The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-09-20
aa Isreal Zangwill At Home.
BY THpo YOUNG.

1 is a litter of books and papers. In the center of the floor stands the novelist's desk, veteran that has seen better days, and the book crowded walls suggest the back rooms of a secondhand dealer's.. 1 Some of the shelves are packed with French novels in their tattered paper cov- | ers others with ponderous histories and
 works of reference. It is the room to whom books are tools and not merely things for displaying the book binders art. On the desk one notices some cu- rious little paper weights fashioned like miniature copies of MT. Zangwtlrs own novels whose names they bear. These,
 the gift of an admirer.
 | It is Sunday afternoon in the year 1901, to the Gentle visitor. Monday afternoon
 in the yea; 5662 to his Jewish host But trihe like that is neither here nor there | in these practical days. Mir. Zangwill Is at his desk writing in French a letter to q Paris publisher. who desires to issue translation of some of the novelist's works. which curiously enough, have nev
 CT before been rendered into French.
 though they have been translated into most of the European languages. inciud- ing Bohemian. There Is something par ticularly nice about having your work translated into bohemian" says MT. Zangwill with one of his half bashfuI laughs. But he adds that 1t would be impossible to imagine anything more un- like the English title than its appearance | in Bohemian.
 As we sit there and discuss afternoon tea our conversation roves far and wide. from the time when MT. Zangwill was sn obscure teacher in a Jewish Board School In Whitechapel and experimented in lit- | erature with booklet that was hawked about the streets. to his prentice days in journalism. his editorship of one of the best humorous journals London has ever had-that Ariel whom the gods loved
 to his conquest of fame with Children
 of the Ghetto" in 1892 when he was only | 98 This chit-chat of memory also gives | place at time to weightier subjects. such | as the Zionist movement of which Z find Mir Zanswill is an earnest supporter. | He dreams of the time when the Jews
 as people will returrf to their "an- cient and never-to- be forgotten home | in Palestine, and there build up a conn
 monwealth that will stand to all the | world as a model of what an enlieht- | ened government should be- But such | a nachievement does not mean that more 1 than a nucleus of the Jewish race will
 return home; the remainder. the vast re-
 mainder will still spread itself through
 the world and act as the Ieaven that l leaveneth the whole lump.
 Thus is MT. Zangwill as much a dream | CT of the Ghetto as any of his won
 derfully fascinating characters who come under that description; but he Is a
 dreamer who has n~ed very active life and a very practical one. There
 are very few contemporary novelists who
 have touched the literary life at so many different points as Mir. zangwill
 has done. Ills humorous account of the | trials which beset the Afwtruistic editor of the Flag of Judah" in The Chil-
 dren of the Ghetto" may be taken as
 unmistal5able evidence of the old jour
 nalist hand.
 Who would have thought that the au-
 thor that gave us those droll absurd
 ities, "The Bachelors Club" and The | Old Maids Club" was also to give us
 Children of the Ghetto.' and "The
 King of Schnorrers?" The versatility of
 the man is wonderful. Look at that ad-
 mirable pot boiler. The Big Bow Mys-
 tery." and his shrewd penetrating. H.
 luminating criticisms some specimen of
 which have been gathered together in 1 Without Prejudice" and you will ad-
 init that there Is scarcely any form of