There were a good many women writers even at that time, some of high merit, but there were few publicists among them. Some espoused this or that "Cause" and gave to it the passionate devotion so natural to a woman's heart. But Anne Royall, while she also was passionately devoted to several well-defined "Causes," was unique in that she kept in view the general situation of her country, political, economic, geographic, and educational, and wrote steadily for thirty-one years on matters of national importance.

It is not a question of whether she was right or wrong—though she was mostly right, as history has proved; but the impressive thing is that this old woman, with "troubles of her own," was overwhelmingly interested in her country and its service. There are not so many, either men or women, of this mind, that we can afford to overlook this sturdy pioneer "new woman." She had virtues, too, good solid Christian virtues of the rarer sort; she visited the sick and afflicted, gave to him that asked, and from him that would borrow turned not away. Even to her own weaker sisters she was a strength and comfort, greatly injuring her own position by this unusual charity. Also she was brave, honest, truthful, persevering, industrious—"manly" virtues these.

But—and here we have the reason why Anne Royall made no greater mark, why she was "unsuccessful," why most of us never heard of her—she attacked great powers, and she fought unwisely. Her abusive writing sounds abominably to-day, but must be judged, of course, by the standard of her time. The worst things she said were not as bad as things Shelley said—as the bitter invective and scurrilous attacks common to pamphleteers of the time. If our newspapers are yellow, theirs were orange in the matter of personalities.

But even then this woman had a keen-cutting weapon, and used it unsparingly. Being alone, with no male relative to defend her; being poor, and so further defenceless; being old, thus lacking weak woman's usual protection of beauty, she had absolutely nothing to fall back on when her enemies retaliated.

This picture of one lone woman defying and blackguarding what was almost an established church, is much like Jack the Giantkiller—with a different result. It was deemed necessary to crush this wasp that stung so sharply; and in 1829, in the capitol city of the United States of America, a court of men tried—and convicted—this solitary woman of sixty as a Common Scold. They raked up obsolete laws, studied and strove to wrest their meanings to apply to this case, got together some justification, or what seemed to them justification for their deeds, and succeeded in irretrievably damaging her reputation.

She was not to be extinguished, however. In 1831 she started a newspaper, with the ill-chosen name of PAUL PRY. In 1836 another took its place, called THE HUNTRESS. And on the sale of these newspapers and her books, the indomitable old lady lived to fight and fought to live till she was eighty-five.

She is well worth reading about. The history of her times rises and lives around her. In her vivid description we see the new rugged country, over which she travelled from end to end; in her accounts of current literature we pick up stray bits of information as to new authors and new words. "Playfulness," for instance, is one which she stigmatizes as "silly in sound and significance," and declares that she does not read the new novels "with the exception of Walter Scott's." More interesting still to most of us is to study over the long lists of her pen-portraits and see our ancestors as the others saw them. Few Americans of three generations but can find some grandfather or great uncle halo-ed or pilloried by this clear-eyed observer.

Miss Porter has done her work well. It is clear, strong and entertaining—this biography. If the writer seems more enthusiastic about Anne Royall than the reader becomes, that is clearly due to an unusual perception of life-values; a recognition of the noble devotion and high courage of her subject, and an intense sympathy with such characteristics.

*

The discussion as to whether we should or should not teach children the Santa Claus myth pops up anew with Christmas time; and puzzles anew anyone who regards this festival from a religious viewpoint.