Life — July 30, 1896 — page 7: what you’re looking at

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

-LIFE: 81 A MISNOMER, A USEFUL DISCOVERY. N Italian has devised a method for making mummies by the absorption of gasses into the body. This is a much wished-for discovery. With the disappearance of our forests the mummy can be made into an article of utility as well as a thing of beauty. What can be more convenient for visitors, when they drive up to the front gate, than to be able to hitch their horses into the car of an ancestor on a stepmother's side ? Of course, it would be rather heartless to use cousins for gate posts. The relationship is too close. But a farmer could take second cousins and build a picket fence around his entire place. If the supply of iron should become exhausted the blacksmith might be able to pound through life by using as an anvil the head of some long deceased pugilist. st cxown Tiles Love, WRN COLENRITEY Then think what a convenience it would be if instead of dragging a out a bulky photograph album to show up one's distant ancestors at an where the wrong man and the wrong girl are evening party or a rural quilting, the entire company could be con- shown to be complacently happy, and a middle ducted up to the garret or out to the woodshed where ancestors have aged millionaire is about to sail for Europe to been corded and properly labeled for generations, storm the heart of the heroine. The moral of it all is that ‘‘in view of all the facts of life, the mutability of human affection is its happiest quality.” Or to put it in the vernacu- lar “*There are as good fish in the sea as ever were caught.” . . * UT in California when the wrong man marries the wrong woman, in a novel, the difficulty is not so philosophic- ally solved as in the effete East. Alice S. Wolf in ‘‘A House of ‘4 Cards” (Stone & Kimball) is |“ Anp THOU canst crows TH satisfied with nothing less than COLUMBIN death for her heroine. She had just parted with her lover forever when the heart disease over- took her. It was very poetic and saved everybody, including the author, a great deal of trouble in straightening out the tangle. Moreover ‘A silvery shaft of moonlight slanted athwart her hair,” as she lay dead. That is perhaps the best solution of the trouble for a woman who writes novels as this heroine did. It is doubtful if a woman who believes that she isa literary genius can be happy with any man. Death is her fitting refuge. ° . . . HEN you come to stories of the great Middle West, such as Ella W. Peattie has collected in ‘‘A Mountain Woman” (Way & Williams), the gloom is less sentimental and the suffering more within the range of realities. There are cight short stories in the volume and most of them are remarkably well done. As a bit of strong character sketching ‘‘ Up the Gulch" is a delight. Indeed each story has a vivid personality about it. ‘‘ Jim Lancy’s Waterloo,” which is a tale of Nebraska farm life, will materially help an Eastern man to comprehend the Populist craze. One of Lancy's conversa- tions is a striking forecast of some of Bryan's arguments. A WICKED WORD. WE have received a pleasant note from Denver, in which the writer speaks of v section as ‘‘this most cowardly. senseless and damnable crime. Those are strong words, Broth- er, and, of course, they pain our ears; but as they fit the case with precision and are, if any- thing, a trifle too moderate, we can pardon you this once. The more humane physicians all over the country are them- selves signing petitions against this exciting sport and it begins to look as if public opinion might in time ac- complish a good result where Mercy and Prog- ress have heretofore been powerless. BUT THE COLUMBINE MapPt D TO BE JUST PLAIN POISON IVY, AND NOW THEY DO NOT SPEAK AS THEY PASS BY, The volume contains good writing and considerable strength of passion. Droch. comicbooks.com