The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1910-05-14

, there is to be written about Turkish
women-I mean a novel-in which tie
cold truth is respected, not any pretty
pretty fiction evoked by sentimental
French novelists who only see through
a very small hole in the curtain"
THE hanson waited for a moment
at the junction of Orchad street and
oxford street, and the innumerable
company of locomotives sped by it. Mo-
tubbling, hansCms jingled westward,
large, slow vans made deliberate pro-
gross, delaying the traffic as some half
built dam inpedes the course of flowing
water till it finds way around it, and
through the streams of wheels and
horses pedestrians Scuttled in and out
ike bolted rabbits. The whole tide of
movement was at it's height, and the
little islands in mid-street were crowd
ed with folk who were cut off, it would
seem by the rising 1ood-water from all
communication with the shore, with but
remote chance of escape. Then an ON
ripotenc policeman stepped out into the
sUrging traffic, held up compelling
and resistless hand, and at his gestur7
the tides, more ohedient to him than
20 Canute, ceased to flow. and the cross
movement began, which permitted
Daisy and her cousin to cross the
stream" A sparkle snatched from E.
F. Benson's latest brilliant comedy of
London society, 1.-The Fascinating Mrs.
Halton," published by Doubleday, Page
& Co.
Francis Lynde, the author of 1.-The
Tanning of Red Butte Western" a
novel of railroading in the west just
published by Charles Scribner's Sons,
though formerly an active railroad man
now lives a quiet life near Chattanooga,
Tennessee. Our home" he says, SIS
on the rocky slope of Lookout noun
Tot
four good miles from the city which il
overlooks. Down in one corner of the
lot 1 have a little shack of a study in
which, six days of the week, I grind
from in the morning till r. and from
in the evening until any old time
when 1 happen to realize that it's bed
time. III over the lot there are tons
and tons of the country rock, big
boulders and slabs: and under the
house there is a small machine aINl
blacksmith shop. Pleasant afternoons
I cut stone and lay it, in retaining
walls, boundary walls, Or the walls of
a new Wideview. Rainy afternoons 1
blacksmith and stone-tool kit or tinker
in the blacksmith shop on little labor
savin~ devices, for the house, or an old
automobile which gives me quite as
much pleasure in the way of repairing
and devising improvements as it does
in tie driving. Once in a blue moon or
so I go to town, but rarely unless 1
nave 10. once IN dozen blue moons
some literary club or high school COM
mittee or lecture bureau will get
derrick hitch on me and drag me out
to bluff an audience into the belief that
1 know more about some certain sub
ject that it does. And when this hap
pens I'm careful to have the old white
steamer fired up and waiting at the
stage door. Even the Sundays hardly
break the monotony. From a time so
far back that I can't remember the
year, I've been the lay-reader for a
poor little parish at the foot of the
mountain suburb. That accounts for
the Sunday forenoon. And the after
noon usually sees a little friendly gath
ering here in the shack study-mostly
men, mostly young men, who come and
make smoke-talk with the man who,
though no longer young. is still-thank
God-aS young in heart and interest
and ambition and optimism as ever he
was. 1 love my work; but so do thou
sands of others in thousands of other
walks of life. don't know anything
about inspiration, or moods or the
creative white heat or the artistic
temperament or any of those things.
But l can put word to word just as
can lay stone upon stone in a WALL and
I'm rot above taking the words apart
and putting them together in a better
way just as I'd take the stone up in
the derrick-fall and reset it if it didn't
please me. That's humdrum, too; dead
ly humdrum for the general. But I
get stacks of pleasure out of both kinds
of building. You see, I'm just a plain
mechanic after all, with an Unborn
mechanics love of making things, and
making them different, and finding q
keen delight in discovering that the
ten-thousandth part of an inch in cali
bering is still a quantity sensible to the
eye and the touch"