The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1898-06-26

in this way of our own home history.
especially of the revolutionary period.
Mr.. Ross is unmarried, and leads a
cheerful bachelor life, usually housing
himself in the busiest part of the city
While he is capable of expanding as
much pains on his work as anybody,
he is also capablesof very rapid spro-
ductlon. He is an approachable, genial
man, one whom you feel it cheerful to
meet, and one who combines some COM
mercial gifts with his literary, so that
he is not only able to write, but to sell
what he writes.
1 see it announced that Mr. Leslie
stephen is preparing a new volume of
his essays for the press, and this moves
me TO think what a difference there is
in the fortunes of eSsayistS. It must
be all of 30 years now since an excep-
tionally alert reader here and there
became aware-usually by the merest
chance-that in a small volume hen
lately put out. under the title of Hours
in Library" there was rare and
delightful book. Lowell, for one,
found it out, and there is somewhere
in his published correspondence an ex-
preston of his pleasure in it. He had
indeed, to help him to the discovery a
previous personal acquaintance with
the author, but, no doubt, he would
have come upon it, sooner or later,
without so direct a provOcation, for it
was just the sort of book he liked-a
half biographical, half critical '.medi-
tation" on the most interesting of the
English worthless of 18th century liter
ature-and a good reader is led by a
kind of instinct almost infallible to the
thing he likes. Yet in all these 80 years
l have heard that book mentioned only
by one person, and he was a man who
recommended and loaned it to me.
think 1 have never seen a copy of it
but the one l read. And this, / take it,
fairly illustrates the kind and degree
of acceptance attained by Mr.. Leslie
Stephen throughout his career. Mean
while men of not one-half of his learn
ing, and even less of his penetration
and breadth and liberality of mind.
and of no more, if as much power Of
style, have secured the widest reading.
Mrs. Helen WattersOn Moody, whose
book, 1.-THE Unquiet Sex" is just now
provocative of not a little wholesome
mental activity, is one of the most in
tereSting literary women of New York
TO know. AS her book discloses, she has
exceptional intellectual alertness and
brightness, and she shows this quite as
and attractively in her con-
versation as in her writing. She is Of
Ohio birth and education, is related to
Henry Watterson, the editor of the
Louisville Courier-Journal and was for
some time employed on the New York
Sun, where she created a de-
partment that made her name of Helen
Watterson well known and added not a
little to the popularity of the paper.
Among her fellow workers on the Sun
was the present editor of the Book
Buyer" On acquaintance she found
him, as most who know him do find
him, man to be fond of, and cOnse-
quently became his wife, and thus adj
ded the Moody" to her name. She
holds no editorial position now, and un-
dertakes to write only as the inspira-
ton urges her. She is a woman of
much force of character, as well as
brightness of mind, and is a distinct
influence in her circle of acquaintance.
E. c. MARTIN.