San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1890-10-04
Written for the LIGHT
SINGLE SATURDAYS.
Modern IfeaESm.

Did you ever nv AXE what they
call in A merlca .s,..l square meal"
off of just one uIsi,
1ty u have made the attempt you
must have found it dead failure and
the rule of the physical world holds
good in the mental.
The school of modern realism is
popular and prolific one. 1t has
old romantic method and pleased our
self satisfied century by placing rea-
son above sentiment.
The Minerva Publishing Co., of
New York has filed what the adver-
tisements call "a long felt want' by a
collection of novelettes from the pen
of the founder of this realistic school.
There are fourteen short tales bound
in one paper volume and they are of
powerful and historic interest.
They give specimens of what the
school can do at its best. with an
occasional calcium light thrown onto
it's darker probabilities.
We start out with Balzas, and fol-
low him with lola, in q little tale
called "Life."
There are horrors in this and suffer-
ing and wrong, but there are beauties
too, and the purity of an unselfish
soul. lola was quite sadly sane
when he wrote it, he had not looked
at the world through block glasses 80
long, as to have lost all memory of
the sunlight.
In his last long novel LA Bette
HUMANE" he has struck the final
note to the dirge of his own degener-
alton.
. In all Zola's works the trail of the
serpent" is visible, but in LA Reve"
(The dream and the Able Maurret
it does not absorb the landscape.
Can We find a mind really sane,
which shows nothing but brutal tri-
umphant evil-the gambols of a
moral boa constructor.
Susely both Tolstoi and lola have
outlived their usefulness and weak
ened their intellects by the contem-
plation of one side of life-the bad
side.
They have ploughed the fields of
pessimism until the ground is ex.
hausted and will produce nothing but
what is equivalent to our loco weed.
In 1.-TWO Generations we see Tolls
Russian middle class life. He paints |
q huzzar of the early part of our CEN
tury-fnll OF nre, vigOr and brains
and distinguished for his rash love-
making and his many duels, but a |
human being still.
The nightmare of the Kreutzer So |
nata had not paralyzed his brain GEN.
tiers then, for he allows the women of |
the story to put on their innocent
finery with innocent hearts.
He even says Of one: "She seemed
not q woman, but flower, some ex-
uberant, wild, pink blossom, which |
could only have bloomed on some
little hillock, clad with virgin snow,
in far-away land" |
Alas! that he should have lived to |
write such libel on man and Chris
tisnity as the Kreutzer Sonata! Alas!
that we of the Christian communion.
must bow to the heather Judgment |
of the work, as expressed by Colonel
Robert G. 1ngersoll, in the North
American Review.
1 advise all readers of the LIGHT to
read Famous Novels of the Realistic |
School," compiled by Mary Alton
Brown, butt also advise them not to |
read it straight through as did. 1t |
is not possible, as 1 said at first, to |
make satisfactory meal of one dish, |
even when we thank God that mod |
ern realism is not all real. The motto |
of these sincere but depressing au.
thors seems contained in the follow
ing lines:
o, the joy we found the best
Was the joy that first has flown
And the truest loves are those
Which our hearts have never
known.