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NE summer, a few years ago, having a month's leave of absence, I accepted an invitation from a university classmate to visit him at Syracuse, N. Y., where he had promised me "no end of a good time and all kinds of it."

My friend met me at the station. I had scarcely landed on the platform of the depot before he had introduced me to what seemed at least half the city of Syracuse. I have never seen any other place in my life where the people flock to the station as they do in Syracuse. It seems to be the gossip place of the city, a sort of mutual exchange station, where the news gleanings of the day are traded. It is said that the Syracusans talk well. do not wonder at that, with such a school for training in the art of conversation.

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Being well supplied with letters of introduction, the first day in the city sufficed for me to get acquainted with a number of the newspaper men. To one of these I owe the good fortune of an acquaintance with the author of "David Harum," who, upon our introduction, invited me to call upon him, as he desired to have a talk about Canada, having learned that I was a newspaper man from the Dominion.

My editorial friend to whom I was indebted for the introduction said: "You' must call upon Westcott; he is a fellow well worth knowing. He can tell a story fit to make a dog laugh; and he is as bright as a new quarter. He has a way of taking off the original characters around the town that would put Bob Burdette in the shade. Besides he is the best of good company." So it fell out that the editor and I called upon Mr. Westcott at his home a few days later.

The twilight had begun to thicken as we approached the house, a two-story cottage, with a steep roof, projecting gables, and a semi-Queen-Anne air about it that blended harmoniously into the softened outlines of the well-kept lawn, peeping lazily out through the first shadows of coming night.

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I believe he would have taken the world by the ear. He has the fine taste of an artist, the refined ear of a musician, and the delicate imagination of a poet."

Ushered into the drawing-room, a slightbuilt man with clear-cut, intellectual features and broad forehead, well developed above the eyes and over the temples, advanced, with a rare smile of welcome, to meet us. We were at home with one another at once. Our conversation wandered from the French habitant to all sorts of Canadian questions. Mr. Westcott continually surprised me with his knowledge of the country — a knowledge that must have come, as he said, of interest. He was familiar with the younger Canadian writers; and he professed to believe that all the true poetry of the last decade had had its birth in the "Frozen North," as he laughingly termed Canada. Fréchette he admired greatly. He found in him the vivacity of the Frenchman with the solemn mien and heroic tendencies of the younger Canadian poets. His deep love of nature made him more than a Frenchman. It made him cosmopolitan.

Mr. Westcott quoted several stanzas from Bliss Carman's "Yule Guest" with a depth of feeling that showed how thoroughly he entered into the spirit of the poem. He had a beautifully flexible and sympathetic voice that seemed to yield to every shade of thought or sentiment. Suddenly he turned to me and said, "Mr. H [the editor] tells me that you

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are a critic and book-reviewer. I cannot tell you how I envy you critics who spend your time among books and the people who make them; especially the latter. do not know of any more inviting life than that, except it be, perhaps, to be one of the creators; and I am not even sure that the latter should be classed as the more enjoyable. For the man who does nothing but create becomes, in a sense, a slave to his own creation, which calls for ceaseless work. He is like a man who sets out with the single object in life of becoming a millionaire. The moneygrabber and the man who grasps for fame as an author must each throw aside all but his one ambition. I believe," he added with a smile, "that there are many of us who could become millionaires, artists, or poets if we had the necessary

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write that comes to almost every man who loves books. But my ambition is as unsteady as a kite in a gusty wind. It bobs about too much to do anything very serious. It is a terrible disadvantage, for anyone who takes himself seriously, as we all do, to have a bobbing genius. One never knows what trick it may be going to play him. Do you know I spend more time looking after my genius than would make me a millionaire were it properly employed. I. think, if it were not for my genius I might be able to write something, perhaps a book."

This was said with a perfectly serious countenance; but there was a twinkle in his eyes that betrayed the amusement he found in the half-philosophical absurdity of his own remarks.

That evening spent in Mr. Westcott's house was one of the most enjoyable in my life. Our host seemed to be in his element. The conversation wandered from books to men and from men back to books again. We discussed the latest successes in literature for the past few years. Mr. Westcott was enthusiastic in his praise of the technique of "Ships that Pass in the Night." While there was a little sentiment in it that he did not exactly like, it had one of the qualities that he admired most in a book. Throughout the whole story there was present a great, tender soul that understood the most lowly and apparently uninviting of characters. Its humanity was its most marked note. He said: "The simplicity of the diction of this book and the sincerity and life-likeness of the characters attract me wonderfully. In fact some chapters in it have appealed to me so much that I have read them several times; and I have always found new beauties each time I have read them."

Then he added, as though he were throwing in a reflection that had just come to him at the moment; though I have no doubt that he had often thought the same thought: "There is nothing so noble as directness and simplicity in the telling of a story."

One can understand how it was possible for a man with such views of the art of story-telling to write "David Harum."

Although there are, at first sight, almost no points of similarity between "Ships that Pass in the Night" and "David Harum," yet I have taken great pleasure in likening the one to the other, for the simple reason that in the former Mr. Westcott found his ideal, or at least something like it, of the art of simple story-telling, and in the latter he has worked out his theory of that art. Two books could scarcely be more dissimilar. "Ships that Pass in the Night" is sombre almost throughout, and the lamp of hope burns but dimly: "David Harum" has ever a jest on his lips, and an unquestioning hope in the average goodness of human nature. The Disagreeable Man is as correct in his diction as the Archbishop of Canterbury; David rather prides himself on his rude country dialect; the former seems to have made it his special business in life to discourage people who have hope and ideals; the latter is always holding out a helping hand to those who are willing to help themselves, and he even has a kind word for

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those who have gotten so far down the road that they have not energy enough left to try to work out their own salvation. Again one is tempted to say there could not be two characters and two books more completely different in all respects. Why, then, does the one suggest the other? I have asked myself this question many times; and I have found but one answer. Both authors have striven for the same ideal; that is, simplicity, directness, and large human sympathy in the building up of their creations. Each has almost discarded the use of both plot and action, and each has opened the soul and shown us what manner of man the hero is. I think I know both the Disagreeable Man and David Harum better than I do my most intimate friend.

On two other occasions during my visit to Syracuse I spent the evening at Mr. Westcott's house, and several times I met him elsewhere. In a diary that I kept at that time I find numerous expressions of the impression that the man created on me. I remember wondering why it was that one so shrewd in his estimate of human character, and so literary in his tastes, should not have written at least one book. I think I answered this unexpressed question by agreeing with Mr. Westcott himself that it was his "bobbing genius" that was at fault. Perhaps I did not go so far afield in agreeing with him. A few extracts from the diary above mentioned will perhaps help to bring out the character of the creator of David Harum better than anything I can write at this distant date. It is only fair to state here, however, that the entries in this diary were not made as an estimate of the character of Mr. Westcott. I have been in the habit of laying away ideas for future use in newspaper work; and some of Mr. Westcott's appeared to me to be of considerable value, and a few of them of no little originality. The outlines of a few of his stories I filed away with the idea of working them over at some future date. Then, too, my editorial friend had led me to look upon Mr. Westcott as "a character" even before I visited his house for the first time.

Talking about the duty that an author owed to his profession, and above all to himself, Mr. Westcott said:

"What a great book one might write if he would make a resolution and keep it, similar to tnat made by Prescott, the historian, to spend

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ten years in uninterrupted study, thought, and observation, and the following ten years in putting the result of his labors on paper. imagine it was in some such way as this that all really great books were written. The author gathered material for years before he set himself to work it into a thing of art and beauty."

In a discussion of the relation of plot and incident to the vitality of a story, Mr. Westcott contended that neither was necessary. He said:

"We do not that is most of us-live lives of much incident, and our goings and comings are not laid out in regular dramatic style, with a complex plot, into which all the incidental parts are fitted as carefully and exactly as a piece of dovetail work. Yet the most humble life is full of human interest if we have but the eyes to see it. I have read somewhere that, for the most part, modern Russian writers pay little attention to plot and incident, but depend very largely upon human sympathy of a natural sort for means of holding the attention of their readThis is quite natural, for the country has long been in a sympathetic mood, and has lent an attentive ear to the cry of human suffering within itself. I think nature has made the Russian a natural story-teller. I would sooner read the story of those homely lives about me than the most cunningly constructed combination of plot and action. One is according to nature; the other is like those trim, tidy gardens that the French make by clipping and cutting the trees out of all semblance to nature. I like art, but only when it is true to nature.»

ers.

Mr. Westcott was one of the best storytellers I have ever met. He could make the most trivial incident of the day not only interesting, but often laughable. He had a way of caricaturing the curious people he met that was quite humorous; though it was always in a kindly vein.

Nothing gave him greater pleasure than the study of local character. He said to me one day, speaking of Syracuse: "There are more humorous characters in this city than would furnish material for twenty Pickwicks, and some day a Dickens will come along and find it."

Has not his prophecy already come true?

I met Mr. Westcott on the street one afternoon, and he said, with a quiet smile that was habitual with him whenever he saw anything that amused him:

"I stood on the street corner up there for five minutes just now, and I got within the sanctum sanctorum of two men, one woman, and two families.

"You know there is always a great crowding of people in the centre of the city on Saturdays;

but it seems to me there are more people here to-day than I remember seeing for some time.

"I was standing waiting for a chance to cross the street, for half a dozen cars and twice as many wagons and carriages jammed up the way for half a block or more. In the van of the crush, at the cross-way, were two wagons, in one of which was a good-humored, roundfaced old man, and in the other a long-faced, long-bearded farmer about sixty years of age, and a stout, sour-visaged woman some years younger. These wagons were wedged in so tightly that it was impossible for them to move for the moment.

"The long-bearded man was doing his best to quiet a team of restless horses; while the woman kept urging him to go ahead; that the road was as much his as anybody's. James,' she cried, in a voice that was half a screech, 'you haven't any more spunk than a milkin' COW. I wish I was a man; I'd teach 'em to block up the street that way. But I never knowed you to have no spunk, James. I wish I'd married a man, I do.'

"When he could get a word in edgeways the round-faced man shouted: Jist you wait a little, mister, an' I'll back out.'

"Then the woman broke out again: 'Didn't I tell you, James? You stan' up for your rights an' you'll get 'em. But you ain't got no spunk, you ain't. If I was a man I'd be ashamed to

let a woman do ever'thin'.'

"By this time the round-faced man, who had backed out enough to allow the long-bearded man to move out, shouted: There you are! God bless you, neighbor! Drive ahead. know how it is; I have one like her at home.»

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A careful study of such reviews as have fallen into my hands has shown me that the majority of them classify "David Harum" as a dialect sketch, and are inclined to attribute the success of the book in no small measure to the dialect element and local character-sketching.

To those who knew the author this would seem to be the furthest possible from the truth. Mr. Westcott was a man who loved to look beneath the roughened exterior of human nature for the more than average goodness of the human heart, as he expressed it one day. He had a belief that things were not exactly what they seemed. They were a little better. No evil, however bad it might appear, was an unmixed evil. Or, as David Harum puts it: "A reasonable amount of fleas is good for a dog; they keep him f'm broodin' on bein' a dog." It is this strong faith in human nature creeping out through the roughened exterior of such characters as David Harum and Aunt Polly that makes one of the

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There is considerable art in the setting of the gems in the David Harum philosophy; and Mr. Westcott learned that art in the great heart of nature. Our hearts beat in sympathy with the humanity of the chief characters; the humor of David Harum, the simplicity of Aunt Polly, and the by-play of the others. Our interest is never in the story; for there is none in the book. The author did not intend there should be. He wrote to Mr. Ripley Hitchcock, of the firm of D. Appleton & Company, in January, 1898:

"Lenox's love affair is in abeyance from the first part of the book to the last. It seems to me that if Lenox's love affair had been carried along to a prosperous conclusion from the start there would have been no reason for him or anybody else to make David Harum's acquaintance. I purposely laid but little stress upon the episode; to my mind the sentiment, so to speak, of the book lies more in John's engagement of the affections of the eccentric old couple and of the prosperity which followed from it, putting him in a position to marry the woman of his choice at last."

The above quotation explains better than anything I can say Mr. Westcott's plan in writing "David Harum." He wished to lay bare to us the hearts of the eccentric old couple. He had no thought of giving us a dialect story. It is true he uses dialect skilfully and often with telling effect; but he only does so because he finds a rustic setting the fittest for the rough diamonds he has to display. He deliberately threw plot and story behind him, because they were opposed to his idea of the best art of storytelling. This may sound paradoxical; and, if it be so, it is the author's fault, not mine. But in truth it is not so; for Mr. Westcott has succeeded in telling a most delightful story that is in no sense of the word a story in the modern acceptation of the term. His work is very close to the best French character-sketch, which looks within for the soul of each character. The French writers use dialect, but always with conservatism and never for theatrical effect. The French taste is too artistic for that. The same may be said of the author of "David Harum."

I never knew a man who was more sensitive than Mr. Westcott in regard to

the characters in the books he read. They were always living personages to him. Those who knew him better than I did say that he carried his philosophy of the making of books into his life; and I believe this is so. He seemed to be all nerves in regard to the artistic.

One day we were discussing "The Story of an African Farm;" and he said: "It is a great book; the character-painting and the introspection show the hand of a genius. I feel the power of the book; but for that reason, do you know, I almost hate it. It made me miserable for a week after I read it. I could never write a book like that, and I almost wish no one else could. I believe in Tennyson's philosophy:

What is life that we should moan?
Why make we such ado?'"

From this it will be seen that Mr. Westcott had a pretty accurate conception of his own powers. He was all sunny philosophy, nothing could daunt his cheerfulness, and the sorrows and troubles of life had no attraction for him. He was the furthest possible from a pessimist. January, 1899, when dying of consumption, and it was only a question of a few weeks when he would have done with the world, he wrote to Mr. Hitchcock:

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"If David Harum' were to be published, even without much delay, it would in all probability be posthumous. I had the fun of writing it any way, and nobody will ever laugh over it more than I have. I never could tell what David was going to do next."

One can understand how a man who could write the above could create "David Harum."

The estimates formed by the critics of "David Harum » have been so varied, and sometimes so contradictory, that I cannot resist the temptation, even at the risk of repeating myself, of summing up here a few of the reasons apparent to me for its popularity and the failure of some of the reviewers to find it at least passable.

In the "Literary Digest" for August 12, 1899, I find the following:

«This curious diversity of literary judgment is amusingly illustrated by the story of a writer who lately read 'David Harum' with more delight than he had found in any novel for many years; and he had read most of the novelists from Fielding and Richardson to Hardy, Tolstoi, and Juan Valera. He was just on the point of sending a copy of 'David Harum' to a friend whose tastes were in general similar to

his own, when by the same mail he received a letter with these words:

"I have just read the famous "David Harum,» expecting a rare treat, and was woefully disappointed. To me it was exceedingly stupid and commonplace, and I wonder at its popularity. According to the usual location of climaxes one should begin with the last chapter and read up to the first; for me the interest began to wane after the opening chapter, and reached the vanishing point about the middle of the book.)»

It is evident that the first writer brought to his reading of "David Harum » a broad sympathy that enabled him to appreciate a flesh-and-blood creation that was not cast in the conventional mould.

The objections of the second critic are all raised against the most deliberate and thoughtful work in "David Harum." He complains that the book is commonplace. What he should have said is that it is "about the commonplace." This was what Mr. Westcott considered most worthy of his attention. No one objects to Zola pouring out his whole soul over the commonplace, and painting the most uninviting pictures of human life; and no one lays the charge at his door of writing commonplace books. And yet Zola is read only for what he has to say; for his literary style is far from the best.

The second charge is that it is "stupid." It may be that the stupidity is in the reader. I remember the same charge was laid against Kipling not so many years ago, by those who were not able to understand him. Is there anything stupid in the quaint humor of "David Harum » himself, or the lifelike picture of simple Aunt Polly? I felt, as I read the book, that I had already met David and Aunt Polly before Mr. Westcott introduced them to me.

The third objection is that the author has not followed the conventional rules laid down for the upbuilding of fiction; or, to quote again the words of the critic, according to the usual location of climaxes one should begin with the last chapter and read up to the first.”

It is evident that the critic is afflicted with what someone has cleverly called the "fiction sense." He does not care for a picture of real life. All he looks for in a story is the artificial mechanism in the modern novel, the proper development of the climax. To him the development of character is nothing. He has no sympathy or patience with Mr. Westcott's theory that the development of character is more truly the work of the literary

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