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
to know that I had the work by me for eight or ten years
before publishing it, so that it represents a mature and not
a hasty opinion of my subject."
A far superior book, however, to Rejected of Men, far
more expressive of the spiritual nature of its author, was
The Garden Behind the Moon, which was published i~n
1896. In February, 1 889, both Mr. and Mrs. Pyle went to
Jamaica for a short trip, leaving their only son 'in Wilmington with Mrs. Pyle's mother. During their absence he was
taken sick. and died before the parents could be reached.
It was to both Mr. and Mrs. Pyle a terrific and staggering
blow, the effects of which could not easily be softened, but
the father found some outlet for his grief in the writing
of this book. There is more poetry, more beauty in it than
in any other of his productions, and it is movingly sad. It
sets forth in an allegorical way the very mystical theory of
life and death at which the author had arrived After years
of questioning.,
The only explanation we have from the author as to the
meaning of the allegory 'is in the following letter to Miss
Phoebe Griffith:
CC*0.There is indeed an intended inner meaning to
The Garden Behind the Moon, but to explain it would
require a long dissertation at the end of which that certain
indefinable mystery with which I intended to surround the
story would be altogether dissipated.
"I may tell you so much as this, although you probably
have guessed it for yourself, that the Moon Angel represents the Angel of Death, and the Garden means that place
in the other life to which little children go after they live
the life of the'world and before their minds and faculties
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