davidaulloa/AmericanStories huggingface dataset:
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-12-11

"HE democratic tidal wave of 1910
 means several things.
 J First, tariff graft has gone far enough and the Payne-Aldrich bill is in big degree responsible for the extortion- ate and outrageous high cost of living.
 Second, the people respect the judiciary, and will have none of this odious imper- lalism that comes under the guise of "new nationalism."
 Third, what Washington declined, and what was denied to Grant, Col. Roose- welt shall not have, and the question of a third term in 1912, or other time during this generation, was emphatically pro- bounced against and irrevocably deter mined adversely fin 1910.
 Fourth, not even Is Theodore Roose- yelt big enough man to be all things to all men, one thing at the east, another pt the west, one thing at the north and mother at the south.
 If Colonel Roosevelt had any dignity, had he conducted himself in retirement as did Grover Cleveland or Ben Harrison, 10 go further back, he would have re- mained not only the first citizen of the republic, but he would have been the most influential personality of our hemis- phere. Instead he itched for his former power and I have no respect for the yer pcity or intelligence of any man who is not willing to say that the campaign
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-12-11
A OPPOSED KING-No. By Sauoyard

Theodore Roosevelt made in 1910 was with view to third term in 1912. No won der the result made him speeches..
 As a southern man, and speaking from southern standpoint, I have no hesi itancy in saying that William Howard Taft is the best President his party ever gave the country. though have no doubt that had the southern-born and southern blooded Lincoln lived he would have proved the best friend the south ever had, and saved that section ten thousand cruel and felon stabs. Taft Is splendid man. The pity Is that he was bred to the bar rather than to the forum. He had read Blackstone and Iiot Adam Smith He had studied John Marshall and Roger B. Fancy and not Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. He was a lawyer, and a great one, and pity 'tis, that as a practical politician he Is a poor one But President Taft is a great man, a broad man, and what Is better to the point, he is good man, and as much President of the south as he Is of the north, some- thing Lincoln did not have opportunity to be, and something no other republican President ever was. All honor to Will liam H. Taft. He is a man who, made to see the right, will do the right as resolutely as Grover Cleveland himself.
 Well, the Colonel got back from hunting
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-12-11

So weary with disasters, tuggd with
 fortune
 That he would set his life on any chance To mend it or be rid ont
 The other says that he is one Whom the vile blows and buffets of the
 world
 Have so incensed that he is reckless what He does to spite the world"
 Now, there can be no doubt that the last named was a much worse and more dangerous man than the first
 Such grades as these are common enough in real life Indeed, they are the rule. Burns and Byron were both dlssi- pated, and both leentious, and yet who believes that there was not vast moral difference between the honest Scottish peasant and the lordly English libertine Swift and Sterne were both eoarsely ob- scene ard both clerical .miscreants; but who vii. deny that there was a great mora, interval between the mighty master Of English undefiled and the hypocritieal vender of tawdry sentimentalities?
 It is frequently held and published that genius Is very rarely found combined with coinmon sense, sound judgment and skill in matters of business. But one of the few things that We really know
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-12-11

stood by everybody with sense enough to herd flock of geese or manipulate a panel of draw-bars that the Colonel was for himself and agln the administration.
 Unadvisedly, as I believe though the result seems and perhaps does challenge my view, the Taft administration handed the New York state republican conven- blood raw. Here is what William R. Nell son said of it in his Kansas City Star, by the way, about as good a newspaper as you ever saw:
 "Advices from Saratoga are to the eff feet that Colonel Roosevelt met and ad- journed."
 And so. he did. He routed the "Old Guard" he got possession of the ma chine, and he had not doubt that he would sweep the state by 100000 majority. Hearst, whom he had commissioned Eli hu Root to denounce as responsible for the murder of Mckinley, now engaged with Roosevelt, "as thick as Brindle with Cherry and the circumstance recalls dle bed, which I am sorry to say Is too coarse to print in politer times, it fits so well and so appropriately.
 It was the dirtiest campaign since 1884, and the Colonel threw more mud than anyone else. Everybody who disagreed with him was "a d-d jackass of Vol
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-12-11
GENIUS OF GEORGE ELIOT-By J. C. Hic

highest rank, nor to even very high rank, as man of genius.
 The mimic and the humorous carica- tIrist can scarcely be said to need the highest order of genius Clowns in the circus have made great fame in these lines. Success in satire cannot claim. and does not deserve, the praise which we usually accord to genius of a high grade The cartoonist of the newspapers ofter. make happy hits in this line.
 But the artist who creates men and women and children, and makes them live, and move and have their being, who makes them speak, and act, and look like real people whom we have known all our lives--ths is the artist who deserves the first rank.
 What we call "culture' seems to have little or nothing to do with the develop ment of this power. Ben Jonson was a great scholar. who loved Shakespeare personally, and greatly admired his genius He has left on record his testl- mony that Shakespeare had little Latin and Less Greek;' but Shakespeare s "Hamlets Is immortal, while Ben Jon sons livery Man in His Humor' Is known only to the curious. George Eliot,
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-12-11

them. or even to find place among them, seemed no light task; and yet scarcely any competent critic will venture to deny that George Eliot is. speaking generally, the peer of any of them, and in some important points the leader of all of them.
 In the storytelling capacity she falls below Bulwer; in humorous caricature she is not equal to Dickens; and in high Unfinished satire she must yield to Thackeray; but in her English style she has not been excelled by any one of them, not even by Fielding himself; and in the drawing of character, and the paint ing of manners, and of real life, she has a place which is all her own. In these last po,nta she is excelled by Shakespeare alone. Her two greatest works, Adam Bede' and "The Mill on the Floss" may fairly be called prose dramas of real life; and 'Middlemarch" is only shade, if at all, inferior to them.
 Many men of no very high order of in- tcllect have been good storytellers. James Fenimore Cooper was one. Literary plot ting required higher order of mind; but Wilkie Collins did 1t wonderfully we'll, ara he has no pretensions to the
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-12-11

large the authority of the Lords and call that reforml If his measure should delude the people of England into estab- fishing him as prime minister, two things would happen; first the fastening of the authority of the peers in g new grip, and secondly a concession to the people by some more or less revolution any reform of their house. Such Is the ary reform of their house. Such is the way of the opportunist, and if Arthur ]. Balfour is rot an opportunist his foes misjudge him. The mantle of Beacons- field hangs loosely on those spare houlders-Beaconsfiel of whom Gold win Smith so recently said: He made a gambling table of my country"
 Happily. however, in the present fn- stance honest political sagacity Is in the saddle, and MT. Balfour must sit and crticise the riders. It Is a more useful and less perilous occupation. for him and for the people. These four things are being discredited and discarded: privilege, hereditary or personal; a swindling and pretended democratic programme; the fear of an Ireland made free to govern itsef the dangling bait of protection, tariff reform or colonial pref erence. Once more England Is voting for and one of the acts of the new parliament will have to be the removal of the ban on trades unions in politics
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-12-11

marvellous Uncle Pullet is phenomenally stupid and ignorant and yet he is made amusing.
 To portray fools wisely is one of the fine arts. Shakespeare possessed it In an eminent degree. Polonus was fool; but the term "fool' in the sense of a great mans Merry Andrew, was certainly not applicable to Polonius, for he had no pre- tensions to wit. Indeed, he is almost as tedious as Mrs Nickeby herself. Nor vas Polonius a fool in the same sense in which Dogberry was. Shakespeare's fools, then, were not all alike. The art of the great interpreter of human nature Is never more truly nor more splendidly ex- hibited than when he employs it in de- picting the various phases presented by different characters of the same general type. An ordinary observer would natur- ally suppose that there would hardly De any marked difference of moral char acter between two men who were both ready to be hired as assassins; but Shakespeare knew better; and hence we find the two murderers in Macbeth" ex. hibiting two widely distinct phases of reckless depravity. One of them says that he is
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-12-11

about Shakespeare is that he was an excellent man of business who looked sharply 10 the main chance, managed 'is finances with great skill and made an independent fortune
 Pope made a fortune by his pen, and he well hnew how to take care of his money anu made it go 'as far as pos slble.
 Gibbon was exceedingly careful of hs money. apo was more anxious about the rise of his own fortune than about the fall Of tbe Roman empire. Dickens loved his money almost as much as he loved his iinner and his wine. He maze large sums an6 took uncommon care of the siuews of war. Thaekeray did not like to waste his money, of which he made and kept nc small amount.
 ThomPs Carlyle's household expenses were managed with rare skill and econ omy, though his admirable wife deserves much Of the praise.
 Ge' rge Eliot. with all her genius and learning and literary skill, was one of the lest hnanciers. as well one of the Lest housekeepers, in all England She was extremely careful to follow the greatest of all financial maxims: Pay as you go and when you can't pay. don't go,
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-12-11

hHE origin, the development and the
 character of the English novel
 4 constitute one of the most interest," ing and instructive chapters in the his- tory of OUT literature. Just when the English novel began to be is question not easily answered. Macaulay, one of the ablest and acutest of our critics, thinks he discovered in some of Addi- sens Spectators the germ which after
 ward grew Into the novels of Richardson and Fielding. Henry Fielding is often called the father of the English novel; but this statement is certainty erroneous; for Richardson was d highly popular novelist before Fielding was known as a writer of fiction. Indeed, Fielding's Joseph Andrews was written to cari- cature one of Richardson's novels, which had reached a very high degree of pop ular appreciation. If pressed to give the name of the father of the English novel, = should write the name of Richardson.
 When George Eliot began her literary career she found the novel in the heyday of it's glory. Scott, Bulwer, Dickens and Thackeray had filled the English-reading world with their fame. TO rise above
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-12-11

some varmints and snakes and things in Africa. He had made Taft President be- cause he feared that he could not make Root President. though it were an easy task to have landed the great trust builder in that office, in view of MT. Bryan's Czarship in the other camp. As when Napoleon Bonaparte got back from his hunt and slaughter of men in Africa, more than a century earlier, Colonel Roosevelt was not only taciturn, but mys- terious. Was he a standpatter, as he had been all the 90 months he was President, an insurgent? The whole country stood with open mouth to catch the drippings of original virtue, as 1t percolated from that inexhaustible and never-failine fount of patriotism and infallibility
 The Colonel was not only taciturn and mysterious, but he was interesting. h. surgents made pilgrimages to Oyster Bay and came away smiling. Weeks and weeks passed and not word came from that garrulous tongue to encourage the Taft administration that had been as- sailed so cruelty, and I believe, so un- justly-all but the tariff part of it-and If William Howard Taft shall ever grasp ton he will smash it. For that sort of job would not give him for regiment of Roosevelts. Soon 1t became under
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-12-11

zest was lacking. We outgrow some
 books, just as we outgrow our clothes.
 There are some books, however which
 one may read in mature life with the
 same enthusiasm that he read them in
 youth. This sentiment applies to Dick ems. Bulwer, Scott. Thackeray, Trollop
 and Hugo, among the French: I do not
 know how often have read Les Miser- ables. Some of the authors we never ap-
 preciate fully until we read them in riper manhood
 I mentioned Anthony Trollope. I wish
 that I could revive an interest in dear
 old Trollope. do not recall a single one of his stories that is not clean enough for the purest minded person. O, so different from so many of the trashy, unclean things that people are expected to read these days. Yet TroI- lope's stories are full of life. action, even excitement and abound with naturalness and human interest. I recommend espe- cially ''The Three Clerks, "The Eustace Diamonds,''s 'srhe Warden" "Doctor Thorne." and, but why particularize? They are all good Yet. so few people read any of them now.
 Next to a broken set of Ralzac (for my library Is divided, some of my books being at my country home in virginia), there is a set of Charles Reades works. read his stories with profound interest. think they are characterized by di- rectness and strength that few writers disclose. George Meredith has the same degree of strength, as "The Egoist'': but the nervous, sententious style of Reade, Meredith has not By the way, for some reason that have never analysed, when reading George Meredith I feel that I am reading some member of George Eliot's family. It isn't the identity of the first name. nor the likeness of style. yet, when reading 'sThe Egoist'' have to pinch myself as reminder that am not reading 'Middlemarch." But to return to Reade. Many of his stories deserve to live al ways. "The Cloister and the Hearth," Hard Cash," and Tt Is Never Too Late to Mend," are three great novels. Each one bears upon some phase of the great est problems that engage the minds of thoughtful men and women today. From | the "Cloister and the Hearth the world may learn a sad but essential lesson. Reade is one of my old friends. and he 1 should be the friend of the reader. He | was close associate and warm friend | of Dickens, Thackeray and Wilkie Col | ljns.
 Wonder is a long line of over 90 volumes of books bound in green cloth They
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-12-11
The Old. Old Story

From Scribner's Magazine. Late that afternoon I met Frederic i Wentworth, up the long hill past the Glen. He stopped, with a short greeting word. and took my books for me. In silence he fell into step beside me- On we went. up the lovely hills, all silvered in their brave new green; through wood paths foaming sweet with wild grape, down warm slopes rosy with anemone. Up the last shining slope we climbed, side by side, with not 6 word to break the crystal spell. And then
 Oh, dare say was ca silly young sertimentalist in those days, precisely as I'm silly old sentimentalist today. But, as 1 walked beside him, 1t was as if the wind and the leaves and the sunlight went singing it. high and sweet, and the magical petals of words blew eddyinx round us, an elfin charm. And never shall I see those hills, that white road shining in the sunset, that falling gleam Of leaf and light. that shall not walt ever through their golden dream
 Across the hills and far away,
 Beyond their utmost purple rim,
 And deep into the dying day
 The happy princess followd hims
 And the magic rang so true so clear, that when he stopped at the crest of the last long shining hill, and stood there, his strong face ashen white save for the angry burn, and told me that he loved me, that he had loved me from the first hour his eyes had seen me Why. 1t was only my unspoken thought come true. Surely he loved me. l, who had lived my whole life through to be loved of him.
 An. be sure I was happy princess from that hourl Together we laid our royal plans. Neither of us possessed one penny; fact which caused us no an- noyance whatever. Promptly we both left school Frederic went to work for . s'rvevn~ firm. earning a prosperous S25 a month. and found.r I was given a winter school, with a dignitied salary Of $l5 and my board. Five dollars sent home regularly. for the winter was bit- terly hard. The other S1O went, every copper into the fund for our household gear Each month. Frederic could come for day with me. The winter fad sunlit wings.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-12-11

the French into English. It is In six
 volumes consisting of all the essays,
 with marginilia, and elaborate notes, and
 printed in the ancient text. The title
 page to each volume is printed in red
 and black. In the first volume there is
 an etched portrait of Montaigne, taken
 from the oil portrait still preserved at tho
 Chateau de Montaigne. The binding is
 in olive-green leather. The writer of the
 plays of Shakespeare was close reader
 of Montaigne, as all readers of The
 Tempest know. Andrew Lang, the crit ic and essayist, says, 'Montaigne is a mans author, not woman's" I suppose this is true. But, though less poetic than Amiel, less speculative than Bacon, less
 stately than Emerson and less cynical than Carlyle. Montaigne remains still the prince of the worlds essayists, and the kindliest critic of mems foibles and faults.
 Among my friends have an old set of ''The Arabian Nights" which I value greatly. They are in four volumes and bound in leather, and translated by Ed ward Forster, Oxon, in 1902. This trans lation of the Thousand and One Nights is not so pretentious a work as Burton's, which requires IT volumes to tell all tho tales, but it is far better in one respect, that is any woman can read the stories Burton would not permit his wife to read his translation. and he distinctly says, in the preface, the book is not for women and children. The humor of the stories is less conspicuous than their ob- scenity in Burton. But In this old yer sion anyone can find real pleasure, with out seeking it in the filth of old customs and unclean habits,. related by Burton. Many books sold for The Arabian Nights" hold only a few of the marvel lous stories. Forster has given us all that are worthy of preservation. Does one ask, But do you read such tales at your time O life? Yes; why not? and Aesops fables, also. They both mean far more than appears upon the surface of the page. They are wholesome; they quicken the imagination, they suggest verbal drapery, and excite the fancy, and besides, they make us more fit to enter .ain the little people in the twilight hours as they await the coming of "the sand man.
 In my first paper on this subject gave ! list of the six best English or Ameri- ,an novels, so far as my judgment could lecide. They were: "A Tale of Two Nities. "Ivanhoe,' 'The Last of the 'Romola,'' The Newcomes, Y Ten Thousand Year. then asked
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-12-11
EUunS

the readers of The Age-Herald to let me know by postal card their six favorites An analysis of the notes and postal cards will be interesting. think.
 Eighty per cent include some one of Dickens novels, but they do not, how ever. agree upon the same book Twenty the rest preferring "Bleak House" One person wrote Dickens never wrote any thing that could not be read in a parlor or anywhere else" I agree with him. Said one, David Copperfield is the most human of them alb Is this criticism correct? What think you?
 One hundred per cent name Scott, and nearly all prefer ,Tvanhoe" few like Wentworth" and "The Antiquary'' best
 Sixty per cent include George Eliot, 40 per cent of whom prefer Adam Bede' ; the other 20 per cent are divided between ''The Mill on the Floss" and "Romola' D
 Bulwer has 80 per cent of admirers among my correspondents, with 40 per cent for The Caxtons", the other votes going to the great story. My Novel"
 Thackeray's name Is found in So per cent of my notes, being divided between Vanity Fair" "rhe Newcomes, ''The yirginians,' and Henry Esmond"
 Then there are small contingents who voted for Saracinesca, Ten Thousand a Year." "The Vicar of Wakefield, :" Peter simple,' "The Woman in White, The Mysteries of Udolpho. "The Scar let Letter." "Charles O'Malley," Lorna Doon," etc.
 A number of choice men and women letters in regard to my references to books in these columns. All their kind and appreciative opinions I value most highly. As I read their notes, cards and letters, feel that I have made personal friends of a host of The Age Herald readers. We have met on common ground, here in Bookland. and We all have so many friends that are friends of each and friends of all, that I posi- lively feel that we are personally ac quainted. Here, good friends, friends of my friends. we meet in the Booklover's happy Forest of Arden. Here we re- new friendships of other years and look into faces upon which we closed the printed page ever so long ago In the names of our old friends cordially clasp your hands.
 There. the courthouse bell has just struck sleepy. lonely. dismal hour, and for some little time the sand man" has been sprinkling an impalpable dust upon
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-12-11

That was Jefferson Davis living; but Jeff ferson Davis dead. Theodore Roosevelt made a pilgrimage to vicksburg to eulo- gize him. Think of 1t, you southron.
 Had not such Popes of Rome granted indulgences to commit sin nobody would have heard of Martin Luther. Apparent ly. Theodore Roosevelt thinks he has in diligence to be all things political. Col onel Nelson, his ablest and his most pow erful defender and his most eloquent and enthusiastic eulogist, says Roosevelt was the Saratoga convention of 1910 That convention indorsed the Payne-Aldrich tariff Why? sN,
 I'll tell you. It was for poodle. It was an attempt to "fry the fat'' out of the manufacturers. as had been done a score of times before. Roosevelt knows the republicans have not carried the country since 1872, except with the strongest cash box. The presidency was bought for Garfield in 1880. It was bought for liar rison in 1888. It was bought twice-once certainly-bought for Mckinley and in 1904 MT. Cortelyou had at command one of the most opulent poodle funds boss ever handled, or monopoly ever contrib uted. That is history.