The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-11-08

returned from trip to Europe with hel husbands MT. Gale Young Rice, two l agreeable announcements were made tS l her. One was that her books. Mrs. wigg.
 of the Cabbage Patch." and "Loves
 Mary" the only books she has evei
 written. had sold to the number of g
 full half million and were still in de
 mand, with popularity undiminshed. The
 second pleasant bit of news was that the play Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage
 Patch," which Mrs. Constance Flexnei
 of Louisville constructed by putting to-
 gether and dramatizing the two stories in one, had been presented on the theat- | rical stage and was as successful in ttt | way as the two books had been in theirs
 The good luck of Mrs. Wiggs" was indeed something uncommon from the
 start, that of "Lovey Mary" no less so | The first book was a modest, though
 dainty volume of only 150 pages. Per l haps because of the episode of the Il Wiggses' Christmas turkey 1t was espe- | cially wanted for Christmas presents. In
 December of last year. the month in
 which Miss Hogan was married to Mir | Rice, 62, 900 copies of Mrs. Wiggs' were
 sold. That fact could not help making | the youthful authors honeymoon all the
 more joyful.
 What is the quality that makes Alice l Hegan's tales so widely read? No story
 could be more unpretentious than they
 are, being simply the ups and downs oi l a quaintly original and benevolent moth-
 CT and her children and friends in the
 DO white trash" quarter of Louisville.
 The style in which the stories are writ ten is so unbookish that probably many l of the million people who read Mrs | Wiggs" remarked:
 What a simple story that is! Any
 body could have written it."
 l It sounds that way, doesn't 1t? Yet if ! anybody thinks he or she can depict a 1 Mrs. Wiggs let that person try it. When the common people comment on a writing with "why. that's just what
 would have said myself; I always knew | that, anybody could say it, then we
 may know the author has struck a great chord of human life. An author can re- ceive no higher compliment.
 The quality that makes everybody read and like Mrs. Rice's stories is their great | underfiowing current of sympathy with all that lives The artifcer in any field of work who possesses that will be sue cessfui. Next to the warm human sym pathy of the pleasant tales there is the vein of persistent. determined optimism running through them, and this delights all of us mortals. No matter how cold or hungry or poverty stricken the Wigges are, no matter how much trouble they or their friends are involved in, there Is a generally good ending. Parted lovers are happily reunited, troubles are satis- factorily settled, hungry stomachs are | filled. We all like that; we know we dc | in spite of our pretending to admire in- | sane pessimism and morbidness because | they are artistic. This optimism. some | how makes us feel that maybe our own | troubles will cease in some pleasant way The delightful optimism in Mrs. Rice s
 stories Is due no doubt to the authors own happy childhood and girlhood. She | must have brought with her into the world what the theosophists would call a l good garma. In the woods little way
 out of Louisville was long cabin, built | pioneer style, with an open passagewaV
 side of it, living room on the other, with great fireplaces for logs. It was the | Heganss picnicking cabin. The Hegans | gathered up bits of old tiny furniture
 and put them in the cabin, which had 8
 wide porch around it. The family and | their friends had week end parties" 1T
 this cabin from spring to autumn, and
 here Alice passed away many of the
 blithest hours she ever spent or ever vii | spend One of the features of the cabir | was the old-fashioned water bucket and | gourd of the pioneers. Another was 2
 round dining table with raised revolv. ing center. Upon this center were placed | the food dishes, so that when diner
 wanted anything he could give the mid
 dIe of the table a twirl and swing around | next to himself the tidbit he wanted. We
 are not told whether this unique table
 was Miss Alice's invention or not
 The pleasantest picture in Alice Hogan: | life is that cabin in the Kentucky woods | The girl had that happy childhood which
 Is the just heritage of all. but which
 alas, falls to so few. Where one doei
 have 1t 1t gilds the whole after life witt l joy.
 Friends and acquaintances of Mrs.
 Hogan Rice in Louisville have furnish | ed some pleasant new information In re-
 gard to her and her only original Mrs. | Wiggs. It is known, of course, that
 the Louisville cabbage patch" is a real locality: that Mrs. Wiggs herself is z
 real parsonage whose actual name Is
 something else. The real Mrs. Wiggc
 used to send her little girl to the He gans and to one of their neighbors fol I 1fG