Arizona republican., 1920-05-24
By Frederic J. Haskin


 WASHINGTON, D. C.. May 2t.- The death of William Dean Towels ends a life that ought keenly to ln- terest every American. MT. Howells lived through a large part of the American history Think of man still a wild country. who knew Ralph Waldo Emerson in his prime, and who lived through the World War!
 He witnessed the making of na- tion. He saw it broken in civil war and made whole again. He saw II grow from a scantiIy peopled wilder ness into one of the richest states in the world, yielding power that every corner of the word has felt.
 The spectacle of material develop ment that Mir Howells saw was stu pendous. But he was not much inter Sested in material growth. He was one of those very few Americans in each generation who stand back from the e-counter. Instead of rushing Tn to get his share of the wealth which the usty young country was creating, he spent his energies in an effort to n terpret that young country to itself. He added his iot to it's intellectual growth, while nearly all others were merely making money. He tried 10 make our national brain grow fast enough to keep up with our national body In seventy volumes of novels 8, Of criticism, and of travel books. he set fCrth his vision of America, and his juGgn ent of what was gooi and baS ih it and above all. he tried to teach his e Csuutryme,l 10 lock ct lite directly aCd not thr ugh rosy spSctacses Of sentiment illusion and superstition. He was perhaps the first American novelist to do this much needed thing. His preachment has been carried much farther now by others. Beside the work of younger novelists of real merit, such as Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson James Branch Cabeili Charles G. Norris and Villa Seibert Gather, the stories of Mir. HoWeiis seem timid and conventional. Yet they are sincere and true as far ;.s they go. Mir. Howells may be bit .old- fashioned now, but he was literary radical in his day. He foaght the good fight with a skill that any writer might envy. And in the Rise of Stias Lapham.'' he wrote one of the greatest American novels.
 The old New England
 Mr. Howells began his career just as the great days of Boston as an intel IectlIal center, and of what might be called re-industrial America, were drawing to a close. In the old New culture. There was no big business then, except the romantic one or marine commerce in sailing ships. The old American stock still dominated New England. and so did the ldeais that had grown out of the revolution and the framing of the Constitution. That old New England produced Elmer son, a world philosopher, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. a novelist of the higness rank whom all Europe admired, and Thoreau, queer, half-defeated genius who has nevertheless been recognized as a great man by all the world.
 Then came in rapid succession the opening of the West. the Civil war inc factory system and the hordes ot ] imrnigrants The old New England was swamped in the rush of millions l of men mad for money Boston, as i the intellectual capital of America, de 1 clined and fell. It degenerated into i what one of it's inhabitants has de- i seribed as a low brow town with l highbrow reputation" The publishing 1 business moved to New York.
 l As always when men are makine much money. +he intellectual life oi ] the nation declined. The old New Eng ! flanders may have been narrow minded l in some ways. but they took their in. 1 teIlectual life seriously and valued 1 their gifted men Tn this mad rusf of money making which followed the i Civil war. there grew up the present American attitude toward literature which is that it is a thing to cheer one