Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1915-11-10
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THE true university of these days
IS a collection of books" was the sage
remark of Thomas Carlyle in his
Heroes and Hero Worship" but the
remarks of Thomas Carlyle were not
remarks that were of temporary appli-
cation only-their scope is not con-
fined to one century or several CEN
turies and few will combat the above
statement in this present day.
The Foolish Virgin, by Thomas
Dixon. a
The American public has wended it's
way theaterward and paid homage to
the man whose well-directed and un-
tagging energy produced that Won
derful creation on the moving picture
screen called ''The Birth of Nation. ="
But Thomas Dixon was the man who
wrote "The Clansman" and it was
there that the seed was planted which
later under the magic touch of David
Griffith grew into such gigantic pro-
portions.
Again we are given the opportunity
of enjoying the fruits of Mr.. Dixon's
mental toll in the The Foolish Vir-
gin," recently published (Appleton's, S,
$1.35 metz. Suppose you fell in love
with a man and married him, and
then found he was a criminal. Would
YOU be crushed to despair or would
you rise and fight for his rehabilita-
ton" Upon this powerful and daring
theme Mr.. Dixon bases a stirring
story. Mary Adams, a village beauty,
leaves home and follows the modern
crowd in it's rush to the great cities.
For five years she succeeds in earning
living, yet she cannot be happy. Her
ideal of life still demands marriage
as its end and her dream of a hero
fades into disillusionment in the face
of the city's great loneliness. At last,
quite unconventionally, she meets the
man of her dreams and rushes into a
marriage with him of whom she really
knows nothing. She discovers to her
horror that her husband has in his
possession a case of jewels, the prop
erty of q man in her boardinghouse
who was robbed and murdered by a
burglar In the deep silence of the
Blue Mountains, the story carries us
through a whirlwind of startling
climaxes with the foolish virgin in her
struggle to decide whether to leave
her husband, to let him crush her, or
to fight to save him. Tt is a virile
book that reveals the depths in the
nature of man and woman when in
spired with real love.
A History of American Literature
Since 1870, by Fred Lewis Pattee,
Professor of English in the Pennsyl-
vania State College.
How few of us are thoroughly
familiar with the history of our own
literature, particularly that part which
is almost contemporary with our own
s-concretely-the period after
the Civil War? America has a liter
airy history of her own now, but it has
only been in recent years that it has
been possible to say this How little is
generally known of the men who have
made this history for u.s. men whose
work has been constructive in giving
TO this country name in the field for
the cultivation of which we were
formerly dependent upon the brains
ard pens of foreignersi
Professor Pattee's book on "The
History of American Literature Since
1870" (The Century Co.. $4,000, gives
a comprehensive review of the more
prominent writers whose work has
stood out above the mass of litera-
ture. good bad. and Indifferent. of
every description, that has flooded the
country of late years. He discusses
Bret Harte and John Hay. who, he
says. studied their surroundings OBJ
jectively for the sake of copy; Joaquin
Miller, who emerged, as did Mark
Twain, from the materials in which
he worked; the restless, fervid John