“A NATIVE AUTHOR CALLED ROE”
An Autobiography
Two or three years ago the editor of “Lippincott’s
Magazine” asked me, with many others, to take
part in the very interesting “experience meeting”
begun in the pages of that enterprising periodical.
I gave my consent without much thought of the effort
involved, but as time passed, felt slight inclination
to comply with the request. There seemed little
to say of interest to the general public, and I was
distinctly conscious of a certain sense of awkwardness
in writing about myself at all. The question,
Why should I? always confronted me.
When this request was again repeated early in the
current year, I resolved at least to keep my promise.
This is done with less reluctance now, for the reason
that floating through the press I meet with paragraphs
concerning myself that are incorrect, and often absurdly
untrue. These literary and personal notes, together
with many questioning letters, indicate a certain amount
of public interest, and I have concluded that it may
be well to give the facts to those who care to know
them.
It has been made more clear to me that there are many
who honestly do care. One of the most prized
rewards of my literary work is the ever-present consciousness
that my writings have drawn around me a circle of
unknown yet stanch friends, who have stood by me unfalteringly
for a number of years. I should indeed be lacking
if my heart did not go out to them in responsive friendliness
and goodwill. If I looked upon them merely as
an aggregation of customers, they would find me out
speedily. A popular mood is a very different
thing from an abiding popular interest. If one
could address this circle of friends only, the embarrassment
attendant on a certain amount of egotism would be banished
by the assurance of sympathetic regard. Since,
from the nature of circumstances, this is impossible,
it seems to me in better taste to consider the “author
called Roe” in an objective, rather than in
a friendly and subjective sense. In other words,
I shall try to look at him from the public point of
view, and free myself from some predisposition in
his favor shared by his friends. I suppose I
shall not succeed in giving a colorless statement of
fact, but I may avoid much special pleading in his
behalf.
Like so many other people, I came from a very old
family, one from which there is good proof of an unbroken
line through the Dark Ages, and all ages, to the first
man. I have never given any time to tracing ancestry,
but have a sort of quiet satisfaction that mine is
certainly American as far as it well can be. My
forefathers (not “rude,” to my knowledge)
were among the first settlers on the Atlantic seaboard.
My paternal and maternal grandfathers were stanch
Whigs during the Revolution, and had the courage of
their convictions. My grandmother escaped with
