5

even at the bidding of duty or policy, re-
fuse the prayer of age or helplessness
in distress. Children instinctively loved
him; they never found his rugged features
ugly; his sympathies were quick and
seemingly unlimited. He was absolutely
without prejudice of class or condition.
Frederick Douglass says he was the only
man of distinction he ever met who never
reminded him by word or manner of his 10
color; he was as just and generous to the
rich and well born as to the poor and
humble a thing rare among politicians.
He was tolerant even of evil: though no
man can ever have lived with a loftier
scorn of meanness and selfishness, he yet
recognized their existence and counted
with them. He said one day, with a flash
of cynical wisdom worthy of La Roche- 20
foucauld, that honest statesmanship was
the employment of individual meannesses
for the public good. He never asked per-
fection of any one; he did not even insist,
for others, upon the high standards he set 25
up for himself. At a time before the
word was invented he was the first of op-
portunists. With the fire of a reformer
and a martyr in his heart he yet proceeded
by the ways of cautious and practical 30
statescraft. He always worked with
things as they were, while never relin-
quishing the desire and effort to make
them better. To a hope that saw the De-
lectable Mountains of absolute justice and 35

peace in the future, to a faith that God in his own time would give to all men the things convenient to them, he added a charity which embraced in its deep bosom all the good and the bad, all the virtues and the infirmities of men, and a patience like that of nature, which in its vast and fruitful activity knows neither haste nor rest.

A character like this is among the precious heirlooms of the Republic; and by a special good fortune every part of the country has an equal claim and pride in it. Lincoln's blood came from the 15 veins of New England emigrants, of Middle State Quakers, of Virginia planters, of Kentucky pioneers; he himself was one of the men who grew up with the earliest growth of the Great West. Every jewel of his mind or his conduct sheds radiance on each portion of the nation. The marvelous symmetry and balance of his intellect and character may have owed something to this varied environment of his race, and they may fitly typify the variety and solidity of the Republic. It may not be unreasonable to hope that his name and his renown may be forever a bond of union to the country which he loved with an affection so impartial, and served - in life and in death with such entire devotion.

From Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1887.

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS (1837- )

As one follows chronologically the course of American literature, one notes that beginning in the mid-thirties more and more writers were born outside the New England environment, and that most of those who were to be leaders of the new period came from beyond the Hudson, and even beyond the Alleghanies. One thinks of Harte and Burroughs and James born in New York, and of Mark Twain, Eggleston, Hay, Miller, Lew Wallace, and Howells born in the Midlands. Howells was a native of Ohio and until he was long past twenty he had never been beyond the bounds of his state. He was largely self educated: his college was a country printing office and then a city daily at Columbus, Ohio, supplemented constantly during his boyhood and early manhood by a most remarkable course of reading in all the classics of the world. A campaign life of Lincoln brought him a consulship of four years at Venice — his university course it really was and he returned at last more really educated and cultured than any of his generation who had had formal academic training. He became, in 1866, assistant editor of the Atlantic Monthly, and from 1871 to 1881 the editor, resigning to take up literary work in New York City in connection with the Century Magazine, and finally with Harper's Monthly, following after an interval George William Curtis as occupant of the Editor's Easy Chair.'

He began as a poet, contributed poetry to the early volumes of the Atlantic, and in 1860 with John J. Piatt issued a volume entitled Poems of Two Friends. During his years at Venice he wrote sketches of Italian life, publishing them in 1866 as Venetian Life, and in 1867 adding to them Italian Journeys. His Suburban Sketches, 1871, was a blending of the realistic sketch and the short story in which characterization is predominant. From it to his first novel, Their Wedding Journey, 1872, was only a step. It has slight plot, but much careful study of details and of manners. The strongest work of Howells came after 1881 when he left the Atlantic editorship and devoted himself wholly to literary creation. To this period belong A Modern Instance. The Rise of Silas Lapham, The Minister's Charge, and Indian Summer, and the earliest and best of his parlor comedies like The Mouse-Trap. The list of his novels is a long one, and to them he has added volumes of autobiography, as well as much critical and biographical and essay material. His industry has been remarkable and the level excellence of all his work has been uniformly high.

Howells has long been summed up in terms of 'realism.' He has dealt with the average of American life, and he has drawn his pictures with careful attention to detail and manners and unidealized truth, as he saw the truth. He has the power to make a character actually live before the reader, and he has lightness of touch, especially in his parlor comedies, which are so closely akin to the short story form of the period, and a mastery of dialogue, all of which unite to place him among the rare prose artists like Aldrich. Few American writers have so uniformly expressed themselves with verbal exactness, with felicity of phrasing, and sustained ease of expression. His style is natural and clear, a model of pure and idiomatic English. He seldom touches the deeps of human life: he seldom moves deeply his reader or chastens him with the tragedy of life or convulses him with outright laughter. He is a classicist: restrained, correct, scientific, though in making himself a classicist he was forced to gain control over the romance and the poetry with which nature had freely endowed him.

A MODERN INSTANCE 1

CHAPTER XL

Halleck woke at daybreak from the drowse into which he had fallen. The train was creeping slowly over the track, feeling its way, and he heard fragments

1 Reprinted from A Modern Instance by special arrangement with the holders of the copyright, Harper and Brothers.

of talk among the passengers about a broken rail that the conductor had been warned of. He turned to ask some question, when the pull of rising speed came 5 from the locomotive, and at the same moment the car stopped with a jolting pitch. It settled upon the track again; but the two cars in front were overturned, and the passengers were still climbing from to their windows, when Halleck got his be

775

'Fifty miles,' the brakeman called back over his shoulder.

'Don't you worry any, Marcia,' said her father, moving off in pursuit of Flavia. 5' This accident makes it all right for us, if we don't get there for a week.'

Marcia answered nothing. Halleck began to talk to her of that Belgian landscape in which he had first seen a wind

wildered party to the ground. Children were crying, and a woman was led by with her face cut and bleeding from the broken glass; but it was reported that no one else was hurt, and the trainmen gave their helplessness to the inspection of the rotten cross-tie that had caused the accident. One of the passengers kicked the decayed wood with his boot. Well,' he said, 'I always liked a little accident like this, 10 mill, and he laughed at the blank uninearly; it makes us safe the rest of the day.' The sentiment apparently commended itself to popular acceptance; Halleck went forward with part of the crowd to see what was the matter with the loco- 15 motive: it had kept the track, but seemed to be injured somehow; the engineer was working at it, hammer in hand; he exchanged some dry pleasantries with a passenger who asked him if there was 20 any chance of hiring a real fast ox-team in that neighborhood, in case a man was in a hurry to get on to Tecumseh.

30

They were in the midst of a level prairie that stretched all round to the horizon, 25 where it was broken by patches of timber; the rising sun slanted across the green expanse, and turned its distance to gold; the grass at their feet was full of wildflowers, upon which Flavia flung herself as soon as they got out of the car. By the time Halleck returned to them, she was running with cries of joy and wonder toward a windmill that rose beautiful above the roofs of a group of common- 35 place houses, at a little distance from the track; it stirred its mighty vans in the thin, sweet inland breeze, and took the sun gaily on the light gallery that encircled it.

A vision of Belgian plains swept before Halleck's eyes. There ought to be storks on its roof,' he said, absently.

'How strange that it should be here, away out in the West!' said Olive.

4

telligence with which she received his reminiscences of travel. For the moment, the torturing stress was lifted from his soul; he wished that the breakfast in the miller's house might never come to an end; he explored the mill with Flavia; he bantered the Squire on his saturnine preference for steam power in the milling business; he made the others share his mood; he pushed far from him the series of tragic or squalid facts which had continually brought the end to him in reveries. in which he found himself holding his breath, as if he might hold it till the end really came.

But this respite could not last. A puff of white steam showed on the horizon, and after an interval the sound of the locomotive whistle reached them, as it came backing down a train of empty cars towards them. They were quickly on their journey again, and a scanty hour before noon they arrived at Tecumseh.

The pretty town, which in prospect had worn to Olive Halleck's imagination the blended hideousness of Sodom and Gomorrah, was certainly very much like a New England village in fact. After the brick farmsteads and coal-smoked towns of Central Ohio, its wooden houses, set back from the street with an ample depth of door-yard, were appealingly familiar, and she exchanged some homesick whispers with Marcia about them, as they 45 drove along under the full-leaved maples which shadowed the way. The grass was denser and darker than in New England, and, pretty as the town was, it wore a more careless and unscrupulous air than the true New England village; the South had touched it, and here and there it showed a wavering line of fence and a faltering conscientiousness in its paint. Presently all aspects of village quiet and seclusion ceased, and a section of conventional American city, with flat-roofed brick blocks, showy hotel, stores, paved street, and stone sidewalks, expressed the

A brakeman came up with a flag in his hand, and nodded toward Flavia. She's on the right track for breakfast,' he said. 50 There's an old Dutchman at that mill, and his wife knows how to make coffee like a fellow's mother. You'll have plenty of time. This train has come here to stay till somebody can walk back five 55 miles and telegraph for help.'

'How far are we from Tecumseh?" asked Halleck.

5

several little tables within the bar, lounged in their chairs, or stalked about laughing and whispering to each other; the prosecuting attorney leaned upon the shoulder of a jolly-looking man, who lifted his face to joke up at him, as he tilted his chair back; a very stout, youngish person, who sat next him, kept his face dropped while the clerk proceeded:

readiness of Tecumseh to fulfil the destiny of every Western town, and become a metropolis at a day's notice, if need be. The second-hand omnibus, which reflected the actuality of Tecumseh, set them down at the broad steps of the courthouse, fronting on an avenue which for a city street was not very crowded or busy. Such passers-by as there were had leisure and inclination, as they loitered by, to turn 10 and stare at the strangers; and the voice of the sheriff, as he called from an upper window of the court-house the names of absentee litigants or witnesses required to come into court, easily made itself heard 15 this cause is now submitted to the Court above all the other noises.

20

It seemed to Halleck as if the sheriff were calling them; he lifted his head and looked at Olive, but she would not meet his eye; she led by the hand the little girl, who kept asking, 'Is this the house where papa lives?' with the merciless iteration of a child. Halleck dragged lamely after the Squire, who had mounted the steps with unnatural vigor; he promptly found 25 his way to the clerk's office, where he examined the docket, and then returned to his party triumphant. 'We are in time,' he said, and he led them on up into the

court-room.

And now, on motion of plaintiff, it is ordered by the Court that said defendant be now here three times called, which is done in open court, and she comes not; but wholly makes default herein. And

for trial, and the Court having heard the evidence, and being fully advised, find for the plaintiff,- that the allegations of his complaint are true, and that he is entitled to a divorce. It is therefore considered by the Court, that said plaintiff be and he is hereby divorced, and the bonds of matrimony heretofore existing between said parties are dissolved and held for naught.'

As the clerk closed the large volume be fore him, the jolly lawyer as if the record had been read at his request, nodded to the Court, and said, 'The record of the decree seems correct, your honor.' He 30 leaned forward, and struck the fat man's expanse of back with the flat of his hand. Congratulate you, my dear boy!' he said in a stage whisper that was heard through the room. 'Many happy returns of the day!

A few spectators, scattered about on the rows of benching, turned to look at them as they walked up the aisle, where the cocoa matting, soaked and dried, and soaked again, with perpetual libations of 35 tobacco-juice, mercifully silenced their footsteps; most of the faces turned upon them showed a slow and thoughtful movement of the jaws, and, as they were dropped or averted, a general discharge 4o of tobacco-juice seemed to express the general adoption of the new-comers, whoever they were, as a necessary element of the scene, which it were useless to oppose, and about which it was idle to speculate. 45 Before the Squire had found his party seats on one of the benches next the bar, the spectators had again given their languid attention to the administration of justice, which is everywhere informal with 50 us, and is only a little more informal in the West than in the East. An effect of serene disoccupation pervaded the place, such as comes at the termination of an interesting affair: and no one seemed to 55 care for what the clerk was reading aloud in a set, mechanical tone. The judge was busy with his docket; the lawyers, at their

A laugh went round, and the judge said severely, Mr. Sheriff, see that order is kept in the court-room.'

The fat man rose to shake hands with another friend, and at the same moment Squire Gaylord stretched himself to his full height before stooping over to touch the shoulder of one of the lawyers within the bar, and his eyes encountered those of Bartley Hubbard in mutual recognition.

It was not the fat on Bartley's ribs only that had increased: his broad cheeks stood out and hung down with it, and his chin descended by the three successive steps to his breast. His complexion was of a tender pink, on which his blond mustache showed white; it almost vanished in the tallowy pallor to which the pink turned as he saw his father-in-law, and then the whole group which the intervening spectators had hitherto hidden from him. He dropped back into his chair, and intimated to his lawyer, with a wave of

further qualified by a feeling which something pathetic in the old Squire's bearing inspired.

"Yes, your honor, I move to set aside 5 the default, and I shall offer in support of this motion my affidavit, setting forth the reasons for the non-appearance of the defendant at the calling of the cause.'

his hand and a twist of his head, that some hopeless turn in his fortunes had taken place. That jolly soul turned to him for explanation, and at the same time the lawyer whom Squire Gaylord had touched on the shoulder responded to a few whispered words from him by bekoning to the prosecuting attorney, who stepped briskly across to where they stood. A brief dumb-show ensued, and the prosecutor 10 ended by taking the Squire's hand, and inviting him within the bar; the other attorney politely made room for him at his table, and the prosecutor returned to his place near the jury-box, where he re- 15 that made other hands quick to aid him. mained standing for a moment.

'If it please the Court,' he began, in a voice breaking heavily upon the silence that had somehow fallen upon the whole room, 'I wish to state that the defendant 20 in the case of Hubbard vs. Hubbard is now and here present, having been prevented by an accident on the road between this place and Indianapolis from arriving in time to make defense. She desires to 25 move the Court to set aside the default.'

The prosecutor retired a few paces, and nodded triumphantly at Bartley's lawyer, who could not wholly suppress his enjoyment of the joke, though it told so heavily 30 against him and his client. But he was instantly on his feet with a technical objection.

The judge heard him through, and then opened his docket, at the case of Hubbard 35 vs. Hubbard. What name shall I enter for the defense?' he inquired formally.

40

Squire Gaylord turned with an old-fashioned state and deliberation which had their effect, and cast a glance of professional satisfaction in the situation at the attorneys and spectators, I ask to be allowed to appear for the defense in this case, if the Court please. My friend, Mr. Hathaway, will move my admission to this 45 bar.'

The attorney to whom the Squire had first introduced himself promptly complied: Your honor, I move the admission of Mr. F. J. Gaylord, of Equity, 50 Equity County, Maine, to practice at this bar.'

The judge bowed to the Squire, and directed the clerk to administer the usual

'Shall I note your motion as filed?' asked the judge.

'Yes, your honor,' replied the old man. He made a futile attempt to prepare the paper; the pen flew out of his trembling hand. I can't write,' he said in despair

The

A young lawyer at the next desk rapidly
drew up the paper, and the Squire duly
offered it to the clerk of the Court.
clerk stamped it with the file-mark of the
Court, and returned it to the Squire, who
read aloud the motion and affidavit, setting
forth the facts of the defendant's failure
to receive the notice in time to prepare for
her defense, and of the accident which had
contributed to delay her appearance, de-
claring that she had a just defense to the
plaintiff's bill, and asking to be heard upon

the facts.

Bartley's attorney was prompt to interpose again. He protested that the printed advertisement was sufficient notice to the defendant, whenever it came to her knowledge, or even if it never came to her knowledge, and that her plea of failure. to receive it in time was not a competent excuse. This might be alleged in any case, and any delay of travel might be brought forward to account for non-appearance as plausibly as this trumped-up. accident in which nobody was hurt. He did his best, which was also his worst, and the judge once more addressed the Squire, who stood waiting for Bartley's counsel to close. 'I was about to adjourn the Court,' said the judge, in that accent which is the gift of the South to some parts of the West; it is curiously soft and gentle, and expressive, when the speaker will, of a caressing deference, 'But we have still some minutes before noon in which we can hear you in support of your motion, if you are ready.'

I am m-ready, your honor!' The old man's nasals cut across the judge's

oath. I have entered your name for 55 rounded tones, almost before they had

the defense, Mr. Gaylord. Do you desire to make any motion in the case?' he pursued, the natural courtesy of his manner

ceased. His lips compressed themselves to a waving line, and his high hawk-beak came down over them; the fierce light