MARY R. S. ANDREWS

Mrs. Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews, short-story writer and novelist, was born at Mobile, Alabama, in 1860, but she was brought to Lexington, Kentucky, in September, 1861, when her father, Rev. Jacob S. Shipman, an Episcopal clergyman, was chosen rector of Christ Church. When six years old she was sent to Christ Church Seminary, the church's school, conducted by Rev. Silas Totten and his daughters. One of these daughters tells with a smile to-day that "May" Shipman's first story, written at the age of seven, was upon her dog, "Shep." When thirteen years of age she discovered that the older girls in the school were studying French, when she was not, and she went to her father with the request that she be permitted to join the class. But the rector's question, "May, would you put in your furniture before you built your walls?" sent her back to her Latin and mathematics without further protest. She attended the school for eleven years, and at it received her education, never having attended any other institution. On November 26, 1877, when the future writer was seventeen years of age, her father accepted the rectorship of Christ Church, New York, and the family shortly afterwards removed to that city. She has been in Kentucky but twice since: five years after her departure, and about ten years ago. But that she has not forgotten her Kentucky home is evinced in the signed copies of her books which have found their way to the Blue Grass country and in her letters to former friends. On the last day of December, 1884, Miss Shipman married William Shankland Andrews, now associate justice of the supreme court of New York. Mrs. Andrews spends her summers in the Canadian woods, and the winters at her home in Syracuse, New York. Her first novel, Vive L'Empereur (New York, 1902), a story of the king of Rome, was followed by A Kidnapped Colony (New York, 1903), with Bermuda as the background. Bob and the Guides (New York, 1906), was the experiences of a boy, "Bob," with the French guides of the Canadian woods who pursue caribou. A Good Samaritan (New York, 1906), has been called the best story ever printed in McClure's Magazine, in which form it first appeared. The Perfect Tribute (New York, 1906), a quasi-true story of Lincoln and the lack of enthusiasm with which the crowd received his Gettysburg speech, adorned with a love episode at the end, is Mrs. Andrews's finest thing so far. This little tale has made her famous, and stamped her as one of the best American writers of the short-story. It was originally printed in Scribner's Magazine for July, 1906. Her other books are: The Militants (New York, 1907), a collection of stories, several of which are set in Kentucky, and all of them inscribed to her father in beautiful words; The Better Treasure (Indianapolis, 1908), is a charming Christmas story, with a moral attached; The Enchanted Forest and Other Stories (New York, 1909), a group of stories first told to her son and afterwards set down for other people's sons; The Lifted Bandage (New York, 1910), a most unpleasant, disagreeable tale as may well be imagined; The Courage of the Commonplace (New York, 1911), a yarn of Yale and her ways, one of the author's cleverest things; The Counsel Assigned (New York, 1912), another story of Lincoln, this time as the young lawyer, is not greatly inferior to The Perfect Tribute. Mrs. Andrews's latest volume, The Marshal (Indianapolis, 1912), is her first really long novel. It is a story of France, somewhat in the manner of her first book Vive L'Empereur, but, of course, much finer than that work of her 'prentice years. It has been highly praised in some quarters, and rather severely criticized in others. At any rate it has not displaced The Perfect Tribute as her masterpiece. That little story, with A Good Samaritan, The Courage of the Commonplace, and Crowned with Glory and Honor, fairly entitle Mrs. Andrews to the first and highest place among Kentucky women writers of the short-story. She has attained a higher note in a most difficult art than any other woman Kentucky has produced; and it is only right and just that her proper position be allotted her in order that she may occupy it; which she will do with a consensus of opinion when her Kentucky life is more widely heralded.

Bibliography. American Magazine (May, 1909); Scribner's Magazine (September, 1911; August, 1912).

THE NEW SUPERINTENDENT[24]

[From The Courage of the Commonplace (New York, 1911)]

Three years later the boy graduated from the Boston "Tech." As his class poured from Huntington Hall, he saw his father waiting for him. He noted with pride, as he always did, the tall figure, topped with a wonderful head—a mane of gray hair, a face carved in iron, squared and cut down to the marrow of brains and force—a man to be seen in any crowd. With that, as his own met the keen eyes behind the spectacles, he was aware of a look which startled him. The boy had graduated at the very head of his class; that light in his father's eyes all at once made two years of work a small thing.

"I didn't know you were coming, sir. That's mighty nice of you," he said, as they walked down Boylston Street together, and his father waited a moment and then spoke in his usual incisive tone.

"I wouldn't have liked to miss it, Johnny," he said. "I don't remember that anything in my life has ever made me as satisfied as you have to-day."

With a gasp of astonishment the young man looked at him, looked away, looked at the tops of the houses, and did not find a word anywhere. His father had never spoken to him so; never before, perhaps, had he said anything as intimate to any of his sons. They knew that the cold manner of the great engineer covered depths, but they never expected to see the depths uncovered. But here he was, talking of what he felt, of character, and honor, and effort.

"I've appreciated what you have been doing," the even voice went on. "I talk little about personal affairs. But I'm not uninterested; I watch. I was anxious about you. You were a more uncertain quantity than Ted and Harry. Your first three years at Yale were not satisfactory. I was afraid you lacked manliness. Then came—a disappointment. It was a blow to us—to family pride. I watched you more closely, and I saw before that year ended that you were taking your medicine rightly. I wanted to tell you of my contentment, but being slow of speech, I—couldn't. So"—the iron face broke for a second time into a whimsical grin—"so I offered you a motor. And you wouldn't take it. I knew, though you didn't explain, that you feared it would interfere with your studies. I was right?" Johnny nodded. "Yes. And your last year at college was—was all I could wish. I see now that you needed a blow in the face to wake you up—and you got it. And you waked." The great engineer smiled with clean pleasure. "I have had"—he hesitated—"I have had always a feeling of responsibility to your mother for you—more than for the others. You were so young when she died that you seem more her child. I was afraid I had not treated you right well—that it was my fault if you failed." The boy made a gesture—he could not very well speak. His father went on: "So when you refused the motor, when you went into engineers' camp that first summer, instead of going abroad, I was pleased. Your course here has been a satisfaction, without a drawback—keener, certainly, because I am an engineer, and could appreciate, step by step, how well you were doing, how much you were giving up to do it, how much power you were gaining by that long sacrifice. I've respected you through these years of commonplace, and I've known how much more courage it meant in a pleasure-loving lad such as you than it would have meant in a serious person such as I am—such as Ted and Harry are, to an extent, also." The older man, proud and strong and reserved, turned on his son such a shining face as the boy had never seen. "That boyish failure isn't wiped out, Johnny, for I shall remember it as the corner-stone of your career, already built over with an honorable record. You've made good. I congratulate and I honor you."

The boy never knew how he got home. He knocked his shins badly on a quite visible railing, and it was out of the question to say a single word. But if he staggered, it was with an overload of happiness, and if he was speechless and blind, the stricken faculties were paralyzed with joy. His father walked beside him and they understood each other. He reeled up the streets contented.

That night there was a family dinner, and with the coffee his father turned and ordered fresh champagne opened.

"We must have a new explosion to drink to the new superintendent of the Oriel mine," he said. Johnny looked at him, surprised, and then at the others, and the faces were bright with the same look of something which they knew and he did not.

"What's up?" asked Johnny. "Who's the superintendent of the Oriel mine? Why do we drink to him? What are you all grinning about, anyway?" The cork flew up to the ceiling, and the butler poured gold bubbles into the glasses, all but his own.

"Can't I drink to the beggar, too, whoever he is?" asked Johnny, and moved his glass and glanced up at Mullins. But his father was beaming at Mullins in a most unusual way, and Johnny got no wine. With that Ted, the oldest brother, pushed back his chair and stood and lifted his glass.

"We'll drink," he said, and bowed formally to Johnny, "to the gentleman who is covering us all with glory, to the new superintendent of the Oriel mine, Mr. John Archer McLean," and they stood and drank the toast. Johnny, more or less dizzy, more or less scarlet, crammed his hands in his pockets and stared and turned redder, and brought out interrogations in the nervous English which is acquired at our great institutions of learning.

"Gosh! are you all gone dotty?" he asked. And "is this a merry jape?" And "Why, for cat's sake, can't you tell a fellow what's up your sleeve?" While the family sipped champagne and regarded him.

"Now, if I've squirmed for you enough, I wish you'd explain—father, tell me!" the boy begged.

And the tale was told by the family, in chorus, without politeness, interrupting freely. It seemed that the president of the big mine needed a superintendent, and wishing young blood and the latest ideas, had written to the head of the Mining Department in the School of Technology, to ask if he would give him the name of the ablest man in the graduating class—a man to be relied on for character as much as brains, he specified, for the rough army of miners needed a general at their head almost more than a scientist. Was there such a combination to be found, he asked, in a youngster of twenty-three or twenty-four, such as would be graduating at the "Tech?" If possible, he wanted a very young man—he wanted the enthusiasm, he wanted the athletic tendency, he wanted the plus-strength, he wanted the unmade reputation which would look for its making to hard work in the mine. The letter was produced and read to the shamefaced Johnny. "Gosh!" he remarked at intervals, and remarked practically nothing else. There was no need. They were so proud and so glad that it was almost too much for the boy who had been a failure three years ago.

On the urgent insistence of every one, he made a speech. He got to his six-feet-two slowly, and his hand went into his trousers as usual. "Holy mackerel," he began—"I don't call it decent to knock the wind out of a man and then hold him up for remarks. They all said in college that I talked the darnedest hash in the class, anyway. But you will have it, will you? I haven't got anything to say, so's you'd notice it, except that I'll be blamed if I see how this is true. Of course I'm keen for it—Keen! I should say I was! And what makes me keenest, I believe, is that I know it's satisfactory to Henry McLean." He turned his bright face to his father. "Any little plugging I've done seems like thirty cents compared to that. You're all peaches to take such an interest, and I thank you a lot. Me, the superintendent of the Oriel mine! Holy mackerel!" gasped Johnny, and sat down.