State's affairs, and many thoughtful stu- dents have manifested an interest in the new problems. Since I wrote of the distribution of population and emphasized its essential Ameri- can character, the races of southern and south- eastern Europe have begun to filter into Indiana, markedly in the larger cities and along the curve of Lake Michigan. Gary is unique among in- dustrial centres in that it did not grow but was literally created upon sand dunes and swamps. It was begun in 1906 and to-day its population is estimated at 40,000. It is cheering to note that its first building was a school house. The effort made to fashion for Gary a system of public education that should meet the town's peculiar social needs has caused the eyes of the educational world to be fixed upon this new com- A CENTENNIAL POSTSCRIPT 277 munity. Indiana is proud to enroll as a Hoosier William A. Wirt, the superintendent of Gary's schools, whose ideas and ideals have lately pro- voked wide discussion. Mr. Wirt was born near Markle, and attended the Bluff ton high school and De Pauw University. Quite as significant and valuable as her ex- cursions in literature are Indiana's endeavors in the field of education. The public schools of to- day realize in fullest measure the hopes of those educational pioneers who fought so valiantly from the beginning for free schools. The State University, as the cap-sheaf of the system, has so widened its influences that it is now a valued force in the State's life ; its sister institution, Purdue University, is recognized as one of the best technical schools in America. The State's provision has been generous, and both institu- tions have enjoyed admirable management. In Wayne County, on a day last spring, I watched a group of farmers, many of them old men, re- ceiving instruction in the choice of seed corn from one of Purdue's teaching staff. In view of the old contemptuous dismissal of " book larnin' " by practical farmers, it struck me as 2/8 THE HOOSIERS amusing that even men bred to the soil now gladly avail themselves of the scientists' aid. When the Hoosier farmer goes to Purdue for a winter " course " he takes his wife with him, that she may receive instruction in the house- hold arts or in any other field that appeals to her. In old times the State's sanitary conditions were indubitably bad ; the inhabitants spent much of their time shaking with the ague, or in combating other ills with patent nostrums. Drainage combined with a noteworthy advance in medical standards has rescued the Hoosier from many of the perils that once beset him. Indiana has profited greatly by the services of John N. Hurty, who, as secretary of the State Board of Health, probably has made more en- emies and saved more lives than any other man who ever lived within the borders of the com- monwealth. It is creditable to the State that he has held this office, which he did not seek in the first instance, for twenty years continuously an evidence that public sentiment has cor- dially supported him in his labors. To improve the conditions in which a people live, and to A CENTENNIAL POSTSCRIPT 2/g increase their efficiency and happiness by mini- mizing the hazards of life is, I should say, as noble an achievement as the taking of a city or the writing of a book. In this connection I shall not apologize for mentioning Harvey W. Wiley, long government chemist, whose zealous efforts in behalf of pure food have endeared him to all of his countrymen who are inclined to be considerate of their stomachs. Dr. Wiley was born and educated in Indiana. The temptation is strong upon me to make the approaching centenary an excuse for widen- ing the scope of this postscript ; but I must hold a tight rein upon my exuberance. Indi- ana has sent so many of her sons and daugh- ters to other States to win honor and renown that there is danger of arousing animosity by " claiming " a host of natives who have lent their energy and genius to other communities. When asked on an occasion why so many great men "come" from Indiana, George Ade vouch- safed no explanation, but remarked that the greater the men, the faster they came ! While Mr. Ade repudiated this aspersion, it serves to emphasize Indiana's generosity in bestowing 280 THE HOOSIERS genius upon other commonwealths. Although Harrison remains Indiana's one president, there are always " possibilities " awaiting the peoplejs call : and the office of vice-president seems to be conceded to belong to Hoosierdom. Schuyler Colfax was elected on the ticket with Grant in 1868; Thomas A. Hendricks with Cleveland ^in 1884 after being defeated with Tilden in 1876. William H. English was Hancock's running- mate in 1880 and was defeated. Charles War- ren Fairbanks was elected with Roosevelt in 1904, and while John W. Kern shared Mr. Bryan's defeat in 1908, Thomas R. Marshall again brought the honor to Indiana in 1912. Indiana has not yet been recognized by an ap- pointment to the United States Supreme Court, though at least one native, Willis Van Devanter (born at Marion in 1859, an d a graduate of De Pauw), won this honor for another State. The fact that a State whose illiteracy was so dismaying only a little while ago should have produced many writers of reputation is not more humorous than that it should also have mothered two eminent librarians. John Shaw Billings who attained distinction as a surgeon A CENTENNIAL POSTSCRIPT 28 1 in the Civil War became the first director of the New York Public Library. He was a native of Switzerland County, in which Edward Eg- gleston was born. Dr. Billings' many honorary degrees included Oxford's coveted D. C. L. He was succeeded at his death by his assistant, Edwin Hatfield Anderson, a native of Boone County, and a graduate of Wabash College. Many who have gone far in literature left Indiana before they could be enrolled among her writers. Among these may be mentioned William Vaughn Moody, a native of Spencer (1869-1910), who took rank as one of the most distinctive of American poets, and whose un- timely death will long be regretted. Still In- diana may shine in the reflected light of the genius that flowered in the "Ode in Time of Hesitation," "Gloucester Moors," and other poems of rare quality. Theodore Dreiser (1871), one of the sincerest exponents of the realistic school of fiction, was born at Terre Haute and educated in the schools of Warsaw and at the State University. George Barr Mc- Cutcheon, author of many delightful romances, was born close to the Tippecanoe and is still 282 THE HOOSIERS proud to stand up and be counted whenever the Hoosier roll is called. He is a diligent hunter of rare books and owns a valuable library of first editions. His brother, John T. McCutcheon, best known as a cartoonist, has made a reputation as a war correspondent and traveler, and has written a sprightly narrative of his adventures in quest of big game in the African jungle. Booth Tarkington, whose earlier books have already been mentioned, has maintained the position he took at the start as a writer of quality. He is the most cosmopolitan of Indiana authors but still continues his residence in the city of his birth. A style of unusual charm and grace, a rare gift of characterization, and an astonishing versatility distinguish his work, which has grown steadily in breadth and power. Besides his many books he is the author of a number of successful plays, and of these, "The Man from Home " (done in collaboration with Harry Leon Wilson), held the stage for several seasons. Mr. Tarkington's father, John Stevenson Tarkington, an Indiana lawyer and soldier, has employed his leisure in literary A CENTENNIAL POSTSCRIPT 283 work. His " Hermit of Capri " (1910) shows a pleasant fanciful vein that is wholly individual. New writers have appeared in an intermi- nable line in these fifteen years, and I must repeat the discreet reservation of the preface to cover omissions that are enforced by the limita- tions of space. One of the most popular of American novelists is Gene Stratton Porter, whose books, including "The Song of the Cardinal," "Freckles," "A Girl of the Limber- lost," " The Harvester," and " Laddie," have endeared her to thousands of readers. Mrs. Porter's writings reflect her love of the country- side and a sympathetic understanding of simple, homely character. Like Maurice Thompson, she is an accomplished ornithologist, and bright wings beat constantly through her pages. She was born on a farm in Wabash County, and her manuscripts are dated from Limberlost Cabin, near Rome City. Elizabeth Miller (Hack), a native of Montgomery County, has shown marked originality in her choice of subjects for fiction. Her first novel, " The Yoke," deals with earliest biblical times, and is remarkable for its vividness and freshness of treatment. She 284 THE HOOSIERS followed this with " Saul of Tarsus," " The City of Delight," and "Daybreak." "Judith, A Story of the Candle-lit Fifties," by Grace Caroline Alexander, reproduces the atmosphere of old Indiana times most attractively. While Annie Fellows Johnston has elected to cross the Ohio into Kentucky for residence, mention should be made of her numerous stories for young people, which have won for her a wide and loyal constituency. And this record would be incomplete if it failed to name again Mrs. Johnston's sister, Albion Fellows Bacon, whose labors in behalf of housing reform in Indiana have attracted wide attention. While sharing her sister's literary interests, she is best known and will long be remembered for' her courageous battle for tenement laws. Modesty, a trait sometimes denied the Hoosier by envious outsiders, is the happy possession of the author of "In My Youth" (1914), a novel (if such indeed be its proper classification) that reflects vividly the pioneer days of Central Indiana. The unknown writer has laid a debt upon all lovers of the State in this charming chronicle. A CENTENNIAL POSTSCRIPT 285 David Graham Phillips, well known as a journalist and novelist, was born in Madison. He received his early education in Indiana, but did not begin writing until his removal to New York, where he died in 1911. Max Ehrmann, a native of Terre Haute, has followed the muse in the spirit of truth and sincerity, and he is the author of many poems of beauty and significance. Robert Alexander Wason, though born in Ohio, overcame this handicap as quickly as possible by crossing the border into Indiana, where he spent his formative years. Among his books are " Happy Hawkins," " The Steer- ing Wheel," and "The Knight Errant." Marjorie Benton Cooke, a native of Wayne County, is the author of " Dr. David," " Banbi," and other volumes of prose and verse and is well known as a dramatic reader. The State University has exerted a stimulat- ing influence upon literary endeavor. The list of books written by faculty and alumni is long and awaits a special bibliographer. William Lowe Bryan, the president, a native of Bloom- ington, has written, with his wife's collabora- tion, " Plato the Teacher," and " The Republic 286 THE HOOSIERS of Plato with Studies for Teachers." William A. Rawles is the author of " The Government of the People of the State of Indiana" (1897) and " Centralizing Tendencies in the Administra- tion of Indiana" (1903). James Albert Wood- burn has written "The American Republic and Its Government," " Life of Thaddeus Stevens," and many other books. Born at Bloomington (1856), he has served the State long and faithfully as a teacher, and he has participated in many movements for good government. Samuel Bannister Harding, the son of George C. Harding, one of the most brilliant of Indiana editors, has written much in his own field of history. Will D. Howe, of the department of English, has led many "to the things that are more excellent," and his text-books and in particular his edition of Hazlitt speak for scrupulous scholarship and sincere devotion to the humanities. Charles W. Moores, of a family identified from the beginning with the best life of the State, is a lawyer who has made literature his recreation. He has written admirable biogra- phies of Lincoln and Columbus for young A CENTENNIAL POSTSCRIPT 287 readers. Mr. M cores is an authority on Lin- coln's personal and political history, and his volume on the great president is distinguished for accuracy and ease and charm of narrative. Another Hoosier, Jesse William Weik, has written (with William H. Herndon) a " Life of Lincoln," in two volumes. Mr. Weik owns a large and valuable collection of Lincoln manuscripts. Julia Henderson Levering's " His- toric Indiana" (1909) contains much material that is nowhere else accessible, and her volume reflects Mrs. Levering's wide acquaintance with Hoosier people and traditions. When I visited New Harmony in 1900 to examine the records left by Owen and his suc- cessors, I learned that George B. Lockwood was at work on a history of the Owens and their experiment in socialism. He very gen- erously placed at my disposal the data he had collected, and of this I made use in my chapter on New Harmony in this volume. It gives me pleasure to direct all who are interested in this subject to Mr. Lockwood's books, " The New Harmony Communities" (1902) and " The New Harmony Movement" (1905), which are 288 THE HOOSIERS the fruits of many years of laborious research. New Harmony's centenary was fittingly cele- brated in 1914. Former President Taft and Governor Ralston were among the speakers, and the occasion was otherwise made memorable by a noble pageant, the inspiration of Miss Charity Dye. The unusually varied and interesting career of John W. Foster finds expression in his "Century of American Diplomacy" (1900), "American Diplomacy in the Orient" (1903), and "Diplomatic Memoirs" (1909). General Foster was born in Pike County in 1836. He was Secretary of State in Harrison's cabinet, succeeding James G. Blaine, and has held im- portant diplomatic positions. Albert J. Bev- eridge, a senator in Congress for two terms (1899-1911), is the author of "The Russian Advance" (1903), "The Young Man and the World" (1905), "The Meaning of the Times" (1907), and a biography of John Marshall not yet completed. Frederick Landis, a member of a family long identified with Indiana pol- itics, has made several successful excursions in fiction. He is the author of "The Glory of A CENTENNIAL POSTSCRIPT 289 His Country" (1910) and "The Angel of Lone- some Hill" (1910). I purposely omitted reference to Indiana's interest in the fine arts in the preceding pages, but it seems proper to mention a few Hoosier painters who have won much honor for them- selves and the State. Of these Theodore C. Steele has loyally maintained his residence in Indiana, serving art long and devotedly. He has interpreted the Indiana landscape with rare fidelity, and his example and instruction have been an inspiration to many younger men. Others whose names must be included even in this passing reference, are William Forsyth, J. Ottis Adams, Richard B. Gruelle, Otto Stark, J. E. Bundy, Way man Adams, Lucy Taggart, and Ruth Pratt Bobbs. It may be said that the strongest sympathy has existed between Indiana writers and painters, and the wielders of the brush have in several instances shown marked writing ability. On her one hundredth birthday Indiana may render an account of her stewardship with a good conscience and a pardonable pride. In peace and war she has been a loyal member 2QO THE HOOSIERS of the Union. Her citizens have stood stead- fastly for sound ideals of government amid many disturbances of the equilibrium ; she has governed herself well and has wielded no small influence in national affairs. She has contributed men and women of character and genius to every department of human activity, and in cultural fields their attainments often have won the crown of fame. Increasing re- spect, bordering upon affection, attends the name Hoosier (once employed in reproach !) wherever it may be spoken. A typical American State is this Indiana. Her earliest laws were written in the generous impulses and liberty-loving hearts of her first citizens, who turned toward the wilderness with rifle, axe, and Bible, to realize in their own lives the best that has been thought and done in the world. INDEX Abbott, Lyman, 215. Adams, J. Ottis, 289. Adams, Wayman, 289. Ade, George, 242, 279. Alexander, Grace Caroline, 283. Anderson, Edwin Hatfield, 280. " Artemus Ward," 159. Bacon, Albion Fellows, 269, 284. Bagehot, Walter, 158, 178. Banta, D. D., 75, 236. Baptists, organized first church, 67. Beales, at New Harmony, 132. Beecher, Henry Ward, 18, 83, 250. Beecher, Mrs. H. W. 35, 56. " Ben Hur," how written, 189, 193 ; Ms. of, 270. Benjamin, Park, 19. Bennett, Emerson, 248. Bernard, Duke of Saxe- Weimar, "3, "5- Beveridge, Albert J., 288. Biddle, Horace P., 248, 251. Billings, John Shaw, 280. Blackford, Isaac, 22, 83. Blake family, 18. Blake, James, 83. Bobbs, Ruth Pratt, 289. Bolton, Nathaniel, 253. Bolton, Sarah T., 253. Boone, Richard G., 234. Booth, Newton, 16. Brook Farm, Robert Owen visits, 123. Brookville, 12. Brotherton, Alice Williams, 13. Brown, Admiral George, 212. Brown, Demarchus C., 242. Brown, Paul, at New Harmony, 115, 119. Bryan, William Lowe, 285. Bull, Ole, 19. Bundy, J. E., 289. Bush, Rev. George, 66. Butler College, 26, 83, 95, 228. Butler, John M., 179. Butler, John Maurice, 179. Butler, Noble, 16, 251. Butler, Noble C., 251. Butler, Ovid, 82. Cambridge, 13. Campbell, Alexander, 123, 238. Carleton, Emma, 243. Carleton, Will, 172. Carrington, H. B., 179. Cartwright, Peter, 67. Catherwood, Mary Hartwell, 215. Centerville, 12. Century Magazine, 14, Channing, W. E., 24? Channing, W. H., 24 Chase, W. M., 12. Child, Lydia Maria, 227. Chitwood, Mary L., 248, 252. " Christian Endeavor," origin of name, 144. Civil Service Chronicle, 26. Clark, George Rogers, 4, 5. Clarke, James Freeman, 248. 291 2Q2 INDEX Coburn, John, 83. Coe family, 18. Coggeshall, W. T., 245, 250, 251. Colfax, Schuyler, 280. Cooke, Marjorie Benton, 285. Cory don, n, 94. Costume at New Harmony, 113. Cox, Millard, 222. Cox, Sandford C., 36. Craig, George, 134. Cranch, C. P., 248. Crawfordsville, 8, 177, 267. Cutter, George W., 252. Dale, David, 102. D'Arusmont, Phiquepal, 105, 114. Dawson, Richard Lew, 269. Dennis, Charles, 28. DePauw University, 68, 77. Dillon, John B., 231, 249. Dooley, A. H., 237. Dransfields, at New Harmony, 132. Dreiser, Theodore, 281. Dufour, Mrs. A. L. Ruter, 248, 251. Dumont, Mrs. Julia L., 89-94, 247, 248. Duncan, Robert, 181. Dunn, Jacob P., 232. Dye, Miss Charity, 287. Dyer, Rev. Sidney, 250. Eads, James B., 12. Earlham College, 77. Eaton, Arthur Wentworth, 215. Edson, Helen Rockwood, 241. Egan, Maurice Francis, 215. Eggleston, Edward, 8, 17, 51, 79, 89, 91, 133-155, 225, 280. Eggleston, George Cary, 134, 224. Eggleston, Guilford, 138. Eggleston, Joseph Cary, 134, 137, 139- Eggleston, Miles, 138, 236. Ehrmann, Max, 284. Ellsworth, Henry W., 251. Emerson, R. W., 248, 263. English, William H., 235, 280. Episcopalians, early difficulties of, 65. Everett, Edward, 19. Fairbanks, Charles Warren, 280. Fauntleroys, at New Harmony, 132. Feiba Peveli, in, 112, 122. Fellenberg, 102, 124. Field, Eugene, 172. Finley, John, 29, 34. Fishback, W. P., 242. Fiske, John, 8. Fletcher, Calvin, 83. Fletcher family, 18. Fletcher, Julia C., 216. Fletcher, Rev. J. C., 216. Flower, Richard, 101. Flowers in churches, 63. Fort Wayne, 13. Forsyth, William, 289. Foster, John W., 288. Foulke, William Dudley, 26, 229. Franklin College, 26, 77. Fretageot, Achilles, 105. Fretageot, Madame, 115, 132. Fuller, Hector, 242. Furman, Lucy S., 216. Gallatin, Albert, 71. Garland, Hamlin, 172. Gary, 276. Gillilan, S. W., 243. Gilmore, James R. (" Edmund Kirke ") , 257, 260, 263. Goode, Frances E., 155. Goodwin, Rev. T. A., 35. Gordon, Jonathan W., 251. Gruelle, Richard B., 289. INDEX 293 (Hack) , Elizabeth Miller, 283. Hadley, John V., 53. Halford, E. W., 237. Hall, Bayard Rush, 73. Hanover College, 77. Harding, George C., 240, 267, 286. Harding, Samuel Bannister, 286. Harney, VV. W., 250. Harper, Ida Husted, 241. Harris, Leo O., 157, 266. Harrison, Benjamin, 4, 243. Harrison, Christopher, 16. Harrison, W. H., 4, 67,71. Havens, Rev. James, 67. Hay, John, 16. Hayes, Lewis D., 237. Hayes, President, 190. Henderson, Rev. C. R., 241. Hendricks, Thomas A., 280. Hendricks, William, 76. Henodelphisterian Society, 75. Higginson, T. W., 157. Holland, J. G., 19. Holliday family, 18. Holliday, John H., 26, 237. Holliday, Rev. F. C., 65. Holman, Jesse L., 76. Holmes, O. W., 260, 263. " Hoosier Athens," 177. Hoosier dialect, 45-62, 152, 163, 275- Hoosier Fiddle, 41. Hoosier " group," 274. Hoosier, origin of word, 29-36. " Hoosier Schoolmaster," 145. Hoosierdom, extent of, 151. Hoshour, Samuel K., 96, 181. House, Ben D., 265. Hovey, Edmund O., 80. Howard, Tilghman A., 35. Howe, Daniel Wait, 234. Howe, Will D., 286. Howells, W. D., 246. Howland, John D., 12. Howland, Livingston, 12. Howland, Louis, 26, 237. Hurty, John N., 278. " In My Youth," 284. Indiana : relation to national life i 3-5 ; slavery in, 5 ; foreign and native element, n ; political preferences, 26; pioneers, 36, 39 ; religious influences, 65-69 ; education in, 70, 277 ; illiteracy in, 81, 87; early poets, 245; landscape of, 36, 219, 269 ; fine arts, 288. Indiana University, 26, 73-76, 277. 285. Indianapolis, 17-20. Indianapolis Literary Club, 19. Ingersoll, Robert G., 189. James, G. P. R., 181. Jennings, Governor, 22. Jewett, Milo Parker, 80. Johnson, Robert Underwood, 13. Johnston, Annie Fellows, 283. Jordan, David S., 78. Jordan, Mrs. D. M., 269. Judah, Mary Jameson, 221. Julian, George W., 226, 251. Julian, Isaac H., 248, 251. Kern, John W., 280. Ketcham, W. A., 44. Keenan, Henry F., 215. Krout, Caroline V., 212. Krout, Mary H., 213. Lafayette, 14, 267. Landis, Frederick, 288. Lane, Henry S., 180. Lee,,John, 202. Lehmanowski, Colonel, 32. Lesueur, Charles A., 104, 106. 294 INDEX Levering, Julia Henderson, 287. Lewis, Allen, 26. Lewis, Charles S., 26. Lincoln, Abraham, 38, 125, 152. Lockwood, George B., 287. Lodge, Harriet Newell, 241. Longfellow, H. W., 258, 263. Lowell, J. R., 160, 172, 263. Lynching, 43. Maclure, William, 104, 105, 115, 129. McCulloch, Hugh, 14. McCutcheon, George Barr, 281. McCutcheon, John T., 242, 281. Macdonald, Donald, 105, 107. Macluria, in, 112, 122. McDonald, Joseph E., 179. McGinnis, Gen. George F., 184 Madison, n, 155. Major, Charles, 223. " Mark Twain," 164. Marshall, Thomas R., 280. Martindale, E. B., 160. Mason, A. L., 242. Matthews, Claude, 21. Matthews, G. C., 237. Matthews, James Newton, 215. Meredith, Solomon, 83. Merrill family, 18. Merrill, Miss Catharine, 94. Merrill, Samuel, 94. Militia, early, 39. Miller (Hack), Elizabeth, 283. Miller, Joaquin, 215. Millerites, 148. Mills, Caleb, 79, 80, 85-88. Moody, Martha Livingstone, 241. Moody, William Vaughn, 281. Moores, Charles W., 286. Morris lamily, 18. Morrison, John I., 16. Morton, Oliver P., 22, 229. Morton, Oliver T., 26, 229. Mount, James A., 21. Murphy, Dr. Edward, 130. Nadal, E. S., 204, 216. Nadal, Rev. Bernard H., 216. Nashoba, 105. Neef, Joseph, 105, 106. Neef, Madame, 115. Nelson, Thomas H., 15. New Albany, 140, 143, 256, 257, 258, 259. New Harmony, 21, 98-132, 287. New Harmony Disseminator, 128. New Harmony Gazette, in, n8, 128. Nicholas, Anna, 220, 237. Nichols, Rebecca S., 248, 250, 252. Noble, Harriet, 241. Xorth Carolina, influence of, in dialect, 52. Xotre Dame University, 77, 215. Oliphant, Laurence, 126. Owen, David Dale, 126. Owen, Richard, 127. Owen, Robert, 99, 101, 103, 104, no, 115, 121, 122, 123, 124, 131, 287. Owen, Robert Dale, 24, 76, 104, in, 114, 124, 125. Owen, William, 104, 128. Paine, Dan L., 267. Parker, Benj. S., 56, 249, 254, 265. Parker, Theodore, 19. Peabody, Rev. Ephraim, 248. Pestalozzi, 102, 107. Phillips, David Graham, 284. Piatt, John James, 215, 246, 256, 258, 260. Pioneers, books of, 38. Poe, Edgar A., 261. INDEX 295 Poetry, characteristics of early Western, 244. " Poor Whites," 8, 44. Porter, Gene Stratton, 282. Posey, Thomas, 21. Prentice, George D., 246, 247, 253- Protestantism, phases of, in Indi- ana, 64. Public Schools, 277. Purdue University, 277. Rabb, Kate Milner, 241. Ralston, Alexander, 17. Rapp, George, 98-101, Rariden, James, 236. Rawl -s, William A., 285. Ray famiiy, 18. Reed, Peter Fishe, 249. Reeves, Arthur M., 230. Reid, Whitelaw, 185. Richmond, 13. Ridpath, John Clark, 233. Riley, James Whitcomb, 27, 42, 49- 57. 133. 156-176. 217- Riley, Reuben A., 157. Ross, Morris, 273. Salem, 16, 17. Say, Thomas, 104, 106, 115, 128. Scotch-Irish, 7, 51, 65. Sharpe family, 18. Smith, Elizabeth Conwell (Will- son), 257. Smith, O. H., 31, 83, 236. Smith, Roswell, 14. Sorin, Father, 64. Stark, Otto, 289. Stcele, Theodore C., 288. Stein, Evaleen, 267, 270. Sternpel, Guido H., 275. Stempel, Myrtle Emmert, 276. Stevenson, R. D., 243. Stoddard, Charles Warren, 215. Sulgrove, Berry, 15, 49, 181, 237. Sullivan, Jeremiah, 17. Swift, Lucius B., 26. Taggart, Lucy, 289. Tarkington, Booth, 217-221, 282. Tarkington, John Stevenson, 282. Taylor, Bayard, 19. Taylor, Dr. H. W., 40, 58. Teal, Angelina, 241. Terre Haute, 14, 215. Terrell, Rev. William, 140. Test, John, 180, 236. Thomas, Edith M., 159. Thompson, Maurice, 27, 109-211, 270, 283. Thompson, Richard W., 14, 76, 83- Thompson, Will H., 202, 211. Thurston, Laura M., 252. Todd, M. Genevieve, 268. Troost, Gerard, 105, 106, 115. Tuttle, Joseph F., 80. Unitarians, in Ohio valley, 248. Upfold, Bishop, 63. Van Devanter, Willis, 280. Venable, W. H., 249. Very, Jonas, 248. Vevay, 89, 134. Vickroy, Louise E., 249. Vincennes, 5, n. Vincennes University, 72. Voorhees, Daniel W., 15. Wabash College, 77, 80, 88, 178, 211. Wallace, David, 22, 76, 180, 236. Wallace, General Lew, 22, 56, 180-199, 2 i. Wallace, Mrs. Lew, 198. Wallace, William Ross, 250. Warren, Josiah, 129. 296 INDEX Wason, Robert Alexander, 284. Weik, Jesse William, 286. Wheatcrofts, at New Harmony, 132. Whitcomb, Governor, 22. Whitecaps, 43. VVhitwell, Stedman, 105. Wickersham, James A., 222. Willard, Governor, 22. Williams, Charles R., 237, 242. Williams, Henry M., 26. Williams, James D., 20. Williams, Jesse Lynch, 14. Williams, W.R., 269. Willson, Forceythe, 256-264. Wilson, W. L., 243. Wilstach, J. A., 241. Wirt, William A., 277. Woodburn, James Albert, 285. Woodlands, influence of, on pioneers, 36. Woods, Rev. Aaron, 33. Woollen, William Wesley, 236. Wright, Frances (D'Arusmont), 105, 124. Wright, Joseph A., 22, 31. Yandes family, 18. Printed in the United States of America. L.O University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. AC MAY 1 2000 REC'DYRLQECSl'W