The Washington herald., 1912-11-10

meshed in the silken cobwsbs of the ro-
nance Of Tho Trail Of the Lonesome
Pino," by John Fox. Jr.
June is the embodiment Of the spirit
Of the daisy hecked pine encircled slopes.
whose fresh blue tints are nourished un-
der skies more Italian than the far
famed cerulean blue than canopIes sunny
Italy. The stars which shed their ra-
dance over Lonesome Cove are never
obscured; the nights June spent commun-
ing beneath the stalwart pine were never
dark, while the effulgence Of her sun was
ever in equipose-never distressing. Her
habitat was an earthly paradise; II 1t
were not. tho feathered songsters that
she heard there would not have fingered
to laden the air with their eternal song.
Poetry and practicability never mar
ried happily. but the poet and the more
practical adventurer who spends a vaca-
ton among the Virginia hills will find
much to delight them. When Messrs.
Klaw Erianger decided to have q
play constructed from the story Mr.. Fox
wrote. they commissioned Eugene Walter
to do the work. especially requesting him
to emphasize dramatically the beautiful
spirit which permeated the pages Of the
hook and forget the grim and tragic
features OF the feud. Walter went into
the fastness Of the hills and met the
primitive folk who dwelt there; he trav-
ersed the mountain trails: he fished
In the mountain brooks; he was looked
upon with suspicion as a government spy
seeking out Illicit distillers and stills.
but in spite of early suspicious the dis
trust OF the mountaineers, Walter ad
mits he found the people delightful.
Their real characteristics their fearless
honesty, primitiveness and clannish hate.
he says, were simply concomitant with
the Spirit that created the everlasting
hills. Walter realized that alone in the
mountains, in the primeval forest, in the
cabins of the mountaineers he was III
the presence at all times of life's most
joyous secrets-fath in the good Of every
thing. and an adherence Of everything
that was sham.
For six weeks Walter daIlied in the
mountains. seeking all the time to dis
cover a girl exactly the counterpart of
Fox's delightfully."- ingenious heroine and
to secure a dramatic foothold to start
his play upon. Nine weeks passed: he
was getting insistent letters from New
York, brought by the mountain mail car
rier, asking how the play was progress
ing-he had not started a line-the letters
became annoying, but he pursued the
even tenor of his way waiting. as he put
it, for the psychological moment which
comes to poets and painters alike-the
moment that marks the beginning of
the annealing process of the intuitive
thought into concrete form. Suddenly
a cup OF mountain coffee and corn pone,
the long wished-for thought came TO
him. and calling to his secretary the
dramatist began debating his play. For
nine hours Walter kept up a steady
flow Of words. and managed to get
through the first act and part of the
second. The day following was spent in
finishing the second act, the third day
in revising his dictation. and then he
turned his back on typewriter and secre-
tary and started a second period of
mental hibernation. The secretary had
fondly hoped that when Walter had
started and finished the first and Sec
ond acts, he would keep on. But Wal
ter was IN q dilemma; he realized that
the real cause Of the feud was not he
bitterness existing between the rival clans
Of the Falins and Tollivers, but the love
June had suddenly conceived for an out
sider-one who was jealously looked
upon by the young mountaineers as a
q