The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1903-07-04
AMONG The BOOKS
Kate Stephens Writes of Some
Late Publications.
DIR. s. Weir MitcheIl's Comedy
of Conscience.
MR.. COLTON'S STORIES.
They Are Hawthornesque in
Their Flavor.
MR.. COLTON'S STORIES.
"Darrel of the Blessed Isles" 6
Money Getting Story.

"A Comedy of Conscience" is not
play, but it is a tale which will doubt
less be made into a play. The conscience
is the possession of a spinster, and its
action-resulting from the DANES scru-
pies about keeping a diamond ring which
thief dropped when he stole her pocket
books the comedy The conscience Is
that product Of New England life and
New England theology which we al
most never see a product of other the
ologies-eXcept that older brother of the
New England religion,-the Hebralc-
The author. of this delicate. graceful,
humorous little tale is DR.. Weir Mitch
ell.
A volume by Arthur Cotton is named
''Tioba" from the first of eleven short
stories which have appeared in various
magazines. These tales are of native
delicacy and gentle human feeling chill
ed and sometimes overborne by the
culture" we find in some college CO.
teries, of an occasional Hawthornesque
fantasy and pathos, as in the ghostly
churehyard OF me spiral stone o.
refined humor, as in "A Nights Lodg-
ing; of local color enough to recall
Mr. Colton's country to the mind of the
reader as ION Edan Hill and "Tioba.
The volume is small, modest, instinct
with the retirement of a refined nature,
and conveying u sense that the author
has been repressed by academicism.
1t is far and away beyond books that
are making much more noise, and at
tracing much more attention-books
much read"
..Darrel of the Blessed Isles" is
voice of pure idealism to dwellerS IN
today's money-getting, luxury worship
ping materialism. Darrell hlmsei1 Is
circuit clock tinker and countryside
philosopher of strong independence OF
mind and of well digested learning.
Know We not" he says, there IS =
country in easy reach of US, with talr
fields an proud cities an many people
an all delights, all delights? There 1
hope thou Shalt build a city so Wen
nothing shall overthrow it. Where? In
the Blessed Isles, boy, in the Blessed
Isles, Imagine the infinite sea O time
that is behind US. King an empire an
all their striving multitudes are sunk
in the mighty deep. But thou shalt see
rising out of it the Blessed Isles OF
Imagination. Green-foreVer green are
thew, Look! There is the city o
Shakespeare. Go there and mingle
with the people-good company ana
merry hearted folk a-paenty Talk
with them. an they VIII teach thee
wisdom Hard by is the Isle O. Milton.
an beyond are others-it will take thee
many years to visit them
The tale is a country idyl with the
light of the forest falling through IFS
leaves, the hum of bees. the business OF
ants and other citizens of the fields,
and in the winter the hemlocks droop-
ing with SHOWS and alive with bird
twitterinG.
But aside from Darrell the people are
for the most part not bone and blood
being, but fleshless fantasies. You feel
if you were to grasp them that your
fingers would close upon something as
incorpOreaI as telepathy. Yet homely
countryside minutiae. of which the
author, Mr.. Irving Bachelor, has clear
knowledge bring now and then a YER
liable stroke of realism, and help the
detached chapters to verisimilltude-
The human oddities of a village and
road off the traffic of life, and cOun-
try clown for whom there is no Audrey,
give brightness and humor to the love
story.
Some years ago DIR. oliver Wendell
Holmes showed that teacup history
might be as agreeable and aromatic as
the dish over which it was told. So
Mrs Myrta Lockett Avary's "A Vir-
ginia Girl in the Civil War; is an ac
count, founded on fact, of what Vir-
ginia woman saw and suffered in those
days when the Old Dominion had
pledged herself to the confederate
cause, and offered her soil for meeting
of hostile north and south Necessarily
intimate expression and local color are
in the weaving of such romantic his
tory. Also as here, a personal charm.
And there are some of the conclusive
sentences of the heroine: Under -he
pressure of the times there was sec
tional conscience, and people did
things they did not wish to do, because
they thought it right when it's all
over what good will it do? 1t will just
show that one side could fight better
than the other, or had more money and
men than the other. 1t won't show
that anybodys right" Throughout the
nnemoir-as in most of cur present-day