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Among the Thinkers and Writers of Dixie
JOHN ESTEN COOKE.
N able advocate, a gallant soldier, a pa
triotic annalist, a felicitious poet, a
fascinating novelist, and a genial gen
tleman, Major Cooke, for a long time,
enjoyed, among his own people, a pop
ularity possibly unexcelled in the earlier
annals of Southern literature; and even
in the North itself, his thrilling stories
of the Civil War were read and reread
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with the keenest delight, by those of the Romantic
School. Toward the (dose of his life, however, the
realistic writers of the William I). Howells type
began to make their influence felt in the world of
letters; and authors like Cooke were, for a time,
driven to the dusty shelves; nevertheless his novels
were not doomed to utter oblivion; and if present in
dications foreshadow the future, the day may not be
distant when “Mohun,” “Hilt to Hilt,” and “Sur
ry of Eagle’s Nest” will pass through new editions,
rekindling the fires of patriotism in the hearts of
the Southern youth and raising a shaft of a peo
ple’s appreciation above their author’s unmarked
grave.
If surroundings make the man, John Esten Cooke,
of M inehester, A a., must have dreamed in numbers
long before his baby lips had learned to prattle in
prose; tor “Glengary,” his father’s country villa,
nestled in the valley of the Shenandoah. Here in
the midst of the beautiful vale, he was born, Nov.
3, 1830; and here he passed his sunny childhood,
dreaming in the shadows of twilight groves and
singing with the spirits of the sparkling river.
Os his mother, no mention is made in the biogra
phies now at hand, but evidently she was richly en
dowed with the rarest graces of Southern woman
hood; and that intense love of the beautiful both
in nature and in art so pronounced in the character
of the child, must have had its birth in the aesthetic
germ bequeathed to the boy by his mother. More
is known of his father, however, for Hon. Jno. Rog
ers Cooke was perhaps the most distinguished jurist
in AGrginia during the first half of the nineteenth
century. His legal services were eagerly sought
after on every hand, and hardly an important case
was ever passed to the high court of appeals in
which the able attorney failed to participate.
When John Esten was only ten years old, the fam
ily moved from Winchester to Richmond; but
“Glengary” was not forgotten; and the silent
beauty of the Shenandoah still haunted the soul of
the youthful dreamer.
Richmond, however, offered better educational ad
vantages; and it was in the schools of this city that
he completed his course of study. In literature and
history, he was a very efficient student; but he
seems to have been anxious overmuch to enter into
the active duties of life, and, like too many young
men of the present time, to have gone into his chos
en profession without having finished a course in
mental culture sufficient to meet the demands of
his subsequent career.
Satisfied with his scholastic attainments, young
Cooke now entered the office of his father, resolved
to figure in life in the role of an advocate. Hered
ity coupled with heroic endeavor soon enabled him
to master the minutest details of the profession; and
so rapidly did he progress with his reading that he
was admitted to the bar before he was twenty-one.
Dazzled by visions of the gavel and ermine, the
enthusiastic young advocate hung out his shingle
and waited. Clients soon came, perhaps influenced
by the fame of the father; and Esten’s prospects
for legal laurels grew brighter and brighter from
day to day. But the court room began to weary
him; and the siren voice of literature soon beguiled
him into other fields. He resolutely abandoned the
practice of law, ami determined to devote the re
mainder of his days to literary pursuits.
His apprenticeship over, his poems and prose
sketches began to find their way into the Southern
By DAVID E. GUYTON.
The Golden Age for September 20, 1906.
Literary Messenger of Richmond; and in the course
of a few years he grew to be a regular contributor
to Putnam’s and Harper’s, the two most popular
periodicals of that day. Among his most success
ful stories of this period of his career may be men
tioned* “The Virginia Comedians’’ and its sequel,
“Henry St. John, Gentleman,” both of which pos
sessed some merit and deserved the distinction which
they freely received at the time.
But the war came on, Virginia called for volun
teers, and the prosperous author threw down his
pen to catch up the patriot’s sword. Peaceful pur
suits were more congenial to Cooke, but his soul
could brook no insult to the South; and for four
long years he served with fidelity with Stuart, Jack
son and Lee. His military record was brilliant; his
devotion to his native land was beautiful; but his
nature was too noble to cherish petty sectional hate,
and thus he speaks of the terrific struggle':
“1 think of the past without bitterness—God
did it—God the all-wise, the almighty, for his own
purpose. I do not indulge in repinings, nor reflect
with rancor upon the issue of the struggle. I prefer
recalling the stirring adventure, the brave voices,
the gallant faces; even in that tremendous drama of
1864-65, I can find something besides blood and
tears. ’ ’
At the close of the war he returned to the val
ley of \ irginia to take up his literary labors again.
In 18(57, he was united in marriage with Miss Mary
Erances Page, a beautiful young woman, of one of
the first families of* Virginia. Their home life was
happy, and their country site, “The Briers,” was
one of the centers of Southern hospitality. His
loudness lor his wife ami home often found expres
sion in passionate outbursts such as this: “If there
was ever a nearer approach to an angel than my
wife, I have never met her. Why, I would rather
pass my time quietly here at ‘The Briers’ in the
beautiful valley of the Shendoah than rule a na
tion.'’ His ample acres were bounded by the spa
cious plantations of families like the Randolphs,
the Nelsons, and the Pages, and the social atmos
phere of his surroundings was unsurpassed in the
stateliest circles of the South.
Opulence such as fort uno had showered upon him
might have stifled the ambition of a less heroic soul;
but life, was more to Major Cooke than drinking,
hunting, and dining; and the veil of romance his
genius lias flung over his native land remains as an
eloquent witness of how well he employed his hours.
Patriotic impulses rather than mercenary motives
seem to have prompted him to write. His purely
historical works, comprising a life of Gen. Jackson,
a biography of Robt. E. Lee, and a history of Vir
ginia, are still honored as historic records; but his
fascinating stories of the Civil War have done more
than these to perpetuate the glorious traditions that
have transfigured the annals of Virginia. Nowhere
have the characters of Stuart, Jackson, and Lee been
so graphically portrayed as in the pages of Mohun,
Hili to Hilt, ami Surry of Eagle’s Nest; and even
if the portraits are sketched in extravagant colors,
no boy or girl in the South can afford to leave these
volumes unread to appease the wrath of those of the
Realistic School. In addition to his striking char
acterizations, Major Cooke has illumined the pages
of his stories with marvelous bits of description;
ami the splendid dash of the Southern cavalier per
vades them from cover to cover. Other titles might,
of course, be mentioned, for he wrote with a teem
ing pen; but perhaps these three are worthy to rank
as the best of his thrilling romances pertaining to
the Civil War.
His poems, too, possess real merit, and ripple off
with a rythmical lilt like most of the lyrics of the
South. They are inferior, it may be, to his ampler
efforts in prose; still they are aglow with eternal
life; and had their author written nothing else, his
lays alone would have fostered his fame, and given
him a niche in the temple of renown.
Major Cooke died near Berryville, Va., Sept. 27,
1886; and his body lies in the little church yard of
the Episcopal chapel there. Only a simple slab of
pine, with his name roughly pencilled upon it, marks
his lonely grave; and yet Virginia serenely smiles
while her hero sleeps in silence without a stone to
hallow his sacred dust.
The Benefits of College Training.
1 he majority of uneducated people have an idea
that the sole object of a college education is to fit
a man to make more money and to make it easier
than his uneducated brother.
I he man who has never lived four years in the
midst of a warm-hearted body of young men, can
have no understanding of the idealistic part of col
lege life. Tell an uneducated man that you are not
spending your time in college to learn to make mon
ey and he laughs at your seeming ignorance and
when your back is turned calls you a sport, spend
ing your father’s money uselessly, and going to col
lege merely to learn a- quicker and more expensive
method of spending it. He is not educated up to
the college man’s point of view, an ideal one, that
has been gradually and firmly instilled in him by
four years or more of hard labor under his profes
sors, and on the athletic field; “not to live for what
you can get out of the world, but for what you can
put in it.”
A course of four years to a man who goes to co’•
lege intent on improving liis time, means an uplift
ing into a social, an intellectual Eden, that his hith
erto undeveloped mind has never conceived before.
His struggle on the foot ball field broadens and
strengthens his shoulders, so that they are better
fitted to push the wheel of lite, and to assume the
leadership of men. With a sound body there comes
in part a sound mind. The hours of hard study,
and the joy 'when one finds a puzzling truth or
solves an intricate mathematical problem, give
him a. course of training that will enable him to
grasp his opport unity and hold it, when it comes.
And then, too, a full colletre coirrn means the
broadening of character and understanding of men
that is acquired after years of close companionship
with several hundred whole souled boys. No other
chance exists for learning human nature better
than to be one of a college community. There, ev
ery man’s heart is an open book to his fellow stu
dents, and if the pages are read carefully while at
college, you have a correct diagnosis of this man’s
future life.
And now we come to the comparison and result of
this training. If our character has lived a clean
lite, he is apt to be turned out into the world with a
character so much broader than his less fortunate,
uneducated brother, that he will seem a giant among
pygmies. He can grasp a business proposition and
think out new ideas, that a man without a college
course can hardly see even the practicability of.
He is worth a great deal more to his employer be
cause of his originality and unwillingness to follow*
beaten ruts. And lastly he is puffing the strength
of a fertile mind into the world as a means of
bettering mankind. Your college man does not de
sire merely to make money, he wants to leave the
world something that will last when gold has fad
ed, the imprint and inspiration of an uplifting
C. E. Sutton.
Faith and Fate.
By RICHARD HOVEY.
To horse, my dear, and out into the night .'
Stirrup and saddle and away, away!
Into the darkness, into the affright.
Into the unknown on our trackless way.'
Bast bridge ami town hurtled with fly: g feet,
Into the wilderness our riding thrills;
The gallop echoes through the startled street
And shrieks like laughter through the startled hills;
Things come to meet us with fantastic frown
And hurry past with maniac despair;
Death from the stars look- ominously down
Ho, ho, the dauntless riding that we dare!
East to the dawn, or West or South or North—
Loose rein upon the neck of fate and forth!
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