Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1889-03-09
DAINTRY, LIBBY AND ATHERTON.
Three Bright Women Who Write Un.
pardonable Literature.

From the New York Truth.
The eruption of the demi-monde in literature
still continues and the molten lava is still pour
ing down the sides of all our bookstalls. How
long the fiery fluid will continue no one can tell
with precision, but from present indications it
is not at its height, and the protest OF society
and OF the press has not fairly set in yet. sus-
pect that there must be half a score more of
reckless and INSCRIPTIONS literary women to
come to this vortex before people wake up to
the shower of cindefs that threatens to bury us
all The fever appears to have attacked in
some degree even the ordinarily discreet
writers. For example, we find SO modest bard
as Josephine Hunt screaming throughout the
prsss OF the country in trochaics a. follows:
And were I this instant
An angel possessed
Of the peace and [the) 10y
That are given the best, .
would fling my white robes
Unrepiningly down;
would tear from my forehead
Its beautiful crown,
To nestle once more
In that haven Of rest
Your lips upon mine,
My head on your breast,
You kissed mel
Now this, it strikes me, is the most unpardon-
able exhibition of erotic dementia that lady
can make. do not object to kissing In any of
its multifarious phases. Ipresume that lovers
kisses are the proper subjects of poesy, but
when a young woman goes off into hysteria be-
cause she has been kissed; and begins to throw
her arms about and becomes bowling dervish,
and tells us if she were in heaven among the best
she would fling her white robes unrepiningly
down and tear from her forehead its beautiful
crown to nestle once more in masculine arms
and feel once more the ecstatic thrill of a kiss,
think 1t is high time We begin to exercise
some repressive measures upon this style of
literature. young woman flying frantically
through the public highway, screaming for
more kisses and begging for masculine arms
and something to nestle down on, suggests a
sad want of that discretion and modesty which
at one time we thought to be the most amiable
qualities Of womanhood. There is one more
objection to Josephine Hunts kissing par
oxysm, and it is that Ella Wheeler Wilcox went
through ldentically the same contOrtion several
years ago, and used almost the same screams
and waved her arms in almost the same man.
ner, upon almost the same topic, if not the same
manly breast, and regret to say that never
heard that any other masculine animal was pre-
vailed upon to take her in his arms and let her
nestle down properly and get over her fit
In prose the demi-monde writers are quite as
bad. Daintry, Libby, and Atherton are the
three graces who are at present dancing this
Bacchanalian jig for the newsdealers, and the
only recompense that they seek is through the
American News company. Mr.. Edgar Saltus
was seduced into this coterie and left his mas
culinity behind to write Transaction in
Hearts, but understand that since the ap-
pearance of that red-hot pot-boiler in Lippia-
COTS Magazine, the orders to cancel subscrip-
tons were so numerous that Edgar Saltus re-
formed and retired from the Guild Apropos
OF this eruption, l hear from all parts of the
country of steady increase in immortality.
One of the daily papers last Sunday printed a
page of interviews with the chiefs Of police of
all the principal cities of the Union, and their
testimony Is that immortality of a social and
sexual kind has been on the steady increase