University of Virginia Library

THE WEST IN A PETTICOAT.

(By way of declining a communication in hope of a
better one.)

We have been for years looking at the western
horizon of American literature, for a star to rise that
should smack of the big rivers, steamboats, alligators,
and western manners. We have the DOWN EAST—
embodied in Jack Downing and his imitators. There
was wanting a literary embodiment of the OUT WEST
—not, a mind shining at it, by ridiculing it from a
distance, but a mind shining from it, by showing its
peculiar qualities unconsciously. The rough-hewn
physiognomy of the west, though showing as yet but
in rude and unattractive outline, is the profile of a fine
giant, and will chisel down to noble features hereafter;
but, meantime, there will be a literary foreshadowing
of its maturity—abrupt, confiding, dashing writers,
regardless of all trammels and fearless of ridicule—
and we think we have heard from one of them.

The letter from which we shall quote presently, is
entirely in earnest, and signed with the lady's real
name. We at first threw the accompanying communication
aside, as very original and amusing, but
unfit for print—except with comments which we had
no time to make. Taking it up again this morning,
we think we see a way to compass the lady-writer's
object, and we commence by giving her a fictitious
name to make famous (instead of her own), and by interesting
our readers in her with showing her character
of mind as her letter shows her to us. She is
quick, energetic, confident of herself, full of humor,
and a good observer, and the “half-horse half-alligator”
impulses with which she writes so unconsciously,
may be trimmed into an admirable and entirely
original style by care and labor.

Miss “Kate Juniper,”[1] (so we name her), thus
dashes, western-fashion, in what she has to say
to us:—

“I hate formal introductions. I would speak to you
now, and I will see you, when I may, in the Palace
of Truth. I am in Godey's Lady's Book with decent
compensation, but I want to be published faster than
they can do it. I want to write for the Mirror without
pay, for the sake of `getting my name up.' I shall
ultimately `put money in my purse' by this course.
I have now three manuscript volumes, which good
judges tell me are equal to Miss Bremer's. I send you
a specimen. I have a series of these sketches, entitled
`The Spirits of the Room.' I can sell them to
Godey, but he will be for ever bringing them out. I
propose to give them to you, if you like them, in the
true spirit of bargain and sale, though not in the letter.
I will give you as many as will serve my purpose
of getting my name known; and then, if success
comes, you will hold me by the chain of gratitude, as
you now do by that of reverence and affection.

“Will you write me immediately and tell me your
thoughts of this thing? Truly your friend.”

We can only give a taste of her literary quality by
an extract from her communication, the remainder
wanting finish, and this portion sufficing to introduce
her to our readers. We give it precisely as written
and punctuated. She is describing an interview with
a travelling lecturer on magnetism, and gives her own
experience in neurological sight-seeing:—

“Mark the sequel. I had, on going into the room,
lost my handkerchief. A gentleman famed for his
wisdom, his powder of seeing as far into the future
without the gift of second sight, as others can with it,
lent me his, protem. I heard the wonderful statements
of the `New School in Psychology' relative to sympathy
established by means of magnetized or neurologized
handkerchiefs, letters, etc. I determined to
keep the handkerchief and see if there were enough
of the soul aura of my wise-acre friend imprisoned in
it, to affect me. I did so; I returned to my home in
the hotel—to my lonely room; evening shut in; the
waiter did not bring me a light; my anthracite burned
blue and dimly enough; I bound the magic handkerchief
about my brow and invoked the sight of my
friend to aid my own. What I saw shall be told in
the next chapter.