John Hay was born October 8, 1838, in Salem, Indiana, graduated from Brown University in 1858 and was admitted to the Illinois bar a few years later. At nineteen, when he went back to Warsaw, the little Mississippi town where he had lived as a boy, he dreamed only of being a poet—a poet, it must be added, of the pleasantly conventional, transition type. But the Civil War was to disturb his mild fantasies. He went to the front and saw active service under General Hunter. He became private secretary to Lincoln, then major and assistant adjutant-general under General Gilmore, then a colonel by brevet, then secretary of the Legation at Paris, chargé d'affaires at Vienna and Secretary of Legation at Madrid. His few vivid Pike County Ballads came more as a happy accident than as a deliberate creative effort. When Hay returned from Spain in 1870, bringing with him his Castilian Days, he still had visions of becoming an orthodox lyric poet. But he found everyone reading Bret Harte's short stories and the new expression of the rude West. (See Preface.) He speculated upon the possibility of doing something similar, translating the characters into poetry. The result was the six racy ballads in a vein utterly different from everything Hay wrote before or after. The poetpolitician seems to have regarded this series somewhat in the nature of light, extempore verse, belonging to a far lower plane than his serious publications; he talked about them reluctantly, he even hoped that these "diversions" would be forgotten. It is difficult to say whether this regret grew because Hay, loving the refinements of culture, at heart hated any suggestion of vulgarity, or because of a basic lack of courage-Hay having published his novel of labor unrest in the early 80's (The Breadwinners) anonymously, refusing to acknowledge his authorship. The fact remains, his rhymes of Pike County have survived all his more classical lines. They served for a time as a fresh influence; they remain a creative accomplishment. Hay was in politics all the later part of his life, ranking as one of the most brilliant Secretaries of State the country has ever had. Under President Hayes he was ambassador to Great Britain. In collaboration with J. G. Nicolay he wrote the most authoritative Life of Lincoln of the period, a biography which has been unequalled until Carl Sandburg's two volumes. He died in 1905. JIM BLUDSO OF THE PRAIRIE BELLE Wall, no! I can't tell whar he lives, Whar have you been for the last three year He war'n't no saint,-them engineers And this was all the religion he had: To treat his engine well; Never be passed on the river; To mind the pilot's bell; And if ever the Prairie Belle took fire, He'd hold her nozzle agin the bank All boats has their day on the Mississip, The Movastar was a better boat, But the Belle she wouldn't be passed. And so she came tearin' along that night— With a nigger squat on her safety-valve, The fire bust out as she clar'd the bar, And quick as a flash she turned and made Thar was runnin' and cussin', but Jim yelled out, Over all the infernal roar, "I'll hold her nozzle agin the bank Till the last galoot's ashore." Through the hot, black breath of the burnin' boat And they all had trust in his cussedness, He warn't no saint,-but at jedgement That wouldn't shook hands with him. BANTY TIM (Remarks of Sergeant Tilmon Joy to the White Man's Committee of Spunky Point, Illinois) I reckon I git your drift, gents,- And whereas, and seein', and wherefore, The nigger has got to mosey From the limits o' Spunky P'int! Let's reason the thing a minute: I'm an old-fashioned Dimocrat too, Though I laid my politics out o' the way For to keep till the war was through. But I come back here, allowin' To vote as I used to do, Though it gravels me like the devil to train Now dog my cats ef I kin see, In all the light of the day, What you've got to do with the question Ef Tim shill go or stay. And furder than that I give notice, Ef one of you tetches the boy, He kin check his trunks to a warmer clime Why, blame your hearts, jest hear me! You know that ungodly day When our left struck Vicksburg Heights, how ripped And torn and tattered we lay. When the rest retreated I stayed behind, With a rib caved in, and a leg on a strike, Lord! how the hot sun went for us, And br'iled and blistered and burned! That nigger-that Tim-was a-crawlin' to me The Rebels seen him as quick as me, Till safe in our lines he drapped us both, So, my gentle gazelles, thar's my answer, He trumped Death's ace for me that day, You may rezoloot till the cows come home, Bret Harte Francis Bret Harte was born August 25, 1839, at Albany, New York. (In certain quarters doubt is thrown on the date of his birth. One or two sources maintain that a compositor, upsetting a |