The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1893-02-05
rather than the great majority Of ma
tives who have maintained the govern
ment for many years.
As To LITERARY CENTERs.

AN ~ LITER ny GEN IEKS.
The New York Sun takes a Tennessee
newspaper to task for asserting that
Boston is the great literary center Of
the country. The Sun insists that that
proud distinction belongs to New York.
1t says: "a large proportion of the
principal authors OF the country live
here; a large majority OF all the books
that are the product OF the American
mind are fabricated here; nearly all the
important literary magazines of the
United States are established here; and
here it is that the leading publishing
houses of the country are found"
The Providence journal thus calls
down the compliment New York critic:
but our contemporary is clearly mis-
taken. 1t forgets the west--how stead
lily our great writer's move in that direc-
ton and grow up with the country. Has
it never heard OF Omaha, OF Ogden, Of
Helena, of the thousand other centres
of culture beyond the great Mississippi.
And even II Tennessee they have Bloom
field Zeisler concerts"
The journal is right. With two or
three exceptions the most noted men
and women in the literary field live out
side of New York. The exceptions are
Howells, Aldrich, Hawthorne, Fawcett
and one or two others who are employed
on magazines that are published in New
York because that city is the CONNER
,in1 ovid financial ,ayfnr ~ %ho rNnrfrv
and can furnish the most business for
the advertising pages of the periodicals.
In fact, New York has no literature Of
its own. There is no literary coloring to
its society, as ia the case with Boston.
The writer's that New York now boasts
she has borrowed, and she hasn't the
best of them yet.
All the conditions OF New York, the
dominance Of the commercial instinct,
the scramble for wealth, the extrava-
gance and display, the cost CT living, the
rush and hurry burly are unfavorable to
literature. The best American l:tera-
ture to-day is provincial. 1t draws it's
life-giving properties and flavor from the
soil. Transplant the writer's to new
scenes, and they wilt and die. Bret
Harte made an immortal name in Cali
fornia. In Boston and London he has
produced nothing but trash. George
w. Cable won enduring fame when he
walked the quiet streets of New Or
leans and lived among the Creoles whose
life he so delightfully."- described. Since
his removal to New England, his work
has lost its quality. Thomas Nelson
Page. Richard Malcolm Johnston, and
Joel Chandler Harris, who still charm
their wide circle of readers with
sketches of southern life, continue to
live amid the scenes whence they drew
their first inspiration. Take James
Whitcomb Riley away from Indiana and
set him down IN New York and the sub
tie fascination of his quaint and homely
verse would be lost to the world. Fancy
Lowell writing the Bigelow Papers in
Gotham, or the sage Of Concord evolving
high thoughts on Broadway, or Haw-
thorne composing "Mosses from an Old
Manse' in a seven by-nine fiat!
No, no, New York, you are great in
many ways, the imperial city of the new
world, but you are not the home of
American literature, and you never will
be, until the time when Chicago
wrests your commercial supremacy from
you. Then you may turn your thoughts to
higher things and begin to do that which
you have not yet done, contribute some
thing of your own to our literature.
You may publish the books of our
American authors and distribute them,
but for years to come you will only be
to literature what Horace Greeley said
the daily newspaper was-the bellows
blower to the organ. Leave the poets
and the story writer's and the essayists
and the historians to their quiet hooks
and academic groves, where they may
pursue their meditations fancy free. In
that way only can we have a literature
that is truly American.