The herald., 1897-02-28
The gods are deadg Perhaps they are!

The wise, the fair, the awful. the jocose,
Are one and all, l like to think, retreated
Once high they sat, and high Ger earthly
With sacrifcial dance and song were
greeted,
Once-long ago; but now the story goes.
The gods are dead.
1t must be true. The world world Of
prose,
Fuli-crammed with facts. in science
swathed and sheeted,
Mods In a stertorous after-dinner doze.
Plangent and sad, in every wind that blows
Who will may hear the sorry words re-
peated-
The gods are dead
It pours contempt on all ones pride to
read on the printed page something that
Is not quite in accord with the manu-
script in the way Of a perplexing even
though small mistake. That such things
will happen, and does happen, even in
this corner of The Herald, that ought to
be without serious error as to form of
speech, we confess with sorrow
AS to the more serious mistakes that
one finds in all his reading there might
be q weekly sermon about them. We
must be content this week, however,
with calling attention to paper recent
ly read before a teachers institute by
Mr.. Godkin of the Nation, upon the illit-
eracy of our boys and how little we do
to remedy it. He says:
II speak with delberation when I say
that there is no civilized country in
which, outside the colleges, so little of
this is done as in ours; in which the peo-
pie at large. though their average speech
is better than usual, pay so little aten-
tion to their manner of speaking and
choice of words; in which so much havoc
Is made with the language in daily use.
n 10 witt mo W a
call educated, who do not seem to care
how they speak or how they write. Their
speech is full of soecisms, and their let
terS and notes are unpunctuated scrawls,
and in their pronunciation the vowel
sounds are summarily got rid of. A dia-
lect is being formed today under our
very noses in New York which bears
only a faint resemblance to English, and
which you may see illustrated in Chin
mie Fadden,' a much-read, much-ad
mired book, which has even been
dramatiZed.
you may depend upon it that there is
no defense against bad speech but ha-
bitual good speech. IL we wish to speak
well, we must speak we'll every day.
You cannot have what l may call Sun
day or holiday speech. as well as every
day speech. like Clothes"
The case here is not put 700 urgently
indeed, 1t cannot be. In our very midst
the daily speech of men and women is
actually barbaric. What can be ex-
pected from the young people who grow
up with such surroundings? In fact,
the habit of many persons amounts TO
scorn of good English.
If one were to stop in the writing or
the reading of any book and ask him
self in the matter be clean and whole
some, there is one test that will never
fail him--would his wife, or daughter.
or mother think it "nice?" And how
simple and practical test this is, since
one can guess instantly what the answer
would be! There is no mistaking this
matter. We all know how safe we
should be if we lived upon these certain
lines of life. We may be uneducated,
poorly equipped in literature, but this
does not matter. when we come to the
true standard of what ought to be writ
ten and read Eggieston tells this pretty
story of Bonner who had no literary
attachments and yet who made the
Ledger the greatest success ever
achieved in household literature: 1.-The
way do Is this: When 1 was boy
used to go to a Scotch prayer meeting
In Pennsylvania, and I remember one
very good little old woman in brown
silk hood who always sat in one place
she was my ideal of goodness. 1 always
ask myself whether what put in would
offend that little old woman in the brown
silk hood"
The recent death of Mrs. Margaret
Hamilton Hungerford at her old home
in Ireland has brought out her family
history unknown before. She was the
daughter of Canon Hamilton, rector Of
Roscarberry, and as a child showed
some skill in story telling Whether her
marriage was especially unfortunate
does not appear, but she was very young
r-I,1 l1ft
rem to support and wholly without
means With a wonan's courage and
sense she wrote Molly Bawn" out Of
her own heart, following 1t with "Phyl-
lis" both of which are successes. The
world has judged her somewhat harshly
because of her later tendency to write
down." but it must be remembered that
she wrote for the market and must
furnish what the publishers would pay
for. While none of her multitude IF
books are actually immoral, several
have helped to lower her earlier stand
ard, which is explained, if not excused,
by her great necessities.
THE SIGN OF THE CROSS. BY Will
son Barrett. j. B. Lippincott COM
pany, Philadelphia.
This is story of early Christian Rome,
the Rome of Nero's reign, with all its
sin and cruelties to the new sect. The
volume will be compared with "Cuo
Vadis," instructively and inevitably, and
somewhat to its disadvantage, but on
the whole it is a striking picture of
most remarkable epoch. The play which
has attracted so much attention in Lon
don, produced by Mr.. Barrett, and acted
with himself in the leading role, has
the story of this volume and its main
characters. The fact that such play
has been a success is regarded as real
surprise in London, where it has been
said that "the English play-goer is best
caught with broad pieces and the things
which he would condemn in the real life
of his own home" 1t appears that men,
at the bottom OF their hearts, have a
scorn of base thoughts, and a kindlng
to whatever is pure, and true, and hon
orable-although we have not always
known it! Such, at least, is the opin-
ion of the Bishop of Truro, who writes
spirited preface to the volume before us.
The story is rather slight in plot but
many of the scenes depicted are very
vivid, like the arrest and torture os
Stephanus. The character of Marcus.
who saves Mercia from Jigellinus' SOL
diers at the peril of his life and the
loss of the prefecture, and his death with
her as Christian is the story Of Vim
cinius and Seygia over again. 1t is often
such volume as this, and the play
founded upon it, that will turn our at
tention to great events and drive us to
the study of history itself when nothing
else could; and herein lies the main ex-
cellence of such a romance.