The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, January 30, 1898, Page 22

22 THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, JANUARY 30, 1898. ma “The Pri it was much not a thing on whi finally 3 ambition great politicic destroyed. In kins, who had give such a hard fight ber for Soutk Bucks lawyer Haw- was ion of € world only ppeared Hec clergyman and his fath of the Lo brought up as his walk followed down for him and wa bar. He did not have many clients, and in | one of the first cases he had, which w a criminal case, his ner victed the whole batch Then he went in for politics and pr law “on the side.” When he w old—that is, in 18%3—he first be for publication. Why e 2 years n to write he him- self does not know, for when he offered his book for publi he was still of the id t he w ined to make his mark awyer or a politician, or both, | and his principal literary food had been | “The Pilgrim's Progress.”” This book he | used to take to bed with him when he | was a child; and it shows the power that | is inherited in every one of rising above the influences of their youth, that he should ever have been able, after such a handicap, to write the “Prisoner of Zenda.” When “Anthony Hope” was at the Marlborough school and at Oxford he was a first-class football player. He did not stand high at the preparatory school, but did pretty well at Oxford. His first bos “A Man of Mark,” he had to publish at his own expense, and it was not a finan- clal success at the time. When fame came to him, however, he republished the book, and more than got square with the world, financially, for its former lack of appreciation. In 180 he published his second book, “Father Stafford,” which also fell flat at the time and is now much admired. The lack of financial success in the matter of literature did not daunt Mr. Hawkins, and he went to writing short storfes. He had lost money on his books and he did not get rich on his short stories. In 1892 he published “Mr. Witt's Widow,” and that was his first success. not a glaring one. But that was Then he wrote “A Change of Air” and ‘Half a Hero,” and | such men should come from a place we | | know is now incapable of producing them. | finally “The Prisoner of Zenda.” After that he became a fixed star in the literary firmament and has reluctant- 1y given up the idea of being Lord Chan- cellor or Prime Minister except in such | kingdoms as Ruritania. After ‘The Pris- oner of Zenda,” he wrote ‘“The Dialogue,” “The God in the Car” and “The Indiscretion of the Duchess,” all of new country, easily acquired wealth, the | Hope" | freshness of the wilderness, and a cli- | which were well received. Mr. does not find time to do much reading, but when he does read he prefers novels and his favorite authors are George Mer: dith, Kipling and Stevenson. As to poetry, he rarely reads it, and, still more won- derful, has never written any. | His work room, where he thinks and writes, Is far away from his home, and . he goes to it every morning as a lawyer | Pure Americans, every vice or shortcom- | would go to his office. His “den” is in an old house at No. 16 Buckingham street, London, and he reache: day at 9:45 and works until 4 or 5 in the afternoon. He does not set himself any fixed task for the day, but writes what | he feels in the best mood for, taking, a he says, “anything that the Lord sends. He never rewrites, but corrects his manu- seript carefully. Mr. “Hope” recelved several offers to | lecture in America soon after the success of “The Prisoner of Zenda,” but kept saying to his tempters, “I will go to the | States some day; there s plenty of time for that.” Now he has yielded, and is with us. IN OLD COLONIAL DAYS. MEN. WOMEN AND MAN LONIAL TIMES-By S RS IN CO- | Iney George | Fisher. J.B. Lippincott Company, Phil- ! adelphia. For sale by Hoffman, San | Francisco. If Mr. Fisher had styled his two fas- cinating volumes “The Lament of the Colonial Cavaller” the title would have been absolutely deseriptive. As he car- ries you back to the past days of tyr- anny and romance, it is borne upon your inner consclousness that the true makers | of America were people upon whose mem- | ories prim respectability is apt to glance | askance; that the riotous, fearless, irrev- erent blades who colonized the Southern States, who clung alike to loyalty and in- dependence, who thrilled with “la jole de vivre”” and faced death unflinching bedecked, silk-attired, strong-hearted dames who dispensed hospitality, glided | through a minuet, or starved amid | swamps with stately grace; that these it was who gave the race its bones and sin- | ews, and that departure from their tra- ditions accounts for much degeneracy. A good many time-honored beliefs and pre- judices are knocked on the head by Mr. Fisher with startling energy, but none recelves such a complete cudgeling as the faith in the suffering meekness of the Pligrim Fathers. Under our author's guldance the Pligrim worthies rise before us as & gathering of exceedingly unpleas- ant, self-sufficlent gentry, who sought freedom for persecution rather than for worship. Yet, albeit a strongly biased, | nate refinement, this is a by no means unjust hronicler; he virtue, vices, notes ki lays down his work with sympathy for those bra colonists who fought 50 hard and bore down so many obstacles 1f-appointed task a nation. pa sections devoted to the ferent colonie order of ce, and thesethe first Tobacco, it has be author a labor of love. His thies are enti the inde; aristoc he has good word ev r fox-hunting parsons and blots out the accepted »d; fame: wooden portrait of the oody Washington of cherry-t: stupid, cl ster into- which he has been manu- factured to suit modern hypocrisy is not in accor e either with his own account of himself or with statements of contemporaries.” ) And straightway we have a sketch of the true Washington, the sociable, courte- ous gentleman of superb physique, who loved his cards and his glass, who rode to hounds and danced all night whenever he had the chance, who trained horses and led men with eq and who ame to the front without effort, from sheer force of character and healthy, all- | round development. Washington is to | Mr. Fisher but a type of the true ginian, a natural evolution which he ex- plains very succinctly: o amount of book-learning, no col- lege curriculum imitated from plodding mystical Germans, no cramming and e aminations, and jno tem of gymnastic exerci can be even a substitute for that Virginia life which Inspired with vigor, freshness and creative power the | and great men who the Constitution. ‘“There is no mystery about it. There is no need that we should wonder that formed the Union As soon as we unravel the details of colonial life it is all plain enough. It was that same mingling of sport, scholarship, social intercourse, and knowledge of the world in country life the Virginians had the advantage of a mate which sharpens the intellect.” Tn this passage the author strikes an- other characteristic note rarely heard in America; his enthusiasm for England, glish character and English ways is absolutely unbounded. Every virtue of the republic owes its origin to the good old English blood flowing in the veins of ing is attributed to which has crept in. the foreign taint there every week | 8rant he has unfeigned aversion, for the | Dutch settler unmitigated contempt, and his chapter “Manhattan and the Tappan ee” is a scathing indictment of the pu- illanimous avarice of the Knickerbocker race. Indeed, when showing up Iniquity, Mr. Fisher" pen is unsparing, While his sympathies are with [ holders in the days of settlement, he does not ignore the dark side of slav- ery and the details of brutal cruelty in some of his pages are appalling. Not more appalling, however, than other de- even to his | tails given in his chapter *“Puritans and Philosophy,” on the Massachusetts meth- od of administering religious freedom. In that happy region, where it was criminal to think, let alone speak for yourself, banishment was a mild punishment for independent thought; imprisonment, whippings and other cruelties were com- mon, execution was not unknown, and a refined, cultured woman like Mrs. Anne Hutchinson could be mentally tortuged, excommunicated and exiled with none daring to protest. As for the witcheraft persecution, its horrors equal those of the Inquisition, and make as unpleasant reading as certain pages of “Uncle Tom's Cabin.” Some of our author's most charming passages are devoted to the women of colonial days. Cavalier or Puritan, Re- publican or Royalist, he makes us love them all with their brave hearts and in- their social distinction or religious devotion, their love of gay apparel and desire for cuiture, their apti- tude for luxury and fortitude under re- verse of fortune. Even the Dutch vrouw he deals with tenderly; and we become familiarized with more than one romance of those early days. Lack of space for- bids further quotation, but we advise our readers to procure the work for ‘them- selves. CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHIES. ALL'S RIGHT WITH THE WORLD—By Charles B. Newcomb. Boston: The Philogophical Publishing Company. THE ANCIENT OF DAYS RENEWED— By Henry S. Williams. Chicago News- paper Union. Mr. Newcomb is a philosopher of the his | { which has made | Dolly | England the leader among nations; and | For the Irish immi- | y school, bent on proving that every- thing is for the best in this best of pos ble worlds and that there is nothing to worry about if you don’t worry about it. selected quotations from Marcus Aureliu: merson, Whitman and other authoritie on the Philosophy of Content. Mr. New- comb’s sentimen e not strikingly or- iginal, but he hi extensively, ob- served life and its v carefully, anl cultivated & ‘terse, epigrammatic style which often lends an air of profundity to a somewhat shallow remark. To the thoughtful reader, needing mental tonic, his chapters may prove helpful and strengthening; but his chiseled axioms will not comfort the broken-hearted, feed the hur or numb physical agony. Mr. Williams is a Californian resident who has discovered the History of the | United States as written by Flavius Jo. sephus well nigh two thousand years ago His views—and those of Josephus—he sup- ports by liberal Scriptural quotation, and his arguments are irrefutable for the ex- cellent reason that the ordinary reading mind cannot follow them. The lucidity of Mr. Willlams® style is well illustrated by the final paragraph of his preface: “My constructure lacks workmanship, but is founded upon allegorical Scriptural prophecies, which are the rock of ages. When the giants behold the location, they will build 2 new temple, great and high, upon the same foundation; then my structure, crude and slender, will be re- membered as gossamer, harbinger of the storm, which shattered the veils over the face of prophecy, and swept staggering theology of nineteen centuries into the past.” HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED. OLD LAMPS FOR EW__ ONES—By Charles Dickens. New York: New Amsterdam Book Company. Was it really necessary for the editor, Mr. Fred Kitton, to revive these ephem- eral writings of Dickens? Enthusiastic admirers of the immortal Pickwick will not find therein aught to.increase their admiration, and readers who do not ad- here to the Dickens school will not be at- tracted to it by papers which were merely contributions to the passing literature of the day. During the past forty ¥ hundreds of newspaper scribes have cons tributed articles on the same subjects, in often with the same sentiments and | the same maner, and thoughts W Dickens’ day seemed strikingly now appear mere platitudes. How | there are possibly some people -who | anxious to know the popular novelist's views on such ever-present questions as Capital Punishment, the Amusements of the People, and the Sunday Post, and to these Mr. Kitton's volume will recom- mend itself in certain pages, those on popular theatrical entertainments, and the article “Whole Hogs,” to wit: Dickens shows himself as the precursor in style of Jerome K. Jerome. But the paper which most completely recalls the Dick- | ens best known to posterity is undoubt- edly the comic essay entitled “Lively Tur- are Said I to him, ‘Mr. Grogsles, the best | Turtle 1s where?" ays he, ‘If you want a basin forlunch my opinion you can't do better than drop into Birch's.” “Said I, *Mr. Groggles, I thought you had known me better than to suppose me capable of a basin. My intention is to A tureen.’ Mr. Groggles, without amoment’s consideration, and In a determined voice, ‘Right opposite the India House, Leaden- hall street.” " New York sale at Doxey Mr. erick Wright has given us one of th clopedic pseudo-scientific works which the pres- ent day superficial Kknowle reading the ior brings to bear on his subject 1 endous, his illustrations and quot inge from astronos 000N0000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000 000C00000000000000000000C0000000O0OVOV0T0O WHAT A MAN CAN SEE IN A YEAR. A YEAR FROM A REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK. BY RICHARD HARDING DAVIS. It is wonderful, when one comes to think of it, what a man may see in a year. Given money and leisure, the modern facilities of travel will ena- ble a traveler to visit every important place on the round globe, and if he times his tour well, to witness many strange and wonderful sights. It is not every one, however, who has the good fortune of Mr. Davi As a globe-trotting journalist, within the twelve months between May, 1806, and June, 1807, he attended the coronation of the Crar at Moscow, the inauguration of President McKinley at Washington.the millennium celebra- tion at Budapest in Hungary, and the Queen's Jubilee in London. He also found time to pay a visit to Cuba, and to go through some exciting e periences with the soldiers of young Greece. Of all these things Mr. Davis writes fluently, with the ease of a trained journalist, and if he does not aim at high literary effects, his style at any rate is much superior to the aver- age journalese to be met with in our daily papers and monthly maga- zines. Then it must be remembered that Mr. Davis, in the first place. was writing for ephemeral publication, dashing off pen and ink pictures on the spur of the moment, amid all the hurry and excitement of the great events which he was portraying. Considering the circumstances the work is wonderfully well done. and most of the sketches will doubtless be familiar to the general reader, as they appeared at the time in Harper's and Scribner’s magazines. Perhaps one of the most vividly realistic scenes with which Mr. Davis presents us in the execution of the patriot, Rodriguez, in Cuba. On a chill, misty morning they lead Rodriguez to the plains without the city, and did him to death in the presence of 300 soldiers and many curious civilians. Here we have an admirable sketch of the patriot as he stood waiting for the fatal volley—“he made a picture of such pathetic helplessness, but of such courage and -dignity, that he reminded me on the instant of that statue of Nathan Hale, which stands in the City Hall Park, above the roar of Broadway, and teaches a lesson daily to the hurrying crowds of money-makers who pass beneath. The Cuban's arms were bound, as are those of the statue, and he stood firmly, with his weight resting on his heels like a soldier on parade, and with his face held up fearlessly, as is that of the statue. ~But there was this difference, that Rodriguez. while probably as willing to give six lives for his country as was the American rebel, being only a peasant. did not think to say so, and he will not, in consequence, live in bronze during the lives of many men, but will be re- membered only as one of thirty Cubans, one of whom was shot at Santa Clara on each succeeding day at sun- rise.” Harper & Brothers, New York. For sale by A. M. Robertson, Post street. 000000000000 00000000000C00000C0000QCO000000O C000000000000000000000000000000000000000000C000000C00 fac gospels; his facts and conclusions are rly set forth in simple language and - makes no assertions unsupported by proofs. Yet it is to be doubted whether a work of this kind has a value in any way commensurate to the labor involved; ] globe, picking up scraps of information Some of the scraps are of nticity; if Miss Kellogg ever o Sydney, for instance, its will have something to say to her for having assigned the notorious miracles” of geology and the date of the four gospels, these are but a few of the subjects that come within the author’s wide range; but “the conclusion of the whole matter” is to be found in one of his opening sentences: “From a philo- the real student, he who is capable of | Sophical point of view modern science IS | Woolloomoolloo to them as their quarter. giving the arguments their full weight, | more superficial than it is popularly rep- | Occasionally the descriptive notices aro does not care for this desultory trifling | Tesented to be.”” to be commended, as in the case of Ma- dith sclentific method: he goes to the deira and the South Sea Islands, but the Tountain heaq and works ant s own | GEOGRAPHICAL SMATTERINGS. | &%, firaction for young folka lies in the conclusions. The popular student, whose | AUSTRALIA AND THE ISLANDS OF | lllustrations, which are extraordinarily pretel to general knowledge are THE SEA-By Eva M C Kellogg. | numerous. = > founded on this s of literature, only Boston, New York and Chicago: Sil- s adds to his smattering and to ver, Burdett & Co. | JUBILEE POETRY. his infinite th for boredom. desirability of But peptonize This volume makes the eighth book of “The World and Its People” series pub- OF EL_DORADO—-By Howard '(‘,l ndon. granted San Francisco: C. A. Murd & Co. mental food, Mr. Wright has done his | lished in the Young Folks' Library, for | Inepired by the Golden Jubilee, Howard work excellently well from the speciai | the young folks' educational develop- | Glyndon (Mrs. Redden Searing) glven point of view. From his first | ment. It is, however, very doubtful us g poetic pamphlet celebrating the in which he defines Herbert | whether the growing mind has any rea- | peauties of the Golden West. Her ver: s “an a priori philosopher at- | son to be grateful .to authors and pub- Cal- are rhythmic and pleasing, and t ifornia patriots to whom they ar cially adressed will see in the writer's enthusiasm an all-sufficient plea for her tempting, ve like the spider, to spin a uni- out of his own bow to the last 'Cumulative Evidence,” there is not lishers who cram it with this style of dry and somewhat slipshod information. The title of the book is enough to suggest its an incoherent or inappropriate para- | careless construction, islands having a | uynpretentious little work. Her muse is graph, and his quotations are so ju- | natural affinity for the sea wherever they | nothing if not patriotic. diclously selected that some, who have | happen to be located. Why the little con- looked upon our modern scientists with distant awe, may be induced to go to the iginal text. Darwin's gemmules and Weissmann's germ plasm, the Indian lea? butterfly and the Noachian Deluge, th its cuneiform testimony, the ‘“‘mediats tinent of Australia should be huddled to- gether with all the known islands, from the Faroes to the Friendlies, from Hayti to Tahiti, does not appear; apparently the idea IS to “rush” the young person | through the less populated regions of the | sanctimonious | | READING IN GARDEN CHILD'S tribute to the memory o¢ a lost parent is always pathetic; In the volume before us the pathos is intensified, fos the gentle scribe did not live to place her love-in- }sp(red pages in the hands of the public. A touching preface, by a bereaved sister, tells us that the small memoir, written in feeble health, was never revised by its au- thor. “The hand which had traced the words dedicated to our father's memory grew too feeble to hold a pen, and before the proofs of her little volume could be submitted to her for revision, my dear sister died.” Comment can only weaken the simple eloquence of this statement. From it we turn with reverence to the pages, almost childlike in their tender prattie, in which Mamie Dickens chronicled the home life of him whom she was so soon to rejoin. Her own Introductory words fully express the scope of the memoir: “If, in these pages, written in remem- brance of my father, I should tell you, my dear friends, nothing new of him, I can, at least, promise you that what I shall tell will be told ratthfully, if simply, and perhaps there may be some things not familiar to you.” | This last idea is erroneous, for as we turn page after page, telling of Charles Dickens in his dally life amid the family (AN TR N N SONMNRN an CHARLES DICKENS THE EMPTY CHAIR circle, we are conscious of things strange- ly Zamiliar, not in the writings of his bi- ographers, but his own. Like many an- other author with irrepressible vitality, Dickens has put himself into many of his favorite creations: and the man who romped with his children, took dancing lessons from his daughters, played ath- letic games with his friends, spent hours on Christmas eve in the toyshop, adored his dogs and his birds, fidgeted over Christmas pudding decorations and organ- ized New Year festivities, is the man we have known and loved, under a dozen guises, in the pages of the beloved ‘Boz.” The book teems with recollections of hap- py childish days, family gatherings, con- vivial doings, merry j . kindly actions, kindly sympathies, above and beyond all an overpowering tenderness for the home circle; if there is one thing Mamie Dick- ens more especially insists upon, it is her father’s intense devotion to his children, his capacity for home life, his craving for home appreciation, as man and as author. Next in interest to the children came the pets; there is one delightful anecdote after another of dogs, cats and birds, among which Dickens' favorite tale of “Of” the Newfoundland is perhaps the most irresistible: “He came from Oxford and had lived all his life in a brewery. Instructions were given with him that if he were let out every morning alone he would immediately find out the river, regularly take a swim and come gravely home again. This he did with the great- est punctuality, but after a little while he was observed to smell of beer. FHis owner was 8o sure that he smelled of beer that she resolved to watch him. He was seen to come back from his swim round the usual corner and to go up a flight of steps.into a beer shop. Being instantly followed, the beershop keeper is seen to take down a pot (pewter pot) and 1s heard to say: ‘Well, old chap, come up for your beer as usual, have you? TUpon which he draws a pint and puts it down and the dog drinks it. Be- Ing required to explain how this comes to pass the man says: ‘Yes, ma'am, T know he's yvour dog, ma'am, but I didn’t when he first came. He looked in, ma’am, as a brickmaker might, and then he come in, as a brickmaker might, and he wag- Zed his tail at the pots, and he giv' a sniff_round and conveyed to me as he was used to beer. So I dra’d him a drop, and he drunk it up. Next morning he come again by the clock, and I dra'd him a pint, and ever since he has took his pint reg’lar.’ " Of a truth this hath the genuine Dick- ensian ring. But there 1S one Impression which the authoress quite unintentionally leaves upon the reader,-that Dickens, with all his home charms, must have frequently been a home nuisance. - When not shut up in his study or absent-minded at meals he was figeting about in an appalling manner. Home interest is all very well, but Dickens seems to have been a mas- culine Martha, troubled over many things usually left to the cook and housekeeper. A man who must have his finger in every ple, who worries over everything, from the menu and the table decorations to his daughters’ bedrooms, who goes the morn- ing round of his house like a ship’s mar- tinet, replacing chairs and stray books and taking evil note of dust and crumbs, this Is the sort of man who would pro- voke daily storms in the average house. hold; and the fact that Dickens’ women. folk bore the burden joyfully speaks vol- umes for the adoring affection he spired. The truth is Charles Dickens had not a particle of the Bohemian In his nature; his sympathies were all with the steady- going, humdrum, lower middle class, MY FATHER AS I RECAL - Mamie Dickens, ke B N ¢ BOP. Dutton & Co. STk WL in-