The Portland daily press., 1880-07-15
Cable.
The New Light in Louisiana.

Those who have read Old Creole Days and
are reading the Grandissimes will be inter
ested in the following sketch of the author,
made by the Literary World
George Washington Cable is resident of
New Orleans, Louisiana, where he was born
on the 18th of October, 1874. At the age of
fourteen he found himself the elder son of
widow, with two sisters older and one brother
younger, all pretty much dependent upon him;
and under these conditions he left school and
went into service in customs warehouse as
maker OF bales and boxes AT the outbreak of
the war he was seventeen years old, but so
slight physically as to be mere child in ap-
pearance; and on the surrender of the city he
was allowed to leave with his sisters unques-
toned. After spending a few months as pr-
vate tutor in family in Mississippi, he was
enrolled in the army, but on the way to his
command was mistaken for woman in dis
guise. Clerks being scarce in the Confederate
army, he was soon assigned to duty at the
division headquarters, and never succeeded in
getting into more than one fight In this,
however, he was wounded. On this score.
therefore, we may rank Mr.. Gable as veteran.
AT the close of the war he returned to New
Orleans and entered dry goods esta Enlistment
ON Canal street as an errand boy. After a few
weeks he took cierkship in a country store
In Mississippi, and after few months returned
80 New Orleans to begin life afresh as account
ant in cotton factors office. Throughout all
these vicissitudes he had been, so far as
circumstances allowed, a hard student. Even
in the cavalry column he carried his books
in his haversack,, and now he began to
try systematic study. Sickness. resulting from
exposure during the war. put him back again,
and in 1867 he commenced lie for the third
time; now as an anonymous writer for a New
Orleans paper, with the long scattered mem
bers OF his family once more gathered around
him. Some success in this venture led to his
engagement as reporter, but he did not get
acquainted with burglars easily, made little
iisaduau as an litter viewer, and found it hard
to get the first news. In f9zt while fiIIing an
accountants position in the cotton lIouse of W.
G. Black & Co., he fell in with Edward King,
who had come to New Orleans in the course of
writing his Great South, and who brought him
to the notice of the Scribners. This was the
real beginning of Mr.. Cables literary fortune.
He sent the Scribners short story, another,
and another, and SO on out of which came
nnally Old Creole Days 1879. Mr. Boyesen
mad much to do with the forward movement of
the young author at this critical point The
Gfandisslmes, now running in Scribner's
Monthly, was written under great disadvant-
ages, Ill health interrupting its composition at
one time for more than year. In December last
MI Gable gave up his commercial connections
altogether, and saving representative position
ior Charles Scribner's Sons in New Orleans,
ne now devotes himself wholly to literary la
DOR. He is rendering some assistance upon the
census, and has q new novel blocked out and
under way. Mr.. Cables wife lisa native of
New Orleans, of Connecticut stick; and of
their hive children the only boy did in 1878, a
victim of the yellow fever.