The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-03-26

q, large
first Importance and can never be an
swered. President Davis held it to be
the best book on the subject 1t is
invulnerable and rock-based. Mr..
Wilson says:
1T is one of the hopeful indications
Of the times that the truth of history
is at last even though slowly but
surely, coming to light this is one
OF the books that will greatly aid in
so righteous work. The reader In
perusing this splendid book will not
be slow in discovering that there were
rebels and traitors and 'disloyaP
people by the thousand in the events
leading to and during that war, but
they were not the men who We the
gray or followed the Starry ass'
from Manassas to AppomattOX.'
The late James Russell Lowell, one
of the most gifted of American writer's.
came over in a steamer from England
in 1851 with the great Thackeray. He
had written four years before of his
great novel "Vanity Fair" one of the
supreme works of masterful genius,
in this wise:
II wish to say how much I have
been pleased with Thackeray's
Vanity Fair He has not Dlckens's
talents as a caricaturist, but he draws
take character to pieces and make us
laugh immoderately at the comic parts
of it-or he takes only the comic
parts of it-as boys take the honey
bag of the bee, destroying the whole
insect to get to it. But Thackeray
can put a character together. He
has more constructive power. ID. is
u satiriser, r. a satirist. | don't think
ID. ever made anything equal to
Becky Sharp. Ra|don Crawley, too.
is admirable"
George William Curtis, the fine lit
erary editor, and accomplished au-
thor, a Yankee, wrote of Thackeray's
first lecture in Boston. Among those
present were Washington Irving Feni-
more Cooper, Prescott and other fu-
nous men of the times, at his lecture
in New York Mr.. Curtis wrote of
him, and is graphic:
His huge figure filled the pulpit,
and the desk was raised so that he
could easily read his manuscript. He
stood erect and perfectly still; his
hands thrust into his pockets. or the
thumbs and foreigners into his waist
coat pockets, and in that deep, melo-
dious and flexible voice he read his
essays. No purely literary lectures
were ever half so interesting. As he
moved on, his felicitious skill flashed
out the living form of each man he
described like a torch upon a statue"
So long as the best literature is
loved Thackeray will never be dis
placed. He had great, signal qualities
as a writer. Vanity Fair" Henry
Esmond, "Pendennis, "The New
comes" and his two volumes OF
Lectures will keep him to the front
so long as true culture flourishes.
Edna LyaI was not so long ago a
very popular novelist Donovan"
1--WE Two" Knight Errant, and
others were widely read. She died in
1908. Her novels are not now the
passion of the fictive deVourers. Her
real name was Ada, Ellen Bayly, AID
she was born at Brighton, England, in
1857. Her father was barrister. A
recent life of her bNJJ., M. Escreet has
appeared in England. Her biographer
describes her in these words:
"She was of medium height, and
slight Her hair was very dark brown
and turned back from broad, intel
lectual forehead. The eyebrows beau
tifully marked and arched; dark blue
gray eyes, wonderfully tender and ex-
pressive, IAN outward sign of all the
warmth within smiled with her lips,
but one might see those eyes flash with
Indignation at any tale OF injustice Oh
cruelty She was described by the
tall African chief, Khnma, as "the
little lady with the bright eyes that
point to the kind heart"
Mr. Frederick Palmer wrot a book
entitled with Kuroki in Manchuria.'
Kuroki is the great Japanese soldier
genuine military genius. Mr..
Palmer described him before he had
reached the height of his extraordina
ry fame. He is possibly one of the
worlds truly greatest geniuses for
war. He is described in this wise and
it is interesting:
HE is sturdily built sinewy, with
no spare flesh, and has clean
shaver, square jaw. One saw him
walking by himself among the trees
of the groves which he and his staff
occupied, and again with q telescope
on a prominence watching his own
troops rather than the positions of
the enemy-watching and smoking. "
In the face of good and bad news
he was the same unchanging Kuroki.
No spectators curiosity held his at
tentOn to any one part of the field. He
was playing the greatest of all games,
with his mind on team play.
TO my recollection / never saw him
make any gesture except to salute.
The sculptor had best make MIN
squatting and looking at q map while
he listens to his staff; and always all
of his staff except the younger men
(the gallopers) We're at his side. He
could call for, information or SUCCESS
tions as quickly as the head of great
business house who has row of push
buttons on his desk
The 70,000th copy of Tom Dixons
"CIansman" has been printed in six
weeks And still the heather rage.
Truth crushed to earth shall rise
again,
The eternal years of God are hers"
So wrote the Yankee Bryant sixty
or seventy years ago
Wilmington n. c.