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Show I American Versus English Writers In a recent Issue of the English Review a correspondent sought to cool the literary pride of the United States by pointing out that it had produced very little really priceless duff. This unfriendly criticism naturally stirred uu considerable correspondence in American periodicals, period-icals, and among others Mr. Thomas Stewart McN'lccol undertook to refute re-fute the English Review, and to 6how that in American literature Home dozen authors might be chosen vho need fear no comparison with an equal number of English writers Since Washington Irvlng's day. said Mr. McN'lccol. the United States had produced twelve writers "whose work has penetrated almost all civilised civil-ised lands. He proceeds to name bis twelve, and It is to be admitted that the names are all famous, but. of course, being famous does not settle the matter, for. as Mr. Louis h How points out ln Reedy's Mirror, -Nick Carter" has penetrated furth-then furth-then wnv of them. Mr How savs that the United State's Is so weak in criticism that the defenders of native literature always al-ways consider "foreign notice' as the criterion of it. He sees no rea-whv rea-whv a review of American litr Mature houid start arbltrarllyfter Washington Irving, and beUevej thp thirty years he worKcu should be included. He thinks a should oc b d(. about ?-e?r ?? to leive the date later n exclude a couple of writer; 3ftJ5aW i'1 Ul"r f,a' CUJOyC1r wh0 certa in. an). of as much J"g" mstanoc th.-n- h was Frai.K thj ..vcry ln. M Malh?nn of sanity and good ' BCnS ' wbo as an able political ferson. Jig u boWever, writer. JSefor produced (nerc had jeeu k.aI1 lit.. tha, mjgW caiieo ePfttUrfnrcottcn works ot '., u0w torgou h lurninij MaT fit sub att.-d by Mr Mc-10 Mc-10 5f this critic takes Up Poe and ProduCH?ltorent lands " Mr is of opinion tliat at least Aristotle and Byron produced quite as great results. Whitman, t!iq is referred to as "the poet of democracy," is not quite justified In wearing this crown, though it is ono he sought for, because he Is not read by tho general public. Few except very bookish people have any opinion whatever abmit Whitman. About Emerson, however, there Is not so much doubt. He was a great writer, writ-er, and his claim to immortality is universally admitted. Longfellow is called the "household poet of ttie English tongue, unrivaled translator of Dante, and the only successful user of Lexameter verse in English literature.'' but .Mr. How says that tho first title Is one that he ought not to assume. Similarly it is an exaggeration to claim that Hawthorne Haw-thorne s Hie greatest of psychological psychologi-cal novelists, for Ht least Balzac and Dostoievskl are his masters in this respect. Mr. How goes on to say of somo of the others: "There can bo no doubt about Motley's right to a place in this list. When Froude aud Humboldt both called him 'the great historian of the new world who has scarcely a rial in the old one,' t jie almost iu-credlblc iu-credlblc coincidence suggests a supernatural sup-ernatural approval. Perhaps Frqude (who was probably not too 'English to know German) merely quoted Humboldt's tribute "Prescott would seem to have tho weakest position in the list, for .Mr. M NMccoll says he was inferior to Motley Still, he says, 'second only t Motlej in saying the last word on his subjecte.' Surely he may always be valued for the charm with which h tell his t,,r . . Not through his own fauH Is be an Illustration of Mr. Birr ell's dictum that 'if they have good styles they arc so apt to lie' ln Fiske's 'Discovery of America' there Is a good popular account ac-count of how Mr, Lewis Morgan's researches and. indeed, ethnology in general have made Prescott's almost al-most 'last word on his subjects' quite the last from Prescott's point of view. "The bracketing of William James and Ambrose Bierce for eleventh Place is inti resting. James was .1 ' ' lighlful writer of very ood English, Eng-lish, Bierce I shall not discuss. be- cause I do not know whether ho is dead 'Mark Twain ends tho list. If we had wished to begin with our best known author, lie should probably have headed it Besides that in Missouri Mis-souri there la a double chauvinism at work to prejudice the critics. It is rather soon to attempt to place him definitely." Mr. How says that if anyone seriously seri-ously contends that American literature lit-erature in the past fifty years Is to be compared with English literature, litera-ture, ho should be asked to select the best ten American books of tho period and the best ten English books, and say which ho would choose 'liicre could be onl one answer. He admits that if the United Unit-ed States has not a literature by this time it is not for want of trying. try-ing. "We have tried culture aud patient Imitation. We have even tried anarchy and impatient originality." origin-ality." Neither, it seems, has brought success. Advertising has also been tried, and iu the opinion of this candid critic the only thing left to try is "Industry ln silence " Certainly this has worked out well ln other places, and there Is every reason to suppose that, persevered ln, it would bring ultimate success to the American writer Two Peculiar Japanese l-'arms. Two of the oddest farms in tho world are to be Been iif Japan, farms from which a crop of tens of thousands of snapping turtles and thousands of pearls are shipped every year. The snapper tarm is the property Of Mr. Ilattorl, and It has solved the problem of preserving preserv-ing tho supply of what ia to Japanese Japan-ese as great a delicacy as tho diamond-back terrapin Is to tbe American Ameri-can The farm consists chiefly of a number of ponds. Some of them are set apart aa breeding ponds. Once a day a man goes over the shores and with little wire baskets covers up all new egg deposits. Sometimes thousands of these wire baskets are iu sight at a time, marking mark-ing the placo where the eggs lie and preventing the turtles from scratching tho earth from them. Hatching requires from forty to Sixty days, according to weather. The young, as soon as they appear, are put in separate small ponds and are fed with finely chopped fish. They eat this during September and October and late In October burrow in the mud for the winter, coming out in April or May. Most of them aTe sold In the mar-ket mar-ket w hen they are irom 3 to 3 years old, at w hich time thev arc most delicate. de-licate. Japan also contains a unique fishery fish-ery ln a pearl oyster farm In tho Bay of Ago a Japanese has established estab-lished a plantation from which ho is reaping a harvest of Jewels. In May or Jun stones weighing six to eight pouuds are sunk In shallow water and in August tho tiny shells begin to appear on them. Here tho stones remain for two mouths, but the young oysters can not stand cold in November, therefore, all rocks In less than live feet of water are moved farther out, where the temperature is more even. At the end of three years, when the shells hto about two Inches across, they are taken from the water, nuclei for pearls are inserted in-serted in them and they are put back again, thirty 0f them to every six feet square or bottom They are left there four years. Then, being 7M years old. they are removed and searched for pearls. The harvest for artificial or "culture" "cul-ture" pearls Is very large, but unfortunately un-fortunately these are only llttlo more than half pearls, for, although large, lustrous and of fine quality, they are flat on one sid-'. This tho farmer hopes to remedy In time, but the market Tor half pearls is always al-ways very large. He has an additional source of income in-come in tho natural pearls which his oysters produce, for there is not lacking among them the usual proportion pro-portion of perfect gems to be fouud among oysters of this vicinity. Appropriate. The officials are going over the wreck. They find !hc englDe on its side in the ditch, the day coaches scattered here and there, and tho first sleeper jammed half way Into the side of the hill near the track. "What's the name of that sleeping car''" asks the superintendent. "Hiawatha," answers the trainmaster. train-master. "I always said 'Hiawatha' would be run in the ground," mutters tho superintendent, who eats lunch at a place where the orchestra plays tho popular tunes of the day. |
