LITERARY AND SOCIAL RECOLLECTIONS OF W. D. HOWELLS.
STRANGE how long we may live in the neighborhood of an historic pile and be unmoved by its associations! The thought came home to the writer on a recent spring day while strolling in the vicinity of St. Francis Hospital. This building rises proudly from the heart of Ohio's capital, and is pronounced one of the most perfect specimens of Gothic architecture. "A Modern Instance" lay snugly hidden in my pocket, and, as it made its presence known by an occasional whiff of printers' perfume, my fancy caught the observant eye of its author looking out from the second-story window of St. Francis, where often in early manhood he "dreamt those dreams." Some years before the building became the abode of charity, motherly Mrs. Jenkens dispensed there the hospitalities of a boarding-house in which many a struggling aspirant found a home. Previous to Mrs. Jenkens's landladyship, however, there came to Columbus, Ohio, in 1851, a shy, awkward lad familiarly known to his companions as Will Howells. He secured a situation as compositor on the Ohio State Journal at a salary of four dollars per week. This, the first money he ever earned and received as his own, was turned into the family treasury to help keep the wolf from the door. As the son of a practical printer and visionary journalist, he had shared from infancy the vicissitudes inseparable from a family whose chief cherished high journalistic aims without the financial ability wherewith to make them practicable. The future novelist was born at Martin's Ferry, Ohio, March 1, 1837. The Howellses were Quakers, of Welsh extraction. Grandfather Howells was early attracted to America by his democratic sympathies. He became a fervid Methodist, and his son in turn was converted to the Swedenborgian faith, in which belief the novelist was reared. Mother Howells was of the Pennsylvania stock of Deans. The Deans were a sturdy race. Four sons of Grandmother Dean were noted steamboat-men in the early history of Ohio and Mississippi navigation. They were strong characters, and had the educational defects, together with the traditional good sense, of the pioneer, which enabled them to accumulate wealth and command influence each in his sphere. The novelist was named William Dean after the eldest of these sons, and it is from the maternal side that he inherits that pluck and industry to which much of his success is attributed. When William was three years old, his father moved from Martin's Ferry to Hamilton, Ohio, where he purchased the Hamilton Intelligence, a weekly journal, in the office of which William Dean learned to set type. His lather was a man of cultivation and fine literary taste, but dreamy and impracticable. He is still living, at an advanced age, proud in the success of his gifted son, and beloved by his progeny, among whom this incident is jokingly related. On one occasion, while his wife was ill, the old gentleman was sent to the grocer's to buy some butter. The day passed, and he did
