I stood transfixed, not realizing what had taken place, until I saw them returning to the house. Viney was dragging the lifeless body of the thief tied by his hind leg to her apron string, while the boys were meting out vengeance to him in no unstinted terms, slashing him vigorously with one hand, the other busily engaged holding up their disjointed pantaloons.
In the lead was Aunt Jane. The little pile of grey feathers on the corner of her apron, resting tenderly on her hand, was all that was left of her “sassy little deb’l,” the beautiful mocking-bird.
SOME SOUTHERN WRITERS
JAMES RYDER RANDALL
By Kate Alma Orgain
As a rule all national airs have been composed rapidly, under the strong inspiration of some moment of intense and enthusiastic feeling, and their writers little dreamed at the time of the power and influence their passionate appeals would have. National lyrics play an important part in every country’s history. What has moved and held the army of France like “The Marseillaise Hymn?” Nothing rouses the Southern soldier like our glorious “Dixie,” and since the hour when the notes and words of “Maryland, My Maryland” first sounded on the air, the noble song has always started the pulse-beat higher and faster in every Southern heart.
It is a pleasant fact for all Southern people, of Irish descent, to remember that the four grand lyric poems of the South were written by Irishmen, or men of Irish parentage. “Dixie” was the work of Dan Emmet, “The Bonnie Blue Flag” that of Harry McCarthy, “The Conquered Banner” came from Father Ryan, and “Maryland, My Maryland,” whose beauty has thrilled the souls of thousands, was, as we know, written by James Ryder Randall. In a letter received by the writer not long ago, Mr. Randall says that on his father’s side he is of Irish descent, thus giving us in our Southern airs a quartette of Irish talent. Mr. Randall was born in Baltimore in 1839, received the principal part of his education at Georgetown, D. C., where he went to school from his tenth to his seventeenth year. Here he obtained a fine classical education, but owing to delicate health could not entirely finish his course. His work in life has been chiefly editorial, and at different times he has been connected with the newspapers of Augusta, New Orleans and Baltimore, and has never devoted himself exclusively to literature. In 1861 James Ryder Randall was, though very young, a professor at Poydras College upon the Fausse Rivière of Louisiana. Only a stripling, just from school, with a soul full of poetry and romance, the condition of the South, the first gun at Fort Sumter, the scent of the battle afar, thrilled his ardent heart, and “one sleepless night in April, in a second story room of Poydras College, seated at a little old wooden desk,” he wrote the lyric poem that has been called the “Marseillaise of the Confederacy.” The song, set to music of an old college melody, “Lauringer Horatius,” by its passionate appeal, caught the attention of the Southern heart, and was sung in field and camp, in cottage and palace. It was first set in print in the New Orleans Delta.
JAMES RYDER RANDALL
Mr. Randall wrote also a number of other beautiful poems, among them being “The Sole Sentry,” “Arlington,” “John Pelham,” and “The Cameo Bracelet.” “The Unconquered Banner” was written in reply to Father Ryan’s “Conquered Banner,” and its beauty and spirit can be seen by even a few lines: