A new star, bright shining, Then blossom three roses, Half white, half red, That never shall wither In garden bed. And in heaven the angels And earthwards each morning The Miller: Ah, brooklet, lovely brooklet, Ah, brooklet, but thou know'st not Ah, down there, far down there, 'Tis cool and deep. Ah, brooklet, lovely brooklet, 10451 CRADLE SONG OF THE BROOK SWEETLY sleep, sweetly sleep! Wanderer, so weary, thou'rt now at home. Asleep on my breast, Till the brooklets mingle with ocean foam. Thy bed shall be cool In moss-lined pool, In the chamber of sparkling blue crystal clear; His cradle lave, Soothe him and rock him, my comrade so dear. When the sound of horn From the greenwood's borne, I will rush and I'll gush, that thou mayst not hear. Peep ye not through, Little flow'rets blue! You make all the dreams of my sleeper so drear. 10452 Away, away From my margin stay, Wicked maiden, lest from thy shadow he wake! But throw me down Thy kerchief brown, So for his eyes I'll a bandage make! Now good-night, now good-night! Forget all thy hopes, and forget thy fate! The moon shines bright, The mists take flight, And the heaven above me how wide and how great! FRO VINETA ROM the sea's deep hollow faintly pealing, Of the old enchanted town below. On the bosom of the flood reclining, Ruined arch and wall and broken spire, And the boatman, who at twilight hour, Once that magic vision shall have seen, From the heart's deep hollow faintly pealing, Ah! a wild and wondrous tale revealing There a world in loveliness decaying Flash like golden fire-flakes from the sky. Lights are gleaming, fairy bells are ringing, In those ancient towers below the sea. Translation of J. A. Froude. MARY NOAILLES MURFREE (CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK) HEN Miss Murfree's first work appeared, not only was her pseudonym, Charles Egbert Craddock, accepted by her editors without suspicion as her proper name, but the public was equally deceived. The firm, quiet touch, the matter wholly free from subjectiveness, the robust humor, and the understanding of masculine life, had no trace of femininity. MARY N. MURFREE Her first book, Where the Battle was Fought, which finally appeared in 1884, was the effort of a very young writer, containing more of promise than fulfillment, though the peculiarities of style and character were prophetic of her later manner. No publisher desired it until the great favor accorded to 'In the Tennessee Mountains' opened the way. In the maturer story was struck a more confident note. Miss Murfree had found her field, and henceforth the Tennessee mountains and their inhabitants were to occupy her descriptive powers. These men and women are for the first part rude people, kept in unlikeness to the outside world not only by their distance from civilization, but by the mist of tradition in which they live. Here is a colony of people who have their own ideas of etiquette, and as strict a code as that of Versailles in the time of Louis XIV..- their own notions of comfort and wealth, and their own civil and moral laws. Here they dwell in their mountain fastnesses, distilling illicit whisky with as clear a conscience as they plant the corn from which they make it, or as the Northern farmer makes cider from his apples-in their opinion an exact parallel. Passionately religious, full of picturesque poetry,-which they learn from the Bible, their only familiar book,-no wonder the "Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountain" thrilled his audiences when he described the scenes enacted in the Old Testament as having been transacted on the very hillsides where he preached, and that the majestic imagery of the Book was heightened by the majestic surroundings. But good "material," in a literary sense, as are the Tennessee mountaineers, no sort of idealization nor surface acquaintance, however aided by artistic intuition, could have made them natural to the outside world. It was the office of one who knew them as Miss Murfree knew them, not only from the inside view but the view of a social superior, which enabled her to give the picture a perspective. Nowhere is this gift better indicated than in the artistic story 'Drifting down Lost Creek,' in which the elements of interest are thoroughly worked up, the motive of the delicate romance touched with a perfect consciousness of the author's audience; while there is such a regard for the verities, that the whole story turns on the everyday feminine loyalty of a mountain girl to her lover. 'On Big Injin Mountain' is an episode of a sturdier kind, more dramatic both in matter and in manner than 'Drifting down Lost Creek'; but at its close, when the rude mountaineers display a tenderness for the man they have misunderstood, the reader, gentle or simple, is perforce thrilled into sympathy, for this is a passage to which the better part of human nature, wherever found, responds. In Miss Murfree's writings we are perhaps too often reminded of the pictorial art which she undoubtedly possesses, by the effect she evolves from the use of words. She has a clear vision and a dramatic temperament; and it is a temptation, not always resisted, to emphasize physical surroundings in order to heighten situations. The moment a lull occurs in the action of her personages, the mountain solitudes come in to play their part,-the sylvan glades, the chromatic hues, the foaming cataracts, the empurpled shadows. Even the wild animals assume the functions of dramatis persona, and are an inarticulate chorus to interpret the emotions of the human actors. But it is not given to a redundant and enthusiastic nature, a youthful nature at least in her earlier stories,- for Miss Murfree was born about 1850 in the township of Murfreesborough, Tennessee, a town called after her respected and influential family,—always to use one word when two or three seem to do as well. The normal mind is more active in the details of human life than in the details of landscape; but Miss Murfree, although she has not always accepted this as a fact, has painted scenes where she has perfectly adjusted her characters and their surroundings. In 'Old Sledge at the Settlemint,' the picture of the group of card-players throwing their cards on the inverted splint basket by the light of the tallow dip and a pitch-pine fire, while the moon shines without, and the uncanny echoes ring through the rocks and woods, is as graphic as one of Spagnoletto's paintings. And she has done a gentler and even more sympathetic service in depicting the lonely, self-reliant, half mournful life of the mountain women whom she loves; particularly the young women, pure, sweet, naïve, and innocent of all evil. The older women "hold out wasted hands to the years as they pass,-holding them out always, and always empty"; but in drawing her old women, Miss Murfree lightens her somewhat sombre pictures by their shrewd fun and keen knowledge of human nature. Mrs. Purvine is a stroke of genius. Nor could Miss Murfree's stories have won their wide popularity with an American audience without a sense of huinor, which is to her landscape as the sun to the mist. Her mountaineer who has been restrained from killing the suspected horse-thief is rather relieved than otherwise, having still a sense of justice: "The bay filly ain't such a killin' matter nohow; ef it was the roan three-year-old 'twould be different." The novels which have most added to Miss Murfree's reputation, perhaps, are 'In the Tennessee Mountains,' The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountain,' and 'In the Clouds,'-all stories of the Tennessee mountains, told in her vigorous, dramatic manner. THE DANCIN' PARTY AT HARRISON'S COVE From 'In the Tennessee Mountains.' Copyright 1884, by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. UR ye see, Mis' Darley, them Harrison folks over yander ter the Cove hev determinated on a dancin' party." "FOR The drawling tones fell unheeded on old Mr. Kenyon's ear, as he sat on the broad hotel piazza of the New Helvetia Springs, and gazed with meditative eyes at the fair August sky. An early moon was riding, clear and full, over this wild spur of the Alleghanies; the stars were few and very faint; even the great Scorpio lurked vaguely outlined above the wooded ranges; and the white mist that filled the long, deep, narrow valley between the parallel lines of mountains, shimmered with opalescent gleams. All the world of the watering-place had converged to that focus the ball-room; and the cool, moonlit piazzas were nearly deserted. The fell determination of the "Harrison folks" to give a dancing party made no impression on the preoccupied old gentleman. Another voice broke his revery,-a soft, clear, wellmodulated voice; and he started and turned his head as his own name was called, and his niece, Mrs. Darley, came to the window. "Uncle Ambrose, are you there?-So glad! I was afraid you were down at the summer-house, where I hear the children |