The Dakota chief. (Gann Valley, Buffalo County, S.D.) 18??-1913, 1895-01-31
THE LAND OF ACADIA
,mMORTALIZED BY CONGFEL.
LOW IN "EvANGEllNE."
flow the Great Poet Came to Write
the Story-A Tragedy of the Colo
,;al Wars-The Acadia of the Pres.
ont Day.
A Pathetic Story.


The investigation of the literary orr
gins Of various productions is now be-
ing prosecuted at so lively a rate that
,bo critics are faiu to go into the by
WAYS and hedges Of literature for the
n1rposc Of as%certaining how the great
masterpieces Of our own and other
languages were produced. Anecdotes
and "reminiscences accounting for the
origin of various literary productions
orc always acceptable and generally
instructive from the fact thai they
show that literary works are not, as Il
rule. Inspirations. but rather accre-
tons: that is to say, after the primal
lv little it is added to until the finished
product is achieved.
Somewhat in this way did Longfel-
lows "Evangeline" have it's origin. AS
/ the story goes, a gentleman from Salem
was once dining with Hawthorne and
| Longfellow, when he entertained the
poet with an account of how he had
been e~ndeavoring to interest Haw-
thorne in a legend of Acadia. A young
maiden. he said, in the hurry and on
fusion of the enforced embarkatiOn,
had been separated from her lover.
The years went by and constantly she
sought him. but not until they were
both old did the twain meet again.
The gentleman, whose name has not
been preserved, said that he had recon-
mended the subject to Hawthorne as
4 tit topic for a novel, but that the lat
ter did not see his way clear to put it
in literary shape, having other work on
hand at the time. LOngfellow caught
at the subject. and asked if it would be
agreeable for him to use it in n poem.
The gentleman cheerfully consented,
and Hawthorne, too, willingly turned
over the subject to LOngfellow for
poetical treatment. This, it is stated
on apparently good authority, was the
origin of "Evangcline," but this ane
dotc gives no idea of the tanner in
which the subject must have spread out
before the mind of the poet as he was
working it up in all its fullness of de-
tail for the eyes of his readers.
The story of "Evangeline' is by no
means the only literary relic of Area
die. or. as the English call it, Acadia,
for among the $4,000 present French
Inhabitants of that region there still
Finger many legends of the day when
the French residents were ruthlessly
driven from the homes they had found
led for themselves, from the farms they
had taken pains to render fertile and
valuable by the labor Of their hands.
Wa remarkable pertinacity do the
Trench of Nova Scotia cling to the
language. the dress, the manners and
cuStoms of their ancestors, and travel
cNy assure us that when among them
the impression is strong that one is in
France, but in a France grown old,
the France of 200 years ago, the Brit
tany or Normandy of the days when
Louis le Grand strutted along the
walks Of Fontainebleau and imagined
himself the greatest of monarchs who
had ever lived. For it is a curious fact
that among cOloniStS separated from
thc mother country there have fingered
relies of observance in unimpaired
eXactitude just as they were brought
lfom the mother country. The mother