The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1902-07-19
Kate Stephens Writes Brilliant
ly Of Mary MaeLane.
Art Sense of Her Book is Dis
tinct and Rare.
HAVE BEEN SILENT.
Others Felt That to Which Miss
MacLane Gave Expression.
What She Will Learn While at
College.

The Story of Mary MacLane, by Herself,
Chicago. Herbert s. Stone & Co.
aICMII- Pp. 32z-
One pities the writer of such volume
as this The books art-sense IS dis
tiuct and rare; its literary feeling adj
mirable But this does not do away
with the consciousness of the personal
fty behind the matter, the conviction
that here is a fine American girl-and
the fine American girl is the finest girl
in the world-a fine girl of large ability
going to waste; whose days and years
are distorted, even whose art is at times
spoiled, by false ideas and ideals. The
little girl writer of the book is much
what she says she is. Therefore one
pities her
You feel like reaching out a hand.
and pulling her to you. and saying,
Have patience, little MacLane- l. is
all true And yet it is not true at all
Work like a dynamo Forget yourself
in your work Lose affectation- Don't
revert to the Highland thief and raider
type. And you shall have reward" The
author has great good that is now mis-
directed
Another of the pitiful things about
the book is that this little MacLane
girl is not the only one of her descrip-
ton With the egotism of nineteen
years she thinks she is Solitariness
nearly always breeds inflated values,
Just as Miss MacLane has the faith that
she is distinctly original innately' and
the greatest genius the world has seem
There are Observation-Disclosures thou
sands-of young women living. or who
have lived, what the author here por-
trays in her yearnings. discontents with
present and outreaching for larger
horizon There are also men. But the
world offers SO many opportunities for
men of uneasy, aspiring ambition. Con-
yention does not frown them back as it
does women To repress and withhold
herself has been taught the girl from
babyhood; to express and Outreacb
taught the boy.
Montana, has been giving mouth to
what others have kept back in silence.
Therefore again We have pity for the
spokesman.
Young women with just such heaven
climbing ambition, just such impati-
ence, just such awful desolation, soli-
fairness. shut-offness from the eager
world, have lived on prairie, mountain
and sea coast-everywhere where wo-
manhood is They may never have
made the old-fashioned devil their IA
niliar as desperately as Miss MacLane
affects after medieval myths to do.
But they have chung to chance spars in
their drifting and some of them at
least have come by the hand of God to
taste their deserts.
in Cambridge went to Havana to study
In biology she thought lay the work
through which her name should be spo-
ken everywhere and by all men. She
even said this. 1t was all very harm
less. Il hurt no one. She is now an
exemplary wife and mother, and an aid
% her scientific husband to whom stud
ents come from across the sea- An
ether whose extraordinary gifts lay in
mathematics. of whom a Harvard pro-
fessor said after seeing her work. I'VE
can offer her nothing here; she is be-
yond anything we Offer; who after
wards won honors at Gottingen, also
married a college professor. Such wo-
men are apt nowadays to marry
academic men; just as a hundred years
or so ago they welded with clergymen-
Both these young women have men,
toned grew up on the fat-rolling lands
of Kansas. 1 know many others. Events
at times feed their conviction of extra
ordinary genius One girl from Lake
George sold her first picture, exhibited
but a day. 'at any price she wishd to