Newspapers / The Smithfield Herald (Smithfield, … / Nov. 15, 1901, edition 1 / Page 3
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The National Period! of American Literature BY LORENZO IEAIS. LIT. B., $ | Prefemur of A mrrir/trx Literature in 2 JirmiTi I'niverwity. 9 VI.?The Knickerbocker Group. NO ?writer of Irring's genius could spring up In a bar ren age without inspiring such mediocre talent as might be tncliMd to leth argy. The mere stirring of fallow ground will scud np unsuspected growths, and the awakening which the keen humorist gave the drowsy tuen of Manhattan started a crop of letters among oiner enecis ot me moot, ir tne name or me ixaicxernooxer school be too large for tbe little group of authors who followed Dledrirh. the historian, afar, it may be said that the term wax applied to leas dignified ob ject* in the 'ay of its immense |>opularity and to more worthy out* sine*. The New York Evening i'ost had been established In the first year af tha century with a hospitable policy toward letters, as well us a critical spirit which enhanced the honor of appearing in its columns. To gain admittance to then* was aext to having a book published. Qu the street and In coffee housoa were knots of young men with corresponding ambitious notwithstanding tbe commercial bias of tha city and the material bent of tbe age. Foremost amoag them was a banker's clerk who was not so far lost In arithmetical figures that he could not appreciate poetical and even wished that be might "lounge upon a rainbow and read Tom Campbell," a sentiment with which a bystander agree.!. In thla way Fitz-Greeue Halleck and Joseph Hodman Drake became acquainted in the spring of 1819, the beginning ef a literary companionship as intimate as it was brief, for Drake died the next year. Judged by what he had begun to do, this young poet was cut down at the opening of a promising career. His early essays found their subjects for satire la Che topics of the town, but descriptive and patriotic pieces soon followed, the address to the American flag deserving a higher place than all that have succeeded It. A more remarkable feat was the production In two or three days of "The Culprit Fay" in refutation of an assertion that it would be difficult to write a fairy poem purely Imaginative without the aid of human characters. He accomplished this work with no nearer approach to humanity than in these two lines: For an Ouphe has broken his vestal vow; He has loved an eurthly maid. The rest Is the fanciful account of the consequences of snch a high misde meanor, full of delicate art and the traceries of an Imagination at home with the hidden things of nature, Itself idealized and peopled with intelligences of the ]>oot'B own creating. It is the midsummer night's dream of an airy fancy. The entire poem should be the delight of children who dwell on the border land of the seen and the unseen. Halleck survived to write an elegy upon his friend, which shows how far the art had progressed since the days of Mather; also to continue the strain of American verse which the two friends had joined in contributing to the col umns of The Evening Post. Afterward he was stirred by the wrongs of suffer ing Greece to lift up the voice of freedom in "Marco Bozzarls." Whoever has lost a friend of his youth will associate witli the recollection of his sorrow the lament of Halleck for his companion, beginning: Green be the turf above thee, Friend of my better days! None knew thee but to love thee Nor named thee but to praise. Clement O. Moore has a place among the writers who were inspired by Putch traditions to produce a Knickerbocker literature. No doubt the theo logical professor expected to rest his fame upon the first Hebrew and English lexicon compiled in this country or upon his version of Lavardin's "History of George ("astriot." Instead, when he is placed among the immortals it will be In recognition of his "Visit From St. Nicholas," which all children know be gins: 'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. Gulian C. Verplauck was a New Yorker whose services to literature entitle him to mention. First a lawyer, then a politician and afterward a lecturer in divinity, his pen was seldom idle. "Essays 011 lievealed lteligion" and the "Doctrine of Contrasts" were the more substantial results, while "The State Triumvirate" and "The Ceremony of Ins illation" are in a lighter vein. As a n.emlier of congress lie was prominent in obtaining the extension of the term of copyright from lis to -12 years. Later he was associated with Sands and Bryant in The Talisman, a publication containing some of the best writing of the time. In ids addresses on art, history and literature and "The Iniluence and Use of Liberal Studies," and especially on "The American Scholar," he anticipated some of the more recent essayists and orators who have made kindred themes the subjects of high discussion. William Cullen Bryant may bo considered as an adopted member of the Knickerbocker group since be was not born in New York, but on the Hamp shire hills of western Massachusetts. However, be was not Ions in finding his way to the metropolis and to the little circle which made it the literary center of the country at the time. A copy of I wing's "Knickerbocker" had traveled into the lonely village where young Bryant was reading law and gave him a taste of what was possible in lower latitudes. Hitherto his reading had been among the professional books of his father's medical library, varied by the Latin poets, the Greek Testament, Watts' hymns. Pope's "Iliad" and an unusual number of English classics for that period. But meter and rhyme were a part of his nature and blossomed out in juvenile verses, religious and political, to tiie delight of his father and to his own subsequent chagrin. To these there were two notable exceptions, left at home when he went away to practice law in Great Harrington. His father found them one day six years afterward when rummaging in a drawer, read them himself and to a neighbor and without asking his son's permission started posthaste for Boston and the editor of The North American Review, then a two-year-old magazine. If this overland journey of 100 miles was a remarkable instance of pater nal pride, there was something to warrant it, for one of the poems was, "Than atopsis" and the other "An Inscription Upon the Entrance to a Wood." The first of these was enough to establish the youth as a poet of no common order. It came to a reflective people in an age when the shadow of gloom had not entirely passed, having a sad note that appeals to every reader in sober days and raising riatons of the sublimity, majesty and vastnesa of the universe which bring a pleasing awe to the soul of man in the presence of Infinity and fiWurity. It is a poem of the intellect rather than the heart, grand, austere, wcneinu, a fUnocal anthem of the human race. The golden sun, The planets, all the infinite host of hoar en, Are shining on Mo' sail abodes of dentil Through the still lapee of ages. But he wrote ethar potitis that readers like better than this requiem ef the universe, and in tliam all is the note of nature, struck by a sympathetic ob server not of her graaions moods alone, but of the severe and fateful as well. Out of them all, however, be drew lessons of truth or beauty or morals. He tiuds the law of guidance in the flight of the lone waterfowl across the De cember sky and of hops in the fringed gentian blossoming on the border of winter. "The Forest Hymn," "The Dentil of the Flowers," "The Song of the Dover*' and others longer or shorter are charged with the bloom of summer and frosts of winter and tinted with the hues of spring and autumn. He in clines to the last season with the sober inheritance from a Puritan ancestry and writes: The melancholy days arc como, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds and naked woods and meadows brown and sere. Yet into "The little People of the Snow" he lias put a sympathetic strain, such as is not always found with eulogists of winter and never with shivering grumblers about it. But then lie survived the rigors of 20 Cummiugton win ters before he went to New York and the sultriness of as many summers and thereupon could also write: The quiet August noon lias come. A slumbrous silence tills the sky; The tiehls are still: the woods are dumb; In glassy sleep the waters lie. . Open the volume of lid poems anywhere and some phase of nature is presented, usually in her quiet majesty. Sometimes patriotic and national strains appear, as in "The Song of Marion's Men," "The Green Mountain Boys," "Our Country's Call" and "O Mother of n Mighty Race," hut the return Is speedy to "The White-Footed Deer." "The Hunter of the Prairies" and "The Death of the Flowers." lie is pre-eminently the poet of the woods and waters, of enrth and sky, of summer and winter, of the times und seasons, the days and the years. Bryant's verse will always have its own charm for New Englanders and for their descendants, wherever they may live. They love the moods of na ture with which the fathers played and fought by turns. The viking blood in their veins still makes them sing: The winds from off the Norseman's hills Do shriek a fearsome song; There's music In the shrieking winds That blow my hark along. Besides, there Is In his poeins the flower of that Imagination which, in epite of his pretended indifference, was in the Puritan's soul. It Anally blos somed out early in this century like a crocus 011 the sunny edge of a snow drift In northwestern Massachusetts. It reveled 111 the solemn, the sublime, the severe, as the forefathers hail for 200 years. Moreover, the first great poet had all their conscientiousness In his performance of his task, even If he did break with their Calvinism. Ills measure is exact, his rhyme Is perfect, and, more than all, his moral tone is without a flaw. There are in it both strength and health. iCopj right, 1WQ.J t LONGEST OF RAILWAYS. Cost of Great Siberian Road Has Been $390,000,000. THIRTY MILES OF BRIDGES. Total Length ot Line, With Branches, Will be 5,542 Miles?Vast Possi bilities ot the Project. Russia has practically com pleted her trans-Siberian Hail road. The following concerning this, the longest of the world's railways, from the Baltimore Hun, will perhaps interest Herald readers: The total cost of the railway, constructed by Russians and with Russian money?with all its branches and auxiliary under takings?amounts to $890,000, 000 of which $350,000,000 wus expended by 1900 The con stru tion began in the rtign of Emperor Alexander III, and the ' first stone was laid at Vladi vostok, May 19, 1891, by the then heir apparent N icholas. In the interests of transporta tion and with the object of ren dering the stupendous under- j taking as inexpensive as possi-1 ble, the shortest and most direct route was selected, traversing the most fruitful and comparatively j populous belt of the country?j j the granary of Siberia. Therail j way was begun at both ends, its j western terminus being Tchelia- ] binek, the last station of the | Samara-Zlatoust railway, and a ; district town in the Province of 1 (Irenourtr. By 1 900, .'{,375 miles of lint! i were l.iid down. Such results must be considered as highly ! favorable, especially taking into ;iccount, first, the difficulty of ; laying the permanent way in a country so intersected by rivers I as the Provinces of Tomsk and j Yenisei and so liable to inunda I lion as the trans-Baikal regions, j aud secondly, the great number I of large l ivers to be crossed by the railway, over 30 miles of bridges being required for this purpose. The longest of these | Bridges is that over the Kiver Yenisei, it being 2,940 feet long, j with spans measuring 490 feet. In rapidity of construction the Siberian railway is unequaled, excelling the Canadian railway, 2,920 miles long, which has so much in common with it. and which took 10 years to build. Direct steam communication is now possible between the Euro pean railway net and Vladi vostok. The total length of the Siberian railway, with the Man churian and other branches, which are being pushed to completion, will be 5,542 miles. From the first, the immediate results of working the railway, as shown by the extent of passenger and goods traffic, exceeded all previous expectations. For three months of 1895 and the vears 1896,1897,1898 and 1899'tfnre were carried ou the southern and central Siberian sections, 3,352, 000 passengers and 2,041,000 tons of freight. By the will of its imperial origin ator, the construction of the rail way was put in close connection with the auxiliary undertakings, the promotion of the coloniza tion and industrial development of Siberia. The Siberian railway opened a door into Siberia, through which a broad stream of emigration poured. The work of emigration nas been placed on a proper footing and becomestrict ly regulated. In order to develop the trade with the countries of the Far Fast?China and J apan?the rail way company has constructed a commercial port at Vladi vostok. There is a strong ice breaking steamer for use in win ter, and the port iscalculated for an annual turn over of 1(50,000 tons of goods. The Ilusso-Chi nese Hank has likewise been es tablished. To facilitate the trans port of building materials for the eastern Chinese railway, as well as to extend Russian export trade in eastern Asia, the rail i way company has organized a 1 regular service of steamers along I the Pacific and the riverSungari, which Hows through the most thickly populated and industrial ! part of Manchuria. On tteshores of the unfrozen Yellow sea, at Talien Wan, one of the termini of the great trans-continental railway, the port and town of 1 Dainv has been es ablished as a 1 free port. However large the cost of the railway maybe,it is insignificant in comparison with the commer cial and strategic advantages held out to Russia by the ex ploitation of the shortest rail way route between the Atlantic and the I'acilic, in conjunction I with the Htimulation of the rich productive po were of a vunt coun try like Siberia and the develop ment of Russia's commercial in tercourse with the countries of Eastern Asia. Novel Writing as an industry. There have been more than 200 new novels published in the Uni ted States uiis fall. There have been perhaps five thousand writ-1 ten that the publishers have de clined. The phenomenal popular sue-, cess of a few writers of fiction! during the last few years?some masters of their craft and some mere stage carpenters who set up sp.*ctacular scenes?has had the effect of making-novel writing appear to be an iudustry. Few I persons used to make it a busi-! ness; for regarded as an industry it did not pay for the labor it re quired. Hut now it is regarded ; by many as a way to fortune.; Lonely women, disappointed teachers, impecunious preachers; ?these, but not these only, try their hands at it. You never knew whom to suspect. Your physician, even your broker, men in public life, ladies in so ciety?your own grandmother or your own granddaughter for all you know?all these have taken to the secret pratice of the craft. For instance, one publishing house, which does not publish many novels, has within a given period received eight hundred volunteered book manuscripts, of which six hundred and fifty were novels. Of these lour were accepted for publication. A few such fai'ts as these indicate the extent of the de usion about the profits of the industry. "Father," said a boy of fourteen the other day, "I want you to buy me a copy of the 'Century War-Book.' I'm intuit; to write a novel of the Civil War." There are other books that the world wants more than it wants novels ? histories, biographies, social studies, adventures. These | seldom yield sudden fortunes. But there have been men who have made very considerable in- i comes us historians and biogra phers. Their incomes have as often come to their children as to themselves; but almost every im portant historical work has brought a fair reward at last. As a gainful industry novel writing is not worth the labor it costs. As an art it is one of the noblest and most difficult; and only those who regard it as a great art have any right to undertake it.?World's Work. You Know What You are Taking'. When you take Grove's Taste less Chill Tonic because the form ula is plainly printed ou every bottle showing that it is simply Iron and Quinine in a tasteless form. No Cure, No Pay. 50c. He Could Walt. "Here's the devil to pay!'' ex claimed the old man, coming in with a handful ot bills. "Don't worry about him, dear," said the wife; "he knows that you'll settle with him hereafter!" ?Atlanta Constitution. Infantile Pride. "Poh! My papa wears evenin' clothes every time he goes to parties." "That ain't anytbin'. Our minister wears his night clothes every time he preaches."?Cleve land Plain Dealer. The Eminent Kidney and Bladder Specialist. ixcjai The Discoverer of SWamp-Root at Work la His Laboratory. There is a disease prevailing in this country most dangerous because so decep tive. M any sudden deaths are caused by it?heart disease, pneumonia, heart failure or apoplexy are often the result of kidney disease. If kidney trouble is allowed to ad vance the kidney-poisoned blood will attack the vital organs, or the kidneys themselves break down and waste away cell by cell. Then the richness of the blood?the albumen ?leaks out and the sufferer has Bright's Disease, the worst form of kidney trouble. Dr. Kilmer's Swamp-Root the new dis covery is the true specific for kidney, bladder I and urinary troubles. It has cured thousands of apparently hopeless cases, after all other efforts have failed. At druggists In fifty-cent and dollar sizes. A sample bottle sent free by mail, also a book telling about Swamp Root and Its wonderful cures. Address Dr. Kilmer & Co., Binghamton, N. Y. and mention this paper. I ARE YOU DEAF? ANY HEAD NOISES? ALL CASES OF DEAFNESS OR HARD HEARING ARE NOW CURABLE by our new invention. Only those born deaf are incurable. HEAD NOISES GEASE IMMEDIATELY. F. A. WERMAN, OF BALTIMORE, SAYS: Baltimore. Md.. March yo, iooi. Gmtlemen Beir ? cr.'irly cured of deafness. thanks to your treatment, I will now give you l full history of mv cast 'o I - us I at vour disc- -ti nr. Abou- five vfii ? a?o m\ right ear uegati to sing, and this kept on getting worse until I last my hearing in this ear entirely I underwent a treatment for catarrh, for three months, w;thout any success, consulted a num ber of physicians, among others, the *no?t eminent ear specialist ol this city, who told me that only an ope at ion could help me, and even that only temporarily, that the head uoisr* would then cease, but the he . iug in the affected ~at would 1 e lost forever I then saw vour advertisement necideii allv in i. New York pap r. and ordered <""r treat ment After I had used it only a few days according to you* iirecrious tl. ihh-^c-.i d. and to-day. after five week- m\ hearing in th?- diseased ear has Ixtn entire!) restored. I thank you heartily and beg to remain Very truly yours K. A. WERMAN. yo S. Broadway, Baltimore, Md. Our treatment does nut, inter/ere with your usual occupation. E".^vr?*ud YDU CAN CURE YOURSELF AT HOME "'V.r-.T.'"1 INTERNATIONAL AURAL CLINIC, 596 LA SAILE AVE., CHICAP", || ? MAKE HOME HAPPY. We know nothing you can buy that would add more to the happiness of your home than A GOOD ORGAN. We want to sell you one. We keep the ESTEY, a strictly high grade instrument. Head(juartei8 at R F. Smith's Furniture Store. Call and see these Organs. BENSON ORGAN CO., Robert F. Smith. RFMSOM N C Joseph G. Smith. DCiNSUl>, FN. OIO-2111. , NEW FALL GOODS, My new stock of Dry Goods, Notions. Millinery, Cloaks, Capes, Shoes, Hats Caps, Clothing and Gents' Furnishing Goods i- now complete and up-to-date in each department. IN DRESS GOODS, I have a full line of the latest weaves and colors in dress goods. Aho a full line of trimming in silks, velvets, gimps, braids, jets and applique. SHIRT WAIST GOODS, My line of shirt waist goods is ' bang-up." I have a nice I line of silks, flannels, all wool Albatross, Percales. All in beautiful shades. My Millinery Department is Full and Complete. I have put in a full stock of the latest shapes and colors for fall and winter. Also full line of CAPS for misses and chil jdren. Ladies wishing anything in this departnu nt will find ; Miss Beckwith at her post ready and willing to servt them in a i strin.tlv nn.trw1n.tp atvln SHOES, SHOES. h/+ SHOES. SHOES. I carry a full line of Zeigler Bros.' fine shoes for ladies, misses and child en, the best shoes made for wear. Every pair war ranted. I also carry a full stock of other makes of tine shoes for men, ladies, misses and children, which are first quality and you can buy them very cheap. CLOTHING! CLOTHING! I have put in a full stock of clothing of newest make-up styles in all sizes for men, youths and children. Prices from $1 tofl2.be per suit, Also a nice line of I'ANTS from f2 to fo. Aso I have a good line of FINE HATS, all colors, and a good line of GENTS' FURNISHING GOODS. Don't buy your (roods until you get my prices, as I am sure that ; I can save you money, as I discount all of my bills and will give my i customers the benefit of it. YA/. G. Yelvington, SMITttFIELD, N. G. FARMERS Can Save Money BY BUYING MONEY-SAVING TOOLS. H/ ,0 sen(* catalogues of each 11 G Wail l o' ?he following to every ????? Farmer in the State. WRITE A POSTAL CARD FOK ONE: Tho CORN CROP can be doubled by using a HllSKER and SHREDDER. It husks the corn and delivers Into wagon or crib and shreds or cuts the stalk and fodder at the same time into splendid feed and delivers it into barn or stack. FEED MILES, which grind corn and cob or shelled grain into meal, i HAM) or POWER FEED CUTTERS, J with travelling feed table. HOUSE POWERS with FEED MILLS attached, and for running Feed Cut ters, Wood Saws, etc. FANNING MILLS for grain and seed. GRAIN DRILLS, both disc and hoe. Rufrirle*, Carriage, Wagon sand Mar* liess, from the finest to the humblest. We have the largest stock in the South. SORGHUM MILLS cud Evaporators. WIRE FENCING of all Kinds. The best and cheapest and will last a lifetime. Wood Patent SWING CHURNS by far the beat. S K N D FOR CATALOCUKS OK ANY OF T I 'VII. THE IMPLEMENT COMPANY 1302-1304 East Main Street, : : : RICHMOND. VIRGINIA
The Smithfield Herald (Smithfield, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Nov. 15, 1901, edition 1
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