Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-10-25

However it might in Flanders.
Perhaps not. Perhaps they do keep some
OF the commandments better in Chicago
than they do In Flanders. Let US hope SO,
any way.
There can be no mistake, however, about
the excellence and the charm of this 'Little
Book of Western Verse" 1t was
written in the West but it ranges over
all space and time. Side by side
with poems in such modern and Western
American as "Casey's Table d. Hote" and
Mr.. Dana, OF the New York Sum-" are
verses In the Oldest of old English, as old as
the DAYS when every man was wont to spell
as it seemed good in his own eyes, such as
''Madge, We Hoyden, and "a Proper Trewe
Idyll of Canelot" Here are echoes of
Horace, and Beranger. and Heise, and
INLAND. Here-and these are best of all
are cradle songs from man. lands, from old
England, from the islands of Orkney and
the coasts of Cornwall, from Sicily and Hol-
land and Japan. l would like to quote
delightful half-dozen of them. But YOU
must give yourself the pleasure of reading
them in the book. A book with a singular
and winning charm about it, witty, pathetic,
always most graceful, always true, uplitt-
ing-genuine poetry, such as is happiness
to read.
1t is from Boston, rather than from Chi
cago, that we are accustomed to look for
books like Mr.. Fields. 1t was from Boston
that the writer Of ''The Round Trip started,
passing through Chicago, with her face
turned still further westward. Miss Clark
stopped in Chicago only long enough to
visit Lincoln Park, where she thought the
sea lions rather unpleasant creatures, and
noticed the statue OF De La Salle, "a dis
coverer of hardly less note than Columbus,
for did he not discover Chicago?" 1.-The
Round Trip" followed that beaten path
which is every month getting wider and bet
ter worn. which touches Santa Fe and Pasa-
dena, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara and
Riverside, and returns by the way of the
Yosemite and Salt Lake City. The journey
did not extend even to Alaska, where an in
creasing number of tourists are making ex-
ploratlons nowadays Nobody will read the
book for adventures or discoveries. 1t is
just simple, bright and cheerful journal of
a pleasant summer journey, told in a
woman's sprightly and gossiping fashion,
readable Throughout, good to have in your
bag if you purpose making the same trip
next summer, and excellent as refutation
of the assertion quoted on its initial page:
''It you wish to be mfortable-trdUel!'
The story OF ''Mr. Dide's Vacation" be-
gins with the thermometer 20 degrees be-
the ground in the valley of the Platte 1t
ends with a great coasting trip, whlsking
around the sharp corners of Pixies Peak
The most important part of the book
is the background. The figures of
Mr.. Dide and the others are sketched in
like the little groups in Claude's pictures,
to give q touch of human life, perhaps, to
the scene. But you see at once that the
trees and hills, the ravines and rivers are
what you are really meant to look at. The
young woman who talks Darwin and wears
glasses and waits on the restaurant table, and
says: Roast beef boiled mutton -caper-
sauce-pork-and-beans," as if she had never
heard of the doctrine of evolution, and Mr..
Dide himself, whose anglicized dialect was
never really spoken anywhere, and the dea-
con and the rest of the party do not greatly
mar the Colorado scenery, OF which Mr.
France gives us here a series of most graphic
pictures.
Arizona, ii seems, means the "land of sill
ver." 1t was toward Arizona that poor
King Montezuna pointed when Cortez
asked him where he got his gold and silver
And CorteZ sent an expedition out in that
direction 10 find that store of treasure and
bring it back with them-but they never
brought back so much as a nugget, for they
never came back themselves They were never
heard of afterward. 1t was into Arizona
that good Father Kline journeyed, Jesuit
priest from the Spanish colony, and found a
wonderful people dwelling in that land, a
people living in stout houses with the front
walls written over with pictures, manufact-
urers of cotton cloth, users of paper, cul-
tivators Of corn, beans, chocolate and sugar,
possessors OF remarkable plant which
served them with abundant sup
plies of pins, needles, paper, rope,
cloth, thatch for their dwellings,
meat and drink They guarded upon their
altar fire which was never extinguished,
and upon the continuance of whose flame
they based their national prosperity. That
was 400 wears ago. After all, there is some
ancient history in America, and most inter-
csting history, t,o, i one could but read it,
And we have our ruins as well as the
older world. though men of armor never
played at tournament in their courts. The
fame has long ago died out upon the
ARIZONA altars, The Apaches put It out