that amusing and useful study. Write me often, and continue to send copies of your translations and exercises in French, as well as Latin.

THE CULTIVATION OF CORRECT PRINCIPLES From 'Letters of John Randolph to a Young Relative.'

WASHINGTON, Dec. 30, 1821.

YOUR letter of the 20th has lain several days on my table. The difficulty of writing, produced by natural decay, is so increased by the badness of the materials furnished by our contractors, (who make the public pay the price of the best,) that I dread the beginning of a letter. At this time, it requires my nicest management to make this pen do legible execution.

So true is your remark, that I have tried to strike root into some of the people around me—one family, in particular; but I found the soil too stony for me to penetrate, and, after some abortive efforts, I gave it up-nor shall I ever renew the attempt, unless some change in the inhabitants should take place.

The medical gentleman, whom you suppose to be actuated by no friendly spirit towards you, made the observation in question, to one whom he believed well disposed towards you; and he mentioned it to another, of the same description, who told it to me. I do not believe that the remark extended beyond us three.

One of the best and wisest men I ever knew, has often said to me that a decayed family could never recover its loss of rank in the world, until the members of it left off talking and dwelling upon its former opulence. This remark, founded on a long and close observation of mankind, I have seen verified, in numerous instances, in my own connexions-who, to use the words of my oracle, "will never thrive, until they can become 'poor folks' ";-he added, "they may make some struggles, and with apparent success, to recover lost ground; they may, and sometimes do, get half way up again; but they are sure to fall back-unless, reconciling themselves to circumstances, they become in form, as well as in fact, poor folks.'

The blind pursuit of wealth, for the sake of hoarding, is a species of insanity. There are spirits, and not the least worthy, who, content with an humble mediocrity, leave the field of wealth and ambition open to more active, perhaps more guilty, competitors. Nothing can be more respectable than the independence that grows out of self-denial. The man who, by abridging his wants, can find time to devote to the cultivation of his mind, or the aid of his fellow-creatures, is a being far above the plodding sons of industry and gain. His is a spirit of the noblest order. But what shall we say to the drone, whom society is eager to "shake from her encumbered lap?" -who lounges from place to place, and spends more time in "Adonizing" his person, even in a morning, than would serve to earn his breakfast?-who is curious in his living, a connoisseur in wines, fastidious in his cookery; but who never knew the luxury of earning a single meal? Such a creature, "sponging" from house to house, and always on the borrow, may yet be found in Virginia. One more generation will, I trust, put an end to them; and their posterity, if they have any, must work or steal, directly.

Men are like nations. One founds a family, the other an empire-both destined, sooner or later, to decay. This is the way in which ability manifests itself. They who belong to a higher order, like Newton, and Milton, and Shakespeare, leave an imperishable name. I have no quarrel with such as are content with their original obscurity, vegetate on from father to son; "whose ignoble blood has crept through clod-poles ever since the Flood"-but I cannot respect them. He who contentedly eats the bread of idleness and dependence is beneath contempt. I know not why I have run out at this rate. Perhaps it arises from a passage in your letter. I cannot but think you are greatly deceived. I do not believe the world to be so little clear-sighted.

What the "covert insinuations" against you, on your arrival at Richmond, were, I am at a loss to divine. I never heard the slightest disparagement of your moral character; and I know nobody less obnoxious to such imputations.

When you see the C's., present my best wishes and remembrance to them all. I had hoped to hear from Richard. He is one of the young men about Richmond, with whom it

is safe to associate. Noscitur è Sorio is older than the days of Partridge; and he who is the companion of the thriftless, is sure never to thrive: tavern haunters and loungers are no friends to intellectual, moral, or literary improvement, any more than to the accumulation of wealth.

I have seen nobody that you know but Frank K. and Gen. S. The last asked particularly after you. That you may prosper in this life, and reach eternal happiness in the life to come, is my earnest prayer.

Dr. Dudley.

JOHN RANDOLPH of Roanoke.

OPIE READ

[1852- ]

W. L. VISSCHER

PIE READ, the son of Guilford and Elizabeth Wallace Read, was born in Nashville, Tennessee, on December 22, 1852. His gift of story-telling must have been innate, for he says: "At our home when I was a boy, were several of my nephews. They were younger than I, and to tell them stories was my assignment. They would ask my father to make me tell them stories, and he did. I don't know why. He never heard me tell a story." But Read liked his assignment, and from individual stories turned to an improvised serial about one "Robert, the Good Shooter." This thrillingly sensational and somewhat bloodcurdling romance ran through nearly two years, affording to the young raconteur abundant exercise in oral improvisation and ministering, no doubt, to his facility in invention and in rapidity of composition.

About this time came his own most thrilling adventure, for when he was a boy of little more than nine years, during the Civil War, he rode into battle behind a Confederate bugler on the same horse. The bugler was shot dead and tumbled from his seat. Opie clambered into the empty saddle, and looked around. The scrambled mass of blue and gray was gone. He was in an open field. He saw a meadow lark light on a swaying red-tasseled iron-weed and heard the bird sing its summer song. He knew that the battle had ended and he rode home on the dead bugler's horse.

After the close of the war he persuaded his father to let him learn printing and then turned his skill to good account in setting type for his college magazine. Whether engaged in this mechanical work or serving in a more literary capacity on a newspaper, he had but one real aim, to become a novelist. To this end he bent his energies, and because he knew that a writer must have a publisher, he made for himself friends in that guild. He began his newspaper work in Franklin, Kentucky, but went later to Little Rock, Arkansas, where he so identified himself with his adopted State as to be reckoned among her men of letters. From 1878 to 1881 he was editor of the Arkansas Gazette, but in this latter year he bettered his condition by marrying Miss Ada Benham and accepting a position on the staff of the Cleveland Leader. After two years' sojourn on the

Northern Lakes, he returned to the balmier climate of his Southern home and established in 1883 the Arkansas Traveler, a humorous paper that reached a circulation of sixty thousand. This paper he gave up in 1883 that he might move to Chicago and give his whole time to writing novels and short stories. By 1896 he had written either in Arkansas or Chicago the following novels: 'Emmett Bonlore,' with much of himself in it; 'Len Gassett,' in which his father appears; 'A Kentucky Colonel,' his most successful production; 'The Colossus,' 'The Tennessee Judge,' pronounced by critics his most finished work; 'The Wives of the Prophet,' 'Down on the Suwanee River,' 'The Jucklins,' his favorite; 'Miss Madam,' with glimpses of his own wayward life, and 'My Young Master,' marked by care. Since 1896 his principal works are: 'Tear in the Cup and Other Stories,' 'Old Ebenezer,' 'The Carpet-Bagger,' 'The Starbucks,' 'The Harkriders,' 'The Son of the Swordmaker,' 'By the Eternal,' 'An American in New York,' 'In the Alamo,' 'Judge Elbridge,' 'A Yankee from the West,' 'An Arkansas Planter,' 'Up Terrapin River,' 'The Waters of Caney Fork,' and 'The Confessions of Marguerite.' These, with several scattering titles, number about thirty, all of which have been commercially successful, some of them phenomenally so. 'The Starbucks' and 'The Harkriders' have been effectively dramatized by their author.

Read's romances are strong and pure, and he writes of character, custom, and peculiarities among the scenes he depicts just precisely as they are. When his characters talk, they talk naturally; and when the author speaks, his diction is pure and rich, yet plain and unassuming. The man utterly despises pedantry, and is as easy in his work as he is in telling a brilliant story to a party of admiring listeners; and yet he loiters along paths where flowers bloom, among the woods where birds are singing, into places where passions surge and amid the secluded nooks where love is sweetest and most blissful. He writes poetry in prose as naturally as white clouds float beneath the blue of summer skies. Yet with all his greatness Opie Read seems to comprehend it less than anyone who knows him and in his work and daily life is an exemplification of the kinship between humor and pathos.

Read has the reputation, among those who see him frequently and know him least, of being indolent. He is, in fact, one of the most incessant workers in the literary field. His very recreations are taken in the interest of his work. He tells stories at his club (the Chicago Press Club) to the knots of men who draw their chairs up to his to listen, and he does that to keep his fancy at work. He reads the heaviest, strongest and most voluminous books and then re-reads them. Gibbon, Macaulay, Motley, Carlyle, Hume are