OCR Text |
Show Hugh Farrar Macdermott's Youth. New York, June 12. It is hard to peak calmly, still harder to speak critically, criti-cally, of such a man as the late Hugh Farrar Maedermott One who did not know him intimately would be entirely Incapable of telling the world what manner man-ner of man he was whom we have just lost: Those who did know liim are almost incapacitated by reason of their sorrow from estimating him justly, or writing such a story of bis life as should, pass into history as the true record of the life of a true genius. Such Maedermott was. The clear vision, and the blindness; the simple directness, and the erratic waywardness; way-wardness; the in-1 I spired utterance, and the child like petulance; the divine 'gifts, and the human shortcomings short-comings of genius were all his. While it may not be that he will be remembered as one of the en-eater hdgh F. macdbrmott. members of tllfl hnman family, it must come to pass that his memory will be cherished by those who knew bim as the image of some fair, lovely child, whom the world could not spoil, whose very faults made him the dearer to his friends. " ' Hugh Farrar Maedermott was born in Ireland, near Euniskillen, on the 10th of August, 1884, , Tho father, Thomas Gould Maedermott, Maeder-mott, was a dealer in grain, and during the famine of 1846 and 1847 he was a heavy loser, finally becoming so seriously ( involved that he gathered up what means he had left and came to America with his family to make a new Btart in life. He purchased a homestead in Dorchester, Dor-chester, Mass., and Hugh, then a boy of IB, was placed in Judge Brigham's office to study lav. The elder Maedermott, however, died soon afterward, and the boy turned to the press for a living. Macdermott's writing, immature as it was, was promising enough to attract the attention of Isaac W. Fry, then the managing editor of The Boston Courier, who determined to train him thoroughly, and put him at type setting. Even at that early period Maedermott Was a typical bohemian of the highest class, aud affiliated readily, as he did all through his life, with the cleverest and wittiest of the writers of the day, It so came about that before the days of the famous New York Bohemian club of 1868 to '60 he was associated with "Arte-nius "Arte-nius Ward," "Mrs. Partington" and "Miles OTioilly" as contributor to The Carpet Bag. It was tn 1858 that he went to California. Califor-nia. There, notwithstanding his youth, he became a figure and was an influential influen-tial member of the famous vigilance committee. In 1857 he returned to New York and took up the stick for a living, but his pen was never idle. His poetry soon won recognition and for many years afterward his life was one series of Bucoeases. His best known poem is "My Blind Canary." D. A. C. |