The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-08-08
LITERARY NOTES.

Kipling's jubilee poem, 'Recessional," Is
to be set to music by Sir Arthur Sullivan
Sarah Grand is on the warpath again,
and her forthcoming novel will not only
be "a study of a woman's life from the
cradle to the grave" but the subject OF
heredity will be seriously dealth with.
1t is related Of oliver Optic" CWilliam 7.
Adams) that his first school composition
was eight pages in length, his second
Twenty-Five and the third eighty. This was
but a natural beginning for the man whose
name is to be found on the title pages Of
more than lbs volumes.
1t is perhaps rather premature to talk
about Christmas literature at midsummer
with the thermometer at So in the
shade but Mr.. Andrew Lang, at any rate,
is mindful of the fact that time flies swiftly
nowadays, and has his new fairy book well
in hand. This successor to the delightful
blue" and Green" books will be known
as the Pink Fairy Book"
Mrs. Burnett has written the mans side
of the story of Mistress Clorinda Wildair's
life-tragedy ana called it His Grace the
Duke of Osmonde; being a story Of that
nobleman's life omitted from the nara
tive given to the world of fashion under
the title of A Lady of Quality" While
the new tale is not a sequel to Mrs Bur-
nett'S remarkable book of last winter, 1T is
a companion volume to it, and is not less
striking in its manner and substance.
This is what Marion Crawford says Of
women in his Rose of Yesterday"
Woman brings us into the world, woman
is our first teacher woman makes the
world what it is from century to century
We can no more escape from woman, and
yet continue to live our lives they
should be lived, than we can hide ourselves
from nature. We are in her care or in her
during all, from first to last. We are born
of her. we grow of her, as truly as trees
and flowers come from the mother earth
and draw their life from the soil in which
they are planted. The man who denies his
mother is a bad man, and the man who has
not loved woman is man in darkness.
M Jules Lemaitre has this to say of the
traditional mysterious dignity of letters
and art: 1T ought to be generally known
that literature and art are not professions
which confer of themselves on those who
choose them a mysterious dignity or spe-
cial titles to the consideration of others.
We owe no awful respect to the young men
who embrace a literary career, for there
are far too many of them; and it is very
fine to call ones self writer or an artist,
since it can be done without justifying 1t
by single proof that it is true. Nor should
one have the least Scfuple in dlScourdSlng
the young people who are suffering from
the disease of writing. Those of them who
have talent will either succeed in any case
in spite of all hindrances, or else will dis
play it in other professions IN unexpected
and useful forms; so that neither their ar
tistic sensibility nor their Imagination will
be lost"
Mr.. Louis Becke the Australian writer,
who has done such brilliant work with the
South Sea islands as basis for his power
full realistic stories, has been in England
says the Book Buyer, for some months
past and is now about to return to the
tropic isles beaches, reefs and palms that
he knows and loves SO well. rough sailor
and trader before he took to writing, he
iG i'm tn % q Inn n
not permanently, al least for a considerable
time. Writing to him has always been the
hardest Of tasks, and he would never have
given the world his fascinating South Sea
stories but for continual prompting from
Mr.. ]. F. Archibald. the editor of the Aus
tralan Bulletin, in which all his earlier
work first saw the light. His literary out
put all along has been labor rather than
a pleasure, and his heart is ever among
the coral reefs and the dusky jewellers in
the tropic south and thither he returns
in his old occupation of supercargo.