ALEXANDER L. BONDURANT, A. M. (HARVARD) PROFESSOR OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE IN THE Reprinted from the Publication of the Mississippi Historical Society for 1899 SHERWOOD BONNER---HER LIFE AND PLACE IN THE LITERATURE OF THF SOUTH. BY ALEXANDER L. BONDURANT, A. M. (HARVard). The life of Sherwood Bonner illustrates the union of the subtle elements,ancestral traits and personal qualities, which, distilled by the alchemist, Dame Nature, in her alembic produce the individual. Her father, Dr. Charles Bonner, was born in Ireland, but his family left their ancestral home when he was quite young, and settled in Pennsylvania. When he arrived at man's estate, he left the North, and like Prentiss and Boyd turned his face Southward. He reached Mississippi in "Flush Times," and was content to dwell there, for he found a cultured, refined people, who recognized in him a kindred spirit. In her novel, "Like unto Like," Sherwood Bonner thus describes the home of his adoption: "The climate was delicious. Winter never came with whirl of wind and wonder of piling snow, but as a temperate king with spring peeping to meet him, before autumn's rustling skirts had quite vanished round the corner. Yet there was not the monotony of eternal summer. Winter sometimes gave more than hints of power to the pert knaves of flowers who dared to spring up with a wave of their blooming caps in his face; and the peach-trees that blossomed too soon were apt to get their pale pink heads enclosed in glittering ice-caps, through which they shone with resplendent beauty for a day then meekly died. Even a light snow fell at times; and everybody admired it and shivered at it, and said the climate was changing, and built great wood-fires, and tacked list around the doors, and piled blankets on the beds, to wake in the morning to find sunshine and warmth-and mud. But for the most |