The shaft which the prophetic eye of Timrod saw “in the stone” was in time revealed, and years later that other shaft, awaiting the hour for doing homage to the poet, found the light.  To-day the patriot soldiers asleep in Magnolia, and their poet alike, have stately testimonials of the loving memory of their people.

    [Note:  The quotations from Henry Timrod found in this book are
    used by special permission of the B.F.  Johnson Publishing Company,
    the authorized publishers of Timrod’s Poems.]

“FATHER ABBOT”

WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS

Woodlands, near Midway, the half-way stop between Charleston and Augusta, was a little kingdom of itself in the years of its greatness when William Gilmore Simms was monarch of the fair domain.  It was far from being a monastery, though its master was known as “Father Abbot.”  The title had clung to him from the pseudonym under which he had written a series of letters to a New York paper, upholding the view that Charlestonians should not go north on health-seeking vacations when they had better places nearer home, mentioning Sullivan’s Island where the hospitable Fort Moultrie officers “were good hands at drawing a cork.”  Of course, he meant a trigger.

Rather was Woodlands a bit of enchanted forest cut from an old black-letter legend, in which one half expected to meet mediaeval knights on foaming steeds—­every-day folk ride jogging horses—­threading their way through the mysterious forest aisles in search of those romantic adventures which were necessary to give knights of that period an excuse for existence.  It chanced, however, that the only knights known to Woodlands were the old-time friends of its master and the youthful writers who looked to “Father Abbot” for literary guidance.

Having welcomed his guests with the warmth and urbanity which made him a most enjoyable comrade, Father Abbot would disperse them to seek entertainment after the manner agreeable to them.  For the followers of old Isaac Walton there was prime fishing in the Edisto River, that “sweet little river” that ripples melodiously through “Father Abbot’s” pages.  To hunters the forest offered thrilling occupation.  For the pleasure rider smooth, white, sandy bridle-paths led in silvery curves through forests of oak or pine to the most delightful of Nowheres.

[Illustration:  WOODLANDS, THE HOME OF WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS By courtesy of D. Appleton & Company]

Having put each guest into the line of his fancy, the master of Woodlands would betake himself to his library to write his thirty pages, the daily stint he demanded from the loom of his imagination.  Sometimes he had a companion in Paul Hayne who, not so much given to outdoor life as many of the frequenters of Woodlands, liked to sit in the library, weaving some poetic vision of his own or watching the flight of the tireless pen across the page.