Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-05-10

There are so many enemies" and
villains" spoken of in childhood'S
stories that one sometimes wonders
what becomes of them when a reader
| grows up.
The old narrational necessity, the OBJ
| stacle, was eXemplif1ed in many char
| acter whose one sole duty, as We re-
member it, was to harass, hamper and
| in other ways work against the hero.
This sort of thing was exceptionally
well done in some of the old nickel
novels" sometimes called dime novels,
although they only cost 5 cents.
The hero always had an enemy. and
this fellow was traditional. No matter
what the hero did. from winning the
hand of beautiful maiden to knock
ing home run in the ninth inning, his
faithful enemy was right there to butt
in.
The story always worked up to a
! point where this enemy fellow seemed
about to triumph. Mary, Frank
sweetheart, felt her sentiments chang
ing; she believed she had liked Fred,
the enemy, all the time but had not
known it.
When a game of base ball was in
progress, Frank was about ready TO
slam out a triple, which, would nave
swept the bases. tying the score, but
Fred managed to slyly throw a bit OF
dust in his eyes at the crucial moment,
making him miss the ball by mile.
In the last chapter. however (Which
also was the last inning, of coursel,
Frank won the beautiful Mary Tor ms
own. and also knocked a home run
maybe it was the four-bagger which
caused Mary to change back again.
X x
It seemed in those days that no boy
it1
some sort of villain pursuing him. Out
of this situation came the famous
phrase. "And the villain still pursued
her" The raw stuff of the melodramas
was transferred with a little more ar
tiStry to the pages of books.
Even the Henty books, beloved OF
their generation, were Sprinkled with
many obstacles in the way OF enemies
and villains, not only national enemies
and villains, but also personal ones VINO
were every whit as interesting to the
readers.
Small boys got into the habit of
thinking that life was necessarily like
that, so many of them were rather
mildly surprised, on growing to mans
estate, to discover that life did not
necessarily mean enemies in the meanly
vindictive sense.
There will always be obstacles. of
course. but there is no dire necessity
for enemies in the worst sense of the
word One discovers in adult life that
the worst his average garden variety
of enemy" does is to indulge in petty
mischief.
The Villains" the average man runs
into are sorry sort of villains, after
ALL Not one of them would cut
pretty figure on stage. Scarcely a
one would do to figure in the pages
of romance.
Can yonder surly Office mate. who
makes business of being offended over
nothing. can he be dignified by being
called an enemy?
It is to laugh.
Where are the villains" of yester-
year? Surely that ugly fellow with the
perpetual sneer is not entitled to be
labeled villain"
No, the label would be much too
good for him. He has no large curling
mustache, he does not smoke big
cigars cooked at an angle. and he has
no cold and glittering eye. Such mean
ness as he possesses is of petty va
riety, not in the grand manner. He
simply needs to reform his diet to be
q pretty decent fellow.