The Dakota chief. (Gann Valley, Buffalo County, S.D.) 18??-1913, 1895-09-26

in the pleasing consciousness Of SUPERB
GRITTY to all that groveling herd Of hui
mainly that is not literary and conse-
quently has no soul.
A step above the novel club is the
club that say to itself, go to, let us
study Browning" and when the young
lady litterateur has taken this step, she
feels at once that her mind has begun
to develop. for. be it understood, study
ing Browning is the next thing to
studying protoplasms. and icthyosaur-
uses, and biology, and the young wOm-
an whose mind can get a correct grip
on these mysteries is but one grade be-
low her who has written a book. 1t is
true that the study Of Browning is
somewhat mystifying, but woman is
fond Of mystery-it is perfectly lovely,
in fact; so the trifing circumstance
that even Browning once admitted that
he was at q loss to tell what he meant
by some of his pOetical prOfundities is
a matter of no consequence. Its nice
to guess, even if you don't know" cas-
ually explained one of the sisterhOod,
and the statement generally receives
a hearty assent from the entire quota.
1t is but just, however. to say that the
study Of Browning is most popular in
Boston, where babies wear spectacles
and children know more than men and
women who had not the good fortune to
be born on soil sacred to the muses.. To
Boston and her daughters, therefore,
the rest Of feminine America generally
leaves the study of Browning, and
Aristotle, and Kant, and Hegel, and
Fichte, and Schopenhauer, and the
whatness of the whatsoever, and con-
tents itself with Dickens, and George
Eliot, and Victor Hugo, and Lew Wal
in a while. descend to the plane of ev-
ery-day life, and think thoughts that
people can understand.
But not all the young ladies of the
present day are literary in their tastes,
so the tendency toward societyism is
by no mean limited to literary objects.
The percentage is also unitarian and
benevolent. and not Il few of those fair
ones who care nothing for Browning
would not give Il tig for all the theories
and to whom dissertations on the rela-
tons of the world objective to the
world subjective are mere sound and
fury, signifying nothing. find that they
a keep in the fashion by turning
their attention in other directions. TO
these the sewing schools for poor chill
dren. the mission schools. the clubs for
working girls. and other lines Of effort
furnish a field ut once broad and fer
tile, and in which they have the con-
are in the highest degree humanitarian
and benevolent.
But while these last are not regard
ed by their literary sisters as of their
own number. they are not despised. but
are rather looked upon as worthy of
commentator, for they are considered
to be doing what they can and are not
to be blamed if Providence has not en-
lowed them with superior minds, able
TO grasp the problems presented by the
masters of fiction and philosophy.
Fads may be amusing to those who
cultivate them not, but they also have
their uses. for not infreQuently they
lead To something better. There is an
East Indian tale of a man who carried
a bundle of textile fabrics through Il
garden of roses, and was afterward
surprised and delighted to find that his
goods had become greatly enhanced in
value from the fact that they had alb
sorbed the perfume of the flowers while
passing between the w of blossoms.
SO il is possible that what Holland calls
IAN armful of beautiful dust may, in
passing through the gardens of litera-
ture, absorb so much of the fragrance
of poetry and fiction as to be rendered
more valuable both for purposes mis-
cellaneOus and matrimonial. At all
events. nothing will be lost by the ex-
pertinent, for all effort toward the at
tainment of a worthy object is, of it
self, ennObling in its tendency. The
man who jumps at the stars may never
attain the stars, but he rises higher
than if he had never tried to jump: the
woman who essays to understand
SchOpenhauer may never grasp the con
ceptiOns of that sage, but she may learn
to comprehend George Eliot, and there
is gain even in that.