welling tear is arrested by the faint smile. At the end of "Meh Lady" the old negro, Uncle Billy, sitting at his door in the moonlight dreamily smoking, has a vision of the dear dead days, in the telling of which there is an exquisite union of quaint, heartfelt pathos and gentle humor, but the pathos prevails. The moonlight, in truth, is over all that poetic past, the moonlight of memory, very much as it is over the fairylands of childhood. As Page sees that old civilization, it was "the sweetest, purest, and most beautiful ever lived."

This sentiment finds delightful expression in Red Rock, the preface to which prepares us for the romantic treatment of the material, so artistically done, indeed, as to seem quite realistic. But through it all we are made to feel that with the passing of the old régime in Virginia there vanished from the earth a glory as hopeless of recovery as a lost Pleiad. "Even the moonlight was richer and mellower before the war than it is. now." Dr. Cary in Red Rock is a noble figure, one of the finest in our fiction, heroic in his life of service. The old community lives again, as we read this delineation of men and women bravely taking up their burdens after the war. And the book ends in hope; the spirit of reconciliation between the sundered sections is manifest; the prophecy of a new nationalism is there. It has been the province of Thomas Nelson Page to reconstruct aristocratic Virginia at the end of the golden age. Upon the whole he has done this more pleasingly in his short stories than in his novels. He has been particularly successful in portraying the Virginia woman of war times, the heroine of the home who learned to minister also to those on the battle field and to endure with serene courage the discomforts of poverty. In his dealing with negro dialect he is as successful as Joel Chandler Harris and Irwin Russell; but, as has been pointed out, he is concerned with the negro only as "an accessory to the white man, " while Harris and Russell have given him a separate existence through his folk-lore. Page's 1 Southern Writers, Vol. II, p. 147: article by Mims.

contribution is a series of memorable pictures of the happy relations between master and man.

LATER WRITERS

The writers already considered are representative of literature in the South up to the end of the nineteenth century. The list is not an exhaustive one, for the limits of this work forbid an attempt at that; only those writers who, by virtue of some noteworthy contribution, have come to be regarded as standard,

are discussed; even these are subject to a modification of values in the judgment of a later posterity. Few living writers, indeed, can assuredly boast themselves of tomorrow; in literature it is hard to tell what a decade may bring forth. Predictions are perilous, and "the whirligig of time brings in his revenges."

There are a few writers of prose fiction who have become widely known since the closing years of the last century, and who within the last decade have strength

ened their claims to permanent recognition. Brief mention of these in a concise history of American literature seems justified.

Of the later short-story writers, WILLIAM SIDNEY PORTER ("O. Henry") (1862-1910) has achieved widespread popularity. He was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, lived on a cattle ranch in Texas, did newspaper work in Houston and Austin,

spent a while in Central America, moved to New Orleans, and in 1902 settled in New York, where he was living at the time of his death. Of the nine or ten volumes of his short stories the best are probably Cabbages and Kings (1905), The Four Million (1906), Heart of the West (1907), and The Voice of the City (1908). The Four Million and The Voice of the City are short stories of life in New York City as Porter saw it on the streets and in the shops. These volumes probably contain his most enduring contribution. The chief characteristics of an "O. Henry" short story are humanness, compactness, and final dramatic surprise. He endeavored to depict the romance of the common human heart and the common human life. He said that he tried to show that "the innate propensity of human nature is to choose the good instead of the bad."

JOHN FOX (1863—) is a native of the Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky, who has written interesting short stories and novels of life in the Kentucky and Virginia mountains. He spent many years at Big Stone Gap, Virginia, which is still his summer home, among the people whom he describes, sustaining to that region something of the relation that Miss Murfree does to the Tennessee mountains. The best known of his works are The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, A Cumberland Vendetta, The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come, and A Knight of the Cumberland.

A reaction against realism is to be found in the earlier work of MARY JOHNSTON (1870--), of Virginia, whose Prisoners of Hope, To Have and to Hold, Audrey, and Lewis Rand, deal with the romantic period of old Virginia history. In these romances there is a revival of the historical novel in a modified form. Her two later works, The Long Roll (1910) and Cease Firing (1912), depict scenes and heroes of the Confederacy. Miss Johnston shows a remarkably extensive knowledge of the background of her novels and an unusual grasp on historical detail. Her later novels are more realistic than the earlier, the purpose being to portray with faithfulness some of the

great campaigns, battles, and leaders of the Southern side. This she does with vigor and vividness. These works form a sort of prose epic of that mighty struggle.

Another Virginia novelist, ELLEN GLASGOW (1874-), has chosen as the general theme of her most interesting novels the changing society of the South after the war and the consequent social readjustments. The Deliverance, The Voice of the People, The Romance of a Plain Man, and The Miller of Old Church, develop various phases of this theme in a striking way, but the main interest is in the puzzling question of unequal marriages. The inferior class of society under the old order, growing prosperous and enlightened, aspires to intermarriage with the descendants of the higher class. The gradual intermingling of the two social strata seems to typify, as in a kind of faint allegory, the triumph of democracy in the New South, which is to recruit itself from the ranks. These realistic novels, however one may interpret the complex social problems there presented, are thought-provoking. The themes are developed with clearness, courage, and well conceived art.

Among the other numerous present-day writers ALICE HEGAN RICE (1870), of Kentucky, may be mentioned for her clever delineation in humorous and breezy fashion of simple, humble folk, for whose struggles she shows a sympathetic appreciation. Her most famous book is Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, which has been successfully dramatized. The widespread interest in forms of social service shows its influence in the work of HENRY SYDNOR HARRISON, Who began his career as an editorial writer on the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and whose novels, Queed and V. V.'s Eyes, have won high praise for the strength and nobility of the characters portrayed and for the wholesomeness and ingenuity of the plots.

Other Southern Writers.-Other writers in the South since the war to whom brief notice must be given are: RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON (1822-1898), who was born and educated in Georgia but spent the last thirty years of his life in Baltimore and Washington. He was lawyer,

college professor (in the University of Georgia, 1857-'61), schoolmaster (in Baltimore), and at the time of his death was connected with the United States Bureau of Education. He is author of a number of volumes of stories, but his best work is the collection of Dukesborough Tales (1871), racy stories of Georgia country life around the village of Powelton, four miles from the author's birthplace. FRANCIS HOPKINSON SMITH (1838—), a native of Baltimore, has written one famous story of Southern life, Colonel Carter of Cartersville (1891). Literature is his avocation rather than his vocation, for he is civil engineer, painter, and lighthouse builder. AUGUSTA EVANS WILSON (1835-1909), was born in Georgia, but spent most of her life in Mobile, Alabama; she wrote a number of romances, of which St. Elmo is the best. Her books were once popular, but the stilted style and the pedantry do not greatly appeal to readers now. St. Elmo was once a "best seller" and, despite its unrealities of plot and character, still exerts a fascination on the romantic youthful mind. W. GORDON MCCABE (1841-), of Richmond, Virginia, has written fine poems of war time, the best known of which are "Dreaming in the Trenches," "Christmas Night of '62," and "Only a Memory." FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT (1849-) was born in England, but because she lived for a time in Tennessee she is sometimes classified as a Southern writer. Her most notable work is Little Lord Fauntleroy, though she has written other exceedingly popular stories, such, for instance, as That Lass o'Lowrie's. MARION HARLAND (Mrs. Mary V. Terhune) (1831—), though born in Virginia, has spent most of her life out of the South; her writing, however, has been largely on Southern life. Her stories, such as Sunnybank, Judith, and others, are bright and wholesome. Another writer connected with the South is GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON (1839-1912), brother of Edward Eggleston, the Indiana writer. Eggleston was born in Indiana, of Virginia ancestry; was educated at Depauw University and Richmond College, Virginia; served in the Confederate army; and spent most of his life in New York City as editor and author. He wrote a number of stories on old Southern life, several books of adventure for young people, and entertaining reminiscences of his own experiences as soldier and literary man. HARRY STILLWell Edwards (1854—) of Macon, Georgia, has written entertaining stories and sketches of Southern life and character. GRACE ELIZABETH KING (1852—), of Louisiana, has made valuable contributions to local literature and history, especially on the Creoles and the early history of her native state. Among her works are Monsieur Motte, Tales of Time and Place, and Balcony Stories. RUTH MCENERY STUART (1856-), of Louisiana, is the author of many pleasing short stories of lowly life, including the negro, in the South. Her work is artistically and sympathetically done. She has been called "the laureate of the