The Virginian has portrayed the sweeter side of the old slavery days, in direct contrast to Mrs. Stowe's picture of the harsher side. In the master he has delineated forbearance, confidence, protection; in the slave, respect, devotion and fidelity. Without a scruple he has felt constrained to make one of his characters say of the days before the war: "Dem wuz good ole times, marster--de bes' Sam ever see! De wuz, in fac'! Niggers did n' hed nothin' 't all to do--jes' hed to 'ten' to de feedin' an' cleanin' de hosses, an' doin' what de marster tell 'em to do; an' when dey wuz sick, dey had things sent 'em out de house, an' de same doctor came to see 'em whar 'ten' to de white folks when dey wuz po'ly. Dyah war n' no trouble nor nuthin."
A few years ago Mr. Page was asked if he wrote rapidly. "Yes and no," he replied. "I write the first draft as rapidly as I can and then go over it very carefully in the revision. I try to simplify my writings as much as possible. The more simple it is, I think, the better it is. I find, however, that the revision often takes away the spirit from the first draft. I lay away the manuscript, and looking at it several weeks later, I can see that the first draft is truer to nature than the more stilted revision. I think I do more careful work now than I have done in the past. My ideal is far above anything I have ever done, and I sometimes despair of approaching it. There is one thing I do, however, which I think is a good plan for any writer. That is, I always give the best I have in me to the story which I am writing. I do not save anything which I think might perhaps be of use to me in the future. The cream, if you could use that expression, always goes to the present."
In 1891 the author of "Marse Chan" left Richmond and went to New York to succeed Charles Dudley Warner in the conduct of "The Drawer" in _Harper's Monthly_, Mr. Warner succeeding Mr. Howells, who at that time left _Harper's_ for the _Cosmopolitan_, in the conduct of "The Study." That same year Mr. Page appeared as a public reader. Two years later he married Mrs. Henry Field of Chicago, a granddaughter of Governor Barbour of Virginia, and since then, for the most part, he has lived and worked in Washington. By far his most ambitious work is "Red Rock," a novel which has done much to affect favorably the old attitude of the North toward the South.