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This Essa' The B. Paper by Mrs. Vandiver on South*! Only Won State Prize in G Honor Over i IMH-spring thc Martin Hoyt Pub lishing company of Atlanta ntl. nil. in an essay contest open to all Daugh ters of the Confederacy, as a capital prize and lo copies, or rather sets, cif their exc< Hem work. "The Library of Southern Literature." in 1<> volumes, as State prizes. The sub ject of the essay was "The I'laoe of the South In the Literatur?! of the Nn -t?on" and the subheads therein were to be: 'The State's Place In South ern Literature," or in case of thc writer's living in u Northern Slate "Southern Author? Who Made That State Their Home." "Southern Ora .- tory." "Idealism lu Southern Litera ture," and "Southern Literature as an Interpretation of Southern History." Luter the major prize was with drawn, to be offered next spring, but the State prizes were awarded at the '" general convention in Savannah and Mrs. Vandiver won that for South Carolina, her essay also having been adjudged the best of ull submitted '. - and giveu the place of honor. H Mrs. Vandiver in 191.1 held the sil ver cup ottered annually by Mrs. Hose ** J of Mississippi for tba beat essay on "The Women . of thc Confederacy." ?r open to every ll. D. C. in thc whole j organization. The prize paper on Southern Liter ature follows. Tho literature of tho American nn T?fctl?n has not yet come int.) the full ness of Its growth: hilt steadily it is ? advancing, and win sure ly Htand ono lay fair and great and beautiful; true daughter of a lovely English mother, with an added strain drawn from all itv-- tho peoples of the earth beating with the brain and blood of the composite American. w,v < AH yet America has a literature of i? ita Northern, Its Eastern, its Weat . ern and Its Southern St?tea. One day the groat Amerlran shat arise who will blend them all. and produce thc mater literature of all the world. Aa rij?r* tho path of every great writer has Sk, - linen prepared yb those who preceded him the trail blazed that tho supreme ttji?aj^onlus might gather the fruit of all !.. endeavor and bring it to perfection, 3o Is tho way being prepared for this future American. For ycarB after the settlement of tho new country, the pioneers were CO busy making the wild land habi table to have either lclsur*? or Incli nation for producing literature. More ? over they were Englishmen, Ute great ? Place in Literature of Nation Not cneral Contest But Place of Ml Submitted. heritage of English letters \\.<^ theirs. They read hooks "rom "home," ami thought an Englishmen, though lliey may have heeli Uirti In the Ameri can wilderness, ami have seen Eng land univ in tlu ir dreams. Krotu th?- earliest Hcltlmciita lhere wore two distinct types .?II the West lern continent; their thought, ami la ter their literature, developed ?IIOIIK very different lines. The New Eng lander was ethical, speculative, in tensely religious, and even the li tim - blest workman, from frequent listen ing to discussions on serious topics, formed the hahlt of thinking for him self. and the ground was well pre pared for reformers and for culls. Milton und I lacon appealed strongly to this type of mind, and essays, s?r iions end stories bearing a moral were gradually produced by Nev, England ers. In th? South the fox-hunting squire troubled himself little about ethical queritlotiH. ile felt what it required Drowning to express, "Uod's In Min heaven. All's right with the.world.-' The Southern sportsman was a man of education, hut lt was strictly a classical education. Mn rend with pleasure Virgil and Horace. The pul sing humanity of Shakespeare, appeal ed more to him than the ethereal apir ituality Of Milton, Additon and Steele pleased his taste more than the phil osophical Raton. These two people grew apace, each In its own direction. It was in the year? after the Revolutionary war. and before the outbreak of thc War lle tween the Sections, that American literature was horn. Th?; thinkers of New ' hi nd were producing booka that c. .minded attention and their large pi oductlon so overwhelmed the small output of tho South that there grew a notion that the South had none. It in a surprise to Southern pt opie themselves, when they learn how much that may bo fairly clussed ns literature, was produced in ante bellum times in the Southern. States. South t'iirolinti'H I'nrt. Before proceeding to Southern liter ature in general, let tim State of South Carolina he examined aa to her share in the "story of the glory" of the South. In the formative, period of Ameri can literature, South Carolina gave to the world of letters "Washington AT Mon., poet us wo!I un painter: Hugh S. Legare, brilliant essayist, orator ami statesman ; .lames Matthew llegare, poet; Btcphan Elliott, botanist; John Drayton, historian, essayist ?ind biog rapher, and a number of other writ? rs on similar topics, which, though In tended primarily tn Inntruut, wen' at i he sanie lime so Interesting in treatment, as well :IH matter, thal iii? y may well bo classed on Pan <nasi's ib Unit!.ni ot the aims of litera. ? lure in please. IO awaken feeling, thought ami imagination," and ter tuiuly they come under (Tarlysle'a dell-1 nitiou: "Literature is the thought of I thinking souls." Pur novels ami poetry. South faro-; lilia looked to Kugluud, ami ('aro- ' lillians read i'.ipe. Smollett ami Sterne; loved Tri..tam Shandy and his charming t'ncle Toby. Joseph Andrews ??mi Tom Jones, a* their children loved Ivanhoe. Amy itobsart and Jeanie Dean?; ami tin ir grandchildren adored Little Nell, Oliver Twist and Paul Do obey. Tu South Carolina belongs thc giunt nmong statesmen ami orators. ? Joh ii c Calhoun, und alKj Itobcrt V. llayne, George McDuffle ami others. In lighter literature William Gll morc Simms, Henry Tim rod unil Paul Hamilton Kayne are but a few of the lon? Hui o? ante-bellum writers who enriched thu literature of this state ami ol' the nation, ami who hail the ability to become lamons in letters, had they Riven lo them their time, talents and lirst allegiance. Literature is an exalting mistress, she brooks no divided heart, and ex cept for thc last three these Stint h Carolinians, like their great English prototypes. Sydney und Raliegh, made literature but the "elegant pastime of au idle hour." Simms ranks as one of America's most distinguished novelists. though he also wrote poetry, essays and his tory. His ambition was to be known ami remembered us u poet, but his verse is loo rugged to be pleasing: he ?vas at his best in romance. The first South Carolinian to make literature a profession, he set an example of in dustry, study and application thut has toen equaled by none of bis succes sors. Simms is often called the South ern Cooper, and it is with the author of "Leather Stocking Tales" that he is usually compared by critics, and .compilers of American literature. Hut in truth he should be compared with Sir Walter Scott, whom he closely resembles. Like Scott's his novels are a little overloaded with digressions and descriptions, wearing perhaps to impatient renders, hut like Scott he fully repuyB in charm and interest oue who continues with him until tho deliberate author has fairly conducted him into tho heart of his story, and makes him fully acquainted with the people of his imagination... The trials and exigencies of war brought t'i perfection the genius of , Timrod. Hi? war lyrics breathe not I only tho highest patriotism, but are full of fervor and poetic conceptions. ' while his nature ' poems recall the purity and beauly of the famous Lake aehool of Bngland. liaytie, iln'ii^?i a brave soldier of ili<- Confederacy, was not at ?ii? beat in war poetry, Natur?' was thc theme thal moat appealed to him, and aa a sonneteer he lia.-? nu (superior lu Amer ica literature, frequently dosel) ap proaching Wordsworth in thin form of expression. To these names of high rank. South Carolina cati proudly add a long list of li sser poets, "whose songs gushed from their hearts" and "like strains of minor music" reach thc inmost soul's recesses. This State's Historic I.i tera tu re. In historic literature, especially in chronicling the story of the lifo of the State itself. South Carolina takes pro cedence of all others. Prom the time when Oldmixhm and Archdale wrote of this turbulent realm of the lords proprietors there has never been lacking "? ehitd among them takln' notes. '' Thc 1 i KI is long, and only a few of the ninny names may be given. Ramsey, Drayton, Moultrie, Johnson. Rivera, Carroll. Lopau, Landrutn. O'Ncall, MacCrady, chapman, Mrs. Ravcnel, Mrs. Means, Mr. Kailey. Mr. Snowden. Dr. White, are a few of the South Carolinians who have preserved m lasting form the fascinating history of their Stale. While Davidson and Wain hope have made valuuble collec tions of her literature. lier essayist.! include such writers as Calhoun. Mayne. I'ettigm. Middle ton. Lowndes, Preston, McDuffle, Ham i.md, Hut ledge and Trescott, Some of her scientists aro Elliott, botanist; Holmes, geologist; Nott, ethnologist; Porcher and Ravcnel, botonists; Wells of Charleston, who preceded Darwin in formulating the theory of natural oolection. and who was the lirst to announce the present accepted theory of dew. Also she boasts a Kerie.? of intcrst ing works on travel and foreign conn trier, from Henry Laurens' account of his captivity in the Tower of Lon don during the Revolution, to Dr. Schcrer's two delightful books on Ja pan, which have appeared In recent years, and Col. Janies T. Bacon's in im* 1 table letters written during a tour of Europe .shortly before his death. In the realm of fiction Simms is king, but the world, at least that part of the world composed of the Southern States of America, would not willingly let die Longstreet's "Georgia Scenes." Judge Longstreet spent many years of his life in Geor gia, but he claimed South Carolina as his natal State, and it was-for a long time II?H home, he havidg been president of the South Carolina col lege. His wonderful ' Georgia Scenes" was first published In a Charleston magazine. Mrs. Kinn. Henry .Tunlus Noltl Mrs. Gilman, Mrs. Schoolcraft are other famous novelists of the Palmetto State. Among the present day a?tHbrs ol fiction. Stanhope Sams takes high rank, us .does Elliott CrayUjsx Mc Cants. wlio especially as a- shpri, story writer IMH no superior. HIH ure del icate expressiv?' sketch's of Southern life caught in some of Its most ef fective and sensitive phases, and re dolent of the red hills of his native State liven with Ibis very partial and meagre summing up of tin? writers of South Carolina, it is not too much to claim tor her a place lu the fore most ranks of Southern literature. Hut Hie other ll! that may fairly claim to he Southern States, have each contributed a noble part to the lileratun of the nation. Each bogan where the Southerner naturally he gins-in oratory. It is Just to in clude oratory in the literature of a people, for there if anywhere, the author seeks to phase, to awaken thought, feeling and Imagination; and moro quickly and moro surely than hy the written word does lie suc ceed. The thought and the course of the world's destiny have been more influ enced by the spoken word of two teachers than hy all the literature ever penned. Neither Socrates nor Christ ever wrote one line, hut their words have been thundered through the ages and shaken empires. How ever, -ll honor to the work of quill uni stylus. The present century would have hut garbled fragments of those burning words had not Plato and the evangelists set them down for fu ture ages. The first century of national life wu s a period of statescrafC ; men un iccustomed to the task were building i nation, and politics was the strong est force in life, save in New long land, where it shared its domain with religion. There was religion in the South, too, real and true piety, but the difference was that the people did not 'ake it quite no painfully, not evin after Whitefield's marvelous elo quence and burning ardor had estab lished the great Methodist church In every corner of the lwickwoods from Maine to Florida. Whitfield himself may Justly be claimed hy the South. Georgia was his home and the field of his most earnest work, and people of his name and blood are still living there, and in South Carolina. Eveu before the brewing of the Revolution, oratory flourished. There were for a long time no newspapers and then but few; the only way to reach the populace was by speech. In the thickly settled North lt was large ly thc preachers who formed the thought, and swayed the minds. of men. Tl.e names of John Cotton, Cot ton Matthews, Edward Everett, John Harvard. Edward Everett Hale. Wil liam Ellery Channing, Phillips Hrooks, are still names to conjure with ii. Massachusetts-all orators, all preach ers. In the South.' Patrick Henry. John Rutledge, the Pinckneys, William C. Prer.ton. the Tuckers. John Randolph, lohn C. Calhoun. Henry Clay, Robert Y. HaVnc, the Taylors, the Bonhams, the onv, uro magic names, and with one accord are they lawyars. South erners were born with a predelectlon I ? 'OAards law. politics and oratory; and regardless or numerical popula tion, the South lias always been far in thc ascendency in tills realm. Here in must lie included Jefferson. Wash ington and Madison, who. though not speakers, were stutesnien, and wrote phrases, if tiley could not speak them, that have rome ringing down the years and ar?' eurrent coin in modern speech. Tile ante-bellum Southerner, being modeled on the classics and the forensic, eloquence of England, ap pears to modern taste somewhat bom bastic and stilted; hut so also seem the writings of the great Ur. Johnson, whose rolling sentences and magnifi cent diction were greatly admired In the South. And those eloquent speak ers accomplished their purpose; they swayed their audiences and created the greatest enthusiasm. It has been said that more than any other except the French to whom they are akin are the f.eople ot' the South caught by a slogan, or Influenced hy a person ality. Therein lay the wonderful pow er ot these speakers. The South ls still the home of ora tory. One reads, and is greatly im pressed by many of the new ideas, cults and theories that originate, gen erally in Boston, the center of ethi cal and reformatory thought. But visit Boston, go to hear the originators or promulgators of thia new thought and abstruse philosophy speak upon their chosen subjects, and the Southerner at least, leaves unimpressed. , The college professors of New Eng land nre, as a rule, not only men thoroughly acquaint'd with their sub ject, Out delightful speakers. Their speaking, however, is in a very quiet style. One is impressed rather with the mutter, thau the manner of their addresses. There ls no oratory, their object is not to stir the emotions, but to teach, and the listener must under stand and follow the thought. Hut attend the Bimplest memorial day exercises, or any occasion for speaking in the South, and while the oldfashioned word rolling is happily i thing of the past, there is a warmth, a beauty, a fervor of languarge. a color that 'ls wanting elsewhere. The old leaven ls still in the yeast, and the Southerner is still* a horn orator, and he moves his audience to tears, to laughter, or to frenzy at his will. Idealism in Southern Literature. All the forceB that have shaped the South, have tended towards ideal ism, and the prevailing characteris tics of Southern literature are ideal istic. The early civilizations, which was feudalism, grafted on to modern education and conditions of living, was the nearest approach that Idealism has ever ' made to actual life, and the thoughts, the dreams, the aspirations of the Southerner, were purely of the realm bf romanticism. The dominant reason that comparatively little light literature was produced In tho South before the war. was that in place Ol writing romance and poetry, the Southerner was living them, and the heavy narcotic of the medieval atmos phere he breathed wrapped' him -in the langourous drouniB of the opium eater, and paralyzed Iiis faculties. He awoke only at the call of statecraft, which lu hiB case seemed to he self-prcBerva tion. It required the fierce fires of war fully to arouse the drugged giant, to burn away the dross of slavery and to Bet the white man free. Southern poetry and romance are perhaps unsatisfactory to the Grad grlnes of literary criticism. There are no facts, hard, cold and real. The hare things of life are clothed in a mantle of idealism, and there results in America two totally different phases of literature. The idiosyncrasies of the North may he represented hy the Immortal naines of Emerson, Hawth orne and Whittier. Those of the South hv thc brilliant writers, Lafucadlo 1 learn. Janu s Lane Allen and Edgar Allen Poe. The flrdt have the clear, beautiful, perfect but cold glitter of the diamond; the latter the ricli warm glow of thc ruby. The essays, the nov els, the poems of the Northland are cool, perfect, delicate as the mountain laurel, while those of the Southland breathe the langourous odor of thc magnolia. In the days when you were . .ung and hung over a book like a bee hangs over a flower, you remember, espcclaly if you were a little girl, how you read ' Little Women" and "An Old-fashioned Girl"-eagerly, gladly, over and over. Those were real live girls, JuBt like yourself, they were your companions, and you liked them. In short you were impressed by the realism of the books, though you didn't know realism from pate de-fol6-gras. Then you read and reread and reud again "St. Elmo" and "Beulah." Were you in the same world? Those were not real people, they were .nothing like you, nor any of the prosaic peo ple that you knew, but those chann ing, wonderful, learned ladles were Just what you meant to be when you should grow up and could spread those hidden wings that the grown ups did not know you possessed. You were going to find somewhere on that glittering road before you called "the future," though you did not know that it had a name, just exactly such a fascinating, stern, delightfully wick ed hero, who should discover your un suspected charms and love you just as romantically as those gloomy roues did the poor but proud maidens of their choice, and you were going to develop such a perfect charac ter that your lovely virtues should lead the black sinner from his infancy to the light of perfect day. There is the difference between real istic and idealistic literature. And while wise critics may chant the praises of the realistic type and preachers and teachers may warn the unwary against false pictures of life presented in some of "the popular fiction of the day." the girls and boys and tim people wiro used to be girls and hoys are going to pour over their St. Elmos and their Gold Bugs with thru la that 'never come from asso <CONT?K?VEO, ON PAGE SEVEN.) ? WANTED, 1,000 MEN I To take The Anderson Daily Intelligencer at a Special War Price of only I I 75 cents for THREE MONTHS i We desire to increase the number of our readers, and to do so yve are willing to make this big I reduction in our subscription price ? In order to show no favoritism, every subscriber, whether new or old, who pays his subscription 3 months in advance will bo entitle to this remark- . I ably low rate of 75 CENTS. ., Y: ;V *?^:^SS?^?^i'? ' ? .. 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