The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1902-08-16

This book is a 1eu O. esprit VIII large,
a fling in lovely summer in the King
dom of Unreality. It is a romance in
which all physical beauty is exaggerat-
ed. all physical ugliness hidden. 1t is
a charming. vivaciouS, gay, witty love |
story. 1t is an artistic excellence IL IS
picture of a green park, and "a sky
like blue velvet and sea like blue
silk" haunted by shapes which are apt
to make wonderfully bright, bitterly
sharp speeches to one another. They are
human shapes for the most part, not
human beings They lack human hearts
Moreover, if human beings talked TO one
another as truculently as these shapes
exchange courtesieS there would be
many heads broken.
1t is an idyl in the Kingdom of I'm
reality There is no such country as
these quasi noble creatures live in 1t Is
a fancied island, in one instance, in the
Adriatic, in another it is England But
there they are They sleep and eat
especially they eat-and walk and drive
and yawn. Then they play at love.
and two of them get burned, these two
being naturally the hero and heroine
As in all other idyls the people of
this story are few. The one hkest lie
is Commentators Fregl, the Wh1lom
guardian of the lady paramount, the
heroine. And next after him is the
major domo. Adrian Willes. with the
soul of a Merry Andrew; part natural
country clown, part fool of the counts
court part comrade, part stewart, and
all lazy, inert, food-loving body whose
energieS-after orders to the butler-are
spent in writing songs He is gen
uine wearer of the motley, as far as the
pseudo modern spirit of the story viii
admit His speech, aboundingly witty,
pointed, direct, epigrammatic, antithetlc,
pyrotechnic, is many times brlstnnS
with what Englishmen call American
isms." But he is not an American,
thank heaven We now and then have
a few like him-with, however, a differ
ence. But whatever his country, one
would have more respect for his moral
sense if he had made some demur to the
nasty caddishness the hero turned
toward him at times.
OF the two chief shapes the hero is
naturally named first, even when the
other is paramount His characteristics
in the first part of the book, where ne
Is the shade of a cad if not of a bounder,
directly contradict his appearances in
= the last half where he is the shade of a
gentle man. But then in the last half
he is in love-and that attribute is sup
posed to civilize, at least temporarily
even a Patagonian.
And then of the heroine-what shall
we say? She is a sleek tisress in the
form Of woman of the world who has
seen twenty-five summers, but speaks
and acts as if she had known sixty
But she is a good natured cat In the
one whole escapade that forms the
story there is the long designing with
sleepy, blinking eyes, the careful creep
ing forward, the playing her prey, the
final spring and spread of the paw and
claw-even upon her willing capture
She is a splendid cat, with considerable
OF such gray matter in the head as cats
commonly carry, with more gray matter
by far than her prey, the hero, ev1nces-
It was probably these cat character
istics of his heroine, (to whom, however,
he does not refer as feline), that led the
author to speak at frequent intervals of
the heroine's eyes These organs of
vision, as we'll as of much else il this
case, enter on page 4. and
Like colors in the sea. like flowers.
Like a cats splendid circled eyes
That wax and wane with love for hours
Green as green fame, blue-gray like
skies.
And soft like sights"
continue to the end. She makes her
eyes grave" and gay, and true, and
much else.
Since the first of our poets sang of
ox-eyed Here and gray-eyed Athene.
authors have attributed consequences
to heroine's optics, but never more than
in this romance. In the old times the
eyes were unconscious Now they are
the reverse The heroine apparently.
in these pages, aims at effect with
them.-a distinct loss in art and nature.
The weeping heroines of our grand
mothers several generations back were
wholly unconscious in their emotion.
''Clarissa" and that chief Child of the
Abbey" must have went lakes. if not
oceans. Such emotions belonged to the
low-shoe. weak-lung. indoor creature
Since those days heroines have cast
their eyes to heaven and dropped
them to the ground" but the lady par
ticularly before US goes through various
other sorts of monkeyshines with hers
before we read Enis. However. if it
unconsciouSly done no one should
say her nay
This subject of work effected by those
organs nature designed for vision might
be a pretty subject for book for light
err hours by the bye Or rather What
Eyes have Accomplished in Literature"
for the hero sometimes has eyes with
other than the business of seeing, as
well as heroines. There is no copyright
on the suggestion, and the subject is
open to any one who will take the bad
reading and writing the making OF such
book involves.
When I said this fair and artistic
story was laid in the Kingdom of I'm
reality 1 used the word Kingdom in
place of land" designedly. The peo-
pie of it are a people of monarchica1 or
rather feudal ideas. The lady ruler of
the island rails about the peasants and
burghers. who for centuries have sub
served her family, because they are in
spirited with the democracy of Carl
baldi. She asserts they were much bet
ter off when they were her family's
serfs. And yet the people, who are tol-
erably sensible taken as body. think
quite otherwise about their emancipa-
ton The hero for his part AYERS so
furiously that popular education is a
contrivance of the deviI'' that you feel
like asking him why men of more sense
than he have not as good a right as ne
to school training
But that is what the story is in addi-
tion-it is story OF feudal ideas. The
characters living in palaces, and on
lands their ancestors grabbed hundreds
of years before, fatten in Incidence and
excess Exercise they take in the form
of sDort-to digest one meal and gain
appetite fer the next That they might
gain the wholesomeness of hunger by
useful labor never enters their ritual
fstic brains Labor is for the people
whom they tax. or have taxed, and out