The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-01-08
BOOKS AND THEIR AUTHORS SUBJECTS
 OF PHELPS TALK
An Opinion on the Novels of Today From Weighty
 Source.
"SCARLET LETTER" BEST
 AMERICAN STORY WRITTEN
Brilliant Yale Professor Greet ed by Cultured Audience at Stratford, Town Of His Mothers Birth.

Mothers Birth.
 Prof. William Lyon Phelps, of Yale, delivered a very entertaining and
 amusing lecture on the t'Novel of the Day. before a crowded house last evening at the Stratford Library. He was introduced by Judge Howard J. Curtis, who said the series of lectures to be given this winter was not so
 much for money as to contribute to the life and culture of the town. We are grateful, he added, that we are to have lectures from Professors Phelps and Wier.
 Prof. Phelps in response said: "I can not begin to express to you my pleas ure in coming back to Stratford. Here my aunt. Mrs. Seymour lived and died, and here my mother was born. Among my happiest recollections are those of my childhood spent in Stratford; every inch is for me hallowed ground. I
 never go through the town on the fast est express train without a thrill. I cannot tell you how deeply I feel in speaking to you tonight for the first time in beautiful old Etratford, to me 1 the most beautiful town in the world '"The novel is the most prominent form of literature. The libraries cir
 culate more and the publishers produce
 more of this literature than of any
 other. Literature follows the fashions
 like clothes. Once dramatic plays and poetry were written. Pope Essay on Man, which my good aunt used to
 quote to me by the yard. went off like
 hot cakes. To-day the House of M.rth would be more read. An English au
 thor once wrote a long poem in bed.
 He had to for he was drunk. His theme was on the Nature of the 1 Onif no f, onCf a ~ form of literature. owing to the univer- sal high school education which pre- | vails. Millions and millions of people
 demand reading for entertainment. There is 8 good and a bad side to this. define real work of fiction to be l "a good story we'll told.' About 50 per cent. of so-called novels are not stories at all They are all kinds of ideas put | in the form of a novel to make the l work saleable.
 Twenty years ago Mrs. Ward pub lished tE1smere.' That was a story the kind. It was not 8 story at all. I recollect seeing in the window of a | New Haven drug store, some 12 years ago, a sign to the effect that One copy | of Robert Ellsmere will be given away with a cake of soap I never could l make out the relation existing between the soap and that book Bellamy'S
 Looking Backward was a treatise on socialism. A novel now may be a treatise on politics or on mechanics. I once when boy got a Sunday School book with a good title-'Gen. Putnam in the Wolfs Den.' I thought I was to enjoy a good story.
 s"The first sentence in the book read as follows: AS General Putnam de- scended into the wolf's den, should we l all struggle against the demon of in- ! temperance. And that was all the | book had to say about Gen. Putnam. | The book called the Fruit of the Tree
 discusses the question whether you | should squirt poison into ones arm. l Thackeray's Henry Esmond' contains | all the essentials of a great novel-it l is a story we'll told.
 Russia, France. and England write 1 the best novels. Germany has not 1 succeeded with the novel, but if you l wish to study music, or theology, or 1 the sciences, go to Berlin. All the music written in the world outside of
 Germany, multiplied by ten would not equal the music of Germany. I was I in Chicago not long ago, and in | great music hall there were five names, | all German. While Germany excels in
 art and lyrical poetry she has never | done we'll with the novel. In it's en- | tire history the good novels produced l in that country can be counted on the
  portion. Every possible detail is put | in. They do not know how to elirnin- ate. They have an excess of senti- | mentality. They are great iconoc1asts. They like to prove a thing is not so, or demolish some theory. I grow more
 sentimental as I grow older, one hun dred thousand times more than I used to be. German fiction is killed by too
 much moonlight. The moon rises on every page and is always full. It is the most hard worked animal in the
 German novel. In Sudiman's the
 Cats Bridge the book is killed by
 too much moonlight. They ought to
 write their novels with an almanac so
 as to be correct. Their moon is like a calcium light in melodrana. That is their real difficulty.
 Americans have never done we'll with the novel. I think it better to write a good novel than to elect 1 President. We should appoint con- servator over Winston Churchill. There has never been a, single great realistic novel written in America. Our great est novel is the Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne. It is as great as any | body has written. We do not have to | apologize for it and say he was an | American. It stands in the front rank. I think Twain's 'Huckleberry Finn stands a chance to survive as great nOVel, ana perhaps HIS IOIn Sawyer Howells in his early life | wrote delightful stories. He thinks A Modern Instance his strongest work, 1 but says he took the most pleasure in writing Indian Summer The Ken tons is worth reading. Henry James do not entirely understand. Daisy Miller is worth all his other work. It is literally impossible to forget Daisy after reading the book. His stories suffer from lack of proportion. Some one has said that to read one of his books is like looking out of a tenement house window with nothing doing. 'In Boston it is said they read Hen- ry James in the original. He wrote teh best ghost story I ever read. Think of anything from him which will prevent a man from going to sleep! It is called The Turn of the Screw. There is none of the machinery of the melodrama about it. There is 6 dead man on the roof. He is actually there. You see him. And there is a dead woman walking. There can be no
 doubt about it. I am a Yankee and not easily frightened, but when it came time to turn out the gas in the hall be- low I didn't want to go a bit. And I rushed up the stairs three steps at
 bound, expecting to feel some dead hand on the back of my neck! Oh. a most delightful sensation! Magnificent! owen Wister Is one of our most