Life — July 26, 1894 — page 6: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

- LIFE: OUR FRESH AIR FUND. OSE children whose bare feet are treading the hot stones of the city would be very much happier if those same feet could run for a fort- night upon the cool grass at Branchville. For the stones are really hot, and the air is dead and unwholesome, and it is at this period of the summer that eyes begin to look hollow and faces become paler than ever. Remember that if times are hard for you they are harder still for these young ones who lose their one chance for a glimpse at the country. Lend a hand, Brothers and Sisters, and help us in our undertaking. Previously acknowl- | In the name of a little child. $937.50 ‘Thrqueb Larchmont Circ. Library 3.00 A Faithful Friend, Friend ged. : Hilda Wood °- M.P.G Four Leaf Clover Club’ ‘of Lawrence River Scarsdal Cash, Bos! : Tableaux Impromptu For the Fresh Air Fund, 5 Mrs. €. W. Colton F. B.N., Shafter, Texas... es SSERETREREREIE 8 “THE EBB TIDE.” a writer reaches a certain art in the telling of a tale, he may put into it all sorts of uncanny people, and you'll follow them to the end of the story. The swing of the style often has a good deal to do with it, but perhaps of greater moment is the faculty he has of leading you along like a child, by pointing out strange and unusual things now and then. To hold the attention of a child, with a tale, it is not necessary to be particularly original or even coherent—all the child wants is simply “ pegs to hang his fancy on.” \ That is why anything that Robert Louis Stevenson writes is read with pleasure; and though “The Ebb Tide” (in which Lloyd Osbourne collaborated) is filled with disagreeable people and events, it has the charm of a tale well told, that will carry even a fastidious reader to the last chapter. (Stone & Kimball.) Like most of his stories, there is not a woman in it, and you do not miss her. In fact a woman would be out of place in such a tale; she woul immediately set up a certain standard of taste and morality that woula put the real heroes of the tale so far out of the pale of decency that no one would care to read about them. But when all the men are adventurers with shady records, you m: focus your moral glasses upon them so that you can distinguish the vary- ing degrees of their wickedness and even those aspirations and achieve- ments that might relatively be called good, * . . HE marvel of the book is the complete characterization of the four men whom chance has thrown together; they are) like no other men, and they are engaged in strange deeds, but you never doubt for a minute that, bad as they may be, they are of the same clay as yourself. This kinship with common humanity is made evident by the moral struggles in their breasts. They may be plotting the darkest crimes, but through them glows faintly the moral spark that only waits for a favoring breeze to spring into flame, It is doubtful whether even Stevenson's own strange allegory of “ Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” showed more subtilely and strikingly the struggle of good and evil ina man than isrevealed by Herrick in “ The Ebb Tide.” THE HARD LUCK OF AN ACROBAT. There are half a dozen pages of descriptive writing in the book that show the hand of the master at his best—notably the description of sunrise and the approach at dawn tothe strange island, Then there is the truly wonderful chapter where Attwater takes Herrick into his confidence, and discourses of fate and religion—* Religion is a savage thing, like the universe it illuminates; comicbooks.com