The Hoosiers

by Meredith Nicholson

Again, when invited to read a poem before the Phi Beta Kappa, of Harvard, in 1893, he chose for his subject “Lincoln’s Grave,” expressing, with greater care, similar feelings of loyalty, and recounting Lincoln’s high qualities with eloquent appreciation.

Mr. Thompson has published a number of novels: “A Tallahassee Girl” (1882); “His Second Campaign” (1882); “At Love’s Extremes” (1885); “A Banker of Bankersville” (1886); “A Fortnight of Folly” (1888); and “Stories of the Cherokee Hills” (1899), a volume of short tales reminiscent of slave days and the author’s boyhood. “A Tallahassee Girl” is a graceful and pretty story, the scene of which is laid at the South, as is true also of the two tales that immediately followed it. They convey distinct impressions of phases of Southern life in the early post-bellum period, and abound in romantic color. “Alice of Old Vincennes” (1900), is a captivating tale of the French period of Indiana history, closing with the surrender of Vincennes to Clark. The heroine is delightful, and Father Beret is a character worthy of Dumas. The book shows in all ways a marked advance over any previous prose work of this author. He has also written “The Boys’ Book of Sports” (1886); and “Louisiana” (1888), in the Stories of the States series, and “The Ocala Boy” (1885), all for juvenile readers. He has written many essays in which some phase of literature has been observed from the point of view of a nature-lover; and his touch in such instances is always light and his matter bright and stimulating. Two volumes of such papers have been collected, “By-ways and Bird Notes” (1885) and “Sylvan Secrets” (1887). The scientist and the litterateur meet in his discussions of the mind and memory of birds, and the anatomy of bird-song; and his essay on Shakespeare, written within sound of the Gulf of Mexico, to the accompaniment of the songs of mocking-birds, is wholly characteristic of his independence in literary matters. He has been one of the most courageous champions of the romantic as against the analytic and realistic. He delivered at the Hartford Theological Seminary, in 1883, a series of lectures dealing comprehensively with the question of morality in literature, and he embodied these in a volume, “The Ethics of Literary Art” (1883). Mr. Thompson became, in 1889, literary editor of the New York Independent, reserving, however, the privilege of continuing his residence at Crawfordsville. His home, “Sherwood Place,” is on a quiet margin of the town, and the house has stood for half a century shielded from the public eye by native beeches and alien pines. Mr. Thompson’s life is wholly devoted to study and writing. His instincts are thoroughly scholarly, and in some directions, as in Greek poetry and Old French literature, where long and loving study have given him special knowledge, he is an authority. He has no complaints of the world’s treatment of him or his work, and he declares that his writings have been received with much more cordiality than they have deserved. He is exceedingly kind to beginners in literature, and his criticisms have been of benefit to many young Western and Southern writers. Wabash College conferred upon him, in 1900, the degree of Doctor of Letters.

His brother, Will H. Thompson, was born in Missouri (1846), and the experiences of their youth and early manhood were similar. Will Thompson was a marvellous archer, and shared his brother’s enthusiasm for hunting with bow and arrow. He has not been, in recent years, a resident of Crawfordsville, having removed to the State of Washington, but he wrote while in Indiana his “High Tide at Gettysburg,” one of the few poems of the Civil War that has adequately expressed the spirit of battle and the larger meaning of the conflict.

III. Mary H. Krout—Caroline V. Krout

Mary H. Krout, another Crawfordsville author, has added to the distinction of an Indiana family in which an admiral, George Brown, and several scholars and scientists have appeared. In her girlhood she wrote the verses “Little Brown Hands,” which have enjoyed a vitality not always relished by the author, whose later and longer flights are better deserving of recognition. Miss Krout has been an indefatigable traveller, and her books include “Hawaii and a Revolution” (1898), an account of her personal experiences in the Sandwich Islands during the political crisis that preceded annexation; also “A Looker-on in London” (1899), which describes novel phases of English life freshly. Miss Krout more recently penetrated to the interior of China, visiting cities remote from the beaten track of travel. Her sister, Caroline V. Krout, a classical scholar of high attainment, has written, under the nom de plume “Caroline Brown,” “Knights in Fustian” (1900), a novel of Indiana. The “knights in fustian” are “Knights of the Golden Circle,” a treasonable society which menaced Indiana during the Civil War. The principal characters are the fatuous rustics, who indulge their crude taste for the mysterious in the secret meetings and sonorous ritual of the society. Miss Krout knows the people of her own soil thoroughly, and the particular type that has attracted her is set out in her pages with photographic accuracy. The tale is true to history and to the local life, and its literary excellence places the author’s name high on the roll of Western writers. She has also written many short stories for the periodicals.

CHAPTER VII
“OF MAKING MANY BOOKS THERE IS NO END”

The multiplication of books by Indianians increased steadily during the last decade of the nineteenth century. Much of the production in prose is unimportant save as it is taken in connection with the general rise of cultivation in the State, and not a little derives interest principally from the personality of the writers. Fiction attracted many during the period indicated, and the impulse in this direction has been attended with notable successes. The part played by Indiana in the Civil War has latterly received attention, and the newer phases of village life have also been treated. Local history has not, unfortunately, attracted the literary fledgling in Indiana so often as could have been desired, though the field is inviting, and thorough work of this kind is far likelier to enjoy permanency than fair or indifferent fiction or mediocre verse. Criticism is naturally last to receive attention, and little critical writing can be credited to the State. It is, however, remarkable that so much good work is done in the several departments, the inference being that where so many are moved to make experiments, the general average of cultivation must be high.

Indiana has been a kind of way station for many who have gained their chief distinction elsewhere. Joaquin Miller and John James Piatt were born in Indiana, but left in childhood, and Mary Hartwell Catherwood lived in the State for a number of years; but these writers may hardly be numbered among Indiana authors. James Newton Matthews, an Indianian who has lived for many years in Illinois, has written much good verse, and is included in discriminating anthologies. Lyman Abbott began his ministry in Indiana as pastor of the Congregational Church at Terre Haute. Both Charles Warren Stoddard and Maurice Francis Egan were members of the faculty of Notre Dame University at different periods. The Rev. Arthur Wentworth Eaton, a poet and writer on Acadian life, was once a resident of Indianapolis; and Henry F. Keenan, who wrote “Trajan” and other novels, edited the Indianapolis Sentinel before he became an author. The Rev. Bernard Harrison Nadal (1812-1870) held a professorship at Asbury University from 1854 to 1857, and was the father of E. S. Nadal, an essayist whose critical papers appeal to the admirers of a calm and pensive style of writing. Miss Lucy S. Furman’s “Stories of a Sanctified Town” (1896) were written at Evansville, though the scenes are laid in Kentucky. The Rev. James Cooley Fletcher, of the well-known Indiana family of that name, is the author of “Brazil and Brazilians” (1868); and his daughter, Julia Constance, wrote, under the pen-name “George Fleming,” the novels “Kismet” (1877); “Mirage” (1878); “The Head of Medusa” (1880); “Vestigia” (1884); and “Andromeda” (1885). Both have long been absent from the State, Mr. Fletcher in California and his daughter in Italy.

I. Fiction

Booth Tarkington stands with Mr. Riley as the exponent of a Hoosier who is kindly, generous, humorous, and essentially domestic. His novel, “A Gentleman from Indiana” (1899), depicts the semi-urban type that Mr. Riley so often celebrates in verse. Whitecapping as introduced in this story is only the coarse exploit of a vicious colony living on the outskirts of the town in which Mr. Tarkington’s tale has its habitation. The author plainly states that his whitecaps are not to be confounded with vigilance committees that undertake to reform the morals of individuals, but that they are rowdies who masquerade as whitecaps merely for purposes of private mischief and vengeance. Their settlement resembles in some degree the “tough neighborhood” often found in cities. The hostility between the people of Plattville and the Cross Roads element dates back to the first movement of population on the long trail from North Carolina into the Ohio Valley. The Cross Roads folk had been evil and worthless in their early homes, and they carried their worst traits with them into Indiana. Mr. Tarkington has followed accurately the social history of the good stock and the bad, illustrating the antipathy existing between the prosperous and intelligent and the idle and ignorant. The distinction of Plattville as a county seat of the central West is well established, and its indolence, amiability, and pride are characteristic. The hero is a new type of Hoosier, who has little kinship with the earlier people of Eggleston, or with the Hoosier as Riley reports him; he is a native, but has experienced at an Eastern college an intellectual change “into something rich and strange,” and after long absence becomes a pilgrim of light among his own people.