Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/27

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH gave scope to a genuine side of his nature. Furthermore, it must be remembered that he "made good," and while still in his early prime had reached his goal—the freedom of a modest competence—and was ready to devote the remainder of his days to literary work. This plan was frustrated by no fault of his own. A tragedy of errors on the part of one in whom he had put his trust undid the work of years and sent him back to an unravelled task,—sent him back with unbroken courage, it is true, but with lessened strength and added responsibilities. If character is to be gauged by the greater tests, then Edmund Clarence Stedman stands high indeed among his fellows for the fine spirit with which, at this supreme juncture, he accepted failure and rejected defeat.

Very soon after his arrival in New York the young writer began to attract the attention of the reading public and to make friends in the literary Bohemia of that day. His life-long friendships with Bayard Taylor, Stoddard, Curtis, Aldrich, Howells, Winter, and others of the guild, date from this time. Three poems published in the "Tribune"—"The Diamond Wedding," "The Ballad of Lager Bier," and "How Old Brown took Harper's Ferry"—captured the popular fancy with their young gusto, and his first volume, "Poems, Lyric and Idyllic," was published in 1860.

Howells, in his "Literary Friends and Acquaintances," gives a sketch of Stedman in these days: "I had already met, in my first sojourn in the capital, a young journalist who had given hostages to poetry, and whom I was very glad to see and proud to know.... I sat by his bed while our souls launched together into the joyful realms of hope and praise. In him I found the quality of Boston, the honor and passion of literature, and not a mere pose of the literary life; and the world knows without my telling how true he xvii