in her sympathies or the character of her work. She wrote from beginning to end of the South and Southern types, and every sketch or story reflected her affection for the section of her birth.

Her work was of high literary quality and widely praised by American critics and thousands all over the country who have been charmed by her books will mourn her passing.

(From The Times-Picayune.)

NOTED LOUISIANA WRITER EXPIRES IN
NEW YORK.

RUTH MCENERY STUART FAMOUS FOR HER STORIES OF THE OLD SOUTH.

New York, May 7.-Ruth McEnery Stuart, the well-known author, died Sunday after a long illness, in the fifty-seventh year of her age.

Mrs. Stuart's first story was written in 1888 and printed in the Princeton Review, after which she gave close attention to literary pursuits, following up the first story, "Uncle Mingo's Speculations," which was a sweet, pathetic picture of negro life, with other dialect tales in magazines, until 1891, when she moved to New York.

Mrs. Stuart was one of the large number of writers who were born below Mason and Dixon's line, and have made their homes in New York, yet have given up nothing of their birthplaces. She wrote of the South, and her expatriation appeared only to give her an added stimulus to create her local perspective. One of her latest books, "Daddy Do-Funny's Wisdom Jingles," published four years ago, she said was the acknowledged and gladly owed tribute to the slaves who stood guard over women and children left in her care while the Southern men were on the battle front. The dedication was:

“To the memory of those faithful brown slave men of the plantations throughout the South, Daddy's contemporaries all, who, during the war, while their masters were away fighting in a cause opposed to their emancipation, brought their blankets and slept outside their mistresses' doors, thus keeping night watch over otherwise unprotected women and children—a faithful guardianship of which the annals of those troublous times record no instance of betrayal."

KNOWN AND LOVED HERE.

MRS. STUART WON PLACE IN HEARTS OF ALL SOUTHERNERS.

Mrs. Stuart was a charming writer of short stories, and her depictions of negro types, and the type of backwoods whites, both contemptuously and affectionately termed "Hillbillies, made her famous throughout the country. Joel Chandler Harris wrote her on one occasion: "You have got nearer the heart of the negro than any of us, a statement which will be indorsed by those who have known the negro all their lives. A master of dialect, Mrs. Stuart was a close observer also, and had the retentive memory of past years that one has found so remarkable in Mark Twain. She was one of the few women writers who had an appreciation of humor, and, unlike most of the humorists. of her sex, she made her readers laugh with her characters rather than at them.

Ruth McEnery was born in Marksville, La., in 1860, the daughter of James McEnery and Mary Ruth Stirling. Five of her kinsmen have been Governors of Louisiana. Samuel D. McEnery, Governor and United States Senator, was her first cousin. In the nineteenth century her family was almost continuously represented in the Congress of the United States. Her father, who was a cotton commission merchant in ante-bellum days in New Orleans, was born in Limerick, of a noble Irish family, whose estates were confiscated in the days of Oliver Cromwell. Sir John Stirling, her mother's father, was a sturdy Scot, who came to this country and invested his means in land and slaves, dropping the title when he became a citizen of the republic.

BEGAN TO WRITE IN THE '80s.

Ruth McEnery married Alfred Oden Stuart, a cotton planter, of Hemptsead County, Arkansas, in 1879. Her husband died four years after her marriage, leaving her one son, Stirling McEnery Stuart, who died just as he was on the threshold of manhood.

Mrs. Stuart began to write for the public in the latter '80s, and for the convenience of being near her publishers she moved to New York and had lived in that city since, except for the time spent each year in her summer home in the Catskills. During her residence in the North, however, she frequently visited her friends in this city, and traveled extensively. She was at one time editor pro tempore of Harper's Bazaar, and occupied the editorial chair of other publications, but she would accept no permanent employment of that sort, preferring to write the stories which charmed thousands of persons.

HOMELY PHILOSOPHY.

One or two jingles will give a good idea of Mrs. Stuart's verse and their homely philosopsy. Take "The Terrapin":

"Br'er Terrapin draws in 'is head so knowin',
You can't tell whether he's comin' or goin';
But his mind ain't mixed-he's layin' low,
"Tel he sees which way he's obleeged to go.
An' he ain't no new politician in dat—
No, he ain't by 'isself in dat."

"The Mocking Bird," which has its little fling at imitators, reads:

"Br'er Mocking Bird sings in de live oak shade,

A iron-hand chat or a serenade;

He'll take off a pa'tridge, a robin, or a jay,

But he'll nuver make a name no other way.
But he ain't by 'isself in dat, in dat-
But he ain't my 'isself in dat."

STUDENT OF OWN TONGUE.

Nothing was dearer to Mrs. Stuart's mind than a jealous study of the American spoken tongue, and concerning English criticism of the "American" language, she said:

"Speaking in the large, we are engaged, consciously or not, in an enrichment of the language. That which has been kept at home, and is hence too near their vision for perspective, has possibly suffered somewhat otherwise, and while a fine conversatism has undoubtedly preserved it in better form as to general usage, is it not in danger of becoming a little died out and formal? Is there not aeration, not only of the mind and soul of man, but of their vehicle of expression, in the broad American life with its rapid changes, its color constantly breaking into iridescence, not to mention its grappling and gripping as it breaks new ground and deals with things as well as people elemental?

"So with all our verbal cheapnesses, our short cuts, our nasal iniquities, and even our slang (which is almost as unpleasant as England's and fully four times as breezy), it seems to our American conceit that perhaps our loved common tongue has in the main gained flavor in American, even if it has lost somewhat in form this, of course, of our 'English as she is spoke.'

Mrs. Stuart was not a prolific writer, yet every story she wrote was worth while, and she had the happy faculty of combining humor and pathos in such a way as to add to the beauty of both. Among her books were "A Golden Wedding and Other Tales, "Carlotta's Intended," "In Simpkinsville," "Sonny," "Hally and Pizen," "Napoleon," "George Washington Jones," "Aunt Amity's Silver Wedding," "The Haunted Photograph," and "The Cacoon," which was her last book, published in 1915. She had one son, born in 1881, who died.

STUDIED HUMAN NATURE.

Mrs. Stuart was not a student of books, but of human nature and of personalities, and was particularly alive to original types. None of her characters were subtle, but were as sharply drawn as a cameo, and she did not permit attempts at brilliancy, at "fine writing," draw her away from the truth. Comedy is the prevailing note in her writings, but it is comedy not marred by melodrama--spontaneous and liquid. Pathos is used without ovedrawing it. Her favorite type was the "new issue" negro, the class that was trying to find itself after freedom. She depicted this character always lightly and hur not ignorant of the negro's defects and s careful not to ridicule either him or the class of hill people she drew so faithfully. Some was close to tears, but all of it was sparkling, truthful and sympathetic.

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and

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One of her critics has said that while Mrs. Stuart was not the first to treat the negro in fiction, she was probably the first to show him in his home life independent of his relations with his white neighbors. In dialect she was sure of her ground, whether writing of the negro or of the Latin-Americans of New Orleans (French, Spanish or Italians) in the days when English was & language acquired by necessity, not through choice, or of the Latin-American negro, with his jargon of French and English, both of which he mispronounced and clipped.

It is a notable characteristic of the writings of Mrs. Stuart that while most of her work was done in the North, she always wrote of Southern characters, adhering generally to the types mentioned, though in her single long story, "Babette," she wrote conventionally an idyl of Creole life in New Orleans. In "The Unlived Life of Little Mary Ellen" she adopted a style radically different from her usual writings, and this work, meritorious after a somewwhat strained fashion, does not represent the general character of her work, though it is considered by some of the foremost critics to be her best work.

CRITICS PRAISE HER WORK.

Before she began writing Mrs. Stuart found a wealth of literary material going to waste, and she entered the field lovingly and enthusiastically. She was adapted by nature as a short story writer, and she almost invariably subordinated plot to persons and mental latitudes. Contemporary critics have accredited her with "wide human sympathy, broad sanity, keen and delicate humor and intellectual poise.

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Perhaps the best loved of her works are "In Simpkinsville, "Sonny" and "Napoleon Jackson." The Simpkinsville type of the backwoodsman is charmingly drawn with quiet but sparkling

humor, while the monologues of Deuteronomy Jones, father of Sonny, are a continual delight. So human was the humor of Mrs. Stuart that while we laugh about the personality of Napoleon Jackson, the gentleman of the plush rocker, we rarely laugh at that worthless personage.

The published works of Mrs. Stuart consist mainly of the following: "A Golden Wedding and Other Tales," "Carlotta's Intended and Other Stories," "The Story of Babette," "Sonny, "Solomon Crow's Christmas Packet and Other Tales, "In Simpkinsville," Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches," "The Second Wooing of Salina Sue and Other Stories, " "Holly and Pizen and Other Stories," "Napoleon Jackson, the Gentleman of the Plush Rocker," "The River's Children, an Idyl of the Mississippi, "Aunt Amity's Silver Wedding and Other Tales," "The Cocoon" (her latest published work), and in verse "Ole Daddy Do-Funny's Nonsense Jingles.”

Mrs. Stuart has secured an abiding place in the literature of the country as a delineator of negro character and customs, as well as of those of backwoods whites-that humble but sturdy race of men who for four years carried the fortunes of a newlyborn nation on the points of their bayonets. The dialect of her stories is not only captivating, it is real, which most dialect is not. In none of her writings did she strive for effect, and while she was not a depicter of character in the sense that she was an analyst, she was a character drawer in the sense that Dickens and . Mark Twain were, getting the effect by a few bold strokes rather than by studied effort and detail in drawing. In other words, she allowed her characters to present themselves to the reader and confess their own characters. Such was the man Napoleon Jackson, whose mother prenatally "marked him for rest," and such were her other characters. "Sonny," one of the most fascinating characters in American literature, was presented in such outline by his "Hillbilly" father, Deuteronomy Jones, that the reader knew the lad's character perhaps better than he did himself.

During her extended visit to this city in the winter of 1913-14, Mrs. Stuart founded the Stuart Clan, the only New Orleans club of which she was an officer. This organization, composed of over a score of intellectual women, elected Mrs. Stuart permanent president, and she presided at all the meetings of that season and favored the sessions with original readings. The farewell luncheon given in her honor by the Stuart Clan at the new Country Club early in June, 1915, was a memorable social event in this city. On that occasion a hand-wrought and hand-carved chest was presented her by the club members to contain the degree conferred upon her contemporaneously by Tulane University. The last letter penned by the authoress during her long illness was to the vice president of the club.