The Arena. Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891

I quote a few lines from another scene.

Christmas morning. Hester and Silas, some young friends, have come in to take breakfast. All are seated at the table with much bustle and laughter. Lish Mead, Mary’s foster father, pokes his head in the door.

Lish Mead. Wish you Merry Christmas.

All. (Hilariously.) Merry Christmas! Come in.

Lish. Can’t less some on ye hol’s th’ door open.

Silas. I’ll hold it, Lish. (Lish enters, hauling a warehouse truck on which is a barrel of flour and a large hamper.)

Lish. Mister Seward wanted I should hand ye these with his complements.

Mary. Oh, how kind of Mr. Seward, and how good of you to bring ‘em.

Jack. Set down here, Lish, and have a bite o’ breakfast.

Lish. (Taking off mittens, cap, comforter, etc.) Whatcher got? Chicking? Waal, that’s good ‘nough. (Seats himself at table.) Say, Jack, d’ you know, you left a goose a-layin’ on Jim Adamses bar las’ night? I was goin’ to fetch it along but Jim said you gin it to him, swore you made him a present on it.

Mother. Jack Hepburn, did you give that goose—

Mary. (Interrupting her.) Have a cup of coffee, mother.

Lish. Jack, have you got the time o’ day? (Chuckles.) Here’s y’r new Waterbury. The boys wanted I should fetch her ‘round; ye went off las’ night without her.

Jack. Ye can take her back again; I don’t want her.

Mary. O Jack!

Jack. No, Mary, I don’t. I wish the durned ol’ Waterbury ‘d never been born.

Mary. The boys meant well, Jack; I wouldn’t send back their present.

Jack. All right, Mary, if you say so, I’ll take her. There’s one thing sure, every time I wind her up she’ll put me in mind how durn near I come to losin’ the best little wife in the whole world.

This play brought me to know Mr. and Mrs. Herne. It needed but an hour’s talk to convince me that I had met two of the most intellectual artists in the dramatic profession, and also to learn how great were the obstacles which lay in the way of producing a real play, each year adding to the insuperableness of the barriers. Mr. Herne was at that time (two years ago) working upon a new play, in some respects, notably in its theme, finer than Drifting Apart. It was the result of several summers spent on the coast of Maine, and is called Shore-Acres. The story is mainly that of two brothers, Nathaniel and Martin Berry, who own a fine “shore-acre” tract near a booming summer resort. An enterprising grocer in the little village gets Martin interested in booms and suggests that they form a company and cut the shore-acre tract up into lots and sell to summer residents.

Martin comes with the scheme to Nathaniel.

Martin. I’d like t’ talk to yeh, an’ I d’ know’s I’ll hev a better chance.

Uncle Nat. I d’ know’s yeh will.

Martin. (Hesitates, picks up a stick and whittles.) Mr. Blake’s ben here.

Uncle Nat. (Picks up a straw and chews it.) Hez ‘e?

Martin. Yes. He ‘lows thet we’d ought to cut the farm up inter buildin’ lots.

Uncle Nat. Dooze ‘e?

Martin. Yes. He says there’s a boom a-comin’ here, an’ thet the lan’s too valu’ble to work.

Uncle Nat. I want t’ know ‘f he dooze. Where d’s he talk o’ beginnin’?

Martin. Out there at the nothe eend o’ the shore pint?

Uncle Nat. Yeh don’t mean up yander? (Pointing with his thumb over his shoulder.)

Martin. (Slowly.) Y-e-s.

Uncle Nat. Dooze ‘e calkalate t’ take in the knoll thet looks out t’ Al’gator Reef?

Martin. I reck’n he dooze.

Uncle Nat. Did yeh tell him thet mother’s berried there?

Martin. He knows thet ‘s well ‘s you do. (Sulkily.)

Uncle Nat. What’s he calkalate t’ do with mother?

Martin. He advises puttin’ her in a cimitry up to Bangor.

Uncle Nat. She’d never sleep comfort’ble in no cimitry, mother wouldn’t.

Martin. He says thet’s the choice lot o’ the hull pass’ll.

Uncle Nat. Then who’s got so good a right to it as mother hez? It was all her’n once. Thet’s the only piece she ast t’ keep. Yeh don’t begrutch it to her, do yeh, Martin?

Martin. I don’t begrutch her nothin’, only he says folks hain’t a-goin’ to pay fancy prices ‘thout they hev ther pick.

Uncle Nat. D’ye think any fancy price hed ought to buy mother’s grave?

Martin. Yeh seem to kinder shameface me fer thinkin’ o’ partin’ with it.

Uncle Nat. Didn’t mean to. Law sakes! who’m I thet I should set my face agin improvemints, I’d like t’ know? Go ahead, an’ sell, ‘n build, an’ git rich, an’ move t’ Bangor, unly don’t sell thet! Leave me jes’ thet leetle patch, an’ I’ll stay an’ take keer th’ light, keep the grass cut over yander, an’ sort o’ watch eout fer things gin’rally….

Ann. Sakes alive! Martin Berry, bean’t you a-comin’ to your dinner t’day? Come, Nathan’l, y’r dinner’ll be stun cold. I say yer dinner’ll be stun cold. ‘T won’t be fit f’r a hawg t’eat.

Little Mildred. (Going to Nat, looks up into his face.) He’s cryin’, momma.

This estrangement, and the results that flow from it, form the simple basis of Shore-Acres, a play full of character studies, and permeated by that peculiar flavor of sea and farm, which the New England coast abounds with. The theme is the best and truest of all Mr. Herne’s plays of humble life.

Mr. and Mrs. Herne have lived for twelve years in Ashmont, a suburb of Boston. They have a comfortable and tasteful home, with three children, Julie, Crystal, and Dorothy [aged ten, eight, and five], to give them welcome when they come back from their seasons on the road. Mr. Herne is very domestic and lives a very simple and quiet life. And he enjoys his pretty home as only a man can whose life is spent so largely in fatiguing travel. He is fond of the fields which lie near his home, and very many are the long walks we have taken together. He is very fond of wild flowers, especially daisies and clover blossoms, and in their season is never without a bunch of them upon his desk. Books are all about him. He writes at a flat-top desk in the room he calls his, but his terrific orders to be left alone are calmly ignored by the three children who invade this “study,” and throw themselves upon him at the slightest provocation. He is much tyrannized over by Dorothy, whose dolls he is forced to mend, no matter what other apparently important work is going forward.

Mrs. Herne is a woman of extraordinary powers, both of acquired knowledge and natural insight, and her suggestions and criticisms have been of the greatest value to her husband in his writing, and she had large part in the inception as well as in the production of Margaret Fleming. Her knowledge of life and books, like that of her husband, is self-acquired, but I have met few people in any walk of life with the same wide and thorough range of thought. In their home oft-quoted volumes of Spencer, Darwin, Fiske, Carlyle, Ibsen, Valdes, Howells, give evidence that they not only keep abreast but ahead of the current thought of the day. Spencer is their philosopher, and Howells is their novelist, but Dickens and Scott have large space on their shelves. All this does not prevent Mr. Herne from being an incorrigible joker, and a wonderfully funny story-teller. All dialects come instantly and surely to his tongue. The sources of his power as a dramatist are evident in his keen observation and retentive memory. Mrs. Herne’s poet is Sidney Lanier, and she knows his principal poems by heart. “Sunrise” is her especial delight. But to see her radiant with intellectual enthusiasm, one has but to start a discussion of the nebular hypothesis, or to touch upon the atomic theory, or doubt the inconceivability of matter. She is perfectly oblivious to space and time if she can get someone to discuss Flammarion’s supersensuous world of force, Mr. George’s theory of land-holding, or Spencer’s law of progress.

Her enthusiasms bear fruit not only in her own phenomenal development, but in her power over others, both as an artist and friend. Wherever she goes she carries the magnetic influence of one who lives and thinks on high planes. Her earnestness is tremendous.