The house of Martha (1891). By

THE LADY OR THE TALKER? Really and truly, all our hero wants is someone to listen to him You see, it's quite simple. He had a wonderful time in Europe. He wants to tell folks back in the States all his adventures. But our hero, in the nineteenth century, confronts a problem that has only gotten worse in the twenty-first.,"" . . the ears of the present generation are not purveyors to the mind; they are merely agents of the tongue, who watch for breaks or weak places in the speech of others in order that their principal may rush in and hold the field . . . the conviction came to me that nowadays we listen only for an opportunity to speak."" What to do, oh what to do?..... Frank Richard Stockton (April 5, 1834 - April 20, 1902) was an American writer and humorist, best known today for a series of innovative children's fairy tales that were widely popular during the last decades of the 19th century. Born in Philadelphia in the year 1834, Stockton was the son of a prominent Methodist minister who discouraged him from a writing career. After he married Mary Ann Edwards Tuttle, they moved to Burlington, New Jersey.where he produced some of his first literary work. The couple then moved to Nutley, New Jersey. For years he supported himself as a wood engraver until his father's death in 1860; in 1867, he moved back to Philadelphia to write for a newspaper founded by his brother. His first fairy tale, "Ting-a-ling," was published that year in The Riverside Magazine; his first book collection appeared in 1870. He was also an editor for Hearth and Home magazine in the early 1870s. He died in 1902 of cerebral hemorrhage and is buried at The Woodlands in Philadelphia.