Mrs. Nancy Huston Banks, novelist, was born at Morganfield, Kentucky, about 1850. She is the daughter of the late Judge George Huston, who for many years was an attorney and banker of her native town. When a young woman Miss Huston was married to Mr. James N. Banks, now a lawyer of Henderson, Kentucky. Mrs. Banks's first book, Stairs of Sand (Chicago, 1890), has been forgotten by author and public alike, but shortly after its publication, she went to New York, and there she resided at the Hotel St. James for many years. At the present time she is living in London. She became a contributor to magazines, her critical paper on Mr. James Lane Allen and his novels, which appeared in The Bookman for June, 1895, being her first work to attract serious attention. A few years later Mrs. Banks dropped her magazine work in order to write her charming novel of life in southern Kentucky, Oldfield (New York, 1902). This story was highly praised in this country and in England, the critics of London coining a descriptive phrase for it that has stuck—"the Kentucky Cranford." Her next novel, 'Round Anvil Rock (New York, 1903), was a worthy follower of Oldfield. One reviewer called it "a blend of an old-fashioned love story and an historical study." Mrs. Banks's most recent novel is The Little Hills (New York, 1905). The opening words of this story: "The air was the breath of spice pinks," was seized upon by the critics and set up as a sign-post for the book's tone. Mrs. Banks has been a great traveler. She was sent to South Africa during the Boer war by Vanity Fair of London, and her letters to that publication were most interesting. She knew Cecil Rhodes and George W. Steevens, the war correspondent, and, with her beauty and charm, she became a social "star" in the life about her. Mrs. Banks's one eccentricity—according to the literary gossips of New York—is her distaste for classical music; and that much of her success is due to the fact that she knows how to handle editors and publishers, we also learn from the same source. At least one of her contemporaries once held—though he has since wholly relented and regretted much—that, in a now exceedingly scarce first edition, she out-ingramed Ingram! But, of course, that is another story.

Bibliography. The Critic (September, 1902); The Nation (February 5, 1903); The Bookman (February, 1904).

ANVIL ROCK[4]

[From 'Round Anvil Rock (New York, 1903)]

The courage and calmness which he had found in himself under this test, heartened him and made him the more determined to control his wandering fancy. Looking now neither to the right nor the left, he pressed on through the clearing toward the buffalo track in the border of the forest which would lead him into the Wilderness Road. Sternly setting his thoughts on the errand that was taking him to the salt-works, he began to think of the place in which they were situated, and to wonder why so bare, so brown, and so desolate a spot should have been called Green Lick. There was no greenness about it, and not the slightest sign that there ever had been any verdure, although it still lay in the very heart of an almost tropical forest. It must surely have been as it was now since time immemorial. Myriads of wild beasts coming and going through numberless centuries to drink the salt water, had trodden the earth around it as hard as iron, and had worn it down far below the surface of the surrounding country. The boy had seen it often, but always by daylight, and never alone, so that he noted many things now which he had not observed before. The huge bison must have gone over that well-beaten track one by one, to judge by its narrowness. He could see it dimly, running into the clearing like a black line beginning far off between the bordering trees; but as he looked, the darkness deepened, the mists thickened, and a look of unreality came over familiar objects. And then through the wavering gloom there suddenly towered a great dark mass topped by something which rose against the wild dimness like a colossal blacksmith's anvil. It might have been Vulcan's own forge, so strange and fabulous a thing it seemed! The boy's heart leaped with his pony's leap. His imagination spread its swift wings ere he could think; but in another instant he reminded himself. This was not an awful apparition, but a real thing, wondrous and unaccountable enough in its reality. It was Anvil Rock—a great, solitary rock rising abruptly from the rockless loam of a level country, and lifting its single peak, rudely shaped like a blacksmith's anvil, straight up toward the clouds.

THE OLD-FASHIONED FIDDLERS

[From the same]

Those old-time country fiddlers—all of them, black or white—how wonderful they were! They have always been the wonder and the despair of all musicians who have played by rule and note. The very way that the country fiddler held his fiddle against his chest and never against his shoulder like the trained musician! The very way that the country fiddler grasped his bow, firmly and squarely in the middle, and never lightly at the end like a trained musician! The very way that he let go and went off and kept on—the amazing, inimitable spirit, the gayety, the rhythm, the swing! No trained musician ever heard the music of the country fiddler without wondering at its power, and longing in vain to know the secret of its charm. It would be worth a good deal to know where and how they learned the tunes that they played. Possibly these were handed down by ear from one to another; some perhaps may have never been pent up in notes, and others may have been given to the note reader under other names than those by which the country fiddlers knew them. This is said to have been the case with "Old Zip Coon," and the names of many of them would seem to prove that they belonged to the time and the country. But there is a delightful uncertainty about the origin and the history of almost all of them—about "Leather Breeches" and "Sugar in the Gourd" and "Wagoner" and "Cotton-eyed Joe," and so on through a long list.