The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1898-03-06
Season and COSTUME.
Wise Women Buy Their Summer Gowns in Winter"-Notes
of Newest Paris Modes.

s1cencr in Il paror car. I'll discover it
some day
| ihave never been able to get over the
| conceit of the man who wrote Ben
| Hur." He said that Dickens would be
forgotten because his peoples are com
mon, Why. when "Ben-Hul+' is being
used to wrap up Slate pencils people will
be loving Little Nell, admitting David
Copperticd. applauding the heroism of
sydney Carlton, and adoring the sweet
womanlinesSs Of Bella Wilfer. i don't be-
lieve Charles Dickens and ,Thackeray
talked that way about people who wrote
books when they lived, yet here's a man
who happened to make Il hit with
book that had history as its foundation,
and he throws mud at the men who pos
Sessed the great gift of touching the
heart and of drawing the pictures of liv-
ing, breathing souls. Brother! Conceit
may push book. but it won't make ii
live forever. 1t may advertise it, but it
can't make us love it. Each one of us may
read it once. but when the heart Us
sad we don't go to it TO be cheered up as
we do go 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. Il good one, is like beautiful
piece of sunshine-it's going to bring JOY
to you. If you are we'll IN mind ana
body, you appreciate it keenly; If you
are i'll. it comes TO you just hike the gold
en- ray that peeps through your shutters
and frightening your abiding place
makes everything around you gladden..
He who can write a good novel has done
more than any other man to bring hap
a n nnst
novel isn't one that has 300 pages de
voted 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 way that
! If is like a series of pictures, it 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 ahafyze faith into nothing, that con
denim man until one wonders how 1t was
| possible that God made him after His
own image and exploit and make OF
worth fool of Il woman who considers II
her business to remodel the world. III
| tired of it, This is a very good world
| if one will only take the trouble to look
| for TIE good things in it. | don't blame
anybody for refusing 10 honor and res
pact such women as are pictured IN the
ANALYTICAL novel of to-day. They talk.
| talk. talk. until You think that is the
| only mission they have. They regard
motherhood rs a burden. faith as Il folly.
humanity as Il fraud. They complain OF
lunfaithful husbands. of wicked children,
| of unsympathetic friends. But what
| have they done to deserve anything bet
| ter: Thank goodness. most of these wO-
men are in books Only few of them
are in the everyday world, and those few
are not popular Women can WRIT
advocating a new kind of woman, but
| it's the old kind, the loving, sympathetic,
gentle woman, who is popular. Men are
wiser than they look. and they realize
that if the heroine of the analytical
novel were desirable as Il companion she
would have been discovered III SOl0mon's
: time Instead. as the centuries have
rolled by, men have gone on loving and
I choosing the gentle. womanly woman,
and she's the woman he'll continue to
select I'm sure of this. Generalizlng.
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 We're not for her. Oh.
yes. I've so much belief in man that ]
know he will choose the right kind Of wo-
man.
Parenthetically though | must beg OF
him not to disappoint me and so go back
on the good character vouched for him
| nv BAR