The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-12-10
I812-Fsb.Z-19E2

aOIZ EcD.E 1Sl In the practice of the literary art, path os is the most difficult of success and the most dangerous to attempt. When it succeeds, 1t marks the master: but it succeeds so rarely that the great and successful examples of pathos in the worlds literature can be counted al most on ones fingers.
 It is the most dangerous for the writer to atte mpt,. because an attempt at pathos, if unsuccessful, becomes ridiculous. A man may laugh uproariously in public. he may rave, he may go to any extreme of invective. and still escape the sneers or smiles of the beholders. But if he weeps in public he must have such reason for it as will make all other men weep, too.
 Yet, pathos is one of the most vital factors in literature. because it is one of the vital factors in life. Most ot our sorrows and disasters in real life are pa thetie and not tragic. Few of us have real tragedies.
 It is a little remarkable that the two great English writers-the only English writers, in fact-who have dared to deal largely with pathos. and have succeeded at least measurably. are the two con temporaries. Dickens and Thackeray. or these two, Trackeray was the more sue cessful with it Indeed hardly failure can be scored against him, while Dickens failed often. But Thackeray used pathos sparingly, and Dickens used il so lavish ly. so darinsly, that at last he dared to write a whole novel. and long one. whose heroine was to have nothing of the dramatic. nothing of the heroic, noth- ing of the tragic, but to be purely and simply pathetic. This novel was "The old Curiosity shop" and this heroine was Nellie Trent
 If we ask: Was the attempt success ful2r there is an answer. Scarcely one person in a thousand will be able to an- swer the question: ''Who was Nellie Trent?'' But tell them that she was Lit tie Nell" and scarcely one person. in thousand will be found who does not know her. That is a striking answer Critics have assailed Little Nell' for half a century. and no person of good perception and quickened sense can read 'The Old Curiosity shop without see ing the faults which these critics have pointed out SO generously and so gladly But where the critic makes his mistake is in assuming that pathos is meretri- cious, instead of realizing that if is the 1nskilled or insincere use of pathos that is meretricious.
 Charles Dickens dared to attempt the most dangerous thing that a writer could attempt. and he succeeded. There are flaws in the monument-faws that can be seen quite readily without a mi- croscope: but the monument stands.
 4 GRIM and fantastic place was the "A old CurSoeity Shop, dusty and 4 \ dark, and melancholy as are all these places that thrust into the living laughing face of today the relics of those who laughed, and long ago have died.
 Gaunt suits Of mail stood In all the murky corners, empty, but with an air as if ghostly presences stood within them. Carved faces all awry, grinned from walls and ceiling. Everywhere were dust and rust and the work that lives in wood.
 The master of the shop was less of the living day than of the mouldy past in which he dealt. A feeble, aged man, faded alike in body and brain beset by senile fears and morbid fancies-this was old Trent, the grandfather of Little Nell.
 Alone with him, in the midst of this decay and lumber and ugly age, sine  there. She was not yet IA and young even for that age in knowledge of the world, and yet old, very old in strange thoughtfulness and fancies created by loneliness and unchildlike life.
 When still she should have been sunny and merry with careless youth, she was old with care for the old man; for though she lacked any wisdom that would tell her that something was wrong with him, she had come to know that she must guard him.
 Once she had gone singing through the dim rooms; but now she sat in them still as their inanimate occupants, with no heart to startle the echoes with hei voice.
 The old mans very love for her-the one vital thing in his weakened, gropng hfe-was so distorted that he dreamed that she was happy because never in al her existence had she learned to tell single childish sorrow or trouble to . human ear He asked her greedily if sht were gay and merry; and at night he stole to her bed and, trembling, touched her hand.
 
 every night. There was a madness or him; and night after night he staked hi: poor savings at the gaming tables, imag. ming that in one great night he should sweep the board and win a fortune that should make ner rich.
 Many and many a long evening, ant far into the night, she sat alone ant thoughtful waiting his return. From her window she watched the people or the street, or the windows opposite, won dering if those rooms were as Lonesome as her own and if the people there fel it company to see her sitting there al she did just to see them look out, nov and then. SEe was glad when the lamp & lighter came along to light the stree lamps. and sorry. too, for it made it lat and very dull inside. She would ool around the room to that everythin was in it's place and hadn't moved, an then fall to watching the street aga till the shops began to close, and at las even the lights in dwelling houses wen out and nothing was left except her and there a dim light that was to bur all night and told of illness or of deatl
 At last came the time when her grand father had staked and lost not only d lis savinps hut all the money that h