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Show Bm ill - WITH PEOPLE WHO WRITE. Hi: HH Jules Verne has prophesied the decline of fic- HP 1 j tion. Accoiding to the librarian's reports the aver- Hg' age reader declines everything else nowadays. KB j ' The late Paul Blouet, better known by his pen Hr ' ! name of Max O'Rell, had the unusual fortune to HB i ! be mourned by the peoples of whom he made BBs 1 sport. He laughed at English foibles with Ameri- HH 1 i cans, at American Incongruities with the Brlt- Hbi I , ons; at both with his own countrymen. But it HB I was laughter without malice and his loss is felt Hv I on both sides of the Atlantic. HL The first unabridged dictoionary in .raised Eb print has just been completed at the Maryland H I ! School for the Blind in Baltimore. K f ' ' This month's Bookman records four books as k 3 ' worthy of notice: Mrs. Oarlyle's "Letters"; Vil- HEJ It v 'ar's "Iinvasions of Italy"; Seamus McManus' "A Hj l! j M Lad of the O' Friels," and Bacheller's "Darrel of Hf p 'S the Blessed Isles" the latter being deemed not- Bp V f ably bad. Bf Li- In sPlte of the fa(Jt that editors have long since H 1 i declared dialect a drug on the market, J. J. Bell H; 111 s making a little fortune out of "Wee McGi egor," Hff I t which is practically all dialect. The book was Hf I i ' j first published in England at the author's ex- H it pense. It is the story of a little Scotch boy and Hl I ' f has neither plot nor sequence of events, but is H I i ! full of simple, kindly human nature. Bj I I Blackwood's Magazine (Edinburgh) contains H f j an anonymous disparagement of Emerson that H J ' is likely to stir up a hornet's nest in this coun- Kj i " J try. Our well-beloved sage is described as an I arch pedant, as provincial, lacking in the sense i of literary fitness, destitute of originality, an- mg( , , archie in life and letters, etc., through several Hj h ' pages of bitter depreciation. H 1 ijj ; "English Fogy ism" is dished up by Francis H : Grlerson in the "Critic." He pays his respects to Hj ; new and old literary conceit and conceits indis- Hj I jr : criminately, and sums up the situation caustically B ' ' saying: "There are three Pantheons in our day; K ,' one for the old fogies who Ignore the new, one K 'J for the young fogies who ignore the old, and one K , il for the new Mammon which accepts eveiything Kf ' that will 'decorate the barracks.' " Hj ! James Lane Allen's new novel "The Mettle ot B the Pasture," will be out by July 1st. H , i Miss Anne Hobson, sister of Captain Rich- H j mond Pearson Hobson, will publish soon a novel H j ' entitled "In Old Alabama," dealing with Southern V life in the small town. B "The Lamp" has a most interesting article on B i i I "Tho Chances for Americans in English Journal- B I j j ism," which details at some length the conserva- B I tive methods of the English newsgetters. The H I writer, Mr. J. M. Bulloch, asserts that the older H f ! London dailies practically edit themselves; that H 1 1 i the editor's function is to write political leaders, H 1 1 i Wft p and that with the paper as a whole he concerns H j v W " himself but little. H ' ; : . It is a leap from tho environment of "Chimmle H ' j Fadden" to the wastes of the Sierra Nevada H mountains but Edward W. Townsend has ven- 1 I tured it. His new book, "Fort Birkett," pre- sents the scenic features of outlawry, claim jumping jump-ing and gold mining with California as a background. back-ground. The plot is based on the complications arising from the grant of land already partially settled to the railroa'd company. The story of the sturdy attempts of the settlers to protect their land and homes against a superior force is thrillingly told, and the reader's sympathies are drawn with the settler outlaws against tho corporation. Tho love element centers around the charming granddaughter of one of the sufferers, suf-ferers, who after proving her claim to the title of heroine by sundry daring feats, marries a young New Yorker and is swallowed up in the effete East. The center of literary gravity is certainly changing when no less an autocrat than Mr. William Wil-liam Dean Howells admits on the conservative pages of the North Amorican Review that Chicago Chi-cago writers are doing rather more than their share of the best literary work in this country. There is hope for the inter-mountain region yet. Apropos of Mr. Howells, his latest publication, "Questionable Shapes," is hardly to be expected from the author of "The Rise of Silas Lapham." Possibly realism has palled on Mi. Howells after all these years; at any rate, the ghosts of this group of stories are anything but realistic, and ip spite of their creator's gift of character drawing, are rather uninteresting. The thiid of the series, "Though One Rose From the Dead," is the most favorably received by critics. It Is the story of a highly refined pair who live for three years in a lonely house on the Sound. In this isolation they come to believe themselves in constant telepathic tel-epathic communication. Each can call tne other at will. On the death of the wife the husband waits in the lonely house for the wife to come and call him. The tale is pathetic rather than inter- esting. Mr. Jack London has "risen up" as a Kipling champion. He has nothing very new to say either iri defense or eulogy of Mr. Kipling, but he says the old things remarkably well. He draws on the Anklo-Saxon race-genius and Kipling's perfect understanding of it, and of the nineteenth century spirit. "He has sung," says Mr. London, "the hymn of the dominant bourgeois, the war march of the white man round the world, the triumphant paeai of militant commercialism and imperialistic nationalities. And the romance of the nineteenth century man as he has thus expressed liimself in the nineteenth century, in shaft and wheel, in steel and steam, in far-journeying and adventuring he has caught up In wondrous songs tor the future centuries to sing." |
