"The ill-timed truth we might have kept,—

Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung?
The word we had not sense to say,-

Who knows how grandly it had rung?

"Our faults no tenderness should ask,

The chastening stripes must cleanse them all;
But for our blunders,- oh, in shame

Before the eyes of heaven we fall.

"Earth bears no balsam for mistakes;

Men crown the knave, and scourge the tool
That did his will: but Thou, O Lord,

Be merciful to me, a fool!»

The room was hushed: in silence rose
The King, and sought his gardens cool;
And walked apart, and murmured low,
"Be merciful to me, a fool!"

WHA

A MORNING THOUGHT

HAT if some morning, when the stars were paling,
And the dawn whitened, and the east was clear,
Strange peace and rest fell on me from the presence
Of a benignant spirit standing near;

And I should tell him, as he stood beside me :

"This is our earth-most friendly earth, and fair; Daily its sea and shore through sun and shadow Faithful it turns, robed in its azure air;

"There is blest living here, loving and serving,

And quest of truth, and serene friendships dear: But stay not, Spirit! Earth has one destroyer —

His name is Death: flee, lest he find thee here!"

And what if then, while the still morning brightened,
And freshened in the elm the summer's breath,

Should gravely smile on me the gentle angel,

And take my hand and say, "My name is Death"?

STRANGE

E DIED at night. Next day they came

HR

To weep and praise him; sudden fame
These suddenly warm comrades gave.
They called him pure, they called him brave;
One praised his heart, and one his brain;
All said, "You'd seek his like in vain,—
Gentle, and strong, and good:" none saw
In all his character a flaw.

At noon he wakened from his trance,
Mended, was well! They looked askance;
Took his hand coldly; loved him not,
Though they had wept him; quite forgot
His virtues; lent an easy ear

To slanderous tongues; professed a fear
He was not what he seemed to be;
Thanked God they were not such as he;
Gave to his hunger stones for bread:
And made him, living, wish him dead.

F

LIFE

ORENOON, and afternoon, and night,- Forenoon,

And afternoon, and night,- Forenoon, and — what! The empty song repeats itself. No more? Yea, that is Life: make this forenoon sublime, This afternoon a psalm, this night a prayer, And Time is conquered, and thy crown is won.

WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS

(1806-1870)

NE of the stalwart pioneers of American literature was the South-Carolinian, William G. Simms. He cultivated letters under comparatively adverse conditions. He produced, under the whip of necessity and by force of a vigorous gift for literary composition, a remarkable number of books, many of them below his normal power. Yet some of his Revolutionary and Colonial romances have a merit likely to give them a lasting audience. Boys, who are keen on the scent of a stirring plot and a well-told story, still read Simms with gusto. Moreover, in making lit

erary use of the early doings of his native State and of other Southern and border States, he did a real service in drawing attention to and awakening interest in local United States history. Simms had the wisdom, in a day when it was rarer than it is now, to draw upon this rich native material lying as virgin ore for the novelist. No other man of his time made more successful use of it.

W. G. SIMMS

William Gilmore Simms was born at Charleston, South Carolina, April 17th, 1806. His father was a self-made man of decided force, though lacking education. William had only a common-school training; and before studying law, was a clerk in a chemical house. He was admitted to the bar when twentyone years of age; but cared little for the profession, indicating his preference the same year by publishing two volumes of poems. Throughout his career Simms courted the Muse; but his verse never became an important part of his achievement. In 1828 he became editor and part owner of the Charleston City Gazette, which took the Union side during the Nullification excitement. He held the position for four years, when the newspaper was discontinued because of political dissensions, leaving the editor in financial straits. After a year's residence in Hingham, Massachusetts, - where his first novel, 'Martin Faber, the Story of a Criminal,' was written, -he returned to South Carolina; settling finally on his plantation Woodlands, near Medway, in that State, where he lived for many years the life of a genial

country gentleman, a large slave-owner, his mansion the centre of an open-handed hospitality. Simms was in these years the representative Southern author, visited as a matter of course by travelers from the North. This life was varied also by political office: he was for many years a member of the South Carolina Legislature, and was once an unsuccessful candidate for lieutenant-governor.

Personally Simms was was an impulsive, choleric, generous-hearted man, full of pluck and energy, widely interested in the affairs of his land, doing steadily what he conceived to be right. During his meridian of strength he prospered, though driven to work hard to keep up his style of living. But when the war came he suffered the common lot of well-conditioned Southerners, and was almost ruined. Thereafter, until his death, it was an up-hill struggle. Simms was frankly, warmly sectional in his feelings, stoutly maintaining the right of the South to secede. A sympathetic picture of the days of his activity, in both sunshine and storm, is given in Professor William P. Trent's biography of him prepared for the 'American Men of Letters' series. Simms published more than thirty volumes of novels and shorter tales: his verse alone counts up to nearly twenty books, and in addition he wrote histories, including several books of South Carolina biographies,―edited various standard authors, and contributed almost countless articles to periodicals. The voluminous nature of his writings explains the ephemerality of much of his work, and suggests his faults,-carelessness of style and looseness of construction, and an inclination to the sensational. Simms's bloody scenes are generally in full view of the audience: he did not see the value of reserve. But his good qualities are positive: he has lively characterization, brisk movement, a sense of the picturesque, and great fertility of invention.

It is unnecessary, in the case of a writer so fecund, to catalogue his works: the most powerful and artistic are those dealing with his native State; and the chapter quoted from The Yemassee,' the most popular and perhaps the best of all his fiction,- a story describing the uprising of the Indian tribe of that name, and the bravery of the early Carolinians in repulsing them,-gives an admirable idea of his gift for the graphic presentation of a dramatic scene. Guy Rivers,' in 1834, was Simms's first decided success in native romance; and crude as it is, has plenty of bustling action to hold the attention. The Revolutionary quadrilogy beginning with The Partisan' (1835), and ending with Katharine Walton' (1851), including also 'Mellichampe' and 'The Kinsman,'all tales of Marion and his troopers and the British campaign in the Carolinas; the group of short stories known as Wigwam and Cabin' (1845), dealing with frontier and Indian life; and the much later The Cassique of Kiawah' (1860),

which depicts colonial days in Charleston,- are superior examples of his scope and style. Both the American and English public of that day took to his work: ten of his novels received German translation.

Simms was conscientious and indefatigable in getting the material for his tales: reading the authorities in print and manuscript, traveling in order to study the physical aspects of the country and gather oral legends and scraps of local history. Thus he came to know well, and to be able to reproduce with truth and spirit, the Indians and white men who filled his mind's eye. The reader of to-day is more likely to underestimate than to overestimate Simms in this regard. He was a writer with a very conspicuous talent for character limning and narrative, which was aided by years of ceaseless pen-work. Under less practical pressure, and with a keener sense of the obligation of the artist to his art, he might have ranked with Cooper. As it is, with all allowance for shortcomings, he is an agreeable figure whether he be considered as author or man.

I

THE DOOM OF OCCONESTOGA

From The Yemassee'

T WAS a gloomy amphitheatre in the deep forests to which the assembled multitude bore the unfortunate Occonestoga. The whole scene was unique in that solemn grandeur, that sombre hue, that deep spiritual repose, in which the human imagination delights to invest the region which has been rendered remarkable for the deed of punishment or crime. A small swamp or morass hung upon one side of the wood; from the rank bosom of which, in numberless millions, the flickering firefly perpetually darted upwards, giving a brilliance and animation to the spot, which at that moment no assemblage of light or life could possibly enliven. The ancient oak, a bearded Druid, was there to contribute to the due solemnity of all associations; the green but gloomy cedar, the ghostly cypress, and here and there the overgrown pine,— all rose up in their primitive strength, and with an undergrowth around them of shrub and flower that scarcely at any time, in that sheltered and congenial habitation, had found it necessary to shrink from winter. In the centre of the area thus invested rose a high and venerable mound, the tumulus of many preceding ages, from the washed sides of which might now and then be seen protruding the bleached bones of some ancient warrior or sage. A circle of trees at a little distance hedged it in,