he slender
volume of the new poet. To him I owe much. From him I secured my first
knowledge of James Whitcomb Riley, and it was Hurd who first called my
attention to Kirkland's _Zury_. Through him I came to an enthusiasm for
the study of Ibsen and Bjornsen, for he was widely read in the
literature of the north.

On the desk of this hard-working, ill-paid man of letters (who never
failed to utter words of encouragement to me) I wish to lay a tardy
wreath of grateful praise. He deserves the best of the world beyond, for
he got little but hard work from this. He loved poetry of all kinds and
enjoyed a wide correspondence with those "who could not choose but
sing." His desk was crammed with letters from struggling youths whose
names are familiar now, and in whom he took an almost paternal interest.

One day as I was leaving Hurd's office he said, "By the way, Garland,
you ought to know Jim Herne. He's doing much the same sort of work on
the stage that you and Miss Wilkins are putting into the short story.
Here are a couple of tickets to his play. Go and see it and come back
and tell what you think of it."

Herne's name was new to me but Hurd's commendation was enough to take me
down to the obscure theater in the South End where _Drifting Apart_ was
playing. The play was advertised as "a story of the Gloucester
fishermen" and Katharine Herne was the "Mary Miller" of the piece.
Herne's part was that of a stalwart fisherman, married to a delicate
young girl, and when the curtain went up on his first scene I was
delighted with the setting. It was a veritable cottage interior--not an
English cottage but an American working man's home. The worn chairs, the
rag rugs, the sewing machine doing duty as a flowerstand, all were in
keeping.

The dialogue was homely, intimate, almost trivial and yet contained a
sweet and touching quality. It was, indeed, of a piece with the work of
Miss Jewett only more humorous, and the action of Katharine and James
Herne was in key with the text. The business of "Jack's" shaving and
getting ready to go down the street was most delightful in spirit and
the act closed with a touch of true pathos.

The second act, a "dream act" was not so good, but the play came back to
realities in the last act and sent us all away in joyous mood. It was
for me the beginning of the local color American drama, and before I
went to sleep that night I wrote a letter to Herne telling him how
significant I found his pla