The Hand of the Mighty, and Other Stories

by Vaughan Kester

During one of Vaughan's long visits to his grandmother in Mount Vernon, Ohio, he heard a vague report that Dan Emmett, the composer of Dixie, was living north of the town. He hunted up the famous minstrel, and found him, nearly eighty years old, chopping wood for a living.

Mr. Emmett had been a man of some means, and was well connected, but he had drifted away from his people and was living a hermit's life in a little house he had built, unknown for the most part to his townspeople.

This meeting with Emmett was important to both my brother and to the old composer. They became great friends, and the result was that Vaughan wrote several articles for the papers—accounts of Emmett's career as a composer and as one of the Christy Minstrels. Kate Field's Washington printed the first of these articles. These sketches marked the beginning of Vaughan's career as a writer. It was his first real appearance in print. The money he received for this work he gave to Mr. Emmett, who had furnished him with the facts the articles embodied.

I remember very well how distressed Vaughan was at the thought of leaving Emmett when he should return to Virginia.

He induced me to write to A. M. Palmer, at that time head of the Actors' Fund, stating Mr. Emmett's case and explaining that Emmett was unwilling to make any appeal for himself. The response was immediate. Fifty dollars was telegraphed to my brother for Mr. Emmett, and a letter followed promising a pension of five dollars a week. This pension—and one was never better deserved—was paid to the old composer as long as he lived.

This little success with his pen inspired Vaughan to more serious effort. It was also the direct means of his meeting with Paul Wilstach, who was so long and so intimately associated with us, and whom, indeed, we came to regard as one of our family. Paul Wilstach was collecting autographs at the time Vaughan's article on Emmett appeared in Kate Field's Washington. He wrote, asking Vaughan to secure an autograph copy of Dixie for his collection. Vaughan replied that he would obtain the autograph if Mr. Wilstach would send him a check for five dollars for Mr. Emmett. The check was sent, a correspondence ensued, and when Paul Wilstach came east he visited us at Ben Venue, the house above the Potomac in which he now lives.

Paul Wilstach and my brother wrote some farces together, and aided each other to keep alive their literary enthusiasms. When a little later we were living in the big white house on Riverside Drive in New York, Paul Wilstach frequently made the place his home.

Vaughan was about twenty-three when we went to New York, settling ourselves on Riverside Drive in The Big White House, as the place came to be called by our friends. Here my brother and I wrote a two-act play together—The Cousin of the King—which was published in The Looker-On, and afterward played by Walker Whiteside. This was the only play in which Vaughan had a hand that was ever acted. But he was keenly interested in the theater and most sympathetically and helpfully interested in my various ventures as a playwright.

Not long after we settled in New York he wrote a short story, The Mills of the Little Tin Gods, which Mr. Walker accepted for publication in the Cosmopolitan magazine. Mr. Walker was enthusiastic about the story, and sent for Vaughan, who returned from Irvington with an offer to go on the staff of the magazine and the news syndicate which Mr. Walker was at that time conducting in connection with the Cosmopolitan. Vaughan enjoyed his work at Irvington. It was a novel experience and it brought him into contact with men of ability. He saw a magazine in the making and he helped to make it. He also did a great deal of hard work for the syndicate, and he obtained special articles from others. For a short time I joined my brother on Mr. Walker's editorial staff, and we would go up to Irvington together for the early Monday morning conferences.

After this there was never any doubt as to the career my brother meant to follow. It was while he was associated with the Cosmopolitan that he obtained a short leave of absence from his duties and returning to Mount Vernon, Ohio, was married to Miss Jennings. My brother's wife was deeply interested in his literary career, and devoted herself to him and to his work. His marriage was undoubtedly an added incentive to his ambition and it was at this time, or soon after, that he began the writing of his first novel.