New-York tribune., 1919-11-29
and Fiction Year in Brief Review

nearly 1OrgOtten tune
! My father and mother sucbscrbed
for "Harper's Young People" "St. Mich
olas," Golden Days" "The Youths
Companion" and other periodicals.
Every Christmas we received sets of
Oliver Optic, Harry Castemon, Ho-
ratio Algcr and the like, and good
many fairy stories Grimm's, Ander-
sens and and others: We read .r1 tom Saw
and the Pauper," "Little Lord Fauntlc-
roy,' Donald and Dorothy" Little
Women Little Men" and the various
| editions of "Chatterbox" with rapture.
y never heard of Henty till I had
grown up and l never read Lewis Car
roll till was in college
Scottish Chiefs" and "Ivanhoe" we're
greatly enjoyed, but l got mred COM
pletely in "Rob Boy don't know how
old | was when | went mad over Ga
boriau's "File No. 49," but I was still
very young.
liked biography and history prema-
was called "History" as q nickname,
though l didn't really deserve it, and |
went through an intensive course in
dime novels-which we called "nickel
libraries" and of which we could not
buy, borrow or steal enough. "Old
Cap Collier" was beloved hero, and
SO was "Nick Carter" from whose
gifted author | was proud to receive
a letter of praise recently. Another
nickel hero whose memory haunts me
still was "Thc Kid Glove Miner" He
always wore kid gloves. and we boys
read numberless books about the mys-
.cry. He had been branded on the
hands with The word ",hief.' though
he was innocent Of the crime. and
spent several novels tracing the real
criminal and acqultting himself.
/ have feeling that these stories
were really we'll written and that their
author was Captain lngraham. I
wish could find them again.
Stories BY James OTIS gripped my
young heart, one of them concerning
boy who ran away with circus; an
other about boy VINO got whipped
BY another and went into a severe
course of training TO prepare for re
venGe. Physical culture was not a
household word at that time, and few
things have since struck me as moro
heroic than the tremendous courage
the young hero showed in giving up the
eating of pie. 1t is q heroism can
only occasionally rise to.
J. T. Trowbridge we liked, ard his
book "Cudjo's Cave" made a profound
impression on me. l have always
wanted to read it again TO see if it
still holds
There was a public library in Keo-
kuk, where / spent my bcyhood, and I
usually read book day. l still
remember my bitter feeling of exile
when | was once forbidden to draw
a new book out in the evening after
having finished one in an afternoon.
\ n,,I1 hn IL ~,
to recall the catalogue Of these books
l usually kept several continued
stories going at once through my tor
azines with feverish mpatience All
the while was dclving into the ma
turer works on the home shelves.
Poetry | did not care much to read,
though | wrote a great amount of un-
usually puerilc puerlity in rhyme, and
browsed about in Bryants compilation
and another called "a Thousand and
One Gems of English Verse"
When I was fourteen 1 heard a
lecture by Professor Frost, of Oberln.
1t presented, the poetic idea in such
read all of Milton right through, al
most all of Tennyson and of Shake
speare, and many another as fast as |
could gobble it down. But at four
teen, of course, boy is already an
old man.
In the school hours of my childhood
there was some compulsory reading of
stories by such American classics as
Washington Irving and Nathaniel Haw-
thorne, and certain amount of short
verse. And then there were the news
papers, which carried usually con-
tinued story and much boiler plate in
formation.
Reading. indeed, played very large
part in my boyhood. 1t was as ram
bling. reckless and tireless as our
athletic life, which was very busy there
on the Mississippi River, with so much
swimming and skating to get done and
so much exploration of wild forests
and swamps to be accomplished when
our baseball teams could spare our
services.
1t was this life that | put in my first
serials, the Lakerm Athletic Club
stories published in "St Nicholas" !"
and later in book form as my first
published volumes. My later serials
and volumes have departed somewhat
from these themes, but | am still q
child mentally, alas, and find that my
contemporaries also are still as foolish
and no more earnest than we were
then.
1HOeeu, considering the immense HOOD
of occult books now being published,
the grown-ups Of to-day would seem
to be good deal greener IN the eye
than most Of us were then We loved
fairy stories, but we did not believe
them. We loved spooky stories and
were afraid Of spooks; but we did not
believe in them. We adored imagina-
ton, but we regarded its produce with
hilarious skepticism, and when we v:cre
asked to take it for real, we had a
wise way of pulling down lower
eyelid and asking See any green
there?"
Among my most terrific memories
arc the ghosts that haunted Richard
III and the witches that haunted Mac
beth. These were the first two plays
saw after "Unce Toms Cabin" and
| was about ten years old. Tom Keene
played Richard and Macbeth, and his
ghosts and witches scared me almost
under the seat. But l knew that they
were actors and doubtless pretty bad
ones.
The most important change OBJ
serve in the reading Of children nova
days is the tendency to avoid the hor-
rible fairy stories Of cannibaistic ma
ture. We reveled in them then, but
they make my blood run cold when
| try to read one of them to a child to-
day. 1t is a wholesome change
m1nu'1