The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1866-11-08

b MAGAZINE SToRIEs.-A writer in tbo loo.
number of The Nation thus pleasantly satirizas
a certain class of magazine romances verv
fashionable in these days.
Where else may we look for the wondrous
young gentlemen and ladies who love each
other, and fill "Harper's" with eonstaney
which reminds one of fRochefoucaulds remark
on that quality-that constancy is a fact, not a
virtue? 1t would be pleasant to meet with
some of those Bellies and Perditas and Helens
and Lilies whom their relatives, we are told,
call homely, but who have way of putting q
SIMPLE rose in their hair and walking of with
the most eligible young gentlemen; whose
father falls i'll business, and dies and leaves
Margaret to keep school and Journal from
which latter we see the writer is consciously
unconscious OF possessing all the virtues. Mar
cias are pretty common, too: 'sAs they drew
near, noticed that Marcia had left off her
deep mourning She wore black silk, and look
ed regal in it." But her elegant figure and be-
coming dress do not prevent her dying with a
moan on her lips for James Harris 1t might
not be so pleasant to meet the various males of
these speeches-Howard with a patch on his
boots, and the grave sweet smile, is apt to be
prigghish; Trehurne has an artist nature and
great means; but this is his way of talking to
Margaret when he presses her hand, and says
good night as the two return home from ball;
HWhatsoeyer your hands find to do, do it with
all your might, and blossom into success as the
graphing fortune by the throat and crying
Stand and deliverp like highwayman." He
gets his leg broken, though, afterwards, AMI
marries her before she has won success as a
school-teacher. Then there is Hugh, who has
commanding abilities, but whose hands and
feet are of q size to shock DIR. Bellows; and Ar
thur, who has misunderstanding with Ellery,
and goes and gets made a colonel in the army,
and by-and-by is shot in the shoulder at the
head of his men, and, after 'all the rest was
blank, opens his eyes upon the white face of
Ellery, who is speechless with gratitude. She
shut her grief in her proud heart, and went to
Washington as a nurse, where she casually
heard of mertally wounded colonel, and her
heart told her it might be Arthur. This month
in half-a-dozen stories. 1t is difficult to say
just what frame of mind the reading of them is
apt to create. We. can conceive that young
people Of unhardened hearts, and Heury Kings
ley, might, after a steady perusal OF q good,
many OF these tales, find themselves in state
OF what you may call toplottiness- going off in
gush of high moral nobility, on any little pro-
vocation, and delighting to martyrizc them
selves in painted flame of self sacrifice. 1t
would tend to marriages on a limited income,
we should say, and possible to marriages
with artists and poets and persons with
curly hair. 1t would not be true either to say
that these fhousand-1nd-one tales have nothing
good in them. Unless ones nature abhors a
vacuum there is not much fault to be found
with them, and that, in itself, is something
Sometimes they are well enough written but
as general thing, their natural inclination is
to run into this sort of writing (Gibraltar is to
be described); "A huge lion, 0d-hewp out Of
the solid rock, lying over with his face turned
to that land of mystic lore-the wonderful East
guards the narrow portal that leads thither
"h.urJn1 ID ntlis1 % uCg ia eE sHlgLG gsu llfE