nection with interstate commerce and the adjustment of labor controversies, and of excluding contract laborers by restricting immigration and providing against fraudulent and undesirable naturalization, and so on to the end of the chapter. "The subject of the enforcement of the 'Monroe doctrine' in its letter and spirit would be in special charge of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and the President and Secretary of State would be authorized to move officially only as directed by a majority of the House of Representatives. If the voters of the nation could have thus spoken through the House of Representatives, the Nicaragua incident would probably not have happened. In any event, it would not have been tolerated without vigorous protest, and official notice would have been given to call a halt.” A President elected under such conditions could not assume, in Mr. Ashley's view, "the prerogatives which nearly all our Presidents have assumed in the past fifty years, by defiantly using and abusing the veto power and the appointing power." Such a President would of necessity be "an American," and he would have neither motive nor excuse for betraying the people or their representatives. Mr. Ashley is confident that the impending political advance must be made along the lines indicated by him, and he reviews at length certain chapters of our political history to show that great injustice has often resulted from the alleged imperfections of our present system. PLUTOCRACY AND PATERNALISM. WE hear and read a great deal about the dangers of pluto cracy, and we also hear much about the evils of paternal ism. As a rule, those who are alarmed at the latter see nothing in the talk about the former, while those who warn us against plutocracy scoff at the cry of "paternalism." Is the country really between the devil of State despotism and the deep sea of the almighty dollar? Prof. Lester F. Ward, in The Forum, attempts to analyze the current notions regarding wealth and government and distinguish between real and imaginary evils or dangers. So far as "plutocracy" is applied simply to the accumulation of wealth in the hands of individuals and the normal influence of that wealth, Professor Ward dismisses the indictment as worthless. Wealth has done and in doing incalculable service to society, and will continue to be useful. The transmission of immense fortunes to idle heirs is injurious, but a wise limitation of inheritance would easily afford a remedy. As to the vague objections to paternalism, Professor Ward says that it is merely used to excite prejudice against proper extension of state functions and undeserving of serious attention. We quote the passage which follows this affirmation: "Are there, then, no dangerous or deleterious tendencies in modern society? There certainly are such, and they may be said to be in the direction of both plutocracy and paternalism, giving to these terms not a literal, but a real or scientific meaning, as denoting respectively the too great power of wealth, and the too great solicitude for and fostering of certain interests on the part of government. . . "Modern society is suffering from the very opposite of paternalism—from under-government, from the failure of government to keep pace with the change which civilization has wrought in substituting intellectual for physical qualities as the workers of injustice. Government to-day is powerless to perform its primary and original function of protecting society. There was a time when brigandage stalked abroad throughout Europe and no one was safe in life or property. This was due to lack of adequate government. Man's nature has not changed, but brigandage has succumbed to the strong arm of the law. Human rapacity now works in subtler ways. Plutocracy is the modern brigandage and can be dislodged only by the same power-the power of the state. ... "If, then, the danger of plutocracy is so largely due to insufficient government, where is the tendency to paternalism in the sense of too much government? This opens up the last and most important aspect of the subject. If there were no influences at work in society but those of unaided nature; if we had a pure physiocracy or government of nature, such as prevails among wild animals, and the weak were thereby sacrificed that the strong might survive to beget the strong, and thus elevate the race along the lines of evolution-however great the hardship, we might resign ourselves to it as part of the great cosmic scheme. But unfortunately this is not the case. Without stopping to show that, from the standpoint of civilized society, the qualities which best fit men to gain advantage over their fellows are the ones least useful to society at large, it will be sufficient for the present purpose to point out that in the actual state of society it is not even those who, from this biological point of view, are the fittest, that become in fact the recipient of the greatest favors at the hands of society. This is due to the creation, by society itself, of artificial conditions that destroy the balance of forces and completely nullify all the beneficial effects that are secured by the operation of the natural law on the lower plane. Indeed, the effect is reversed, and instead of developing strength, either physical or mental, through activity incident to emulation, it tends to parasitic degeneracy through the pampered idleness of the favored classes." Professor Ward refers to trusts and monopolies, the control of the means of transportation and communication, the reckless bestowal of public franchises without an equivalent, and other instances of the sacrifice of public interest, and then continues as follows: "The very possession of wealth is only made possible by government. The safe conduct of all business depends upon the certain protection of law. The most powerful business combinations take place under legal forms. Even dishonest and swindling schemes, so long as they violate no penal statute, are protected by law. Speculation in the necessaries of life is legitimate business, and is upheld by the officers of the law tho it result in famine; and even then bread riots are put down by the armed force of the state. Thus has society become the victim of its own system, against the natural effects of which it is powerless to protect itself. It has devised the best possible scheme for satisfying the rapacity of human nature. And now, mark: The charge of paternalism is chiefly made by the class that enjoy the largest share of government protection. Those who denounce state interference are the ones who most frequently and successfully invoke it. The cry of laissez faire mainly goes up from the ones who, if really 'let alone,' would instantly lose their wealth-absorbing power. "The degree to which the citizen is protected in the secure enjoyment of his possessions is a fair measure of the state of civilization, but this protection must apply as rigidly to the poor man's possessions as to those of the rich man. In the present system the latter is not only encouraged, but actually tempted to exploit the former. Every trust, every monopoly, every carelessly granted franchise, has or may have this effect, and the time has arrived when a part at least of this paternal solicitude on the part of government should be diverted from the monopolistic element and bestowed upon the general public. If we must have paternalism, there should be no partiality shown in the family.". AN INDICTMENT OF COLLEGE ATHLETICS. an extent that President Schurman, of Cornell University, and other authorities have felt called upon to denounce the tendency as vicious and to express grave doubt whether intercollegiate athletics are now healthy or innocent. Mr. Caspar W. Whitney, an expert who conducts the amateur sport department in Harper's Weekly, describes the situation as alarming and sickening, and says that "amateur athletics are absolutely in danger of being exterminated in the United States if something is not done to cleanse them." We quote from his article in the current issue: "I venture to say that not one man in a thousand on the Atlantic coast, interested as he may be in the sport of gentlemen, has any conception of the rottenness of the whole structure through the middle and far West. Men are bought and sold like cattle to play this autumn on 'strictly amateur' college elevens. Men offer and sell themselves for an afternoon for from twenty-five to two hundred and fifty dollars, and apparently there is something like a scale of prices just as there is for horses and cows and grain. A list of a few cases here and there through the country shows a state of affairs as disgraceful to the honor of gentlemen as it is destructive to the health-even to the life of amateur sport in our country. "If you will follow the course out West and in the South, in each case you will see at what stage in this inevitable progress the particular team or sport or college in question has arrived today. Some are better, some are worse, but in every case the professional element is vicious, and the whole situation taken generally is appalling. Two things make it infinitely worse that it ever became, or could become, here in the East. One of these is ignorance of what amateur sport is, and the other, by far the more vicious, is the deliberate disregard of all amateur laws, and a general scramble to take part in athletics as one would take part in the manipulations of the Stock Exchange, to get all that can be made out of it by fair or foul, honorable or dishonorable, means. In the West and the middle West there seems to be no excuse available on the score of ignorance. The whole procedure is bad, and it will as surely kill good sport in time, if not corrected, as it will injure the characters of men who think they can do such things and preserve not only their good standing, but their selfrespect. In the South the situation is bad enough, but in many instances pay is taken in the summer to help out college expenses in the coming winter. . . Mr. Whitney reviews the situation in a number of amateur athletic clubs and in the universities of Michigan, Chicago, Minnesota, Illinois, etc., and finds the same vicious tendencies everywhere. He continues as follows: "You can not patch up a mistake by bringing forward good motives or pleading ignorance. Amateur sport must be faithfully upheld according to the strictest rules, for it is of a nature that will either remain absolutely pure or go directly to the bad. When I consider the condition of affairs this moment over the whole country in football alone, I am compelled to acknowledge that it is a criticism of the severest kind on the morality of the young men of America, and when the readers of this department see these paragraphs and realize how inadequately such a wretched state of affairs can be treated in a single page of The Weekly, that this is but a drop in the hogshead of what is going on, he will be not only astounded but shocked to think that his own countrymen have so little sense of honor and justice and commonplace every-day integrity that they can not even play their games without cheating in secret or with brazen-faced openness. a calamity, and the practise is so widespread that it seems almost incurable. One way there is, however, through which the whole practise can be corrected, and that is by a general union of all athletic men, writers, talkers, and thinkers, making a public crusade against the professional in amateur sport. The most direct is for all these college faculties to act promptly to root out the evil their very indifference has permitted to exist." way COLLEGE WOMEN AS WAGE-EARNERS. DOES It is OES higher education pay in the case of women? Are college-bred women better able than their less educated wage-earning sisters to command equal pay with men for equal work? An answer to these and other interesting questions is attempted in the last annual report of the Massachusetts Labor Bureau, which presents the results of a statistical investigation into the wage-earning capacity of educated women. A summary of the report is given in an editorial in the Washington Post, and we reproduce it as follows: "The inquiry on which the report is based was addressed to employers and employees. Replies were received from 104 of the former and 451 of the latter. The employees included 169 teachers, 47 librarians and assistants, 28 stenographers, 22 nurses and superintendents of nursing, 19 newspaper editors and reporters, 19 clerks, 15 telegraph operators, and 15 typesetters, the rest being distributed among fifty different occupations. Of the 451, 6 reported wages less than $25 per month; 88 received $25 and less than $50; 144 received $50 and less than $75; 88 between $75 and $100; 73 from $100 to $200; 2 received $200 and less than $300; 2 over $300, and 48 failed to report the amount of their monthly salary. 'To the next question, Are men employed at the same kind of work? 281 reported affirmatively, 118 reported work that differed from that of men, and 52 failed to respond. To the question, Do men receive more pay than women for the same work? 150 reported that men received more pay, 95 reported the same pay for men and women, and 5 reported higher salaries than those paid men for the same work. To the question, Is the work of women less valuable than that of men in the same calling? 332 replies were received, 212 claiming that the services of women are as valuable as those of men, while 41 considered the work of women more and 31 less valuable than that of men. Of the 104 employers only 90 responded to the last question, 46 of whom regarded the work of men and women of equal value, 29 regarded the work of men of greater value, and 17 gave indefinite replies." A number of women answering confess that they regard their service as less valuable than that of men, and therefore equal pay can not be reasonably expected. It is shown that forty per cent. of the women support others wholly or in part, and that thirty per cent. have more or less of domestic care in addition to their duties. The facts gathered, tho very incomplete, are considered to be significant. The Boston Transcript thinks that they "make brighter the prospects of an economic future of equal pay for equal work." The New York World finds the figures somewhat disappointing, but not at all discouraging. It says: "It is something that two out of a given 500 women should earn over $300 a month, even if over three fifths of the total number earn less than $100. Perhaps such statistics might seem conclusive to some if the amount of money that can be made out of a higher education were its only justification. But it is true for women as it is for men that intellectual development is of priceless value whether there is money in it or not.” The Washington Post says: "We hope the chief of the Massachusetts Labor Bureau will continue his work in this field and broaden its scope. What is the money value of an education at a woman's college? is the main point to be determined in a matter-of-fact inquiry such as this was designed to be. A comparison between the earnings of college graduates and the graduates of the public schools would be very helpful toward a solution of the great question. We do not mean to suggest that a liberal education has no advantages that are not measurable in dollars and cents, but the cash value of such training is the question with which this inquiry deals." TOPICS IN BRIEF. FIRST come the hardy pioneers, with rifles, plows, and axes, And civilization follows close, with debts and thieves and taxes. -The Enquirer, Cincinnati. AFTER a few more Armenians have been massacred we shall expect to see Salisbury hang up his hat and talk through his cannon.-The Tribune, Detroit. THE powers took aim, but they were afraid to shoot.-The News, Indianapolis. THERE are two Populists who are not such very bad fellows after all, They are the two who hold the balance of power in the Kentucky legislature.-Post-Intelligence, Seattle. ATTORNEY-GENERAL HANCOCK is after the Tobacco Trust. Whether he will be able to smoke it out is, however, still an open question.-Mail and Express, New York. FOREMAN (through the speaking tube) "Where do you want that stuff about Turkey put?' Night Editor (yelling back): "On the inside, of course."-The Tribune, Chicago. THE winter season is at hand, and popular attention will once more be directed to Congressmen who ought to act and actors who ought not to. The Star, Washington. THERE appears no way for the Sultan to repair his finances except by disguising himself as a man and coming over to America and making himself agreeable to some girl in the Vanderbilt family.-The Eagle, Wichita. A LETTERS AND ART. RAPTURE OF THE CREATIVE MOOD. LL writers and artists know that there is a positive feeling of rapture when the creative mood is successfully working. This exaltation of feeling is doubtless experienced in a degree even by those who can do nothing original, but are ambitious to create or construct; else why would they, the numberless, continue to produce things in literature and art which none but themselves can ever approve? "It is undeniable," says Matthew Arnold, "that the exercise of a creative power, that a free creative activity is the highest function of man; it is proved to be so by man's finding in it his true happiness." If this be true, reasons Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie (in the November Bookman), then the great books not only embody and express the genius and vital knowledge of the race which created them, but they are the products of the highest activity of man in the finest moments of his life. "They represent a high felicity no less than a noble gift; they are the memorials of a happiness which may have been brief, but which, while it lasted, had a touch of the divine in it; for men are never nearer divinity than in their creative impulses and moments." Mr. Mabie continues: " 'Homer may have been blind, but if he composed the epics which bear his name he must have known moments of purer happiness than his most fortunate contemporary; Dante missed the lesser comforts of life, but there were hours of transcendent joy in his lonely career. For the highest joy of which men taste is the full, free, and noble putting forth of the power that is in them; no moments in human experience are so thrilling as those in which a man's soul goes out from him into some adequate and beautiful form of expression. In the act of creation a man incorporates his own personality into the visible world about him, and in a true and noble sense gives himself to his fellows. When an artist looks at his work he sees himself; he has performed the highest task of which he is capable, and fulfilled the highest purpose for which he was planned by an artist greater than himself. "The rapture of the creative mood and moment is the reward of the little group whose touch on any kind of material is imperishable. It comes when the spell of inspired work is on them, or in the moment which follows immediately on completion and before the reaction of depression, which is the heavy penalty of the artistic temperament, has set in. Balzac knew it in that frenzy of work which seized him for days together; and Thackeray knew it, as he confesses, when he had put the finishing touches on that striking scene in which Rawdon Crawley thrashes Lord Steyne within an inch of his wicked life. The great novelist, who happened also to be a great writer, knew that the whole scene in conception and execution was a stroke of genius." But, says Mr. Mabie, while this supreme rapture belongs to a chosen few, it may be shared by all those who are ready to open the imagination to its approach; it is one of the great rewards of the artist that while other kinds of joy are often pathetically short-lived, his joy, having brought forth enduring works, is, in a sense, imperishable. "And," he adds, "it not only endures; it renews itself in kindred moments and experiences which it bestows upon those who approach it sympathetically. There are lines in the 'Divine Comedy' which thrill us to-day as they must have thrilled Dante; there are passages in the Shakespearian plays and sonnets which make a riot in the blood to-day as they doubtless set the poet's pulses beating three centuries ago. The student of literature, therefore, finds in its noblest works not only the ultimate results of race experiences and the characteristic quality of race genius, but the highest activity of the greatest minds in their happiest and most expansive moments. In this commingling of the best that is in the race and the best that is in the individual lies the mystery of that double revelation which makes every work of art a disclosure not only of the nature of the man behind it, but of all men behind him. In this commingling, too, is preserved the most precious deposit of what the race has been and done, and of what the man has seen, felt, and known. In the nature of things no educational material can be richer; none so fundamentally expansive and illuminative." A NEW SPIRIT IN LITERATURE.. IT is gratifying to be assured that a new spirit like a summer atmosphere is sweetening all our literature." In an eloquent sermonic address recently delivered in Chicago by Rev. N. D. Hillis, on the subject of "Prophets of the New Era" (reported for The Inter Ocean), this statement was made. Mr. Hillis has bright hopes of the world's literary future. He does not believe in any degree that the age of poetry and romance are gone forever, nor that we shall have no more Dantes or Shakespeares, nor that Genius has forsaken her temple. He says that the prophets of pessimism must reckon with Him who indeed was yesterday, but is also to-day and to-morrow, and whose manifest plan in all things is progression and perfection. Speaking of "the qualities of the seer," Mr. Hillis says: "Zola can describe, Balzac can picture, Howells can photograph; but these shed no tears and feel no heartache. They paint but do not pity. With solemn pageantry of words Gibbon caused the Roman centuries to pass before each reader. The mind of this great historian worked with the precision of a logical engine, cold, smooth, and faultless. But Carlyle's eloquence is logic set on fire. What his mind saw his heart also felt. All the wo and pathos and tragedy of the French Revolution swept in billows through him and broke his heart. Gibbon worked in cold, white light. Carlyle dipped his pen in his heart's blood. Therefore Carlyle's history is a seething fire; but Gibbon's is only the picture of a fire-mere canvas and paint. Moreover, the prophet who is guided of God adds to the great mind and the sympathetic heart a third quality. Each Paul and John, each Savonarola and Luther have had a consuming passion for righteousness. Purity has been the crowning quality of all the epochmaking men. For lack of righteousness Bacon lost his leadership. While his head was in the clouds his feet were in the mire. So great was Goethe's genius that he sometimes seems like one driving steeds of the sun, but self-indulgence took off his chariot wheels. Therefore the German poet has never been to his century all that Milton was to his age. During his life Goethe always kept two friends busy-the one weaving laurels for his brow, the other cleaning mud from his garments." Returning in the course of his address to consideration of the character of Carlyle, Mr. Hillis pays tribute to him and to Ruskin, as follows: " 'Carlyle also was God's prophet-a seer stormy indeed, and impetuous, with a great hatred for lies and laziness, and a mighty passion for truth and work; lashing our shams and hypocrisies; telling our materialistic age that it was going straight to the devil, and by a vulgar road at that; pointing out the abyss into which luxury and licentiousness have always plunged. Like Elijah of old, Carlyle loved righteousness, hated cant, and did ever plead for justice and mercy and truth. His every sentence was laden with intellect and still more heavily laden with character. Verily, God gave the great Scotchman the prophets' vision, the seer's sympathy and scepter. "And here is Ruskin teaching us that life without industry is guilt; that industry without art is brutality; that men can not eat stone nor drink steam; that the apples of Sodom and the grapes of Gomorrah, the dainties of ashes and the nectar of asps will feed no man's strength; that the making of self-sufficing men is a business worthy the ambition of cities and states; that ten-talent men returning to give an account of their stewardship can never thrust gold into God's hands." We now come to that part of Mr. Hillis's address which gives title to this article, and quote: Their 'Consciously or unconsciously, the divine tides have been poured out upon our authors. Our writers are becoming prophets. A new spirit like a summer atmosphere is sweetening all our literature. In reading the works of Cicero or Seneca, one must glean and glean for single humanitarian sentiments. writings are exquisite in form and polished like statues, but they are without heart or humanity. And even English literature, from the day of Fielding and Smollett down to Pope and Dryden, teems with scorn and sneers for the uneducated poor. The works of Sidney Smith are filled with contemptuous allusions to the vulgar herd. Until recently the English poets purged their pages of all peasants, and the novelists will have for hero no man less than a squire, and deal chiefly with lords and ladies. But to-day the people with their woes and griefs have found a standing in literature. A new spirit has been poured out. The new era began with 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' when a slave stood forth as a candidate for hero-worship. Then Dickens became the knight-errant of each 'Oliver Twist,' and society began to hear the bitter cry of the children. All literature became permeated with sympathy for the under classes. Great writers no longer look with derision upon those underneath them, and none dare insult the common people. At length a great host of writers like Victor Hugo, and George Eliot, and Charles Kingsley, and Walter Besant have come in to give their whole souls to softening the lot of humanity. To-day all literature is working for the once despised and unbefriended classes. Moreover, books that have no enthusiasm for humanity are speedily sent to the garret. Society cares less and less for work of artistic finish, and more and more for those filled with sympathy and enthusiasm for man. Gladstone says that there are no classics except those that preach the gospel of humanity to the poor. Verily our authors have become prophets!" HOW MARY ANDERSON BECAME AN ACTRESS. ΤΗ varro)—her irrepressible aspirations for the stage, and the obstacles that blocked her way-tallies in many respects with the experience of various actors, especially in is the fact that she had to overcome the religious scruples of parents and friends. Yet the story of her girlhood, as related in The North American Review (November), very interesting, as showing what determination may accomplish and as hinting at the mandates of destiny. Having narrated many incidents of her childhood, especially such domestic events as had reference to the suppression of her inclination for the stage, she comes to the time when she witnessed a play for the first time. The play was "Richard the Third," "with Edwin Adams as the crook-backed tyrant. This was in Louisville, Ky. Her delight was so great that her hitherto inflexible mother softened and yielded to her desire for more of the drama, and so it was that she and her little brother came to see Edwin Booth, who at that time visited Louisville. She writes: prick of conscience in determining to work out clandestinely what seemed to me then my life's mission. I was fourteen years of age, inexperienced and uneducated, but I had not a moment of doubt or fear." Under this inspiration Miss Anderson applied herself diligently to study, and soon surprised her household by character-exhibitions in parlor and in kitchen. Dr. Griffin, her step-father, now recognized her talent and abetted her. It so happened that the doctor was called to attend the leading comedian of Macauley's Theater, in Louisville, to whom he spoke so enthusiastically of his step-daughter's dramatic work that the actor requested a reading from her. This reading (of "Richard") so captivated him that he hailed Miss Anderson as "our American Rachel." Soon afterward he was called away to support Charlotte Cushman, during her engagement in Cincinnati, and subsequently a letter came from Miss Cushman inviting the young lady to come to Cincinnati and read for her. With much persuasion Miss Anderson won the day, and she and her mother started for Ohio. She tells the story as follows: "It was arranged that we should meet Miss Cushman the next day. We accordingly awaited her in the large parlor of the hotel. Presently we heard a heavy masculine tread, and a voice, too high for a man's, too low for a woman's, saying, 'I am sorry to be late, but some of the actors were duller than usual this morning.' She stood before us, her well-set figure simply clad, MARY ANDERSON. "An announcement that Edwin Booth was to visit Louisville filled its playgoers with delightful anticipations. Times were hard, we were poor, and many sacrifices had to be made to enable us to witness a few of his performances. 'Richelieu' was the first of the series. What a revelation it was! I had never seen any great acting before, and it proved a turning-point in my life. The subtle cunning with which the artist invested the earlier parts of the play was as irresistible as the power, fire, and pathos of the later scenes were terrible and electrifying. It was impossible to think of him as an actor. He was Richelieu. I felt for the first time that acting was not merely a delightful amusement but a serious art that might be used for high ends. After that brilliant performance sleep was impossible. On returning home I sat at the window of my little room until morning. The night passed like an hour. Before the dawn I had mapped out a stage career for myself. Thus far, having had no fixed aim of my own making or liking, I had frittered my time away. Then I realized idle life must end, and that much study and severe training would have to be undertaken: this in secret, however, for there was no one to go to for sympathy, help, or advice in such a venture. Indignant that all my people had, in times gone by, looked upon so noble an art as harmful, if not sinful, I felt no that my the short hair in her neck still in curling pins, showing a delightful absence of vanity, for she had just come in from the street. She looked at me for a moment with the keenest interest in her kind bluegray eyes, then wrung my hand with unexpected warmth. 'Come, come, let us lose no time,' said she in her brisk business-like way. Let us see what you can do. "Richard!" "Hamlet!" "Richelieu!" Schiller's "Maid of Orleans"? A curious selection for such a child to make. But begin, for I am pressed for time.' It was trying to stand without preparation before so great a woman, but, with a determined effort to forget her, I acted scenes from 'Richelieu' and 'Jeanne d'Arc.' When the trial was over, I stood before her in that state of flush and quiver which often follows our best efforts. Laying her hand kindly upon my shoulder, 'My child,' said she, 'you have all the attributes that go to make a fine actress; too much force and power at present, but do not let that trouble you. Better have too much to prune down, than a little to build up.' My mother was troubled at hearing her speak so calmly of the stage as my future career, and protested earnestly. No one, she said, of her family, nor of my father's, had ever been on the stage, and she added that, to be frank, she did not like the atmosphere of the theater, and could not look with favor upon a child of hers adopting it as a profession. Miss Cushman listened attentively. 'My dear madam,' she answered, 'you will not judge the profession so severely when you know it better. Encourage your child; she is firmly and rightly, I think, resolved on going upon the stage. If I know anything of character, she will go with or without your consent. Is it not so?' (to me). 'Yes,' said I-and how my heart beat at the confession. 'Be her friend,' continued she to my mother. 'Give her your aid: no harm can come to her with you by her side.' Then turning to me again, 'My advice to you is not to begin at the bottom of the ladder; for I believe the drudgery of small parts, in a stock company without encouragement, often under the direction of coarse natures, would be crushing to you. As a rule I advocate beginning at the lowest round, but I believe you will gain more by continuing as you have begun. Only go to my friend, George Vandenhoff, and tell him from me that he is to clip and tame you generally. I proph esy a future for you, if you continue working earnestly. God be 12 (132) THE LITERARY DIGEST. with you! Doubtless in a year or two you will be before the public. May I be there to see your success!' With a hearty farewell she stalked out of the room. That was our first and last interview. In her almost brusque manner, she had led me to the right path, and had, in less than an hour, fought successfully the dreaded battle with my mother. In two years' time I had made my début upon the stage, and she, the greatest of all American actresses, was sleeping her last sleep in a laurel-covered grave at Mount Auburn." MR. HALL CAINE ON NOVEL-MAKING. R. HALL CAINE expresses emphatic belief in the usefulness of the novel as a means of diversion for poor overworked and bewildered humanity, and furthermore he believes that the present is a good time for the writing of novels. He says that when he asks himself if the nineteenth century is less romantic than the sixteenth, he concludes that it is beyond comparison more romantic, more available for the conflicts of emotion, the thrilling incidents and the complications of interest which are the stock in trade of the imaginative writers. He asks: "Can the atmosphere of any age of the world compare, for the purposes of the imaginative writer, with the atmosphere of our own time?" And he answers: "Depend upon it, the nineteenth century is the most romantic period in the history of the world. It is the romance of our age, and not its prosaic utilitarianism, that is the most amazing fact of it. We are not far enough away from it to realize that romance. But by and by the great imaginative writer will take hold of this century of ours and find material for the most thrilling, startling, and astounding developments of the human story that literature has yet known." From an article in The Mail and Express by Mr. Henry Edward Rood, on Mr. Caine, we extract some of the latter's ideas as expressed in a recent discussion of the novel and the novelist in their relation to the public. Mr. Caine said: "A novel should not be like the figures on the front of a barrelorgan, ground out to slow music by the machinery inside. It should not be conspicuously branded with an aphorism. 'It should not even have a moral. It should be no more moral than a story in the ‘Arabian Nights.' Art and morality have nothing to do with each other. When the novelist or dramatist presents his characters he should stand aside from them; he should disappear; he should annihilate himself. This is the attitude of many of the more notable French authors at the present moment. "There is only one thing the public demands, and that is human nature. It says to the novelist, 'Amuse me! Sustain me! Comfort me!' But it leaves him to please himself how he does it. He can sing what song he pleases. All it asks is that the song shall be good, and that he shall sing it well enough. Undoubtedly there are subjects which it forbids. It forbids all unwholesome and unnatural passions; it forbids the imaginative treatment of sacred personages. Short of these, it welcomes anything-religious questions, political questions, or even dangerous moral questions." Mr. Caine makes a strong plea for what he calls "the twin angels of freedom and truth," as follows: "God forbid that I should stand here as an apologist for what George Eliot calls 'the Cremorne walks and shows of fiction.' But I want to stand here for the twin angels of freedom and truth. I want to plead with you for complete liberty of conscience in the art of fiction and the drama. Perhaps you say that some recent novels and plays make it pretty clear that there is already not only liberty but license. It is certainly true that at the present day a novelist without a conscience is a moral anarchist, armed with a dynamite that ought to be called damnation. "Nevertheless, let me plead for liberty with discretion. Don't If the novel and the try to banish the moral nude from fiction. drama are to act upon life, they must be at liberty to represent it, not in one aspect only, but in all aspects; not in its Sunday clothes merely, but in its week-day garments; not in part but altogether. You tell me that this is fraught with dangers. So it is, with great dangers. [Nov. 30, 1895 "This is what I would say to the reader, and to the writer I Mr. Caine sees nothing to laugh at in the love of the public for 'Sometimes we laugh at the love of the public for a happy ending. Let us not laugh at it. The outspoken craving of the human heart is not for the claptrap of marriage bells, but for spiritual compensation. It will suffer itself to see the hero die, if only he dies in a good cause, if only his death is the crown of his life, if only it can feel that, tho everything passes away from him -youth, fortune, love-one thing remains-spiritual compensation. Mr. Hardy and Mr. Pinero may say, 'I don't see it happen.' A lady said to Turner, 'I don't see these colors in the sunset.' 'I dare say not, madam,' said Turner, 'but don't you wish you could?' Surely this is the very essence of art as distinguished from life. Life is made up of a multitude of fragments, a sea of many currents, often coming into collision and throwing up breakers. "We look around and we see wrongdoing victorious and right- Here and there my lord is lower than his oxen and his swine, Tribute to Eugene Field.-"Field was a hospitable and genial man, very friendly with his friends, ready to spend himself and his time for them, and ready to make new friends when opportuHe was as unnity offered and the material came to hand. worldly a person as one often sees, careless of externals, as indifferent to profit and loss as his obligations as a man of family would permit, and delightfully simple in his attitude toward society. He was intensely and whimsically American, and even while penetrated with nervous dyspepsia he gloried, in theory if not in practise, in the worst abominations of American cookery. He was the sort of patriot who would have lived on pie and doughnuts in London if he could, as an example to the British. Yet he seemed to have no Anglophobia, and maintained the friendliest relations with some of the English writers and actors, and he gloried almost as much in a Gladstone ax that was given to him as if it had been an original hatchet of George WashingFew men have been able to realize as vividly as he the It is Jeffersonian theory that all men were born free and equal. impossible to think of him as ever overawed by any dignitary, or as giving himself airs of superiority over any human creature who had in him the making of a comrade. He seems to have been greatest not as a poet, nor as a prose-writer, nor even as a newspaper man, but as a human being. He was not very rich, not handsome nor imposing, nor particularly thrifty; there were defects in his worldly wisdom, defects in his literary taste, and defects in most of his literary work. Yet if there is any man in Chicago whose death would be as widely and deeply regretted as his, and who will be so long remembered, one would like to know who that person is, for his name does not suggest itself.”—E. S. Martin, in Harper's Weekly. ton's. |