Some Romances of the Revolution

THE interest of the first half of the Revolution centres in the North, that of the last half in the South; and it is sometimes difficult to say which is the more picturesque group of heroes, — Putnam, Stark, and Ethan Allen, or Sumter, Marion, and Pickens. At least, one who began his novel-reading with the popular favorites of a quarter of a century ago will hardly approach the latter group without thinking of William Gilmore Simms. He has put life and reality into the events which tried men’s souls along the Ashley, Cooper, and Saluda rivers, and those companion streams whose names terminate so musically in a double e; painting for us with a vividness which makes them seem almost like familiar friends those partisan outcasts who had taken the law into their own hands, and were destined to become the founders of a new though somewhat ragged order of knighthood. Denizens of the Cypress, always upon the alert, fording the rivers and threading the thickets, and dashing down in unexpected assault upon their Tory enemies along the highways of that devoted section, they emerge from their fastnesses, to melt away again like shadows when their fell purpose is accomplished,— to the perennial satisfaction of the reader.

In no other way could we have made the personal acquaintance of the wily Goose-Creeker, with his almost superhuman acuteness in the bush and on the road; the Santee woodsman ; the Edisto raftsman; or the boatman of the Congarce. We know that, in the end, this warfare, with its mixture of civilized skill and Indian cunning, proved too much for the conventional tactics of their British antagonists ; but nothing better helps us to realize just how this result was brought about than the half dozen novels beginning with The Partisan and ending with Woodcraft.

The first of the double trilogy, containing The Partisan, Mellichampe, and Katherine Walton, — I purposely omit The Scout, as contributing nothing to the progressive movement of the series, and being distinctly inferior both in quality and in interest to the other six — opens at the tavern of Richard Humphries, “ Sly Dick of the Royal George,” and is for the most part confined to the seaboard and the region about Charleston and Old Dorchester. The second three. The Forayers, Eutaw. and Woodcraft, continue some of the characters of the first, and take the reader into the interior, to the country bordering the “ High Hills ” and broken by the Santee and Congaree rivers. No mere chronicle could show, as do these stirring stories, the intricate play of motives which entered into the life of the period ; the reaching out in both directions and balancing of chances, the covering of retreat under the timid effort to advance, which brought some men into doubtful and nearly all men into subtle and obscure relations with their neighbors. Patriotism and selfishness were in constant conflict, and every man was felt, to be concealing more or less of his real thought and feeling from even those who were nearest to him. It was diamond cut diamond, and the most innocent expressions of friendliness or allegiance were scrutinized with reference to some sinister purpose. A whistle in the woods, and the recognized loyalist sipping his Madeira or Monongahela on his piazza, might be off to a meeting with Marion’s men. who knew well enough where to find their friends even among the avowed servants of the king.

There is a distinct gain in the background of reality against which Simms was able to project the purely fictitious elements in his novels. His intimate and loving knowledge of the region of which he wrote, his command of local tradition, as well as his perfect familiarity with the history of the war in the South, help to create in the reader a sense of moving among veritable scenes and people. These fortunes we are following seem to belong to the larger life of the nation, and this also helps us to give the author a larger measure of our confidence than happens ordinarily with brethren of his craft. He is at no small pains to recall for our benefit that brilliant circle of belles who made the social life of Charleston so distracting at this period ; nor does he forget in Katherine Walton that bevy of beautiful widows who did so much to confuse the heads of the royalist garrison in that gay capital.

In fact, here is the good old-fashioned novel, with its plot, its villain, its outraged innocence, its virtue triumphing over adverse circumstance, and all. I say " good ” advisedly, because its merits as an at least occasional relief from the modern inconclusiveness under which we suffer seem to be undoubted. The graceful inanities of recent fiction have certainly given an edge to our relish for a more robust and varied characterization of life. Simms is decidedly a novelist of action, especially the action of men who live out of doors, and express themselves in off-hand, unsophisticated ways. No one could enter with more admirable readiness into the spirit of the times he is depicting, or more completely command the resources which it called into play.

There are many instances of this in the series of novels under consideration : such as the ride of Major Singleton and Lance Frampton from The Oaks, in The Partisan, — an adventure well calculated to show the address and courage required by that peculiar warfare ; or the scene in Mellichampe, where Bill Humphries wakens Thumbscrew in the swamp to tell him that the revengeful Blonay is on his track, together with the incidents which immediately follow : or perhaps better yet, that wonderfully realistic description of a Southern thunder-storm, in the fifteenth chapter of The Partisan, where, as Singleton and Humphries are making their way back to the encampment in the Cypress, in one of the lurid after-flashes of the tempest the former catches a glimpse of the deserter Blonay on the ridge above them. What takes place later at Dame Blonay’s hut in the woods is a still further illustration of the author’s dramatic force and intensity.

This wild, uncanny, witch-like woman Simms paints with a vigor hardly surpassed by Scott himself; and indeed there is much in his breadth of canvas and masterly grouping of figures and details in a landscape to remind one of that prince of novelists. It is, however, in his portraiture of women that Simms commonly fails. As a rule, his heroines are tame and colorless creations, with very little to lift them above the conventional standard of the eighteenth-century novel; and the reader, who is almost certain to be a man in search of the distinct flavor of an open-air experience, justly feels at liberty to turn them a deaf ear at even their moment of most apparent charm. Simms errs, too, in a frequent straining for effect, an overdrawing in the delineation of the intenser emotions, which is due perhaps as much to the outgrown literary fashion of his day as to any artistic defect in the author. Melodrama had not yet gone out of date, and exaggerations from which the very instincts of a modern carpet novelist would protect him were as unconscious with Simms as they were inevitable. Haste in composition, a limitation which he frankly confesses in his prefaces, had also much to do with this, although it came still more from the literary conditions of his times. Even Cooper does not escape the same criticism, and often offends more grievously in this direction.

Katherine Walton is a notable exception among the women whom Simms has painted, a character moulded upon a truly admirable pattern and consistently carried out. In spite of her somewhat statuesque proportions, there is an engaging quality, a thorough womanliness about her, which holds her as a gracious personality in the reader’s regard throughout the two romances in which she figures. This is all the more enjoyable because, embodying as she does the best motives and feelings of the times, she seems to affect us as in some sort a representative of what is most distinctively American.

Although the earnestness and sincerity of Simms’s work appear in the patriotic emotions which he loved to bring into play, it was also incidental to the task he had undertaken that there should be more of the unpleasant side of human nature in it than is altogether consistent with later taste. Even at the time of its publication there were those to insist that crime and the shedding of blood disfigured his pages. The nature of the case made this more or less inevitable ; nor were craft, confession, and revenge the worn-out subterfuges of the artist they have since become. And yet the fact remains that no writer gains more by a judicious discrimination on the part of his readers than he; and in general, while it is always safe to follow him when he is out of doors, his step is never quite assured when he crosses the threshold and attempts to deal with the subtler relations of men and women, and the more artificial atmosphere which they create and require. His sphere is the manipulation of a plot in those large, active conditions from which women are generally excluded. He is really inspired by what is vigorous in movement and poetic in scenery, and when he is on his own ground no one has better command of the arts of the practiced story-teller than he. Perhaps no one phrase could more aptly describe his characteristic as a man and writer than that which his favorite Lieutenant Porgy selected for his own epitaph. Replying to his companion’s remark that he would have his joke though he died for it, Porgy declared, “ To he sure, old fellow, and why not ? God help me when I cease to laugh. When that day comes, Humphries, look tor an aching shoulder. I’m no trifle to carry, and I take it for granted, Bill, for old acquaintance’ sake, you ‘ll lend a hand to lift a leg and thigh of one who was once your friend. See me well buried, my boy ; and if you have time to write a line or raise a head-board, you may congratulate Death on making the acquaintance of one who was remarkably intimate with Life.”

Despite occasional blemishes, Simms’s pages throb with life. They are full of human feeling and the flesh-and-blood likeness of things as we know them. A certain homely heartiness, by no means easy of creation, is the natural outcome of this genius of his for life. The blare of bugles sounds through his books; and the stir of men in motion — men, too, in dead earnest and with mighty issues at stake — carries the reader along with a sense of being himself very much alive. Once created in his imagination, Simms’s grasp of a personality is unerringly firm, especially if it be that of a man of strong native qualities for good or bad ; and no one need suffer any doubt as to the identity of friend or foe to whom he has been properly introduced by the author. From a historical point of view, also, one can avail himself in Simms of a painter of unsurpassed opportunity and most painstaking research. These novels contain essential reference to the careers of Marion, Moultrie, Sumter, and Pickens, while nowhere else can be found more vivid portraitures of Governor Rutledge, of South Carolina, Baron De Kalb, and General Gates on the side of the Colonies, or of Tarleton, Balfour, and Rawdon on that of the Crown. Marion, in particular, fairly lives in the pages of Simms ; and so completely acquainted do we become with his slightest mental and personal peculiarities as to acquire almost the feeling of knowing the man in veritable presence. Above all does he communicate his own love and reverence for the partisan leader in such a way as to touch our imagination and rouse our sympathetic regard.

By way of illustration, as well as to show what were the distinctive elements of his power as a local painter, let us penetrate the Cypress with one of his heroes, and after hours of hard riding through thicket and morass, perhaps splashed with water and torn by the undergrowth, we shall find ourselves admitted to the famous camp of Marion. From the time of our entrance into the swamp, scouts and sentries have been safely passed at intervals along the way, the guide elected of our fancy answering sundry hootings of owls and familiar whistlings with satisfactory repetitions of the same. “ Owls abroad ? ” has been the challenge of some coon-skin-covered head thrust out at us from the bushes, to which the responsive “ Owls at home! ” has been promptly given. And when, on nearer approach, the demand is made in still more emphatic phrase, “ What owl hoots ? ” the due and proper answer has been forthcoming; until at last, on the edge of a mighty tuft or hillock, formed like an island out of the surrounding ooze, as if for some such patriotic purpose, and called in local speech a bay, we are permitted to dismount.

At once we become conscious of a little world out here in the woods by itself. In a hollow, the better to hide the flames, the party has built its fires ; about which, in varying degrees of activity or repose, are grouped the hunted followers of the Swamp Fox.” Here a trooper is mending his bridle beneath a gigantic oak, or ash. or hickory, while a little farther away another of less strenuous make-up is stretched at length, with feet to the fire, and half-closed eyes peering dreamily up through the branches into the starlit shy. Yonder, a knot of younger men are busy fashioning arrows from a great pile of canes or reeds such as abound in the lowlands of this region, while a basket stands near by crowded with feathers of the eagle, crane, hawk, and common turkey, to be fitted to the shafts when ready, and a collection of nails and sharpened bits of wire with which to tip them. In the hollow trunk of some neighboring tree, white-oak or ash bows and sheaves of these arrows will be stored against the possible failure to capture more of King George’s baggage - wagons laden with British arms and ammunition. Still others of the camp, bent upon play rather than work or sleep, are absorbed in a game of “ old sledge,” or a pitch at quoits or coppers, while one solitary individual is grooming his horse upon the outer edge of the swamp. The trees are a veritable depository for bridles, blankets, coats, and cloaks, and a dozen saddles lie scattered at their feet.

Here in his element is the typical ranger, or forester, of the period, with his scanty though picturesque costume, consisting of a mixture of Indian undress and military uniform, with his nonchalance, his drawl, and his almost uncanny cleverness in woodcraft, or the fence which is capable of deluding an enemy into the feeling that he is a friend. Even the names by which he is familiarly known among his fellows bespeak the haunts and habits to which his peculiar warfare has driven him; for, in the frank and unconventional phrase of the camp, we shall be sure to meet Hard-Riding Dick, Dusky Sam, Clip-the-Can, Prickly Ash, and Black Fox. Here, too, we shall find those who are destined to become still better known to us, — Porgy, with his sable attendant Tom, Lance Franipton, Bill Humphries, and Jim Ballou: “ a merry crew, cool, careless, good-natured, looking for all the world like a gypsy encampment. Their costume, weapons, and occupations; the wild and not ungraceful ease with which they throw their huge frames about the fire; the fire, with its great drowsy smokes slowly ascending, and with capricious jets of wind sweeping it to and fro among the circle; and the silent dogs, three in number, grouped at the feet of their masters, their great bright eyes wistfully turned upward in momentary expectation of the fragment, — all ‘contributed to a picture as unique as any one might have seen once in merry old England, or, to this day, among the Zincali of Iberia.”

One group in particular, gathered about the carcass of a line buck recently brought in from the chase, is worthy of our attention. Over the slain animal stands the portly person of Lieutenant Porgy, bare of arms to the elbow, and flourishing a monstrous couteau de chasse. The nimble motions of so weighty a man become very diverting to a lookeron, as does his philosophy to the listener ; and after watching him for a while, we are prepared to share in the emphasis of the author’s exclamation: ‘‘How he measured the brisket! How he felt for the fat! With what an air of satisfaction he heaved up the huge haunches of the beast! And how his little gray eyes twinkled through the voluminous and rosy masses of his own great cheeks ! ”

“I can live in almost any situation in which a man can live at all,” declares this woodland epicurean a little later on, as he takes another smoking morsel from the hissing coals, “ and do not object to the feminine luxuries of city life in lieu of a better ; but there is no meat like this, fresh from the coals, the owner of which hugged it to his living heart three hours ago. One feels free in the open air; and at midnight, under the trees, a venison steak is something more than meat. It is food for the thought. It provokes philosophy.”

The reader of these romances very soon comes to love Porgy, and to look to him for the creation of a good many pleasant surprises. Indeed, for a fleshy man, “ as subject to heat as butter ; a man of continual dissolution and thaw,” like Shakespeare’s fat knight of Eastcheap, whom in so many harmless respects he resembles, his quickness of mind is no less remarkable than his agility of body. He is equally at home in the seriousness of some bit of worldly wisdom, or the humor of half-satirical sally or ponderous practical joke. Porgy loves to play the gourmand, but we speedily learn to see through his assumption of a part suggested by his size of person rather than his size of appetite. In truth, he is but an indifferent eater as to quantity, but makes up for it by the strenuousness of his demand as to quality. And when he boasts himself upon the distinction of having the best cook in the army, in the person of his colored man Tom, it is quite as much with a view to hospitality as it is in the interests of private indulgence. Nor do his gustatory propensities ever lead him to forget his higher function as a reformer of dietetics to the rest of the world; for long before the others at his mess have finished eating, he is looking about him in the pleased fancy that he is elevating the taste of his fellows in what he loves to consider the most important act of life. Thought and feeding go closely together, in his estimate; and perhaps no reader of the gentler sex can quite afford to ignore his summing up of what goes to the making of a good wife, “one who knows the difference between hash and haggis, and can convert a terrapin into a turtle by sheer dexterity in shaking the spice-box.’’ There may still be bachelors to echo his somewhat despairing conclusion. “ I feel that I could be happy with such a woman.” Nor could anything well be more novel and convincing than his arguments in favor of widows as wives, especially in cases where a knowledge of the first husband’s tastes has made one feel sure of their proper education.

Altogether, Porgy is perhaps the best illustration of the gourmet, the intellectual feeder, in our literature : a man, as he himself puts it, “ refined in soups and sublime in sauces ; ” whose abdomen and brains, we are told, seemed to work together, and who “thought of eating perpetually, and while he ate still thought.” “ I perceive,” remarks one of his companions, “ that you are always sentimental after supper, lieutenant.” “ And properly so,” is the reply. “ The beast is then pacified. Then there is no conflict between the animal and the god. Thought is then supreme, and summons all the nobler energies to her communion. ‘ And again, as he finishes his repast : “ So much of life is secure. I am satisfied, — I have lived to-day, and nothing can deprive me of the 22d of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty, enjoyed in the Cypress Swamp. The day is completed : it should always close with the dinner hour. It is then secure, — we cannot he deprived of it: it is recorded in the history of hopes realized and of feelings properly felt.”

Patriot and epicurean at the same time, Porgy can serve his country even while occasionally grumbling at the scantiness of fare with which in turn she often served her defenders. But so admirable a philosopher is he that he suffers neither protest nor anticipation to disturb his equanimity. “ Never do you hurry,” runs his tutoring of the impatient Lance Frampton, as they once neared the home of the latter’s sweetheart, “ even if it be on the road to happiness. No man enjoys life who gallops through it. Take it slowly ; stop frequently by the way, and look about you. He who goes ahead ever, passes a treasure on both sides which he never finds coming back. . . . Many a man. through sheer impatience, has swam for the shore, and sunk just when it rose in sight. Had the fool turned on his back and floated for an hour, the whole journey would have been safe and easy. If you please, Master Lance, we ‘ll turn upon our backs for an hour. I have an appetite just now. If I fail to satisfy it, I lose it till to-morrow, and the loss is irretrievable. There is some jerked beef in your wallet, I think, and a few biscuit. We will turn up this branch, the water of which is cool and clear, put ourselves in a close, quiet place in the woods, and pacify the domestic tiger.”

But one must have an all-round knowledge of Porgy really to appreciate him ; and although a volume might be made of his pithy sayings, his apt criticisms of life, his playful thrusts at sentiment and by no means serious appeals to the “ inner man,” it would necessarily fail to do justice to his character as a whole. Perhaps the chief source of its charm lies in the fact of his being such an amiable compound of contradictory qualities. A moralist as well as man of humor, his convivial tendencies are often only the cover for a disposition to take life more seriously than he cares to do ; while his bodily habit and capacity for sensuous enjoyment do not unfit him for nature’s simplicity and the hardships of a trooper’s existence. Truculent, yet good-humored, he has that large tolerance which is supposed to belong to the favored in flesh ; and so he remains the friend even of those whom his logic confounds. A wag and an unsparing joker, no one sacrificed more personal comfort than he — for few had so much of possible comfort to sacrifice — for the sake of country or companions. Listen to him as he placidly discourses in the shadow of the swamp thickets, his great body at rest, but his small eyes twinkling upon the scene with a gaze that omits nothing ; and after the labors and excitements of such a day as he has participated in, you will declare with him, “Ah, this is life!” although perhaps the full gusto of the original exclamation might be lost in the feebler responsiveness of our generation. With his figure, “ made for state occasions and great ceremonials only,” “ his great beard, long and well sprinkled with gray, his expanse of abdominal territory well belted with leather and girthed with crimson sash,” Porgy lives for us with a sort of Falstaffian grotesqueness, a big, unwieldy playfulness of temper which is not without its other side of agile resource. Indeed, we shall have to go far in fiction to find a character more original and unique ; and one can easily credit the statement of the author that he is a portraiture from real life.

Not to go too far for a specimen of those amusing situations in which from time to time throughout this series of novels Porgy discovers himself to our acquaintance, take the account of his hunt for terrapin, in the thirtieth chapter of The Partisan. Some of us may be as ignorant as was the Goose-Creeker, John Davis, who witnessed the feat, of the succulent qualities of alligator terrapin when reduced to the form of stew. Nor could we be expected to know better than he that the true manner of stalking the game is to find him asleep in the starlight upon some log hung across a lagoon, and then to draw near on all fours, imitating as best one may the grunts of his swamp neighbor, the hog. To have seen the ponderous lieutenant “cooning the log” with a skill and patience worthy of self-abnegation in a higher cause than that of soups would be an enjoyment second only to that produced by the author’s description. The philosophy with which he fortifies himself against his own reflections, in this descent of the gentleman to the level of the swine, is inimitable. Truly, the “ pleasures of a dinner are not to be lost for a grunt; ” and it only needed Porgy’s idealization of that important ceremonial to inspire him with " as good a grant as ever echoed in Westphalian forests.”

But Porgy’s mission to a dull and unobservant world does not end with the mysteries of mock-turtle soup and terrapin pie. What a flavor does it leave in the mouth just to read of that sylvan feast which our partisan epicure spread for the captains, in the concluding pages of The Forayers. In a recent brush with the enemy, Porgy had managed to secure some delicacies intended for the table of the Tory officers, and he further proposes a raid upon the unoffending denizens of Caw Caw Swamp, — “ green jackets of the pond,” our author calls them. Blissfully ignorant of what they may he eating, the guests are to be initiated into the merit of frog as an article of diet, and the result fully justifies the happy anticipations of the host. Soup, ball, and steak, — his skill in woodland catering is acknowledged by all; but something like consternation follows the announcement of the secret, and the consciousness that they have actually partaken of a morsel hitherto tabooed by their uncultured tastes.

And what a company it was! — consisting of the then puissant Rhode Islander, General Greene, majestic alike in person and professional dignity ; noble Governor Rutledge, the veritable father of the people who had chosen him to guide their troubled fortunes ; the Swamp Fox himself, that famous guerrilla of Carolina, with his modest person and demeanor, even while he remained the sleepless master of every situation ; the Game Cock, Sumter, with his dash and his sensitive pride, — the one impelling him against the enemy, the other sometimes driving him against his friends : together with William Washington, the nephew of the commander-in-chief, and Lee and Horry and the rest.

One feels glad, also, that the poet was not left out, Geordie Dennison, the partisan troubadour, whom his companionsin-arms were so fond of heralding as the Homer of a new epic. Porgy and Dennison go well together, as ought always to be the case with philosopher and poet ; and when the latter brews a Jamaica punch, his friend and admirer declares, smacking his lips with unctuous commendation, “ The proportions are good : the acid has yielded to the embrace of the sugar with the recognition of a perfect faith, and both succumb to the spirit as with the recognition of a perfect deity. Next to poetry, Geordie, you are an adept at punch.” Perhaps we cannot do better than to transcribe in part one of his ringing martial lyrics : —

There must have been something in the nature of Simms akin to that genius for woodcraft, horsemanship, and Indian cunning which he was able to work so successfully into the character of his favorite woodsmen, — men whom he delighted in quite as much for the simple, unaffected manliness which went with these accomplishments. Next to a philosopher disguised as a bon vivant, he loves a scout. Jack Witherspoon, or Thumbscrew, as his friends preferred to call him, is the real hero of Mellichampe, and not the “ Airnest ” for whom he so willingly dies at its close. A more genuinely affecting and dramatic scene can hardly he found than that in which the faithful woodsman faces his end with only patriotic feelings in his heart : —

“ ‘ That’s the gineral — the old “ fox,” ’ he murmured as the approaching Marion spoke to the negro at his head.

“ ‘ Stand out of the moonlight, nigger — I wants to see the gineral.’

“ ‘ I am here, Thumbscrew,’ said Marion, kneeling down beside him. ‘ How is it with you, my friend ? ’

“ ‘ Bad enough, gineral. You ’ll have to put me in the odd leaf of the orderly’s book. I’ve got my certificate.’

“ ‘ I hope not, Thumby. We must see what can be done for you. We can’t spare any of our men,’ said Marion, encouragingly. The dying man smiled feebly as he spoke again : —

“ ‘ I know you can’t, and that makes me more sorry. But you know me, gineral. Was n’t I a Whig from the first ? ’

“ ‘ I believe it— I know it. You have done your duty always,’

“bPut that down in the orderly book — I was a Whig from the first.’

“ ‘ I will,’ said Marion.

“ ‘ And after that, put down agen — he was a Whig to the last.’

“‘ I will.’

“ ‘ Put down — he never believed in the Tories, and ’ — (here he paused, chokingly, from a fit of coughing) ‘ and he always made them believe in him.’

“ ‘ You have done nobly in the good cause, John Witherspoon,’ said the general, while his eyes were filled with tears, ‘ and you may well believe that Francis Marion, who honors you, will protect your memory. Here is my hand.’

“ The woodsman pressed it to his lips. “ ‘ Airnest ’ — “The youth bent over him. . . .

“ ‘ Airnest ! ’ he exclaimed once more, and then his grasp relaxed. He lay cold and lifeless.”

It is Bannister, or “ Supple Jack,” who saves for us The Scout. He, at least, is always interesting in the book. One almost seems to hear the whistle of his old boat-horn tune, “ the long wailing note such as soothes the heart with sweet melancholy, untwisted from the core of the long, rude wooden bugle of the Congaree boatman,” as he winds his way up and down the waters of that rapid Stream. In The Forayers, Jim Ballou divides the interest with its military hero ; and even black ’Bram, whose fat sides sometimes tempt him by too loud breathing to expose the trail he is on, comes in for a high place among his wily brethren. These are the kind of men who have served their time and taken all the six degrees necessary to a scout’s full education, “foxing, snaking, moling, cooning, possuming, and, if need be, wolfing ; ” who, riding at a canter through the woods, will stop their horse and show you. the track of deer or turkey among the leaves, and tell you just how many hours have elapsed since the creature who made it went that way. So familiar do they become to us that we feel acquainted with even their belongings ; we know Mossfoot and Button whom they ride to battle, and Polly Longlips, the rifle which the Scout apostrophizes in terms reserved by other men for their sweethearts. " ‘ Yes, yes — Polly Longlips was always a famous talker,’ murmured the landlord flatteringly, and moving to take in his hand the object of his eulogium. But Supple Jack evidently recoiled at so doubtful a liberty in such dangerous times, and drew the instrument more completely within the control of his own arm.

‘ She’s a good critter, Muggs, but is sort o’ bashful among strangers; and when she puts up her mouth, it ain’t to be kissed or to kiss, I tell you. She’s not like other gals in that pertic’lar. Now, don’t think I mistrust you, Muggs, for’t would be mighty timorsome was I to be afeared of anything you could do with a rifle like her, having but one arm to go upon. It’s only a jealous way I have, that makes me like to keep my Polly out of the arms of any other man. It’s nateral enough, you know, to a person that loves his gal.’ ”

It is of such simple, out-of-the-way materials as this that Simms has constructed the series of novels which so vividly help us to realize the cost of our liberties. To freshly commend their charm is not to overlook their crudities, nor is it unduly to apologize for them. The land of impression which he produces is sufficiently rare to include a good deal of incidental tolerance ; and he who has once come to know the straightforward, manly qualities of his art will not allow himself to be too much disturbed by its frequent want of proportion and finish.

Of Simms himself it would be interesting to know more than we do. We are told that he was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1806 ; that he attempted several roles besides that of author, and in authorship itself did not confine his attention to less than half a dozen distinct fields of writing. A lawyer, journalist, politician, and planter, he yet found time to write nearly sixty volumes, the best of which have been republished many times, and are still being freshly issued in our own day. Several have been translated into the French and German. These include fifteen volumes of more or less respectable verse ; a history and geography of his native State; biographies of Marion, Captain John Smith, Chevalier Bayard, and Nathanael Greene; together with lectures, pamphlets, and a considerable amount of Shakespearean criticism and general literary work. The three series of romances — Border, Colonial, and Revolutionary — embody a picture in orderly sequence of American life up to the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with the careers of most of the heroes who have made themselves famous during that time upon Southern soil. It is principally by the last series, however, that Simms will in future he known, not only because the nature of the subject will call attention to his work, but also because it. was peculiarly fitted to display his best powers. For it is the honorable distinction of both the man and the writer that he identified himself with the annals and spirit of American life at its most critical period, and thus became in a graphic and delightful way an exponent of its history.

Edward F. Hayward.