Читать книгу Children's Stories in American Literature 1861-1896 - Henrietta Christian Wright - Страница 9

In all the stories which relate to the settlement of the United States none are more interesting than those which tell of the experiences of the pioneers who fought face to face with the Indians in the valley of the Ohio.

From the time when Daniel Boone and his companions followed Indian trails across the Alleghenies and settled Kentucky, until far beyond the period of the Revolution, the history of every settlement on the frontier was one of bitter warfare with the red men. Before he could build his house or prepare the land for tilling, the frontiersman had to erect a block-house to protect the settlement against his wily foe, and very often this fort-like structure was the home for weeks at a time of the entire community. Whether the pioneer felled trees, broke up the new ground, sowed, tilled, or gathered his crops he worked ever with his rifle by his side. And the housewife, busy with spinning, weaving, and other family cares, never went to her door without an anxious glance to see that no lurking enemy was near. Very often, too, in spite of all precaution, the smoke rising from his burning dwelling would be the first warning that the settler would receive, and he would hasten home to find his wife and children slaughtered or carried away into captivity.

It required brave hearts to found homes on the frontier, where even nature gave only in return for hardest toil, and still braver ones to work steadily on in the face of treacherous Indian foes. But the pioneer of the Ohio Valley did not know fear, and his record of honorable accomplishment has made him a famous character in the story of his country.

An old block-house of this region, the first that was erected on the Indiana side of the Ohio, was built by Captain Craig, a noted pioneer, who won renown both as a fighter against the Indians and as a leader in the little band of settlers. It was men of this class, resolute, brave, and self-sacrificing, which redeemed the Valley of the Ohio from nature and the red man and made it habitable.

And although the struggle went on for years, it ended at last in peace and prosperity for the pioneers. The Indians retreated toward the Mississippi, thriving little villages grew up around the old block-houses, and the outlying country, rich in valuable timber or meadow lands, was as free from danger as the valleys of the Connecticut or Hudson.

In Vevay, Ind., one of these little villages, about four miles from the old block-house, was born on December 10, 1837, Edward Eggleston, a grandson of Captain Craig. His father, a descendant of a Virginia family which had won honor in the Revolution, was a prominent lawyer of Vevay, where the boy lived until his third year. The family then removed to the old Craig homestead, and in this region, so rich in historic memories, young Eggleston spent six of the most impressionable years of his life. As he was a delicate boy, school life occupied a very small part of his time, though books were always interesting to him. He above all implored to be taught to write, and almost as soon as he knew how to write he began to express his own thoughts, of which he had many. But the best education he could have had for the work he was to do was obtained from the still lingering picturesqueness of Western life, which surrounded him everywhere.

Life was still primitive enough in the Ohio Valley, and the interests of the people were so closely allied that they seemed almost like one large family. If a man wished to build a house or barn, he summoned his neighbors to what was called "a raising," when all worked to raise the building on its foundations. The crop of corn was husked at a "bee," to which all the country lads and lasses came, and after dividing into two companies, worked hard till one or the other won the race by husking the last ear first. A supper in the farm-house kitchen and a dance in the barn would follow, when the guests would separate, to meet perhaps the next night at another "bee." Wood was chopped, logs rolled from the forests to the river, where they were floated down to the sawmills, and every other kind of farm work done in the same way. In the households the women had spinning and quilting "bees," and, in fact, from the oldest to the youngest, each member of the community felt that he had its interests at heart.

While the frontier life had developed a certain class who were rough in manner and careless in morals, the greater part of the people were Methodists, and were sincerely and enthusiastically devoted to their religion. In those widely scattered communities churches were almost unknown, and services were held in the school-rooms or at private houses, as might be most desirable. The ministers were as a rule men of character and force, descendants in the next generation of stalwart Indian fighters and frontiersmen, and into their work they put the same energy which their fathers and grandfathers had used in winning homes in the wilderness.

These Methodist ministers were called circuit-riders; they had no settled parish, but each one had charge of from fifty to one hundred parishes, which they were required to visit as often as possible. With his saddle-bags and rifle the circuit-rider would travel from village to village, claiming hospitality from the families under his care, who always welcomed him gladly, placed their houses at his disposal, and if the meeting was to be held in the school-house, stood ready to guard him from the attacks of any of the rough class who might try to interfere with him. The circuit-rider was undoubtedly the greatest influence for good known to the Ohio Valley, and his respect and esteem were sought by all. He did his work well, infusing into the daily life of his followers an earnest desire for right-doing and a hunger for spirituality which had a lasting effect upon the characters of the builders of the Middle West. One of Eggleston's first memories must have been that of the circuit-rider riding up to the door of his grandfather's house and dismounting, while the heads of the family stood ready to welcome him with respectful courtesy. And the mind-picture photographed thus vividly was to be reproduced later and form a unique contribution to American literature.

From the old homestead the family removed to Vevay on the death of Eggleston's father, and here in his tenth year the boy began his school life in the little school-house which has become so familiar to his readers. The scenes and incidents of this experience are retold in that charming volume, A Hoosier School Boy, with so loving and faithful a touch that no one can doubt that they are the personal memories of the chronicler. The ambitions of these boys, whose greatest desire was to have an education, their hopes and disappointments, their misunderstandings with their teacher, and their manly apologies, their schoolboy games and plays, are all a part of Eggleston's own experience. The school-house is a memory, not a creation, and into it really walked one day the veritable little Christopher Columbus, with his tiny voice and thin legs, to shame all the big boys by reading better than they. Little Christopher Columbus did not know that his biographer sat watching him with admiring eyes, and no one dreamed that this episode was afterward to be incorporated into that charming book. Eggleston's boyhood, like that of Howells, was full of the energetic influence of the young West, an influence which, after building homes in the wilderness and bringing civilization to take the place of savage conditions, kept bravely to its work of developing the frontier.

The youth of that period received only those things for which he strived. Education, the boon more desired than anything else, was hard to obtain. The country schools were either taught by old fogies, who ruled with birch and rattan, or by young men, to whom teaching meant only a means to livelihood while preparing for some other work. Here and there throughout the country were scattered a few academies where the higher branches were taught, but only a few boys had the means to avail themselves of the privilege. The boy of the Ohio Valley fifty years ago knew very early that his own will and strength must win for him in the battle of life; and this knowledge brought into play the best forces of his nature. Underneath the carelessness of boyhood generally lurked an earnest desire to become useful to his generation, and to this ambition Eggleston was no exception.

Life meant much to him early, and at nine years old the village school at Vevay knew no better pupil than the delicate boy who had already begun to learn that the patient endurance of ill-health must be one of his greatest teachers. A few weeks at school would be followed by many months of sickness, but his purpose never faltered. During one of these periods of ill-health he was sent to stay for some months in a backwoods district, where life was still in the rudest stage. Shut off from books, Eggleston gathered from this experience stores of valuable knowledge. Although only twelve years old, he was a student of human nature, and the unfamiliar scenes became picture-stories of the lives of the rough men by whom he was surrounded. Many years after he reproduced the memories of these days with a faithfulness which showed how vividly they had impressed him. There is, indeed, in all his work the same charm that is found in the poetry of Whittier, and which makes so much of it seem like a translation of the moods and feelings of boyhood.

Besides studying, Eggleston was always busy writing. He was still a young boy when his first contribution appeared. A country newspaper had offered a prize for the best composition by a schoolboy under fifteen, and he resolved to obtain it if possible. He was not at that time in school, but was acting as clerk for a hardware merchant. The editor, however, assured him that this would not debar him from the competition. Thereafter every spare moment was given to the composition of an essay on the given subject, and to Eggleston's great joy he won the prize, although his employer had from that day suspicions as to the real value of a clerk with a literary turn of mind.

Not very long after, being again at school, he won high praise from his teacher for a little essay on The Will, which, although full of imitations of the writers he had been studying, still showed much promise. At that time there were no railroads connecting the East and the West, and the newspapers and books from the Atlantic coast were a long time in reaching the frontier. There grew up, therefore, in the Ohio Valley a little coterie of native writers, who represented the best thought and culture of the region. Their poetry, fiction, and essays were gladly welcomed by the Western newspapers, which often devoted pages to this literature, and the writers thus gained much local fame. The teacher who so kindly encouraged young Eggleston was one of the best known of these Western writers. Although she found fault with every other sentence of the little essay on The Will, she still saw its merits, and to Eggleston, who had admired her fame for years, her praise was very sweet. It was a great inspiration to him at the moment, and the faithful criticism which she continued to give was of inestimable value to the future novelist.

When he was seventeen Eggleston went to Virginia to visit his father's relatives. Here he had a year's experience of Southern plantation life. This easy, luxurious existence was a great contrast to life in the Ohio Valley, but, although Eggleston appreciated it, his instincts remained true to the wider freedom of the country of his birth. He was destined to be the chronicler of the true story of much of that Western life, and nothing could ever detract from its vital and enduring charm. One of his Virginia uncles, who was rich and childless, wished to adopt him, but Eggleston refused, and returned home richer for the experience and for the few months' training from an excellent Virginia school, but still devoted heart and soul to the interests of the West.

A year later he was sent to Minnesota, in the hope that the climate might benefit his health, which seemed completely broken. He was threatened with consumption, and knowing that he had but this chance for life, he threw himself desperately into the rough frontier work, which kept him out of doors continually. He drove oxen to break up new ground, wading through the wet prairie grass at day-break, and broiling under the noonday sun. He felled trees, rolled logs, and acted as chain-bearer for a party of surveyors. He fought a troublesome cough and fever with the same determination, and in a few months his youth and pluck had turned the scale, and he was on the road to health. He now set out to walk from Minnesota to Kansas, and it is a pity that he kept no journal of this experience.

A delicate boy travelling through the Western frontier for over two hundred miles, he must have met with many unique adventures. He slept at night in hunters' cabins, rough country taverns, little log-houses of settlers, and sometimes out of doors under the shelter of friendly logs and ties. He lived on the rude fare that supplied the wants of the hardy backwoodsmen, and his companions were oftenest those rough spirits who found in the excitement of frontier life a congenial atmosphere. But the journey was accomplished, though on reaching Kansas he was not allowed to enter its borders because of the unsettled state that society had been thrown into by the political troubles. Turning eastward, Eggleston resolved to travel home on foot. When near the end of his journey his money and strength both nearly gave out, and he was indebted to two friendly strangers for the two dollars necessary to reach home. He arrived at the house of his nearest relatives in such a tattered condition that the maid almost refused him entrance, and his half-brother was for some moments in doubt about allowing the relationship. This experience ended Eggleston's boyhood. The next year, being not yet nineteen, he put into execution a long-cherished plan. Knowing that his health would never allow him to enter college, he put that wish aside, and filled with a desire to make of life a noble achievement, he became that ideal of the young West, a circuit-rider.

In entering the ministry Eggleston was fulfilling the hope of his life. To one of his education and training the Methodist minister of the day represented the ideal of self-sacrifice and spiritual aspiration; he was a soldier of Christ, ready to fight, conquer or die, in his Master's service, and to him the warfare seemed glorious. Eggleston took up his new duties as the youth of old assumed the honors of knighthood. It was a solemn dedication of his young life to the service of humanity and the acceptance of a trust which he faithfully fulfilled. The Methodism inherited and shared by the generations to which Eggleston belonged did for the West what Puritanism accomplished for New England—it made the every-day life an impulse toward right-doing, and in this it laid strong and deep the foundations of noble character and loyal citizenship. The republic owes much to this valiant army of workers which Eggleston now joined, burning with a desire to devote his whole feeble strength to the common cause.

We can picture him thus, a delicate boy, riding from place to place, be the weather what it might, finding his home among the members of his scattered flock, suffering discomfort and often danger, anxious, yet fearing nothing but that he might fail in his duty.

His first charge included a circuit of ten places, which he visited at intervals. He carried his wardrobe in his saddle-bags, and as he never for one moment gave up his determination to become a scholar, nearly all the time he spent on horseback was passed in reading and study.

Much of Eggleston's experience as an itinerant Methodist minister is reproduced in The Circuit Rider. The Ohio Valley in Eggleston's youth was the border-land of town and village life, all the great country westward being occupied only by Indians or by rough settlements of hunters, traders, and miners. This place between, where the civilization of the East met the wild life of the West, was the scene of The Circuit Rider, into whose pages are wrought many striking incidents of those successful times. The heroes of the book are two youths, Kike and Morton, sons of valley farmers. Both are turned from their wild lives through the influence of one of those Methodist ministers so familiar to their times, and both renounce all worldly ambitions to enter upon the life of the circuit-rider. The story is touchingly in sympathy with the experience of the humble country folk who figure in its pages. Their home life and their spiritual struggles alike appeal to our interest; we are present at their merry corn-huskings and apple-paring bees, at their prayer-meetings, and camp-meetings. Each scene has the value of local history, and nowhere in American literature is there a more soul-stirring picture than that which traces Kike awakening to the high conception of a life of self-sacrifice.

Eggleston's own experience as a circuit-rider came to an end after six months, as his health broke down completely under the strain, and he was obliged to return to Minnesota. The invigorating air and freedom from care again worked their charm, and in a short time he was once more engaged in preaching. His work now was on the Minnesota frontier, where the Indians still lingered, forming a large part of the population. The white settlements and Indian villages all along the Minnesota River soon became familiar with the face of the young preacher, who walked from place to place shod in moccasins, and who brought into their rough lives the only refining and uplifting influence that they knew. We can see the groups gathered round him while he gives his word of advice or encouragement, the scene recalling an episode in the career of Eliot, and reflecting a phase of American life that has forever passed away.

But Eggleston's fame as a preacher soon made him in demand in the larger towns, and less than two years after he entered the ministry he accepted a call to the city of St. Paul. From this time his life was spent almost entirely in cities. Owing to his poor health he was often obliged to give up his duties as a minister and take up whatever work presented itself as a means of support for his family. He had in the meantime begun to write regularly for various religious papers, and had successfully accomplished some editorial work.

In 1870, when Eggleston was in his thirty-fourth year, he accepted a position on The Independent, and left the West for his new home in Brooklyn. Although later years were again devoted to preaching, this was the beginning of an uninterrupted literary life, which has continued to the present day.

His first important book, and the one which brought him instant recognition, was The Hoosier Schoolmaster, which was written as a serial for the periodical Hearth and Home. Almost immediately after its publication in book form it was issued in England, France, Germany, and Denmark, and everywhere it was received with the greatest favor. With true artistic instinct, Eggleston had gone for the material of his book to the old familiar life of his youth. The scenes which lingered in his memory when touched by his trained hand became vivid pictures of new and peculiar interest. This revelation of the picturesqueness of Western frontier life appealed to all, and the vital humanity which throbbed through its pages touched every heart.

This book which made Eggleston a novelist showed him, also, the probable place for his own contributions to American literature. He became the novelist of the river frontier and prairie life, which so fortunately for our literature lingered long enough to make its lasting impression upon his youth. The titles of his successive books show this life in many aspects. From the ideal reproductions of The Hoosier Schoolmaster, and The Hoosier Schoolboy, in which we walk hand in hand with childhood, through all the graver problems of adult life we still follow the fortunes of the class that Eggleston's art has made typical.

One of the most interesting of his books is The Graysons, the story of a young law-student who is accused of murder, and whose acquittal is obtained by Abraham Lincoln who pleads his cause. This introduction of Lincoln into fiction was made by request, and the incident is cleverly made to illustrate the keenness and sagacity of the great statesman even while an obscure lawyer in an obscurer Western town.

Among Eggleston's juvenile works The Schoolmaster's Stories for Boys and Girls, Queer Stories for Boys and Girls, A First Book in American History, and a large amount of miscellaneous matter all indicate his sympathy with the heart of childhood, and his ability to enter into the questions and interests which make up the child-world. They are genuine boys and girls who walk through his pages. Perhaps the book which shows Eggleston at his best is The Circuit Rider, with its fine insight into those spiritual problems which interest all humanity. Roxy is another delineation of character, which, in its story of the struggle between right and wrong in the human heart, suggests the old Puritanism of New England.

Besides his novels Eggleston has accomplished a great deal of work on historical subjects, which has appeared in various magazines and periodicals, and he has in preparation a history of the United States to which he has already devoted much time in research in the great libraries of the world. Some school histories and a good portion of miscellaneous matter must also be included in his work. His distinctive contribution to American literature is his reproduction of a phase of American life which has now passed away, but which has a unique value for the student of history.

The latter years of Eggleston's life have been spent mostly in New York, where he now lives.