The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-06-17
The story of Mary MacLane.

The foolish young woman of Butte,
Mont, who. after the manner of Marie
Bashkirtseff. has committed to paper what
she is pleased to consider her soul, is a
subject for pity rather than ridicule APP
parently she has not had enough occupa-
ton TO keep her busy and healthily tired,
and idleness. unwholesome self-conscious-
ness and appalling seif-conceit are respon-
sible for the preposterous outpourings
which it is her misfortune TO have found
any one 10 print. After announcing re-
peatedly that she is a genius, that she
loves the devil, that she wants fame, that
her family is nothing to her. and so on.
she remarks that she feels forty years old.
and adds: But i know my feeling is not
the feeling of forty years. They do not
feel any of these things at forty At forty
the fire has long since burned out. When
l am forty l shall look back TO myself and
my feelings at nineteen-and / shall smile.
Or shall I not smile?" Verify, she will not:
at forty she will lament bitterly and with
tears that at nineteen she was not forcibly
as she has done by writing and printing
this rubbish, which, absurd it is-and
not half as wicked or out of the common
as she fancieS-has in IL CLEANS of wit and
cleverness which suggest that she might in
time have accomplished something credit
able In literary way had she escaped this
ld(dl start. InlS, Tor instance, Is not pad.
II believe that it's the trivial little facts
about anything that describe it the most
effectively. In Vanity Fair, when Becky
Sharpe was describing young Crawley in a
letter to her friend Amelia, she stated that
he had hay-colored whiskers and straw
colored hair. And knowing this you feel
that you know much more about the Craw-
ley than you would If Miss Sharpe had not
mentioned those things. And yet il is but
a mere matter of color!
when you think that Dickens was ex-
tremely fond OF cats you feel at once that
nothing could be more fitting. Somehow
that marvelously mingled humor and
pathos and gentle irony seem &c go exceed
ingly well with fondness for soft. green
the pathetic humor, but knew about Dick
ems and his warm feline friends you might
easily expect such things from him.
when you read somewhere that DR..
Johnson is said never to have washed his
neck and ears. and then go and read some
of his powerful, original philosophy, you
that this man never troubled himself IL
wash his neck and ears 1, for my part
having read some Of the things he has
written, cannot reconcile myself to the fact
that he ever washed any part of his
anatomy. l admire DR.. Johnson-though
wash my own neck occasionally.
When you think of Napoleon amusing
himself by taking a child on his knee and
pinching it TO hear IL cry, you feel an elias
tic little wave of pleasure at the perfect
fitness of things. You think Of his hard
DllAlidhls CoHlllluOue NiCNOilSos dlu yON SAS
pect that Napoleon Bonaparte lived but tc
crafty Napoleon Bonaparte. When yoJ
think Of the heavy muscular man smiling
~ pinching the child you are quite sure OF
II. Such a method Of amusement for that
king among men is so eXquisitely appropri
ate that you wonder why you had moi
thought of il yourself.
Having published this hysterical book
sensational episodes may be looked for in
the misguided young woman's life unit
years bring her better sense
H S. Stone & Co., Chicago