9958 and paper were universally approved.' For further light, however, an inquiry was addressed to the officers of that erudite bodyancient, honorable and still very much alive-which elicited the following response, completely solving the question as to the why and wherefore of the "F. R. S." which Erskine was entitled to append to his name: Albert H. Heusser, Esq., Paterson, N. J., U. S. A. Dear Sir: The Royal Society, In reply to your enquiry of the 7th instant, I have looked up the original certificate of Robert Erskine and find it recorded thereon as his qualification for election that he was "A Gentleman well versed in Mathematics and Practical Mechanics." He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on January 31st, 1771, at which date his residence was stated to be Scotland Yard, London. Among the signatories of his certificate were Sir John Pringle, Bart.,59 President of the Society from 1772 to 1778, and Benjamin Franklin. I am, Yours faithfully, F. A. TOWLE, Ass 't Secretary. No one but an amateur biographer can understand the thrill which came with the reading of this reference to great Franklin, opening up an entirely new field for interesting speculation. At once there ensued a hurried review of the latter's life story, involving many more absorbing surmises. In 1753, the Royal Society of London had elected Benjamin Franklin to membership on the strength of his discovery that lightning and electricity were manifestations of the same natural forcethis discovery being the result of the famous experiment of the key tied to a kite-string during a thunder storm. Franklin had been in London since 1764 representing the American Colonies (being their most distinguished spokesman), endeavoring to combat the shortsighted policy of the King and the British ministry. Not until 1775 did he return to America. In the interim, as may well be imagined, Item No. A 308.58 J-"Erskine Papers," N. J. Hist. Society, Newark. Sir John Pringle (1707-1782), a distinguished physician and author of books and lectures upon Hygiene. He spent many years of his life in Scotland, and was at one time a professor in the University of Edinburgh. Undoubtedly he was a friend and patron of Robert Erskine. he moved in the most select and scientific circles; and it seems apparent that he and Erskine must somehow have met and formed a mutually-profitable acquaintance. As to the intimacy of these relations, we are not likely to know more than the inference to be drawn from the high compliment paid by the scholarly Franklin in his endorsement of Erskine as a desirable candidate for co-fellowship in the Royal Society. It is evident that Erskine had, by the exercise of his talents, made a place for himself among the chosen few of his day and age—the mental aristocrats who constitute the true "nobility." Having gained the confidence of such men as Pringle and Franklin (the latter already internationally honored and esteemed), it is plainly to be seen that Erskine was himself a man out of the ordinary, and one whose future would have been a brilliant success had he chosen to remain an Englishman. Contingent upon the approval of the present proprietors of Ringwood Manor, Mr. Heusser expects to continue this biography of Robert Erskine in succeeding numbers of AMERICANA, carrying the narrative through the later years of his career in America, in which he distinguished himself as iron-master, patriot and Surveyor-General to the army of the United States. As a history of Erskine's early years, however, this installment may be considered as an article complete in itself,-a unique and unpublished chronicle of the youth of "the Forgotten General." The Man From Oquawka BY FRANCES HIGGINS, ASHEVILLE, N. C. I. ITTLE has hitherto been known of the personal life and character of E. H. N. Patterson, admirer, partner-tohave-been, and defender of Edgar Allan Poe. It is as if he made his one overture to fame, received the indifferent reply, and thereupon lost himself from view before the world could comprehend his existence, much less his qualities of mind. A few biographers of the poet, it is true, have referred to him casually as "a Mr. Patterson" or "the man from Oquawka, Illinois, who was to have published the 'Stylus.'"' And one of them has gone so far as to include in his "Life and Letters" the correspondence relative to this Monthly Journal of Literature Proper, the Fine Arts, and the Drama, long cherished in the dreams of Poe, scheduled at length for a triumphant appearance into actuality January, 1850, then deferred to July, then postponed indefinitely by that "Fate whose name is also Sorrow." For that matter the correspondence as it now survives-four complete letters of Poe's and the drafts of two replies by Patterson -has long been known. It, with some pertinent data, was placed before an incredulous public by Eugene Field in the eighties and furthermore preserved in reprint and fac-simile by courtesy of the Caxton Club. Yet even so the youthful party of the second part has remained throughout the years neither more nor less than the dream publisher of Poe's dream journal, a vague and visionary figure. He, however, was less the man of mystery he has seemed than a man of supreme modesty. It was his gift to recognize an artist like Poe in an age when, as Dr. Erskine says, "so few of his countrymen had anything like the equipment for appreciating his genius"; likewise to foresee the benefit accruing to American literature from placing him at the head of an influential periodical, to conceive and develop the plan whereby this might have been accomplished, to see his plan hopelessly frustrated, and to pass calmly on to other things as if the same had never been. He announced the melancholy news of the death of Poe, a blow more personal than his readers could possibly have fathomed, in the Oquawka "Spectator," October 24, 1849. He followed this, November 7, with what is believed to have been the first public defense of the deceased, a scholarly reply to the prediction of the "Saturday Gazette" that Poe's fame would prove merely traditional. He saw his plan for publishing the complete works of his friend anticipated by the Rev. Dr. Griswold. With that his role of "the humble instrument," as he no doubt would have quaintly phrased it, ended. Exit E. H. N. Patterson. Thereafter reference to this chapter of his life was of rare occurrence though the letters in Poe's exquisite hand and the "Stylus" page of his designing were cherished always with none knows what regrets. He planned to write the whole story but somehow never found the time, or it might have been, the courage for it. The sparse Oquawka and "Stylus" references of the biographers all came through Poe's friends, not his, until the publication of the correspondence years after his death. Such reticence in a man is so uncommon as to be considered remarkable; in a boy it is little short of phenomenal. And Edwin Patterson, the instigator of the interesting correspondence, was scarcely more than that. He was younger by some years than the young Lowell who had written to Poe in 1843: "Your early poems display a maturity which astonished me, and I recollect no individual (and I believe I have read all the poetry that ever was written) whose early poems were anything like as good." Truth to tell, he was but little older than Poe had been upon the publication of his second volume of poems, his "Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems," of unique position in America, and for that matter, English poetry. And like the litterateur of his devotions he was dark and striking in appearance as well as impatiently ambitious of literary fame. When, in the little frontier town of Oquawka, known also as Yellow Banks, from its position on the Mississippi, he had first taken his pen in hand to formulate the proposition to be deemed “very flattering" and to display insight into the management of periodicals to be accounted "almost original," he had neither attained his majority nor yet concluded his term of apprenticeship to the Oquawka "Spectator." But he had, as it appears, been born to the profession and his prospects were in reality more bright than they at times seemed to him. His father, Col. J. B. Patterson, founder and owner of the "Spectator," was a journalist of experience and ability from the East. He had at the time of Edwin's birth, January 27, 1828, been engaged in publishing the "Winchester Virginian," his home town paper. Somewhat later he became the editor of "Jackson's American Argus" at Washington, D. C. Further evidence of his literary ability was furnished by his "Life of Black Hawk," a standard history of early border times. He had interviewed the great Sac chieftain, Ma-ka-ta-ma-she-kiakiak, during a visit to Rock Island after the close of the Black Hawk war, and his manuscript, written with the quill of a swan, was subsequently published in Boston where it had a great run. It is now a rare piece of Americana. Thus it happened that Edwin Patterson found in his own home and in the environment so nearly approaching what young John Hay was to term "Boetian" the necessary encouragement for his enterprise. In due time, and that before the letter Mr. Putnam was requested to forward to Poe's place of residence had reached its destination, he celebrated his twenty-first birthday, finding beneath his plate that morning a deed to one-half interest in the "Spectator" and the job printing office connected therewith. When the belated but highly favorable reply reached him, he was ready for whatever course of action might be determined. Other influences that entered into the shaping of Oquawka's marvelous boy might well be noted here. For truly he could have been no ordinary young journalist who wrote: "Our Literature is, just now, sadly deficient in the department of criticism. The Boston Reviewers are, generally, too much affected by local prejudices to give impartial criticisms; the Philadelphia Magazines have become mere monthly bulletins for book-sellers; Willis does not, with his paper, succeed even tolerably, as a critic; in fact, I seldom find any critique so nearly according with my own ideas of the true aim and manner of criticism as were yours, while you had charge of that department in ‘Graham's and Burton's.' I wish (and am not alone in the wish) to see you at the head of an influential periodical." His home training, as is so often the case, had been unusually wise and sympathetic. His mother, who was as far above the average parent of the frontier as was his father, became his first and |