SEED SOWN LONG AGO.
Speaking of the writing of this poem, Mr. Markham said that he sketched the outline of it fourteen years ago, upon seeing a photograph of Millet’s famous painting, “The Man with the Hoe.” When he saw the picture itself four years afterward, he further elaborated the idea, but did not write it out in complete form until Christmas week, 1900. He then spent three or four days on it, and sent it to the San Francisco Examiner, where it was published for the first time on the eighth of January 1901.
Within a few months, the volume, “The Man with the Hoe and other Poems,” was issued by Doubleday and McClure, of New York, and met with so large a sale that it was soon in its fifth edition. It has been very favorably received.
Mr. Markham paid his way through the state normal school at San Jose, and afterward through Christian college at Santa Rosa, California. He has done important educational work in that state as a superintendent and principal of schools in various places, and is now head master of the Tompkins observation school in Oakland. Inducements have been offered him to deliver a series of lectures throughout the country, and he has received many requests for literary work, with some of which he will comply.
The world is well lost when the world is wrong,
No matter how men deride you;
For if you are patient and firm and strong,
You will find in time, though the time be long,
That the world wheels round beside you.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
XXV
A Famous Authoress Tells Literary Aspirants the Story of Her Struggle for Recognition.
BORN and reared in Wisconsin, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, although a resident of New York, is still faithful to the ideals and aspirations of the young and vigorous western state in which she first saw the light. She began writing at an early age, and still has in her possession childish verses, composed when she was only eight years old.
She was, however, far from any literary center; she had no one upon whom she might rely for advice as to her methods, and she had no influential friends, for her family was not a wealthy one. The usual difficulties, so familiar to all beginners, met her at every step; discouragements were endured day after day, and year after year. After a while, she began writing for various periodicals. Her first poems appeared in the New York Mercury, the Waverly Magazine, and Leslie’s publications. It was from the publishing house of Frank Leslie she received her first check. Her income from literary work was very small and recognition came quite slowly. But courage, and patience, and fortitude, finally won the day.