The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-07-26

| ~~~S NANNa tS toA tiiC tuITdLCuI5eIueuL Ol WO- men.
 To write selling book the author must startle, yes startle. It makes no differ ence whether the book be good or bad. abusive or defensive. but it must con- tain thrill. It must, so to speak, say "boo," and make one jump. It may be ever so good or ever so bad. 1t may de- lend an abuse or 1t may abuse some es- tablished right. That is neither here nor there. But it must give a. shock, so to speak Mary Bastkertceff and Mary Mac Lane did these things. So did Harriet Beecher Stowe.
 Writing book to sell and writing a book to live are two different acts, or rather the one Is trade and the other an art It Is question which Is the pref erable. Surely the first gives the author more return. He gets bread to eat while he Is alive and needs bread and he gets glory while he is living and can drink In It's sweetness.
 MT. T. w. H. Crossland. in his second book Lovely Woman" has struck the abusive tone and selected the half of hu- manity, of which his mother and wife are parts, to hurl his shots at It is a wide sweep he has and there is no great credit, If in firing he hits his mark. Here are two extracts selected by a critic as sam pies of his work:
 Beauty Is supposed to be woman S special prerogative. She may have the heart of tlgress and a few feathers where her brains ought to be, but as long as she be beautiful men will forgive her It Is grave question, however whether after all there Is such a thing as femi- nine beauty. Show me a woman with whom am not in love and will show you fifty blemishes which bar her from consideratlon as a beauty. She has too much or too little hair; her eyes are not of color; her teeth are defective; her nose Is too sharp; she has three chins; she pulls mouthAlike a salmon when she cries; her hands are dumpy; her bust is too ample for the balance of her; judg- ing by the way she walks she probably has corns-most women have corns; her voice Is shrill and cheap or it is too mel low or 1t is a hoarse whisper; she laughs loudly. to the verge of the guffaw, or she giggles and simpers; she is too tall, too short, too stout, too willowy. Altogether you can. do well without her."l
 He perhaps writes the following from personal experience. No other viewpoint could possibly give him such accurate in- formation:
 From a mans point of view the fright fui part of having wife Is that you can not marry another one. Woman knows this, and glories in 1t. She casts it in your teeth in a thousand little ways, and for her final triumph makes a point of out-llving you, So that a wife, as a rule, is an abiding possession. Having married her you seldom lose her. In the early stages of your married life she has winning trick of going home to her man. ma on the slightest provocation."
 The shades of The Brontes and of George Eliot will rise and have a conver- sation on the house boat of the river Styx when they learn the following has been written:
 ''"The Brontes would have been forgot ten long ago had 1t not been for the pains taking researches of Mir. Clement Short CT. And as for George Eliot, Miss Brad don, Ouida and Mrs. Henry Wood, peo- pie are rapidly learning not to read them. To the moderns one may offer a stammering need of praise. I have never been able to get on with any of Mrs. Humphry Wards volumes. Buffers Analogy always does me quite we'll when I feel like that kind of reading.
 "Of the work of Miss Marie Corelli I have low opinion; it Is as bad as that of MT. Hall Caine, who, let it be remem- bered, in his late capacity as reader to Bentiey's, is understood to have turned Miss Corelli down.
 "Of Miss Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler I will only say that I wish she had never been born. She appears to be one of the many startling finds of that literary Bar ney Barnato, pr. Robertson Nicoll. For the purposes of the present chapter pur- chased, and tried to read Miss Fowler's latest opuscle, entitled, clumsly, Fuel of Fire When one comes to think of it, fuel could not be fuel of water, nor fuel of cheese, nor fuel of elephants"
 How dainty CD the wit in the forego- ing Is. In what refined English MT. Cros- land shows his loathing of women!