The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1893-11-01
fury has attained her highest success,

mas won nef mOSC enduring I3n0.
Yet. sorrowful to say, the crab-like
tendency of some Of our modern
women nOvelists seems to be to work
backward to the, contemplation and
delineatiOn of pagan models. They
forget that the passionate songs OF
Sappho must give place to the chaste
"magnificat" of Mary. Their gross
indelicacy is due either to greed Tor
said that a young authOress once beg
as indecent, in the hope that his
scathing review might do for her
novel what barring the mails did for
"Kreutzer Sonata"-sell half a mil
lion copies of it! Too often, however,
the women who befoul their pens in
the cesspools of lewd sensualism and
erotic romance (ike certain delinea-
tors of the nude in art), pander I'M
blushingly to the prudency of the
f1eshly. They, indeed, create words
that burn"-yea, that burn with the
lurid and unquenchable fire of hell,
not with the pure and cleansing
flame of Isaiah's celestial coal. Their
muse, instead of swinging before the
most high golden censor, sending
fourth delicious incense from cOnSe-
Grated resins, f1OuriSheS before the
golden calf a braiser of dusky, smol-
dering charcoal, whence issue the
deadly fumes OF asphyxiatiOn to all
that is pure and noble in humanity.
Such women are the dorothy
Draggletails" of literature. They
may have learned, in common par
lance, ito call spade a spade" but
in so doing they have furnished
themselves with spade to dig the
grave of their own wOmanly delicacy
and self-respect.
Ye nymphs. that reign DER sewers and
sinks,
Doth wash your city of Cologne;
But, tell me, nymphs, what power divine
Shall hencefor wash the river Rhine,
Commenting upon the assertion of
Julian Hawthorne and others, that
''literature in America is emaSculat-
ed by convention" reviewer not
long since boldly declared in lead
ing eastern magazine that sit is the
fear of the young that emasculates
ftp
Surely, this out-Herods Herod.
GROWTH OF IMMORAL LITERATURE.
Accused is the age, accursed the
commonwealth, that ceases to re-
spect, to reverence, the innocence of
the young. Even the pagans wrote:
"Maxima debetur puero reverentia;"
and the ancient Egyptians at the OBJ
seQuies of their dead, proclaimed the
departed spirit damned or saved, &C
cording as it had wronged or rever-
enced little children during life.
ConscientiOusly careful, tenderly
strong, must be the pen that traces
the first impressions upon the soft,
pure wax of the virgin mind. Those
cravings will outlive the inscriptions
cut upon bronze and granite. "Take
your vase Of Venice glass out of the
furnace" says Ruskin: "and strew
chaff over it in it's transparent heat,
and recover that to it's clearness and
rubbed glory when the north wind
has blown upon it; but do not think
to strew chaff over the child fresh
from Gods presence, and to bring
least. in this world"
read aloud to his young sons the i'm
moral tragedies of Mrs. Benin, or
the disgracing fictions of George
Sand? What christian mother lay
open before the innocent eyes of her
young daughters the shameless pages
Of "The Quick and the Dead" or
deliberately put into their hands the
lucubra tiOnS of Miss BraddOn, or of
that hydraheaded and sensuous gor-
gon of romance, yclept the Duchess?
Literature, it is true, as Cardinal
Newman reminds us, can never be
anything else than the manifesto
tiOns OF human nature IN human
language; that, as science is the re-
Election of physical nature, literature
is the rejection Of nature moral and
social. We cannot eliminate the
evidences Of human passion from the
records of human life, and our age of
fiction is pre-eminently introspective
and analytical. But surely, my sis
tiers, in order to be true to nature,
we are not called upon to dip our
pens into the sinking slush of foul
and debasing passions. In order to
be faithful to reality we are not
obliged to lay bare to the vulgar the
most sacred esOteric mysteries; to
make our toilets in public; to expose
ourselves, as master mind has
phrased it, unveiled in the market
place, unveiled and unrobed to the
gaze Of prOfane world.
Surgeons do not detect their sub
JcCGS Oh SUrecU corners. 1nere is
native delicacy in true science, as
we'll as true art. OF Rembrant's
famous picture, "The Lesson in An
atomy," it has been remarked that
the artist rivets the gazer's atten-
tion on the glowing, lifelike figures
of the professor and his students
rather than on the livid, repulsive
corse that lies before them on the
dissecting table.
Ii we must faithfully portray ma
ture in our works, my sters and CO
laborers, let us not forget the God
OF nature in his works. Let us give
to the world something better than
the vintage of an intoxicating and
effervescing romance pressed from
the dry grapes of exhausted passion
and erotic pruriency Let us offer
it, not "devil's wine," but Goods
wine"-a destillatiOn from the fresh
herbs and sweet-smelling simples of
a chaSte pasturage giving to fainting
souls and faltering hearts the royal
cordial of the golden and La Grande
Chartruse. The dove that goes forth