Morning journal and courier., 1884-02-23
A street cor ProposaI.

6 passenger car in that city on Saturday night was aroused by conversation between two lovers who were his sole companions in the car. His awakening was not observed by the infatuated pair, and he listened to the following novel method of popping the ques- ton.
 Are you cold, Amelia?' came in gentle tones across the car.
 ''Yes Charley" was the half-whispered re- ply. And Charley snuggIed up close and took Amelia's hand in his.
 He then glanced at her in loving way, looked across at the reporter, who was sp- parently asleep, noticed that the conductor was entirely occupied in keeping his feet warm and, after giving one or two coughs, said, with a smile:
 ''Do you recollect what told you the first time met you, Anelia9"'
 ''No, Charley. WhRt2''
 ''Why. that had never been in love, and that 1t would be cold day when I'd ask girl to marry me-''
 ~"Oh, yes; but why do you ask?''
 Well, this is very cold day, Amelia. isn't it2"
 ''Yes, Charley, but why?" and she blushed as she glanced up at him, and as his face grew nearer to hers.
 "Wen, will you?"
 
 the jingle, jingle of the bells and the snuff fling of the conductors feet upon the icy platform. Then she slipped her hand into his. blushed even rosier than before, and whispered, Yes"
 Bless you, my children" exclaimed the delighted reporter; and as the lovers half started up absshed at the unexpected dis covery of their secret, the scribe shot out of the doorway and hurried away.
 ClaFIssa Harlows.
 From the Contemporary Reviewl
 We ourselves tolerate many things in our favorite authors which we wish away. Many of us would like Dickens better without his often forced and artificial sentiment. Still more of us would be we'll content-in her later books, at any rate-with less of the waterlogging ballast of George Eliot'a physiological psychology. Our posterity, therefore will have no right to argue from Dickeps' fame that his sentiment was as generally valued as his humer, or from George Eliot's fame, that her contemporaries thought as highly of her scientific insight into character, and her original gift of creative imagination. And we ourselves have equally no right to assume that what may have been deductions from the sum of Richardson's claim upon his readers were actually additions thereto. All we kuOW 1Or C9IbH1u O1 tn9 mater IS that our great grsndfathers read and delighted in certain desperately prolix novels; it Is too much to assume that they delighted in the prolixity for it's OWL sake. We are often re- minded, 1t is true, that our great grRndfath CTS lived in leisurely age, but this is an ex- plRnstion which accounts rather for their capacities as readers than for their tastes. It may be that inordinately long winded books could only be tolerable in leisureIy age. This, however, is equally true of long din ners. long whist and other forms of indul- gsnce or recreation, and it explains merely the possibility and not the popularity of one particular form of slow moving amusement Again, the more lsisnrely the age the greater, we should imagine, the tendency to sleep. Yet if there is well authenticated fact con- nscsed with "Clarissa Harlowe," it is that the novel put to flight instead of provoking slumber. Right reason," in short, and "the instinct of self-preservstion in man kind" as MT. Matthew Arnold would say. revolt from the hypothesis that any race of men can have preferred to have story in which they were deeply interested related to them at excessive length. For it is to be specially remembered that the most popular of Richsrdsons romances was popular in respect of it's story. It was not, or not mainly, by it's moral lessons, by it's pictures of manners, or by it's analysis of character that ''Clsrissa HarIowe" held the public spell bound it was by it's plot. Tho "town" was in fever-a slow fever, of course, but still 8 fsver-of excitement to know wheth or the infamous Lovelace would succeed in his plot, and what would be the end of the unfortunate CIarissa; and it is not to be believed that mere diffuseness of narrative, mere expenditure of many words in relating events which might have been told in few words, would have been found endurable, or would, In fact, have been endured. The delay must have been in some sense or other artistic the prolixity must have been felt to contribute something to the artistic result in order not to have wholly destroyed the pop nlarity of the story. The sense in which it was artistic may, to our present conceptions of art, be well nigh unintelligible; the some thing which it contributed to the result may to us bo nothing, or worse than nothing But it is surely irrational to suppose that the exterior form of Richerdson's novsl-iR which include not only the mere length of the book from cover to cover, but it's eplsto- lary structure and whatever other draw backs that structure to our present ways of thinking involves-could have seemed to it's own public what it seems to us, viz, simply SO much hsndicappirg of the tale. There must have bssn some reason other than the mere amount of his spare time which compelled the eighteenth century reader to listen so patiently to 8 story of which he was so deYourinaly anxious to hear the end there must have been some reason why he did not resent the authors unusual fidgeting, and in many, though not in all respects, undramatic method of telling his story in the form of correspondence. Such is the conclusion which ought to suggest itself on . priori grounds of probability, to all who have ever considered the matter with any degree of care; and it is, may add, conclusion which subsequent inquiry abundantly con, firms. There is reason and good one for Richardson's proiixity; it was in many respects the very secret of hia poUer Ruk unfortunately, it is a secret to~the discovery of which there is no royal road for it would be uncandid to give so attractive a title to the only method of ascertaining it with which am acquainted-that, namely, of reading the romances straight through from beginning to end.