411s
ne INation.
LV O82 71, INO. 1052
children, goodness, and horses; he hates meddling, cruelty, and the cheating horse- desler. “Never knew © mean man t’ own ‘a good hose,” he says. The autoblographer, the little boy in the basket, tells the story of bis life, which ranges and changes from the farm to the Tribune office and to the battlefleld of Bull Run, Few latter-day American stories omit a glimpse of elther Horace Greeley or Lincoln, and this one in- troduces both. Indeed, the author declares of Lincoln, “he reminded me in and out of Horace Greeley. . . . They had a like habit of forgetting themselves and of say- tng nelther more nor less than they meant. strength of an ox and
abounding 10 maple leet, in trout, deer, and panther, and all wholesome wood-lore, in rustic poetry and philosophy, in journalistic and military anecdote—a mild, kind book.
In ‘Pine Knot,’ too, the story serves, but the raison d'étre of the book may be found ta {te contribution to the history of tho mountain regions of Kentucky during tho days of anti-slavery agi- tation, with their culmination in the civil war. ‘The path whereon the story moves Is a comparatively untrodden one. ‘The hero, John Howard Buzbee, a Virginian, fe an old visionary and enthusiast, a scholar and philanthropist, allenated from his kin- dred by his anti-slavery ‘views, full of Greams of the abolition of slavery, but hold- ing strong convictions of the righteousness of compensating the slaveholders. Working with Lundy, he Is opposed to Garrison in methods, though atill an abolitionist. When the discovery of a supposed silver mine tu the Kentucky mountains holds out to him the prospect of vast wealth, his all-absorb- ing object 1s to purchase the slaves and save the Union peaceably with honor. To- day, when the public eye is turned upon the Kentucky mountaineer, it 1s interesting to trace the political pedigree, in the six- ties and earller, of a border town between Kentucky and Tennessee. “Time bad been, tn a Presidential election of general interest when the Pine Knot mind was a unit, that the presence of the State line added its special glory to an election. Every one in Pino Knot, for instance, had voted for Henry Clay, and, . . . each voter having polled ‘8 good and honest vote in his own State,
jepped over the line and voted in the other.” ‘There were no booths. As lately as in ‘98 in a neighboring county the vot- ing was done in the old way, the people having torn down the booths “established by the new and cumbersome Australian sys- tem.” ald a local politician, “When a team gits in thar with his lead pencil, who knows whether he votes the way he says he will?” In 1860 they managed it thus:
““‘How be you-alls in Kaintuck votin’?! arked Sim.
“Dinged if I know. I sorter bad a (dy of votin’ for Douglas.”
‘Did ye? That's too bad. I sorter lay- 0 off to vote for Bell 'n' Everett. What's the ditterence?”
‘Dinged if I know,” replied Dan again. Finally, Sim echoing Dan's avowal that he ain't no rebel nor no black abolitionist, they ‘agree to go over and take somethin’ and then split the difference and vote for Lin- coln. ‘He's a mountain boy and some kin of ourn, I reckon," ”
‘The private disillusionment of Buzbee and the conversion of the State from neutrality to loyalty are worked out into a story full of interest, if something lacking in compact-
ness. Asa piece of local history ‘Pine Knot” takes more than creditable place in the fast- swelling library of books about ourselves. ‘Another, equally of the siztles and equal- ly @ document in political history, is the powerful and painful record of “The Jay- Hawkers,’ a name given the Free-Soil raid- ‘3 who used to swoop out of Kansas Into Missouri, and carry off parties of slaves Into freedom—ratds returned with interest by the Missourian Bushwhackers, burning, plundering, and recapturing—Border Rut- fians all. Of the four books under notice this has the most firmly kolt story, and fs the bloodiest and most hideous in its It carries entire conviction of the familiarity with the horrid scenes she describes, so minute is the tale, the tell- Ing so thrilling from its very dispasstonate- ness. Reading such a chronicle, we are properly attuned to our present daily morn- Ing news trom South and West and Orient.
Poris, By Hilaire Belloc. London: Edward ‘Arnold. 12mo, pp. xil, 476. 7 maps. From the dissyllab{c title of Hilaire Bel-
Joe's atest book, but a vague idea of its contents is to be gained. Is it a guide, a mass of statistics, or a book of literary goe- aipt It is certainly none of these, but, as one who knows its author's training and in- clinations might: expect, it 1s a serious his- torical essay. It deals with the growth and changes of the city from pre-Roman times to the end of the eighteenth century. Its aim is to show the city's varying but united Ufe, to give a picture of that ever-shifting crowd, whose hopes and fears, whose surength and weakness, made Paris what it ‘was from time to time, and the outcome of whose united lives has mado it what It 16 to-day. ‘The author seoks not alone to show the physical activities that have resulted in the thing we know so well, not alone to tell us of the rearing of the Roman palace ‘and amphitheatre, of the modimval walls, ‘and the cathedral, but to make us realize the great enthusiasms and vagaries of the people—enthusiaams that resulted in Notre Dame and in the University; vagaries that Jed to the depths of the great Terror. Hence we have a history not of the people, nor of their rulers, nor of thelr monuments, nor of thelr intellectual life, but rather of all these things combined, wo that one lays {t down with a senso of the continuity of the city’s life, with a feeling curiously different from that with which one stands on a high place and views a great stretch of country; with a feeling, rather, of having looked upon a little spot down in a valley and watched {ts growth, its shrinkage, and its regrowth for a space of full two thousand years.
‘Though it runs to almost five hundred pages, Essay 1s, perhaps, the best word to describe this volume. Formal history it cer- tainly 1s not, and the author is the first to Gisclatm any intention of making it such, for he says at the outest that the things he has put down are such gleanings as a man gets from old prints and chance phrases of memoirs, with an outcome as superficial and as personal as a traveller's drawing or ‘as a man's diary, yet serving to give just the necessary framework upon which the mé mory and imagination may build. Some what too modest an estimate is this, for though the facts may come from scattered sources, they are so arranged and connect- ed as to leave a lasting ‘mpression on the
mind, especially as to the peculiar char-
acter of each of the epochs Into which the
author divides the long space of time he
has to cover. We feel the Roman influence
powerful for good, civilizing, organizing, de-
veloping the little Gaulish village into a
provinelal capital, giving it laws, and bring-
ing order and prosperity out of chaos and
want. Some clear idea of what this Gallo-
Roman Lutetia was, with its towered wall
encircling the Island, with its temples, its
palaces, and its amphitheatre, we may gal
but we are soon swept on to the time of
that mysterious Geneviave about whom we
Know 0 little with certainty, but who,
from her twentleth to her elghtieth year,
‘was such a potent factor in the city’s life,
‘and after whose death the people dwelt for
five centuries in the shadow of the dark
ages. From all those years of contusion we
gain another clear impression, namely, of
the way Paris crumbled bit by bit, and of the
way the light, the artifice, the well-ordered
monotony of the Empire were lost, and how
there grew up legend, miracle, and the or-
deal of fre.
‘Then 2 sudden change. The doubt and despair at the coming of the year 1000 dis~ appear. Not Paris alone, but the whole of Burope awakes. Great kinguhips, consoll- dating scattered States, appear. The Ro- ‘man law Is revived, universities and ver- nacular Hterature mark the coming of the early Middle Ages, but, most of all, the Gothic architecture stands as the memorial of the splendid energy and enthusiasm that pervaded all society. For Paris it was the UUme of the walling of the city, of the found~ Ing of the Louvre, of the bullding of Notre Dame. With those later Middle Ages, the two centuries reaching from Bt. Louls to Charles VIII, come thoughts of war, pesti- Jence, and famine. Paris suffered a changed in a way that was typical of the time, As society grew in luxury and misery, Paris expressed the change by huddling its people together more closely than ever be- fore, and by building that splendid Palace of St. Paul of which scarcely a vestige Is now left. It was a time of despair for the com- mon folk, a time when the King’s orchard yielded its unfailing crop, and when the Danse Macabre was no mere piece of empty strony.
How profoundly the state of society was Influenced by that clear light coming over the Alps from Italy, by the new ideas brought back by the troope of Charles VIII, we all know, but we fall to recognise that ‘the changes wrought upon the clty by the Renaissance, including as they did the Louvre, the Hotel de Ville, and the Tul- lertes, failed to transform it as a whole. ‘The effect of the new movement was but partial and accidental. The aspect of Paris at the close of the sixteenth century was still medieval, and it was left to the sey- enteenth to rebuild the city and to blot out, the traces of the Middle Ages, as it was left to the mineteenth to again rebulld the city ‘and to blot out the traces of the seven- teenth.
In what has been said we have, perhaps, failed to bring out the fact that a vast ‘amount of detall goes to make up this gen- eral impression; that the book not only char- acterizes vividly the several periods of the elty's life, but brings before us all the great men who passed across its stage from Casar to Robeeplerre, all the great movements that caused its transformations, all the great
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