Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1928-09-14

The novels of Alexandra Dumas
| charm because they possess certain
elation of spirit and narrative skill
lacking in other works. Especially does
, this French author excel in the hand
| ling of conversation.
| Charles Dickens wins the adult reader
by qualities, if not the reverse. quite
diverse. He, too, was a full-bloodee
man of sanguine temperament, which
quality manifests itself in his stories
but he had touch of melancholy
which grew with the years.
Instead of swashbucklers for heroes
| he chose rather men who had to fight
against certain circumstances, chiefly
those included in the human equation
His novels were always tracts against
some condition of human society not tt
his liking.
His novels, dull to some but un.
euualed of their kind to most readers
make up for their lack of French
sparkle by certain British stolidness
almost amounting to the traditional
German thoroughness.
| His stories, his plots, his characters
are thoroughly worked out, above every
| thing else. Words piled on words fol
pages upon pages succeed in giving a
sense of realism which no other method
attainS
Minute description is the secret Of
| his power. He looks at a character as
real human beings look ct other human
| beings. The eyes take in everything
although often enough the observer is
not aware of 1t.
When one looks at another he sees
his eyes, his ears, his nose his clothes
| the buttons thereon, etc. He may not
be able to tell later what he saw, but
the point is that he saw 1t.
Dickens merely describes what most
eyes see. He does In words the same
complete job of seeing that the eyes dc
ordinarily when looking at some strange
person.
Every novel is a strange land to every
new reader. This is peculiarly true oil
the works of Charles Dickens. When
one reads story of his he is entering
strange country in which every char
acter is new and different--new because
there is almost as much Dickens in
them as there is life, and different be-
cause they are not exactly like any
human beings the reader has ever
known.
This combination results in the quail
ity which some critics have\ called carl
caturization. not being willing to admit
that an author may create whole new
world of his own. In this particular
case this world is known as the world
of Dickens. There are people in the
world something like Quilp, but not
precisely like him. There are Peck
shifts and Capt. Cuttles in a measure
but never such actualities.
Dickens made them different because
he knew that the novel possesses both
length and breadth and thickness, in
contradistinction to the short tale
which lacks the latter dimension, and
almost the former, which the story
makes up for in some measure by COM
pleteness.
Dickens knew with the sureness OF
the master that in the work which he
could do the permissible quality of ex-
aggeration might be worked overtime
Accordingly, he lost no time about It,
but gave the world gallery of pictures
at once strange, quaint, alive-above
all, new.
He could do this because he saw with
the minuteness of a reporters eye and
possessed that one-tenth more ability
which allowed him to see people that
existed only in his minds vision with
more completeness than most of us see
real people.
He tells us just how many buttons
are down the coat front of character
Modern writer's, especially those of the
more ultra school, Scorn this meticulous
description, declaring that the inner
feelings of characters, their psychology
is their meat. No doubt they are right
since they do not seem to possess the
ability of Dickens to make minute char
acterizations interesting.
This is hurry-up age, and If a
reader will not do Dickens the Justice tc