The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-06-05
THEY ARE GOING BACKWARD.
Common People of New England Are
Rolling Downhill.

From 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 in an article in the
April number of the Atlantic Monthly,
the resident of a New England hill
town and long familiar with the New
England character as developed in the
country towns, says; Were I to pass
Judgment upon Miss Wilkins work
should say that it is a little deficient
in artistic audacity; she understates
the case. Her fantastic types abound
in the hill towns; they are the natural
results of reckless intermarriages with
in the clan"
Summarize lions and concentrations
are of little value without the facts to
support them. The congratulations of
New England writer's in regard to New
England have usually been the oppo-
site of the opinion just quoted, and
have resembled Julia Ward Howes ac-
count of the failure Of one of her plays,
which account she concluded with the
gentle excuse that at failed to keep the
stage, as the saying Is" With the ex-
ception of the historian, William Root
Bliss, New England writer's have been
as tender toward New England as Mrs.
Howe was toward her play. The writer
of the magizine article under consider
aLlon Thinks IHaC even MISS WliklnS
does not make a full statement of the
actual condition of society in rural
New England, and presents to his read
ers the facts upon which he bases his
belief
He says that six toes on each foot.
hare lips, cross eyes, "muffle chops"
mutes dwarfs and idiots are very COM
mon among the pure English descend
ants of the puritans of these rural
"a
to speak of the idiots very much as
Mrs Howe spoke of the failure of her
play, as backward children ''be-
lated ones" them that amt over
above bright" etc. Accustomed to the
presence 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 treas
ure-seekers went rushing from ocean
to ocean to rifle Alaskan gold fields.
None of them volunteered when the
Cuban war fever spread broadcast
through the country. But in the IRON
ical words of this New England an
alyst of his home social conditions,
they are ever ready to attend the
prayer meeting"
OF the cattle shows of 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 ground are
insulted and where the evenings
drunken, promiscuous dance termin-
ates 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 throng of human crea-
lures as ever congregated in White
chapel or Five Points, and that in the
loathsome rabbie gathered from twenty
hill towns there is not a French Cana
dian or foreigner of any kind, but that
every mothers son of them is descend
ed from the puritan.