• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 17190 0

placed before us the veritable settlers of the forest, with all their peculiarities, national and individual; their free and fearless spirit; their homely utilitarian views; their shrewd out-looking for self-interest; their thrifty care and inventions multiform; their coarseness of manner, united with real delicacy and substantial kindness when their sympathies are called into action — in a word, with all the characteristics of the Yankee, in a region where the salient points of character are unsmoothed by contact with society. So lifelike were her representations that they have been appropriated as individual portraits by many who have been disposed to plead, trumpet-tongued, against what they supposed to be “the deep damnation of their taking-off.”

“Forest Life” succeeded “A New Home,” and was read with equal interest. It gives us, perhaps, more of the philosophy of western life, but has the same freshness, freedom, piquancy. Of course, a truthful picture of pioneer habits could never be given in any grave history or essay so well as in the form of narration, ­where each character is permitted to develope itself; narration, therefore, was very properly adopted by Mrs. Kirkland in both the books just mentioned, and even more entirely in her later volume, “Western Clearings.” This is the title of a collection of tales, illustrative, in general, of Western manners, customs, ideas. “The Land Fever” is a story of the wild days when the madness of speculation in land was at its height. It is a richly characteristic sketch, as is also “The Ball at Thram’s Huddle.” Only those who have had the fortune to visit or live in the “back settlements” can enjoy such pictures to the full. “Chances and Changes” and “Love vs. Aristocracy” are more regularly constructed tales, with the “universal passion” as the moving power, but colored with the glowing hues of the west. “The Bee Tree” exhibits a striking but too numerous class among the settlers, and explains, also, the depth of the bitterness that grows out of an unprosperous condition in that “Paradise of the Poor.” “Ambuscades” and “Half-Lengths from Life,” I remember two piquant sketches to which an annual, a year or two ago, was indebted for a most unusual sale among the conscious and pen-dreading denizens of the west. “Half-Lengths” turns on the trying subject of caste. “The Schoolmaster’s Progress” is full of truth and humor. The western pedagogue, the stiff, solitary nondescript figure in the drama of a new settlement, occupying a middle position between “our folks” and “company,” and “boarding round,” is irresistibly amusing, and cannot fail to be recognised as the representative of a class. The occupation, indeed, always seems to mould those engaged in it — they all soon, like Master Horner, learn to “know well what belongs to the pedagogical character, and that facial solemnity stands high on the list of indispensable qualifications.” The spelling-school, also, is a “new country” feature which we owe Mrs. Kirkland many thanks for recording. The incidents of “An Embroidered Fact “ are singular and picturesque, but not particularly illustrative of the “Clearings.” The same may be said of “Bitter Fruits from Chance-Sown Seeds;” but this abounds in capital touches of character: all the horrors of the tale are brought about through suspicion of pride, an accusation as destructive at the west as that of witchcraft in olden times, or the cry of mad dog in modern. ­

In the way of absolute books, Mrs. Kirkland, I believe, has achieved nothing beyond the three volumes specified, (with another lately issued by Wiley and Putnam,) but she is a very constant contributor to the magazines. Unquestionably, she is one of our best writers, has a province of her own, and in that province has few equals. Her most noticeable trait is a certain freshness of style, seemingly drawn, as her subjects in general, from the west. In the second place is to be observed a species of wit, approximating humor, and so interspersed with pure fun, that “wit,” after all, is nothing like a definition of it. To give