Life — June 1, 1899 — page 3: what you’re looking at

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

with hymeneal intent, in his anger pounced upon the blushing and devoted bride, and, with a roar which struck terror to the hearts of all beholders, swallowed the fair girl before she had promised to love, honor and obey the man of herchoice. Nor shall we tell how the semi-widowed groom—if, indeed, that is what in the circumstance Mr. Blen- kinsop may be called—forced himself in a noble, R. F. but suicidal, frenzy down the throat of the now thoroughly those rare individuals,among gorged beast, and, amid the cheers of the multitude, per- the professional humorists, who formed the double function of joining his departed Jove in her have allied to a sense of humor a sense of proportion. Instead tragic end, and choking tho ill-mannered creature who, after of yielding to the temptation to make a three-volume novel out the fashion of beasts of his kind, had not studied etiquette, of a slender situation, he has contented himself in his amusing and had, therefore, not learned that in polite society a bride, story of “‘ Love Among the Lions” (Appleton) with a brevity if devoured at all, must be devoured by the eye, acd not other- which is wholly appropriate to the slightness of his theme. It wise, even if, as brides often do, she looks good enough to eat. is not impossible to believe _- that Mr, Henry James would have found in the ** psycho- logical moment,” wherein the fair Lurana Carmen De Castro decides that she must be married in the lions’ cage, at the circus of Afessrs. Wooker and Sawkins, or not at all, ample material for an interesting discursion of some four or five hundred pages of his charming, but some- what puzzling, periods. Mr, Anstey, however, has never been given to that sort of thing, and, in a rapid, vig- orous manner, he has com- pressed all that he has to tell of the famous marriage, which failed to eventuate, according to the advertise- meats on the show-bills, into an hour's pleasant reading. It would be unfair alike to author and to reader for us to go into the details of Mr. Anstey’s complication in this story. It has but one com- Plication, and to divulge that in part, or asa whole, would amount almost to an Infringe- ment of the author's copy- right, if perchance he has one. We shall, therefore, not re- veal to our readers whether or not the outraged lion,’ thus intruded upon by a young lady and her afflanced ‘WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS, Indeed, it is hardly proper for us even to hint of these things, because they do not really happen in Mr, Anstey’s romance of the ring. What did happen, however, is equally plausible, and Mr. Anstey hastold of it after his usual happy and quuintly humorous fashion. * We must confess to some surprise to note the hope- lessly commonplace illustra- tions chosen for the story in book form. When ‘ Love Among the Lions” was run- ning serially in the American weekly periodical in whose columns we first read it, it was copiously and wonder fully well illustrated by Mr. Peter Newell in the manner which he has made peculiarly hisown. That Mr. Newell's suggestive pictorial comment upon the author’s work should be set aside for the wholly inadequate “cuts” which “embellish” the book {s in- comprehensible, We wonder that Mr, Anstey and his pub- lishers should have missed an opportunity so obviously to their own advantage. John Kendrick Bangs, GE cherishes as many illusions about the past as Youth about the future,