Augusta J. Evans was a Southern author who opened a hospital for Confederate soldiers during the Civil War in Mobile, Alabama. Of Evans' nine books St Elmo is her most well known. Her beautiful writing style can be seen from her opening sentences, which read, "He stood and measured the earth; and the everlasting mountains were scattered, the perpetual hills did bow. These words of the prophet upon Shigionoth were sung by a sweet, happy, childish voice, and to a strange, wild, anomalous tune-solemn as the Hebrew chant of Deborah, and fully as triumphant."