William Fayal Clarke

“ Nicholas and the copies of her books that are to be found in thousands of homes to-day will never lie dust-covered, but will continue to gladden the family life, and to inspire a love for goodness, truth, and beauty in the hearts of those who are to come after us. It is given to few to exercise so far-reaching an influence upon young minds, and thus upon the future of the nation. ”

“ Dodge has said of him, Mr. Roswell Smith, the founder of the magazine, was “ambitious for the work in hand, rather than for himself. He counted no cost too great for the carrying out of a plan; and the success of St. Nicholas has rested upon his energy and liberality.” In her editorial work, also, she was fortunate in having capable and devoted assistants who shared her own enthusiasm for the magazine and its readers. The work was never drudgery to her nor to them. Her ardent zeal, keen wit, and tireless invention brightened with zest the dullest hour and the hardest task. ”

“ There was never so delightful a department for young readers as “Jack-in-the-Pulpit,” nor one so endeared by matchless wit and wisdom to every youthful heart.
As if the heavy and steadily recurring tasks of editorial work were not enough, Mrs. Dodge found time, in the intervals of her busy life, to publish, in the year 1874, her famous “Rhymes and Jingles”; in 1877, a book of essays and short stories entitled “Theophilus and Others”; and in 1879 a collection of poems and verses for grown-up readers, entitled “Along the Way.” ”

“ The recognized leader in juvenile literature for almost a third of a century, she was universally honored by the children of America and even of the world—for from shore to shore of our country and across the widest seas her name was held in reverent affection by child-readers and their parents. Two generations of girls and boys have known her work and learned to love the noble, gifted, kindly nature which that work revealed. ”

“ There was no such thing in those days as a children’s magazine; but there were the great masterpieces of literature, the Bible, the old English ballads, Shakspere, Milton, Bunyan, and Walter Scott. Professor Mapes inspired in his daughters a love for the world’s great books, and Mrs, Dodge may have gained from them the crystal clearness and the force of her literary style. As she grew into her teens she grew also more and more fond of writing, and before her girlhood ended was already helping her father in the preparation of his learned pamphlets and essays ”

“ Their heads are strained and taxed with the day’s lessons. They do not want to be bothered nor amused or taught nor petted. They just want to have their own way over their own magazine. They want to enter the one place where they may come and go as they please, where they are not obliged to mind, or say “yes, ma’am”’ and “yes, sir,”— where, in short, they can live a brand-new, free life of their own for a little while, accepting acquaintances as they choose and turning their backs without ceremony upon what does not concern them. ”

“ Few lives have been more worthy and high-minded, more useful and successful, more devoted and unselfish. Perhaps it was a part of her recompense that she retained to the last the charm of inexhaustible youth—the radiance of the morning-time of life. ”

“ A child’s magazine is its playground.
Even with the opening issues, the child-readers of the country recognized that they had come into their own at last. It was the aim of both editor and publishers to produce the most beautiful and entertaining periodical for youth which it was possible to create. Mrs. Dodge was at her prime, and she made the magazine a marvel of inventiveness and youthful jollity ”

“ It was into this home that little Mary Elizabeth was born on January 26, 1831. “I had a devoted father and mother and a happy childhood, a remarkably happy childhood, watched over with loving care,” is Mrs. Dodge’s own tribute to the wise and tender rearing which she received and to the home influences which molded her earliest thoughts.
The picture of Professor Mapes’s daughters in their childhood, painted by William Page, shows Mary, the second daughter, as the little figure in the foreground holding a doll in her arms. ”

“ Dodge was persuaded to issue a new edition of this work, under the title “Poems and Verses.” Throughout, it shows sincerity of poetic feeling; a rich imagination; a genuine love of nature; and a happy serenity of heart. “Enfoldings,” the sonnet on “The Stars,” “Inverted,” “The Two Mysteries,” and not a few other pieces are poems indeed—poems that the world will not willingly let die. They have found their way already into various Anthologies of Poetry, whose editors—some of them distinguished critics—are quite willing to call them poems, even if their author was not. ”

“ Dodge’s unconscious pride in her elder son, James Mapes Dodge, who, not content with carrying the family genius for inven-tion to new heights of recognition, is-also a marvelous entertainer, telling stories as only he—and possibly his distinguished grandfather—could tell them. ”

“ Yor Onteora had cast its spell, not only upon writers, but upon leading artists, players, and men of the first rank in their professions, who had found themselves lured to congenial association within its leafy byways. ”

“ In one sense, she neither will nor can have any successor. But the work which she established and directed so ably will be continued, and will endure, a source of pleasure and of benefit to thousands, adapting itself to new conditions as they arise, and fulfilling—or even enlarging, let us hope—its mission and its influence. ”

“ After the publication in leading magazines of several essays and stories for grown-up readers, Mrs. Dodge brought out, in 1864, her first book— made up of short tales for children—under the title “Irvington Stories.” So great was its popularity that the publisher begged for a second series or a sequel. But Mrs. Dodge, meantime, had begun work upon a longer narrative. ”

“ In Holland itself a Dutch translation has found a sale of many editions. By a curious coincidence, too, when Mrs. Dodge was in Amsterdam with her son in 1873, a copy of this Dutch edition was recommended to him by a bookseller as the best and most faithful juvenile story of Dutch life that was known in Holland. ”

“ Nicholas Songs” gives ample evidence of this, for more than a third of all the text in the volume was written by Mrs. Dodge.
“Theophilus and Others” was a book of stories and sketches for grown people. Among its contents were a remarkably clever satire, “The Insanity of Cain,” which at once attracted wide notice, and that mirth-provoking comicality in Irish dialect “Miss Maloney on the Chinese Question.” This skit—well worthy to rank with Bret Harte’s “Heathen Chinee”—had an enormous popularity in its day, and has since been included in almost every collection of humorous masterpieces. ”

“ Nicholas reaches its readers, the daily newspapers will have brought to them the sad news of the death of the beloved editor of this magazine. Mrs. Dodge had been suffering from a severe illness for several months, and it was hoped that the usual sojourn in her summer cottage at Onteora, New York, might restore her to health. But she steadily grew weaker until the end, which came peacefully on the morning of Monday, August 21st.
To all who knew and loved her it seems almost unbelievable that one who was so vital a part of the lives of those around her has vanished forever from our sight. Mrs. ”

“ And, in addition, she compiled from the volumes of the magazine, with most conscientious care and skill, two famous nursery-books for very little folk, entitled “Baby Days" and “Baby World,” which in their special field never have been equaled in merit or popularity.
The “Hans Brinker” occurrence in the Holland book-store was matched by several
Mrs. Dodge at about the time when she became editor of “St. Nicholas.” like incidents. During a conversation which had turned upon the many varieties of dialect in the British Isles, Mrs. ”