Mower County transcript. [volume] (Lansing, Minn.) 1868-1915, 1872-08-22
Literature and Art.


various literary labors. Among other
things, he is writing a novel entitled.
Twenty Years; a Picture of Social
Life"
THOMAS HILL, the Boston artist. will
reside in California for some time to
come. He Is working with might and
main upon large picture from Cali.
fornia scenery.
COLONEL GEo. w. MuMFoRD. former
Secretary of the Commonwealth of
Virginia, is putting his recollections of
men and events of his Official life into
historical work.
WILLIAM PAGE is at work in his
studio on his portrait of Shakespeare.
This work has engaged the artists at
t.ntion for several months past. and
when finished, which will be some time
during the present year, it will, no
doubt, attract quite as much notice ma
his head of Christ, which was exhibited
at the National Academy of Design in
1871.
A WORK on the coal regions of
America will shortly be brought out by
the Appletons, under the title of Gun
derground Treasures; Where and how
to Find Them; Key for the Ready
Determination of all the Useful Miner.
ais within the United States" Prof.
James Orion will also soon publish
work of great use and value to those
prospecting among mines, real or sup
posed
MORTIMER COLLINS has published q
satire which has excited much attention.
called "British Birds" Tennvson ia
satirized as "Hair," Browning al
"Brow," and Swinburne as BEARD. :"
The statesmen are, Gladstone, "Letus-
lapis;" Bismarck, Bisnotus," and
Theirs, "Lachrym@;" while Huxley is
g Protoplast;" Tyndall, tsGerm !"
Darwin, Gorilla" and Stuart Mil,
"Sewing machine"
A NEW York journalist, in ransack-
ing the posthumous papers of his
grandfather, an Westchester county
official, during last week, stumbled
across an unpaid check for S21. 900
which the deceased had won in 1901 in
a lottery for the encouragement of lit
erature, lotteries being legalized in
those days.
HuRD's grass is not a good article for
human food. It is very slow of diges-
ton. Connecticut paper swears that
a man at Montvillo coughed up head
of this plant which he swallowed seven
teen years ago. It was hard "a stone
and retained its form and fiber per-
fectly.
JEAN LEMo1NNE, the Partisan Jour-
111lIaE 1O00 yuviffnr, +1,~ IT, Il
Sue, the novelist, which contains some
curious disclosures about the private
affairs OF that wonderfully successful
writer. Lemoinne, who was for manv
years an intimate friend of Sue, saws
that the latter took a strangely morbid
interest in cruel and bloody scenes. He
never failed to be present at any exc.
cutlon in Paris, and watched with his
opera glass the face of the doomed cul-
prit, from the moment he appeared on
the scaffold to the bloody end. One day
he went to England for the sole pur-
pose of witnessing fogging scene, and
he often regretted that he had never
been able to see Russian knouting.
THE defect in average American it,
erature and art lies in the haste with
wAAO'A tsAA u6tcI1UA ID WORKED up ana
thrust crldely before the public. Two
weeks in the Yo Semitic or Yellowstone
region gives us a mountain painter in
Smith; chance week in yacht de-
luges us with marine views for wears
atterward from Brown; an hours ride
in railway car fills the notebooks of
our many looming American novel;
lists" with characters. Our artists with
both pen and pencil work, as it were,
from hand to mouth; their bread, in
housekeepers' phrase, is made of
raw flour. 1t would be worth
their while to compare Hawthorne's
note books with his finished work. to
observe how long the ideas were suffer.
ed to lie fallow before they were slowly
titled and brought forth into fruit so
perfect and enduring. The real differ
ence, perhaps, lies in the fact that in
one case the work is done from the life
long love of art, in the other from the
daily necessity of money; but until that
difference is recognized the prospect
for both our art and literature is but
a fungus growth, strong and rank for
the time it lasts, but that time will be
but day.