Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1888-07-28

tering of the rain. The room is filled
with easy lounges and chairs, common
book shelves, large writing desk. and q
cabinet containing specimens of Hudson
river birds. Mr.. Roes latest hobby was
to collect birds and to study their songs.
He endeavored especially to make an
exact list of the time. to the fraction Of Q
second, at which each bird began to sing
In the early dawn. 81 like to get my
facts from nature" he said, mot from
other mems books.
e..
Mr.. Roe was fond of entertaining his
friends, and he nearly always had grouped
around him coterie of men prominent
in the field of letters. Not long before
his death he extended an invitation to
the Authors club of New York to visit
him at his country seat; and the meeting
was memorable one Nearly all those
who accepted the invitation travelled to
Cornwall by water, and they were by no
means a bad lot, taking them together.
There was Edmund Clarence Stedman,
for example, the most popular writer Of
writer's, the youngest man, by all odds.
for his age-fuller of the exhilaration Of
youth than most of his juniors by twenty
years; Julian Hawthorne, in a flannel
shirt, with soft red tennis cap on his
handsome head, by far the most pictur-
esque figure of all; Richard Henry Stod.
dard. the venerable poet, exuberant with
health and good nature; and score more
Of writers OF all ages, whose names are
known the world over. Roe himself was
in the best of spirits.
T.. =. Roe was a man of somewhat
striking presence. He was of medium
height, powerfully built, with a gravely
pleasant and intelligent face; his dark
hair was brushed carelessly back from q
high forehead, and his beard and mus
tache We're long and black; his eyes were
Of a kindly gray, and his manner was
that of man who had spent the greater
part of his life in the atmosphere Of
home. The authors were entertained Law
ishly and had glorious time, and they
all united in singing tho praises of tho
amiable novelist.
Roc was one of the authors who 'made
money" His income from books was
ampler than the income of any other man
Of letters, obtained from the same source
in America. 1t Is estimated that he had
something like 2,000,O 900 readers in the
United States alone, and his works were
translated into many languages.
The novel, Barriers Burned Away"
was his first attempt in the field Of
authorship. On the day of the break
ing out of the great Chicago fire he was
in New York city, where he had been in-
vited TO preach to a church temporarily
without a pastor. Regarding his sudden
trip to Chicago he says:
Il cannot account for 1t, but the i'm
pulse to go to the stricken city at once
seemed to overpower me. l packed my
valise and started westward. l had no
nlnar InSr,;fa ,lor hnyn,I
that of seeing humanity at timo when
it appealed so powerfully to ones sym
pathy and interest. / hoped eventually
to write about the scenes witnessed; but
what or how | should write 1t l did not
know, nor was l by any means certain
that / could produce anything that people
would care to read. In brief, my feelings
were profoundly moved, and | simply
obeyed an impulse to go and see what
would come out of it."
He arrived at the scene of the great
confagration while the ruins were yet
smoking, and every hour deepened tho
impressions of the great disaster upon his
mind. He spent days, and many nights
also, picking his way through the debris
encumbering the streets, while trying to
reproduce in imagination the scenes and
events Of the great fire. The idea of writ
ing u uoNN Ioh tue supJeCt suuueuly oc-
Cured to him, and Barriers Burned
Away" began to take a shadowy outline
in his mind.
He then began to write the story-chap-
ters of it in the cars and on steamboats,,
wherever he happened to be. The story
was first published as serial in The New
York Evangelist, and in 1879 it was pub
lished in book form at $1.75 per volume.
Up to the time of Mr.. Roes death the sale
had reached 1870 900 copies, and it is said
that the demand increases all the time. u