The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-06-21


 melie Rives).
 ------s-.---s | ness of lghtning's flash the powers of
 darkness gain dominion over her. 1 The reader is utterly amazed and un-
 prepared for the sudden transformation 1 In her conduct, when the straight for
 ward, almost childish ingenious Viir- 1 ginia resorts to base methods to destroy l the girl to whom Roden was engaged. Then as might be expected from a creat-
 ure so complex and ihcomprehensible, she
 offers herself as nurse when Mary l Carroll takes the fever, and again as- 1 tounds the reader by endeavoring to ex-
 plate her crime by confessing to Roden
 her guilt. If love makes one desperate. ;, Virginia was desperately in love. for her
 latter day acts were all madly desperate | Like Barbara Jean in According to St. John," was afflicted with a morbid con-
 scientiousness in one particular, that Is
 in a wrong interpretation of her Bible
 She reminds us a good deal of many ev- cry day acquantances Jean belonged to | the class of women who persist in only
 wanting the unattainable, more a vic- tim of a diseased ina agination than an
 all absorbing passion.
 Reviewing the lives of Amelie Rives heroines, with slight notifications. we are almost forced to exclaim with Dertng T hatter myself. I know something
 about men but I'm hanged if I know any l thing about women" So contradictory
 are these creatures of our authors fancy, 1 that some critic. has suggested that they
 might possess dual natures-feminine edi- | tions of Dr. Jekyll and MT. Hyde-ln
 whom the good and bad perform their
 separate functions.
 l Amelie Rives as a girl was fond of
 out door life. With her greyhound ], for a companion she roamed over the
 wooded hills and down the valleys that
 surrounded her fathers home, Castle
 Hill" Albemarle county, Virginia. The
 neighbors regarded her as one queer and eccentric. The incidents of her life have l not surprised them. Tt was no more than , we expected" A sensational shock they have awaited with an anxiety bordering on impatience. So far she has outwitted
 them, though she has had her share of sorrow and fsappointment. while meting
 out full measure to another.
 At the height of her fame and popular ity, for she Is both gifted and beautiful, she met John Armstrong Chanler wealthy young man of New York.
 lxinsman of Colonel John Jacob Astor, and married him. Young Chanler was
 devoted to this beautiful woman. proud Of
 her attainments in the literary world,
 he bought two hundred copies of Lippin- cott's Magazine which contained the story "The Quick or the Dead" with
 panel sketch picture of the authoress and sent them to his friends. But the union did not prove a happy one. After spending some time abroad Amelie Rives returned to her fathers home, Castle Hill," where she secured a divorce from Mir. Chanler without any sensational feat ure. MT. Chanler was for several years confined in a sanatorium with diseased
 brain and disordered mind
 In about a year after securing her di- l HA painter. Prince Troubetzkoi, at Castle HILL" where she is today voluntary
 prisoner and a wreck, both physically and
 mentally, of her former self.
 Many months have passed" says one
 in writing of her, since this beautiful gifted woman turned to her fathers
 home to the enchanting scene of deli-
 cate mists curling ethereally along noun tain sides, of prismatic sunsets, of valleys
 empurpled by twilight, of meadows and | hills and trees and birds. from the l gayeties of life in Paris and the great | cities of her own country, with her health 1 ruined and her nervous System unstrung l She shuts herself in her own room with
 it's silken hangings and white furnish
 ings that has figured so prominently
 in Barbara Dering.' and one or two | others of her works, and refuses to hold | communication even with the members l of her own family To this day she has
 kept up her self-imposed solitude, and | not until night has fallenl does she ven ture forth. Then draped all in white
 she wanders back and forth through the wide halls and up and down the winding
 stairway of the old-fashioned Virginia homestead.
 Here time is spent no one knows how ex- cept the trusty colored woman who carries
 all her meals and attends to all her wants. Sometimes she eudes her and ot,Ia Or0 fo a | of water under a night heaven wherein | she can watch the stars drown them
 selves or shine through its limpid sur
 face" It is known, however, that she
 writes at intervals and this has given
 rise to the report that she is preparing
 another book. which may create a sensa-
 ton in the world like that produced by
 '"rhe Quick or the Dead" Twice | month her husband, Prince Troubetzkoi. | now resident of Washington, goes to see | her and spends few days at Castle | Hill" Sometimes she consents to see him
 for a short time and sometimes she does not.
 Amelie Rives is said to have amassed
 considerable fortune by her literary
 labors, and will not want for temporal
 comforts during the remainder of her life.
 It was rather singular coincident that | the public resurrected. so to speak,
 Amelie Rives. for the world at large
 seemed to have lost sight of this beaut- full gifted woman. As the late beloved
 Bishop wimer of the Episcopal Diocese | of Alabama. was laid in his grave at
 Mobile Amelie Rives spent portion of
 her girlhood in that city. She was a ] kipswoman of the bishop
 Meeting the bishop at one of the vir- i ginia springs the summer that her story ! 'The Quick or the Dead' was first sprung on the literary world she asked him what he thought of her story. The good i old man. gently stroking her hair with | his hands. said;S T think the quicker it 1 is dead the better" This criticism is said | to have been( a poignant stroke to her l zen sitiue nina n DeIenn of Mohile