Young People's Story of American Literature
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' I M il! YOUNG PEOP STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE WHITCOMB 3 3333 05967 9114 Young People's Story of American Literature Young People's Story of American Literature Revised Edition By Ida Prentice Whitcomb c Author of "A Bunch of Wild Flowers for the Children,' "Heroes of History," "Young People's Story " of Art," Young People's Story of Music," etc. With Numerous Illustrations , \A\\\V. ^T &*trYt New York Dodd, Mead and Company 1936 FOREWORD A STORY is not necessarily bound by historical per- in the spective ; and following Young People's Story of American Literature," the aim has been three-fold: First, to bring into clear outline such biographical and dramatic elements as appeal to young people and stimulate them to seek further. Second, to incite the youth and maiden in com- mitting to memory poetic selections. These faith- fully garnered will prove a rich treasure. Third, to interest the student in visiting the shrines of our own land as eagerly as those abroad. In collecting materials for the book, the writer has been enabled through great courtesy to visit many of the places mentioned, and has noted much of local value in a desire to add colour to the story. Every shrine visited has made more vivid the per- sonality associated with it. " So the Firstly, Secondly, and Thirdly," are in brief: To seek companionship of the best books; to memorise choice poems; and to make pilgrimages to the homes of American authors. The writer acknowledges, with thanks, the per- mission given by Houghton, Mifflin and Company to FOREWORD reprint extracts from the works of Whittier, Low- ell, Longfellow, Holmes, Thoreau, Stedman, and others; by Charles Scribner's Sons to quote from the poems of Rev. Dr. Henry Van Dyke, Eugene Field, and Sidney Lanier; by Small, Maynard and Company to quote short extracts from the poems of Rev. John B. Tabb; by Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Company to quote from the poems of Paul Hamilton Hayne; by D. Appleton and Company to quote from the poems of William Cullen Bryant; and by Little, " Brown and Company to quote Poppies in the Wheat," copyright 1892, by Roberts Brothers, and also some short quotations from other poems of Helen Hunt Jackson. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I THE EVOLUTION OF THE BOOK i II BEGINNINGS OF THE STORY 4 III JAMESTOWN AND CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH .... 6 IV OTHER WRITERS OF THE VIRGINIA COLONY . .13 V PILGRIM AND PURITAN CHRONICLERS 16 VI EARLY THEOLOGIANS 24 VII DIARISTS AND POETS 34 VIII BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 41 IX REVOLUTIONARY LEADERS 55 X THE NATION-BUILDERS 63 XI GLANCES BACKWARD AND FORWARD 72 XII WASHINGTON IRVING 76 XIII JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 90 XIV WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 101 XV SPASMODIC POEMS AND SONGS 114 XVI JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 124 XVII WAR LITERATURE 140 XVIII BANCROFT AND PRESCOTT 156 XIX MOTLEY AND PARKMAN 165 XX NEW INFLUENCES IN PURITAN NEW ENGLAND . 175 XXI RALPH WALDO EMERSON 180 XXII HENRY DAVID THOREAU 196 XXIII NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 205 XXIV HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 220 XXV JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 240 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE XXVI OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES ....... * . 256 XXVII EDGAR ALLAN POE 275 XXVIII OTHER SOUTHERN WRITERS 291 XXIX WESTERN LITERATURE 304 XXX A GROUP OF EASTERN AUTHORS 318 XXXI WOMAN IN AMERICAN LITERATURE PART FIRST . 335 XXXII WOMAN IN AMERICAN LITERATURE PART SECOND . 343 XXXIII NATURE LOVERS ESSAYISTS HISTORIANS . .361 XXXIV NOVELISTS 369 XXXV POETS 386 AFTERWORD 402 ILLUSTRATIONS The Orchard House: Home of the Alcotts . Frontispiece PAGE Evolution of the Book : Cairn, Oral, Hieroglyphics .... 3 Evolution of the Book: Pictograph, Manuscript, Printing Press 4 Monument to Capt. John Smith, Jamestown, Va ..... 10 Gov. John Winthrop ............. 18 Cotton Mather ............... 18 John Eliot ................ 18 Jonathan Edwards .............. 18 National Monument, Plymouth, Mass ........ 36 Thomas Jefferson .............. 44 Alexander Hamilton ............. 44 Benjamin Franklin .............. 44 Samuel Sewall ............... 44 Page from Poor Richard's Almanac, September, 1738 ... 52 Washington Irving ............. 78 J. Fenimore Cooper .............. 78 Fitz-Greene Hallock ............. 78 William Cullen Bryant ............ 7 8 Sunnyside: Home of Washington Irving ....... 86 Monument to J. Fenimore Cooper, Cooperstown, N. Y. 96 William Cullen Bryant Memorial, Bryant Park, New York . 108 John Howard Payne's "Home Sweet Home," East Hampton, L. I. 118 Home of John Greenleaf Whittier, Amesbury, Mass .... 130 William Lloyd Garrison ............ 142 Daniel Webster ............... 142 Henry Clay ................ 142 Harriet Beecher Stowe ............. I 42 Lincoln Emancipation Statue at Washington, D. C..... 150 Francis Parkman .............. 160 John Lothrop Motley George Bancroft William H. Prescott .............. l6 School of Philosophy, Concord, Mass ........ 176 Ralph Waldo Emerson ............ 184 .Nathaniel Hawthorne ............. 184 ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE Henry David Thoreau 184 Louisa M. Alcott 184 Home of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Concord, Mass 192 The Thoreau Cairn and Thoreau Cove, Lake Walden . 198 Old Manse, Concord, Mass 208 The Wayside: Home of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Concord, Mass. 216 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 222 James Russell Lowell 222 Oliver Wendell Holmes 222 John Greenleaf Whittier 222 Craigie House: Home of Henry W. Longfellow, Cambridge, Mass 232 Elmwood: Home of James Russell Lowell, Cambridge, Mass . 248 Edgar Allan Poe 276 Sidney Lanier 276 Paul H. Hayne 276 Rev. John B. Tabb 276 Poe's Cottage at Fordham, New York City 284 Samuel L. Clemens 308 Francis Bret Harte 308 Eugene Field 308 Henry Cuyler Bunner 308 Edward Clarence Stedman 320 Bayard Taylor 320 Thomas Bailey Aldrich 320 Walt Whitman 320 Edward Everett Hale 330 Frank R. Stockton 330 William Dean Howells 330 F. Marion Crawford 330 Celia L. Thaxter 340 Sarah Orne Jewett 340 Helen Hunt Jackson 340 Mary Mapes Dodge 340 *'- Books are keys to wisdom's treasure,' Books are gates to lands of pleasure; Books are paths that upward lead; 7 Books are friends, come, let us read!' POULSSON. FOREWORD OF REVISED EDITION Now, in 1922, a new edition of "Young People's a Story of American Literature" is issued. What wonderful broadening of vision since the beginning of our colonial period over three hundred years ago 1 To-day there is more thoughtful and artistic au- and thorship than ever before. Essayist dramatist, biographer and historian, scientist and philosopher, illustrator is novelist and poet, are writing; the busy with brush and camera and everybody reads. The of demand is great and our literature is worthy consideration. of Let us study its trend from the characteristics be a few representative authors, for it is better to familiar with the work of a few rather than to have scant acquaintance with that of the many. Which are the best we may not know, for it is of con- never possible to give correct perspective temporary writers. Keenest critics fail in judgment of their own age. Amy Lowell says : "To-day can never be adequately expressed largely because it a we are a part of and only part" ; while John Jay Chapman thus voices his views: "A historian cannot get his mind into focus upon any- thing as near as the present." I THE EVOLUTION OF THE BOOK AN English author rightly traces the origin of the book to the depth of some Asiatic forest, where centu- ries agone a rude savage stood, thorn in hand, etching upon a leaf perhaps torn from a giant palm a symbol by which to commemorate either joy or strug- gle in his simple life; and thus the tree became the ' " ; parent of the book the word book being de- rived from the beech with its smooth and silvery bark, found by our Saxon forefathers in the German forest, and the leaf explains itself. Another more pictorial illustration of the origin of the book, we find in a series of six panels, painted by Mr. John W. Alexander, of New York, in the new Congressional Library, at Washington. In the first of these expressive frescoes, prehis- toric man erects upon the seashore a rough cairn of boulders. The task is laborious, but he must needs make his record. In the second, the Oriental story-teller dramatic- ally relates his tale to a group of absorbed listeners : this typifies oral tradition. Again we look, and the Egyptian stone-cutter chisels his hieroglyphics upon the face of a tomb. STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE His cutting is vigorous and incisive his tale is made to live. Yet another, and a graceful American Indian paints upon a buffalo-skin the pictograph, which rep- resents the war-trail or the chase. We next glance into the dim scriptorium where the monastic scribe patiently illuminates his manu- script; and as the final evolution, Gutenberg eagerly scans the proof that has just come from the printing- press his gift to the world. So from prehistoric age to twentieth century, leaf, cairn and altar, oral tradition, hieroglyphic and pictograph, waxed tablet, illuminated manuscript and printing-press have all had part in leading up to the book the ultimate triumph of modern thought. And the book is the vehicle of literature; and the literature that it holds is the reflection and repro- duction alike of the intellect and deed of the people. - Honest John Morley says: " Poets, dramatists, humorists, satirists, historians, masters of fiction, great preachers, character-writers, political ora- tors, maxim-writers all are literature." The story of literature is a curious and varied one that has unravelled century by century as Egypt, Assyria, Persia, China and India, Greece and Rome, and the more modern countries, have in turn added their records. CAIRN " ' eg i ORAL TRADITION EGYPTIAN H1EKOGLYPH1CS Copyright, by Curtis & Catneron THE EVOLUTION OF THE BOOK. MURAL DECORATIONS IN THE CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY, BY JOHN W. ALEXANDER THE EVOLUTION OF THE BOOK Our subject is American literature. This, how- ever, being but a branch of English literature, we join in the ranks and inspiration of that long and splendid procession, which, for twelve hundred years, has been marching along.