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FOOTNOTES:

[82] Copyright, 1909, by S. S. McClure Company.

[83] Copyright, 1909, by S. S. McClure Company.

[84] Copyright, 1910, by the Atlantic Monthly Company.

ABBY MEGUIRE ROACH

Mrs. Abby Meguire Roach, "the very cleverest of the Louisville school of women novelists," was born at Philadelphia in 1876. She was educated in the schools of her native city, finishing her training with a year at Wellesley College. In 1899 she was married to Mr. Neill Roach, of Louisville, Kentucky, and that city has been her home since.

Mrs. Roach wrote many stories of married life for the New York magazines, which were afterwards collected and published as _Some Successful Marriages_ (New York, 1906). These have been singled out by the reviewers as "charming" and "most beautiful"; and her work has been compared to Miss May Sinclair's, the famous English novelist. One of Mrs. Roach's most recent stories was published in _The Century Magazine_ for July, 1907, entitled "Manifest Destiny," but this has not been followed by any others in the last year or so.

"Unremembering June," one of the best of the tales in _Some Successful Marriages_, relates the love of Molly-Moll for her invalid husband, after whose death she falls in love with Reno, the father of Lola, "who had been his salvage from the wreck of his marriage."

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Harper's Magazine_ (May, 1907); _Library of Southern Literature_ (Atlanta, 1909, v. xv), contains Miss Marilla Waite Freeman's excellent study of Mrs. Roach.

UNREMEMBERING JUNE[85]

[From _Some Successful Marriages_ (New York, 1906)]

"And you will let me have word of you? Surely? And give me a chance to be of use? Won't you?" he persisted, taking leave. She swept his face swiftly with a glance of inquiry, intelligence. "Won't you?"

"O-h--perhaps," with just the faintest puckering of the mouth.

But spring passed without word from her, until there were times when Reno's impatience seethed like a colony of bees at hiving-time.

At last he wrote.

With unpardonable deliberation a brief answer came: Molly's son was a couple months old, but not yet finished enough to be much to look at.

He wrote again: Lola was pale from the city, and bored with herself and her maid; a farm with other children on it sounded like fairyland to her. Could some arrangement be made...?

Lola had been there a month before he had any word but her own hard-written and naturally not very voluminous love-letters, letters in which the homesickness was an ever fainter and fainter echo of the first wild cry, and in which the references to "Dandie" made it plain that she had adopted the other children's auntie into a peculiar relationship with herself. At last a postscript from Mrs. Loring herself:

"Wouldn't you like to come to see her? It's worth a longer trip."

"Of course I would. You're uncommon slow asking me. What kind of father, and man, do you think me?"

Molly was standing with the baby in her arms, chewing its chub of fist. In the warm wind soft wisps of blown brown hair curled all around forehead and neck. Her flesh was firm, transparent, aglow; her skin as clear, satiny, pink as the baby's. And what generous, sweet plumpness! She was at perhaps the most beautiful time of a woman's life--in the glamour of first young motherhood, with the beauty of perfect health and uncoarsened maturity.

And in the black-and-white of her shirt-waist suit there was no more suggestion of mourning than there is thought of winter in full June--rich, warm, full of promise, "unremembering June," the present and future tenses of the year's declension.

As she stood biting the baby, Reno understood why. His look devoured her.

Seeing him, her eyes only gave greeting, and, smiling, directed his to the group of animated children's overalls in a sand-pile in front of her. One particular occupant of one particular pair of overalls spied him. Lola flew. He held her off, brown, round, rosy. "Why, who is this? Whose little girl--or boy--are you?"

Her head dropped; she dropped from his hand like a nipped flower.

"Whose little girl _are_ you?" coached a rich voice with an undercurrent of laughter.

Like a flower again, the child swayed at the breath of that elemental nature. "Dandie's little girl," ventured a small voice. At sight of the father's face, Molly laughed, a laugh of many significances. And with a flood of recollected loyalty, "_Papa's!_" gasped the child, and smothered him with remorse.

"Wouldn't you like to be Dandie's and papa's little girl all at once?"

("Well! I like that!")

"Why, yes. Ain't I? Can't I?"

"I think you can."

("Oh, you do?")

"No?" His grip on her wrist hurt, and forced her to look up. ("Is it only a mother you want for Lola--and yourself?"); and, looking, she was satisfied; and, looking, she flushed slowly from head to foot, answering him.

"The most loyal, affectionate woman in the world!" he added, after a little.

"Oh, never mind the fairy tales!" she scoffed, pleased, waiting.

He spoke none of the time-honored commonplaces that belittle or dignify or mask the real individual feeling under the stereotype of what it is assumed love ought to be. He could foresee her amusement.

Besides, it would have been about as appropriate as trying to capture a bird with a smile.

"But I would never marry any woman that I wasn't sure would be kind to Lola and fond of her."

"Oh, Lola!" Her whole look was soft and sweet. "I am fond of her now."

Then a mischievous laugh bubbled in her throat. "And could be of you, too, if you insist." Even with the laugh her eyes were deeper than words, grave and tender.

"As to that, also, Molly-Moll, what you will be to me I am quite satisfied, quite."

FOOTNOTE:

[85] Copyright, 1906, by Harper and Brothers.

IRVIN S. COBB

Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb, humorist and short-story writer, was born at Paducah, Kentucky, June 23, 1876. He was educated in public and private schools, but the newspaper field loomed large before him, and at the age of nineteen he became editor of the Paducah _Daily News_.

For three years he conducted the "Sour Mash" column in the Louisville _Evening Post_, when he returned to Paducah to become managing editor of the _News-Democrat_, which position he held from 1901 to 1904. Late in the year of 1904 Mr. Cobb went to New York, and for a year he was editor of the humorous section and special writer for _The Evening Sun_. In 1905 he became staff humorist for _The World_, and for the following six years he remained with that paper. Mr. Cobb has written several plays, none of which have been published in book form, but they have been produced upon the stage. They include: _The Campaigner_, _Funabashi_, _Mr. Busybody_, _The Gallery God_, _The Yeggman_, and _Daffy-Down-Dilly_. He has written many humorous stories, among which may be mentioned: _New York Through Funny Glasses_, _The Hotel Clerk_, _Live Talks with Dead Ones_, _Making Peace at Portsmouth_, _The Gotham Geography_, and _The Diary of Noah_.

Then, one day, the daily grind racked his nerves, he rebelled and bethought himself of the good old days in Kentucky years agone. Ah, what a fine chapter was added to the history of our native letters when Cobb looked backward! Now, when he was but twenty-four years of age, he had written a story, a horror tale of Reelfoot Lake, which he named "Fishhead" and immediately forgot, but which he had brought on East with him. On this he made some minor revisions and started it on its round of the magazine editors. But Cobb didn't wait for the fate of "Fishhead"; and it's a good thing that he didn't! He wrote what he now regards as his first fiction story, The Escape of Mr. Trimm; and _The Saturday Evening Post_ accepted it so quickly, printing it in the issue for November 27, 1909, that Cobb gleefully cashed the cheque and sent them another shortly thereafter. The editor of _The Post_, George Horace Lorimer, whom many competent judges considered the greatest editor in the United States, realized that a new literary planet had swam into his ken; and in 1911 he asked Cobb to become a staff contributor, which the Kentuckian was delighted to do. All of his stories have appeared in that publication, all save _Fishhead_, which Mr. Lorimer regarded as a bit too strong medicine for his subscribers. Mr. Cobb's next big story in _The Post_ was one that he has come to regard as the best thing he has done hitherto, "An Occurrence Up a Side Street," which appeared in the issue for January 21, 1911. This was a real horror tale, a "thriller,"

making one couple the name of Cobb with Poe, a comparison which has gathered strength with the passing of the months. For _The Post_ Mr.

Cobb created Judge Priest, a character that has made him famous. He did a group of tales about and around this leading citizen of a certain Southern town--which town was none other than his own Paducah; and which character was none other than old Judge Bishop, whom many Kentuckians recall with pleasure. Cobb is a great realist and he has never had any patience with the romanticists. He painted the old town and the old judge and the judge's friends and enemies--if he had any--just as he remembered them. The best of these yarns, perhaps, was "Words and Music," printed in the issue for October 28, 1911; and when they were collected the other day and published under the title of _Back Home_ (New York, 1912), that story, in which the old judge "rambles," was the first of the ten tales the book contained. Some reviewers of this work have rather loosely characterized it as a novel, and in a certain big sense it is; but the sub-title is a better description: "the narrative of Judge Priest and his people." The book is really a series of pictures; and what Francis H. Underwood did so well in his Kentucky novel, _Lord of Himself_, and what William C. Watts did much better in his _Chronicles of a Kentucky Settlement_, Irvin S. Cobb has done in a manner superior to either of them in his _Back Home_. Judge Priest is a worthy and welcome addition to the gallery of American heroes of prose fiction, hung next to Bret Harte's highest heroes. Cohan and Harris have acquired the dramatic rights of his book, and it is to be made into play-form by Bayard Veiller, author of _Within the Law_, the great "hit" of the 1912 New York season, in collaboration with the Kentuckian, who once wrote of his original plays, which have already been listed: "One was accidentally destroyed, one was lost, and one was loaned out and never returned." Let us hope that none of these things may overtake the present work; and that, when Thomas Wise struts across the boards in the autumn of 1913 as Judge Priest he may receive a bigger "hand" than he ever drew in _The Gentleman from Mississippi_.

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