Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-01-25


tended reform from high caste gambling,
must marty him against the prayers and
protests of all her family and friends. She
knows what it is by this time to be married
to beast, incapable of honor or decency,
whose only pretense of treating his wife de-
Gently is to keep hold of her income. I
never gained such an insight into woman's
weakness as in the details of this affair.
The Uses of Starvation.
One who knows the world grows very much
hardened to the result of starvation. If an
educated or sane man in this day in civil
lied country can't make comfortable liv-
ing the best thing he can do for the world
aud himself Is to starve. Starvation is the
penalty of nature for improvidence and
worthlessness. We are all in the boat to-
gether, and if any man will not take his turn
at the oars, instead of singing, let him 20
overheard as not worth saving. 1t sounds
pretty hard doctrine, but it is i very much
needed and entirely wholesome one.
Lastly, what right mas this young man
to enter the higher calling of literature at
all for ten years to come? What has he
seen worth describing? What has he thought
out and put to test worth our hearing and
thinking over? What can he do that he can
teach us to do; or, with what even can be
entertain us in the telling? He is like an
art student who had learned to copy pencil
drawings who wants work as an artist at
once. He is empty of experience, void of
suggestion. What has he but q taste for
literature, which, forsooth, we are to turn
out of our berths and poke about to crafty?
Requires Thorough Training.
wish there could be schools of literature
established where all aspirants had to 60
through at least as thorough training as
they are expected to for art. At the pros
pect of a seven years course most applicants
would find the taste for literature had de-
serted them. The only reason why litera-
ture is in esteem and held higher than man.
ual labor is that it requires longer, closer,
finer training, which it commonly doesn't
get Most masters of it have taken q 20
years course OF observation of human ma
ture and the world. besides study of history
and the mere art of expression, before they
gained the right place. And there have
been very few men of distinctioutn newspa-
per writing even, who were not men of
affairs as well as of the pen.
Innate laziness is no proof of talent for
literature, though it is q frequent pretcnce
for it. I'll venture to say that this raw
graduate with his fine handwriting and
splendid education, would not be worth his
salt in any newspaper office, any publishing
house, or in any literary work whatever, ex-
cept the mere hunting down and catching
by the tail of his pet ideas, which are the
same breed as his favorite professors and
the world has too much fresh, good thinking
nowadays to tolerate wornout strains.
The Literary Stockings.
There doesn't appear to be any great de-
mand for sucking literary talent. The
census shows about 10000 persons in this
country who call themselves authors, and
adding up the syndicate and magazine lists
of writers and the best known newspaper
men and women, you may account for 500
of them. Perhaps there are as many who
earn 81, 500 a year by their writing alone,
perhaps 100 o! tLese earn more. 1t the rest
of the 10000 average $40 a week they are
doing far better than the publishers give
them credit for. That sum is what every
Irishman who handles spade in this State
can make so weeks in a year.
Educated people may pursue this kind of
life and call it love OF literature, but it is
re ,lly laziness, and the sneaking desire for
the credit OF a high calling without the COM
bined bodily and mental effort which real
affairs require. Pm glad that literature be-
gins to have a little more of the stonebreak-
| ing quality put into It-that the world calls
for newer, livelier thoughts, with some of
the vital marrow in them, some deeper in
sight than the world at large has in man
and woman, society, government, or even in
rock and heather, desert and hillside.
Hints for the Young Man.
You want to study your segment of the
world as Agassiz made his pupils study fish,
which at sight appeared exactly alike but
after months study showed SO many differ
ences that the pupil could hardly discern a
resemblance. To 90 this you must go into
the world, into business and mix with its
characters, learn its phrases, its queer twists
of idea, its pranking vanity, its deep hidden
veins of feeling.
1t is no wonder the caliphs of Bagdad de-
| lighted to roam about the bszaars in dis
| guise, and see human nature in its un-
studied postures, not fiat on their faces
| before q throne. / would myself serve
| months behind counter. just for the sake
of studying life and people as they appear
| from the other side OF 1t. You can't learn
by going as amateur casual day or a week,
for you are as apt to get conclusions wrong
as right, but you must enter some live
| career and learn it as KIpling knows India,
or Verestchagin the Russian service. Not
till then can you make other people see anG
feel what you write.
Secret of Kiplins's Success.
The examiners for the School of Litera-
| ture should ask the applicant not merely,
"have you taste Tor IL, out nave you any
facility of expression" and then, "have you
experienced anything to e1press?" Mr..
| Saueers' method was the right one after all.
| only he applied it to pupils of too young an
| age to profit by it. The secret of Mr.. Kip
ling's effects is that he lived before he wrote.
| His fighting scenes, his barrack life, his
love-making, his flirting was never evolved
| from inner consciousness, or observation.
He has not looked on, eyeglass in band at
the tragi-comedy OF society, TO select few
| details here and there, he has the whole e1-
perience in the Photographic memory. which
| is the best part of a writer's outfit, and
| chooses the lines which live.
| There can be no question about his success
being a lasting one. His method is the
right and true one. and such . man will
write with vivid interest as long as the world
lasts from which he draws material. He is
the one writer who can make story absorb
ing without love-making. He is like to be
the Thackeray of our time, for there is more
resemblance in the two men than their East
| Indian and artistic beginnings. Thack-
eray's early work in the "Yellowplush
Papers" and his short stories has much of
| the dash and swagger Of Kipling's.
| SHIRLEY DARE.
|