MARY NOAILLES MURFREE.
(CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK.)
Author of the “Prophet of the Smoky Mountains.”
HE pen name of Charles Egbert Craddock has become familiarly known throughout the English-speaking world in connection with the graphic delineations of character in the East Tennessee Mountains, to which theme the writings of this talented author have been devoted. Until long after the name had become famous the writer was supposed to be a man, and the following amusing story is told of the way in which the secret leaked out. Her works were published by a Boston editor, and the heavy black handwriting, together with the masculine ring of her stories, left no suspicion that their author was a delicate woman. Thomas Baily Aldrich, who was editor of the “Atlantic Monthly,” to which her writings came, used to say, after an interval had elapsed subsequent to her last contribution, “I wonder if Craddock has taken in his winter supply of ink and can let me have a serial.” One day a card came to Mr. Aldrich bearing the well-known name in the well-known writing, and the editor rushed out to greet his old contributor, expecting to see a rugged Tennessee mountaineer. When the slight, delicate little woman arose to answer his greeting it is said that Mr. Aldrich put his hands to his face and simply spun round on his heels without a word, absolutely bewildered with astonishment.
Miss Murfree was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in 1850, and is the great-granddaughter of Colonel Hardy Murfree of Revolutionary fame, for whom the city of Murfreesboro was named. Her father was a lawyer and a literary man, and Mary was carefully educated. Unfortunately in her childhood a stroke of paralysis made her lame for life. After the close of the war, the family being left in destitute circumstances, they moved to St. Louis, Missouri, and Miss Murfree contributed largely to their pecuniary aid by her fruitful pen. Her volumes include “In the Tennessee Mountains” (1884), “Where the Battle was Fought” (1884), “Down the Ravine” (1885), “The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains” (1885), “In the Clouds” (1886), “The Story of Keedon Bluffs” (1887), “The Despot of Broomsedge Cove” (1888), all of which works have proven their popularity by a long-continued sale, and her subsequent works will no doubt achieve equal popularity. She has contributed much matter to the leading magazines of the day. She is a student of humanity and her portraitures of Tennessee mountaineers have great historic value aside from the entertainment they furnish to the careless reader. It is her delineation of mountain character and her description of mountain scenery that have placed her works so prominently to the front in this critical and prolific age of novels. “Her style,” says a recent reviewer, “is bold, full of humor, yet as delicate as a bit of lace, to which she adds great power of plot and a keen wit, together with a homely philosophy bristling with sparkling truths. For instance, “the little old woman who sits on the edge of a chair” in one of her novels, and remarks “There ain’t nothin’ so becomin’ to fools as a shet mouth,” has added quite an original store to America’s already proverbial literature.
THE CONFESSION.[¹]
(FROM “THE PROPHET OF THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS.”)
[¹] Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
HE congregation composed itself to listen to the sermon. There was an expectant pause. Kelsey remembered ever after the tumult of emotion with which he stepped forward to the table and opened the book. He turned to the New Testament for his text,—and the leaves with a familiar hand. Some ennobling phase of that wonderful story which would touch the tender, true affinity of human nature for the higher things,—from this he would preach to-day. And yet, at the same moment, with a contrariety of feeling from which he shrank aghast, there was sulking into his mind that gruesome company of doubts. In double file they came: fate and free agency, free-will and fore-ordination, infinite mercy and infinite justice, God’s loving kindness and man’s intolerable misery, redemption and damnation. He had evolved them all from his own unconscious logical faculty, and they pursued him as if he had, in some spiritual necromancy, conjured up a devil—nay, a legion of devils. Perhaps if he had known how they had assaulted the hearts of men in times gone past; how they had been combated and baffled, and yet have risen and pursued again; how in the scrutiny of science and research men have passed before their awful presence, analyzed them, philosophized about them, and found them interesting; how others, in the levity of the world, having heard of them, grudged the time to think upon them,—if he had known all this, he might have felt some courage in numbers. As it was, there was no fight left in him. He closed the book with a sudden impulse, “My frien’s,” he said, “I stan’ not hyar ter preach ter day, but fur confession.”
There was a galvanic start among the congregation, then intense silence.
“I hev los’ my faith!” he cried out, with a poignant despair. “God ez’ gin it—ef thear is a God—he’s tuk it away. You-uns kin go on. You-uns kin b’lieve. Yer paster b’lieves, an’ he’ll lead ye ter grace,—leastwise ter a better life. But fur me thar’s the nethermost depths of hell, ef”—how his faith and his unfaith now tried him!—“ef thar be enny hell. Leastwise—Stop, brother,” he held up his hand in deprecation, for Parson Tobin had risen at last, and with a white, scared face. Nothing like this had ever been heard in all the length and breadth of the Great Smoky Mountains. “Bear with me a little; ye’ll see me hyar no more. Fur me thar is shame, ah! an’ trial, ah! an’ doubt, ah! an’ despair, ah! The good things o’ heaven air denied. My name is ter be er byword an’ a reproach ’mongst ye. Ye’ll grieve ez ye hev ever learn the Word from me, ah! Ye’ll be held in derision! An’ I hev hed trials,—none like them es air comin’, comin’ down the wind. I hev been a man marked fur sorrow, an’ now fur shame.” He stood erect; he looked bold, youthful. The weight of his secret, lifted now, had been heavier than he knew. In his eyes shone that strange light which was frenzy or prophecy, or inspiration; in his voice rang a vibration they had never before heard. “I will go forth from ’mongst ye,—I that am not of ye. Another shall gird me an’ carry me where I would not. Hell an’ the devil hev prevailed agin me. Pray fur me, brethren, ez I cannot pray fur myself. Pray that God may yet speak ter me—speak from out o’ the whirlwind.”
