Press and daily Dakotaian. (Yankton, Dakota Territory [S.D.]) 1880-1889, 1886-07-29

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AZ.
PROSPECT COTTAGE, MRS. s~oUTHwoRTH's
HOME.
Mrs. Emma d. Il. N. Southworth is another
Washington novelist, and she is perhaps tho
most prolific writer in the country. She is &C
years old, and has written a novel for every
year of her life. All of her work is taken by
Robert Bonner, of The Ledger, and she has
not furnished a page of manuscript to any
other publisher for years. 1t is said that
Bonner pays her S10,000a year for everything
that she writes, but | nave no basis for this
statement except rumor. There is no doubt
but that she is well paid, and the cottage
which she owns here on the Georgetown
Heights, though 1t lacks paint, is covered
with vines, and it makesa very pleasant home.
1t commands a view of the Potomac, Airing
ton and the Virginia hills, and q cool wind
from the south blows through it day and
night. Mrs. ~Southworth began her writing
at Washington, and her first story was pub
lished in The National Era. She writes the
same character of stories to-day that she did
then. They are full of blood and thunder
aiiu VI IoSo liz ioiiSllB. oIe JuIUS luelu OuG
as though she were a machine, andis not de-
pendent Mt all upon her moods. She grinds
out everything with her own hands, writing
boldly with a large gold pen, She revises her
proofs herself, and often works far into the
night. She writes generally from Tuesday
until ThrYsday night, and spends Friday and
Saturday In visiting, while on Monday she
revises her proofs. She is "a close reader of
the newspapers, and, like Charles Reade, she
takes a great many of her stories from the
facts she finds in them.
Another woman writer of Washington is
Mrs. Admiral Dahlgren, who owns one of the
best houses of the capital city. She lives just
across from Gen. Bob Schenck, our former
minister to England, and a little in front of
the house of Senator Conger, of Michigan.
She has written u book about South noun
tain, her country home, near here, giving a
collection of weird stories and legends of the
romantic region in which it is located. Mrs.
Dahlgren is tine widow of Admiral Dahlgren.
She is IN Ohio girl, and her father was, I
think, q member of congress. She is posted
on society matters, and is an authority on
Washington etiquette, about which she has
written q book.
One of the queerest literary characters of
Washington is Joaquin Miller, who owns a
log cabin o II one of the hills above the city.
Mr.. Miller cultiyates the wild eccentricities of
western life, and AVE thought at times that
he affects a good many of these for the adj
Nertiseinent it gives him. He goes about
Washington in a SLOUGH hat, with his panta-
looms in his boots and his long red hair flow
ing down upon his brawny shoulders. AS YOU
talk to him a dreamy, far-off look will come
into his eyes, and he viii make the most out
landish statements, spiced with poetry, in re-
gard to matters in the conversation. He used
to gallop about Washington on horseback,
soaring the children, in the costume of a west
ern cowboy, and a part of his attire was a
pair Of pantaloons made of the furred skin OF
the Angora goat. He had a silver pommel to
his saddle as big as a soap dish and his stir
rups We're as big as q half-peck measure. Mil
Ter has received d good deal of money from
his writing, but he spends a great deal, and /
doubt whether he owns much more than the
little property that he has here. The interior of
his cabin here is as queer as the outside. The
walls are made Of wood logs and chinked
with plaster, and Mr., Miller keeps his papers
by lacking them to the walls with pins. He
has a couch under the window, and there is a
bed covered with skins behind a portiere
made of rich oriental cloths. Joaquin writes
III a pine table, which probably cost about
81, and the implanted poplar chair he sits
upon could be bought anywhere for fifty
cents. There is no cloth upon the table, and
a plain inlkstand and a steel pen are his only
materials, He has no system in his writing,
and can only write wnen the humor seizes
him. His ~penmanship is harder to read than
the hieroglyphics of the obelisks, and he cam
not write at all If there is any other person
present than himself. He once told me that
the presence of q child constrained his hand.
n that he has found himself posing before
every girl he talked to. II must be alone.n
he said, 'to do good work, and 1 cannot die
tate satisfactorily Joaquin Miller began
writing by sending letters to a weekly news
paper in Oregon. The first pay he got for
literary work was $50 for a magazine article
to The Overland Monthly, and he considers
his best work the novel he wrote, called "One
Fair Woman
One queer thing about Miller is that he
never allows telegram boys to deliver mes
sages to him at his cabin, and he frightened
one nearly to death not long ago by threatep-
ing to shoot if he came inside the gate.
Mr.. Ainswerth Spofford, the librarian OF
congress, is a book maker as well as q book
lende... He is a dark faced mar with a frame
tiuuS VI Nllt ana ltlleu WIN acttvlty, be.
tween so and 60 years of age he does more
work than any young man of % in Washing
ton, and he never wastes an idle moment. He
understands how to make other men work
for him, and he can dictate as smoothly as he
writes. He has q brusque way of talking
and q rather rough voice, but he is business
from the start, and he allows no one from
to senator to consume his valuable
time foolishly. He is always ready, however,
to give information, and that little dark head
OF bis seems to have packed away in its cells
the whole contents of the congressional Ii
brary. Tell him what you want 70 know of
n subject. He win put his finger upon ain
electric bell, give q word to onis of his assist
ants, AMI III a moment you have before you
the very material you want. Mr.,lSpofford
WINS a very pleasant home on Massachusetts
avenue in the incst fashionable part of Wash.
ISisla wide, red brick, and is wortl,
! s;,or!d say at lens: Sl5, go. He rides to this
every evening in the red Herdic. He ALWAYS
carries Q green bag with him out Of which 10
palis o book as snar 8 he enters and reads oll
The way to aiTf from the CAPITOL. Mr.. Spof.
work shop, however, is in :he congress.
lonal library. His little alcove behind the
abLarian's desk IL always filed with books |
md papers, arranged in the most systeu,atic !
and Mr. SyunfyotyI os,,a,.u.