ple without law or legal status; his comrades slain, and the burdens of others heavy on his shoulders.

What does he do this hero in gray with a heart of gold? Does he sit down in sullenness and despair? Not for a day. Surely God, who had stripped him of his prosperity, inspired him in his adversity. As ruin was never before so overwhelming, never was restoration swifter.

In brilliant diction Grady reviewed the marvellous recovery of the South, and pictured her new and better outlook on life. The moral effect of his speech was immediate. North and South alike agreed that he had done much to bring about a better understanding.

Grady never held a public position of any sort, but is honored as a high-souled patriot who spoke and wrote with sympathy concerning the greatest national problem of his day. Just such a man was needed at that time to renew the ambitions of the South, to urge the development of her industries and the exploitation of her great natural resources. No man did more to assuage the bitterness of defeat or to heal the wounds of war. Even a score of years after the surrender of Lee, it required rare courage for a loyal Southerner to express such thoughts as Grady uttered near the conclusion of his oration on "The New South" in his beautiful tribute to his father:

In my native town of Athens is a monument that crowns its central hill-a plain, white shaft. Deep cut into its shining side is a name dear to me above the names of men-t -that of a brave and simple man who died in brave and simple faith. Not for all the glories of New England, from Plymouth Rock all the way, would I exchange the heritage he left me in his soldier's death. To the foot of that shaft I shall send my children's children to reverence him who ennobled their name with his heroic blood. But, sir, speaking from the shadow of that memory

which I honor as I do nothing else on earth, I say that the cause in which he suffered and for which he gave his life was adjudged by higher and fuller wisdom than his or mine, and I am glad that the omniscient God held the balance of battle in His Almighty hand and that human slavery was swept forever from American soil-that the American Union was saved from the wreck of war.

CHAPTER IX

THE CLARION CALL OF THE WEST

An Empire in the Making-Early Writers of the Middle West-John Hay -Lew Wallace-Edward Eggleston-Literature of the Far West-Helen Hunt Jackson-John Muir-Bret Harte-Other California Writers— Edward Rowland Sill-Joaquin Miller-Laureates of American Childhood-Eugene Field-James Whitcomb Riley.

1. An Empire in the Making. The earliest English migrations to the New World soon secured for England full control of the coast from Newfoundland to Georgia, but not until our independence had been achieved was there any wide-spread movement to seek new homes beyond the Alleghanies. The restless pioneer spirit that then carried the dauntless adventurers into the Mississippi valley, and later into the vast territory acquired by the Louisiana Purchase, was of great significance in our national history, but it was not immediately reflected in our literature. Those early homeseekers, like the Pilgrims of two centuries before, were too intent upon shaping the land for the uses of civilization, upon building roads and canals, or otherwise facilitating communication. Conquering the West was a sober piece of business, demanding endurance and persistence in the face of discouraging circumstances. The Hoosier writers who developed in Indiana at a later time found themselves in the midst of a well-defined social order. The realistic writers of the Middle West of the same period drew their chief inspiration from the dreary, monotonous life of the prairie,

not from the stirring adventures of their pioneer ancestors. Much more romantic and spontaneous was the early literature of the far West, where the gorgeous scenery, the feverish lust for gold, and the rude, lawless life of the miningcamp contributed rich and immediate material for poet and novelist. The impulses that carried adventurers across the Rockies or around Cape Horn to California were not those that drew the vanguard of civilization into the Mississippi valley and beyond. Gold was the talisman, and most of the seekers were bent upon securing the precious dust or nuggets to carry back to the civilization they had left behind. In due time, however, a genuine social order was established, and family life replaced the unwholesome atmosphere of the mining-camp. In a literary sense we have come to know the spirit of that land of magnificent distances, where the mind instinctively turns to superlatives, and we have to adjust ourselves to broader horizons, but there is still a wonderful treasure-trove for the future men of letters in the far West.

2. Early Writers of the Middle West.-The country between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi developed few names of literary note during the early national period. The songs of Stephen C. Foster (1826-1864) are among the first notable contributions. Foster was born in Pittsburgh but spent most of his life in Ohio. The popular sentimental quality of his songs in the negro dialect, such as "Old Black Joe," "Old Folks at Home," and "My Old Kentucky Home," assures his immortality. They must not be regarded as folk-songs, as neither the words nor the melodies are based on real negro tradition.

John Hay (1838-1905), a native of Salem, Ind., and a graduate of Brown University, was Lincoln's private secretary; many years later, under President McKinley, he was ambassador to England, and afterward secretary of state. Hay belongs to literature because of his racy Pike County Ballads (1871), which reflect the language and the spirit of the Middle West. The best known of these is "Jim Bludso of the Prairie Bell":

Wall, no! I can't tell whar he lives,
Becase he don't live, you see;
Leastways, he's got out of the habit
Of livin' like you and me.

Whar have you been for the three last year

That you haven't heard folks tell

How Jim Bludso passed in his checks

The night of the Prairie Bell?

Lew Wallace (1827-1905), a Hoosier who was a majorgeneral under Grant during the Civil War, made a successful venture into fiction with The Fair God (1873), a tale of Mexico in the days of Cortez, but he achieved far greater fame and fortune with the melodramatic story Ben-Hur, A Tale of the Christ (1880), which has never lost its popularity. Although not a professed scholar, General Wallace succeeded in presenting a vivid picture of the Roman East at the beginning of the Christian era. The contrast of divergent civilizations is admirably stressed, and his young Jewish hero, who is accused of attempting the life of a Roman dignitary, passes through enough startling adventures to satisfy the most exacting reader. The thrilling descriptions of the sea-fight and of the chariot-race represent General Wallace's manner at its best.