| Show I iIIIERARY GOSSIIP Mr Booker T Washington Is one of the most successful authors of the day if ve may Judge from tiie fact that ails book Dp from Slavery Is In Its twentyfifth thousand t C Albert Fairbanks of Worcester Mass who has been blind for tnlrty three years or since he was 2 years old has published a novel cntitlril Helena or the Bond of Houe It was written by the Urallle system of pinpricks and then translated to a friend whose copy was the manuscript used by the publishers George S Koutwoll tolls In his re rrnlly published 1 book of reminiscences that he was present at an Interview ibctween G j enloe Hooker and Charles Sunnier to whom Hooker applied to assist him In obtaining a Massachusetts Massachu-setts regiment on the plea that he was n native of that State In the course of the conversation Hooker said that Jf he could obtain a regiment he would come to the command of the army and take Richmond This was In May 3SG1 Hooker had then recently arrived ar-rived from California and his appearance appear-ance indicated poverty Ills dress was worn anti his apparel was that of a decayed man of the world THE LOWER BOUGH Rest on the lower bough Whoso w hugs arc frail Nor seek tho riotous toes hashed by tho gale Let not ambition tomtit To flutter whore Tho eagles lion wing Man scarcely dare All native to the award And leafy ehndo Thy slender treble fills The quiet elude Hut hi the upper gale Thy little sound Were like a roseleYif reft Alit blown around > Or In the solitude Of height ou height The Hckorlnz of a spark Within the light iC 13 Palleii quoted In tho Philadelphia Times A unique copy of the first edition of Dr Isaac Watts Horace Lyrlcac dated 170G has Just been placed on i sale In London It has several MS alterations al-terations and on the 13 leaf Is this autograph letter written by Watts to his friend the Hcv Samuel Say Dear Sir Accept of this llrst labor of the press this vcnlrous Essay of Pocsie In so Nice and censorious an Age forgive as you read peruse as a friend design to be pleased ami not to Judge And If you can without too much abuse of your Judgment recommend recom-mend it to the world This has been erased You will help to free me from some obligations under which je Book eeller has put ye Timorous Author Your friend I WATTS On the first edition of Watts Divine Di-vine Songs for Children only one copy Is known to exist It Is Inscribed by the author as presented to Elizabeth Abney This also has been for sale recently e aIn a-In a volume of short stories by the late Sir Walter Ucsont which has recently re-cently been published there is one entitled en-titled The Sky Kocket It which treats of the kind of novel l which makes an enormous popular success despite the absence of obvious merit In It The phenomenon Is certainly puzzling and much more than a short story might be written about It In fact a student might take it as a theme for a whole volume and mako many suggestive guesses as to Its secret One think seems tolerably certain that however defective one of these literary rockets may be however open to the severest criticism at a dozen point there is always al-ways something In Ihe I book the appeal of which Is as legitimate as It Is 1 successful suc-cessful That is to say a novelist with a very mediocre mind may nevertheless possess the narrative gift that gift which is by Itself one of the most potent In the world Again he may while telling the story with the greatest difficulty dif-ficulty as clumsily indeed as It Is possibly pos-sibly for a human being to do anything he genuinely Inventive It has been slated by an experienced publisher that not all the advertising that thousands of dollars could buy will serve to run up the circulation of a book which is totally without some gzaln of Intrinsic vitality This is not to say that the trashy novelist IP Justified of his sins It Is only to enforce the point that his FUCCCSS while mysterious enough Is not entirely so but can be to sonic slight extent rationally explained New York World V We may not look for anything more from the the pen of the author of John Inglesant = and of The Little School 7nastcr Mark Mr Shorthouac who Is not yet 70 years of age linn becomo a confirmed Invalid Literature has been Ills recreation while his work In life has been the manufacture of sulphuric acid He has written live novels various va-rious short stories and divers critical papers but most readers know him as the author of John Inglesant only oil Miss Rhoda BroiiKhton who in the matter of novels Is less Industrious than of yore will bring out a new book this autumn The tit lex thereof la La I viola Miss Broughton by the way is not an English woman but a Welshwoman Welsh-woman v e e It has leaked out that Laurence Ilousman a literary man of London Is 1 the author of An Englishwomans Love Letters The i vexed question as to why the Inhabitants of Scotland prefer the use of the adjective Scottish to Scotch Is thus answered by a Scot The reason rea-son is that Scottish Is the right and Scolcn 1whlch la 1 a pure Anglicism is wrong NEWSPAPERS AS NOVELS In Mr William L Aldens London letter dated July 20 1002 among other things I find tile following M Jules Verne e e has recently re-cently expressed e the opin ion that m the course of fifty or a hundred yjjars there will be no more novels M Verne thinks that the newspaper news-paper will have killed the novel People Peo-ple will road nothing but newspapers and files of newspapers will take the place of formal histories This opinion seems to be based on the fact that newspapers arc more read at present than they < were some years ago but au the same thing cut be said 1 of novels M Vornos argument that the newspaper news-paper will drive UK novel 1 out of cx IstMioe Jones something of Its force The very fact that newspapers describe everything that t lakes place will make ihr I jiovri l more than ever a necessity 1 Men I will Insist upon having some form of llteraluro that will temporarily take them out of the world of fact Fancy a world in which there should he noth ing to read but newspapers It would he worse than a world with nothing to eat 1 except pate de fols grits It is my opinion that the newspapers will kill the novels because they are greater novels than the novels themselves them-selves Edmund < Uurko in his work On the Sublime and Beautiful Hays The first and the simplest emotfon which we discover In the human mind is curiosity tty curiosity I moan whatever what-ever pleasure too take in novelty We sf children pereptually running from place to pluco to hunt out jjomolhing new they catch with great cagcrmns nml with very little choice at whatever what-ever comes icfonj them their eaten tion IK 1 ended by everything because everything has In that stage of life tho charm of novelty to recommend It But as those things which engage us merely by their novelty cannot attach at-tach UB for any length of time curiosity cu-riosity IR the most superficial of all the affections It changes its object perpetually It has an appetite which lu very sharp but very easily satisfied satis-fied Every time the newspapers come out they have something new something novel and something to exclto our curiosity cu-riosity or we think they have ami vc want to sec what it Is But the deuce take the printed matter Give UH bulk and Weight something that we am hold ou land heft so we can make sine that we have our moneys worth Then the novel will go like William J Pryans Commoner until It Is found to be a very unconunoner James Bar rett in Philadelphia Times S Another volume of verse by Mr Tames Whllcomb Riley Is on the way The Book of Joyous Children he calls It BARRED HP called her a poem and divine So fair nha seemed and sweet He loved to scan each perfect lino And raved about her feet To meet her was his only Joy Alan his mopes were slim For soon he found to bin annoy She waa averse to him Dick LawS Law-S Lord Salisbury comes honestly by his literary talents His father wan an eccentric ec-centric character who had a writing mania among others Abraham Hayward Hay-ward records that tho elder Marquis used to secrete a good deal of poetical matter His method of securing a circulation cir-culation Was certainly original This way was by slipping printed copies of his verses Into the greatcoat pockets of the visitors at Hatfield and by himself him-self throwing them all Into the market carts It Is rumored In England that one of the chief reasons for Lord Salls burys recent retirement was his desire to leave a permanent record of his impressions im-pressions of Queen Victoria Bismarck Gladstone Lord Eeaconsfleld and other I notables The Venetian Campanile of St Marks Is i dead and It I Is a great grief to me who have known and loved It for more years than I care to mention The Campanile was a prolific author Allover All-over Venice and all over the mainland that was once Venetian are towers built after the pattern of St Marks Xono of them are quite worthy of their i Illustrious progenitor I > but there are two or three on the mainland near to Venice which run the original very close Possibly the Campanile of St Marks has had a wider Influence upon church towers than has any other tower tow-er It deserves to rank among the great authors of all time And now alas It is dead The theory that the fall of the tower Is I due to the dredging of the port Is nonsense to any one who knows Venice The cause of the disaster Is easily found The Campanile like all Venetian Vene-tian buildings was built on wooden lies driven Into the mud These piles h the case of Campanile lasted nearly 1000 years and then some of them gave way and the tower sank The same fate must Inevitably overtake the other great buildings of Venice It is only a question of time when St Marks shares the fate of Campanile Therefore the sooner any one who has not seen Venice remedies that unpardonable omission the t better AldcnH London Letter In Philadelphia Times S e A BIRDS ELEGY He was tho first to welcome Spring Adventurous ho canto To wake tho dreaming buds and sing The crocus Into flame Ho loved the morning and tho dew lie loved tho sun and rain Ho fashioned lyrics 1 as he Hew With love for their refrain Poet of vines and blossoms he Beloved of them alit Tho timid leaves upon tho tree Grew hold at his glad call He sang the rapture of the hills And from tho starry height He brought the melody that fills Tine meadows with delight t And now behold him dead alanl Where Inc made Joy GO long A bit of blue amid tho grass A tiny broken song Frank Demister Sherman In Scrlbncra Magazine 5 o AN INDIAN SHAKESPEARE The translation of the Hindu drama Sukimtala by the poet Kalldnsi has made something of a stir in London Lon-don a triumph for popular cosmopolitanism cosmo-politanism says the Athenaeum According Ac-cording to the Academy this most classic of Hindu dramas has universal univer-sal features enough to make It appeal to those who can overcome the strangeness strange-ness of the atmosphere the names the customs and the mythology The names and mythology are not stranger than those of the Celtic revival while the present Interest In things Hindu should give It a lift Kalidasa has notor course escaped the title of the Indian Shakespeare It was predestined predes-tined ami you only sigh gently when you see it awaiting you on the title page l of this volume Equally of course beyond the tact that he is the dramatist of India he has no Ilkenes to Shakespeare There Is very little action and compared even wllh those playo of Shakespeare to which It comes nearest Sakuntala is manifestly mani-festly Inferior as regards Incllvidualiza tion of character The Tempest reeks with character comparatively A Midsummer Mid-summer Nights Dream with Bottom and his company cut out would he closest to its poetic generalization ort or-t > pes Yet In Its poeticdramatic convention con-vention it shows singular affinity to the Elizabethan drama as does the Sanskrit Sans-krit drama In general It Is a simple story King Dushyan ta hunting In the forest meets a girl bred up In a community of hermits the adopted daughter oC hone head Cnn na she Is But uhe was really the offspring off-spring of a king and a divine nymph They fall In love and he promises to return for her In three days But Sa kuntala absorbed In thought of him neglects a man of tremendous piety who claims hospitality nnd tine saint promptly curses her Her husband shall forget her as If she had never met him Ho is prevailed upon to mitigate the curse by adding thaUlhu king shall regain re-gain hill memory at sight of her ring The curse works Dushyanta does not return for her and when she sets out to claim her position as his wife he denies her The ring has clipped from her finger when she was washing and she goes out weeping to be caught up by her mother and carried to the moun tain of the god Casyapa The ring la found In a fish and at sight of it Dushyanta regains iris memory and in inconsolable But the god Indra demands de-mands his aid against a demon race Returning victorious from the abode of Indra lie I heavenly car drops him at Casyapa mountain where he finds Sa kuntula and the boy to whom sine has given birth All ends happily will the bontMllfllon of the divine Casyapa and hls wife Nothing could he less dramatic dra-matic from our standpoint The charm lies In the love scenes and the Idyllic pictures of a simple forest life among innocent girls The nature of It penetrates nil strangeness of alien life and KOCH straight to the general heart It in a Hindu Perldital wooed hIt h-It Hindu Pomoo Kulldasa makes real even mythology marvel l He has wit hal h-al an Imagery of abounding fancy though without the Imaginative depth of the grratest western Imagery With such qualities even In a defective garb of English prose Kallduiia can Impress the reader while the exquisite simplicity sim-plicity of the idyll the fini naturalism I of every scene would proclaim him a master In any literature |
