The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-04-26


 those tragic possibilities which dis
 quieting as they are, still give life it's
 meaning and it's majesty it's zest of
 uncertainty, it's courage to turn from
 the drip of sawdust and look on a lir-
 tie red blood.
 In other words we all get tired of
 trying to live up to our blue china, as
 the Oxford aesthete complained. We
 insist on peril and the jingle of nerves
 that comes with peril. We nurse q
 hunger for old hazard. Out of this
 hunger has been created that litera-
 ture which falls under the title of
 tragedy, on the one hand, or the TO-
 nance of roguery. on the other
 The rogue story, of course came to us from Spain, and may be called the
 grandfather of our modern novel.
 Through the medium of the fabllaux and the novelle and the jest book of the
 Middle Ages it persisted, until we find it merging into a "Gil Blas," then into
 Defoe's Mol Flanders" (which graft
 of character study on low life gave us ! our first clumsy specimen of English novel;, and still later into a Felding's
 Tom Jones' The transcription of low life, in a way, took the place of the childshly heroic treatment of human beings peculiar to the epic. Self-con-
 sciousness. and research little by little re-
 vealed to society the multiplicity of crim- inal forces arrayed to prey in and upon it. The natural growth of realism, as
 time went on, compelled fiction to include the criminal in it's reflections of the
 actual. He was first the rogue, mere rascality touched with humor, the sly paramour, the venal priest, and the gypsy,
 the Robin Hood and the sea rover, the
 bad men'i of Chaucer and Villon, Le Sage and Johnson.
 The mere depletion of adventure and intrigue such as this inevitably developed into a study of manners. This again grew into the broader and more humanitarian
 treatment of mortals acting under the lash of emotion or writhing under the
 sting of conscience. Yet 1t was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that the philanthropc and scientific view
 of criminal life actually prevailed. What
 may be called the anatomy of roguery,
 resulting from this scientific attitude, gave us the natural and long-needed anti date of the oversympathetic and the overfebrile treatment of the villain Of fiction. It taught us to countenance the rogue, but with difference, and always with reservations. It established dead
 line across the banking quarters of sen- sationalism. The picturesque novel, as such, is not a modern success. The in- stinct of retributive justice is so deeply rooted in our hearts that we moderns re-
 
 | The rogue of our latter-day romance i must be rogue only under extenuating | circumstances. He must square with ] ethics, or we cannot accept him. Or, if | offense Is open and unequivocal, the of | fender must suffer for his sins. Yet We | love to see him snap his fingers at the over-exacting letter of the law, to the end | that he may carry out it's spirit. We de- ! light in his crushing through temporal
 issues for the sake of those emotions | which we have been taught to regard as | eternal. We ourselves are bit too timd | to do what these fine and flashing heroes | attempt. We feel the chains of civiliza- l tion a little too heavy on us. So we pay | $1.50 for the latest romance and let the l gentleman between the book covers do | the trick for us. We hire him as an | agent, to cross the frontier of reality for 1 us and bring a sense of wonder back to
 our humdrum world.
 | In this lies the actual and economic value of the fictitious offender. There | has been a great deal of discussion about
 Aristotles famous definition of tragedy | as purifying the emotions of pity and
 terror by a healthy exercise of them. We
 may not agree as to just what this kathar- | sis means, but we do unite in agreeing | that the world loves a good story, and | that after it life in some way seems more | lovable. The sedentary bookkeeper who 1 catches the $40 for his trim little subur- | ban home takes his dip into Treasure | Island' or Sherlock Holmes" and be- 1 comes once more reconciled to the placid | order of things. The prim little mlliner | who works in the back shop takes her | daily airing in the emotionalism of Ca mille' and turns contentedly back to her
 toll. For in this world of fiction we all | find that natural and necessary katharsis l of our too dormant emotions We undergo | what may be called a vicarious rebarbari-
 zation. We approach the llicit-the illicit l that is so perennially attractive-without | sacrifice of personal integrity. We achieve | harmless purgation of that potential | and elemental criminality which has come
 down to us from Adam himself.
 We face the novelty of vast emotions, | of those strange passions which are as all | turing as a glimpse into some new land, without in any way compromising our l claim to respectable citizenship In fact, l as we come tngling from each new dip 1 into this bath of picturesque romancing,
 we unwittingly wash away some incrust- | ing perversion of thought or feeling. The stoop-shoudered office worker who
 plunges into his Hugoesque misdeeds on | paper, and achieves a vicarious atone
 ment or has meted out to him vicarious l punishment, returns to the dry land of | every day life with the refreshing feelin s | that existence is wider than a roll-top l desk. He has also eased his soul of that
 whimpering trouble which came down 10 | him from his ancestors. He has screwed 1 a new bar over the potential criminal | still pacing the darker byways of his own | heart The placid bourgeosie of life has | been enlivened with it's flash of barbarism. l He has stepped out of his well policed | days into the realms of romance The latent Nietzscheism of his nature has found it's outlet. He has reveled in that vicarious return to force which is so dear to the hearts of people to whom the exercise of force has been denied. He goes on his way as a God-fearing and
 moral citizen, but before he parts with hs enlivenng company he thrusts the magic pack of misdeeds and audacites back oI the shoulders of Blind Pew, or Gil Bias, or l Gallopng Dick, or Barry Lyndon, or Becky Sharp, or Terence Mulvaney, or John Silver. as the case may be. and turns to his desk a little mystified, prob- ably, as to why we all have such a
 sneaking love for the 'bad people, of fic- tion. Yet these bad people are the safety
 valves that keep his elemental boilers from blowing up. They are the smolder- l ing volcanoes that relieve the fire at the 1 core of his emotional world.
 
 The Most Delicious Eggs. From the New York Press,
 Many a Chinaman in New York would like to have those added eggs of Andrew