The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1909-10-19

S~~- I11n TIE Sol1tieSl OIL
- minstrels who caught
his music from the whispering pines"
Such was the privilege of the writer.
II was in the cool quiet of the Smith
sonian, consecrated to literary and
scientific research and made sacred by
the presence in the past of Henry,
Baird and Langley and where politics
DO not enter. A friend there brought
in DR.. Marcus Mitchell Benjamin, the
co-worker and biogIapher of Boner.
Or. Benjamin, a man of letters, who
with Stedman, Glider and Boner was
IL member of the Authors Club in New
York. and now editor of publications
Of the national museum, says of Boner
that he awaits resurrection into fame
that will come as surely as it did to
Poe. tht greatest OF all American
poets.' He calls Boner the first mar
Of creative genius who has lived in
North Carolina.'
To hear Boner read by DR.. Benja-
min is to be startled into a sense of
our poets power. We all have read
lnese little things because a North
carolina man wrote them" but how
few Of us have thought it worth While
t. study, to probe, to find the strength
and the sweetness beneath as we
should do if the work of a writer from
the North or from England were put
into our hands. Some of US at homo:
are too apt to think that no good
hing can come out Of Nazareth. We
nothing fine" which is
brought forth upon North Carolina
soil until a critic from outside informs
US that it is worth while! Others of
us are too apt to think that all or
our products and belongings are the
frst. great, and only because they
originate down home.
We are familiar with the facts of
Jioner's outer life: that he was born
at Salem, N. c.. i'll 1915; that his
schooling was had there; that he
learned the printers trade: that he
worked on newspapers in Salem and
in ASheVille; that he was reading clerk
in the North Carolina Constitutional
Convention in 1868; that he was chief
Jerk in the North Carolina House Of
Representatives in 1S69-'70; that he
was in the United States Government
Printing Office from about that time
ill 1886. and again III the last years
Of his life.
In 1888 he published Whispering
mes" From about that time his best
life began. His work received recogni-
lion from his literary friends at the
North who never failed him through
the storm and stress thai followed.
Among these friends was Stedman,
who. when BOner was removed from
office for political reasons, secured for
hin cOngenial employment on his
4roat Library Of American Litera-
1ure.' Later, this same friend was in
fluential in placing Boner on the staff
IF the century Dictionary, then IN
course Of preparation.
While engaged in this work in New
York, Boner voiced the ever crying
need Of his nature to express himself
in verse. Though denied intercourse
With the green things of earth, with
"attle and creeping things, even with
The stars whose twinkling is put out
by electric lights down in the canons
calIed streets, yet he saw the confu-
sion and heard the roar of Gotham
not as the Ommon ma but as GOD
gives it to the poet to see and hear.
He wrote a number of City
the best known of which is Broad
way at Noon" To the average man
who has stood in the shadow Of old
Trinity and listened to the roar of
this '~tOrrential humanity" these lines
"Xpress what he feels without know
my because he lacks the finer ear and
Eye Of the poet. Boner through the
mists and the roar of this niagara
OF Streets" heard and saw the agony
ct wrecked souls passing, ~plunging,
"bysmally through this Broadway.
Niagara of streets. See this and know
ne secret Of New YOrk-the spell
that never
7 an he resisted or forgot. the flood
u lofrentlal humanity, that ever
is counter-currented, yet seems to
sweep
Toward you passes, plunges, and is
AoZSmally, still followed by the deep
ana Surglng stream wherein are swift
ly toSt
me faces, faces. faces, Not the roar
VI ocean on her widest crags could
drown
Inc tumult Of this torrent and the
prey