The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1879-05-21
The Late Mrs. Hale.
The Illustrious List of American Authors
Whom She Outlived.


The announcement of the death of Mrs.
Sarah Josepha Hale must have affected all per-
sons who take an interest in literature and
longevity as much as Macaulay was affected by
the death of Nine. D. Arblay (Fanny Burney).
Mrs Hale was born in $780, before Washing
ton had completed the first half of the first
term of his Presidency, and she died in her
eighty-ninth year. She was born only thirteen
months after Fenimore Cooper, and she sur
vived him almost twenty-eight years; and she
published 'Northwood" in 1927, the same year
in which Cooper published 'The Red
Rover" one of the very best of his sea nov els,
the novelst's reputation being then in the
zenith "Northwood" is work that bears re-
peated readings, and as there was not glut of
American novelists when it appeared it ma de
a name for the author; and it keeps the place
it won in 1927, so far as a first place can be
kept after the lapse of fifty-two years. Even
were it dull work, it would be good work,
for it preserves pictures of American life that
are fast getting thrust into space through the
mighty exertions of electric telegraphs and
railway lines. Very little of the social life
half q century since can now be seen, and the
young ignorant of it as they are of that
of the colonial age. 1t can be learned what it
was only in the pages of such works as
"Northwood." When that novel came out
Hawthorne was but youth and had written
nOtnlnS; ana daWtnOrne mas peen sleeping at
Concord for fifteen years. Longfellow was
still younger, and Holmes was younger than
Longfellow-and both are now old men, with
regulations as wide as the world. Whittier
came upon the stage after she had become
known, and Emerson not very far from
the same time. Montgomery Bird began his
literary career twelvemonth after the publi-
cation of "Northwood," when he was about
twenty five and he died twenty-five years ago.
Kennedy and Bryant were younger than Mrs.
Hale, and they began to publish before she
had thought of writing, and she survived them
both, and also, Simms, Poe and Leggett,
Ticknor, Prescott, Hillard, Legare, Edmund
Quincy, Theodore Parker, Theodore Winth-
rOp, belonged to the lettered procession that
she saw depart. 1t helps show how long was
the time that her life measured, that she was
i'll her twentieth year when the first of our
novelists, Charles Brockden Brown died
and he departed at the beginning of
1910, but few weeks after Washington
Irving's cleverest work had come out, She
was the senior of Mr.. Palfrey by more
Bancroft She was about three years younger
than Richard Henry Dana, who died but few
weeks ago. She may have read Washington's s.
farewell address in the week of its appearance,
and she died on the day after the appearance
of President Hayes's last veto message. Her
life all but spanned our national history under
the existing polity. and she saw that wonder
full material growth of her country that has
placed it among the greatest nations of the
world. She was one of the many eminent
persons who were born in New Hampshire, and
who have risen to distinction in other States
and whose labors have done so much to eles
vate the national reputation. Her work
show a various capacity, and her industry was
unrivalled. Northwood, it should be stated,
was not her first work, as she published vol
ume OF poems IN 1928, the very year in which
Mr.. Cooper gave to the world The Pioneers
and The Pilot