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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 A 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! 7