23
Concerning the Convention seat for 1916, The Conservative cannot see what city but Cleveland, active in clubs and publishing, has any valid claim to the honour. Ohio is the logical state, being practically the centre of the amateur world, and Cleveland is the logical city, since Columbus has so lately had a convention. The arguments for Newark are negligible. The Blue Pencil Club of Brooklyn, which would predominate there, is primarily a National body, whilst the Newark boys are all semi-professionals with mercantile rather than literary aspirations.
Introducing Mr. John Russell.
During the winter of 1913-14 The Conservative was engaged in an extremely heated controversy concerning the merits of a certain author whose work appeared in one of the popular magazines of the day. The letters of the disputants, both in prose and in verse, were printed in the magazine, and among them appeared both the formal heroics of The Conservative, and the neat octosyllabics of one John Russell, Esq., of Tampa, Florida. Mr. Russell and The Conservative, who were arrayed against each other in the metric fray, were each separately invited by Mr. Edward Daas to join the United, but while The Conservative responded eagerly and almost immediately, his opponent deferred action. Meanwhile a peace had been sealed betwixt the contending bards, and a correspondence established, in which The Conservative continued to urge what Don Eduardo had first mentioned; the result now appearing in Mr. Russell's advent to the association.
John Russell, whose present address is General Delivery, West Tamps, is a true-born Scotsman, being a native of Penicuik, near Edinburgh. The patriotism of his family is attested by the presence of his two nephews at the front in Belgium, one with the Gordon Highlanders and the other with a Canadian regiment. Mr. Russell's poetry has appeared in the public press of Scotland, Canada, and the United States, and possesses a tersely epigrammatical and at times brilliantly satirical style all its own. Though proficient in classic English, it is in the quaint speech of Caledonia that Mr. Russell chiefly excels. Of this delightful dialect he is a perfect master, and his well-constructed lines are redolent of the atmosphere of North Britain. Upon joining the United, one of Mr. Russell's first acts was to dedicate a poem to the Blue-Stocking Club of Rocky Mount, whose study of Robert Burns at once aroused his interest. This poem, based on the motto of the club, appears in these pages, and affords a striking example of the new member's ability in verse.
We are indeed fortunate in having among us so able a specimen of the race which produced an Arbuthnot, a Ramsay, a Thompson, a Smollett, a Hume, a Blair, a Lord Kames, an Adam Smith, a Campbell, a Scott, a Carlyle and a Stevenson.
In a Major Key.
It was lately the good fortune of The Conservative to receive from The Blue Pencil Club a pamphlet entitled "In a Minor Key", whose phenomenal excellence furnishes emphatic evidence that the old National still retains some members who would have done it credit even in its palmiest days. But great as may be the literary
