The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1886-06-21

EAST ANGELS. By Constance Fenimore Wool
son. New York: Harper Brothers. Indianap
oils The Bowen Merrill Company.
EAST Angels unlike "Anre," that other novel
by the same writer, with which it will be COM
pared, is story with purpose. That purpose
is to teach the entire sinfuness of divorce when
regarded in the light Of an earnest and sensitive
conscience. The story is well told. and indicates
acter studies. some of them being un-
squaled by anything that has re-
Gently appeared in fiction. In Illustration
of the point at which she is aiming, it cannot be
said, however, that Miss Woolson is very eff
fective. The two leading ladies of the tale, to
use stage expression, are drawn in vivid con-
trast One is a charming creature, who cap
tivates every man, woman and child within her
orbit and who falling in love herself with the
abandon of child, or, rather of the untutored
savage maiden, permits no conventionalities,
such as the marriage of her lover to another
woman, to interfere with the expression of her
passion When the wife dies she openly re-
ioices and marries the widower after q scanda-
lousy brief period. She is 'child of nature"
and though pictured as q most attractive being,
is nevertheless undesirably selfish and incapable
of selfdenial. Nevertheless, she goes through
life on the top of the wave, experiencing occa-
sional griefs. but easily consoled, and having,
unauestionably, an enjoyable time of it on the
whole.
The other, the woman with the conscience,
is one of the saints of earth, who passes
through life unappreciated and misjudged by
those about her, self-sacrifcing and submitting
to imposition to degree highly exasperating to
the reader, who can see no good cause for such
extreme abnegation Of self. She has
husband who though fascinating" in
his best days, 10 rascal and abandons
her after the honeymoon for the society OF
another woman, and remains away for seven
years. In the meantime the deserted wife, who
had been too young at the time of her marriage
TO have formed a very deep attachment to her
husband, falls in love with another man into
whose society she has been thrown, and the re-
mainder of her life is an unavaling struggle to
overcome this unhappy but innocent Affection
which, with equal absence of evil intent. is
strongly reciprocated. The recreant husband re-
turns, assumes her forgiveness as a matter Of
course is nursed through months of illness. re-
mistress. Still the wife will not consent to
legal separation, but receives the husband
when he again returns this time hopeless
cripple. The effort to make impressive the les
son concerning divorce has been rather destruct-
i've of it's moral. The average reader with hui
man sympathies and weaknesses will be apt to
feel that. though dissolution of the marriage
relation may be wrong as a general proposition,
the case in East Angels was one of the excep-
tions, aud the faithful wife hardly to be JUS
titled, even on the highest grounds, in making a
martyr of herself. With this exception and the
fact that readers who have grown triae weary of
the Craddock style of devotion to nature will prob
ably grumble over the prep0nderance of land
scape in the book, it is q very enjoyable story,
and to be regarded as of the best of the year.
THE WIND OF DESTINY, by Arthur Sherburne
Hardy. Boston, HoughtoE, Mifin 81 Co.
Indianapolis: The Bowen-M Merrill Company.
The second effort of the writer of good novel
often fails to fulfill the promise of the first, but
this new work of Mr.. Hardy's will nos disap
point the admirers of ''But Yet Woman" Thai
book left the reader strongly impressed with the
authors power and literary ability. The "Wind
of Destiny" demonstrates that he had reserve
force and did not exhaust himself in his
first fight into fiction. Although Mr.. Hardy
is an American, and number Of his characters
the story has NO flavor Of the soil, is not the
native novel which deluded people profess to
desire. Is is cosmopolitan tale, but cosmopol
itan in the sense Of relating experiences common
to humanity, rather than that the personagea