The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1907-1917, 1912-12-19

E. Watson I find in it a strong and
beautiful tribute to a group of South
ern writer's who are being forgotten
in these turbulent days, when men
and women find no time for the fam
lily library, and when the books of
men who first gave to the South her
right to claim the culture of the ma
tion are moth-eaten On Darkroom
shelves.
Mr.. Watson entities his book
"Prose Miscellanies." 1t was pub
1ished in Thomson by the Jefferso-
nian Publishing Company, and in
many respects meets the call sounded
by a daughter of the Confederacy in
Washington the other day, when she
justly claimed that the history and
romance and literature of the old
South was being lost through the
lack of interest on the part of those
whose business it should be to keep
ever alive the memory of the great
men of the cavalier time Not long
ago an audience Of women here were
held spellbound with interest by the
discourse of a young clergyman who
made the same appeal, that the
women Of the cultural organizations
make sure the perpetuation Of the
achievement of men who gave to the
South her most scholarly sons.
In two chapters, the one ga For
gotten Scholar the other Random
Talk on Literary Topics" Mr.. Wat
son makes a valuable contribution to
literature not only in the sense of
bringing to their place Of dignity the
Southern men who have never been
fully known for their worth, but in
his random reference to the forgot
ten thoughts and sayings of the great
English and American writer's being
forgotten. Nothing is more curious
than the manner in which the public
allots credit to authors. 1t would
seem that in many instances the fate
of the literary worker is dependent
upon caprice" truthfulIy writes Mr.
Watson.
The term dependent upon ca
price" coming from him, however,
sets me to thinking. When in this
turbulent time Mr.. Watson has been
helping so directly to make, did he
have time to sit down and compile
the beautifully rational utterances
which enrich many pages Of prose
MiscelIanies? They have the pla-
cidity and sweetness Of having been
written in some Peaceful Valley"
somewhere, and could not have ema-
mated from the same atmosphere
which must have vibrated more than
once in the last few years, when the
writer of France, Napoleon and JEFF
fers0n forgot his great literary call
ing and shut the sunshine out Of his
spirit, out of his thoughts, and used
muddy ink to write with
| hope that prose Miscellanies'
comes as the dawn after the dark
ness, and that the impression it
makes in my mind as I read it of the
"calm after the Storm" will be sus-
tanned by revival of Mr.. Watson s
real literary career which he has
wandered from right waywardly, a
fact which has tried the tolerance of
those who have so willingly and
proudly recorded his genius in the
past
The impulse is to scold on, but my
eyes fall this moment on that page
in his new book which shows the
dear face of Uncle Remus, and oppo-
site that wonderful appreciation Mr..
Watson expressed of him when in
the opening lines of a tribute he
wrote: And so the pale messenger
that never tires, never pities-the
messenger that called Sappho away
from her grief; the messenger who
led Byron to where he could sleep,
and Keats RI WHARF M Clifford cOuId