Part 32

The Gilbert opera. The delicate foolery of Gilbert and the interpreting melody of Sullivan created an inimitable form of opera that delighted its generations. In its way perfection marks it. There is much in it that ministers to inward quiet and enjoyment. "Pinafore," "The Mikado," and all the list, are products of genius. "Ruddygore" is structurally weak, proving that even nonsense must have a logical treatment. Successful in a manner as "Ruddygore" was, it was filled with characteristic quaintness. We accept Rose Maybud as a piece of good luck, from the moment her modest slippers demurely patter to the front; and it is a sober statement to say that our generation has seen nothing more charming than her artful artlessness and innocence. She is worthy of Gilbert. His taste is refined beyond the point of vulgarity in essence or by way of expediency. His fancy is not tainted with the corruption of flesh-tight limbs, and he holds fast only to such physical allurements as the "three little maids just from school" in the "Mikado" or the impossibly good and dainty Rose Maybud may tempt us with. In the dance there is no lasciviousness, only joy. Gilbert and Sullivan have called a halt to the can-can and bid the world be decent. The whole history of comic opera is filled with proof that music first consented to lend itself to foolery on condition that there should be some heart in it; and even Offenbach, the patriarch of libidinous absurdities, could not get along without stopping by the wayside to make his sinners sing love-songs filled with pure emotion.

Rose Maybud is a piece of delicate coquetry with the mysterious simplicity of maidenhood, giving offense in no way. These authors are satirists, not burlesquers and fakirs.

FOOTNOTE:

[33] Copyright, 1892, by Brentano's.

GEORGE M. DAVIE

George Montgomery Davie, a verse-maker of cleverness and charm, was born near Hopkinsville, Kentucky, March 16, 1848. He began his collegiate career at Centre College, Danville, Kentucky, but he later went to Princeton, from which institution he was graduated in 1868. Two years later he established himself as a lawyer at Louisville. Davie rose rapidly in his profession, and he was soon recognized as one of the ablest lawyers in Kentucky. Though busy with his practice, he found time to write verse and short prose papers for periodicals that were appreciated by many persons. Davie was a Latinist of decided ability, and he often employed himself in turning the odes of Horace into English. His original work, however, is very charming and clever, a smile being concealed in almost every line he wrote, though it is a very quiet and dignified smile, never boisterous. He was one of the founders of the now celebrated Filson Club, of Louisville. He died at New York, February 22, 1900, but he sleeps to-day in Louisville's beautiful Cave Hill cemetery. _Verses_ (Louisville, Kentucky, n. d.), a broadside, contains Davie's best original poems and translations and it is a very scarce item at this time.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Courier-Journal_ (February 23, 1900); _Kentucky Eloquence_ (Louisville, 1907).

"FRATER, AVE ATQUE VALE!"

(Catullus, Car. CI.)

[From _Verses_ (Louisville, Kentucky, n. d.)]

Through many nations, over many seas, Brother, I come to thy sad obsequies: To bring the last gifts for the dead to thee, And speak to thy mute ashes--left to me By the hard fate, that on a cruel day, From me, dear brother, called Thyself away. Receive these gifts, wet with fraternal tears; And the last rites, that custom old endears; These fond memorials would my sorrow tell-- Brother! forever, hail thee--and farewell!

HADRIAN, DYING, TO HIS SOUL

[From the same]

Animula vagula blandula, Hospes comesque corporis, Quae nunc abibis in loca, Pallidula rigida nudula; Nec, ut soles, dabis jocos?

Thou sprite! so charming, uncontrolled, Guest and companion of my clay, Into what places wilt thou stray, When thou art naked, pale, and cold? Wilt then make merry--as of old?

JOHN URI LLOYD

John Uri Lloyd, novelist and scientist, was born at West Bloomfield, New York, April 19, 1849. He is the son of a civil engineer who came West, in 1853, for the purpose of surveying a railroad between Covington and Louisville, known as the "River Route." Mr. Lloyd was thus four years old when his father settled at Burlington, Boone county, Kentucky, near the line of the road. The panic of 1854 came and the railroad company failed, but his parents preferred their new Kentucky home to the old home in the East, and they decided to remain, taking up their first vocations, that of teaching. For several years they taught in the village schools of the three little Kentucky towns of Burlington, Petersburg, and Florence. Mr. Lloyd lived at Florence until he was fourteen years of age, when he was apprenticed to a Cincinnati druggist, but he continued to be a resident of Kentucky until 1876, since which time he has lived at Cincinnati. In 1878 he became connected with the Cincinnati College of Pharmacy, and this connection has continued to the present day. In 1880 he was married to a Kentucky woman. Mr. Lloyd is one of the most distinguished pharmaceutical chemists in the United States. He has a magnificent library and museum upon his subjects; and he is generally conceded to be the world's highest authority on puff-balls. Mr. Lloyd's scientific works include _The Chemistry of Medicines_ (1881); _Drugs and Medicines of North America_ (1884); _King's American Dispensatory_ (1885); _Elixirs, their History and Preparation_ (1892); and he, as president, has edited the publications of the Lloyd Library, as follows: _Dr. B. S. Barton's Collections_ (1900); _Dr. Peter Smith's Indian Doctor's Dispensatory_ (1901); _A Study in Pharmacy_ (1902); _Dr. David Schopf's Materia Medica Americana_ (1903); _Dr. Manasseh Cutler's Vegetable Productions_ (1903); _Reproductions from the Works of William Downey, John Carver, and Anthony St. Storck_ (1907); _Hydrastis Canadensis_ (1908); _Samuel Thomson and Thomsonian Materia Medica_ (1909). Dr. Lloyd has won his general reputation as a writer of novels descriptive of life in northern Kentucky. His first work to attract wide attention was entitled _Etidorpha, or the End of Earth_ (New York, 1895), a work which involved speculative philosophy. This was followed by a little story, _The Right Side of the Car_ (Boston, 1897). Then came the Stringtown stories, which made his reputation. "Stringtown" is the fictional name for the Kentucky Florence of his boyhood. There are four of them: _Stringtown on the Pike_ (New York, 1900); _Warwick of the Knobs_ (New York, 1901); _Red Head_ (New York, 1903); and _Scroggins_ (New York, 1904). In these stories the author's aim was not to be engaged solely as a novelist, "but to portray to outsiders a phase of life unknown to the world at large, and to establish a folk-lore picture in which the scenes that occurred in times gone by, would be paralleled in the events therein narrated." _Stringtown on the Pike_ is Mr. Lloyd's best known book, but _Warwick of the Knobs_ is far and way the finest of the four.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Bookman_ (May, 1900); _The Outlook_ (November 16, 1901); _The Bookman_ (December, 1910).

"LET'S HAVE THE MERCY TEXT"[34]

[From _Warwick of the Knobs_ (New York, 1901)]

Warwick made no movement; no word of greeting came from his lips, no softening touch to his furrowed brow, no sparkle to his cold, gray eye. As though gazing upon a stranger, he sat and pierced the girl through and through with a formal stare, that drove despair deeper into her heart and caused her to cling closer to her brother.

"Pap, sister's home ag'in," the youth repeated.

"I know nothing of a sister who claims a home here."

Mary would have fallen but for the strong arm of her brother, who gently, tenderly guided her to a great rocking-chair. Then he turned on his father.

"I said thet sister's home agin, and I means it, pap."

Turning the leaves of the Book to a familiar passage, Warwick read aloud:

"'The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father, but of the world.' This girl has no home here. She is of the world."

"Father, ef sister hes no home here, I hav'n't none, either. Ef she must go out into the world, I'll go with her."

The man of God gazed sternly at the rebellious youth. Then he turned to the girl.

"The good Book says, 'A fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.'"

Joshua stepped between the two and hid the child from her father.

"Pap, thet book says tough things to-night. The text you preached from to-day was a better one. I remember et, and I'll leave et to you ef I am not right. 'I am merciful, saith the Lord, and I will not keep my anger forever.' Thet's a better text, and I takes et, God was in a better humor when He wrote et."

"Joshua!" spoke the father, shocked at his son's irreverence.

"Listen, pap. I hate to say et, but I must. You preached one thing this morning, and you acts another thing now. Didn't you say thet God 'retaineth not His anger forever, because He delighteth in mercy?' I may not hev the words right, but I've got the sense."

"My son!"

"Pap, I axes the question on the square. Ain't thet what you preached?"

"That was the text."

"It ain't fair to preach one text in the meetin'-house and act another text at home."

"Joshua!"

"Let's hev the mercy text to-night. Pap, sister's home ag'in. Let's act the fergivin' text out."

Joshua stepped aside and the minister, touched in spite of himself, glanced at his daughter, a softened glance, that spoke of affection, but he made no movement. Then the girl slowly rose and turned toward the door, still keeping her eyes on her father's face. She edged backward step by step toward the door by which she had entered. Her hand grasped the latch; the door moved on its hinges.

"Stop, sister," said Joshua. "Pap, ef sister opens thet door I go with her, and then you will sit alone in this room ferever. You will be the last Warwick of the Knob."

Warwick, with all his coldness and strength, could not stand the ordeal.

"Come back, my children," he said. "It is also written, 'I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.'" And then, as in former times, Mary's head rested on her father's knee.

FOOTNOTE:

[34] Copyright, 1901, by Dodd, Mead and Company.

Transcriber's Notes:

Obvious punctuation and spelling errors have been fixed throughout.

The oe ligature in this etext has been replaced with oe.

Inconsistent hyphenation is as in the original.

Page xxi: The title of the Emerson poem "Goodby Proud World" is as in the original.

Page 251: 1833 has been changed to 1883 as this follows chronologically from the surrounding sentences. (... and in 1883 his study ...)

Page 273: A missing quote in (... to Write "Grace Truman: ...) is as in the original.