The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1898-02-27

He said that Dickens would be forgotten
because his people are common! Why
when 'Ben-Hur' is being used to wrap
up slate pencils people will be loving Lit
tie Nell, admiring David Copperfeld. ap-
plauding the heroism of Sydney Carlton
and adoring the sweet womanliness of
Bella Wlfer. I don't believe Charles
Dickens and Thackeray talked that way
about pople who wrote books when they
lived, yet here's man who happened to
make hit with book that had history
as its foundation, and he throws
mud at men who possessed the
great gift of touching the heart
and of drawing the pictures of
living, breathing souls. Brotheri Conceit
may push a book. but it won't make il
live foEever. 1t may advertise it, but it
can't make us love it. Each one of us
may read it once, but when the heart is
sad We don't go to it to be cheered up as
We do so to those living, breathing peo-
pie created by the two masters of novel
writing in English. never did see the use
OF writing novels to improve people. A
novel. a good one is like beautiful piece
of sunshine-it's going to bring JOY TO you
If you are well in mind and body, you APP
preciate it keenly; IL you are ill, il comes
to you just like the golden ray that peeps
through your shutters and, Frightening
eAifANAAAArn
around you gladder He who can write a
good novel has done more than any other
man to bring happiness to men and wo-
men. And good novel isn't one that has
800 pages devoted to what the writer thinks
about some much vexed question and 100
to the story, but it is one that tells its
story easily, carefully and in such a way
that il is like a series of pictures 1t must
be the panorama of life, and for the time
you are the locker on.
The immoral novel is one of the unde-
sirable products of to-day-the novels that
analyze faith into nothing that condemn
man until one wonders how 1t was posi-
bic that God made him after his own
image and exploit and make of worth
fool of a woman who considers 1t her bus
mess to remodel the world. I'm tired of it,
This is very good world if one will only
take the trouble to look for the good
things In it. don't blame anybody for re-
fusing to honor and respect such women
as are pictured in the analytical novel of
to-day. They talk, talk, tnlS, until you
think that is the only mission they have.
They regard motherhood as a burden,
faith as a folly, humanity as a fraud.
They complain of unfaithful husbands, of
wicked children of unsympathetic friends.
But what have they done to deserve any
thing better? Thank goodness most of
these women are in books! Only a few
of them are in the everyday world, and
those few are not popular. Women can
write advocating a new kind of woman,
but it's the old kind, the loving, sympa-
thetic, gentle woman, who is popular.
Men are wiser than they look, ana they
realize that if the heroine of the analyt-
zeal novel were desirable as a companion,
she would have been discovered in Solo
mons time. Instead, as the centuries
have rolled by, men have gone on loving
and choosing the gentle, womanly woman
and she's the woman he'll continue to Sc
lect. I'm sure of this. Generalizing, he S
honest and brave and kind, and he looks
for a woman who will be congenial and
who will bring into his life all the pleasant
little womanly ways that he would miss
if it were not for her. Oh yes, I've Sc
much belief In man that 1 know he Will
choose the right kind of woman!
Parenthetically, though, l must beg OF
him not to disappoint me and so go tack
on the good character Vouched' for him
by Bah.