ABSTRACT
Even among those reading widely in American literature, John Townsend Trowbridge today is little more than a name to be remembered chiefly for some verses about a boy named Darius, who, with his home-made contraption buckled to his back, made an early attempt to fly by jumping from a barn loft. 1 And yet in the seventies and eighties, Trowbridge was almost as popular a poet as Longfellow (he was a favorite with the elocutionists) and was, in addition, as editor of Our Young Folks and a leading contributor to the Youth ’ s Companion and St. Nicholas, exceedingly popular with the younger generation. One critic went so far as to write that with Trowbridge a new era in juvenile literature began in America. 2 In his Autobiography, Theodore Roosevelt bore witness to his own allegiance, in these words:
