Mark Twain And E. C. Stedman

( Originally Published 1912 )

TWO later friends of mine were Mark Twain and E. C. Stedman. For several months "Mark," as his intimates were allowed to call him, lived at The .Players in one of the two best rooms, which had been occupied at the opening of the club by Edwin Booth and Lawrence Barrett; and I, then the managing editor of the North American Review, went there one morning to ask him whether he would write an article for us on the origin of the most famous of his stories — "The Celebrated Jumping Frog." We were fellow members, and I had already known him several years.

He pointed amiably to a chair, in which I sat while he paced the floor and puffed at a slow-burning pipe, using it much as an artist uses a brush or his hand in swings and curves when he describes the tremendous things he intends to do with an almost untouched canvas. He talked more slowly than usual — I never heard him talk fast — and at intervals stopped altogether, now resting midway, then striding from wall to wall, shaking his head at what he disagreed with or nodding in concurrence.

All the typographical dashes in the printer's case would be insufficient if I used them to indicate the long-drawn pauses between his words and sentences. Every syllable was given its full value, distinctly and sonorously.

To me his voice was beautiful. It was not a laughing voice, or a light-hearted voice, but deep and earnest like that of one of the grayer musical instruments, rich and solemn, and in emotion vibrant and swelling with its own passionate feeling.

"I didn't write that story as fiction," he said, after a delay, tirelessly but slowly moving his head from side to side; "I didn't write it as fiction," he repeated in the way he had of repeating everything he desired you to understand he stood by, and that there could be no mistake about, "I wrote it ---"

To and fro again and a sweep of his arm. A pause in the middle of the room.

"I wrote it as — not as fiction, not as fancy, not out of imagination — I wrote it as a matter, a matter of h-i-s-t-o-r-y. I can remember now at this very minute, I can remember now, right here, just how that story happened, every incident in it."

Here there was another pause, as if the curtain had been drawn on an interlude in a play. He never under any circumstances was precipitous, or to be driven. Nobody could ever hasten him out of his excogitations. His face was serious, reflective, and reminiscent. That was its prevalent expression. I knew him for nearly thirty years, and cannot remember hearing him laugh in all that time, even when he must have been amused and others were laughing around him — Howells, for instance, bubbling with the freshest, merriest, sincerest and most contagious laugh in the world; Howells, who, though so different in many ways, was one of the dearest and most congenial of his friends, Howells and Aldrich, both of whom he especially delighted in. A smile, an engaging, communicative, penetrative smile, which wrapped one in its own liquid and suffusing satisfaction, was his nearest approach to risibility, save perhaps a shrug or a scarcely audible chuckle.

I could see that some unexpected thing was coming, while I listened to those clear but halting sentences, which dropped from him like pebbles breaking the silence of a lonely pool. His face, that aquiline, almost accipitral face, was as grave as if life and death had been in the balance.

"Well," he drawled, "what do you suppose happened last night? Don't be in a hurry. It's no good being in a hurry."

I did not venture a guess, and he emitted a cloud from the reviving pipe as if to symbolize the impenetrability of his mystery. Again he paced the room before he explained himself.

"A fellow sitting next to me at dinner last night said to me, 'How old do you suppose that story of yours about the Jumping Frog is, Mark?' I stopped to think, quite in earnest, and I said, recalling all the circumstances, `That story is just about forty-five years old. It happened in Calaveras County in the spring of 1840.: 'No, it isn't,' said he, 'no, it isn't. It's more than that; it's two thousand years old.' And since then that fellow has shown me a book, a Greek text-book, and there it is, there it , is, my Jumping Frog, in Boeotia t-w-o t-h-o-u-s-a-n-d years ago."

Two thousand years never seemed so long to me, nor could they have sounded longer to anybody than they did in his enunciation of them, which seemed to make visible and tangible all the mystery, all the remoteness, and all the awe of that chilling stretch of time. His way of uttering them and his application of them often gave the simplest words which he habitually used a pictorial vividness, a richness of suggestion, a fulness of meaning with which genius alone could endue them.

The mystery of the Boeotian was soon solved. He had been translated into the Greek text book by Prof. Henry Sidgwick, Mr. Balfour's brother-in-law, and History was restored to the pedestal on which she had tottered. I got the article I wanted, and a very good price was paid for it.

Mark was not an easy contributor to manage. He knew his own value, and had no unbusiness like indifference to the substantial recognition of it by editors and publishers. He would have his pound of flesh, and insisted on it as strongly as he insisted that no changes should be made in what he wrote, though occasionally elisions would have saved him from the criticisms of fastidious readers, especially from the criticisms of women. I believe the only critic he ever listened to with patience, and respected and obeyed, was his wife. How mistaken were the people who, not knowing him, imagined that everywhere and on all occasions his attitude and point of view were those of the jester! I never knew a more earnest man than he was, or one whose aroused indignation was so overwhelming. When anger moved him you could see his lean figure contract and his eyes ominously screw themselves into their sockets. Every fibre in him quivered, and for the moment his voice became acid and sibilant and out of tune -- almost a whine. Then he would let himself out in a break, like that of a dam unable to hold the flood, in language as candid and unshrinking as the vernacular of the Elizabethans. Epithet would be piled on epithet, one following another with cumulative vigour and distinctness, and the disclosing and illuminative effect of explosives. And not a word missed its mark, not a word seemed superfluous or exchangeable for any other word; each fitted the use he made of it as a cartridge fits a rifle or a revolver; each told. When he disliked anybody or anything, whether it was the Czar, General Funston, Leopold of Belgium, apologists for Shelley, or the Reverend Mr. Sabin, whose refusal to bury an actor led to the glory of "The Little Church Round the Corner," he would not compromise or extenuate what offended him for months or years afterward, if at all. It took years to soften the bitterness which while fresh was implacable. Nor were his animosities without justification. Hypocrisy, deceit, sanctimoniousness, and cruelty were among the cardinal sins for him. You might think he had forgotten particular instances of them, but he would surprise you by springing them back on your memory, in moods and circumstances to which they had no relation, in biting phrases which showed how they still rankled.

His attitude toward the ordinary foibles of humanity was parentally indulgent and benevolent. He admired women and met them with all the grace and complaisance of an ancient courtier, and he loved children and all things simple, beautiful, and true. His affability ex-posed him to flocks of bores, and out of sheer courtesy he would endure them and hide his impatience while they flattered themselves that they were impressing him and establishing an intimacy, the legend of which should be boasted of while they lived and cherished by all their descendants when they were gone. He would smile on them, wag his head and murmur acquiescence in their talk, and when he at last released himself by some ingenious strategy or through the intervention of a friend, who had been watching his unmistakable and comically pitiful signs of weariness, they would fly off to repeat what he hadn't said or jumble what he had, and ever thereafter speak of him as "Mark." It was a lesson in saintly fortitude to observe him and hear the unfathomable sigh which came out on his escape from them.

Usually there was no end to his patience, but I remember his losing it at a little dinner given at The Players, when by some mischance he was seated next to an impossible person, a guest, not a member of the club, who may be called Bounder. Bounder gave him no rest, but Clemens stood the strain for a long time without a protest, and merely swayed his head in the leisurely, half-drowsy, ponderous way an elephant has. That was another little peculiarity of his. Some of us could see that his restraint could not last much longer, however, and presently he beckoned the host, much to that gentleman's bewilderment, into the ante-room.

"David," he said when he got him there, "David — do you love me, David?" His voice quavered with pathos; it was a voice that always had more pathos in it than mirth: it shook with the melancholy of trees in the wind, and pleaded. As I have already intimated, it was seldom he revealed any consciousness of his own humour. "Do you love me, David?"

David was the late Mr. David Alexander Munro, a close and dear friend of his and of all of us. "Love you? Of course I do, old boy. What's the matter?"

"Then, for the love of heaven, if you love me, save me from Bounder, save me from Bounder, save me from Bounder!" repeated thrice, like the tragic wail of a soul doomed and immured in the nethermost depths of despair.

Difficult explanations had to be made, and another than Mark sacrificed for the rest of the evening to the confident and voluble Mr. Bounder.

He always conveyed to me the sense of music; not lively music con vivace, but the slower movements like the andante of a symphony. There were exquisite cadences in his voice, and his gestures harmonized with them. He did not sparkle as Aldrich sparkled; he glowed. Have you seen Vesuvius when quiescent, throbbing in the dark, its ruddy fire diminishing one moment and the next burning scarlet like the end of a Gargantuan cigar? In that one could find by a stretch of fancy a resemblance to his passages from coolness to heat. He was more like a frigate than a torpedo boat, and he deliberated before he touched his guns,

He confessed to me once that at gatherings when speech-making was expected, he preferred to do his part after others had done theirs, for what was said before made, opportunities for him later on. An instance of this occurred at a breakfast in London given during his last visit to England. Augustine Birrell, the Irish secretary, preceded him, and referring to the demands made on him in what is probably the most irritating and laborious of all parliamentary offices, declared, "I am sure I don't know how I got here."

That gave Clemens the chance he had waited for, and he lost no time in making the most of it. No other American who ever visited London received half the applause bestowed on him; not Henry Ward Beecher, Doctor Holmes, General Grant or even Mr. Choate.

"Mr. Birrell," he began very slowly and with a more expansive smile than usual, "Mr. Birrell has just said he doesn't know how he got here." Then he bent over the Irish secretary, and looked into his wine glasses. "Doesn't know how he got here" very significantly. Mr. Birrell was puzzled behind his spectacles, and everybody was on the qui vive just as the speaker liked to have them; it was a part of his game.

"Well, he hasn't — had — anything —" a prolonged pause —"anything — more to — drink — since he came, and we'll at least see that he gets home all right."

The inflection breathed encouragement; it said by implication what many more words could not have said better,, that Mr. Birrell was in the hands of a self-sacrificing friend who would look out for him. It surely was not the sort of humour they were used to, but bishops in their frocks, deans, cabinet ministers, and judges — they, as well as the rest of us, yielded to it in uncontrollable laughter, while the speaker demurely shook his head as if he were compassionating the frailty of humanity. Nor was this the sort of humour, accepted though it was as the essence of him, by which he should be measured. Sunshine in water is not a gauge or its depths. Only those who knew him well discovered his profundity, and how impassioned and militant (a little quixotic, too,) he could be in good causes.

I don't know how Stedman could have ever had an enemy, though he was an outspoken and combative man of strong opinions. You might differ with him — sometimes you had to — but you came out of an encounter with him probably second-best, yet amused and laughing rather than hurt or resentful. You respected his convictions, and could not fail to admire the vehemence with which he declared them and fought for them.

Most of his convictions were enthusiasms, if closely analyzed, and he happily found the swans outnumbering the geese in the world around him.

If you were his friend that was enough to prove excellence of some kind already in existence, and to justify the most flattering horoscopes of greater excellencies in the future. Was your son going to sea? Then he was sure to become a Farragut. In the army, a Grant. In science, a Darwin or a Tyndall. In literature, a Hawthorne, a Poe, a Prescott, or a Lowell. And you ! What encouragement he always gave — finding some grace or subtlety of imagination in your little story, or felicitous cadences in your little poem, which others neither perceived nor heard ! He was, like Fawcett, much too kind to be a good critic of those he knew, and yet in his praise there was no taint of the conscious flattery which speaks to please, with a tongue in its cheek. Of things hopeless he was silent, of things imperfect but not without merit he selected what was best and expatiated on that, shutting his eyes to the less admirable or altogether valueless remainder, like one who with a tray of jewels of various qualities before him says not what he thinks of the whole, but, ignoring the spurious and defective, picks out for approval the one or two pieces which he knows to be right.

Never had any man more sympathy with youth and ambition; nor was it passive sympathy, but the sympathy which patiently proves itself in such practical service as the surrender of time for reading and counsel.

One of the penalties of fame, I surmise, is the number of one's followers. Every tyro hurries his first book, more precious to him than a first child — his heart and soul breathing between its covers — as an offering from below to the oracle on the summit, and alas ! often changes his opinion and recants his faith when that oracle, too busy or too bored, makes no reply. The oracle may mean well and wish well, and try to do what is desired of him, but the offerings come in such profusion that they fill the temple and threaten to suffocate the receiver. No one could have been busier than Stedman, no one could have withstood as he did the multiple strains of business and literature that he was subject to all his life. As is well known, he was for many years a member of the Stock Exchange, and could enter his study only after a trying day's struggle in that maelstrom which, as it regurgitates, leaves men of mightier brawn than his limp and exhausted. Learned societies, national societies, and philanthropic societies besought him for speeches or official services, and, tired though he was, he yielded to their persuasion. Calamity befell him with a destructive weight and poignancy which made his survival seem scarcely less than miraculous. Nothing could extinguish his splendid spirit, nothing impeded his unfaltering activity and energy, and up to the last it was seldom that any little book ever reached him, utterly unknown though its author might be, which he did not look at to see if there was not somewhere in its drab a thread of gold that he could recognize in a letter of acknowledgment — one of those crisply-penned, gothic-handed letters, which he poured out like a man, or more like a woman, shut up in a wilderness of remoteness and seclusion and seeking relief in intimacy and communication.

A mere acknowledgment —"I shall read it with great pleasure," or the old equivocation "I shall lose no time in reading it "— is usually as much as the shaky sender of the virgin pages expects or gets. Imagine then what it meant to him to receive one of Stedman's letters, as he was sure to do if he had any promise or gift at all, showing that the book, moist from the press, had been read from the first line to the last, and sifted for what was good in it and not for what was bad, and that a master high en Parnassus had caught in it the gleam of a jewel, the scent of a flower, or a ripple of melody!

Time and time again young fellows have come to me flushed with pride, firmer on their feet and with strengthened confidence, because each had in his pockets, or more likely in his hands, such a letter from Stedman, which he pressed me to read while he watched its effect on me with the expression which needed no speech for its interpretation: " What do you say to that? That's what he thinks of it. Now, perhaps, you'll be civil." And civil one had to be; it would have been unkind to reduce by a single degree the glow of what was so plainly regarded as marking the matriculation of the poet from his shell. One danger the happy youth was liable to, however. He might meet another of his own sort and, showing the letter to him have it matched by another letter which the second youth had himself received from Stedman. In such a contingency values fell, and both poets probably decided that in the other's case Stedman had lost his usual perspicacity and over-done the praise.

One night at The Players, Stedman complained of the burden of letter-writing imposed on him by young authors.

"Isn't it your own fault?" It was his own fault, and I added, "You've always been prodigal in that way."

He swooped down upon me like a thunder-bolt, as hough he would annihilate me there and then, blameless as I knew myself to be. One had to be used to him to endure his impetuous rushes without losing one's breath. The word "aquiline" might have been made for him: it describes his features and his temperament. As he descended, the shock would stagger, unless one knew enough from past experience to be reassured that, however strongly the wings might beat, talons and beak would not be used.

"You are the fellow who is responsible for that!" he cried. "You've been spreading that story about me nearly all your life, and see what it's done for me! Every fellow that lisps sends his book to me."

His eyes flashed reproach and he thumped the table. He seemed to gather himself together for a spring at me, and the next moment he laughed and shook his head — not at me, but at himself.

"Well, I suppose I am a fool to do it; but it's astonishing what a lot of good work those boys are doing."

What a superb head it was, so handsome, so massive and so noble ! While he was active and unbent, with the step, the gaze, the complexion, and the uprightness of a young man, his beard and the hair of his head were as silvery as sunlit snow. He seemed like a youth made up for Santa Claus or for a mosaic patriarch of incredible years.

One night at the same club Mark Twain was lamenting his own frostiness.

"You haven't got a single gray hair," he said to one of us, nodding pathetically. "And you only two or three, and you — well, not many," indicating each of us in turn. "Not one of you is like me, all white, no other colour."

Then he braced up with the cheerfulness drawn from the comparison. "But if Stedman were only here I'd look like a boy," and with that thought his mood changed.

The familiar epigram repeats itself: "The only people who have no time to spare are those who have nothing to do." Stedman had time for everything. Even in the old Stock Exchange period, when other brokers could barely spare ten minutes for a sandwich, he would have little luncheon parties at his office, and there, with all the noises of Wall Street and Broad Street splashing in through the open windows in warm weather, the bellowings of prices from the hot and struggling mob on the floor, and the chimes of Trinity playing "Rock of Ages," one could meet R. II. Stoddard, Charles Dudley Warner, Aldrich, Edgar Fawcett, Gilder, and other literary and artistic friends of his, as they talked with him of the latest things from Browning, Tennyson, Longfellow, and Swinburne. Strange and dramatic contrasts are not uncommon in that sordid neighbourhood, but nothing could have been more surprising or incongruous than that band of poets engaged in chaff and criticism Stoddard brusque and sledge hammerish (the blacksmith he had been still asserting himself in his manner) ; Gilder, with his fawn-like eyes, glowing with enthusiasm; Fawcett, elegant, appealing, and inquisitive; Aldrich, provocative and full of laugh-making quips, and the host mercurial, emphatic, and plain of speech. They might have been picnicking on Parnassus beyond the reach of other sounds than their own voices and the interludes of Pan.

At this time, too, Stedman's business was large and pressing, and he was acquiring one of those fortunes which were afterward lost through no fault of his own.

I met him one day on the steps leading into the Exchange.

"What are you doing here?" he said. "Can't you read the inscription up there: 'All hope abandon ye who enter here.' No, it's not quite that, but it ought to be."

"And you?" I asked.

"Oh, we have just finished eating our house," he replied, with a shrug, meaning, of course, that he had got to the end of money raised on some of his real estate.

But he was always cheerful and always generous. Never was there a more dapper figure than his, so military in its bearing, so upright, so compact, so alert, so well groomed, and so compliant to the latest fashions. There was no Tennysonian untidiness about him, no proclamation of the poetic scorn of convention. You could easily have mistaken him for somebody distinguished in the army; that would have been your earliest and most convincing inference; that, or a guess that he might be a benevolent and refined plutocrat with a leaning toward art and books. He had every social grace, and society wanted him and courted him, but he preferred the company of his fellow literary men and women. I have said how at a little dinner of authors he, glowing at the end of it, exclaimed: "Haven't we had a good time! We are never so happy as when we are among ourselves ! "

Blow after blow fell upon him without disabling him or disheartening him. Stunned, he recovered. Out of darkness the sun reappeared in roseate dawns. The disappointments of to-day left a keener appetite for what was sure to come to-morrow. The past might gloom, but the future glittered. He was full of ingenious projects, and talked them up to the skies, filling those who listened with his own confidence and buoyancy. Any hint that there might be difficulties in the way was impatiently derided, and it would have been better for the utterer of it to have held his tongue.

When Stedman chose New Castle, N. H., for a summer home, some of his friends thought it would be rather inconvenient for him if he had to make such frequent trips to New York as he expected. But he would not have it so. The journey to Boston, and then across Boston, and then to Portsmouth, seemed much too far to us for frequent repetitions. But it was not long at all to him. He avowed that it was one of the easiest things in the world : his imagination produced a special timetable for him, and even built an air-line which, though it never materialized for others, served him and pleased him as if it had cut the distance in halves. That was his way. He touched things with a wand of fairydom, and lo ! for him and for us they were transformed into whatever we most desired them to be.

What a house it was which his romance and poetry found expression in on that rocky shore where the Piscataqua meets the open sea and the Isles of Shoals mingle with the mirage of opaline mornings! So solid, so weathered, so appropriate to its surroundings ! It looks as if it had stood there forever; as if its stains had come through the wear of ages; as if the sea and wind had spent themselves upon it century after century, making it their own and endowing it with natural dignity and ruggedness. It might have been upheaved out of the gray bowlders among which it is rooted; and, indeed, unmissed from the tumbled strand, many of them have gone into it. The shingles might have been split from driftwood drawn hither and thither from the equator to the poles. One could not, with much ingenuity, picture a more ideal home for a poet, and he loved it and let his fancy run free in its shelter. He had a den in which one became possessed by the spirit of ancient days. The ghosts of smugglers, pirates, and buccaneers floated in clouds of tobacco after dark; and while the wind shook the sash, and the waves splashed and moaned on the beach, and we rattled off old ballads and romances, a kettle would be hung from a crane over the open hearth, its promise confirmed by lemons and sugar. Then he would stealthily fetch from a mysterious locker an antique demijohn, full, not of vulgar gin, brandy,or whiskey, but of honest rum, which, judging from its mildness and flavour, might have been left there by the salty wraiths who in the flesh one easily believed had come and gone on many tides for contraband adventures.

No aeronaut ever yet scaled the air and trafficked with the stars as he did in his sanguine flights. One of the last times I encountered him was late one evening in Gramercy Park, when he was coming away from, and I going into, The Players. He at once proposed a magnum opus — I had heard of others — that should make the fortunes of both of us, but I could see that something was weighing on him. Did I know that "Dick" Stoddard was dying? Kinder words were never spoken of Stoddard than at that moment, and Stedman was on his way to sit up the night with him. The errand of love, with all its urgency, must have been momentarily diverted. We — my wife and I — had just come to town to embark for Italy the next day, and when I later returned to the hotel a great bunch of roses bore witness that even in gloom and distraction his thoughts omitted none of the graceful things he abounded in.

He was a generous letter writer, and the reader may be interested in examples, the first referring to a biographical sketch of him for which I was then gathering material.

Kelp Rock, New Castle, Sept. 28, 1887.

DEAR MR. RIDEING:

There are drawbacks even in living on an island, you know, e. g.: Chas. Reade's castaway lovers, on Godsend Island (see "Foul Play"), had no parson handy — else they would have wedded and bedded. (Indeed they came near to the latter — since the former was impossible — and I always was vexed that the search steamer hove in sight at the thrilling moment!) A drawback here, then, is that one sometimes runs out of letter-paper, then has to fall back on his MS. quarto-post, as in the present instance, which pray excuse.

We were glad to make your better acquaintance, though your visit was done as soon as begun. "I only know" that, like the poet's infant, you "came and went"— and that I drove to Portsmouth & back on three successive days. Literally, a flying visit. It now occurs to me that, after all, you got nothing of what you came for — i. e., nothing to help you, outside of your own artistic handling & imagination, to make any sort of a paper about the boyhood of my uninteresting self. In T. B. A.'s case, you had the best boy's story ever written and, now I think of it, for scrapes and experiences, my own "bad-boyhood" was about the same as his own, & in very near a second " Rivermouth."

I had thought of nothing to tell you, And what does one know of what he really was & seemed as a boy? Those who then tended him are the ones to cross-examine. There are still folks in old Norwich —(pronounced Nor-ridge — to rhyme with porridge, vide "Mother Goose") who could tell much more of my unusual and perverse boyhood than I can myself.

But I do recall that you asked me who were my friends and mates, & that I only mentioned my fishing, trapping, hunting, with Ira. But I did have, after all, more boys with me, daily, than is usual outside of boarding school. My great-uncle & guardian had a reputation for managing boys, & there were many reared & educated in his house. Three pairs of us were there during my stay — from my sixth to my fifteenth year — after which I was transferred to Yale. Three pairs of brothers Smilio & Virgilio Lesaga (Cubans), Hunt & Turville Adams, Edmund & Charles Stedman; the elder brother in each case two years older than the younger, and each three the same age. We were a rather important and dominant sextette in the town — not a place for nutting, berrying, etc., that we did not know & forage in; not a scrape or adventure in which we did not unite. I was a little the oldest of the lot, & probably the leader. Certainly I presented all the petitions to the old gentleman, got credit for all the scrapes, & got most of the thrashings — deservedly, I doubt not, for the others hadn't my imagination, adventurous turn, rebellious independence. I was a great inventor of stories — a raconteur — we slept four in a room; I had to manufacture tales for the rest after the candle was out. The faculty left me as I grew up. Are novelists, then, examples of "arrested development?"

In my childhood, in Plainfield, N. J., I was under an old man, my Grand-father Dodge — a stern old Puritan and disciplinarian. Afterward, under my grand old Uncle Stedman, a fine scholar, noble heart, but also rigid in old-fashioned ways. He taught me Latin, Greek; made me his companion in his law-office, his gardening, his little farm; I dare say loved me more than he showed as his own sons had not taken to the scholarly studies he still cared for. But we were often at open war. I now deeply regret that I was not old enough, or sensible enough, to understand him at his worth. My constant scrapes & rebellion must have tried him beyond measure. But I always was the natural companion of old men — old scholars — and born with a reverence for them. Years afterward I was the friend & private secretary of that fine old Roman, Edward Bates — and was to him all I ought to have been to James Stedman of Norwich Town.

We lived in Norwich Town (two miles from the city), the hive of the Huntingtons, Trumbulls, Perkinses, Hydes, & the birthplace of Benedict Arnold. The quaintest colonial town in New England — full of old customs & traditions. Curfew — 9 P. M.— for centuries. Thanksgiving celebrated as nowhere else in New England. Thanksgiving night, bonfires — barrels strung on masts 60 feet high — stolen & begged by gangs of boys, from the different districts — for months before.

Am pretty sure I was, though small, tough, and the captain of my set of boys. Cannot remember ever being afraid. Never undertook a thing, good or — I am sorry to say — bad, that I did not carry through at any expense of labour or suffering.

I was a wretched and despised hand at any games without a secondary motive. Couldn't play ball, for instance. Was a splendid swimmer, a good runner, & jumper, a poor fighter & always fighting, a good sportsman.

From my earliest remembrance I made poetry. All of the Cleveland blood do bad cess to them! I was a natural writer, an insatiate reader — specially of fiction, adventure, poetry. Of course I got hold of all the great boys' books, of the Robinson Crusoe type; read by stealth the "Arabian Nights" & "Fairy Tales" & believed them. Went alone over the woodlands, in early years, hoping to meet some Genie or Fairy. Did not believe in the terrors of the Calvinism about me. Had to learn the Shorter Catechism, most of the Bible, &c., &c., go to church three times Sunday.

My earliest poet, Scott. Afterward, got hold of Byron, & Shakespeare of course. Then Coleridge, Shelley, & Keats, developed my sense of the beautiful & spiritual in poetry. The only thing for which I have to thank my step-father, Mr. T , was his drawing my attention to Wordsworth — of whom he was a student. I was then 15. Then came along Tennyson, etc., naturally.

Looking back, I can see that, while among kindred who did their duty faithfully, I was in the worst possible atmosphere for a boy like myself to get the right — i. e., the indicated — training. Doubtless, my strongest traits were, first, an inborn & passionate love of beauty — of the beautiful. I was eager to draw, to learn music, &c., & was restricted to my "studies"; secondly, a love of adventure; third, love of nature & books in equal pro-portions.

'Tis a bad thing to separate a child from his mother, & from his natural habitat.

Finally, I was always in love with one little girl, & with larger ones as I grew larger. Don't think any of them cared for me, except the heroine of "The Door Step" & "Seeking the Mayflower."

There, I never have thought, certainly never have talked, so much of myself before. After all, there is nothing to tell. I see the impossibility of your making anything of what I told you; & I see that this effort at a supplement is just as futile. But I pitied you so much, as one having to make bricks without straw, that I have made an attempt to give you some-thing from which, without exactly using any of my garrulous words, you may glean some fodder.

The dates of some of my earliest passable poems are under the head, "Poems Written in Youth," in that Household Edition. They show a natural ear — of course, little originality.

Sincerely yours,

EDMUND C. STEDMAN.

Mrs. Stedman & Mrs. S., Jr. say they hope you'll come again — & to enjoy yourself, as we saw just enough of you to make us wish for more.

44 East 26th St., Tuesday, Dec. 18th, 1887.

MY DEAR RIDEING - What a hearty fellow you are! It is worth while, after experiencing the frequent anguish of bungling & ill-bred newspaper itemizing, to be praised for what one feels may be worth praising — if any of his work is — and in the cleverest weekly letter that comes to this mart, and with the voice whose sound is honest. I had put your note of the 14th by, for a Sunday morning answer, & here I must begin by thanking you for quite touching my heart by your remembrance & opinion of my former Whittier poem. Well, that blank verse really came from the heart, I suspect — and wasn't it Longfellow who said that,

"The heart Giveth grace to every art?"

Now as to the poets & the Kinder. If you talk with Dick Stoddard, when you come on here, he — who is very learned in the records and of poets' lives, especially English poets — would be of genuine service to you. I have written my sister to ask for some reminiscences of her girlish acquaintance with the Brownings, but don't know whether she will give me any. What does come to my memory at once is a charming thing for you to quote — & doubtless it is in your mind as well. I mean the pretty "Line to My New Child Sweetheart," of Tom Campbell's, beginning —

I hold it a religious duty to live & worship children's beauty and they would work in somewhere, perhaps in your Prelude to your series. Swinburne is the greatest lover & laureate of children of all modern poets I know. He has told me so his friends have been mostly the very young & the very old of the latter, Landor, Trelawney, etc. You know his book, "A Century of Roundels" ? I could write a paper about the friendship of young girl-poets & scholars for old men, e. g.—Ascham & Jane Grey, Hugh Boyd & Miss Barrett — but I can't recall anything that would help you as to poets and children.

Yes — you have caught an Aztec goddess in your remarkable photograph of our town. Now write a legend of her career and fate!

Sincerely yours,

E. C. STEDMAN.