The Arkansaw traveler., 1889-04-20
WFSetsn fov TAs Avhansaw Truuefev.
 AMONG HOME AUTHORS.
A Chaplst of Criticism.

He should be better known.
 His literary work is all good but until TO- gently, the subjects which he chose failed to inter- est a multitude of readers.
 We Americans are most willing to be educated after the comfort giving dollars have been hoarded and we'll invested. Culture Is expensive. It absOrbs time and money.
 A Bostonian (and a very practical, busy man he was,) once said to me: "I am & great book lover. My library Is select its titles a broad field of intellectual wealth. The volumes are far more valuable than my stylish modernized house and its useful or ornamental furniture. I bought these books, here and there, now and then, as I could spare the cash. It may seem curious to you, a scholar, but shall nerer be willing to spare the hours necessary for intimate acquaintance with one- third of my collection"
 This frankness was as refreshing as & cup of cool water on dusty summer road.
 Here was a money seeker and fortune maker as eager in the for coin was, and still am, for that mine of knowledge which exces and outlasts our biggest "national surplus"
 Thus 1t happens that the few, and not the many, have actually read John Fiskes ideas about "The Unseen World" or "The Destiny of Man," as viewed In the light of his origin. The "Outlines
 
 dealers in breadstuffs, and the average broker or merchant (when at leisure) cares more for riding after the hounds speeding blooded trotters than he does for the "Excursions of Evolutionist" " Therefore, he and John Fiske keep widely apart.
 
 Yet within the past six months, John Fske has written and signed, at Cambridge in Massachu- setts, the preface to A work of unusual interest which should be closely read and carefully pom dered by every intelligent inhabitant of our bom- bastically proud country. This volume is titled "The Critical Period of American History l7SS- 7s9." It contains the substance of course of lec- lures delivered in the famous Old South Meeting House, at Boston, during the month of December 1884 at the Washington University, St. Louis May, 1885 and in New York City, March, 1886. Of these admirable historical essays, the ripest thoughts and most cogent theories have been pre- served. The book embraces seven chapters consec- utively devoted to the Results of Yorktown" the "Thirteen COmmonwealths," the League of Friend ship" "Drifting Towards Anarchy" the "Germs of National Sovereignty" the Federal Conven- tion," and "Crowning the Work" by President Washington's inauguration an event we are about to grandy celebrate in that United States metrop- oils whose resident population has increased within century, from twenty five thousand to sixteen hundred thousand of all sorts and conditions of human kind
 The first hundred years of a severely tested and resplendently triumphant government "of the peo- pie, by the people and for the people," are almost ended. How near there came being no republic, no sef-government, elected chief magistrates, no happy liberty, no secure pursuit of domestic com- fort, no established justice and no perfect union with an equal promotion of the public welfare, this latest book by John Fiske tells in plain and truth-eloquent language. It can be read only to be approved. His six pages of bibliographical notes show what tireless searcher he has been after Eacts xxhich