Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-10-20

pressed himself as charmed with Americi
and the American people. He pronounced
New York as grand in its great men; Bos
ton, a welcome home for the traveller ant
student; Washington, the most beautiful
city on the continent; Philadelphia, a
charmingly picturesque; Chicago, as phe
nomenal; Denver, as an oak of steady, sub
stantial growth; Omaha, a modern mart
and San Francisco, most attractive to thu
tourist.
THE NEW SCHOOL.
Upon the morning of his departure. Si
| Edwin smoked an after breakfast cigar ir
his rooms at the Palace Hotel, and chattet
| pleasantly with DISPATCH correspondent
upon timely literary topics. As moralist
as a poet OF sweet purity, as man of fine
sensibilities, there is scarcely an English
man to-day better qualified to speak, ir
terms ill or good, of recent American litera
ture, and more especially of erratic fiction
and poems of passion, than is the we'll
known student of ancient Asiatic literature
| II have read Ella Wheeler Wilcox and
| Amelia Rives," said Sir Edwin, knocking
the ashes from his cigar. "The others
have not read." You speak of Mrs. Ather-
ton, Edgar Saltus, Abby Jackman and
other writers of whom know no.hing, and
| of whom 1 have never heard. The Quick OF
the Dead read with a vast deal of interest.
I do not regard this recent American litera-
ture as new school, and most certainly
such school should not be established.
do not think there exists to-day separate,
| distinct school OF this kind. There are GER
tain writers headed by our own Swinburne,
and the gi ted men of France, men whom
know. I do not admit that these men con-
- ool,o ,,fo o-
feshliness.
A REVOLT AGAINST PURITANISM.
''Their work is the old eternal classic re-
volt against Purltanism and the narrower
forms of Christianity. The first of them all
was the Emperor Julian, one Of the finest
fellows that ever lived In his heart there
was revolt against Christ and His teach
ings, for in his breast was the old grace oi
Greece, and the glory of Rome. This new
religion, draped in gray, seemed odious.
Look round and see the clergy consign the
babes to everlasting torment, and say tits
wicked for man to look at women's ankles.
Do not misunderstood me. 1 should never
excuse immortality or forgive offenders
against public decorum. Let us remember
Swinburne's verses, and believe that the poets
of the present make but natural and even
useful protest against the eXtravagances Of
Puritanism. 1 agree with him who writes:
'Dost thou believe that because thou art
virtuous, there should be no more cakes and
alep
"I was sitting with Walt Whitman the
other day, and 7 repeated to him some of his
own verses, and explained their philosophy
and their beauty. He said to me: You are
the first man to explain my own lines At
this said to him, I am no more ashamed
OF body than of soul. 1 look largely, broad
ly at men, at literature, at the affairs of
life. Walt Whitman is right. swear I
am no more ashamed of body than of soul.
Read those lines of Robert Browning in
which he says: Nor soul helps body more
than body once helped SOUL
THE ENEMY OF BEAUTY.
"Ah, me, it is sad spectacle, a disgust
ing thing for the world to be ashamed of
beauty. This does not apply to bad books.
There is no excuse for their birth or their
existence. There is no enemy to the beauty
of the world, the Greek of life, like the OBJ
scene man. He is the guerilla that de-
faces, mars the shape and form of nature
II such books are written to sell, to pander,
the man who writes them is villain, and
should be cast headlong into the broad
Pacific, and the woman-vea, she is worse
than the man. There is Rider Haggard! I
know him well, and meet him frequently on
the underground His work is clever, his
She even better think than Cleopatra. >
There are beautiful things in his books, yet
people will not read. But then you cannot
Judge Cleopatra by the young women of
Boston. You Americans are very moral
There is more propriety here than across
the sea-"
THE MAIDEN OF THE NILE.
One day last winter Edwin Arnold was
walking along Piccadilly. Soon it was
raining hard. He took refuge in museum
of Egyptian antiquities. There he saw the
slippers of an Egyptian mummy. He took
them up, and his quick perception saw the
Maiden of the Nile, who wore them, stand
ing before him as living reality. He drew
an envelope from his pocket, took hurried
notes, and some time since completed a
poem OF great beauty. THE DISPATCH
correspondent has secured these verses for
exclusive publication in America, and they
are printed to-day for the first time in this
country:
TO A PAIR OF SLIPPERS
IN THE EGYPTIAN EXHIBITION, PICCADMIY
Tiny slippers of gold and green,
Tied with a mouldering golden cord!
What pretty feet they must have been,
When Cesar Augustus was Egypt's lordi
Somebody graceful and fair you were;
Not many girls could dance in thesei
When did the shoemaker make you. dear,
Such nice pair of Egyptian threes?
II.
Where were you measured? In Sais, or On,
Memphis. or Thebes. or Pelusium?-
Fitting them featly your brown toes upon,
Lacing them deftly with finger and thumb
seem to see you'll So long ago!
Twenty centuries-less or more!
And here are the sandals; yet none OF us know
What name, or fortune, or face you borel
Your lips would have laughed, with rosy
scorn,
If the merchant or slave had mockingly said:
The feet will pass, but the shoes they have
Two thousand years onward Times road shall
thread
And still be footgear, as good as new!
To think that calfskin, gilded and stitched,
Should Rome and her Caesars outlive; and you
Be gone like a dream from the world you be-
witched.
Not that we mourn you; 'twere too absurd;
You have been such a very long while away!
Your dry spiced dust would not value word
OF the soft regrets that a verse could say.
Sorrow and Joy and Love and Hate,
If you ever felt them, are vaporized hence
To this odor-subtle and delicate
OF cassia and myrrh and frankincense.
v.
OF course they embalmed your But not 90
Were aloes and nard as your youthful glow
which Amenti took, when the small dark feet
Wearied of treading our earth below.
Looki It was hoodtime in Valley of Nile,
Or very wet day In the Delta, deari
When your gilded shoes tripped their latest
The mud on the soles renders that fact CLEAR