The Minneapolis journal. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn.) 1888-1939, 1905-04-01

"The Opal" Edith Dudley is drawn as
a radiant and exquisite creature, nimble
and alert Of mind and quick in sympat thy.
"She's an opal; she's blue and red and
green and yellow, and good and bad and
sweet and sarcastic and religious. and
skeptical ard frivolous and serious &C
cording to one of the other of the books s
characters. She is like a wonderful fire.
work, flashing a shower Of many colored
stars, to paraphrase still another's smile.
She is a riddle worth bordering over"
"a thousand women in one" She says
of herself: II seem to have no ego. There
are hundreds Of indivdualities shut up
inside of me, waiting to pop out as they
are wanted, yet none of them is ME-. If
am suddenly asked, by a person I have
never seen, what think on certain sub
ject I can't answer till feel what the
other persons point Of view is. and then
I express it as we'll as 1 can
And the reason for these paradoXes Of
character Is the absence Of a will.
The author has made the contrasts the
more striking by the use of so charming
a creature for his Cor herr willess one.
and at the same time he has made the
tragedy more tragic. One wonders
whether he has not sought to paint a
type. "The OPAL without a will is
married to a man of ability and high pur-
poses then comes the tempter-and the
rest; all of which surely admits of being
I typified.
|: But one need not shrink from the book
because Of ""The tempter-and the rest
It Is very far removed from any sugges-
ton of vulgarity or coarseness, even In
it's tragedy. One is compelled to see the
possible beauties Of character, the fatal
flaw the fall, but one escapes any sense
of faint himself. The book is wholesome,
and contains very much to delight one,
especially in it's keenness Of wit. Mary
Elton, the friend of "The Opal" it was
who said II did hope to escape this fad
of being operated on; it's worse than
| bridge whist: and later: when bad
| Americans can't die, they go to Paris. y
| This comes in the early part Of the story
| and one Of the fine things about the story
| is the way one .'sees the clouds gather. u
| the sunshine of Hfe's comedy give place
to the gloom Of lfe's tragedy. '"rhe Opal
| then is a book to attract more than usual
| attention. "a
Houghton, Mifhin & Co., Boston. $1.25.
| CAROLYN WELLS INTERESTING
LETTER BOX. OPENED FOR THE
PUBLIC.-Carolyn Wells who is ach1ev'
ing a wide fame for light and airy contri'
| buttons to current literature, has an ar
| ticle in The Bookman for April in which
! she tells muCn tnaL IS dHluSlnS dOoul Az
ters she gets from admirers of her work
and from others, for there do seem to- be
others. Here is letter she got from ar
"audacious stranger" who, however, i:
not one Of those Others mentioned:
I picture thus the manner of your average day
I You wake "Ha," you say to-day will 1 write
much nonsense. I will sit at my big desk and
Jingle a few Iines-just enough to keep in prac
tice Then will dash off q burlesque novel, s
short story for girls. shorter story for boys
write divers letters to members of the Merma1t
club, call on Mrs. Prunes who has such lovely
kitten browse at the bookshops and lunch at the
club. Afterward I will eau on seven hundred 1d1e
and eighty thousand publishers and leave
each a few manuscripts By that time mus
run to the matinee. Then I will have tea Will
Oliver Herford and talk over the illustration:
| for the Forthcoming ninety-four books, then
| will catch the 5:22 ferry from the Twenty-Five
street sta ton and go home to Railway.
| Miss Wells says that so nearly rlgh
did he guess her average daily perform
ance she was fain to learn more of him
and did. .-