In de Promised Land!”
And this spiritual was followed by others, until they went singing into “Headquarters” landing. It is all changed now. The negro has been to the university and got “eddicated” and 363 the white man no longer trusts him, and the white woman fears him.
In the evening hours while Mary was out at various houses, or entertainments I wrote a novel, one of the very best I ever wrote. It was called “The Last of the McAllisters.” I sent it to Henry Holt, being moved to do so by a feeling I could not resist, and cannot explain. He returned it with a letter saying, “If you will write me an American novel as clever and interesting, I will gladly publish it.” This letter, so kind and wise, set me thinking of the possibilities of American history for fiction, and was in fact the seed thought of “The Bow of Orange Ribbon,” and consequently of the series of American historical tales which followed it. The origin of novels is often very interesting, and far to seek.
Early in November, 1880, I had an almost fatal attack of inflammation of the brain, followed before I recovered consciousness, by double pneumonia. At the crisis of the sickness, I was for five days neither here nor there. Where was I? I was in a land where all was of fine shifting sand, a land of such awful silence, that I could feel the deadly stillness. And I wanted to pray, and could not pray. I was conscious of no pain, and no desire, but this terrible, urgent longing to pray, and yet not being able to cry to God for help. To want God, and to have no power to call Him, or to go to Him, was an agony there are no words to express. At last, as I stood helpless and hopeless among mountains of sand, there was a whisper, and the pang of unpermitted prayer was taken away. Then I cried out, “Spare me, Lord, that I may recover strength, before I go hence and be no more forever.” Instantly I was conscious. I knew that I was on earth, in my own room, and I spoke one word, “Mary!”
Mary was kneeling beside me, kissing my almost clay hands and face, and moistening my lips with drops of water. And I knew that I was saved. I knew that God had really given me a new life—a new physical and mental power. Physicians had said, I would never be mentally well again. I was dictating poems and other work to Mary, before I was permitted to have any light in my room—when I lay in my bed, while Mary stood 364 at the open door, writing down my words. My convalescence was rapid and sure. I was in the Astor Library on the twenty-first of March, making notes for an article on “Nollekins, the Sculptor,” for Harper’s Monthly. The next week I went again for notes on “Beating the Bounds” for Mr. Munroe, the editor of Harper’s Young People.
I had been four months in my room. I felt now an urgent necessity to be at work again. I have a list beside me of the work I did in this month of March, and of the work done in the nine months following. It may interest some of my friends to read the list for March, because I was then scarcely out of the shadow of the grave. It includes twelve poems, four for Harper’s Weekly and eight for the Ledger, as follows:
“An old Man’s Valentine.”
“’Tis God’s World After All.”
“Blue and Gray Together.”
“John’s Wife.”