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By James Lane Allen
Condensation by SARA WARE BASSETT FEW writers of American fiction are better qualified to present the early history of Kentucky than is James Lane Allen, himself a native of the Blue Grass State.
He chose as his setting for The Choir Invisible that picturesque period during Washington's administration when the Mississippi was just being opened for navigation, and great tides of pioneers were migrating through the Alleghany highway to settle the sparsely populated regions of the West and South. Lexington, Kentucky, chancing to be directly in the path of one tributary of this current, received not only many of those who were abandoning the cities of the coast for the untried territory of a newer land, but also others who, having tested out the Utopian Western country and left there health, wealth, and dreams of success, were returning broken-hearted to the homes from which they had come.
Hence in Lexington one encountered persons of every class. There were students from William and Mary College, voyageurs traveling for adventure, traders, the gentler bred English colonist from Virginia, homesteaders, and even an occasional group of friendly Indians.
It was a heterogeneous populace, high of courage and strong of fortitude, that amid clearing in forest and canebrake laid the foundation of this fine old Southern city; a populace not to be daunted by discomfort, privation, or unceasing toil.
The heroes and heroines who thus sacrificed their lives on the altar of civilization have, the author tells us, long since joined "the choir invisible of the immortal dead," but they have left behind them a heritage that has come down to us through the centuries.
The chief character of the story is John Gray, the master in the little log schoolhouse, and we have a charming glimpse of him, "a young fellow of powerful build, lean, muscular, wearing simply but with gentlemanly care a suit of black which was relieved around his wrists and neck by linen, snow-white and of the finest quality." He had a handsome head covered with thick red hair, we are told, and was a man of such integrity as to render him a worthy descendant "from one of Cromwell's unconquerable, hymn-singing army." We therefore are not surprised to find him holding himself aloof from the follies of the time, and seeking out the comradeship of those to whom the finer and nobler things of life appeal. Yet is he very human--a creature of anger, passion, and a multitude of moods. Moreover, it is quite consistent with his character that he should fall in love with a woman whom he idealizes, Amy Falconer, who "was perhaps the first beautiful girl of aristocratic birth ever seen in Kentucky, and the first of the famous train of those who for a hundred years since have wrecked or saved the lives of men." She is a coquette, vain, shallow, and incapable of deep feeling, and she tosses John's love aside in a moment of pique for that of Joseph Holden; afterward, on discovering that there is a prospect of John's inheriting a fortune and becoming a person of importance, she shamelessly offers to rid herself of Joseph and reinstate John in her graces.
John Gray, however, is not to be so lightly dropped and picked up again. The episode proves to him that his idol has feet of clay, and, with his faith in her shattered, he bids her farewell.