The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-12-11


written in collaboration with his friend. Mr..
A E. w. Mason. Under the title of Par
son Kelly 1t is to be published Serially in
Longman's Magazine.
There are two great problems, Mr.. Fang
will says, which will puzzle the coming
Jewish writer. The possibilities of the prob-
lem of intermarriage are tremendous, and
that of ''Zionism' bristles with difficulties,
and yet both of these must be grappled and
dealt with in the Jewish fiction of the
future.
Thomas Nelson Page bestows a great deal
of labor on his books. He recasts his SEN
fences and works over the phraseology in
order to get what seems the best effects.
His new book RED Rock" required several
years for completion. Almost at the last
minute he made corrections in the proofs be-
fore it was issued by the Scribners.
In her first instalment of her reminis-
cences Mrs. Julia Ward Howe thus refers to
her beginnings when 1 had published my
first literary venture Uncle John showed me
in a newspaper favorable notice of my
work, saying: This is my little girl who
knows about books and writes an article
and has it printed, but / wish that she knew
more about housekeeping, a sentiment
which in after years l had occasion to echo
with fervor.'
The artist Charles Martin lately quoted
Dickens as telling him one day how the
name of "Oliver Twist had suggested itself
to him. The author had long puzzled his
brains to know what name to bestow on the
youthful parish founding when, one day
getting into one of Shlibeer's omnibuses-
then not long established-the conductor
slammed the door and shouted out to the
driver, GO on, Oliver Twist" 1.-THE singu-
larity of the cOgnomen struck me, " said
Dickens, land I said to myself, That's the
name for my new hero"
Gilbert Parker whose novels are popular,
is a Canadian. and is thirty-three years old.
His father was a British artillery officer
who went to Canada back in the thirties
with Sir John Colborne. Young Parker was
educated at Trinity College, Toronto, and at
one time thought he would be an Episcopal
minister He abandoned the idea, and took
up literature. He gave lectures at Toronto
and then went to Australia, where ne
worked for some years on the staff of the
Sydney Herald. He travelled widely at this
time among the South Sea islands. His last
book, published in October, is THE Battle
of the Strong" which is being dramatized
Mr.. Parker is at present in Egypt travelling
for his health.
Tennyson had almost loathing for Mrs
Browning's narrative poem, aurora Leigh"
and said some rather cruel things about it.
Another contemporary poet, Mr.. Swinburne,
holds an exactly opposite opinion. 1.-The adj
vent of Aurora Leigh 3" he writes in his
introduction to the new edition of the poem
"can never be forgotten by any lover of
poetry who was old enough at the time to
read it, OF one thing they may all be sure
they were right in the impression that they
never had read, and never would read, any,
thing in any way comparable with that
unique work of audaciously feminine and
ambitiously impulsive genius 1t is one of
the longest poems in the world, and there
is not dead line in it. The noble passion
and the noble pathoS of its greater parts are
alike indiscussible and irresistible"
Mrs Amelia E. Barr relates a recent ex-
perience of hers that further illustrates and
corroborates what Mark Twain calls men
tai telegraphy." Mrs Barr has been en-
gagged on a new novel, it appears in which
the scene shifts to Algeria. AS she was ig
norant of the characteristics, manner of
life, customs of the people and the country
she was obliged. to have resort to the neces-
sary authorities in the library. Just then
strange thing happened. While her mind
was so intent on this part of the globe that
she was, in imagination. living there she
received a letter from the proprietor of a
large hotel in Algiers inviting her to visit
him there and spend the winter months I'M
der the clemency of the warm climate. The
mysterious thing about it is that Mrs. Barr
never heard Of this person before and can
not account for his timely interest in her.
The strong minded George Eliot was not
without her little feminine weaknesses, as
Mrs Porter's Annals reminds u.s. ION
one occasion when we were calling on her
that summer she said she was very anxious
about the safety of the manuscript of De
ronda, and wanted to have it back, but
dared not trust 1t to the postoffice. My
father said he could not bring it himself
next day, but could send it by trusty mes
senger (the footman.) AT this she quailed.
oh, he might stop at a public house and
forget it We assured her such a lapse had
never been known to occur. Then might he
not, if he were the sort of high-minded
Bayard we described, be very likely to stop
and help at a fire?' This was contingency
we had never contemplated and finally.
after much laughter, promised her that
some member of the family should place the
manuscript in her hands; and, as a matter
of fact, think my mother drove over with
it to her the next morning.