N° XIX KENNETH GRAHAME 1856 TO one who has enjoyed the humor, goodnatured satire and general outdoor breezi ness of Kenneth Grahame's books would ever suspect the man behind the book to be a prisoner at the desk like the rest of us, a man of facts and figures, whose findings affect every banker and business man in the commercial world. Mr. Grahame, whose "Golden Age" and "Dream Days" delight thousands who have not forgotten they once were children, is none other than the presumably staid and sedate secretary of the Bank of England! His several books appeared in the following order: "Pagan Papers," 1893; "The Golden Age," 1895; "Dream Days" and "The Headswoman," 1898. "Wind in the Willows" is the author's latest production, and is convincing proof that his heart like "the land," as Grover Cleveland once put it, "remains in its place." Mr. Grahame was married, in 1899, to a daughter of the late Robert Thompson, of Edinburgh. Speaking of the first acceptance of his literary work by the astute Henley, he says: "One of my little meteorites, whirling around in edi torial space, collided by sheer accident with the 'Scots Observer,' and Mr. Henley at once took all I had and asked for more. He was the first editor who gave me a full and a frank and a free show, and I should be a pig if I ever forgot it.' Of himself he further writes: "I am Scottish, of course; full-blooded, too, but my country and I parted early, with feelings of mutual respect. Though I was born in Edinburgh, my people were a Glasgow family of old standing-highly respectable burghers, as Glasgow folk are wont to be. In spite of their respectability, they nevertheless once produced a poet-my great-granduncle, James Grahame, author of "The Sabbath,' etc." Byron touched up the Reverend James in his "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," and seems to have frightened Kenneth away, for the nephew confesses he never read his uncle's poems. Mr. Grahame left Scotland at the age of six, or thereabouts. At nine he carried his Scottish accent to an English boarding-school, and there had it kicked out of him. The education he there received "was of the fine old crusted order, with all the classics in the top bin," and he admits it "would have mightily shocked the author of "The Sabbath.'" During his school-days in Oxfordshire and his holidays in Berkshire, he remained innocent of all knowledge of cities, "heartily de spising town-bred folk." Since then he has been pretty steadily engaged in earning a living, a process for which he admits he has little liking. While Mr. Grahame has written several other popular books, his name is oftenest mentioned in connection with "Golden Age," a book which seems to possess a charmed life, having run through edition after edition. With Maxfield Parrish as illustrator, the book has entered upon a fresh career, with a new generation of admiring readers. "Golden Age" and its sequel, "Dream Days," are written in a charmingly reminiscent style, recalling the earlier chapters of our own Donald G. Mitchell's "Dream Life," but with less of sentiment and more of humor. While the author has so far succeeded in divesting himself of mannishness as to think as a child, yet, between the lines of his dialogue, he writes as a man; and hence his child-books are mostly enjoyed by children of larger growth. Its humor is too clever to be fully enjoyed by the child-reader, and its sentiment is just a little too precocious to find full response in the undeveloped soul of childhood. Nothing Mr. Grahame has written is cleverer than his naïve presentation of the egoistic attitude of the small boy toward the stupid insistence of his elders on the performance of certain tasks -tasks which, in his judgment, are irrelevant |