Show Tho Historical Romance I William Dean Hoels who occasionally occa-sionally enjoys as much as anybody the I gentle art of stirring up the lllerarv brethren delivered a speech recently i i in New York in which he attacked the historical novel now so popular These romances are still selling fabulously I far more rapidly in fact than are the works of any of the realities of Mr Kowellas kind The condi Ions hat thfc novelist to confess that when he sees people reading the nine hundred and ninetynlnfti thousand of the latest 1 lat-est romance his heart sinks although he has n sustaining faith that iu due I time the riovellat vho reports hunvui i nature truly V will outsell his present I rivals V The truth seems to be that the prevailing pre-vailing craze for the historical romance ro-mance is a reaction from the long period of Indulgence In realism It is npt at all surprlfilngv The reading public craves somcthT73 new and after n surfeit ot the I ten party1 novel t which Stevensoiii derided It lopk to the flashing tin saberu as a duel Hakel fo water That the taste for books 01 this sort will In turn be followed by a reaction toward the more sold and substantial form of faction is almost a certainty In the period during which realism held sway the taste for a fiction fic-tion which should be rooted in actual ities and n fiithful reflection of life has become fairly established The public may be willing1 to coquette for a time with the newest romances or even with Anthony Hope but it Is I not likely to forget the standards raised unconsciously perhaps to the hooks V which it roads V I will be interesting ten years from now to wee how r many readers are giv ing time and attention to some of the hooks vvhich arc enjoying such phenomenal phe-nomenal success today Chicago Record |