The state chronicle. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1883-1893, 1889-12-25

M u. CABLE AGAIN.

MR.. CABLE AGAIN.
A Y YOung North Carolina Woman,s Hie h
Estimate of His Work.
Especial Cor to STATE CHRoNIcLEl
A lover of books always, much given to
browsing in fiction, especially of summers s
day, | have lately found some of my
most pleasant reading in Mr. Cables pages,
and feel that l want to acknowledge the
debt owe the man, and wish that these
words of mine might open his pages to
some one heretofore prejudiced against the
Cable of political notoriety. If any one of
those who, for years, have been enjoying
his stories should read this it might seem
late to him for Gable apologetics, possibly
that same person might be surprised to
know of the many good people who are
astonished that Southern person of right
principle should read page of the cyan
keeiz ID" writer.
A word of complaint against our news
papers. We have read, in some of them,
such scathing articles in regard to the "in-
durable crank" that the uninitiated would
be led to relieve him one of Gods forsa-
ken. In their opposition to Cables views,
our editors forget TO do justice to this
writer who has helped to better our
national literature.
Says Mr.. Gable himself, when thanking
Mr.. Mckay for courtesy, "a Southerner
and Southern soldier myself, l have yet
rarely been dealt with in this generous
manner by Southern writer's dissenting
from my utterances, and hail this as, to
me, the initial voice of a new and better
form of debate in the South to which l be-
long, not only by birth, but by rearing
and affection"
This ''vOice of a new and better form of
debate" raises itself but feebly from our
journalists through whom the people,
mainly, hear of Mr.. Gable.
We q use the word in its universal
sense)-we need a greater catholicity, we
need to realize that another man may have
opinions exactly opposite to ours in social
and political matters and still be one of
Gods elect. We are trammeled by edu-
cational prejudices, by inborn vanity-''I
am right, tits pity you are wrong, get
thee behind me-" 1t is a ''touch of ma
ture which makes the whole world kin"
Even genial Dr. Holmes loses faith in the
magician wand of Carlyle because of his
heterodox views on the ''nigger" question.
Instead of fostering this narrowing ten
dency our journalists should do somewhat
toward freeing US from it. Our newspa-
pers should be educators (this is much
trOdden ground, but let US have tilt if
our Rosinante do but run afoul of wind
mills). Since the weekly paper is taking,
to such extent, the place of hooks with
the masses we have right to expect from
our editors something more than stump
speakers rhetoric, details of crime, or re-
ports as to the Whereabouts of Mrs Gen
eral Smith or Mrs. Judge Jones.
This was not begun with intent to at
tempt any criticism of Mr.. Cables stories,
but l can't refrain from saying something
of Old Creole Days and DR.. Sewer, the
best their author has thus far given US.
In regard to style, Cables is so good one
does not think of it during the first read
ing of a story He has no tricks of man
nersm, his words are ftly spoken, are
carriers of thought, not new and strange
devices to puzzle the reader.
When he turns aside to indulge in bit
of fine description he gives you the very
music of prose, so aptly put that moon
light or sunlight, soft sounds, odors of
| tropical flowers, breath of the Gulf seem
present to your senses while you are not
conscious of effort anywhere.
To eplcures in short stories would re-
commend Poison Jone and Madame Del
phine, the latter as being the most beauti-
Iul, the former the most fOrceful and ar
tistic of Mr. Cables collection, Old Creole
Days,
lu Poison Jones we have that rare thing,
| a good story without love as the moving
power The author shows US, as do Ste
| venson, Stockton, H. s. Edwards and a
| few others, that the artist need not be
| handicapped by those one-time arbitrary
rules of fiction which require a woman of
| youth and beauty as center-piece, even
| though she prove to be an innocent non
| entity expected to touch q metaphorical
| electric button thereby setting in motion
each passions as love, envy, hatred, jeal-
ousy.
Tsere is a dramatic force, a fine energy
| in Poison Jone found nowhere else in Ca
| ble's writings. Moreover it is exceptionally
| beautiful in that tender handling of the
Poison whereby the Spirit of God is made
to shine through frail fallen humanity and
| light up another mans soul.
But for pure beauty, mellowness, lucious-
ness, commend me to Madame Delphine.
1t is no small tribute to the authors pow
er, the fact that you, true Southerner,
approving stringent laws against race
mixture, find your sympathies with Olive
and her mother.
| One thing noteworthy-Mr. Gable is q
writer for women if they like to be dealt
with very graciously. If our author writes
| Wen WlluOuJ Iu0u u0 uO0S uO less WucL
dealing with them. There's not woman
in the two books under question who fails
to be attractive; indeed it seems to be out
| of the authors province to find the repul
sive in human nature. Throughout his
writing wherever woman in trouble il
concerned he tells of it most beautifully
What can be better than those scenes il
the hospital between DR.. Sewer and Mary
or that in which he finds her at the wash
tub, or in Madame Delphine where thu
little priest wishes he we're an angel tha
he might take the weeping woman in hi
arms and comfort her?
There is in DR.. Sewer delicious humor
notably that of Narcisse and Mrs. Riley,
humor fine as that of the ''gentle Howells,
refreshing as that OF Mr.. Warner. Blu
witbal there's a sad after effect to tn
story, not caused by any unhealthful per
mission, but by an earnestness whicl
threads the tale cropping out most plainl
in the character of John, the very mai
whom so many of US have known, a maj
seemingly we'll equipped for the struggl
of life, and yet somehow he just misses
certain mark which we, in our world wis
dom, have named success.
We have much talk nowadays of "ar
for arts sake" groanings over the fac
that novrlists are so didactlc, longings fo
the story that will not tap US into homi
letics, sociology or some other seriou
| thing To II h devOtees of art Onr ar