It was also at Louisville that the highly complimentary "resolutions" passed by the Senate of Kentucky, and unanimously adopted by that body, were presented to me. They were the State's crowning expression of goodwill to their grateful, though unworthy, country-woman.
[MARY R. S. ANDREWS]
Mrs. Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews, short-story writer and novelist, was born at Mobile, Alabama, in 1860, but she was brought to Lexington, Kentucky, in September, 1861, when her father, Rev. Jacob S. Shipman, an Episcopal clergyman, was chosen rector of Christ Church. When six years old she was sent to Christ Church Seminary, the church's school, conducted by Rev. Silas Totten and his daughters. One of these daughters tells with a smile to-day that "May" Shipman's first story, written at the age of seven, was upon her dog, "Shep." When thirteen years of age she discovered that the older girls in the school were studying French, when she was not, and she went to her father with the request that she be permitted to join the class. But the rector's question, "May, would you put in your furniture before you built your walls?" sent her back to her Latin and mathematics without further protest. She attended the school for eleven years, and at it received her education, never having attended any other institution. On November 26, 1877, when the future writer was seventeen years of age, her father accepted the rectorship of Christ Church, New York, and the family shortly afterwards removed to that city. She has been in Kentucky but twice since: five years after her departure, and about ten years ago. But that she has not forgotten her Kentucky home is evinced in the signed copies of her books which have found their way to the Blue Grass country and in her letters to former friends. On the last day of December, 1884, Miss Shipman married William Shankland Andrews, now associate justice of the supreme court of New York. Mrs. Andrews spends her summers in the Canadian woods, and the winters at her home in Syracuse, New York. Her first novel, Vive L'Empereur (New York, 1902), a story of the king of Rome, was followed by A Kidnapped Colony (New York, 1903), with Bermuda as the background. Bob and the Guides (New York, 1906), was the experiences of a boy, "Bob," with the French guides of the Canadian woods who pursue caribou. A Good Samaritan (New York, 1906), has been called the best story ever printed in McClure's Magazine, in which form it first appeared. The Perfect Tribute (New York, 1906), a quasi-true story of Lincoln and the lack of enthusiasm with which the crowd received his Gettysburg speech, adorned with a love episode at the end, is Mrs. Andrews's finest thing so far. This little tale has made her famous, and stamped her as one of the best American writers of the short-story. It was originally printed in Scribner's Magazine for July, 1906. Her other books are: The Militants (New York, 1907), a collection of stories, several of which are set in Kentucky, and all of them inscribed to her father in beautiful words; The Better Treasure (Indianapolis, 1908), is a charming Christmas story, with a moral attached; The Enchanted Forest and Other Stories (New York, 1909), a group of stories first told to her son and afterwards set down for other people's sons; The Lifted Bandage (New York, 1910), a most unpleasant, disagreeable tale as may well be imagined; The Courage of the Commonplace (New York, 1911), a yarn of Yale and her ways, one of the author's cleverest things; The Counsel Assigned (New York, 1912), another story of Lincoln, this time as the young lawyer, is not greatly inferior to The Perfect Tribute. Mrs. Andrews's latest volume, The Marshal (Indianapolis, 1912), is her first really long novel. It is a story of France, somewhat in the manner of her first book Vive L'Empereur, but, of course, much finer than that work of her 'prentice years. It has been highly praised in some quarters, and rather severely criticized in others. At any rate it has not displaced The Perfect Tribute as her masterpiece. That little story, with A Good Samaritan, The Courage of the Commonplace, and Crowned with Glory and Honor, fairly entitle Mrs. Andrews to the first and highest place among Kentucky women writers of the short-story. She has attained a higher note in a most difficult art than any other woman Kentucky has produced; and it is only right and just that her proper position be allotted her in order that she may occupy it; which she will do with a consensus of opinion when her Kentucky life is more widely heralded.
Bibliography. American Magazine (May, 1909); Scribner's Magazine (September, 1911; August, 1912).
THE NEW SUPERINTENDENT[24]
[From The Courage of the Commonplace (New York, 1911)]
Three years later the boy graduated from the Boston "Tech." As his class poured from Huntington Hall, he saw his father waiting for him. He noted with pride, as he always did, the tall figure, topped with a wonderful head—a mane of gray hair, a face carved in iron, squared and cut down to the marrow of brains and force—a man to be seen in any crowd. With that, as his own met the keen eyes behind the spectacles, he was aware of a look which startled him. The boy had graduated at the very head of his class; that light in his father's eyes all at once made two years of work a small thing.
"I didn't know you were coming, sir. That's mighty nice of you," he said, as they walked down Boylston Street together, and his father waited a moment and then spoke in his usual incisive tone.
"I wouldn't have liked to miss it, Johnny," he said. "I don't remember that anything in my life has ever made me as satisfied as you have to-day."