During the last decade the Southern States, one after another, have been giving to the lovers of fiction each one or more writers of distinction; and abreast with the foremost of this goodly company, Kentucky has lately begun to claim a place for James Lane Allen.

Mr. Allen began his career as a writer several years ago in Harper's Monthly and the Century Magazine with a series of illustrated articles, descriptive of life, character, and social institutions in Kentucky. The matter in them was fresh and of intense interest, not only here, but in England; the spirit was scholarly, impartial, and deeply sympathetic. They appealed to the general reader by the broad culture evident

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behind them, and they were marked by a stateliness of style almost old-fashioned and a treatment equally philosophical and poetic. At the same time a number of brilliant letters, chiefly on Southern subjects, were coming out in the New York Evening Post, and occasionally a poem appeared in Harper's, the Atlantic, or Lippincott's, or an essay, critical or humorous, in the Critic or the Forum. So that Mr. Allen was widely known as a critic and essayist before the first of his striking tales, published recently under the title of "Flute and Violin," came to print. Once begun, these last came rapidly; the tender picture of quaint relations between master and slave in the "Two Kentucky Gentlemen of the Old School"; the broken heroic figure of "Old King Solomon of Kentucky," whose royal rags were but once lifted from the dust; "The White Cowl" and "Sister Dolorosa,' two passionate protests, whether or not the writer meant them for such, against the ideals of monastic and conventual life, protests that were keenly felt throughout the Catholic world; the story of "Posthumous Fame," which might have come from the pen of Hawthorne; and the subtle fusion of humor and tears in "Flute and Violin." These stories unfolded a creative power rarely allied with a faculty for criticism so strong that it seemed already supreme.

By birth, rearing, and education, Mr. Allen is a Kentuckian. He was born several years before the outbreak of the civil war, on a Blue Grass farm near Lexington, Kentucky, and not far from the spot where the generations of his family had lived since the first emigration from Virginia. His ancestry - on his father's side leads back to Colonel William Payne, of Virginia, an officer of the Revolution; on his mother's, to Pennsylvania Scotch-Irish stock of

the same period his great-grandfather having been killed during the Revolutionary struggle. His boyhood was spent at the old homestead, and was much like the life of every boy in the Blue Grass region to-day, except that a love of reading was early developed and carefully fostered by his mother, to whom he pays reverential tribute in the dedication to his stories.

Being much alone, he spent his days with books, or in the woods and fields, where a deep love grew unconsciously within him for the gentle landscapes, that are painted in story and sketch with such truth and tenderness.

Of the world outside he knew little until he was sent to the Kentucky University, once the Transylvania University- the first college founded west of the Alleghanies, and during the last three-quarters of a century the Alma Mater of many men distinguished in the history of the country.

The classical department was co-extensive with that of the best American colleges, and to the classics he gave especial energy. Finishing at the head of his class, he took a post-graduate course, and received the degree of Master of Arts. His first intention was to fit himself for a professorship of the Latin or the Greek language, and he had as a possible final aim the science of comparative philology. He had laid the foundation of this study by a course of instruction in Greek, Latin, French, German, Spanish, and Italian, and his wish was to seek better opportunities in Germany.

Compelled, meanwhile, to postpone this step, he taught in several Southern colleges; but, as he himself says, "liking college work always less and literature always more," he gave up teaching altogether, and began to write. With deliberate purpose and characteristic thoroughness he set about fitting himself for the work that not yet is done. No state was richer than his own in material for fiction, the field was virgin soil, and he turned to it with the love of his own land, that is with most Kentuckians little less than a passion.

Mr.

So, too, they are wrought with the most patient care; and upon the evidences of this fact rest the chief criticisms urged against Mr. Allen's work. There are few writers whose early faults of style are not buried in books and stories unpublished or forgotten. Allen has not this advantage. He has no unpublished stories. Being human, a critic, then, may feel that his work is polished with too great care; that the "literary intention" of it is too apparent; he may recall a little awkwardness of transition or a metaphor a trifle disproportionate to the importance of thought or incident illustrated, suggesting the spirit of Southern oratory; but he is apt to remember, too, the power of thought in the stories and the depth of feeling; the rare union of the two; the imaginative strength; the delicate, tender humor; the love with which the writer has handled his theme; and the reverence for that form of art in which he has striven to mould it.

And remembering, also, the short time in which the author has had to learn that part of his art which Mr. Besant says only time can teach to the writer who is wholly self-dependent, the critic may dismiss his criticisms altogether as trifling, or keep them in mind only as marks by which to measure the writer's steady advance from first to last.

honest in his attitude toward his own work and in his intense aversion to being photographed or written of, before he has done what he deems worthy of note. Measuring what he has done only by the highest, he is himself his own sternest critic. About his collection of tales he confesses singular indifference, and with characteristic humor he presented himself a copy in this way : "To the Author, with his humble compliments and profound apologies." With diffidence, then, the subject of his personality and appearance is approached. Merely to say that he is a Kentuckian would give a distinct impression anywhere in the land; for in personality and ubiquity the Kentuckian is to this country what the Irishman is to the world. Only Mr. Allen is beyond the proportions of the typical Kentuckian, as may be seen in this tribute of one who was once his pupil. I believe I know no man whom nature has made quite so near what a man should be in mind, character, and physique. Physically, Lane Allen, as he is intimately known, is in detail, or was before a recent illness, not much

unlike Gordon Helm, the hero of "Sister Dolo rosa": Saxon in type, tall, splendidly proportioned, with a magnificent head, and a strong, kindly face. I know not whether I admire him most for his brain or for his heart, his exquisite cultivation or his greatness of soul. His manner is what all Southerners like to believe was the manner of typical Southern gentlemen of the old school; and there is something in his bearing that gives an irresistible impression of superiority; so that while I have seen a good many men of distinction, I can remember no one who, in splendid balance of varied powers, does not shrink a little by contrast with James Lane Allen.

The friends who know him best, know that his full strength is yet untried; that the best in him is yet untold; and that with time and health he will give it permanent artistic shape. But they, with the Kentuckians at large, while confident and expectant, would rest proud and content, if he did no more.

BIG STONE GAP, W. Va.

John W. Fox, Fr.

Having followed with keen interest the pros and cons of the arguments in the case of Editor vs. Author, as published in THE WRITER, I should like to add my bit of experience to the sum total.

Writing at first under the shelter of an assumed name, and finding sufficient reward in the pleasure of seeing my rhymes in print, I was one day startled by finding my real name staring at me from the columns of the Independent. The check that followed was recompense enough for the shock, and I then and there dropped the pseudonym and began to seek pecuniary return for my work.

Having too keen a sense of the ridiculous to allow my characters to make crimson cushions out of a scarlet dress, as did the author of a Sunday-school book I know of, or to picture

peach trees blossoming profusely in September I have avoided some of the rocks whereon others have been wrecked, keeping a dictionary always at my elbow, and looking up every point on which I felt the least doubt.

From the beginning I realized that my writings should be judged on their merits, and have never obtruded personal affairs on an editor's limited leisure. For criticism and correction I have been duly grateful. I have striven to profit by kind words of this sort received from many editors, whose memory I cherish, and have meekly altered my pet lines to suit their ideals. (By the way, one of them wanted me to make the house martin whose history I narrated help his wife build their nest, which, as any close observer knows, would be substitut ing fiction for fact.)