The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-04-15


boys and girls with whom they became
acquainted. So they read and talked and
{ thought together, and there was much oil
religion in their reading, their talking
and their thinking. But afterward, wheI
William Dean left the direct influence OF
that delightful home life and came firsl
east and afterWard went abroad as consul
10 Venice, he had the doubts which come
10 most men. This lasted during what
was left Of his youth and through such
part of his middle age as came before his
reading Of TOlstOi.
Il believe in Christ, the life" he said
to me. Il think that is my whole creed
/ To wish to follow Christ is what Tolstoi
teaches. and il seems to me is all that can
be asked of u.s.
Have YOU faith in the theory Of i'm
mortal life, Mr.. Novelist"
AS we grow older / think we grow
less and less positive about such a belief
as that The young are much more posi-
tive than the old. With age comes the
bunting of the edge of most things. As
we gather years we lose love. JOY, grief
| everything that makes life, and so, to age,
1t would not seem so strange if life itself
| ended forever I've died and lived so
many times Every time we go to
sleep, we die-we become unconscious
and pass for the time being out Of life
/ How can we know that we will ever
/ aNhht AIOul DuE ulEuL = sumner, OF LnHJ
| we shall not awake from death2 / can't
say more about it, or more than that l
hope for another life, another chance"
1t was that delightful home life. the
books, the magazines and the semi-liter-
| airy flavor that ran Through il all, be-
cause, first, of ingrained tastes, and sec
! Ond, of the fact that the father was the
/ editor Of country newspaper this was
! in Ohio that gave Mr.. Howells his liter
I hpnf rom tho fret
were all towards writing. They never
wayered. He has never engaged in any
! business. The stories of work for an in
! surance company in Boston are without
! fact for foundation. This does away with
the pretty theory that March, the ex-in-
! surance agent and afterward editor in
! "A Hazard of New Fortunes" was Mr.
Howells himself described by himself in
a book. Mr. Howells has never described
himself in book. March was made out
! OF whole cloth" In fact, the novelist has
| drawn but one character directly from
! life in any of his books. This character
| was F'ulkersOn in that same book, "A
| Hazard Of New Fortunes" He was the
! inventor and business manager of that
! unique publication, Every Other Week, -
| which played so important a part in the
! story. F'ulkerson was a breezy westerner
OF good heart, selfish, crudily witty and
| one Of the most entertaining of Mr.
| Howel's creations. He was mainly
studied from Ralph Keller, one of the
| queerest characters in Boston seventeen
years ago. He finally went TO Cuba dur
| ing the outbreak of n and was mvster-
iously murdered there.
The only story in which MIR. Howells
might be supposed to have painted him
self to even a slight extreme is Indian
summer That tells of middle-aged
man-an editor from the west-who
longed for his youth to come again. That
youth had been partly spent among the
soft breezes and under the sunny skies of
Italy. So the man thinking of this and
remem bering the delight of these past
Gays, made very human mistake.
He thought that the delight was
due to Italy and not to youth.
and weut back to Italy to find it. But
somehow the breezes and the skies had
changed to him, and finally he found that
1t had not been in them, but in himself
his young blood, young heart and young
| head-that the deliciousness of those by
| gone days had been.- This was Mr. How
els own experience He looked back
and yearned for the emotions and enjoy
ments Of twenty years before He too.
fancied that it was the breezes and the
skies that breathed and smiled to him
across the gulf of years, and he, too,
pursuing them to Italy, found that he
was wrong.
Indian Summer" perhaps because
there Is so much of himself in it, is his
tavorlte among his own stories Few of
his admirers choose with him. The
women in the story are better than
the men-that is true, in fact, of all of
Howells novels. In no one of his books
has he given us a man whom we can
lionize in our minds. He has made sew
eral heroines, but no heroes.
why is it" l ask of him, that your
women are always so much more admir-
able than your menl"
The reply came so promptly and truth
fully that it staggered me: Because
women are better than men, A good
woman is beyond the imagination of
even good man, and bad woman is as
| good as the average of the other SEX"
But he quickly qualified the statement
that is, he robbed femininity of credit
| for its own goodness, by adding: at is
because women are mostly outside of our
internal economic SYSTEM
Probably the most pleasing woman in
| Mr.. Howells' books to the greatest num-
Der of readers is Miss Woodburn, the
southern girl of "a Hazard of New For
tunes, who married Fulkerson Proba-
bly, the least pleasing but, at the same
time, the most carefully drawn of all. is
| Statira, in "Lemuel Barker, or the Min
| truthful portrayal will appeal to many
| young men. Most young men, especially
those of the cities, have met her She is
unfortunate, but does not arouse svm-
| pathy Lemuel gets all there is of that,
| although he is week and vacillatiug
| creature, and his only redeeming features
are the underlying good motives which
rarely govern him. To almost everybody
who read it the ending of the book was
unsatisfactory. Lemuel Barker. coun-
| try boy, going to Boston to seek his for
! turne, is brought, in the midst of the early
misfortunes which are all thath seeking
| finds, In contact with 4 shop girl. The
loneliness of a stranger in the midst of a
multitude, and the yearning in him for
woman's society, makes him grasp
| eagerly at the straw of acquaintance with
! her and another vulgar, unimportant
| girl One of these he thinks he falls in
! love with. That is, her clinging affe ton
/ her weakness and her Mandy pamby pret-
! tiness, together with his Comulete isola-
| ton from other women make him seek her
/ society Barker is really young fellow
| OF some mental power, which is however
| dlssipated in many useless directions by
| circumstances and certain weaknesses in
| bis own characte". lie becomes a clerk
| in family hotel ana develops a love for
| books, which pleases some of the guests
and admits HIM hnally to the acQuaint-
! ance of two girl art students
With one of these, a wholly lovely