Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1901-05-11
Books and Authors.

m.""erh authors. 1t is added. received
"''c ''ciitioh from her; and the sto
RES current of the Queens particuIar
interest in this or that recent writer
may De dismissed as the fables of
acknowledgements. She would some
times begin Il book. at the earnest re-
guest of one Of her ladies'. who woula
Immediately write off to the author 81
an happy to tell you that the Queen is
now deep in your Prodigies of Pas
SION but the correspondent would
IAN 10 mention that her majesty had
tossed 1t away when she reached the
min page. For art she frankly cared
nothing at all. English painters did
not attract her. and she refused to sit
10 Mr.. q. +. Watts. When it was
argued that he would produce ~ sp,en
hid painting she would say "Pcrhaps
so. hut l am afraid il would be ugly. :
she delighted in opera. especially in
/ carmen. ana she was so fond of the
Giibcrt and sullivan pieces that "she
would even take Il part in these, very
drolly and prett!ly."
I The Century Company announce
( that the first edition of Miss Runkle's
| historical novel. The Helmet of Nh
] Vafrc, Will be one hundred thousand
copies. This they calculate to be from
forty thousand to fifty thousand large.
than the next largest first edition Of
any novel ever published
OF the great men Scott is the least
Iuotable, Dickens the most. while
George Eliot is perhaps more uuotable
/ than either. Writers of maxims and
moral sentences are Of course in Il
class apart; they have achieved only
failure unless they furnished tags
that can readily be used in discourse
And among these it is noticea BILE that
| The greatest men. Swift for instance
and Pascal, have the least currency
because they cannot divest themselves
OF their individuality: they cannot think
| sufficiently like every one else. La
tochefoucauld is in this group what
Horace is among the poets, the most
commonplace and the most successful
of them all. With the exception Of a
| few flashes, such as the superb deS-
cription of hypocrisy as the homage
that vice pays to virtue, he simply
crystalliZes to a diamond point the
vague opinion of every man of the
world who finds his philosophy and
recognizes it.-London Saturday Re
view.
Mrs. Sally Pratt Mclean Greene, the
author of Cape Cod Folks and
"Nesty of the Basins has completed a
new story of the sandy coast where
she is most at home. Flood Tide" is
the title chosen for her book. which
will be published through the Harper's
in the autumn.
Number eight in the Harper's Amer
lean Novel Series is by Mr.. a. Maurice
Low. who calls his story of social and
political Washington Tine Supreme
Surrender" Judging from the out
lines of its plot il is 4 strong rather
than a cheerful tale, but it is doubtless
an accurate picture of life at the Cap
ital. Mr.. Low whose first novel this
is, is Washington man and the
writer of the page on "Transi. tlantic
Topics in Harper's Weekly.
Civilization has decreed that there
shall be a CLOSE season for wild ami
mails and birds, that the sportsman
shall keep his bloOdthirstiness under
at least for certain number of weeks
out of the year. 1t would be pleasant
is some such prohibitive system could
be arranged with view to sparing
poor humanity, at least for little
Will. every year. the sufferingS now
inflicted upon it by beasts of the liter
airy fraternity, says the New YORK
Tribune Mr. Kipling set a fashion
with his Jungle Books" that has since
become an almost intolerable burden
But for one author who, like hin or
like Mr.. Seton-Thompson. knows what
t he is talking about, having really
studied animals at first hand, there are
scores who would seem from their
stories to have observed only those
unhappy creatures of the forest who
blink laZily at one through the bars
of a menagerie. Fiction i'll when an
imals play the parts usually allotted 10
human beings noW COnfronts us at
every turn in periodicals without num-
bcr and in books also beyond counting.
A good dog story. such as. for example,
Mr.. OlIiyarts Bob, Son of Battle. ~
, boom. We would not exchange the
.Junple Books" or "Wild Animals l
Have Known" for half the tales
about men and women that see the
LIGHT in the course of a year. But the
limit has been reached. IL authors
and editors are not careful they VIII
find the animal story, like the oialect
story. a source of gricvous disarpolnt-
ment.
An English publisher says that OF
novels of merit by unknown authors
bout one in ten succeeds; and in the
COCO of known authors it makes no
dinorence whether they have any merit
or not.
Another English publisher recently
asked by Mr.. Labouchere why a man
sbouI1 desire the empty distinction
of the Laureateship answered.: 1T is
NOT an empty distinction: poet laur-
cate can obtain from any pub'lshcr Il
,,roat deal more for his verse than can
: noet without the laurel In fact. ne
can obtain twice as much as IL Is
worth
rho head of the. English department
of the Central high school, Springfield
Mass. furnishes some interesting lactS
about Juvenile reading in Il recent artl-