Show EVER since our students called the CHRONICLE into existence it has striven hard to maintain a literary department but its editors at the end of nearly two years feel that it has been a somewhat dismal failure Of course it was never expected that we could produce anything in a literary way here that would stand comparison with the efforts c pf of f students students students stu stu- dents in the older institutions of the East yet we are com compelled to admit that our expectations have been to some extent disappointed Even taking into consideration all the disadvantages of the frontier training of most of our students their hard pioneer life the unsettled of our society and more than all the hard struggles most of them are making to complete their courses there is still something we cant can't explain in this paucity of literary talent We have ave known st students dents here hereto to write treatises on the philosophy of i K Kant nt and and other abstract and abstruse subjects which were not half bad but when any of them try even the simplest style of humor or description from life they almost always make a mess of it i We say we cant can't explain this It is certainly not because our surroundings do not offer abundant material for nowhere not nowhere no no- t where can there be found greater su bli ity of natural scenery or greater r variety of human types It has been suggested however that there is so much of the sublime in our mountain r scenery that it becomes oppressively f monotonous that nature in these regions regions regions re re- gions is a perpetual riddle of the sphinx and that western society is too complex r too variable and too unstable to be capable of treatment by any ordinary pen There may nay be something in this r we must admit We can point out delightful der det de de- r t bits of description or refreshing refreshing refresh refresh- J ing images from nature like like Judge t Goodwins Goodwin's description of a sunset in ini inthe inthe i the Salt Lake valley or the mirage experience of one of his Comstock t Club heroes or some of those beautiful t ful ful poetical bits of Mrs Carmichaels Carmichael's or Cy Warman's God was good to tomake tomake tomake make the mountains which would t not suffer by comparison with many of off f the gems of our language But we weE E 1 would still feel that no one onee had yet read the riddle of the Rocky Mountain i sphinx So too with the attempts to picture social life Brete Harte has treated only certain strongly marked peculiarities ties of human nature which would be peculiarities anywhere he has no western types Per Perhaps ha ps there are no such types it has been said that the highest civilization is unfavorable to tot t types and western society is but the advance guard of the restless heaving t pushing spirited commercial-spirited movement which we e call by that name But if we could solve this problem and were able to put our solution in good readable readable readable read read- able form we should have no reason to complain of any lack of literary matter for we should write it However However However How How- ever we hope that our contributors will continue to send us their best efforts and will be not discouraged even though that best is not dignified with the name of literary Time and constant constant constant con con- stant effort will remedy this defect as aswell aswell well as all others |