Poetry

California — A Poem

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Paul Elder published this beautiful booklet during the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. It’s a real gem, with striking full-color drawings by Audley B. Wells and a matching envelope.

Perhaps only after admiring the booklet do we notice the poem it contains, California, by Fred Emerson Brooks (1850-1923). Though Brooks and his poetry have been forgotten, he was very popular a century ago as a writer and speaker. Modesty, it would seem, was not one of Brooks’s character flaws. Billed in a promotional flyer as “The Man Who Never Disappoints, Always Smiling, Always There,” his Chicago publisher gushes:

Fred Emerson Brooks is one of the great men in the lyceum world … Phenomenal health, a clean life and a sunny nature give him a remarkable record. Brooks has a marvelous breadth of thought and expression—there is no passion or feeling he does not portray. He is a gifted orator with a voice ranging from that of thunder to the softness of a summer zephyr.

The flyer also includes endorsements from Presidents McKinley, Roosevelt (“I’ve heard Brooks, and he’s bully!”) and Taft.

California
California, A Poem
California p3
California, page 3
California p5
California, page 5
California p7
California, page 7
California p9
California, page 9
California p11
California, page 11
California p13
California, page 13
California p15
California, page 15
California envelope
matching envelope to "California"

Consolatio

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Cover of "Consolatio"
Cover of “Consolatio”

During Stanford University’s annual commencement on 25 May 1903, professor Raymond Macdonald Alden stood to read a poem. It was an ode dedicated to the members of the class of 1903 who had died that month. Consolatio is a sobering reminder of how, not so long ago, the sudden death of young men and women was an all too common event. It is easy to forget the roll of deadly diseases—measles, mumps, diphtheria, polio, typhoid, whooping cough, scarlet fever—that we have since largely eradicated.

Alden (1873-1924) was born in New York and educated at the University of Pennsylvania. He held junior positions at Harvard and George Washington University before accepting the post of assistant professor of literature at Stanford in 1899. He later became chair of the English department at the University of Illinois. Alden also wrote a Christmas story Why the Chimes Rang (1909). Forgotten today, it was once quite popular. It tells the story of church bells which ring every Christmas Eve whenever someone places a special gift on the altar.

Title page of “Consolatio”

Consolatio has been digitized by the Internet Archive and is available online in a number of different formats.

Interior of "Consolatio"
Interior of “Consolatio”

By the Western Sea

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Cover of "By the Western Sea"
Cover of “By the Western Sea”, with wraparound decoration

By the Western Sea was the very first book published by the new firm of D. P. Elder and Morgan Shepard in 1898. The cover artwork and lettering, by Morgan Shepard, features an ocean wave design wrapping around the spine onto the back cover.

Samuel Marshall Ilsley was a Santa Barbara poet and playwright, the first of several authors published via Shepard’s connections in Santa Barbara. Aside from being a family friend of Morgan Shepard’s wife, Mary, Ilsley was also the first cousin of writer Charles Keeler. In 1896, Ilsley had accompanied Mary’s sister, Katherine Putnam, and Katherine’s daughter, Marian, on a long trip to Italy, part of which became the travelogue, Wayfarers in Italy.

Reviews of By the Western Sea were pleasant but not enthusiastic. The book was printed at the Murdock Press, a firm that often printed Elder & Shepard’s publications before the creation of the Tomoyé Press in 1903.

Updated 2025-12-22

Title page of "By The Western Sea"
Title page of “By the Western Sea”