The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-01-21
MRS. BEDDOW'S PAPER
 BEFORE WRITER'S CLUB
By MRS. J. B. REID

In the following paper, read before
 the Writers club, Mrs. c. F. Beddow very graphically describes the influ- ences of "Idealistic Fiction" through the past ages on the history and even practices of the present, citing the ori-
 gin of custom prevailing today in our courts in placing witnesses under a
 rule, thus evolving the fact that the idealist is truly often the parent of the practical.
 Speaking of realistic writing and it's influence on men and books, my inter pretation of the term is something pie tured in words in such a real, lifelike way that one sees with the author, feels with the author, that, in other words, one is transported mentally to the surroundings and conditions that the author has in mind. It should be simple, free from ostentation and void Of hyperbole.
 For example, we have recorded and
 preserved in the Apocrypha tale writ
 ten some 2000 years ago, in the Hebrew
 language. depicting an act of a woman
 whose intent and purpose was so noble
 and the portrayal of the story is so
 realistic that it was recorded as true
 history and finally became a chapter
 in the sacred Scriptures.
 gro be explicit. Judith, the most
 beautiful woman of Bethulia, who was
 of irreproachabie character and im
 mensely wealthy, had placed a tent
 upon her housetop in which she was
 wont to sit dressed in sackcloth and
 ashes, mourning for her dead husband.
 Hearing that the King, Nebuchadnezzer
 reigning at Ninevah, had declared him.
 self God and offered peace to the Jews only on condition that they fall down and worship him, when the Assyrlan general was just outside the gates of the city of Bethulia, Judith came down from the housetop, clothed herself i'll her finest raiment and proposed to her people that she should meet this gen. eral and conquer him in her own way.
 and on withdrawing with her maids from her own city, she was led by the Assyrian soldiers to Holofernes, who becoming infatuated by her beauty, al- lowed her to remain in his tent; where with Judith piled him with wine, and while he was in drunken sleep shs drew his own sword and cut his head off. Whereupon she immediately re- | turned to her own people with this bloody trophy and they rushed out, be- set the ASSyrians and utterly put them I to flight
 | Now neither Heroditus nor Josephus 1 speak of Judith. Nebuchadnezzer was
 not king of Ninevah and there was no
 such city as Bethulia. The story of
 Judith was without doubt, unauthentic
 and was evidently composed by some He brew author of fine imagination, but 1t
 was so well written so realistic, so pa I triotic that 1t was accepted on Its lace
 value as canonical by the writers of re- | ligious history, and 1t was only when
 they were translating the Bible from the
 Hebrew to the Greek at Alexandria that | the assertion of the Jews themselves that
 Judith was romance. began to take hold
 in the minds of men, and it was after ward recorded as unauthentic.
 'Yet the influence of this story was 1 felt many hundreds of years after by Charlotte Corday, who, when she heard that there was a monster in human form 1 covered with lothsOme sores who spent his time lying in a bath-tub in Paris wreaking his vengeance on mankind py slaughtering them on the Guillotine, laid down her Bible open at the book o1 Judith and took her departure for Paris After reaching that city, she succeeded \ in entering the private apartments o1 Marat on the plea of working for him heard him ordering the execution Of lnno cent people, and becoming satlsIled ol his guilt, she drew a knife from hel cirdle and plunged it in ms neck, killing him instantly thus exemplifying the oit adage that history repeats itself, bu there is nothing in the superstition-his
 tory only repeats itself because of th' realistic writing of one age influencint another
 Again we find from the Apocrypha thu story of Susanna throwlnn rne gieam O it's influence like a searchlight down tn ages, for in the courts of our town, ant all other towns today, when a lawye calls for witnesses to be put under tn rule he is only speaking from the mout of the young man Daniel across tn space of 20O0 years when he said or tn two elders who had sworn falsely O Susanna, Put these two aside one frop the other and will examine them, an they did so, and Daniel, asking eac separately and away from each othei what kind of tree he saw Susanna undei one said under a mastic tree and whe the other was examined he said under
 home tree. Thus when the first time the world witness was put under "th