Life — October 10, 1901 — page 9: what you’re looking at

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

-LIFE- 289 push in the sotar plerus, that gentleman having described him as one of a mob of magazine morbidities. Mr. Howells is one of the writers of the realistic school, which glories in the raucous, conti- nental scribblings of Tolstoi and Zola, and which refuses to profit by the sweet and wholesome chapters of My Highland Journal,” or the elevation, vigor and spirituality of Talmage's syndicate sermons. It is true he might have been saved, for he once lived in Cambridge, Mass., but he was given over to that form of nervous mania called anti-plug-hat-itis, a Western American disease, which liis work in literature has dealt largely with the vulgar details of American life, of self-made men and such; and it is apparent toeven the most tolerant that he has no capacity for rising to the epic heights of Anthony Trollope or the divine Tupper. The burdens of plebeian ancestry lie heavy on our so-called litera- ture; ancestral clods weigh down the pinions of what might be genius with carefully-selected forefathers; and our lack of noble blood can only be overcome by importing sturdy yeomen butlers, hostlers and chambermaids. _ I say in all kindness, Mr. Howells ia a dangerous and insidious element in letters; he appeals in a certain way to Americans, a people ignorant of literary art and its canons, and he formulates for them false and heretical standards. The shadow of Ohio lies heavy on his soul; he exemplifies the axiom revealed to us by Wendell and the ultra-literary cult of Nevada, that in literature the peasant never be the patrician. Mary E, Witktys, Miss Mary Ellen Wilkins, of Massachusetts, is a realistic writer of the pie, piety and Puritan school, with a tendency towards reducing the stern standards of Cotton Mather to cot She bas done much to reveal the nightmare phases of character, which appears to be post-Norman, Chaucerian and pre- Elizabethan, with a dyspeptic, theological, litigious, common-law, tempcrame:ital structure superimposed. Miss Wilkins patrician in antecedents. I am not quite certain which strain of noble blood flows in the veins of this inspired lady ; but her family historian claims the descent from Hugo de Villekins, of Pichurst Grange, Kent, whose hopeless passion for the Saracen Sappho, Dinah of Syracuse, was sung by a thousand medieval troubadours. I disapprove of much of her character drawing, believing that the vulgaritics and crudities of American life should be left to the Clemenses and Howellses. Miss Wilkins has an austere contempt for humor, which has preserved her from enthralling that class of readers who prefer the warming of their blood to the stirring of their intellects. On a sea voyage, or on a desolate island, the works of Miss Wilkins will always be preferred to stray copies of the city directory, or even editions de luze of the Government meteorological reports; and she will give Mary Jane Holmes and Laura Jean Libbey a tight rub for literary immortality. Joseph Smith, A Greater Test. RIGGS: They say those India Yogis can keep their minds fixed on vacancy for hours at a time. Griccs: That's nothing. I spent a whole week recently reading the short stories in the magazines. A Soft Answer. HE: Well, dear, after that you must acknowledge that you are a fool ! ; . He: I always knew it, darling; but—until I married you—I managed to keep it a secret. WLUSTRATED ADVERTISEMENT, SUPERFLUOUS MAIR ON TU PACE INSTANTLY REMOVED. comicbooks.com