" He (James Whitcombe Riley) met me in a red
under- phirt and black trousers, busily adjusting gold studs in the
bosom of a hard-boiled shirt " is an extract from Mr. Hamlin Garland's Roadside Meetings (Lane, 12s. 6d.). It is not asserted that the excerpt is a measure of the whole book, which consists mainly of reminiscences of writing people, but its rather dreadful personal tone is a measure of much 0 it. Here we meet Walt Whitman, old and poor, but the cuffs of his linen shirt are " immaculate," and we have an allusion to " Olive Shriner " (p. 194) and interviews with Joaquin Miller and Stephen Crane, who wrote The Red Badge of Courage; many of the author's days, in fact; were "rich in literary incident." Of Mr. Kipling, on his first visit to America, we read that he " was Colonial in accent and not at all English in manner." -His work had already caught on, and American presses were pirating his books so fast that, as Mr. Garland notes, " a bit of -doggerel went the rounds, 'when the Kip. lings cease from Kipling and the critics are at rest." He seems to have forgotten J. K. Stephen's couplet :— " When the Rudyards cease from kipling And the Haggards Ride no more."
* *
Previous page
