Mrs. Eva Wilder (McGlasson) Brodhead, novelist and short-story writer, was born at Covington, Kentucky, in 187-. Her parents were not of Southern origin, her father having been born in Nova Scotia, and her mother at Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She was educated in New York City and in her native town of Covington. She began to write when but eighteen years of age, and a short time thereafter her first novel appeared, Diana's Livery (New York, 1891). This was set against a background most alluring: the Shaker settlement at Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, into which a young man of the world enters and falls in love with a pretty Shakeress. Her second story, An Earthly Paragon (New York, 1892), which was written in three weeks, ran through Harper's Weekly before being published in book form. It was a romance of the Kentucky mountains, laid around Chamouni, the novelist's name for Yosemite, Kentucky. It was followed by a novelette of love set amidst the salt-sea atmosphere of an eastern watering place, Ministers of Grace (New York, 1894). Hildreth, the scene of this little story, is anywhere along the Jersey coast from Atlantic City to Long Branch. Ministers of Grace also appeared serially in Harper's Weekly, and when it was issued in book form Col. Henry Watterson called the attention of Richard Mansfield to it as a proper vehicle for him, and the actor promptly secured the dramatic rights, hoping to present it upon the stage; but his untimely death prevented the dramatization of the tale under highly favorable auspices. It was the last to be published under the name of Eva Wilder McGlasson, as this writer was first known to the public, for on December 5, 1894, she was married in New York to Mr. Henry C. Brodhead, a civil and mining engineer of Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania. Mrs. Brodhead's next novelette, One of the Visconti (New York, 1896), the background of which was Naples, the hero being a young Kentuckian and the heroine of the old and famous Visconti family, was issued by the Scribner's in their well-known Ivory Series of short-stories. Her last Kentucky novel, Bound in Shallows (New York, 1896), originally appeared in Harper's Bazar. That severe arbiter of literary destinies, The Nation, said of this book: "No such work as this has been done by any American woman since Constance Fenimore Woolson died." It was founded on material gathered at Burnside, Kentucky, where Mrs. Brodhead spent two summers. Her most recent work, A Prairie Infanta (Philadelphia, 1904), is a Colorado juvenile, first published in The Youth's Companion. Aside from her books, Mrs. Brodhead won a wide reputation as a short-story writer and maker of dialect verse. More than fifty of her stories have been printed in the publications of the house of Harper, the publishers of four of her books; in The Century, Scribner's, and other leading periodicals. Many of her admirers hold that the short-story is her especial forte. Five of them may be mentioned as especially well done: Fan's Mammy, A Child of the Covenant, The Monument to Corder, The Eternal Feminine, and Fair Ines. She has written much dialect verse which appeared in the Harper periodicals, The Century, Judge, Puck, and other magazines. Neither her short-stories nor her verse has been collected and issued in book form. Since her marriage Mrs. Brodhead has traveled in Europe a great deal, and in many parts of the United States, traveled until she sometimes wonders whether her home is in Denver or New York, and, although she is in the metropolis more than she is in the Colorado capital, her legal residence is Denver, some distance from the mining town of Brodhead, named in honor of her husband's geological discoveries and interests. In 1906 she was stricken with a very severe illness, followed by her physician's absolute mandate of no literary work until her health should be reËstablished, which has been accomplished but recently. She has published but a single story since her sickness, Two Points of Honor, which appeared in Harper's Weekly for July 4, 1908. At the present time Mrs. Brodhead is quite well enough to resume work; and the next few years should witness her fulfilling the earnest of her earlier novels and stories, firmly fixing her fame as one of the foremost women writers of prose fiction yet born on Kentucky soil.

Bibliography. Harper's Weekly (September 3, 1892); The Book-buyer (September, 1896).

THE RIVALS[69]

[From Ministers of Grace (New York, 1894)]

As the days merged towards the end of August, Hildreth was packed to the very gates. The wiry yellow grasses along the neat walks were trampled into powder. The very sands, for all the effacing fingers of the tides, seemed never free of footprints, and by day and night the ocean promenade, the interior of the town, lake-sides, hotels, and the surf itself, were a press of holiday folk.

In these times Mr. Ruley seldom went forth in his rolling-chair, except early of a morning, when the beach was yet way-free, and the sands unfrequented save for a few barelegged men, who, with long wooden rakes, cleaned up the sea-verge for the day.

Sometimes Wade pushed the chair. But since the night when he gave Elizabeth the honeysuckles he had in some measure avoided the old preacher's small circle. There had been, on that occasion, a newness of impulse in his spirit which made him feel the advisability of keeping himself out of harm's way, however sweet that way might seem. Graham was the favored suitor. He, Wade, having no chance for the rose, could at least withhold his flesh from the thorn.

"So," said Gracie Gayle, "you're out of the running?"

"Ruled off," smiled Wade.

"Don't you make any mistakes," wisely admonished Miss Gayle. "I've seen her look at him, and I've seen her look at you."

"This is most surprising," indicated Wade, with a feigned accent. "You will pardon me, Gracie, if I scarcely credit your statement."

"Be sarcastic if you want to," said Gracie. "If you knew anything at all, you'd know that straws show which way the wind blows. When a woman regards a man with a kind of flat, frank sincerity, it's because her heart's altogether out of his reach. When she looks around him rather than at him, it's because——" Gracie lifted her shoulders suggestively.

"Grace," breathed Wade, gravely, "I am hurt to the quick to see you developing the germs of what painfully resembles thought. For Heaven's and your sex's sake, pause while there is yet time! Women who form the pernicious habit of thinking lose in time the magic key which unlocks the hearts of men."

Grace sniffed.

"Men's hearts are never locked," she said, sagaciously. "The heavier the padlock the smoother the hinges." She shook her crisp curls as she tripped away with her airy, mincing, soubrette tread.

Notwithstanding the inconsequent nature of this talk, it set Wade to thinking. Perhaps he had carried his principle of self-effacement too far. At all events, when he next saw Miss Ruley, he went up to her and stopped for a moment's conversation.

It chanced to be on the sands. Elizabeth was sitting by herself under the arch of a lace-hung sunshade, which cast shaking little shadows on her face, sprigging it with such delicate darkness as lurk in the misty milk of moss-agate.

"You are going in, then?" she asked, smiling up rather uncertainly, and noticing his flannel attire. "Mr. Graham is already very far out. That is he, I think, taking that big breaker. What a stroke!"

Wade, focussing an indulgent eye, saw a figure away beyond the other bathers, rising to the lift of a great billow. The man swam with a splendid motion. Whether he dived, or floated, or circled his arms in that whirling stroke of his, he seemed in subtle sympathy with the sea, possessed of a kinship with it, and in an element altogether his own.

Wade expressed an appropriate sentiment of admiration.

Just then Gracie Gayle came gambolling along, a childish shape, kirtled to the knee in bright blue, and turbaned in vivid scarlet. Among the loose-waisted figures on the sands she was like a humming-bird scintillating in a staid gathering of barnyard fowls. Bailey was with her, having returned after a fortnight's absence.

The two paused beside Elizabeth, and Wade went on, confused by the singular way in which that small fair face, shadow-streaked and faintly smiling, lingered in his vision. He was still perplexed with a half-pleasant, half-pained consciousness of it as he plunged into the pushing surf and felt a dizzy world of water heave round him. The surge was strong to-day, and the splashing and screaming of the shore bathers sent him farther and still farther out. Gradually their cries lessened in his ear, and there was with him presently only the hollow thud of the waves and the rushing hiss of the crestling foam.

Once, as he rose to a sea-lift, it seemed to him that he heard a sound that was not the boom of the breakers nor the song of the slipping froth. It came again, whatever it was, and as he gave ear he took in a human intonation, sharp and agonized. It was a cry for help.

Wade shook the brine from his hair, freeing his gaze for an outlook. In the glassy mound of water to his right a face, lean and white with alarm, gleamed and faded. That the sinking man was Graham came instantly to Wade's mind—Graham, a victim to some one of the mischances which the sea reserves for those who adventure too confidently with her.

Wade struck out instantly for the spot where Graham's appalled features had briefly glimpsed. Shoreward he could note an increasing agitation among the multitudes. Evidently the people had noticed the peril of the remote swimmer whose exploits had so lately won admiring comment. The beachguard no doubt was buckling to his belt the life-rope coiled always on the sands for such emergencies. Cries of men and women rang stifled over the water—exclamations of fear and advice and excitement, mingled in a long continuous wail.

Graham's head rose in sight, a mere speck upon the dense green of the bulging water. Wade, fetching nearer in wide strokes, suddenly felt himself twisted violently out of his course, and whirled round in a futile effort with some mysterious current. He was almost near enough to lay hold of Graham when this new sensation explained lucidly the cause of Graham's danger. They were both in the claws of an undertow, which, as Wade realized its touch, appeared as if wrenching him straight out to the purring distance of the farther sea.

Even in the first consternation of this discovery he felt himself thrust hard against a leaden body, and in the same instant Graham's hands snatched at him in a desperate reach for life.

"For God's sake don't hold me like this!" Wade expostulated. "Let go. Trust me to do what I can. You're strangling me, man!"

But Graham was past sanity. He only clutched with the more frenzy at the thing which seemed to keep him from the ravenous mouth of the snarling waters.

Wade, in a kind of composed despair, sent a look towards the beach. They were putting out a boat, a tiny sheel which frisked in the surf, and seemed motionless in the double action of the waves. Men laid hard at the oars. The little craft took the first big wave as a horse takes a hurdle. It dropped from the glassy height, and Wade saw it sink into a breach of the sea. Then flashing with crystal, it bore up again and outward.

The figures running and gesticulating on the beach had a marvellous distinctness to Wade's submerging eyes. He noticed the blue sky, flawed with scratches of white, the zigzag roof-lines of the great town, the twisting flags and meshes of the dark wire. Everything oppressed him with a sort of deadly clearness, as if a metal stamp should press in melting wax.

He was momently sinking, drawn ever outward by the undercurrent, and downward by the weighty burden throttling him in its senseless grasp. He looked once more through a blinding veil of foam, and saw the boat dipping far to the left. A phantasm of life flickered before him. Unsuspected trivialities shook out of their cells, and amazed him with the pygmy thrift of memory. Then came a sense of confusion, as if the spiritual and corporal lost each its boundary and ranged wild, and Wade felt the sea in his eyes, stroking them down as gently as ever any watcher by the dying.