Howard Pyle, a chronicle by Charles D. Abbott, with an introduction by N. C. Wyeth and many illustrations from Howard Pyle's works.

HOWARD PYLE: A CHRONICLE
undercurrent of pirate allusion. It is interesting to note
a new sense of style that shows itself for the first time in
this essay, words used in an almost precious way which
would have been called impressionism ten or twenty years
later. Such expressions as "The throb of machinery pulsed
into silence," "through the quivering intensity of the midday tropical sun," or "the gnawing salt of the sea-breeze"
are strewn indiscriminately throughout the essay. Yet this
was several years before the publication of Stephen Crane's
first book, and at least ten before the impressionistic style
became the goal of the younger fiction writers. It was apparently, however, only experimentation, for with the
exception of one or two places in some of the later short
stories, Howard Pyle uses a straightforward, simple style,
skillfully adapted to whatever subject he may have in hand.
After "Jamaica" there followed a number of stories and
pictures dealing with buccaneers. "Blueskin the Pirate," ' a
tale of the Delaware coast, the action of which centered
around the picturesque sand dunes, was published in i 890.
Then came an article, "Among the Sand Hills,"2 about the
dunes themselves, one sentence of which is sufficiently expressive of their attraction to be quoted: "A breathless
curtain of silence stretches between the glare of the sky
above and the whispering whiteness below." In the meantime, the lure of pirates had led Howard Pyle into the
mazes of the literature of roguery and called forth a number of accounts in Harper's of Claude Du Val, Jack Sheppard, the romantic figure immortalized in Gay's Beggar's
Opera, Jonathan Wild and others. These spirited tales,
' The Northwestern Miller, December, 1890, vol. xxx, p. iro.
"Harpber': New Monthly Magazine, September, x892, vol. lxxxv, p. 586.
['144 1