A Little Book of Western Verse | Page 7

a New York
Weekly, he prepared a series of tales of adventure which, unhappily,
have not been preserved. In his college days he was one of the associate
editors of the university magazine, and while at that time he had no
serious thought of devoting his life to literature, his talents in that
direction were freely confessed. From my father, whose studious habits
in life had made him not only eminent at the bar but profoundly
conversant with general literature, he had inherited a taste for reading,
and it was this omnivorous passion for books that led my brother to say
that his education had only begun when he fancied that it had left off.
In boyhood he contracted that fascinating but highly injurious habit of
reading in bed, which he subsequently extolled with great fervor; and
as he grew older the habit increased upon him until he was obliged to
admit that he could not enjoy literature unless he took it horizontally. If
a friend expostulated with him, advising him to give up tobacco,
reading in bed, and late hours, he said: "And what have we left in life if
we give up all our bad habits?"
That the poetic instinct was always strong within him there has never

been room to question, but, perhaps, for the reasons before assigned, it
was tardy in making its way outward. For years his mind lay fallow and
receptive, awaiting the occasion which should develop the true
inspiration of the poet. He was accustomed to speak of himself, and too
modestly, as merely a versifier, but his own experience should have
contradicted this estimate, for his first efforts at verse were singularly
halting in mechanical construction, and he was well past his
twenty-fifth year before he gave to the world any verse worthy the
name. What might be called the "curse of comedy" was on him, and it
was not until he threw off that yoke and gave expression to the better
and the sweeter thoughts within him that, as with Bion, "the voice of
song flowed freely from the heart." It seems strange that a man who
became a master of the art of mechanism in verse should have been
deficient in this particular at a period comparatively late, but it merely
illustrates the theory of gradual development and marks the phases of
life through which, with his character of many sides, he was compelled
to pass. He was nearly thirty when he wrote "Christmas Treasures," the
first poem he deemed worthy, and very properly, of preservation, and
the publication of this tender commemoration of the death of a child
opened the springs of sentiment and love for childhood destined never
to run dry while life endured.
In journalism he became immediately successful, not so much for
adaptability to the treadmill of that calling as for the brightness and
distinctive character of his writing. He easily established a reputation as
a humorist, and while he fairly deserved the title he often regretted that
he could not entirely shake it off. His powers of perception were
phenomenally keen, and he detected the peculiarities of people with
whom he was thrown in contact almost at a glance, while his gift of
mimicry was such that after a minute's interview he could burlesque the
victim to the life, even emphasizing the small details which had been
apparently too minute to attract the special notice of those who were
acquaintances of years' standing. This faculty he carried into his writing,
and it proved immensely valuable, for, with his quick appreciation of
the ludicrous and his power of delineating personal peculiarities his
sketches were remarkable for their resemblances even when he was
indulging apparently in the wildest flights of imagination. It is to be

regretted that much of his newspaper work, covering a period of twenty
years, was necessarily so full of purely local color that its brilliancy
could not be generally appreciated. For it is as if an artist had painted a
wondrous picture, clever enough in the general view, but full of a
significance hidden to the world.
Equally facile was he in the way of adaptation. He could write a hoax
worthy of Poe, and one of his humors of imagination was sufficiently
subtle and successful to excite comment in Europe and America, and to
call for an explanation and denial from a distinguished Englishman. He
lived in Denver only a few weeks when he was writing verse in miners'
dialect which has been rightly placed at the head of that style of
composition. No matter where he wandered, he speedily became
imbued with the spirit of his surroundings, and his quickly and
accurately gathered impressions found vent in his pen, whether he was
in "St. Martin's Lane" in London, with "Mynheer Von Der Bloom"