shows its author's ardent devotion to the great inland sea beside which she lives and the glorious snow-peaks towering above. This passionate love of nature in all its wildness is the most delightful feature of Mrs. Higginson's work. Her portrayal of Northwest life, with its hard-worked rancher, its rough yet tender-hearted logger, and its aspiring type of girlhood shut away from young associates by the darkgreen forest walls, is exceptionally vivid. Her men and women are of real flesh and blood, and are drawn with a firm hand. If art is selection," Mrs. Higginson's success in fiction shows it to be selection of first-hand material. We frequently hear the novelist derided who writes wholly of a particular section of the country. It is sometimes said that he has fenced off a little field of his own, and intends to work it so long as it proves productive. If our writers of fiction are to give us truthful pictures of life, they must know the regions they describe and the exact conditions which surround the people. In other words, the writer must come into contact with the life he pictures or the portrait cannot be a true one. It seems to me that authors devoting themselves to studies of certain sections seldom fail in presenting true pictures, and in this fidelity to life Mrs. Higginson has certainly distinguished herself. Her poems, a collection of which the Macmillans have in press, possess an exquisite grace and charm of expression. Especially successful is she in that difficult form of poetic composition, the sonnet.

Concerning the attainments of the New Northwest in the field of art and letters, I feel that they are at the least worthy of consideration. Certain hardships confront our writers. The remoteness from literary markets is frequently a source of annoyance. Again, our authors sometimes assert, and it would be difficult to convince them otherwise, that the editors of Eastern periodicals discriminate against them; that the wares they offer are not regarded with the same favor as are those coming from New York or Boston. While this is doubtless a false belief, it is a fact that our writers are often subjected to unjust criticism, simply for the reason that those who find fault with their productions have never seen the region described, and consequently are ignorant of its peculiar features.

To them the poem or picture naturally appears extravagant and unreal. Joaquin Miller's lines, for instance, are often thought to be too highly colored to give an accurate conception of the Sunset Land.

Where the plants are as trees,

Where the trees are as towers,

sings the Poet of the Sierras, and the faraway New England critic questions the assertion that plants are as trees, and terms the expression "extravagant description. But in the great wilderness of the Far Northwest a man can lose himself among the dense forests of ferns. They grow much higher than one's head, and form such a canopy of green that the sky is shut from view. The plants are as trees, and the poet's picture is not overdrawn. The peculiar coloring of this region is unappreciated by the majority of those who have not seen it for themselves.

Once, when visiting an exposition, and while passing through the art department, I came upon an artist friend who was apparently enjoying the caustic remarks of the passers-by concerning one of his paintings, entitled "An Alaska Lake." The color of the water might be properly called an ultramarine blue, and in contrast with the surrounding hills of snow it was strikingly brilliant, and brought forth from ready critics much adverse comment. And yet it was an exact reproduction of nature's coloring, and of course the artist was perfectly satisfied with his work, and took the scathing criticism in the very best humor.

The vastness of the West is misunderstood in the same way as was the coloring of this Alaskan lake. O, the noble majesty of these mountain ranges! White with everlasting snow; with cloudy turbans wound about their rugged brows and a veil of purple haze across their breasts, they look down in solemn grandeur upon the undulating green of those trackless forests of fir. No pen can describe the marvelous splendor of these peaks, and no brush. can portray their peerless beauty to the world. The eye never tires of looking at their awful chasms and gleaming pinnacles. They roll and toss in the violet heavens as billows upon the sea; they lift a robe of purity to the dawn, and burst into rosy bloom at the touch of the sinking sun. Cold and gray under a lowering sky, aflame

with the golden light of noon, or half seen through the rents of rolling clouds, these peaks are ever a source of admiration and wonderment. Why should not such scenes produce artists and poets?

The mighty mountains of this new land are not more beautiful than its Puget Sound, the greatest of America's inland seas, which winds its way into the very heart of earth's most magnificent forest of fir. Puget Sound is irresistibly fascinating. It has a singularly indescribable charm. Every glimpse of shore, every winding bay and inlet, is a picture throbbing with color. And such color! Such sunsets on its waters! A sky aflame with poppies and a sea that burns like the fire in the heart of an opal, softwinged gulls in silver clouds drifting above, each fir upon the shore a flaming torch, each peak reflected in the glassy tide a tower of burnished gold, and the million ever-changing, ever-shifting hues of sky and water. What radiance! What unspeakable beauty! Is it to be wondered at that many seize palette and brush and attempt to reproduce this mass of color on canvas, or that others should strive to describe in verse the entrancing grandeur of the scene? Then, too, the woods-the miles upon miles of unbroken forest, with its varied shades of green. In these deep woods there is eternal twilight. The sunshine never enters this dim abode of Solitude. The winding forest aisles hold the silence of centuries. Such silence - impressive, profound! The very boughs seem weighed down with its intensity. Long banners of moss, gray as from age, hang from the massive limbs of the firs, and the earth beneath wears a robe of perpetual green. Somewhere in the gloom a white lily drowses like a slender taper burning dimly in the majestic halls of sleep. It is here, in the solemn cathedrals of nature's fashioning, that “man owns up his littleness to God"; for in their holy silence the heart is ever in prayer. O, the sublimity of these dim old forests of the Far Northwest! Would that a Milton might give them voice!

It may be that I have dwelt too long upon the scenic grandeur of the North Pacific region; but this majesty in nature has much to do in determining its possibilities in art and literature. As a general rule, environment molds the mind. Lofty peaks inspire lofty thought. A man dwelling

upon a desolate plain sees no poetry in the surrounding landscape, nor does the painter thrill with ecstasy as he views the arid levels of a desert land. As Philip Gilbert Hamerton has said :—

All sights and sounds have their influence upon our thoughts. We are like blank paper, that takes a tint by reflection from what is nearest, and changes it as its surroundings change. In a dull, gray room, how gray and dull it looks! but it will be bathed in rose or amber, if the hangings are crimson or yellow.

The history of the Old World shows us that it is in those countries where nature is most majestic that art has found its inspiration and attained its greatest perfection. The shore of the sea, the flashing peak of a mountain range, the river leaping through its rocky gorge, and the vast slowbreathing forest, with its impressive dignity, are potent factors when considering the possibilities of a country in art and letters. Why should the Emerald Land not give birth to poets and painters? Surely it possesses those elements which inspire men to high thought and lead them to holier heights.

A rare field here awaits the novelist a field rich in material. Every peak and every waterfall has its poetic legend. There are mountain ranges yet unexplored, rugged cañons which tradition veils in haunting mysteries. The life in the mines, among the fishermen, and in the logging-camps, with all its hardships, joys, and sorrows, has never yet, one might say, been portrayed to the world. And what entrancing picturesqueness and dramatic strength it contains! It is a fascinating freedom these people enjoy in the mammoth woods of this new land - a freedom not easily comprehended by those who have known nothing but the conventionalities of an older civilization. This spirit of freedom breathes through all the writings of Western authors-poets and novelists - who do not draw their inspiration from the world of books, but from the life that surrounds them. And in the dawn of Northwest literature it is most encouraging to note the creative power exhibited, the getting away from Old World restrictions and stereotyped forms. It is not so much a question of culture, but of wisdom the ability to do or say something that is not a mere imitation of Old World models. And herein lies the

literary strength of the entire West, regardless of its particular section. No mere imitator ever yet gave the world a great poem, and perhaps this may have prompted the Eastern critic to assert that we are now in the twilight of the poets. I can take no such gloomy view; and if I may be so bold as to prophesy, the morn of the poets has just begun, and the great singer of the West that is to come will pipe neither of Trojan wars nor of Greek mythology, but will celebrate in immortal song the land of his birth. He will not find his inspiration in the tombs of the Past. He will be the interpreter of Nature, and the glory of her colors will be reflected in the fountain of

his song. The Emerald Land as described from a car-window by some literary tourist has never yet recognized the portrait drawn of her, and she never will.

Perhaps I am too sanguine as to the literary promise of the New Northwest. It is true there needs must be a channel for utterance or the author remains in shadow; but magazines and publishing-houses are on their way. Of course, to the conservative critic of the Far East, the assumption that the Northwest could be otherwise than crude and illiterate might seem one of the improbabilities; and yet to me the future of this land in art and letters is as bright as the snows of its glorious peaks.

TEARLY forty years ago, on the day (December 2, 1859) when John Brown, the hero of Osawatomie and Harper's Ferry, looked his last upon the earth and sky, Edmond Sears wrote these prophetic lines:

Not any spot six feet by two,

Will hold a man like thee;

John Brown will tramp the shaking earth,
From the Blue Ridge to the sea,
Till the strong angel comes at last,
And opes the dungeon door,

And God's great charter holds and waves,
O'er all his humble poor.

No man was ever more misunderstood by the majority of his compeers than was Old John Brown; but in the clearer perspective gained by added distance from those troublous days when he was an actor in the drama of history we of this generation are able to gain the true aspect of this grand figure in the struggle against oppression, and to recognize in him a relation to those pivotal men who by nature and environment are predestined historic characters. As Cromwell appeared upon the stage of England's story at the proper moment for Anglo-Saxon freedom, so John Brown, that later Puritan, came at the right time to strike his great blow and die his great death for American liberty.

Many persons still believe that "Old Brown of Osawatomie" was one of those vulgar ruffians who delight in blood and the spectacular, and others class him with cranks of the Guiteau stripe, whose thirst for notoriety leads them to crime. Nothing could be farther from the truth; and those who knew him well and appreciated his character while he lived hold him in increasing veneration as time goes on. John Brown himself had a clear view of the future, and while in prison at Charleston, Virginia, repeatedly declared that his death would be of more value to his beloved cause than his further existence could be, and that the time would come when none would blush to acknowledge relationship to "Old John Brown."

Ruth Brown Thompson, the eldest

daughter of John Brown, lives at Pasadena, California, with her aged husband, Henry Thompson, an actor in the Kansas FreeSoil agitation. She was a mature woman when John Brown first became known as the champion of the slave, and her memory of her father is very vivid. Those aspects of his character which could be known only to members of his own family are the ones most revered by Mrs. Thompson, who relates incidents of her childhood with a lucidity that indicates that she has the family gift of expression. Old John Brown's letters are models of clear diction, and remain as perfect refutation of the charge that he was a crazy fanatic.

Ruth Brown Thompson lives in a roseembowered cottage on the edge of a little mesa, with a view of blue hills and distant mountains through the foliage. Oranges ripen near her sitting-room windows, and the humming-bird builds his nest in the eucalyptus-trees shading her piazza. Giant live-oaks, festooned with flowering creepers, shade the roadway leading to her door, and the mocking-bird sings the whole year round amid the roses that perfume this sylvan retreat. Her home is a shrine of sacred memories; and after the storms of those bitter years when her brothers were hunted as criminals, and her father's name was execrated as that of a traitor, she sits in the afternoon sunlight of a peaceful old age, honored as the daughter of the one man who dared to raise his hand against a nation's crime and prove the Arnold Winkelried of a new era.

I took in my hands the Bible bequeathed by John Brown to this, the best-beloved of his daughters, and as I turned its pages and read the passages marked by his hand, I understood the pabulum on which he nerved his soul to lofty deeds. It is a common old book, bound in dingy calfskin, worn and battered, but it is more precious to Ruth Brown than would be the costliest volume that money could buy, for it solaced the last hours of her father. It bears the names of his children, written by his own hand, and in that record stands these