Show AMONG THE 4 nuns New Reminiscence of Robert Louis Stevenson 4 HIS ADVICE TO A SCOT 1 A LATTER WAD TO BECOME A SIONAY 4 Present Eepresentatives In Literature of a Metaphysical Pamily and of a Political Family Brooks Adams Ad-ams Voyage of Observation t West Indies 4 Special Correspondence New York Jan 41 was talking the other aay with Mr M Gifford White whO has the double distinction haying hay-ing beena schoolfellow of Mr RUdyard Kipling at the English boys school the United Service college of which Mr Kipling is now writing a series of stories and of having known very wel Robert Luis Stevenson and all his family He told me a number of interesting inter-esting and new things abut Stevenson and one of these I will venture to repeat re-peat he story was told to Mr White by Stevenson himself in San Francisco in December 1897 Like most other famous people Stevenson Stev-enson was afflicted with a tide of letters from complete strangers soliciting counsel and sometimes money Even in so far off a quarter of the world as Samoa he could not secure immunity every mail brought appeals of one sort of another from people who had upon him not the least shadow of a claim One day there came r latter under a Scotch postmark ir which the writer presented himself as a young man who had had an irresistible call to become a missionary among the heathen of the Pacific islands He had he said heard of Mr Stevenson as a man of some consequence in those parts and he therefore addressed him in the hope of deriving information that would be of service to him in his propect He desired de-sired especially to know if Samoa itself it-self was a promising field for missionary mission-ary laborif the climate was fairly healthful and the natives reasonably his harmless and in case it answered requirements in these respects would i he desired further to know afford the missionary an opportunity to support sup-port himself in part at least by the pursuit of poultry farming Fnally with fine condescension he expreiset himself as willing to sail for Samoa and take up the work of Its regeneration regenera-tion if only Mr Stevenson would promptly forward to him a sum of money sufficient to pay his passage out Letters of this general fir < wera much too frequent to be as a rule replied re-plied to but out of deference to the special quaintness of this one an exception was made in its favor An answer was promptly sent to the following fol-lowing effect That Mr Stevenson begged to acknowledge the receipt of the unknown correspondents lete and in reply desired to state that wh ie fr tunately all the savages on his isand diligently said their prayers mrrrim and night unfortunately poultry had of late became a serious drug in the market Still there was an island about a thousand miles distant which might be an excellent field for a combination of missionary and poultry pursuits where the natives were all cannibals the climate of a most deadly character and where myriads of mosquitos and other poisonous insects swarmed in the air To that island Mr Stevenson would willingly pay the young mans passage upon receipt of a letter intimating that he was ready to start Strange as it may seem to this generous gen-erous proposal there came no response < ftjL The Atlantic Monthly I se ani r nounces a series of papers by Professor William James on psychological and metaphysical subjects that it prom t laos shall be popular reading Professor Profes-sor James has already in various essays es-says proved his ability to fulfill such a promise and thus while his brother Henry James was writing in the department de-partment that we commonly account light literature with a complexity that gave even skillful reader a hard task In following him Professor James in a department where we rather look for nothing but subtlety and obscurity wrote so that even the ordinary reader accompanied him without the least difficulty Psychological refinement is t t hereditary with both their father Henry James gave his life to the meditation f med-itation and exposition of mental problems prob-lems but in some respects the novelist I seems t be the truer son than the psychologist Professor James is a year older than Henry and was educated t f for a physician as Henry was educated for a lawyer In his youth he passed much time in Europe a Henry did also but since coming to manhood he has resided rather constantly at home Since 1S80 he has been a professor of F philosophy in Harvard college Prior I to that for several years he was a professor of physiology in the Harvard i medical school II I I The James heredity suggests the I Adams heredity Indeed there is never any talk of families in this country that we dont in the course of i come around theAdams Mr Brooks Adams in the pursuit of his social and economical eco-nomical studies set off a few days ag for the West Indies He desires to study v the new conditions there with his own eyes What specially interests him now reyes recent writings in the magazines show is the profound struggle between the leading civilized nations of the world for commercial supremacy He studies the subject not only by reading all the literature that bears upon i but by making long journeys and seeing see-ing countries and talking with people And this is the form in hlch the public spirit and political interest that made John Adams an American patriot and the second president or the United States reappears in the youngest of his great grandsons There are four of these great grandsons grandsons of the elder John Quincy Adams sons of I the elder Charles Francis Adams and r they have all given some clear token of their possession of this bias Three L at least of the four are lawyers by education and somewhat by practice The eldest of the four now a man of about 65 and bearing the name of the grandfather John Quincy had in years past a good deal prominence and influence in-fluence a a politician The second a t year or two younger who bears the fathers name Charles Francis is the i wel known authority on the economics I econom-ics of railroads particularly in their I relation to society and the state The J third a man now approaching 60 Is Henry Adams who ha written the authoritative au-thoritative history of the United States for the period of 1S011S17 Brooks Is considerably younger than either of the others being now about 50 He ha his home at the ancient seat of the Adamses Quincy Mass President John Adams great grandfather received ceived a grant of forty acres of land J i < L1 there in 1636 and Charles Francis and 1 I John Quincy live there or in Boston 1 which is not far off but Henry lives In Washington I made mention a few weeks ago of ik some forthcoming stories of political i life by a new writer Dr Walter Barr In the thirtyeight years of his life he F has had a variety and plcturesqueness i of experience thatought to provide material r ma-terial for any number of good stories t He is a native of Ohio but grew up in t the lower point of Illinois known a Egypt He left college a year or two before graduation In order to take 1 a newspaper position that had been oft of-t fered to him unsolicited After a time I he took up the study of medicine and on completing his course at the Jefferson Jeffer-son medical college Philadelphia he returned to Illinois to be married a he himself told me to practice medicine medi-cine half heartedly and to indulge a natural taste for politics In 1890 the offer of a chair In a medical college took him to Keokuk la where he still resides though for an interval of two years he was again resident in Illinois spending much of his time a he expresses presses Jt at Springfield with some of the old political friends in a campaign which came very near being a success as all campaigns do Latterly Dr Barr ha been again more or less at en agan the editors desk and he ha delivered some courses of popular lectures 1 asked cours him about his story writing His answer was interesting and characteristic character-istic Having done about everything in the way of writing said he from a work on idiosyncrasy and drugs to police court reporting except writing a story I felt an itching to complete the chain When I wag 16 I wrote astor a-stor which no one else ever saw but aid from this I had never attempted fiction At odd hours for a month I Wrote out a story founded on fact about a lobbyist I once knew and put Jt away to grow cold enough for me to make an estimate of its value After several months I took it out and showed it to a friend who was good enough to be pleased with it and urged me to submit it to one of the magazines maga-zines I did so and it had the good fortune to be accepted at once Later other stories were written about the same people and together they make which Is likely a connected series lkely after the magazine publication to appear ap-pear in a book There are still a few surviving popular popu-lar authors of full years who havent published their personal reminiscences The statement may be hard to believe but it is true nevertheless For one there is Donald G Mitchell Ik Mar past 70 vel He is now some years pat and Dream Life and Reveries of a Bachelor still keep him in a high esteem with the general reading public as ever but he still hasnt begun to write of the men and things I have known Then there is Frank R Stockton Stock-ton True he is more than ten years younger but he is quite old enough to have already been about this sort of thing if he cared to be Mr Howells about it who is yet younger has been quite assiduously now for some years Mrs Southviorth has reached SO without with-out attempting it but then with her gift of invention it would probably have been an insufferable bore to write pf real persons and things Richard Henry Stoddard ha held resolutely off up to 73 though he has probably more tho11 material for a book of reminiscences than almost any other living American author Mark Twain Charles Dudley Warner and Thomas Bailey Aldrich are all of the eligible age though still like Mr Stockton quite young enoughand as yet they disclose no disposition to take advantage of it I dare say there tae other abstainers no less notable but I may not stop now to recall thei I names It is a rather curious fact that with th I close trade relations now subsist tre ing between the publishers of America and the publishers of England and with the eagerness of publishers on both sides to secure and make the most of popular books the novel that for two months past has been the literary sensation of England and which is there pronounced the most striking novel of the year 1S9S is not published In this country and thus far is not to be had in the bookstores here This Is The Open Question by an author who signs C E Raimond The curiousness curious-ness is emphasized by the further fact that i is a story of American life C E Raimond had made previous appearances ap-pearances in England beginning with 3 novel entitled George Mandevilles Husband published in 1894 but none of these had raised expectation of quite so important a performance a The Open Question is pronounced to be and until that appeared there was no special curiosity shown a to the person per-son for whom the name of C E Rai mond stood Since then however until un-til the matter was set at rest a fort ti that night ago by the announcement I CE Raimond was the pen name of Elizabeth Robbins the actress there was the liveliest guessing and gossiping gossip-ing about itC E aimond va a real name C E aimond was a man C E Raimond was a woman all of which only brings into fuller perspective what an exceptional opportunity the American Ameri-can publishers have missed pUblshers ca II E C MARTIN |