Life — March 12, 1896 — page 8: what you’re looking at

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

COOL OFF THEIR SPIRITS A LITTLE.” SACKCLOTH AND ASHES. Y lady swore she would repent In sackcloth and in ashes gray. I did not think her words were meant Until I saw the proof one day. She wore, in truth, a gray cloth sack, ‘Twas tailor-made ‘twere safe to bet, And on the sleeve I saw, alack ! The ashes—of a cigarette. R. C. MacDonald. AN IDYLLIC STORY BY MR. HOWELLS. HOSE who believe that there will be a sharp reaction from the prevalent ‘‘lit- erature of gore” toward spirituality in fiction will read with delight Mr. Howells's charming novelette, ‘The Day of Their Wedding (Harpers), The young critics who are find- ing themselves,” like the ship in Mr. Kipling’s story, are fond of announcing, with the pride of an original discovery, that Mr. Howells is a realistic novelist with a socialistic bias. Indeed, there is no one so new at the business that he cannot instantly classify Mr. Howells with magnificent certainty. It would be really quite surprising to the critics if they should take a bird's-eye survey of all his work and see how many kinds of ver- satility he displays. The one thing that the youngest critic can assert, with assurance that he is right, is that Mr. Howells is first and last a literary artist, intensely interested in his work and finding his greatest delight in new experiments. Instead of his work being all set in one key (so thata tired reader may say impatiently, “ Idon’t want any more Howells”) it is of infinite variety in subject and treatment, from the lightest farce to serious tragedy, or from idyllic romanticism o depressing realism. . . . HIS beautiful story, ‘‘ The Day of Their Wedding,” belongs to his novels of “THANKS, AWFULLY, OLD MAN, spiritual beauty, of which the best example is “The Undiscovered Country.” The Shaker characters which appear in each story sug- gest a further comparison. The charm of this tale is its idyllic simplic- ity. This one day's excursion into the ‘* world outside” of the Shaker lovers, Lorenzo and Althea, has the allegorical charm of a tale by Hawthorne. It is as though the pa- thetic difficulties of living that sensitive souls realize by years of experience were suddenly revealed to these Shaker innocents in a single day. ‘They are not dense nor stupid. They enjoy the light, the variety, and the beauty of the world as they see it on a day at Saratoga. Althea has all the delight of a modern girl in the beautiful new gowns and finery that Lorenzo buys for her. The people that they meet, from the hack-driver to the minister, are kind to them. They really see their little bit of “ world outside" at its best. And they are most charitably disposed toward it. ‘They even clothe it with all the soft illusions of love and youth. But at the end of the day they realize that it is not for them. ‘They have lived all their lives in the shelter of the Shaker community. The ideal of the ‘* angelic life” has been with them for twenty years, and for them the life of the “ world outside” is sin. So at the end of the day they renounce it all, and in their old Shaker garments go back to their sheltered nest, to live separate as their creed commands. Mr. Howells takes leave of them with Lo- renzo's face concealed in A/thea’s bonnet—his last concession to the impulses of the world outside, And yet a romantic sentimentalist may still imagine that there is a chapter to be written some day soon, when the sight of A/thea's face above the hedgerow at the farm will prove too much for Lorenzo, and he will beg her to consider whether faithful love is not an armor proof against the trials of the wicked world, And in our opinion A/thea will answer “Yee.” Droch, OTHER: Now, children, what are you going to give up for Lent? First Litre Gir: give up fighting. Seconp LitrLe Girt: And I'm going to give up potatoes because I hate ‘em so. I'm going to “Gop knows I'm NoT THE THING I SHOULD BE!"