Lew Wallace
LEWIS WALLACE, generally known by the shorter name Lew, was born in 1827 at Brookville, Indiana, and perhaps was, quite unconsciously, potent in spreading the idea, dear to some, that in that state is located the literary center of this country. He died in 1905.
Like the students of to-day in the great struggle, he left his books for the Mexican War. He served again in the Civil War and rose to be Major-General in the Volunteer army. As after the Mexican episode, he returned again to the law; he was Governor of Utah from 1878 to 1881, and minister to Turkey from 1881 to 1885, when as a good diplomat he won the esteem of the late unlamented Abdul Hamid and could really put through business with that scientifically dilatory tyrant.
He is known by his three books "The Fair God" (1873), "Ben-Hur" (1880), and "The Prince of India" (1893). The first is a very clever reconstruction of the story of the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards. The reader feels a great sympathy with the highly developed natives who fell helpless before the superior arms of the invaders. The story, however, is by no means to be put in the same class with "Ben-Hur." The skill, the knowledge, the reverence with which the story of Christ is told (largely through the lives of others) have made "Ben-Hur" one of the books to take a secure hold on the public, both as book and on the stage, where the famous chariot-race has won a classic place.