The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-05-15

topics selected year before for their con-
of war disturbed them not Their attention
was given to- the intellectual bearings of
music and art and to the Importance of
local color in fiction; they detached them
selves from their own time and sailed Sc
renely into the fields Of Elizabethan and
Queen Anne literature; they got down TO
the Victorian era, 1t is true but only be-
cause it CHANGED that Browning, Tennyson,
Meredith, Thackeray and company had con-
scented TO be born therein. The recent lit
erature edited, so to speak, by Mckinley,
Lee, Sgsbee, Sampson and Dewey had no
interest for them. Perhaps it was not intel
lectual enough; perhaps the style, being less
obscure than that of Browning or Meredith,
failed to attract them; perhaps, having
started out to be literary they had a
reputation to sustain and would not have
jumped the track and discussed live, up-to-
date subjects for the world. Whatever their
motive the fact remains that while all the
rest of the world was keyed up to pitch
of patriotic excitement that made poetry
and art and Elizabethan literature of no
earthly consequence, these representatives
of Indiana culture were able to revel on
purely intellectual heights undisturbed by
the movements of fleets or of armies. Tt was
a triumph of mentality, The general pur-
pose of literary club is to improve the
minds of it's members If any skeptic has
doubted that this purpose was being accom-
plished let him say if he believes that any
other body of men and women save mem
bers of such clubs could separate themselves
from live human affairs, when those affairs
absorbed for three days in abstract aesthet-
les and the achievements of men dead three
hundred years. There is but one answer
possible. Only literary clubs could do it.
The moral is obvious Let any man or
woman who is tired of the excitement and
uncertainty of war and of the news that is
changing the geography of the earth join a
literary club and have peace.
But this gathering was not wholly OBJ
livious of the one subject of interest to all
the rest of the world. Before the close of
the session it descended from it's lofty intel
lectual perch long enough to show that it
knew there was trouble of some kind 1t
had heard that France was not behaving
well, and by way of rebuke unanimously
resolved to boycott Paris finery. AS Paris
finery is not a distinctive badge of the lit
erary club member in Indiana this resolu-
ton will probably not affect the receipts of
the custom house to any great extent, but
the proof that the minds of these members
do not soar SO high that they cannot come
down Is gratifying to the less gifted. An
other demonstration of their capacity for
practical affairs, once they choose to take
them up, was the resolution against the
wearing of birds bonnets. This seems,
according to all accounts, to have been the
crowning achievement of the session Three
days of lofty intellectual absorption, while
wars ragged outside and nations held their
breath, resulted in Illumination against
feathers in the wrong place. Great is lovely
woman when she chooses to be literary. It
is only the elect who can be so, but the
rest of us, distracted with many cares, can
look on with respectful admiration and be
glad we have got her.