The times., 1898-09-25
The CoreIIi.


life, this book will be delightful. (New
York: Dodd, Mead & Coz
The CorelI.
There must always be certain pro-
portion of the human race addicted to
such pursuits as playing the mouth-or-
gan, roller-skating on the sidewalk, chew
ing gum in public. wearing high hats in
the theater, and doing other things which
CRATE upon the nerves of their neighbors
like file drawn slowly across the front
teeth. So there must always be readers
for a certain class of fiction. The penny
dreadful and shilling-shocker of the Eng
lish cockney maiden indicate that she
has taste for print. If not for litera-
ture. The readers of E. P. Roe and Lau-
ra Jean Libbey are readers at any rate.
But it is one of the most abstruse prob
lens known to the human race-the
question whether this sort of reading
really Is any better than gossiping over
the back fence with ones neighbors or
studying the last new style of front
hair. Perhaps it is. The reader is, at
any rate. speechless while engaged with
her novel,
There are grades in this sort of fiction,
and Marie Corelli Is grade above the
Libbey and Roe class of literature. Her
work is of kind fondly supposed to be
improving" 1t is not pure sugar;
IL has q dash OF some sort of med
icine in it, that appeals to the
public, which pays more for pat
ent medicines than for circulating IL
braries. Her latest mixture of chocolate
cure-all is '"The Mighty Atom and the
dose is worth taking for the experience
which il affords.
The story is evidently intended to re-
| fute those bad, wicked theories which in
volve evolution and natural law in the
creation of the world. 1t is meant to
show how much more logical and beauti-
full is Millions picture of the newly-cre-
ated beasts squirming UP out of the
ground. trying to get their hind legs free
Of the imprisoning earth, than the notion
of progress continuing through thousands
of years, and requiring the patience Of
eternity and the forethought of an al
mighty mind. Miss Corelli is made fran
tic by these scientists. She will have
none of them. They believe that the first
cause of everything was an atom, and
| that there never was any God. or any
creation, or anything good at all. And
while in this frantic state of mind she
dashes off a novel which is intended to
prove beyond a doubt that all fathers
| hard-hearted, and that all wives of SCI
entific men are likely to go wrong, and
| that a child not brought up on the old
! fashioned Sunday-school plan will go and
hang himself at the age of ten. Tn
| doubtedly our grandfathers and grand
| mothers raised some very fine families on
the Sunday-school plan, but it is barely
| possible that the youthful generation of
the present day has not only a happier
but more healthful existence.
The story of this novel is, in brief, as
| follows: There is a small boy, called by
| the aristocratic name of Lionel Vallis
| court, and his father is a dreadful scien-
| tific skeptic who does not believe the BIZ
| BILE. The logical result of this is that he
| determines to cram his boy as full of his
tory, Latin Greek and mathematics as
| possible, at the earliest possible age. That
| is the natural thing for a scientific man
TO do, after spending many years In stu
dying the workings of the brain and the
| laws Of physical development. All hu
| man companionship is rigidly excluded
| from the splendid mansion in which
the family live. and even the frivolous
| little mother of the youngster is estrang-
ed from her child by the system under
which the head of the household arranges
| things. While still in knickerbockers,
| however, the youthful Lionel begins to
see truths which his father and tutor do
not, and to try to explain the universe
to them. They, of course, get the worst
of the argument and become cross, and
| then the youngster sinks wearily into
his chair" and remarks:
"It's very funny-but I've always noticed people
get angry what they can't understand! And
they won't listen TO any suggestions or try to
| learn, either. The professor knows well as /
do that there is a cause for everything-only he
| won't take the trouble to it out as to
whether it's an Atom or & Person. He's got a
| theory, and nothing viii alter it,
Among other things the child has been
taught that the Christian myth is one
of a group of twelve, including Phta and
| the Egyptian mythology: Brahma, Wish
nu and the Hindu gods; odin and the
| Morse beliefs, and so on. This is, of
course, the kind of thing which a scien-
tific man would wish his boy to learn at
| the age when other children are studying
their primers. He would also take pains
to teach the infant that there was no
God but that the First Cause of the
| Universe was merely an Atom, produc-
tive of other atoms which moved in cir
cles of fortuitous regularity, shaping
worlds indefinitely, and without any
Mind-force whatever behind the visible
Matter. The fictitious Boston baby is
nowhere beside Lionel with his Atom
Having created this creature-a sort of
|
is naturally obliged TO do something with
him. Two courses are open to her-one,
TO have him convert his father and friends
to an orthodox form OF belief In place
of the 'blasphemous and obscene" teach
ings of Darwin and Huxley; the other,
to have him die. Miss Corelli sternly
chooses the latter She will probably get
letters streaked with tears from the peo-
pie who make up her public, imploring
her TO rewrite the book and make II end
right. But her hero hangs himself with
his own blue sash ribbon. In this devel-
opment she is thoroughly original
A few heroes of fiction have committed
suicide, and one OF two have gone out
of the world In state of suspense, but
never one at 30 early an age that he
could use blue ribbon sash embroidered
with daisies for the rope. If the boy
were real there might be something pa
thetic in this denouement But it is hard