University of Virginia Library

“The Wings of Riches.—The first installment of Moses Adams's
new story, concerning which the world has already heard so many
tantalizing things that have made the world stand on tip-toe, appeared
in the daily Whig of Saturday, in which edition (as well as the
semi-weekly and weekly) the rest of the narrative will be told by
the ex-millionaire. 'Tis marked already by the satire, keen but
never cutting (it can cut, but it doesn't), the knowledge of human
nature, alike in its weakest and its most earnest, its most and least
genial aspects, the pathos, the riant and easy humor, that make Dr.
Bagby, in our critical judgment, another Elia of our era, with more
varied powers than Lamb, though none so well cultivated as those
of that essayist and occasional poet. `What I Did with My Fifty
Millions,' recalls the Doctor's best work, `Blue Eyes and Battlewick,'
published many years ago in the Southern Literary Messenger, and,
unfortunately, never put before the world in book-form. We shall
follow the career of that fortune with eyes of interest, especially as
we have an idea that some small part of it will be laid apart for us.
That is, if we survive until 1876, the year in which the story is cast;
the place being Richmond, with temporary shuntings on the sidetracks
of Lynchburg and Kurdsville.”

“`Fifty Millions.'—... The style of Doctor Bagby is fitted more
to the pages and character of the quarterlies and to the book publications
of the day, than to the daily and weekly journals. Bagby is
the Mark Twain of Virginia, and we have no doubt that some of our
book publishers could subserve a public demand, and at the same
time promote very handsomely the business interests of their establishments,
by furnishing it in book-form. `What I Did with My
fifty Millions' is quaint, original, and peculiarly Virginian, and its
style adds to the virtues of its great local interests, those features of
terse and trenchant style, which will cause it to be read in other
circles than where the cavaliers and their descendants have left their
footprints.' ”

“`Fifty Millions.'—Dr. Adams's great romance, `What I Did
with My Fifty Million Dollars,' is concluded in the last number of
the Whig, in which the wonderful serial has been published. The
final installment is longer than those which preceded, and is crowded
with incidents and tableaux of abiding interest. In the last sad
scene, he beholds, as in a trance, all the comrades and companions
of his earlier years; and there troop in long procession through the
old man's breaking and wandering mind the figures, inter alios, of
many Petersburgers—Mr. Osborne, McCabe, Glass, `the two Barhams,'
the two Venables, Cameron, the writer, and many others.
This vivid memory cheers the old man's heart, as his hold on earth
relaxes, and he falls asleep with the happy vision shining in his eyes.
We hope the story will be collected and printed in book-form for the
amusement and entertainment of the public. There is in it much
more than the humor which plays on its surface; there is even more
in it than the pathos which often breaks through it with tears. There
is in the analysis of the vagaries and hallucinations which precede
death, the evidence of deep study and knowledge of physiology and
psychology too. But we will not discount the reader's enjoyment of
the `Fifty Millions.' It ought by all means to appear in book-form.”

“`What I Did with My Fifty Millions.'—The series of
papers under this fantastic title is brought to a conclusion in the
issue of the Richmond Whig of May 1st.

“Dr. Bagby has made his fancy of great wealth the starting point
for excursions in every direction, sketching, as he alone of living
writers can do, the familiar Virginian life as it was before the war,
as it is now in its transition state, and as it can never again appear
under the new conditions that surround us. Untrammeled by any
fixed limits, he introduces into these separate pictures his own reflections
on men and things—reflections now profound, now playful, here
fantastic, there pathetic, but always tinged with his own humor,
always revealing something of his own self and thought. These
sketches are often personal, and the author has the rare boldness to
talk of the men he means by their own names, but the personality is
but such as Charles Lamb indulged in when he wrote of the India
House, or when he so affectionately and yet so quizzically recorded
his memories of the Benchers of Gray's Inn.

“Dr. Bagby's genius is akin to Lamb's; he has the same keenness
of local observation, the same love for quaint nooks of space, for
quaint examples of mankind, for old fashions of thought and speech
and life. His humor, too, is of Elia's kind,—a melancholy humor,
yet a jesting, a humor often sarcastic in form, always loving in fact.
He draws his pictures of Virginia as Lamb did of London, always
narrow in his theme, but always wide in its treatment, perfect in the
minute observations he loves to make, because his mind is practiced
in large views of men and things.

“Virginia has in truth produced, though Virginia hardly knows it,

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“Among these men of letters the last stands pre-eminent as the
essayist of Virginia, the pen-painter of Virginians, their life and
manners, their foibles and their virtues. It is a great pity that these
sketches of a time and people fast passing, almost wholly passed
away, should not be collected and put in enduring form. Sheppard's
pencil has preserved in outline almost every phase of the
old-time negro life in Virginia. Elder's brush has recorded it to its
minutest detail, and Valentine has stamped it into marble, but the
essays of Dr. Bagby have in turn touched on every part of Virginia,
and touched each one to adorn and to preserve. The country village,
the court-house green, the plantation home, the editor, the
planter, the belle, the hard-worked country doctor, the pampered
house-servant, the traveling gambler, the court-house bully, the country
dandy, the hale old farmer, and the busy, much-worked and all-loving
matron and mother; all these, as seen in Virginia, the Virginia as it
stood in 1850, and likewise the Virginia as in 1870 it was passing
away, his pictures keep alive for us and for the future.

“We hope, and hope earnestly, that the essayist will frame these
pictures in a book and so preserve them. Let the `Fifty Millions'
lead and let the title be `For Virginians only,' and our word for it,
Virginia will buy and read, and value, will laugh, and now and again
will shed a pleasing tear over that book.”

“ `Fifty Millions.'—Doctor Bagby is a humorist of the finest
taste, and his productions are of native growth. Born of Virginia's
soil, suffused with a local coloring at once pure and brilliant, his pictures
of men and scenes have a charm about them which it is hard to
describe without incurring the charge of extravagance from those who
do not know his works. For us this provincialism is very attractive,
but, in addition, we find that he scatters wit, wisdom and learning
with a generous profusion through his pages, so that one rises from
his `Fifty Millions' with a conviction that until this serial appeared
Bagby was unknown even to his own people and his familiar friends.
This performance is to be published in a volume, and on its appearance
we shall have a word to speak about it, until when we beg his
friends, our friends, and the friends of our native literature to interest
themselves in making the forthcoming volume a complete success.”