INTRODUCTION. ARELY in a community where material things overshadow the intellectual and the æsthetic does a man have the love of Art for its own sake so firmly established in his nature as to make him its open and ardent supporter. This part Thomas Emmet Dewey essayed. Born in Victor, New York, in 1859, he entered the turbulent transition days of Kansas at the age of twenty, imbued with eagerness to become a factor in the upbuilding of the State. His profession, the law, confined neither his energies nor his ambitions, and he pursued the study of literature, and of the proper expression of the best ideals of man's soul, into wider fields. As years passed, he grew in mental stature. He felt the impulse of the advocate, the inspiration of the enthusiast. He gathered under his home roof those whose friendship he cherished, and there unfolded newly-acquired joys of discovery. Abilene, his home town for two decades, soon learned to respect and trust his literary taste; the stamp of his approval went far in the estimation placed on any work of literature or of art. So definite and well-founded were his ideals, that he was deferred to by his townsmen, and later by the best thinkers of Kansas. He became recognized as an authority on the things that it pleased him most to judge, and in a sense this was a realization of his dearest dreams. His power as an uplifting factor in many lives came from his strict adherence to the world's established ethical and æsthetic canons. Essentially he was a critic. He analyzed, he saw through POETRY IN SONG. the shams. He was so attuned to harmony, be it in literature, religion, music, art or architecture, that violation of perfect form in any degree awoke his impatience. Out here on the plains, in the constructive period of a State's making, people do violate form; they hurry to results, or to what they think are results. This he would not tolerate, and his insistence on right methods because they were right, his demand for art for its own sake, because it satisfied the artist's ideals-and not because it was popular-awoke in some a timid reluctance, lest their theories be shattered. But kinder critic never lived; a more helpful hand was never reached to him who sought the good things of this world; a cleaner example of dignity and respect was never set. Mr. Dewey's literary grace was a growth. At the first it came from earnest study and thoughtful effort to master the fixed forms of verse-an outcome of his instinct for harmony. From this study he learned to appreciate the whole realm of literature in its purest sense. Such interpreters as Lanier, Shelley and Keats appealed to him. He drank in their tenderness, he reveled in their mysticism. When he wrote or spoke of them, it was with a personal sympathy that told of his own mind's likeness to theirs. With leisure, he would have been a critic of rank with the masters. He would have written literary essays to measure up with the world's best examples. It was in this that he excelled; for this his mind was fitted. Comparatively little of Mr. Dewey's writing appeared in print he believed in the spoken word. He made a worthy effort to establish in Kansas a literary magazine, The Agora, which possessed high merit and won wide praise. Every day for years he selected the verse printed in a leading newspaper, but only his close friends knew it. He wrote editorials for which others received undeserved credit. If his judgment of literary ways had fault, it was this: he so feared the charge POETRY IN SONG. of commercialism that he did not seek more freely the vast audience of the printed page-there he might have extended his influence far beyond the sphere of the platform. Not as a creator of literature did Mr. Dewey come to us. He was an interpreter. His lectures and essays herein published were a sincere attempt to bring to others the same thrill of new-found delight he himself felt. He sought to spread the love of literary grace which inspired his own soul. It is in this understanding that these essays and addresses should be read. Thus accepted, they become stepping-stones to the temple in which he was ever a worshiper. It was inevitable that, with his taste for music and his love for literature, Mr. Dewey should find pleasure in the study of poetry—and in the writing of verse. His finest literary addresses are on the relation of poetry to life and its translation into better living. His own verses, few though they be, breathe an artistic spirit that marks the true student of the world's great poets. Masonry had for Mr. Dewey a charm and a deeply felt attraction. He rose in its honors until he became Grand Master of Masons in Kansas, and his addresses before the craft were messages of great worth. Many of these, being delivered in the "tiled" communications of the lodges, cannot be here reproduced, but they made better men of all who heard them. He received from the College of Emporia the degrees of A.B., A.M. and Litt.D. He was president of the Kansas Academy of Language and Literature, a trustee of Midland College, and for some years before his death at Topeka, in June, 1906, he was Reporter for the Supreme Court of Kansas. Many honors, such as are the portion of him whom the community considers a good citizen, were his-and he filled the duties involved with integrity and faithfulness. In matters POETRY IN SONG. |