It was, of course, not long that the newspapers of our wide-awake country were kept from giving their readers very glimpses of what was going on among the on Mt. Boab. The humorists of the press, those charming fellows whose work is so enjoyable when performed upon one’s neighbor and so excruciating when turned against oneself, saw the vulnerable points of the situation and let go a broadside of that from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It became a matter of daily amusement among the of Hotel Helicon to come together in little groups and discuss these humorous missiles fired upon them from California, Texas, Arkansas and Wisconsin, from Brooklyn, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and Oil-City, Detroit and—, but from everywhere, indeed.
When it came to Miss Crabb’s adventure, every humorist excelled himself in descriptive smartness and in cunning turns of phrasing. The head-line experts did telling work in the same connection. All this was[68] understood and enjoyed at home, but foreigners, especially the English, stubbornly insisted upon viewing it as the high-water mark of American and culture.
When that periodical, the Smartsburgh Bulldozer, announced with due gravity that Miss Crabb, a Western journalist, had leaped from the top of Mt. Boab to the valley below, and had been caught in the arms of a stalwart moonshiner, where she safely , etc., the London Times copied the paragraph and made it a text for a heavy editorial upon the barbaric influences of Republican institutions, to which the American Minister felt bound to in a characteristic after-dinner speech at a London club. So humorous, however, were his remarks that he was understood to be vigorously in earnest, and the result was perfect of the old world’s opinion as to the rudimentary character of our national culture.
Meantime Hotel Helicon continued to be the scene of if not startling incidents. In their search for local color and picturesque material, the litterateurs invaded every nook and corner of the region upon and round about Mt. Boab, , making notes, suggestions, studying dialect, and filling their minds with the of the mountain folk.
“It has come to this,” Peck, “that American literature, its fiction I mean, is founded on dialect drivel and vulgar yawp. Look at our magazines; four-fifths of their[69] short stories are full of negro talk, or , or mountain jibberish, or New England farm yawp, or Hoosier dialect. It is horribly humiliating. It actually makes foreigners think that we are a nation of green-horns. Why, a day or two ago I had occasion to consult the article on American literature in the Encyclopædia Britannica and therein I was told in one breath how great a writer and how truly American Mr. Lowell is, and in the next breath I was informed that a poem beginning with the verse, ‘Under the yaller pines I house’ is one of his master-pieces! Do you see? Do you catch the drift of the Englishman’s argument? To be truly great, as an American, one must be surpassingly vulgar, even in poetry!”
This off-hand shower of critical observation had as little effect upon the minds of Peck’s hearers as a summer rain has on the backs of a flock of ducks. They even grew more in their pursuit of local color.
“When I was spending a month at Rockledge castle with Lord Knownaught,” said Crane, “his lordship frequently suggested that I should make a poem on the life of Jesse James.”
“Well, why didn’t you do it?” inquired Miss Crabb with a ring of in her voice, “if you had you might have made a hit. You might have attracted some attention.”
Dufour laughed , as if he had caught some occult humor from the young woman’s words.
“I did write it,” said Crane retrospectively, “and sent it to George Dunkirk & Co.”
“Well?” sighed Miss Crabb with intense interest.
“Well,” replied Crane, “they rejected the MS. without reading it.”
Again Dufour laughed, as if at a good joke.
“George Dunkirk & Co.!” cried Guilford Ferris, the romancer, “George Dunkirk & Co.! They are thieves. They have been making false reports on copyright to me for five years or more!”
Dufour as if his would fall off, and finally with a red face and gleaming humorous eyes got up from the chair he was filling on the , and went up to his room.
The rest of the company looked at one another inquiringly.
“Who is he, anyhow?” demanded Peck.
“That’s just my query,” said Ferris.
“Nobody in the house knows anything definite about him,” remarked R. Hobbs Lucas. “And yet he evidently is a person, and his name haunts me.”
“So it does me,” said Miss Moyne.
“I tell you he’s a newspaper reporter. His cheek proves that,” remarked Peck.
Miss Crabb made a note, her own cheek flaming. “I presume you call that humor,” she observed, “it’s about like New York’s best efforts. In the West reporters are respectable people.”
“I beg pardon,” Peck said hastily, “............