The Topeka state journal., 1899-05-17
ARE GOING BACKWARDS.
[From the Philadelphia Inquirer.l

IE'rOm the Philadelphia Inquirer
A reviewer of one of Miss Wilkins
stories said not long ago that her New
England characters were exceptional
people. The writer of an article in the
April number of the Atlantic Monthly,
the resident of a New England hill town
and long familiar with the New Eng
land character as developed in the
country towns, says: Were to pass
judgment upon Miss Wilkins work L
should say that it is little deficient in
artistic audacity; she understates the
case. Her fantastic types abound In
the hill towns; they are the natural re
suits of reckless inteTmarriageS within
the clan"
Summarizations and concentrations
are of little value without the facts TO
support them. The generaliZatiOnS OF
New England writer's in regard to New
England have usually been the opposite
of the opinion just quoted and have re
sembled Julia Ward Howe's account OF
the failure of one of her plays, Whlch
account she concluded with the gentle
excuse that lit failed to keep the stage,
as the saying is With the exception
of the historian, William Root Bliss,
New England writers have been as ten
der toward New England as Mrs. Howe
was toward her play. The writer OF the
magazine article under consideration
thinks that even Miss Wilkins does not
make a full statement of the actual
condition of society in rural New Eng
land and presents to his readers the
facts upon which he bases his belief.
He says that six toes on each foot,
hare lips. cross eyes, "muff1e chops,
rlutes, dwarfs and idiots are very COM
mon among the pure English descend
ants of the puritans in these rural
towns. 1t is the practice, he continues,
to speak of the idiots very much as
Mrs. Howe spoke of the failure of her
play, as backward children" "belated
ones" them that amt overn above
bright etc. Accustomed to the pres
ence of idiots the people of these towns,
the writer goes on, expect idiots just as
they expect dwarfs and deaf muteS. The
people of New England, he declares, are
rolling down hill. The rural towns are
said to be composed OF the ambitionless.
and the children of the ambitionless.
These towns have been evolving the
homekeeper. The people stayed at home
when the treasure seekers went rushing
from ocean to ocean to rifle Alaskan
gold fields. None of them volunteered
when the Cuban warfever spread broad
cast through the country. But in the
ironical words of this New England
analyst of his home social conditions,
they are ever ready to attend the
prayer meeting"
OF the cattle shows of a neighboring
town he says it is a multifariOus de-
bauch where the pens especially con-
structed for the detention of violent in
ebriates are soon filled to overlooking,
where all the women on the grounds are
insulted and where the evenings
drunken, promiscuouS dance terminates
a day hardly paralleled elsewhere for
its low brutality, this being the towns
gala day, a proud municipal event. he
declares that these people are as wicked
a throng of human creatures as ever
cOngregated in Whitechapel or Five
Points and that in the lOathsOme rab-
BILE gathered from twenty hill towns
there is not French Canadian or for
eigner of any kind, but that every moth
er's son of them is descended from the
puritans.