William Eleazar Barton, novelist and theologian, was born at Sublette, Illinois, June 28, 1861. He reached Kentucky for the first time on Christmas Day of 1880, and matriculated as a student in Berea College, where he spent the remainder of the college year of 1880-1881, and four additional years. During two summers and autumns he taught school in Knox county, Kentucky, then without a railroad, taking long rides to Cumberland Gap, Cumberland Falls and other places which have since appeared in his stories. The two remaining vacations he spent in travel through the mountains, journeying by Ohio river steamer along the northern counties, and by horseback far into the Kentucky hills in various directions. In 1885 Mr. Barton graduated from Berea with the B. S. degree; and three years later the same institution granted him M. S., and, in 1890, A. M. He was ordained to the Congregational ministry at Berea, Kentucky, June 6, 1885, and he preached for two years in southern Kentucky and in the adjacent hills of east Tennessee, living at Robbins, Tennessee. Mr. Barton's first book was a Kentucky mountain sketch, called The Wind-Up of the Big Meetin' on No Bus'ness (1887), now out of print. This was followed by Life in the Hills of Kentucky (1889), depicting actual conditions. He became pastor of a church at Wellington, Ohio, in 1890, and his next two works were church histories. Berea College conferred the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity upon Mr. Barton in 1895; and he has been a trustee of the college for the last several years. He was pastor of a church in Boston for six years, but since 1899, he has been in charge of the First Congregational Church of Oak Park, Illinois. Dr. Barton's other books are: A Hero in Homespun (New York, 1897), a Kentucky story, the first of his books that was widely read and reviewed; Sim Galloway's Daughter-in-Law (Boston, 1897), the Kentucky mountains again, which reappear in The Truth About the Trouble at Roundstone (Boston, 1897); The Story of a Pumpkin Pie (Boston, 1898); The Psalms and Their Story (Boston, 1898); Old Plantation Hymns (1899); When Boston Braved the King (Boston, 1899); The Improvement of Perfection (1900); The Prairie Schooner (Boston, 1900); Pine Knot (New York, 1900), his best known and, perhaps, his finest tale of Kentucky; Lieut. Wm. Barton (1900); What Has Brought Us Out of Egypt (1900); Faith as Related to Health (1901); Consolation (1901); I Go A-Fishing (New York, 1901); The First Church of Oak Park (1901); The Continuous Creation (1902); The Fine Art of Forgetting (1902); An Elementary Catechism (1902); The Old World in the New Century (1902); The Gospel of the Autumn Leaf (1903); Jesus of Nazareth (1904); Four Weeks of Family Worship (1906); The Sweetest Story Ever Told (1907); with Sydney Strong and Theo. G. Soares, His Last Week, His Life, His Friends, His Great Apostle (1906-07); The Week of Our Lord's Passion (1907); The Samaritan Pentateuch (1906); The History and Religion of the Samaritans (1906); The Messianic Hope of the Samaritans (1907); The Life of Joseph E. Roy (1908); Acorns From an Oak Park Pulpit (1910); Pocket Congregational Manual (1910); Rules of Order for Ecclesiastical Assemblies (1910); Bible Classics (1911); and Into All the World (1911). Since 1900 Dr. Barton has been on the editorial staff of The Youth's Companion. The locale of his novels was down on the Kentucky-Tennessee border, amid ignorance and poverty—a background upon which no other writer has painted.

Bibliography. The Nation (August 9, 1900); The Book Buyer (November, 1900); The Independent (July 7, 1910).

A WEARY WINTER[29]

[From The Truth About the Trouble at Roundstone (Boston, 1897)]

The winter came and went, and the breach only widened with the progress of the months. The men dropped all pretense of religious observance. They grew more and more taciturn and sullen in their homes. They cared less and less for the society of their neighbors, and as they grew more miserable they grew more uncompromising. When little Ike was sick and Jane going to the spring just before dinner found a gourd of chicken broth, so fresh and hot that it had evidently been left but a few minutes before, she knew how it had come there, and hastened to the house with it. But Larkin saw the gourd and at a glance understood it, and asked,—

"Whar'd ye git that ar gourd? Whose gourd is that?" and snatching it from her, he took it to the door and flung it with all his might. Little Ike cried, for the odor of the broth had already tempted his fickle appetite, and Larkin bribed him to stop crying with promises of candy and all other injurious sweetmeats known to children of the Holler. But when the illness proved to be a sort of winter cholera terminating in flux, he was glad to maintain official ignorance of a bottle of blackberry cordial which also was left at the spring, and which proved of material benefit in the slow convalescence of Ike.

It was thought, at first, that Captain Jack Casey would be able to effect a reconciliation between the men. He was respected in the Holler, and was often useful in adjusting differences between neighbors. He was a justice of the peace, for that matter, and had the law behind him. But his military title and his reputation for fair dealing gave him added authority.

He was the friend of both men, and had known them both in the army. He was Eph's brother-in-law, beside, and their wives' friendship, like their own, dated from that prehistoric period, "before the war."

But even Captain Jack failed to move either of the two enraged neighbors.

Brother Manus made several ineffectual attempts at a reconciliation, but at last gave up all hope.

"I'll pray fur 'em," he said, "but I cyant do no more."

Great was his professed faith in prayer; it may be doubted whether this admission did not indicate in his mind a desperate condition of affairs.

But there was one person who could never be brought to recognize the breach between the families. Shoog made her frequent visits back and forth unhindered. To be sure, Ephraim tried to prevent her. He scolded her; he explained to her, and once he even whipped her. But while she seemed to understand the words he spoke, and grieved sorely over her punishments, she could not get through her mind the idea of an estrangement, and at length they gave up trying to have her understand. So, almost daily, when the weather permitted, Shoog crossed the foot log, and wended her way across the bottoms to Uncle Lark's. Larkin at first attempted to ignore her presence, but the attempt failed, and she was soon as much in his arms and heart as she had ever been; and many prayers and good wishes went with her back and forth, as Jane and Martha saw her come and go, and often went a piece with her, though true to their unspoken parole of honor to their husbands, speaking no word to each other.