Part 7 (1/2)

In Colonel Hunter's library, selected with scholarly taste, he found the great old English masters who had the good fortune to be born into the language while it was yet ”a well of English undefiled.” In that well he became saturated with a pure, direct, simple diction which later contact with the tendencies of his era and the ephemeral production of the daily press was not able to change.

It was in the office of the _Countryman_ that Joel Chandler Harris made his first venture into the world of print, shyly, as became one who would afterward be known as the most modest literary man in America. When Colonel Hunter found out the authors.h.i.+p of the bright paragraphs that slipped into his paper now and then with increasing frequency, he captured the elusive young genius and set it to work as a regular contributor. In this periodical the young writer's first poem appeared: a mournful lay of love and death, as a first poem usually is, however cheerful a philosopher its author may ultimately become.

This idyllic life soon ceased. When the tide of war rolled over central Georgia, it swept many lives out of their accustomed paths and destroyed many a support around which budding aspirations had wound their tendrils. The ”printer's boy” sat upon a fence on the old Turner plantation, watching Sloc.u.m's Corps march by, and amiably receiving the good-natured gibes and jests of the soldiers, who apparently found something irresistibly mirth-provoking in the quaint little figure by the wayside. Sherman was marching to the sea, and the Georgia boy was taking his first view of the progress of war.

Among the many enterprises trampled to earth by those ruthless feet was the _Countryman_, which survived the desolating raid but a short time. It was years before the young journalist knew another home. For some months he set type on the Macon _Daily Telegraph_, going from there to New Orleans as private secretary of the editor of the _Crescent Monthly_. When the _Crescent_ waned and disappeared from the journalistic sky, he returned to Georgia and became editor, compositor, pressman, mailing clerk, and entire force on the Forsyth _Advertiser_.

A pungent editorial upon the abuses of the State government, which appeared in the _Advertiser_, attracted the attention of Colonel W.T.

Thompson and led him to offer Mr. Harris a place on the staff of the Savannah _Daily News_. Happily, there lived in Savannah the charming young lady who was to be the loving centre of the pleasant home of ”Uncle Remus.” The marriage took place in 1873, and Mr. Harris remained with the _News_ until '76, when, to escape yellow fever, he removed to Atlanta. He was soon after placed on the editorial staff of the _Const.i.tution_, and in its columns Uncle Remus was first introduced to the world.

In his home in West End, ”Snap-Bean Farm,” he lived in calm content with his harmonious family and his intimate friends, Shakespeare and his a.s.sociates, and those yet older companions who have come down to us from ancient Biblical times. Some of his intimates were chosen from later writers. Among poets, he told me that Tom Moore was his most cherished companion, the one to whom he fled for consolation in moments of life's insufficiencies.

Mr. Harris had no objection to talking in sociable manner of other writers, but if his visitor did not wish to see him close up like a clam and vanish to the seclusion of an upper room it was better not to mention Uncle Remus. Neither had he any fancy for the kind of talk that prevails at ”pink teas” and high functions of society in general.

Anything that would be appropriate to the topics introduced in such places would never occur to him, and the vapory nothingness was so filled with mysterious terrors for him that he fled before them in unspeakable alarm.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SNAP-BEAN FARM, ATLANTA, GEORGIA The residence of Joel Chandler Harris]

”Snap-Bean Farm” was all the world that he cared for, and here he lived and wove his enchantments, not in his well-appointed study, as a thoroughly balanced mind would have done, but all over the house, just where he happened to be, preferably beside the fire after the little ones had gone to bed, leaving memories of their youthful brightness to make yet more glowing the flames, and waves of their warmth of soul to linger in enchantment about the hearth.

It was a sunny, happy day when I visited ”Snap-Bean Farm.” A violet-bordered walk led me to the pretty frame cottage, built upon a terrace quite a distance from the street--a shady, woodsy, leafy, flowery, fragrant distance--a distance that suggested infinite beauty and melody, infinite fascination. When the home was established there, the rumbling and clang of the trolley never broke the stillness of the peaceful spot. A horse-car crept slowly and softly to a near-by terminus and stopped, as if, having reached Uncle Remus and his woodsy home, there could be nothing beyond worth the effort. There were wide reaches of pine-woods, holding illimitable possibilities of romance, of legend, of wildwood and wild-folk tradition. It was a country home in the beginning, and it remained a country home, regardless of the outstretching of the city's influences. Joel Chandler Harris had a country soul, and if he had been set down in the heart of a metropolis his home would have stretched out into mystic distances of greenery and surrounded itself with a limitless reach of cool, vibrant, amber atmosphere, and looked out upon a colorful and fragrant wilderness of flowers, and he would have dwelt in the solitudes that G.o.d made.

As I walked, a fragrance wrapped me around as with a veil of radiant mist. It came straight from the heart of his many-varied roses that claimed much of his time and care. The shadow of two great cedar trees reached protecting arms after me as I went up to the steps of the cottage hidden away in a green and purple and golden and pink tangle of bloom and sweet odors; ivy and wistaria and jasmine and honeysuckle. Beside the steps grew some of his special pet roses.

Their glowing and fragrant presence sometimes afforded him a congenial topic of discourse when a guest chanced to approach too closely the subject of the literary work of the host, if one may use the term in connection with a writer who so constantly disclaimed any approach to literature, and so persistently declined to take himself seriously.

In the front yard was a swing that appealed to me reminiscently with the force of the olden days when I had a swing of my very own. As I ”let the old cat die,” we talked of James Whitcomb Riley's poem, ”Waitin' fer the Cat to Die,” and Mr. Harris told me of the visit Riley had made to him not long before. Two men with such cheerful views of life could not but be congenial, and it was apparent that the visit had brought joy to them both.

I did not see the three dogs and seven cats--mystic numbers!--but felt confident that my genial host could not have been satisfied with any less.

The charmed circle in which Br'er Fox and Br'er Rabbit shone as social stars is yet with us, and we shall not let it go out from our lives.

The mystic childhood of a dim, mysterious race is brought to us through these beings that have come to us from the olden time ”when animals talked like people.”

”The Sign of the Wren's Nest” is peopled by these legendary forms with their never-dying souls. They lurk in every corner and peer out from every crevice. They hide behind the trees, and sometimes in the moonlight we see them looking out at us as we walk along the path.

They crouch among interlacing vines and look at us through the lacy screen with eyes in which slumber the traditions of the ages.

We look for the Magician who, with a wave of the hand, made all these to live and move before us. We know he must be there. We ”cannot make him dead”; but he can make himself and us alive in the life of the past. A little door, with one shutter of Memory and one of Faith, opens before us, and he comes to dwell again in the world which he created in ”The Sign of the Wren's Nest.”

”THE POET OF THE FLAG”

FRANCIS SCOTT KEY

Away back in the years, Terra Rubra, the colonial home of John Ross Key, spread out broad acres under the sky of Maryland, in the northern part of Frederick County. Girt by n.o.ble trees, the old mansion, built of brick that came from England in the days when the New World yet remained in ignorance of the wealth of her natural and industrial resources, stood in the middle of the s.p.a.cious lawn which afforded a beautiful playground for little Francis Scott Key and his young sister, who lived here the ideal home life of love and happiness.

Among the flowers of the terraced garden they learned the first lessons of beauty and sweetness and the triumph of growth and blossoming. At a short distance was a dense line of forest, luring the young feet into tangled wildernesses of greenery and the colorful beauty of wild flowers in summer, and lifting great gray arms in solemn majesty against the dun skies of winter. Through it flowed the rippling silver of Pipe Creek on its sparkling way to the sea. At the foot of a gra.s.sy slope a spring offered draughts of the clear pure water which is said to be the only drink for one who would write epics or live an epic. Beyond a wide expanse of wind-blown gra.s.s the young eyes saw the variant gray and purple tints of the Catoctin Mountains, showing mystic changes in the floodtide of day or losing themselves in the crimson and gold sea of sunset.

In this stately, old, many-verandaed home, looking across nearly three thousand acres of fertile land as if with a proud sense of lords.h.i.+p, the wide-browed, poet-faced boy with the beautiful dreamy eyes and the line of genius between his delicately arched brows pa.s.sed the golden years of his childhood.