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She selected some of the most popular airs and wedded to them the poems which were the result of her own sorrow and domestic bereavement. Music thus immortalized her verse, and through life many of her sweet strains will be remem- bered. The following lines, "Pass Under the Rod," was one of Mrs. Shindler's most popular songs :
I saw a young bride in her beauty and pride, Bedecked in her snowy array, And the bright flush of joy mantled high on her cheek, And the future looked blooming and gay.
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And with woman's devotion she laid her fond heart On the shrine of idolatrous love, And she anchored her hopes to this perishing earth, By the chain which his tenderness wove. But I saw, when those heartstrings were bleeding and torn, And the chain had been severed in two;
She had changed her white robes for the sables of grief And her bloom for the paleness of woe, But the healer was there pouring balm on her heart And wiping the tears from her eyes; He strengthened the chain he had broken in two And fastened it firm to the skies. There had whispered a voice, twas the voice of her God : I love thee; I love thee ; pass under the rod.
I saw the young mother in tenderness bend, O'er the couch of her slumbering boy, And she kissed the soft lips as they murmured her name While the dreamer lay smiling in joy. Ah! sweet is the rosebud encircled in dew When its fragrance is flung on the air. So fresh and so bright to that mother he seemed, As he lay in his innocence there.
But I saw, when she gazed on that same lovely form, Pale as marble, and silent and cold; But paler and colder her beautiful boy, And the tale of her sorrow was told. But the healer was there who had stricken her heart And taken her treasure away,
To allure her to heaven as he placed it on high, And the mourners will sweetly obey. There had whispered a voice, twas the voice of her God: I love thee; I love thee; pass under the rod.
I saw a fond father and mother who leaned On the arms of a dear gifted son,
And the star in the future grew bright to their gaze, As they saw the proud place he had won; And the fast coming evening of life promised fair, And its pathway grew smooth to their feet, And the starlight of love grew bright at the end And the whisperings of fancy were sweet. And I saw them again bending low o'er the grave Where their heart's dearest hope had been laid. And the star had gone down in the darkness of night And the joy from their bosoms had fled. But the healer was there and his arms were around And he led them with tenderest care, And he showed them a star in the bright upper world, Twas their star shining brilliantly there, They had both heard a voice, twas the voice of their God: I love thee; I love thee; pass under the rod.
CHAPTER XVIII.
MRS. WILLIE FRANKLIN PRUIT-MRS. J. J. JARVIS-MISS LENA LEE CRAVENS-MISS MIRIAM MYERS- MRS. JOSEPHINE PUETT SPOONTS.
MRS. WILLIE FRANKLIN PRUIT. - In the "Poets and Poetry of Texas," published in 1885 by Sam H. Dixon, Mrs. Willie Franklin Pruit, then Miss Willie Franklin, is referred to as a writer in whom "Is discerned the poetic spirit," and as a "gifted young poet," whose verses inspired the hope that she might "enroll her name among the few real poets in America." Ten years have passed since this tribute was paid to the genius and potential powers of Mrs. Pruit, and these ten years have only served to increase the honest fervor of her biographer. The test of time has given broader com- pass to the voice of praise, and it has proved that the flat- tering prediction of the past, whether fully realized or not, was not the idle vaticination of a partial pen.
Mrs. Pruit is a native of Tennessee. Her family was closely identified with the social and political aristocracy of the State before the war, and, at its close, she moved to Texas and settled in Washington County. There, at the Baylor University, Mrs. Pruit's school education began, and it was continued and finished at the Waco Female College, and in her native State.
For many years before the Franklins came to Texas, their sympathies had gone out to its people in their heroic struggle for independence. These people were their country- men, but, tenderer tie than all, one of them was their near kinsman and a valiant actor in the struggle. This was the gallant Capt. John C. Hays, he who gave such yeoman serv- ice to the Republic in the hours of its greatest need. It will be remembered that his was the spirit that fired the intrepid
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scouts, who held the forefront of danger in times of greatest peril; that he it was, who, six years after Santa Anna's fall, brought on the fight that ended in the route of Woll and his invading hosts; that he it was, who made the Texas rangers a mighty bulwark between the frontier settlements of the West and their enemies beyond the Rio Grande; that it was he who raised and led the first regiment of Texans for active service in the war with Mexico-a war the outgrowth of the annexation of Texas to the other States. All these events, inseparably linked with the name of the famous Texas ranger, endeared the Franklins to the land for which he fought, and which he helped to make more glorious. Not surprising then that, when in later years the ties of the old home were sundered by convulsions of civil war, they should direct their steps to the land that to them was consecrated by such pathetic memories.
Prior to her marriage in 1887, Mrs. Pruit was a resident of Waco; after that event she moved to Fort Worth, her present home, to which city she has proved an accession of notable value. She is a worker in matters of municipal reform, and is an active participant in measures for the moral and physical comfort of the masses. One of the social schemes, born of modern philanthropy, with which she is closely iden- tified is fully set forth in the declared purposes of a society appropriately named "The Woman's Humane Association," of which she is the president. Its object is to provide needed benefits, both for individuals and for the community at large; in work of the latter class its most conspicuous achievement is the free distribution of pure drinking water throughout the city for both man and beast. In carrying out the design, several handsome stone fountains have been erected, which, apart from their usefulness, are attractive adornments of the city.
Mrs. Pruit's literary work indicates a versatile and cul- tured writer, and meets with ready acceptance from papers and periodicals noted for their critical exaction. Her contri- butions, both prose and verse, usually appear over the pseu- donym of Aylmer Ney. She is a member of the Texas
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Woman's Press Association, and at one of its late meetings read a poem that appears to have enraptured her audience and seems to have firmly fixed her title to a niche in the pantheon of Texas poets.
It is remarkable that in the twenty-five centuries between Sappho and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, so few women have achieved distinction in the domain of poetry, as compared with the number who have excelled in the other fields of polite learning. The present epoch of literary progressiveness seems, however, to have put a period to this reproach; women now climb with their brothers to the classic heights of Parnassus, and quaff with them deep draughts of its Cas- talian waters. And why should it not be so? Poetry is woman's peculiar province; it is the expression of pure thoughts in soft words that appeal to feeling and to fancy, and it is born of an inspiration that lurks familiarly in the heart of every cultured woman. In the ages gone by she closed her eyes to her peculiar work; in the age of her oppor- tunity she has opened them. Like the Galatea of Pygmalion, so poetically referred to in one of Mrs. Pruit's verses, she " slept in stone," she "woke to love."
MRS. J. J. JARVIS .- Ida Zan Zandt, the daughter of the Texas patriot and statesman, the Hon. Isaac Van Zandt, and the wife of Senator J. J. Jarvis, is one of the gifted wo- men of Texas who has made her noble life an idyl of duty. She was blest with a parentage of rare worth, and a mother of excellent judgment in the rearing and education of her children.
Her mother, Mrs. Isaac Van Zandt, was left a widow in 1847. Three years before the death of her father, and while he filled the position of minister to the United States from the infant Republic of Texas, Ida was born in Washington City.
Returning to Texas after two years' residence in Washing- ton, Mr. Van Zandt was a candidate for the office of Governor of the State, but died during the campaign, leaving five little children to be reared and educated by their mother. Mrs.
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Van Zandt was a noble woman, a Lipscomb by birth, and equal to the stern duties before her. Last March she cele- brated her seventy-ninth birthday in Fort Worth. Proud, indeed, must Mrs. Van Zandt feel of her distinguished daughter.
Mrs. Jarvis was given educational advantages at Franklin College, Nashville, Tennessee, but graduated at the age of sixteen from the Masonic Female Institute in Marshall, Texas. She was married to Mr. Jarvis, at that time holding the office of District Attorney, in 1866, living in Quitman until 1874, at which time her husband moved to Fort Worth near which place they have lived ever since. The Jarvis home, a splendid old-style mansion, is known for the unostentatious, judicious and noble hospitality which is dispensed there in the manner of the Southerner of the old régime. During the first six years of Mrs. Jarvis' married life while living in Quit- man in that isolation which the wife of a young lawyer must of necessity lead while her husband is absent on "the circuit" in the practice of his profession, she became the mother of several children, and the writer of her book of "Texas Poems," or the greater part of it. But it was not until the war was over that the poem "Thanksgiving" was written. She says of this : "That was the first poem I ever sent to an editor for publication, and he barely escaped arrest for printing it."
Her literary work is the finished production of a student, inspired by a touch from the wing of genius. Her "Texas Poems " are dedicated to her husband, Senator Jarvis. She is a member of the Christian Church, has taught for six years a large class of boys, from fifteen to twenty-one years of age, in Sunday School; has helped several young preachers to obtain an education ; has been a co-worker with her husband in building up Add-Ran Christian University, of which he has been president of the board of trustees for five or six years. Mrs. Jarvis has been president of the Ladies' Associated Charities of Fort Worth since its organization, and she is one of the executive committee of that beneficent organiza- tion, The Texas Students' Aid Association.
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MISS LENA LEE CRAVENS .- Saintly and beautiful beyond expression becomes that life which, chastened by "the bruis- ing flails of God's afflictions," turns to the divine inspirations of art and poesy for its daily consolations. Such is that of the pure-souled, young Lena Lee Cravens, who, though lead- ing a hidden life under the shadow of the cross, gives the radiant wings of hope and love to the children of her brain, her poems, paintings, and music.
As yet she has not published the first, nor exhibited the second, and her music is only for those who have the benison of her intimate friendship. But hers is not a name to be "written in water," and even if the child of genius, the gifted worker, dies in early life, like Keats, the work lives, goes on, and creates one of "those immortal names that are not born to die."
For Miss Cravens a brighter fate than that of Keats may be anticipated. With the consciousness of the possession of a gift not to be despised, must spring up a hope in the soul of one who, though living the most uneventful life, can find every day full of interest, a hope that, like that of Adelaide Proctor, another suffering soul, will tide her over the waves of apprehension and depression. Those were the cruel bil- lows that made dirge-like the song of her who sang: "I'm so tired, my heart and I," Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She who, deserves the title of "England's greatest woman poet."
Miss Cravens lives a life of retirement among her books, her music and her triune-art loves of poesy, song and painting, at her home in Whitesboro, Texas, where her distinguished father, Col. N. S. Cravens of the Confederate army, lived after his emigration to Texas from Georgia, and who died there in 1875, after having won the laurels of fadeless fame as a patriot, a soldier of stainless honor, a lawyer of ability in his native State, Georgia, and a State senator in the land of his adoption.
A direct descendant of that General Pierson who fought under Washington in the Revolutionary War, and tracing her lineage through an ancestry on both the paternal and ma- ternal sides of her house distinguished for intellect, character,
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education and refinement, Miss Cravens is all that might be expected from a child rocked in the cradle of family traditions.
MISS MIRIAM MYERS .- Miss Myers is a Jewess of Eng- lish descent and her father is a Rabbi. In her social and domestic life as well as in the discharge of her daily offices and duties she displays the warmth of attachment, the firm- ness of purpose and the strength of character that belong peculiarly to her remarkable race. Like the more alert and intellectual of her wonderful people, she has traveled much. No "pent-up Utica " could satisfy her eagerness in its desire for the world's progressive fields, no more than could the restive spirit of her great ancestor, the son of Terah, be con- fined within the "Ur of the Chaldees" or bound to the patriarchal cradle. Born at Melbourne in Australia, she successively lived in England, Canada, New York, Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia, and finally in Texas in the city of Waco which is now her home.
Miss Myers was educated in Montreal and New York city where her fine talents found their proper sphere in the realm of belles-lettres. Upon emerging from the schools, she formed literary engagements with the most prominent Jewish papers in the United States, embracing the American Israelite, of Cincinnati, the Reform Advocate, of Chicago, and the Hebrew Standard of New York, besides writing for the World, the Sun, the Recorder, Current Literature, and other first-class periodicals of the country. A competent critic, in passing upon her work, says of her that she "writes with ease, grace and strength," and in reference to her poetic composition, that she "excels in verse." Those familiar with Miss Myers' productions will heartily endorse this verdict, and those who enjoy the further privilege of her personal acquaintance will testify to her broad views and careful culture, and to the charms of her discourse always richly laden with the fruits of travel, of study and of reflection.
MRS. JOSEPHINE PUETT SPOONTS .- The poem " April," published in a number of the Confederate Veteran, gave its
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author, Mrs. Josephine Puett Spoonts, considerable recogni- tion among literary people. The production received favor- able editorial comment and elicited many inquiries. Gen. Marcus J. Wright, of the War Records office at Washington, D. C., and others, wrote flattering letters of congratulation to the talented author. There is an undercurrent, a vivid in- dication of latent force and feeling in Mrs. Spoonts' verse, that should leave its impress upon the pages devoted to Texas poetry. Still she has never been a voluminous writer, or, per- haps, not sufficiently free from other duties to identify herself in any way with regular literary work. The early years of her life were passed uneventfully amid the rural surroundings of Bell County. The songs she sings are reproductions of those to which she listened in her childhood, the echoes of na- ture in the old tangled forest, where every sunny bank was sweet with flowers and resonant with the droning music of the wild bee. The dreams of life were perchance ideal; the semi-hypnotic influences that environed her are to be traced in her verse, and add delicacy and beauty to the pages of her prose. Her literary taste is a direct inheritance from her father, who, through service in the Confederate army, became an invalid. Early in life Mrs. Spoonts sustained the loss of both parents. Her home is now in Fort Worth, where her husband, Mr. M. A. Spoonts, is engaged in the practice of law.
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CHAPTER XIX.
JOURNALISM IN TEXAS.
MRS. LYDIA STARR M'PHERSON-MRS. S. ISADORE MINER-MRS. HUGH NUGENT FITZGERALD-MRS. EVA LANCASTER- MRS. AURELIA HADLEY MOHL - MISS M. B. FENWICK -MISS BESSIE AGNES DWYER -MISS SARAH HARTMAN.
MRS. LYDIA STARR MCPHERSON .- From the puny "Gazetta" of the sixteenth century to the mammoth "Daily" of the present day, and all through the intervening cen-
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turies of its evolution from the monad to the giant, the newspaper has been an untiring agentin the diffusion of human knowledge, and, in the years of its later devel- opment, a powerful engine in the enforcement of human liberty. Legions of able workers have brought their best gifts to the altar of this humanizing and enlightening ma- chine, and among them, especially in more recent times, are enrolled the names of women from all the higher walks of life. Though the display of their intellectual powers may besome- thing new in this particular field of work, their faculties as writers are conspicuous in the literature of all civilized nations of both ancient and modern times. Twenty-five hundred years ago the Æolians were the exponents of Hellenic learn- ing, and Lesbos the principal seat of Æolian culture. In this classic island maids and matrons were not, like their prede- cessors, restricted to the ignoble duties of domestic life. They were active in all the intellectual pursuits of their countrymen; they were organized in bodies for literary ad- vancement ; under their influence and instruction were trained the best minds of that day, in fact, they gradually assumed the intellectual burdens of the people, and became the staff on which the nation leaned. The annals that have come down to us rarely mention the name of a man in connection with the culture of the Lesbians, and when, as Felton ob- serves, such mention is made it is due to the distinction, as is generally the case with the husbands of famous women, of his being the husband of his wife. To such a height of mental superiority had the application of the women raised them above their brothers that the latter, awakened by the jeers and jests of the surrounding nations, sought at last in sundry ways to discourage the unilateral progress, and thereby re- store the equilibrium of the sexes. The stage, among other means, was employed, and Aristophanes, the great comedy writer of the adjacent Republic of Athens, came to the rescue of his bewildered brethren in Lesbos. He wrote for their benefit the play called "Ecclesiazousa," or Women in Con- gress assembled, in which, with unsparing satire and in pas- sages aglow with sparkling wit, he describes his heroines
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arrayed in male attire and leagued together in conspiracy to usurp the government of their fathers. The great poet's production was wonderfully applauded, and has been ad- mired in all the ages since; but, although it quickened the men into something like intellectual life, it failed to allay the spirit of the women, or turn them away from the temples of learning in which they had so long been permitted to worship. From that day to this, a large number of the sisterhood of all ages and countries, when not restrained by the force of custom or law, have asserted their common heritage of mental gifts and multiplied them by all the means within their reach. In all the strata of human learning, from the surface to the primitive rocks of its foundation, they are found delving after the riches of knowledge. Thus they have forced the gates of journalism, and are everywhere engaged in the broad field that it opens to them. Among these is Mrs. Lydia Starr McPherson, of Sherman, Texas.
She is a native of Ohio, from which State she removed with her parents to Iowa, where she was married to David Hun- ter and became the mother of five children, of whom three are sons, all practical printers. Her husband having died, she entered into second nuptials with Granville McPherson. As- sociated with him, as assistant editor of The Oklahoma Star, she began her journalistic career at Caddo, in the Indian Terri- tory, in 1874. Her connection with this paper continued two years, during which her experience was enriched by many in- cidents of thrilling interest. In 1877 she came into Texas and established The Whitesboro Democrat at the town of the same name in the county of Grayson. Two years later she moved her paper to Sherman, the county-seat, where, under the name of The Sherman Democrat, she has continued to edit it to the present time. It has a daily and weekly edition, and is published under the direction of her sons, Granville and Chester Hunter, who are its owners.
At the time of her advent into Texas, Mrs. McPherson, was the only lady who owned and edited a newspaper in the State, and this anomalous condition drew from the press a general fusillade of humorous and pointed paragraphs. Mrs.
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McPherson, however, was but little disturbed by these playful assaults, and continued to advance in the face of the enemy. She became a member of the Press Association, was elected its corresponding secretary, and a few years later was sent as one of its delegates to the World's Press convention as- sembled at Cincinnati. In 1885 she was appointed honorary commissioner to the World's Exposition at New Orleans, and in the year following she was appointed postmistress at Sher- man, and held the position for four years. At the expiration of her term of service she began an extended tour through the Western and Pacific States, during which she wrote en- tertaining letters of travel for the columns of The Sherman Democrat.
Though a widow for the second time, Mrs. McPherson has not permitted the sorrows of her double bereavement to de- press or diminish the energy for which she is distinguished. She has written and published a book of poems entitled " Reullura," and she has now ready for the press two novels, and another book in verse; and, in the midst of all this literary work, she has never ceased to be an active contribu- tor to the paper she founded, besides collecting and mould- ing material for other works she has in contemplation.
In her religious beliefs Mrs. McPherson subscribes to the · doctrines of Theosophy, a system which, as its name implies, makes the disciple wise in the knowledge of God. The theoso- phist, through processes of his own, attains a spiritual con- dition that admits him to a closer communion with the Source and Dispenser of all light, whereby truth is received as a direct revelation, and the soul is exalted to the functions of a teacher and interpreter of the divine laws. In the realms of this philosophy, Mrs. McPherson's thoughts love to dwell, and in the contemplation of its sublime lessons her restless mind finds the only repose in which it is indulged during the mellowing age of her active and eventful life.
MRS. S. ISADORE MINER .- The only woman in Texas who has ever been honored by a temporary seat in the presidential chair of an assembly composed exclusively of men is Mrs. S.
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Isadore Miner. The Texas Press Association was the source of this compliment, and her reading of an appreciated paper before that body was the occasion.
Mrs. Miner came to Texas two years ago ; prior to that, with the exception of a two years' newspaper engagement at Toledo, Ohio, she had passed her whole life in Michigan, of which State she is a native. On arriving in Texas she im- mediately took service on the staff of the Dallas Daily News and the Semi-Weekly Dallas and Galveston News, editing the society columns of the first, and the Woman's and Children's Department of the other. Vastly important is this dual service on which she hasentered, and rare must be the powers that can evoke the rich results that lie buried in its field of labor. Social functions, in their progressive course, are vital factors in society's resistless evolution, and they are often in- fluenced by the critic's timely counsel. A word of wisdom wisely given is a grain that falls in good soil and brings forth savory fruit. No less vital in its influence is the guiding hand that leads the infant's feet and holds to infant lips the food that he should eat. The modern plans for children's culture have opened up exhaustless fields from which to glean the nourishment proper for tender and expanding minds. A mental diet wisely chosen and skillfully prepared builds up in the young a nature pure, strong, and free from guile. In both her spheres of action, Mrs. Miner has thus far displayed the aptitudes that are only found in minds endowed with native powers of observation and enlarged by philosophic reflec- tions upon the experiences and vicissitudes of life. In this light her future work has the promise of an abundant reward.
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