headstrong multitude which nothing else can control. Certainly the transcript of such words of power ought to be reckoned among the treasures of literature. If so, the utterances of our own orators are among the best examples of American letters.

XXXV

LOCAL FICTION

THE Civil War, like the two which preceded it, had no immediate effect upon our literature. Some of the older writers were drawn aside for an occasional

After the
War.

poem, address, or magazine article upon some phase of the contest, but the few books of note published between 1861 and 1865, inclusive, were not out of the usual course of production in fiction, travel, biography, and history. Immediately after the war there was little to indicate that its turmoil had greatly disturbed the literary atmosphere. A few war stories and many war papers sprung up like new weeds after a forest fire, precursors of a later growth of military history, biography, and romance. But in the main older authors returned to the familiar ruts, and younger ones, with a few exceptions, did not drive far afield.

Meantime, as the last third of the century wore on, readers multiplied exceedingly. The mid-century writers had created a literature which educated the nation to a taste for the best. Peace and returning prosperity brought leisure and means to gratify it, stimulating the demand for more than the Cambridge group or any other could supply. New aspirants appeared and were encouraged by new publishing enterprises. Some of them were passed on to seats among the mighty; more of them had their little day and fell out of the procession.

It would be strange if a few were not conspicuous when so many felt called to write. Authors now becoming classic who were finishing their work had come out of no such swarms of competitors. On the other hand, the throng of latter-day penmen sent no such representatives to the front. Had an age of reflection and criticism set in as usual after one of original production? Certainly one of demand had arrived: first for fiction. A busy and anxious day was over, and like children everybody was saying, "Tell us a story."

Some of the earliest were written by a young man of great promise who fell in the first battle of the war. Theodore Winthrop of New York could count seven Theodore presidents of Yale among his ancestors besides Winthrop. Jonathan Edwards of Princeton, and the younger Winthrop, the well-read first governor of Connecticut. It would not have been like Theodore to fall back upon his forefathers, but literary tastes do not die out, even if they skip a generation now and then. They blossomed early in this one. Scholarships and prizes came to him in college with the habit of composition and of story-telling with the pen. Yet he waited long for recognition. It was just beginning to be accorded when he wrote a description of the march of the Seventh Regiment of New York to Washington. For him this was a leave-taking of a promising career and a march to a heroic death. Then readers began to call for anything he had written and laid away until the time of appreciation should come. Five books were published in rapid succession. "Cecil Dreeme" was the first, a story of bohemian life in and around the old university building in New York city, such as a graduate student might work into the chinks of more pretentious study - if he had the

rare ability. Then came "John Brent," the outgrowth of a run through California and Oregon as far as Puget Sound. It was in the manner of mountain and prairie fiction,, which when well done never loses its charm for either American or English readers. This example of it belongs to the best of its class, and is a graphic picture of roving life on the plains in the days of the Indian and the emigrant, the buffalo, and the wild horse. Other outdoor books of this breezy man are the " Canoe and Saddle" and "Life in the Open Air," wholesome sketches for boys of all ages, books to read in camp on rainy days or at home when the woods are full of mosquitoes and malaria. There is no malaria in these volumes, and their place is with the balsamic books of healthful adventure which are doing much to counteract the overstudious and commercial tendencies of our time.

Edward
Eggleston.

Edward Eggleston wrote of frontier life in the nearer West of Indiana, before successive waves of emigration had crossed the plains. "The Hoosier Schoolmaster," "The Circuit Rider," "The End of the World," "The Mystery of Metropolisville" and half a dozen other stories will preserve the features of early western life in all its hardship, poverty, and aspiration. They are the annals of pathbreakers in a wilderness where a bare existence was nearly all that could be attained, narrow and meagre at that. But pioneers must go before those who easily follow, and their work is not to be despised because it was done in narrow lines, heavily and drearily. The honor they deserve is greater than the mirth they provoke.

Francis Bret Harte was a portrayer of something rougher than prairie life. The half-civilized conditions which

Bret Harte.

sprung up after the rush to California in '49 found in him a faithful chronicler. A new and fresh field was preempted by an enterprising prospector. He had been preceded by Bayard Taylor in his "Eldorado" and "Rhymes of Travel," who drove a stake or two and passed on. In twenty years mining camps and towns became a feature of remote American enterprise, and in the pages of the "Overland Monthly," started in 1868, the editor, who had been miner, schoolmaster, and compositor in turn, began to depict what he had seen. After his introduction to the public in the "Condensed Novels" and "Poems," his "Heathen Chinee" created an immense demand for more of the new brand. That "childlike and bland" son of the morning in successful rivalry with western sharpers was a picture to amuse anybody who could call himself eastern, though he should hail from Salt Lake. No one but Truthful James and Bill Nye could keep a sober face at

"The hands that were played

By that heathen Chinee
And the points that he made
Were frightful to see,

Till at last he put down a right bower
Which the same Nye had dealt unto me.

"Then I looked up at Nye

And he gazed upon me;
And he rose with a sigh

And said: 'Can this be?

We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor,'

And he went for that heathen Chinee."

"The Luck of Roaring Camp," "The Outcasts of Poker Flat," and "Tennessee's Partner" exhibit the best that was left in the rough-and-tumble life which miners and des