Mrs. Annie Fellows Johnston, creator of the famous "Little Colonel Series," was born at Evansville, Indiana, May 15, 1863, the daughter of a clergyman. Miss Fellows was educated in the public schools of Evansville, and then spent the year of 1881-1882 at the State University of Iowa. She was married at Evansville, in 1888, to William L. Johnston, who died four years later, leaving her a son and daughter. Mrs. Johnston's first arrival in Kentucky as a resident (though not as a visitor), was in 1898, and then she stayed only three years. Her son's quest of health led her first to Walton, New York, then to Arizona, where they spent a winter on the desert in sight of Camelback mountain, which suggested the legend of _In the Desert of Waiting_. From Arizona they went to California and then, in 1903, decided to try the climate of Texas, up in the hill country, north of San Antonio. Mrs. Johnston called her home "Penacres," and she lived there until her son's death in the fall of 1910. She and her daughter returned to Pewee Valley, Kentucky, in April, 1911, and purchased "The Beeches," the old home of Mrs. Henry W. Lawton, the widow of the famous American general. The house is situated in a six acre grove of magnificent beech-trees, and is a place often mentioned in "The Little Colonel" stories. Mrs. Johnston's books are: _Big Brother_ (Boston, 1893); _The Little Colonel_ (Boston, 1895); _Joel: A Boy of Galilee_ (Boston, 1895; Italian translation, 1900); _In League with Israel_ (Cincinnati, 1896), the second and last of Mrs. Johnston's books that was not issued by L. C. Page and Company, Boston; _Ole Mammy's Torment_ (1897); _Songs Ysame_ (1897), a book of poems, written with her sister, Mrs. Albion Fellows Bacon, the social reformer of Evansville, Indiana; _The Gate of the Giant Scissors_ (1898); _Two Little Knights of Kentucky_ (1899), written in Kentucky; _The Little Colonel's House Party_ (1900); _The Little Colonel's Holidays_ (1901); _The Little Colonel's Hero_ (1902); _Cicely_ (1902); _Asa Holmes, or At the Crossroads_ (1902); _Flip's Islands of Providence_ (1903); _The Little Colonel at Boarding-School_ (1903), the children's "Order of Hildegarde" was founded on the story of _The Three Weavers_ in this volume; _The Little Colonel in Arizona_ (1904); _The Quilt that Jack Built_ (1904); _The Colonel's Christmas Vacation_ (1905); _In the Desert of Waiting_ (1905; Japanese translation, Tokio, 1906); _The Three Weavers_ (1905), a special edition of this famous story; _Mildred's Inheritance_ (1906); _The Little Colonel, Maid of Honor_ (1906); _The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding_ (1907); _Mary Ware_ (1908); _The Legend of the Bleeding Heart_ (1908); _Keeping Tryst_ (1908); _The Rescue of the Princess Winsome_ (1908); _The Jester's Sword_ (1909; Japanese translation, Tokio, 1910); _The Little Colonel's Good Times Book_ (1909); _Mary Ware in Texas_ (1910); and _Travellers Five_ (1911), a collection of short-stories for grown people, previously published in magazines, with a foreword by Bliss Carman. The little Kentucky girl--called the "Little Colonel" because of her resemblance to a Southern gentleman of the old school--has had Mrs. Johnston's attention for seventeen years, and she has recently announced that she is at work upon the twelfth and final volume of the "Little Colonel Series," as she feels that work for grown-ups is more worth her while. This last story of the series was published in the fall of 1912, entitled _Mary Ware's Promised Land_; and needless to say her "promised land" is Kentucky. There are "Little Colonel Clubs"
all over the world, as Mrs. Johnston has learned from thousands of letters from children, and when she rings down the curtain upon her heroine many girls and boys in this and other countries will be sad.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Current Literature_ (April, 1901); _The Century_ (September, 1903).
THE MAGIC KETTLE[37]
[From _The Little Colonel's Holidays_ (Boston, 1901)]
Once upon a time, so the story goes (you may read it yourself in the dear old tales of Hans Christian Andersen), there was a prince who disguised himself as a swineherd. It was to gain admittance to a beautiful princess that he thus came in disguise to her father's palace, and to attract her attention he made a magic caldron, hung around with strings of silver bells. Whenever the water in the caldron boiled and bubbled, the bells rang a little tune to remind her of him.
"Oh, thou dear Augustine, All is lost and gone,"
they sang. Such was the power of the magic kettle, that when the water bubbled hard enough to set the bells a-tinkling, any one holding his hand in the steam could smell what was cooking in every kitchen in the kingdom.
It has been many a year since the swineherd's kettle was set a-boiling and its string of bells a-jingling to satisfy the curiosity of a princess, but a time has come for it to be used again. Not that anybody nowadays cares to know what his neighbor is going to have for dinner, but all the little princes and princesses in the kingdom want to know what happened next.
"What happened after the Little Colonel's house party?" they demand, and they send letters to the Valley by the score, asking "Did Betty go blind?" "Did the two little Knights of Kentucky ever meet Joyce again or find the Gate of the Giant Scissors?" "Did the Little Colonel ever have any more good times at Locust, or did Eugenia ever forget that she too had started out to build a Road of the Loving Heart?"
It would be impossible to answer all these questions through the post-office, so that is why the magic kettle has been dragged from its hiding-place after all these years, and set a-boiling once more.
Gather in a ring around it, all you who want to know, and pass your curious fingers through its wreaths of rising steam. Now you shall see the Little Colonel and her guests of the house party in turn, and the bells shall ring for each a different song.
But before they begin, for the sake of some who may happen to be in your midst for the first time, and do not know what it is all about, let the kettle give them a glimpse into the past, that they may be able to understand all that is about to be shown to you. Those who already know the story need not put their fingers into the steam, until the bells have rung this explanation in parenthesis.
(In Lloydsboro Valley stands an old Southern mansion, known as "Locust."
The place is named for a long avenue of giant locust-trees stretching a quarter of a mile from house to entrance gate in a great arch of green.
Here for years an old Confederate colonel lived all alone save for the negro servants. His only child, Elizabeth, had married a Northern man against his wishes, and gone away. From that day he would not allow her name to be spoken in his presence. But she came back to the Valley when her little daughter Lloyd was five years old. People began calling the child the Little Colonel because she seemed to have inherited so many of her grandfather's lordly ways as well as a goodly share of his high temper. The military title seemed to suit her better than her own name for in her fearless baby fashion she won her way into the old man's heart and he made a complete surrender.
Afterward when she and her mother and "Papa Jack" went to live with him at Locust, one of her favorite games was playing soldier. The old man never tired of watching her march through the wide halls with his spurs strapped to her tiny slipper heels, and her dark eyes flashing out fearlessly from under the little Napoleon cap she wore.
She was eleven when she gave her house party. One of the guests was Joyce Ware, whom some of you have met, perhaps, in "The Gate of the Giant Scissors," a bright thirteen-year-old girl from the West.
Eugenia Forbes was another. She was a distant cousin of Lloyd's, who had no home-life like other girls. Her winters were spent in a fashionable New York boarding-school, and her summers at the Waldorf-Astoria, except the few weeks when her busy father could find time to take her to some seaside resort.
The third guest, Elizabeth Lloyd Lewis, or Betty, as every one lovingly called her, was Mrs. Sherman's little god-daughter. She was an orphan, boarding on a backwoods farm on Green River. She had never been on the cars until Lloyd's invitation found its way to the Cuckoo's Nest. Only these three came to stay in the house, but Malcolm and Keith MacIntyre (the two little Knights of Kentucky) were there nearly every day. So was Rob Moore, one of the Little Colonel's summer neighbors.
The four Bobs were four little foxterrier puppies named for Rob, who had given one to each of the girls. They were so much alike they could only be distinguished by the colour of the ribbons tied around their necks. Tarbaby was the Little Colonel's pony, and Lad the one that Betty rode during her visit.
After six weeks of picnics and parties, and all sorts of surprises and good times, the house party came to a close with a grand feast of lanterns. Joyce regretfully went home to the little brown house in Plainsville, Kansas, taking her Bob with her. Eugenia and her father went to New York, but not until they had promised to come back for Betty in the fall, and take her abroad with them. It was on account of something that had happened at the house party, but which is too long a tale to repeat here.
Betty stayed on at Locust until the end of the summer in the House Beautiful, as she called her god-mother's home, and here on the long vine-covered porch, with its stately white pillars, you shall see them first through the steam of the magic caldron).
Listen! Now the kettle boils and the bells begin the story!
FOOTNOTE:
[37] Copyright, 1901, by L. C. Page and Company.
EVA A. MADDEN
Miss Eva Anne Madden, author of a group of popular stories for children, was born near Bedford, Kentucky, October 26, 1863, the elder sister of Mrs. George Madden Martin, creator of _Emmy Lou_. Miss Madden was educated in the public schools of Louisville, Kentucky, after which she took a normal course. At the mature age of fourteen she was writing for _The Courier-Journal_; two years later she was doing book reviews for _The Evening Post_; and when eighteen years of age she became a teacher in the public schools. Miss Madden taught for more than ten years, or until 1892, when she went to New York and engaged in newspaper work. Her first book, _Stephen, or the Little Crusaders_ (New York, 1901), was published only a few months before she sailed for Europe, where she has resided for the last eleven years. Miss Madden's _The I Can School_ (New York, 1902), was followed by her other books, _The Little Queen_ (Boston, 1903); _The Soldiers of the Duke_ (Boston, 1904); and her most recent story, _Two Royal Foes_ (New York, 1907). Miss Madden has been the Italian representative of a London firm since 1907; and since 1908 she has been the correspondent of the Paris edition of the _New York Herald_ for the city in which she lives, Florence, Italy. She had a very good short-story in _The Century_ for February, 1911, entitled _The Interrupted Pen_.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Library of Southern Literature_ (Atlanta, 1910, v.
xv); _Who's Who in America_ (1912-1913).
THE END OF "THE I CAN SCHOOL."[38]
[From _The I Can School_ (New York, 1902)]
"Good-bye, Miss Ellison," she said, putting up her little mouth to be kissed. "I'm sorry that it's the end of the 'I Can School.'"
Then Miss Ellison was all smiles.
"You sweet little thing," she said, which was exactly what she had done ten months before.
How long ago that seemed to Virginia. How stupid she had been about learning to spell that easy "cat."
Now she could read a whole page about a black cat which got into the nest of a white hen, and she could add numbers, and "write vertical."
She had painted in a book, and modeled a lovely half-apple, made real by a stem and the seeds of a russet she had had for lunch one day. She knew the name of all the birds about Fairview, and she could tell about the wild flowers.
Altogether she felt very learned and scornful of a certain small person who had thought Kentucky the name of a little girl, and who had known nothing of George Washington, and who had called C-A-T kitten-puss.
Virginia's mamma was very proud of all her little girl knew. She did not wait for Virginia to get her work from the janitor. She took it all carefully home to show her husband.
"Papa," said Virginia, the moment Mr. Barton entered the house that evening, "it's vacation!"
"Vacation!" said her father. "My! my! I remember that there was a time, Miss Barton, when I loved it better than school; do you?"
Virginia hesitated.
"Ten months," she said at last, "is a lot of school. Lucretia and Catherine seem just as tired, papa. Their lessons don't interest them now that it's so hot. I love the 'I Can School,' papa; but it's nice to stay at home and play 'Lady come to see.'"
This was a very long speech for Virginia, the longest that she ever had made.
Her papa laughed.
"Miss Barton," he said, "profound student that you are, I see that in some things you are not altogether different from your parent. But let me remind you, Miss Barton, when you feel at times a little tired of vacation, that the 'I Can' will begin again on the tenth of September."
"And Miss Ellison will be so glad to see me!" said Virginia confidently.
Her papa laughed.
"As for that, Miss Barton--"