She smiles on her white-rose lover,

She reaches out her hand

And helps him in at the window —
I see it where I stand!

To her scarlet lip she holds him,
And kisses him many a time-
Ah, me! it was he that won her,
Because he dared to climb!"

- Aldrich.

XXXI

WOMAN IN AMERICAN LITERATURE

PART FIRST

In order to give our story a gentle ending, we just glance at the part played by woman in American literature. For the feeble twitterings of the songstress were very early heard - even from the colonial day when Anne Bradstreet lightened the harshness of pioneer life by the consolation of poetry. These "first breathings" were a combination of high thought, fantastic conceit, and sentimentality, graced by poetic touch.

Tender-hearted Lydia Huntley Sigourney belonged to the "Knickerbocker Group "; and her one aim in her fifty-six volumes of verse and prose was to do good. It is difficult now to realise how much her solemn lines were quoted in her own day. Her memorial tablet in Christ Church, Hartford, bears Whittier's words:

She sang alone ere womanhood had known

The gift of song which fills the air to-day;
Tender and sweet, a music all her own

May fitly linger where she knelt to pray."

Among prose-writers, were sentimental and con

ventional novelists, whose stately, slow-moving characters acted conventional parts. "Charlotte Temple," for example, written by the playwright and novelist, Mrs. Rowson, was stiff and absurd - the heroine always "bedewed with tears." Then there was The Wide, Wide World," whose lachrymose heroine literally absorbed the wide, wide world. "The Lamplighter" was more normal in its pious setting. But these and other old tales, with chapters capped with morals, won phenomenal success when they were issued, while now-a-days we count them as bits of departed grandeur over which Holmes chants the requiem:

"Where, O where, are life's lilies and roses,
Nursed in the golden dawn's smile?
Dead as the bulrushes round little Moses,
On the old banks of the Nile.

Where are the Marys and Anns and Elizas
Living and lovely of yore!

Look in the columns of old Advertisers,
Married and dead by the score."

In this era of stilted ideals and flowery exaggeration, one very remarkable novel, "St. Elmo," penetrated every corner of our land as hundreds of material monuments give evidence of the enthusiasm which it aroused; for there were "St. Elmo " coaches and steamboats and hotels and towns! The novel was

written by Augusta Jane Evans, a Southern lady, whose "Beulah" had already won success.

In "St. Elmo," Miss Evans catches her heroine, Edna Earl, a girl of twelve, a stern little moralist, standing at dawn, outlined against Lookout Mountain; a duel and a wreck quickly follow- and in time Edna Earl becomes another Jane Eyre, and St. Elmo Murray, another Rochester. And Arthur Bartlett Maurice, the critic, claims that beneath the pompous phraseology, there lurks a real story, inspired by such lofty ideals and passionate sincerity, that, though written over half a century ago, the book remains an early chapter in the code of lifeand "St. Elmo " like "Uncle Tom's Cabin " stands apart.

And what reading was offered boys and girls of the earlier times? In colonial days, they were probably fascinated with the prodigies of Mather's Magnalia." Then "Robinson Crusoe," "Pilgrim's Progress," "Gulliver's Travels," "The Arabian Nights," and the novels of Scott and Cooper -alike held their fancy; while Jacob Abbott's "Histories" and "Rollo Books " were everywhere sought, for they conveyed wisdom and moral instruction in readable form.

And in turning from the statuesque women-writers of a by-gone age to the flesh-and-blood interpreters of our own, we shall find a new world opening out before the children as before those of larger growth.

We recall a few names of women who have made healthful impress upon literature - among them, Louisa M. Alcott, Mary Mapes Dodge, Helen Hunt Jackson, Celia Thaxter, and Sarah Orne Jewett.

To make a brief sketch of Louisa M. Alcott (1832-1888), we must in imagination retrace our way to intellectual Concord, which through her has given a contribution to children's literature. On a hillside stands "Old Orchard House," teeming with memories of four clever, wide-awake little women. Here it was that "Joe scribbled, May wrestled for fine words; here Beth's little cottage piano stood, and May mothered them all when dear Mrs. Marsh was away." We know them each one, and remember what an instantaneous welcome all received when they made their first courtesy to the public; and it was just because they were so real and natural, and proclaimed a gospel of simple living and happy work.

These were their maker's masterpieces; but at the mention of her name, other wholesome children, both boys and girls, come trooping into our memory. Jusserand says: "A tale is the first key to the heart of a child," and what a magical key Miss Alcott held! Her life was a struggle for she was very young when it was discovered that she rather than her visionary father-must be the family breadwinner.

At eight, she wrote her first poem; it was dedicated "To a Robin," and her mother encouraged