"And that seven-branched golden candlestick of inner light that was his Art--was there no other sphere to which it could be transferred, lovely and eternal?"
"And what became of Love?"
"What became of the woman who asked for nothing in life but love and youth?"
"What became of the man who was true?"
"Think you that all of them are not gathered elsewhere--strangely changed, yet the same? Is some other quenchless star their safe habitation?"
"What do we know; what did he know on earth? It was a mystery."
"It was all a mystery."
If there had been a clock to measure the hour it must now have been near midnight. Suddenly the fir below harped most tenderly:
"The children! What became of the children? Where did the myriads of them march to? What was the end of the march of the earth's children?"
"Be still!" whispered the fir above. "At that moment I felt the soft fingers of a child searching my boughs. Was not this what in human times they called Christmas Eve?"
"Hearken!" whispered the fir below. "Down in the valley elfin horns are blowing and elfin drums are beating. Did you hear that--faint and far away? It was the bells of the reindeer! It passed: it was the wandering soul of Christmas."
Not long after this the fir below struck its green harp for the last time:
"Comrade, it is the end for me. Good-night!"
Silently the snow closed over it.
The other fir now stood alone. The snow crept higher and higher. It bravely shook itself loose. Late in the long night it communed once more, solitary:
"I, then, close the train of earthly things. And I was the emblem of immortality; let the highest be the last to perish! Power, that put forth all things for a purpose, you have fulfilled, without explaining it, that purpose. I follow all things into their sleep."
In the morning there was no trace of it.
The sun rose clear on the mountaintops, white and cold and at peace.
The earth was dead.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Copyright, 1908, by the Outlook Company.
[3] Copyright, 1908, by the Curtis Publishing Company.
NANCY HUSTON BANKS
Mrs. Nancy Huston Banks, novelist, was born at Morganfield, Kentucky, about 1850. She is the daughter of the late Judge George Huston, who for many years was an attorney and banker of her native town. When a young woman Miss Huston was married to Mr. James N. Banks, now a lawyer of Henderson, Kentucky. Mrs. Banks's first book, _Stairs of Sand_ (Chicago, 1890), has been forgotten by author and public alike, but shortly after its publication, she went to New York, and there she resided at the Hotel St. James for many years. At the present time she is living in London. She became a contributor to magazines, her critical paper on Mr. James Lane Allen and his novels, which appeared in _The Bookman_ for June, 1895, being her first work to attract serious attention. A few years later Mrs. Banks dropped her magazine work in order to write her charming novel of life in southern Kentucky, _Oldfield_ (New York, 1902). This story was highly praised in this country and in England, the critics of London coining a descriptive phrase for it that has stuck--"the Kentucky Cranford." Her next novel, _'Round Anvil Rock_ (New York, 1903), was a worthy follower of _Oldfield_. One reviewer called it "a blend of an old-fashioned love story and an historical study." Mrs. Banks's most recent novel is _The Little Hills_ (New York, 1905). The opening words of this story: "The air was the breath of spice pinks," was seized upon by the critics and set up as a sign-post for the book's tone.
Mrs. Banks has been a great traveler. She was sent to South Africa during the Boer war by _Vanity Fair_ of London, and her letters to that publication were most interesting. She knew Cecil Rhodes and George W. Steevens, the war correspondent, and, with her beauty and charm, she became a social "star" in the life about her. Mrs. Banks's one eccentricity--according to the literary gossips of New York--is her distaste for classical music; and that much of her success is due to the fact that she knows how to handle editors and publishers, we also learn from the same source. At least one of her contemporaries once held--though he has since wholly relented and regretted much--that, in a now exceedingly scarce first edition, she out-ingramed Ingram! But, of course, that is another story.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Critic_ (September, 1902); _The Nation_ (February 5, 1903); _The Bookman_ (February, 1904).
ANVIL ROCK[4]
[From _'Round Anvil Rock_ (New York, 1903)]
The courage and calmness which he had found in himself under this test, heartened him and made him the more determined to control his wandering fancy. Looking now neither to the right nor the left, he pressed on through the clearing toward the buffalo track in the border of the forest which would lead him into the Wilderness Road. Sternly setting his thoughts on the errand that was taking him to the salt-works, he began to think of the place in which they were situated, and to wonder why so bare, so brown, and so desolate a spot should have been called Green Lick. There was no greenness about it, and not the slightest sign that there ever had been any verdure, although it still lay in the very heart of an almost tropical forest. It must surely have been as it was now since time immemorial. Myriads of wild beasts coming and going through numberless centuries to drink the salt water, had trodden the earth around it as hard as iron, and had worn it down far below the surface of the surrounding country. The boy had seen it often, but always by daylight, and never alone, so that he noted many things now which he had not observed before. The huge bison must have gone over that well-beaten track one by one, to judge by its narrowness. He could see it dimly, running into the clearing like a black line beginning far off between the bordering trees; but as he looked, the darkness deepened, the mists thickened, and a look of unreality came over familiar objects. And then through the wavering gloom there suddenly towered a great dark mass topped by something which rose against the wild dimness like a colossal blacksmith's anvil. It might have been Vulcan's own forge, so strange and fabulous a thing it seemed! The boy's heart leaped with his pony's leap. His imagination spread its swift wings ere he could think; but in another instant he reminded himself.
This was not an awful apparition, but a real thing, wondrous and unaccountable enough in its reality. It was Anvil Rock--a great, solitary rock rising abruptly from the rockless loam of a level country, and lifting its single peak, rudely shaped like a blacksmith's anvil, straight up toward the clouds.
THE OLD-FASHIONED FIDDLERS
[From the same]
Those old-time country fiddlers--all of them, black or white--how wonderful they were! They have always been the wonder and the despair of all musicians who have played by rule and note. The very way that the country fiddler held his fiddle against his chest and never against his shoulder like the trained musician! The very way that the country fiddler grasped his bow, firmly and squarely in the middle, and never lightly at the end like a trained musician! The very way that he let go and went off and kept on--the amazing, inimitable spirit, the gayety, the rhythm, the swing! No trained musician ever heard the music of the country fiddler without wondering at its power, and longing in vain to know the secret of its charm. It would be worth a good deal to know where and how they learned the tunes that they played. Possibly these were handed down by ear from one to another; some perhaps may have never been pent up in notes, and others may have been given to the note reader under other names than those by which the country fiddlers knew them. This is said to have been the case with "Old Zip Coon," and the names of many of them would seem to prove that they belonged to the time and the country. But there is a delightful uncertainty about the origin and the history of almost all of them--about "Leather Breeches" and "Sugar in the Gourd" and "Wagoner" and "Cotton-eyed Joe," and so on through a long list.
FOOTNOTE:
[4] Copyright, 1903, by the Macmillan Company.
WILLIAM B. SMITH
William Benjamin Smith, perhaps the greatest scholar ever born on Kentucky soil, first saw the light at Stanford, Kentucky, October 26, 1850. Kentucky (Transylvania) University conferred the degree of Master of Arts upon him in 1871; and the University of Gottengen granted him his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1879. Dr. Smith was professor of mathematics in Central College, Missouri, from 1881 to 1885, when he accepted the chair of physics in the University of Missouri. In 1888 he was transferred to the department of mathematics in the same institution, which he held until 1893, when he resigned to accept a similar position at Tulane University. In 1906 Dr. Smith was elected head of the department of philosophy at Tulane, which position he holds at the present time. He was a delegate of the United States government to the first Pan-American Scientific Congress, held at Santiago, Chile, in 1908. Dr. Smith is the author of the following books, the very titles of which will show his amazing versatility: _Co-ordinate Geometry_ (Boston, 1885); _Clew to Trigonometry_ (1889); _Introductory Modern Geometry_ (New York, 1893); _Infinitesimal Analysis_ (New York, 1898); _The Color Line_ (New York, 1905), a stirring discussion of the Negro problem from a rather new perspective; two theological works, written originally in German, _Der Vorchristliche Jesus_ (Jena, Germany, 1906); and _Ecce Deus_ (Jena, Germany, 1911), the English translation of which was issued at London and Chicago in 1912. These two works upon proto-Christianity have placed Dr. Smith among the foremost scholars of his day and generation in America. Besides his books he wrote two pamphlets of more than fifty pages each upon _Tariff for Protection_ (Columbia, Missouri, 1888); and _Tariff Reform_ (Columbia, Missouri, 1892). These show the author at his best. And his biography of James Sidney Rollins, founder of the University of Missouri, was published about this time. During the month of October, 1896, Dr. Smith published six articles in the Chicago _Record_, on the sliver question and in defense of the gold standard, which were certainly the most thorough brought out by the presidential campaign of that year. Among his many public addresses, essays, and articles, _The Pauline Codices F and G_ may be mentioned, as well as his articles on _Infinitesimal Calculus_ and _New Testament Criticism_ in the _Encyclopaedia Americana_ (New York, 1906); and he compiled the mathematical definitions for the _New International Dictionary_ (New York, 1908). Dr. Smith's fine poem, _The Merman and the Seraph_, was crowned in the _Poet Lore_ competition of 1906. As a mathematician, philosopher, sociologist, New Testament critic, publicist, poet, and alleged prototype of _David_, hero of Mr. James Lane Allen's _The Reign of Law_--which he most certainly was not!--Dr.
Smith stands supreme among the sons of Kentucky.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Current Literature_ (June, 1905); _The Nation_ (November 23, 1911).
A SOUTHERN VIEW OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM[5]
[From _The Color Line_ (New York, 1905)]
It is idle to talk of education and civilization and the like as corrective or compensative agencies. All are weak and beggarly as over against the almightiness of heredity, the omniprepotence of the transmitted germ-plasma. Let this be amerced of its ancient rights, let it be shorn in some measure of its exceeding weight of ancestral glory, let it be soiled in its millenial purity and integrity, and nothing shall ever restore it; neither wealth, nor culture, nor science, nor art, nor morality, nor religion--not even Christianity itself. Here and there these may redeem some happy spontaneous variation, some lucky freak of nature; but nothing more--they can never redeem the race. If this be not true, then history and biology are alike false; then Darwin and Spencer, Haeckel and Weismann, Mendel and Pearson, have lived and laboured in vain.
Equally futile is the reply, so often made by our opponents, that miscegenation has already progressed far in the Southland, as witness millions of Mulattoes. Certainly; but do not such objectors know in their hearts that their reply is no answer, but is utterly irrelevant?
We admit and deplore the fact that unchastity has poured a broad stream of white blood into black veins; but we deny, and perhaps no one will affirm, that it has poured even the slenderest appreciable rill of Negro blood into the veins of the Whites. We have no excuse whatever to make for these masculine incontinences; we abhor them as disgraceful and almost bestial. But, however degrading and even unnatural, they in nowise, not even in the slightest conceivable degree, defile the Southern Caucasian blood. That blood to-day is absolutely pure; and it is the inflexible resolution of the South to preserve that purity, no matter how dear the cost. We repeat, then, it is not a question of individual morality, nor even of self-respect. He who commerces with a negress debases himself and dishonours his body, the temple of the Spirit; but he does not impair, in anywise, the dignity or integrity of his race; he may sin against himself and others, and even against his God, but not against the germ-plasma of his kind.
Does some one reply that some Negroes are better than some Whites, physically, mentally, morally? We do not deny it; but this fact, again, is without pertinence. It may very well be that some dogs are superior to some men. It is absurd to suppose that only the elect of the Blacks would unite with only the non-elect of the Whites. Once started, the _pamnixia_ would spread through all classes of society and contaminate possibly or actually all. Even a little leaven may leaven the whole lump.
Far more than this, however, even if only very superior Negroes formed unions with non-superior Whites, the case would not be altered; for it is a grievous error to suppose that the child is born of its proximate parents only; it is born of all its ancestry; it is the child of its race. The eternal past lays hand upon it and upon all its descendants.
However weak the White, behind him stands Europe; however strong the Black, behind lies Africa.