The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1899-07-10
WAS. sOUTHw ORTIZ AND OTHERS.

The announcement of the death of Mrs
Southworth was no doubt sad intelligence
TO many women now mature and the
mothers of budding daughters, who were
themselves of about the budding age at
the time that that prolific novelist held
sway. II would probably not be precise
" the proper thing to say how many years
ago that was, in justice TO the matrons
of the day; but they remember perfectly
well those days in which they longingly,
impatiently looked forward to the time
when the next copy of the New York
Ledger would come so that they might
take up the thread OF the story of the
love of the hero and heroine and follow it
through three or four more chapters.
There were stern paternal objections to
love-story reading in those days, but it
availed little. The girls found a way to
outwit papa and mamma, by hiding the
papers or the little paper covered book,
as the case might be, under the mattress
or in the linen closet or elsewhere until
the coveted time for the reading could be
stolen.
What was the character of these stories
by Mrs. Southworth? They were ultra
sentimental, and all were cast in the same
mold. The hero was always a paragon
of masculine perfection. Sometimes he
had been cruelty misused in youth; at
other times he was pampered and petted
child of fortune; but at all times he was
tall, handsome, ardent, faithful and full
of expedients. His business was love-
making. AZ least if he had any other it
did not appear in the stories. He was
usually of the dark and curly-hesded va
riety of men, though sometimes his hair
and eyes were changed for varietys sake.
But his impulses, his motives and his ac-
tons never changed. He was the soul
of consistency, throughout his legion of
careers. And pretty much the same may
be said of the heroine She was, prefer
ably, of the blonde type, with violet eyes
of the most soulful sadness. Generally
she found it necessary to go somewhere
on dark, stormy, dreadful night in the
first chapter OF the story, and the hero
could usually be depended upon to make
her acquaintance in that chapter, or to
see her and be so much impressed by her
beauty and look of sadness that her vision
haunted him until he sought her out and
after many sore trials, made her his wife,
There had of course, TO be villains and
that sort of thing, and they were all of
conventional kind, but the villains new
er failed to meet with their just deserts
The moral of the stories, If there was
moral, was that justice and right and
love would triumph, or deserved to tri-
umph That they inspired sentimentality
is beyond doubt
Novels Of that sort are now classed as
old-fashioned. The girl of the period does
not read such rot" if she is strictly fin
de-siecle. She reads novels, of course.
and heroes continue to WOO and heroines
to be won. But in these later days the
lovers do not roam the dewy dells to-
gether and prattle sweety of love and
consistency; they study together phychol-
ogy, or germs, or the faith cure, or some
thing of the sort, and are mutually at
tracted towards each other by their re-
spective understanding of the subject con-
corning which they are cranky. The peo-
pie in the popular novels of the present
are very learned folks, generally. They
must be able TO construct or unravel a
social problem, u psychological problem,
therapeutical problem, or somo other
problem. otherwise they do not amount
to much. The novel of Mrs. Southworths
time appealed to the sentiment; the novel
Of the period appeals to something else,
with just enough sentiment thrown in
to save 1t from being heavy. Mrs South
worth's novels all had a happy ending.
Many of the novels of The present leave
a bad taste in the mouth