YOUNG E. ALLISON
Young Ewing Allison, one of the most versatile of the Kentucky writers of the present school, was born at Henderson, Kentucky, December 23, 1853. He left school at an early age to become the "devil" in a Henderson printing office. At seventeen years of age Mr. Allison was a newspaper reporter. At different times he has been connected with _The Journal_, of Evansville, Indiana; city and dramatic editor of _The Courier-Journal_; editor of _The Louisville Commercial_; and from 1902 to 1905 he was editor of _The Louisville Herald_. Mr. Allison founded _The Insurance Field_ at Louisville, in 1887, and has since edited it.
He has thus been a newspaper man for more than forty years; and though always very busy, he has found time to write fiction, verse, literary criticism, history, and librettos. In prose fiction Mr. Allison is best known by three stories: _The Passing of Major Kilgore_, which was published as a novelette in _Lippincott's Magazine_ in 1888; _The Longworth Mystery_ (_Century Magazine_, October, 1889); and _Insurance at Piney Woods_ (Louisville, 1896). In half-whimsical literary criticism he has published two small volumes which are known in many parts of the world: _The Delicious Vice_ (Cleveland, 1907, first series; Cleveland, 1909, second series). These papers are "pipe dreams and adventures of an habitual novel-reader among some great books and their people." Mr.
Allison's libretto, _The Ogallallas_, a romantic opera, was produced by the Bostonians Opera Company in 1894; and his _Brother Francisco_, a libretto of tragic opera, was presented at the Royal Opera House, Berlin, by order of Emperor William II. The music to both of these operas was composed by Mr. Henry Waller, Liszt's distinguished pupil. In history Mr. Allison has written _The City of Louisville and a Glimpse of Kentucky_ (Louisville, 1887); and _Fire Underwriting_ (Louisville, 1907). Of his lyrics, _The Derelict_, a completion of the four famous lines in Robert Louis Stevenson's _Treasure Island_, has been printed by almost every newspaper and magazine in the English-speaking world, set to music by Mr. Waller, and an illustrated _edition de luxe_ has recently appeared. _The Derelict_ and _The Delicious Vice_ have firmly fixed Mr. Allison's fame.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Confessions of a Tatler_, by Elvira M. Slaughter (Louisville, 1905); letter from Mr. Allison to the writer.
ON BOARD THE DERELICT
A Reminiscence of _Treasure Island_
[From a leaflet edition]
_Fifteen men on the Dead Man's chest-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!_ --[_Cap'n Billy Bones his song_]
Fifteen men on the Dead Man's chest-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
The mate was fixed by the bos'n's pike, The bos'n brained with a marlinspike, And the Cookey's throat was marked belike It had been gripped By fingers ten; And there they lay, All good dead men, Like break-o'-day in a boozin' ken-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Fifteen men of a whole ship's list-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Dead and bedamned, and the rest gone whist!
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
The skipper lay with his nob in gore Where the scullion's axe his cheek had shore, And the scullion he was stabbed times four.
And there they lay And the soggy skies Dreened all day long In up-staring eyes-- At murk sunset and at foul sunrise-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Fifteen men of 'em stiff and stark-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Ten of the crew had the Murder mark-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
'Twas a cutlass swipe, or an ounce of lead, Or a yawing hole in a battered head-- And the scuppers glut with a rotting red.
And there they lay-- Aye, damn my eyes!-- All lookouts clapped On paradise, All souls bound just the contra'wise-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Fifteen men of 'em good and true-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Every man Jack could ha' sailed with Old Pew-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
There was chest on chest full of Spanish gold, With a ton of plate in the middle hold, And the cabins riot of loot untold.
And they lay there That had took the plum With sightless glare And their lips struck dumb, While we shared all by the rule of thumb-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
_More was seen through the sternlight screen-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Chartings undoubt where a woman had been-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
A flimsy shift on a bunker cot, With a thin dirk slot through the bosom spot, And the lace stiff-dry in a purplish blot.
Or was she wench ...
Or some shuddering maid...?
That dared the knife And that took the blade?...
By God! she was stuff for a plucky jade!-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!_
Fifteen men on the Dead Man's chest-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
We wrapp'd 'em all in a mains'l tight, With twice ten turns of a hawser's bight And we heaved 'em over and out of sight-- With a yo-heave-ho!
And a fare-you-well!
And a sullen plunge In the sullen swell, Ten-fathoms deep on the road to hell-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
HESTER HIGBEE GEPPERT
Mrs. Hester Higbee Geppert ("Dolly Higbee"), newspaper woman and novelist, was born near Edina, Missouri, March 12, 1854. She was the daughter of James Parker Higbee, a Kentuckian, and his second wife, Martha Lane (Galleher) Higbee, a woman of Virginian parentage. Both of Miss Higbee's parents died before she was fourteen years old, and she came to Lexington, Kentucky, to live in the family of Dr. Samuel H.
Chew, who had married her half-sister. Dr. Chew's farm was situated some seven miles from Lexington, and there Miss Higbee lived for ten years. She was educated in Midway, Kentucky, and then taught for several years. She detested teaching and, "in January, 1878, while it was still quite dark, I stole down stairs with five dollars in my pocket and such luggage as I could carry in a handbag, tiptoed into the drizzle and 'lit out.'" The flip of a nickle determined that her new home should be Louisville, and to that city she went. Miss Higbee was the first woman in Kentucky, if not in the South, to adopt journalism as a profession. The following fourteen years of her life were spent in the daily grind of newspaperdom, she having held almost every position on _The Courier-Journal_, save that of editor-in-chief.
In the four hottest weeks of the year, and in the brief intervals of leisure she could snatch from her daily duties, Miss Higbee wrote her now famous novel, _In God's Country_ (New York, 1890). After the Lippincotts had refused this manuscript, _Belford's Monthly Magazine_ accepted it by telegram, paying the author two hundred dollars for it, and publishing it in the issue for November, 1889; and in the following May the story appeared in book form. Colonel Henry Watterson wrote a review of _In God's Country_ that was afterwards published as an introduction for it, and this did much to bring the tale into wide notice. Miss Higbee went to Chicago in 1893 to accept a position on _The Tribune_. On April 4, 1894, she was married to Mr. William Geppert of Atlanta, and the first five years of their married life were spent at Atlanta. It was during this time that Mrs. Geppert's best story was written, _Burton's Scoop_, one of the first American stories written upon hypnotism and related phenomena. The opening chapters of this appeared in the author's little literary magazine, _The Autocrat_, which she conducted at Atlanta for about two years, but it has never been published in book form. Two musical romances, entitled _The Scherzo in B-Flat Minor_ (Atlanta, 1895), and _Un Ze Studio_ (Atlanta, 1895), attracted considerable attention, and a third was announced as _Side Lights_, but was never published. _In God's Country_ was dramatized, with Miss Catherine Gray cast in the role of _Lydia_, and opened at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, New York, September 5, 1897, but the work of the playwright and actors was most displeasing to the author. In 1900 Mr. Geppert became one of the editors of the New York _Musical Courier_, and he and his wife have since resided at Croton-on-the-Hudson. Mrs. Geppert has abandoned literature, but _In God's Country_ has given her a permanent place among the writers of Kentucky.[10]
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Confessions of a Tatler_, by Elvira M. Slaughter (Louisville, 1905); _Lexington Leader_ (July 25, 1909).
THE GARDENER AND THE GIRL[11]
[From _In God's Country_ (New York, 1890)]
Her hair had come down and was tumbling about her neck; she whipped it out and caught it back with a hairpin, took up the guitar, and skirted the shadowy porch to the room over the kitchen. The window was open and she could see Karl sitting in the middle of the room with his head bowed upon his hands. She tapped lightly on the pane. He looked up and saw her standing in the dim light with the guitar in her hand.
"Karl," she said, "I want you to sing me that song before you go--the one you sung me that day for your dinner."
He came forward and took the instrument. He saw she had been crying, but the experience of the summer had been so crushing, he was so subdued by her past behavior, that he did not dream the tears were for him.
"You are grieved for someding," he said, with touching sympathy.
He opened the door and gave her a chair, and, sitting near her on the sill of the window, began to sing the song with all the tenderness and pathos his own yearning and bitter disappointment could put into it. It brought back all the old tumult. She saw now, when it was too late, that she had overestimated her strength. When he finished, she was sobbing; and in an instant he was kneeling by her chair, raising to her a face sad, searching, but shining with the tremulous glow of a hope just born.
"You weep. Liebchen, is it for me?"
She did not answer, but laid a hand gently on his head and looked at him, with all the pent yearning of her full heart, all the agony of that long, weary struggle, and all the pathos of defeat in her eyes.
It was no use. At that moment it seemed that there was nothing else in the world but him. Everything else was remote, dim, and unreal.
He clasped her with a fierce, exultant joy.
"You love me in spite of dis?" he asked, looking down at his coarse attire. "You love me in spite of dat I am your nigga?"
"In spite of all," she faltered.
It was out at last: the crest of victory sank in inglorious surrender.
Her humiliation was his triumph.
He looked at her with a face radiant, shining with a beauty not of earth.