general's daughter would be able to overcome (vaincre) the dog of my
child?--No, I was not afraid. . . . But away with the Ollendorff method.
However appropriate and seemingly unavoidable when I touch upon anything
appertaining to the lady, it is most unsuitable to the origin, character
and history of the dog; for the dog was the gift to the child from a
man for whom words had anything but an Ollendorffian value, a man almost
childlike in the impulsive movements of his untutored genius, the
most single-minded of verbal impressionists, using his great gifts of
straight feeling and right expression with a fine sincerity and a strong
if, perhaps, not fully conscious conviction. His art did not obtain,
I fear, all the credit its unsophisticated inspiration deserved. I am
alluding to the late Stephen Crane, the author of "The Red Badge
of Courage," a work of imagination which found its short moment of
celebrity in the last decade of the departed century. Other books
followed. Not many. He had not the time. It was an individual and
complete talent, which obtained but a grudging, somewhat supercilious
recognition from the world at large. For himself one hesitates to regret
his early death. Like one of the men in his "Open Boat," one felt that
he was of those whom fate seldom allows to make a safe landing after
much toil and bitterness at the oar. I confess to an abiding affection
for that energetic, slight, fragile, intensely living and transient
figure. He liked me even before we met on the strength of a page or
two of my writing, and after we had met I am glad to think he liked me
still. He used to point out to me with great earnestness, and even with
some severity, that "a boy ought to have a dog." I suspect that he
was shocked at my neglect of parental duties. Ultimately it was he who
provided the dog. Shortly afterwards, one day, after playing with the
child on the rug for an hour or so with the most intense absorption, he
raised his head and declared firmly: "I shall teach your boy to ride."
That was not to be. He was not given the time.