Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-09-23
THE CRITIC.

Detective Stories' Popularitv-A Cooper
Wanted-Crawford and Italy.
| According to Mr.. Bellamv,s "Looking Back
| wardn il is the great corporatlons which are
| going to make the millennium possible. By the
time we pet into the twentieth century we will
have learned the lesson which the trusts teach
we will discover that the combined industries
of the nation can he as successfully managed
as the combined ovens of the coke trade And
| then we will take the business of the country
| into our own hands as we took its Government
some hundred years or 40 ago. and set up the
mononoIv of mononoIies
Mr.. Bellamv has NOT much to say in Looking
| Rackvardu about var 7 sunnose that when
the twentieth century ia fully here. war will be
| az obsoIeta as cannibalism There NAV. how.
ever. be the possibilitv of a war or two between
| now and the mi1leninm It NAV chance some
dav that tho fisb of tho tIantic or the seals of
the Pacific will get ms into trouble with Canada.
Mr.. Stockton. in the "Great War Syndicate. /"
| has predicted the way ont in such a case.
Our side of the war will be conducted by the
Great War Syndicate. company of alert cap.
italists. They will make a contract with the
| Government to mt the war down in SO many
months for 80 much money! They will agree
that in the event of the least harm coming to
any American town. even the invasion by land
troops from Canada of the obscurest frontier vii
lage, they will forfeit sl,0O0,OO0. Then they
will take two small boats a "repeller' and a
'crab." and getting out in front of some large
Canadian seaport they will proceed to exhibit
the energies of the instantaneous motor
bomb" They won't kill anybody, but will
quietly content themselves with showing how
easily they could blow the whole town with all
its suburbs into the planet Jupiter. "At the
first aggressive movement" they will say, I'VE
will do that" then they will take repeller
and several crabs and attack England. In a
single battle they will disable and defeat the
united British Navy. Finally, as an unques-
plosive, they will fire bomb or two into sea-
side mountain and leave hole there where the
hill stood, big enough to made harbor for all
the ships IN the English Channel. That Will be
the end OF the war.
-
There is nothing 80 very improbable in that.
War, for now these many years, has been ap-
preaching the condition of impossibility.
saw the other day the photograph OF great
tort whose huge walls ID feet In thickness,
look grlmly out from the coast OF california
toward Japan. That tort Is good Tor nothing.
IL Is as strong ana soild to-day as IL was when
tne last stone was set, but they nave taken the
cannon out and turned the fortress into
pleasure ground. because a Ie" years ago
some qulet, peaceaOie, pespectaeieu German
discovered a ne" explosive, ana they make
guns to-day whlch would nave TO nre only once
at that fort to make it into a dust heap. By
and by all the forts Will have to come down,
and all the soldiers, armed with swords and
guns, VIII become as useless as the lron-shlrted
warriors of the middle ages, when powder was
invented. War will mean annihilation. Mr..
Stockton tells his story charmingly, as he
always does. 1t makes one think OF that bright
little sketch which somebody wrote not long
ago In one or the magazines, "The End OF New
York"
So
Mr.. Stockton tells us what may be expected.
That is pretty near the title of story of his
which Dodd- Mead & Co.. have just put into
new covers, and which is dated 1874 What
Might Have Been Expected" is not quite what
most readers who hail Mr.. Stockton's books
nowadays will be likely to expect 1t is not in
the line Of The Lady or the Tiger" at all; nor
is it like THE Late Mrs. Nell" or Mr.. Stock
tons larger stories. Mr.. Stockton has said
that good many of his stories were written
for children, but that the children's fathers
and mothers got hold Of them and somehow
liked them better than the children did. But
this is a boys and girls book all the way
through. 1t is a good, stirring, and inspiring
book, a good story with an unobtrusive good
moral, and the small readers will enjoy it.
Here and there are bright places which re-
mind one of Stockton but for the most part
there is little to mark the book as being the
child of the author.
This is pretty good. fre
How old are you, Aunt MatildaY" said
Harry. (Aunt Matilda was an old colored
woman.)
81 'spect about 5On said the old woman.
"Oh, Auns Matildar' cried Harry. YOU'RE |
certainly more than so. When 1 was very
little fellow. remember that you were very |
oId-at least 60 or TO-"
"Well. then, 1 'spects pse about 90n said |
Aunt Matilda.
"But YOU can't be 9O.n said Kate: "the Bible |
saws that 20 years is the common length of a |
persons life
Then was Jews" said Aunt Matilda. SIT
didn't mean no cull,d people Guild peonle |
live longer than that Bnt n,rans a culI;d lew
wouldn't live yery Ionp.n
-.
There ia no particular connection betwaan
.Wbat Might Have Reen Ernectedn
and "Tba Wrong Row excant +ha+
AZ IL ia hard tn find Mr. Stool.
TOMS style in the one. it is almost eouallv dim
,ult to find the pecuiiar marks of Mr.. Robert
[ouis Stevensop's pen in the other ONLY in a
,age or two can I detect the autbor of ..Dr
lekvlIm and wrbroun Janet,, and uTbo NJ
A rab;.n Niohtsu The n,ot houana, ;.
enough. It is a continuation
IF that compIicated fantasy which bepins with
he "story of the Young man with the cream
arts, and winds in and ont till the reader cs+s
airly dizzy. Mr.. Stevenson constructed the
o, '1e
We have inst had revelation of the metbod