Daily Kennebec journal., 1902-12-06

years age. we are so atc0st6med to
reading good books that they make but
little impressions On o.. = Whsns Georke
DuMaurier published sTrilby" the crit
les and the piay-goers said It was an
immortal book. Harper & Brothers
contracted for the book at cash price
OF $4,000. ana believed they had made
bad bargain. But when the tale was
published they sold SO many copies
that the author was paid $4,000 and
stifl had right to royalties on the
play. Now Trilby is dead as story
and the author is almost forgotten
Uncle Toms Cabin is still selling at a
great rate. though Ben Hur and QUO
Vadis have seen their day. Not during
the past year can we select one book
that can hope for more than transient
fame. We have read most of the more
popular tales and like them passing
We'll. but we are too busy a people to
iinger for long over any author. We
wish for something new every day
Our very habits preclude the lastine
popularity Of any book, the way they
do the continuation Of any style Of gar
ment.
So for good reading that is good
reading. We must still go back to the
authors who have been dead for years
The works of Walter Scott and Thack-
cray and Dickens and Hugo and George
Eliot are as fresh in our minds today
as when we first read them. There
never was and never will be but one
Monte Cristo. one Don Quixote and
one Hamlet. With no disrespect for
the writer's of TO-DAY, we say here that
there is still more genuine comfort and
pleasure in the pages of Lorna Doone,
of Rob Roy, of the Three Guardsmen
and of Pickwick, than can be discov-
cred In a whole library Of modern
books.-Bangor News. +
out-of-the-way places in Italy in the in
terests Of Harper's Magazine. MI.
Zangwill was accompanied by the paint
er, Louis Loeb, and the result of their
1903. Mr.. Zangwill has now returned to
his London home in st. Johns Wood.
George Horace Lorimer's Letters from,
Self-made Merchant to His Son." pub
lished in October by Small. Maynard &
Company, has already had a remarkable
sale for the first book by a new author
Ten thousand copies were sold before
nounce the fOrtieth thousand. The Cana
dian Edition. which has been published
through William Briggs of Toronto. is
also selling largely, and Messrs. Methuen
4 Co, of London, are printing an Eng
lish Edition, which will be published in
January.
In a group of articles written for the
Book Number of The Outlook, Owen
Wister Brander Mathews, Mamlin. Gar
land, Col. 4. W. Higginson, Edward
Dowden, DIR. Edward Everett Hale, and
several other authors discuss the rather
parts of books are most characteristic oi
American life and genius?" There is
considerable divergence of opinion. Two
lists may be given as together fairly rep
| resentatiye. Colonel Higginson's in
cludes Cowper's Pioneers" Lowelrs
"Biglow Papers, Hawthorne's Scarlet
Letter." Emerson's Essays" Thoreau's
walden Whittier's "Snowbound,'
Mrs. Stoves "Uncle Toms Cabin,
I.ongfellow's "Hiawatha,' Whitman's
Leaves of Grass" Helen Kellers "Story
of My Life" Mr.. Owen Wister sums vi
his impression as follows:
Farewell Address, Washington; Gettys-
burg Address, Lincoln; Phi Beta Kappa
Hawthorne; when Lilacs last in the
Dooryard Bloomd,'' Whitman; "Huckle-
berry Finn" Mark Twain; ''Biglow Pa
pers," Lowell; .'Tennessees Partner,
Bret Harte; Autobiography, Grant; and
for the tenth, in spite of proximity, will
name Mr.. Dooley," whose sane. pro-
found incisiveness must delight the
heart of Uncle Sam as much as did once
the "Biglow Papers,