AUTHOR OF "RAMONA," "VERSES," "BITS OF TRAVEL," ETC.
"The report made by Mrs. Jackson and Mr. Kinney is grave, concise, and deeply interesting. It is added to the appendix of this new edition of her book. In this California journey, Mrs. Jackson found the materials for "Ramona," the Indian novel, which was the last important work of her life, and in which nearly all the incidents are taken from life. In the report of the Mission Indians will be found the story of the Temecula removal and the tragedy of Alessandro"s death as they appear in "Ramona.""--_Boston Daily Advertiser._
"A number of striking cases of breach of faith, heartless banishment from homes confirmed to the Indians by solemn treaties, and wars wantonly provoked in order to make an excuse for dispossessing them of their lands, are grouped together, making a panorama of outrage and oppression which will arouse the humanitarian instincts of the nation to the point of demanding that justice shall be done toward our savage wards.... "H. H." succeeds in holding up to the public eye a series of startling pictures of Indian wrongs, drawn from a century of American history."--_New York Tribune._
Mrs. Jackson"s Letter of Grat.i.tude to the President.
The following letter from Mrs. Jackson to the President was written by her four days before her death, Aug. 12, 1885:--
_To_ GROVER CLEVELAND, _President of the United States_:
Dear Sir,--From my death-bed I send you a message of heartfelt thanks for what you have already done for the Indians. I ask you to read my "Century of Dishonor." I am dying happier for the belief I have that it is your hand that is destined to strike the first steady blow toward lifting this burden of infamy from our country, and righting the wrongs of the Indian race.
With respect and grat.i.tude,
HELEN JACKSON.
ZEPH.
_A POSTHUMOUS STORY._
By HELEN JACKSON (H. H.).
"The story is complete in spite of the fact that a few chapters remained still to be written when the writer succ.u.mbed to disease.
Begun and mainly completed at Los Angeles last year, the ma.n.u.script had been put by to be completed when returning health should have made continuous labor possible. But health never returned; the disease steadily deepened its hold, and a few days before her death, foreseeing that the end was near, Mrs. Jackson sent the ma.n.u.script to her publisher, with a brief note, enclosing a short outline of the chapters which remained unwritten.... The real lesson of the book lies in Zeph"s unconquerable affection for his worthless wife, and in the beautiful ill.u.s.tration of the divine trait of forgiveness which he constantly manifested toward her. As a portraiture of a character moulded and guided by this sentiment, "Zeph" will take its place with the best of Mrs. Jackson"s work; a beautiful plea for love and charity and long-suffering, patience and forgiveness, coming from one whose hand now rests from this and all kindred labors."--_New York Christian Union._
"Although the beautiful and pathetic story of Zeph" was never quite completed, the dying author indicated what remained to be told in the few unwritten chapters, and it comes to us, therefore, not as a curious fragment, but as an all but finished work. There is something most tender and sad in the supreme artistic conscientiousness of one who could give such an ill.u.s.tration of fidelity and so emphasize the n.o.bility of labor from her death-bed.
These things that bring back the gracious spirit from whose loss the heart of the reading world is still smarting, would lend pathos and interest to "Zeph" even if they did not exist in the story itself. The creation of "Zeph" is a fitting close to a life of splendid literary activity, and it will be enjoyed by those who believe in the novel as, first of all, a work of art, which can be made in proper hands a tremendous force for truth and justice, and real instead of formal righteousness."--_New York Commercial Advertiser._
"As people grow older they see more and more clearly that love--the love between man and woman--is the great power that shapes character, and makes life a blessing, a burden, or a curse. More and more deeply did Mrs. Jackson feel the omnipotence of perfect, patient love, the only power that is sure of final victory, and to show this did she tell the story of Zeph. Before the story was finished, Mrs. Jackson became too ill to work any more; but the life of Zeph was very near her heart; she wanted to make it known, to impress the lesson, that through knowledge of a great forgiving human love even the saddest and most sinful creature may come to a faith in a great forgiving divine love, in a G.o.d as good as she has known a man to be, and so in her last hours Mrs. Jackson made a brief outline of the plot for the end of the story. As her latest work, this has a special and pathetic interest."--_Boston Daily Advertiser._
VERSES.
BY H. H.
"The volume is one which will make H. H. dear to all the lovers of true poetry. Its companionship will be a delight, its n.o.bility of thought and of purpose an inspiration.... This new edition comprises not only the former little book with the same modest t.i.tle, but as many more new poems.... The best critics have already a.s.signed to H. H. her high place in our catalogue of authors. She is, without doubt, the most highly intellectual of our female poets.... The new poems, while not inferior to the others in point of literary art, have in them more of fervor and of feeling; more of that lyric sweetness which catches the attention and makes the song sing itself over and over afterwards in the remembering brain.... Some of the new poems seem among the n.o.blest H. H. has ever written. They touch the high-water mark of her intellectual power, and are full, besides, of pa.s.sionate and tender feeling.
Among these is the "Funeral March.""--_N. Y. Tribune._
"A delightful book is the elegant little volume of "Verses," by H.
H.,--instinct with the quality of the finest Christian womanhood.... Some wives and mothers, growing sedate with losses and cares, will read many of these "Verses" with a feeling of admiration that is full of tenderness."--_Advance._
"The poems of this lady have taken a place in public estimation perhaps higher than that of any living American living poetess....
They are the thoughts of a delicate and refined sensibility, which views life through the pure, still atmosphere of religious fervor, and unites all thought by the tender talisman of love."--_Inter-Ocean._
"Since the days of poor "L. E. L.," no woman has sailed into fame under a flag inscribed with her initials only, until the days of "H. H." Here, however, the parallelism ceases; for the fresh, strong beauty which pervades these "Verses" has nothing in common with the rather languid sweetness of the earlier writer. Unless I am much mistaken, this enlarged volume, double the size of that originally issued, will place its author not merely above all American poetesses and all living English poetesses, but above all women who have ever written poetry in the English language, except Mrs. Browning alone. "H. H." has not yet proved herself equal to Mrs. Browning in range of imagination; but in strength and depth the American writer is quite the equal of the English, and in compactness and symmetry altogether her superior."--_T. W. H. in the Index._