Aberdeen herald. [volume] (Aberdeen, Chehalis County, W.T.) 1886-1917, 1892-05-12

Ii literature is the historian, events al
least acquire the dignity OF ancienr
history before literature records them
Now that western land booms are parts
OF safely buried past, fiction is busy
with the remains. In the May issue Of
the Century magazine are four stories
about the new West in three of them the
interest turns directly on the building OF
Western towns. Many minds seem sud-
denly walked to realization that the new
commercial aspects Of this country are as
full of picturesque literary possibilities a.
the gold mining and cowboy life Of an
earlier time. There is less of lurid in
Tterest in a study of the curious ethical
sociological problems growing out of the
new order than in the hair breadth
esrapes Of our old hero OF the adroit larai
and AGILE bowie knife; but in the chang
ing fashions oI d changing time we have
come to be in sympathy with matters
that touch our own experience more
closely. BY some freakish twist in the
human makeup we all like to read of
those things which We have already ex-
perienced rather than add to experience
by reading. like the bird that adde's it,
first egg by much turning instead of COM
ple;ing the nest-full The western liter
any boom is therefore Of particular inter
4 si To us who are town building, and
when all the fiction of an eastern maya
ri Z is concerned wi h the life which we
know, We feel that we are beginning to
be appreciated at our true worth, if only
as material for story-writers.
After having become acquainted,
through the April Harper, with Chrsto-
pher Columbus as particularly bold bad
pirate, to whom greed was the main
spring Oh existence, it is a little discon-
certing to open the May Century on the
trontispiece, a portrait Of him from the
Madrid museum, and be confronted with
the calm, uplifted face, and ON the oppos-
lite page find him described hs he:
''who serving Christ, whom most he sought to
please,
Willed his one thought Until he saw arise
Mans otner home and earthly paradise"
in the same number of the magazine
Emilio CASTELAR,, the spanish orator, be-
gins his life of Columbus. The trutl,
seems to be that the records of his life
and character are very slight and con-
Trajectory and from them can be fash
toned almost any sort of man that is
desired. CASTELAR, has apparently decided
to make his Columbus prophet with an
eye to the main chance. The Worlds
fair series OF articles is also begun in this
number with very Interestingly illus
trated article on its architecture. cap
tain, My Captain" Wolcott Balestier's
story of Western life, gives fresh evidence
of the light that went out with him.
The Chosen Valley is the name of Mrs.
Mary Hallock Foote'S new serial story in
the Century, story OF Eastern Oregon
Irrigation works. The fact that Mrs.
Foote illustrates her own stories gives
certain dainty completeness to her work,
there is some resemblance between the
heroine of the text and that of the draw
ings, and so the two impressions are not
fighting against each other in the mind
OF the reader. The story opens in Mrs.
Footh's usual delicate crisp style but her
dramatis personae suggest plot as an
cient as Romeo and Juliet, not to go far
ther back. Capulet and Montague are
already in place as well as the lovers. We
may hope for more cheerful denouc-
ment, however, as in the first chapter
there is a shadowy suggestion OF dim
figure in the background with arms out
stretched in stage benediction. The writ
ing OF Mrs. Foote always bears the mark
OF the artist. Her most felicitious effects
have been caught as she stands off from
her easel with eyes half-shut to mark
some delicate interplay Of light and shade;
she sees with the outward eye of an artist
rather than the inward eye of a poet, and
this gives her work bright subjective
charm.
ITEMS FROM ABOUT THE COUNTY