David Harum

David Harum

The Project Gutenberg eBook, David Harum, by Edward Noyes
Westcott
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: David Harum A Story of American Life
Author: Edward Noyes Westcott

Release Date: January 28, 2006 [eBook #17617]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAVID
HARUM***
E-text prepared by David Garcia, Janet B, and the Project Gutenberg
Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/)

DAVID HARUM

A Story of American Life
by
EDWARD NOYES WESTCOTT

New York D. Appleton and Company 1899 Copyright, 1898, By D.
Appleton and Company.

INTRODUCTION.
The's as much human nature in some folks as th' is in others, if not
more.--DAVID HARUM.
One of the most conspicuous characteristics of our contemporary native
fiction is an increasing tendency to subordinate plot or story to the bold
and realistic portrayal of some of the types of American life and
manners. And the reason for this is not far to seek. The extraordinary
mixing of races which has been going on here for more than a century
has produced an enormously diversified human result; and the products
of this "hybridization" have been still further differentiated by an
environment that ranges from the Everglades of Florida to the glaciers
of Alaska. The existence of these conditions, and the great literary
opportunities which they contain, American writers long ago perceived;
and, with a generally true appreciation of artistic values, they have
created from them a gallery of brilliant genre pictures which to-day
stand for the highest we have yet attained in the art of fiction.
Thus it is that we have (to mention but a few) studies of Louisiana and
her people by Mr. Cable; of Virginia and Georgia by Thomas Nelson
Page and Joel Chandler Harris; of New England by Miss Jewett and
Miss Wilkins; of the Middle West by Miss French (Octave Thanet); of
the great Northwest by Hamlin Garland; of Canada and the land of the
habitans by Gilbert Parker; and finally, though really first in point of
time, the Forty-niners and their successors by Bret Harte. This list

might be indefinitely extended, for it is growing daily, but it is long
enough as it stands to show that every section of our country has, or
soon will have, its own painter and historian, whose works will live and
become a permanent part of our literature in just the degree that they
are artistically true. Some of these writers have already produced many
books, while others have gained general recognition and even fame by
the vividness and power of a single study, like Mr. Howe with The
Story of a Country Town. But each one, it will be noticed, has chosen
for his field of work that part of our country wherein he passed the
early and formative years of his life; a natural selection that is, perhaps,
an unconscious affirmation of David Harum's aphorism: "Ev'ry hoss c'n
do a thing better 'n' spryer if he's ben broke to it as a colt."
In the case of the present volume the conditions are identical with those
just mentioned. Most of the scenes are laid in central New York, where
the author, Edward Noyes Westcott, was born, September 24, 1847,
and where he died of consumption, March 31, 1898. Nearly all his life
was passed in his native city of Syracuse, and although banking and not
authorship was the occupation of his active years, yet his sensitive and
impressionable temperament had become so saturated with the local
atmosphere, and his retentive memory so charged with facts, that when
at length he took up the pen he was able to create in David Harum a
character so original, so true, and so strong, yet withal so delightfully
quaint and humorous, that we are at once compelled to admit that here
is a new and permanent addition to the long list of American literary
portraits.
The book is a novel, and throughout it runs a love story which is
characterized by sympathetic treatment and a constantly increasing
interest; but the title rôle is taken by the old country banker, David
Harum: dry, quaint, somewhat illiterate, no doubt, but possessing an
amazing amount of knowledge not found in printed books, and holding
fast to the cheerful belief that there is nothing wholly bad or useless in
this world. Or, in his own words: "A reasonable amount of fleas is good
for a dog--they keep him f'm broodin' on bein' a dog." This
horse-trading country banker and reputed Shylock, but real
philanthropist, is an accurate portrayal of