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measured by his intelligence, culture,
morality or good health. His good
qualities are obscured by airs which
westerners especially detest. I think
Bostonians in Boston to Bostonians
are agreeable. The manner of Bos
tonians in Boston to new people wiio
have not pro. 'ed their pedigree is not
exactly cordial. The manner of Bos
tonians to the natives of a town, par
ticularly of a western town, when
desperate circumstances have driven
them to settle in it, is offensive and
still prevents the recognition and re
ward of those almost disembodied vir
tues which disembarked on Plymouth
Rock in 1G20 As Paris is France, so
is Boston Massachusetts. The char
acteristics of the metropolis are re
peated perhaps more faintly in the
interior counties. There are, of
course, many peop'e who have emi
grated from Massachusetts who have
had the grace to conceal their belief
while sojourning among philistines
that they were realty the modern
etiosen people, and knew more and
were better than all the rst. A num
ber of these assorted people from Bos
ton have lived in Lincoln and are or
have been most popular and useful
citizens. It is therefore more in sor
row than in anger that 1 comment
upon the treatment of the Fosburgs
and the inveterate and insular egot
ism which is the cause of it.
Considering the prejudices which a
Bostonian takes with him to a new
country, prejudices which prevent
strangers from emigrating to the hub
with too confident anticipations of
welcome, it is singular that the
strongest society for the encourage
ment of the Filipinos exists in Bos
ton, that in Boston the club women
unanimously insist that the Nation
al Federation shall receive negro
women Into the fellowship with a
warmth which the said Boston wom
en have only experienced in litera
ture. It may be because all coons
look alike to them and they consider
that a woman who lives in Nebraska
might as well be black, but I suspect
rather their strong penchant for re
forming us. A drawback to an un
prejudiced consideration of the ques
tion is the too evident determination
or the Massachusetts clubs that the
federation must be broad-minded or
lose Massachusetts, the good. While
the discussion is pending we might
investigate Pittstield, Massachusetts,
and assign a reason for the ostracism
of the Fosburgs whom court and jury
acquitted as soon as a decision could
be reached.
Eleanor.
Mrs. Humphrey Ward writes long
stories. Her latest novel contains
626 pages. Yet few begin "Eleanor"'
without finishing it. In these years
when the harvest of books never fails
and the press threshes out a tiresome
umber of crops each year, a novel
026 pages long is a severe test of an
author's story-telling powers.
The heart of an imaginative woman
is an open book to Mrs. Ward. She
reads it without stumbling or stam
mering and every woman of the same
kind reads her analysis with convic
tions of its truth, of its startling
accuracy.
Eleanor is a widow of thirty who,
as the book begins, is just recovering
from the suicide of an insane hus
band who, when he jumped from a
high window into the river Sowing
below, took their oung son with him
to death. She is visiting a cousin,
"Mr. Manisty," a brilliant man who
writes books, talks easily, brilliantly,
knowingly, and fascinates a world
bored by homely, commonplace peo
ple. Eleanor is eyes, memory, intui
tion and a critic to Manisty. She
offers him the constant, silent adula
tion which literary men call sympa
thy and which to this particular kind
of a writer is a necessity.
Eleanor herself is a brilliant wo
man, with the literary instinct, the
subtle, peculiar faculty which dis
tinguishes the creative intellect from
the receptive mind. Manisty makes
use of her critical faculty, her taste
and knowledge. He enjoys the en
veloping incense of her growing ad
miration for himself. He makes love
to her and until Miss Lucy Foster, a
younger and fresher woman, arrives,
he is content to use Eleanor's mind
and store of sympathy, knowledge
and 'ove as though they were his of
right. But when he falls passionate
ly in love, simulating love for the
sake of its emotional soothing is
offensive to him, and lie is brutally
cruel to the woman who thought his
play was in earnest.
Eleanor, gentle and unselfish as she
is, decided that she would fight,
like all other members of the animal
kingdom when their lives are threat
ened. Therefore sire tlees with Lucy
Foster, the young and innocent cause
of the trouble, to an old and abandon
ed convent, where until their hiding
place is revealed the two women safe
ly conceal themselves. Although
Lucy Las begun to love Manisty, the
sight of Eleanor's dying agonies and
her own observation of Manistj's
cruel trifling with Eleanor's affec
tions and his use of her powers, con
vinces her of his brutal indifference
to another's pain. Lucy decides never
to see him again. When be does ar
rive she refuses him. and is only in
duced to change her mind by Elea
nor's intercession. So the book ends
with Lucy's marriage, Eleanor's death
and the success of the selfish and al
together objectionable man.
The triumph of the book is the
drawing and modeling of Manisty.
In him the type of the author, egotist
and tyrant, is drawn without exag
geration and without malice. Neith
er an emperor nor a king oh no
indeed, nothing so useful yet ruling
over a small circle absolutely, and
with a single eye to his own comfort
and growth, Manisty assassinate8 the
affections of women as ruthlessly as
Jack the Ripper disemboweled them.
There are literary men with bowels,
but too many lay a heavy tribute on
the unfortunates surrounding them
and make them victims of nerves and
of the fascinations which often ac
company the ability to write. The
greatest are great enough to be kind.
Stevenson, Longfellow, Walter Scott
were as kind as the average unen
dowed man is to his "folks." The neu
rasthenic symbol poets, the novelists
who have written one successful
novel, all the unwholesome subjective
cult of whom D'Annunz:o is chief,
who hold their wrists and count their
heart-beats as they write, belong to
the type and the character of Manis
ty. This kind take favors as their
due and count the bruises and wrink
les, pallors and aches other people
receive in serving them as matters
of course A king dispenses largess
of place; he is giving away all the
time little slices of his power to his
favorites. This sort of literary man
gives nothing all his life except the
privilege to serve him. Such a man
as Mrs. Ward has drawn is familiar to
most of us. He borrows money from
a friend and regards any attempt to
collect it as an impertinence, an ob
tuse, boorish disregard of the privi
lege of sacrifice for the gifted. Such
a man possesses certain fascinations
or he would not succeed in victimiz
ing so many people out of money and
services of various kinds, but he has
no more real integrity than the pro
fessional confidence man who would
also not succeed if he had not an
unusual endowment of that quality
which makes a man liked and trusted
by other men. Mrs. Ward has drawn
her Manisty from life, for every one
who has met the type comments upon
its startling likeness.
J J
A Non-Intime.
How Jaques came into the Forest
ot Arden, an impertinence by Elia
W. Peattie, is the modest title of Mrs.
Peattie's new book. Jaques, the mel
ancholy one, who has found out the
bad taste of life, the futility of all
things which men strive for and
prize till attained, Jaques, who is a
great talker and has reduced his phi
losophical lectures to epigrams, was
the hero of a romance and of a con
spiracy which succeeded in depriving
liim of his sweetheart long before he
found his way into the Forest of Ar
den. Mrs. Peattie discovered his love
story and the reason for his nausea
of life which gave him dyspepsia,
coated his tongue, and made him sar
castic. The man who can be thwart
ed of his heart's desire and not turn
the world into a graveyard is nobler
and las a more catholic judgment
than this Jaques kind who court dys
pepsia and all its effects on the vo
cabulary as soon as they lose their
sweethearts, ortlieir fortunes, or high
places which they occupy. Washing
tons and Lincolns, Wellingtons and
Napoleons lose their sweethearts, ca
bals are formed against them, but
nothing deters them from making
history. Every man and every wo
man suffers defeat; misfortune tags
them from the cradle to the grave.
The weakest men kill themselves,
others retire from the world and look
upon it from a distance with a claim
to know all its lures, while others
repine and accuse God of persecution.
All these who refuse to accept the
rules of the game and play it out to
the end are childish. Just as soon as
they withdraw from the game the
players forget them, aud this is an
other grievance.
In these days Jaques would find few
to listen to his long-winded reading
of life. He lives because Shakspere
recognized his type and immortalized
him in "As You Like It." Shakspere
knew that sucli as he never moved
the world nor ever truly answered
the riddles left on its hard surface as
a sign of having existed We can be
certain of this because Shakspere was
sanest of all poets. He read life large
and realized that each man was a
billionth of humanity, but. that man
is the reason for the existence of
everything else. He knew that the
man who talks and does nothing,
however wise the sounds he makes,
is naught but a prattler, and has no
influence upon the action of the play,
or. if he be a live man, on the world.
Considered as a story by itself, Mrs.
Peattie's accounting for Jaques' mel
ancholy and his persistent disap
proval of the way of life, is very in
teresting. I only wish Jaques were
more worthy of the shower of golden
imagination she has courted him
with.
Mrs. Peattie's Jaques is much more
interesting than the dramatist's
Jaques. To be sure he has the cen
tre of the stage, and we forget while
she is telling the stor7 that all men
have their woes and that the strong
conquer them and that the weak are
vanquished by them. "AH the world
loves a lover," and Mrs. Peattie's
lover tells his story naively and con
vinces us that his villain brother was
a caitiff and he a pure-hearted Laun
celot who dared all men and conquer
ed them in open battle before his
lady-love deserted him, but after
played a hermit's part himself.
Mrs. Peattie's style is flowing. The
light of a subtle fancy plays over the
story and pleases the most fastidious.
Under the style and the manner and
the matter of her telling, there is an
elusive personality; the personality
of a "non in'time" who reveals some
what grudgingly her feelings and
conclusions to the world. It is thi
separateness so frankly expressed and
indulged by Jaques that attracted
Mrs. Peattie. Though whatever in
clination she has felt for a hermit's
life she has bravely and persistently
repressed. Her life has been one of
active benediction to her generation:
in kindly ministration to the poor, in
aid to struggling young authors who
are of the poor, too, in stories which
never fail to stimulate the imagina
tion of the large number who read
them, and finally, and most satis
factorily of all, in rearing three beau
tiful and noble children.
This small book is printed on heavy
cream laid dekel edge hand-made pa
per by the Blue Sky Press of Chicago.
On the book cover is a picture of a
tree according to the stiff fashion of
trees in SLakspere's days. They du
not grow so now. Jaques himself
wanders through the paths of the
forest with his back to us just as it
should be and his disdainful cape
blowing in our faces. The cover and
illustrations were drawn by Mr. Wal
ter J. Enright; the initial letters
with which each chapter begins were
designed by Mr. Harry Everett Town
sznd and illuminated by Miss Bar
bara Peattie, one of the children I
have mentioned who have rewarded
Mrs. Peattie for resisting her incli
nation to go into retreat. The book
is printed in the heavy black letter
that suggests the thick black type
that the printers used soon after the
invention of printing. The five etch
ings are clever and fascinating draw
ings of the men in the Forest and
Jaques' sweetheart and of his wicked
brother. The initial letters are col
ored in water color shades of green,
yellow and gray and add much to the
charm of one of the most charming
books of the season.
Messrs Langworthy and Stevens of
the Blue Sky Press are publishers of
a magazine, "The Blue Sky,'' tilled
with very readable short stories and
crisp critiques of an excellent typog
raphy and paper, and a worthy com
petitor of all short story magazines.
Anarchist Reasoning.
Emma Goldman declared after the
assassination that Czolgosz had shot
the President, not the man, and that
she would be glad of the opportunity
to nurse the man back to health.
The President's heart never stopped
beating. The last faint fluttering r
beat of the faithful heart in McKis
ley's breast wa3 immediately followed
by the strong regular beats of Presi
dent Roosevelt's heart. Not for an
instant of time was this country with
out a president. The succession is si.
remotely established that the Presi
dent can never be killed. And every
man who is wounded by an anarchit
for temporarily holding the office of
president will but increase the sever
ity of the laws against which the
anarchists complain, and because of
which they say they murder.
Seventy million people are living
according to the conventions of the
constitution of the United States
We have kept our agreement with
each other for more than a hundred
years. One of the stipulations in tlu
people's document is that there sh.il.
be a president. It is not within the
power of any murderer to alter tlii
arrangement, although he can mur
der the first choice of a great peep f
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