The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, July 16, 1899, Page 30

80 THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, JULY 16, 1899, N THE BOOK WORLD - "MEN'S TRAGEDIES,” BOOK HOW OUR AMERICAN GIRLS ARE PRESENTED MONG the many social functions in London the one of special in- te: to the feminine visitor,at lea is the Queen's drawing- room, and judging from the ever-increas! number of Americans nted at court on these occasions roach of spring must be a sig- much of a flutter on our side of the / tic as that which the peace of the English fire- creates a stir throughout the to which that al- in England ever g, fades hile from a ooms efit der: they give to the akers, the florists, social are great ved from ground of the cabs. At 2 o'clock the whole thing is over, and except for the flash of a helmet or the glitter of gold braid from a passing cab London ;"U]Léld not know that a levee was being held. The Queen, even when she holds a drawing-room in person, which is rare- ly more than twice during the season, does not remain for all the presenta- tions, as her advancing years make the fatigue too great for her to _bear. She may receive half of the list, but usually leaves the palace about half-past 4 for a drive in Hyde Par This is one of the few occasions which the Londoners have for demonstrating their 10}'31?’, for the Queen dislikes London intensely and spends as little time there as pos- sible. Hyde Park corner and the park are crowded with people on this after- noon, who are eager to catch a glimpse of her Majesty, and, while her eption is an enthusiastic one for the phers, and the rced by this con- » in the number she holds dur- glish to give, it must appear cold to those who are accustomed to the dem- onstrations some of the popular Conti- nental severeigns receive. This being the year of the Queen’s eightieth birth- the number of applicants to the Chamberlain for presentation has and photog largely with tremblingly enter- e of the sovereign once, ish women go PR very large, especially for those i St g-rooms the Queen has held in nted “on their p..¢on~ When her Majesty does not band’s promo- h51q the drawing-rooms she usually morning un- ds the Princess of Wales or day one er daughters to take her place, white- 1 all presentations are considered the G. B. same as to the Queen herself. * e @gainst Cheap Books. alter Besant is not fond of cheap- As he writes books to sell at it means to the pocket- nk that it is high of everybody con- , to protest against alace. ¢ rked by a carpet ex. or to the car- ed with ple terest iny book. It floods it covers the coun- a higher price un- hink of paying more cents) for a book if he one for that sum. It e to believe that six- price that ought _to it is 9 cents—for a book it stated in one rs has been ¢ book. I wish of the othe p. 1 want free libra- es about _ shall encourage S bit reading and edu- AL in good taste. A public CH sver to keep, lend, or buy that literature is to obtain it 1t to some thrift, We all re- in America ire; how it sion, and respect for finest works printing and to ask if which the time, re fine work is to be pro- artist—whether poet, dramatist, .ssayist—must be able to live ble to work all day out having to earn n a man—how can a bookseller a publisher—live by sixpenny nted that he may get through most amusir N 100,000 copies. What does it mean to the e author2 About 3125 the good. But mo 2 half these copies are bought in- stead of higher-priced books. This pro- ; approximate, but it serves dd fact. If my conten- if the sixpenny books are tion is wrong bought in addition to instead of in place of court etiquette, of books or a higher price, then I with- sa returned th e ith great gusto! { S 2 BLEatiE] draw my objection, But this I cannot be. Another American girl In an agony of jieve in the face of all that I am told and ] Queen’s hand a|l that I observe. If I remember aright, 3, instead ; it shook it (his attempt to enlarge the field of read: do ers by cheap issues has been made two or three times already, and has resulted over and over ured confusedly, “How v the greatest charm of the gain In the. discovers; that i Tie A e fuss made over the fleld Is not enlarged but that those tation e 0 v &l ence instead of the e i s igh price. The only way, I re- fore and weeks after. peat, is to enlarge the field gradually by is one long and of free libraries and education; to 1t. Immediately make literature sible to all; and to palace every « trust that the desire to possess will cause hors o readers to save up their money in order s difieatt Wodm. OREC LT DG It is often aske really help to is not at all an Publishers hem friends flc ers; they woul _talk over the When it was put into e T I it at once, and 2 0 coples. This does not prov. she is queen that the people will not buy & . od unless it be all bright paint on ths outside. ——— ng. ; the men take their Jokal, the Hungarian novelist, s to to the Prince of Wales Show, in a pavilion at the coming Paris when he holds a levee. They drive un- $XMnHOR, & CobY, of every editlon of his e nd avee e i vorks. he pavillon w ave to be concernedly through town in hansoms, large one, as he has written over 300 nove their brilllant uniforms or court dress els, some of which ha be standing out against the dark back- oo (unaiated into every European language. The Princess of Wales Receiving American Girls at the Queen’s Drawing Room. FOR WINTER READING UMMER is a pacific season in the book world, and material for re- view comes slowly. This indul- gence to the temperature on the part of publishers turns our thoughts back upon a book that has been some weeks available and yet is not with us either by invitation or suffrance. I speak of R. V. Risley’s “Men’s Tragedies.” As I write no bookshop of prominence has the work for sale, and none seem anxious to ob- tain it. Now, why is this? Trash ga- lore grins at us from the book shelves, yawns at us from the tables, and yet a work that proves its author, a very young man, too, to be possessed of po- tential greatness, glides unnoticed into gloom. Gloom, perhaps that is it. It {s summer and we would laugh. The tregedy of bread-winning is enough. We will choose our summer literary afet of lighter stuff, and we will have it spread where green hills are the outlook and the wind stirs the trees to let the sunlight through. The book has a preface, and a remarkable one. To some it would be a warning to keep out; to others an invitation to enter. Aftetr having read the tragedies one might slightly change the words of Jacques in “As You Like It” and make a preface equally explanatory. LI 2 Melancholy of mine own, compound- ed of many complexes, extracted from nine morbid objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most inharmonious sadness.” All reviewers, I take it, are armed with full permission to speak their minds, and there are generally as many reasons why one should condemn a book as raise it. If we so desire we can find n Risley’s nine fictional es: every manner of doubt as to future great- ness or present originality. He is re- miniscent of Goethe, in that his field of study is nature and the human af- fections; of Schiller, when he touches upon the human aspirations. In a con- fused sort of a way he even suggests Crawford.-There is a passage some- where that warns us against becom- fng human buzzards, who fly over God’'s great, green, beautiful earth looking for carrion and missing more sights than they see. ‘“Men’s Trage- dies” recalls it. It would be impossible to traverse the exnerience of acquaint- ance with these nine men, live over their tragedies and come out of their soclety just as we were when we en- tered it. And yet one should read the book. It would be well, perhaps, if Mr. Risley chose for his summer wander- ings a quiet spot where he could “gather bluebells and acorn-cups and find his way to happiness.” He might then come back to us with a wider literary horizon ready to ‘“take hold of a big world with many hands.” But, in the meantime, are we to sit back and demand always as an antecedent condition that a man shall be famous before we read his books? If so. we will crush the life out of every rising author and build our literature but slowly. He Is not yet “in partnership with things that help the world on,” but, nevertheless, he merits our con- sideration. He strikes no introductory chords in his stories, but plunges ot once to the business in hand, somewhat clumsily at times, but giving us the plcture without varnish. Only in the first essay does he follow the beaten track of a scenery introduction, and this puts us in touch with the charac- ter of the landscape that is to affect the human character of those who come within its influence. In this es- say he makes a character say, “I sink further and further into the gloom of my mood,” and the metaphor is the key to the morbidness that follows. But a powerful hand is at work, and if we read between the lines we will see its power. In “The Man Who Hated” we read: sDhere was no peace in this book-bred mind, used to the long distances of his- tory and philosophy, and a deep ex- asperation against littleness made him willful and impatient at the every- days. He was weary that he had no rears and had not yet awakened to great hopes.” Mr. Risley’s seems a book-bred mind, but ’tis well equipped to meet the world and see what others have perchance passed by. He tells us things that we do not understand and hence do not like, but as one of his women has said “Perhaps we will by and by when we remember them and don’t laugh at them any more.” He uses some very ugly English and queer verbal contortions, but many a well- turned phrase as well. He speaks of “the bravery of a well-slept night,” tells us “the pity of autumn was in the air,” that “Paris is afraid she is in the dark,” that some one ‘““was constantly running against sharp truths and hurt- ing his ideals,” that “lower natures take disillusion more easily because they have not so far to fall” When he would explain why a certain farmer lived in a ravine instead of on the hills of his ancestors, he does so by saying: “As the energy of the race lowered they had come down the hiil.” In one short paragraph he has written the spiritual biography of many a human soul. “There is something in a man’s heart that makes him, when his own beloved belief has fallen, feel that all other beliefs are his. He damns all in the bitterness of his He shows in the fo! of dreams di: appointment.” ing description a keen sense g the ridiculous and a steady pen for char- acter drawing: “He was a tall, slim, fair man, with a low forehead, a mili- tary carriage, a large mustache and plastered down yellow hair. He wore an eyeglass, stuck out his chin, talked in a bark, and clanked his saber and stared coldly. He would have chucked a saint under the chin—if she were pretty—used his old love letters to light his pipe with and faced a charging regiment without losing his glass out of his eye.” From the standpoint of critical literary examination Mr. Ris- ley’s style is bad and his tales a little monotonous. His characters are all idealists who become Peter Grievances and build or rather wreck their lives upon the foundation of a shock. But he has a future. We can’t put next year's peaches on the table and theroughly enjoy their flavor, but we can encour- age their growth and not blight them by frost and neglect. Mr. Risley’s book is quite unlike the fiction with which we are surfeited and let us welcome him and his efforts cordially and hope- fully. CHARLOTTE THOMPSON. S daiky New Books Received. STUDIES OF LIFE AND ITS VARI- ATIONS—BYy C. J. Bayer. J. T. Ogilvie Publishing Company, New York. Cloth, $1 25. A book that attempts to teach mor- ality by showing clearly the causes which tend to produce immorality and physical degeneracy. It deals with the mental power of a mother and her abil- Ity to change the structure of her off- spring when that organism is forming and may prove of value to students of sociology. The author believes there is too much stress laid upon heredity and that at- avism is an unscientific theory. The book is something of a departure from the beaten track of such works. SEA DRIFT.—Poems by Grace Ellery Channing. Small, Maynard & Co., Bos- ton. Cloth, $1 50. A collection of some sixty or more short poems that run the full gamut of tragic sentiment and quiet philosophy and pastoral d iption. One might quote the following as an instance of much in little: AWARDS. A hero’s crown for that man of men ose right arm shall prevail! But what befits their prowess then What lau shall_thelr brow attaln, ‘What guerdon to their lot remalin, And what hosannas hail Who fail and fail and fail again, And rise again—to fail? THE BEACON BIOGRAPHIES.— Small, Maynard & Co., Boston. Cloth, each volume 75 cents. Five biographies of famous men, In- cluding David G. Farragut, Phillips Brooks, Robert E. Lee, Daniel Web- ster and James Russell Lowell. They are the first issued of a contem- plated series, intended in time to in- clude the lives of the most notable fig- ures of American history. The series purposes being a collection of readable, practical, convenient biographies, pre- genting comprehensively the important aspects of American life and thought. D’ARCY OF THE GUARDS; or THE FORTUNES OF WAR—By Louls Evan Shipman. H. S. Stone & Co., Chicago. A romantic tale of love and adventure laid in Philadelphia during its occupa- tion by the British in the war for in- dependence. The theme is not new, nor the setting, but historical love making has always an absorbing interest for the readers of fiction. The value of Revolutionary days as a background is so well understood by novel writers that we can never hope to keep pace with the output. If one reads “D’Arcy of the Guards” he will find it a well- written, pleasing tale with a thread of interest running unbroken to the close. A DUCAL SKELETON—By He- loise Durant Rose. F. Tennyson Neely, New York and London. THE FATE OF THE BLACK EA- GLE—By Russell D. Smith. F. Ten- nyson Neely, New York and London. MOST REMARKABLE BRIDGE HEN the tornado tore its way t h the town of Hastings, Minn., it took with it the most remarkable bridge in the coun- try. When the local engineer to work to solve the Tob- of how to make 2 bridge uufflcl};n(ly high for the Mississipni boats to pass un- der, and yet not so high as to make a hoisting apparatus nec: ary for the ve- hicles that would pass over, he wished to build an incline roadway that would be- gin some distance from the river and lead fin( up to and over the structure. But o ‘Hastings town officiels objected. f;é IN THE LAND. They wanted the public highway served intact, and they wanted as well, and they told the engineer that he could take the puzzle home with him and solve it, or resign in favor of a more ingenlous man. e engineer brought the solution down to the officlals the next day, and they at pre- the bridge The Curlycue Bridge at Hastings, Minn. once sanctioned the construction of the remarkable bridge. The inclined roadway is there, but instead of going straight ahead from a point a distance away it corkscrews within a small space, being elevaied on pillars that increase in height as the brid rises until the level of the 1. sengers on foot and elers in vehicles wind around a spiral roadway, first going toward the river, and then tu ng their backs to it, and then facing around toward it again, until at last they find themselves on the bridge proper. "Until the cyclone came along and slgnified its disapproval of the freak etructure by demolishing it, the bridge had served well the needs of the ped Serve o e people of NEW YORK GONE TUNNEL MAD. F New York City is not tunnel mad her citizens have certainly developed something that is closely allied to a mania for underground transit. Years ago the first tunnel scheme was pro- Jected—s0 many years ago that the oldest inhabitants would have difficulty in re- membering the date—and since that time there have been dozens of such projects launched upon the financial workd. Some of them have existed only upon paper, while others have progressed to a most uninteresting condition of incompletion, but in each case the interest that has been aroused in the proposed Improvement has been permitted to languish and dle, and for & score or more of vears the citizens of New York have thought less of the tunnel schemes than of the possibility of some time being abie to reach Europe by means of aerial navigation. Buddenly, however, there has come a change in the public pulse, and now noth- ing but tunnels and underground transit is_being talked of. During the few weeks that have elapsed since the revival of these long buried projects nearly a score of plans have been drawn, and all have tended to the same end. If these are all carried out, the citi- zen of New York who rides above ground Wwill be regarded somewhat in the light of a relic of old conditions who is too slow to_keep up with the times. Up to the present time the tunnel schemes of New York have been chiefly consplcuous for the ease with which they have consumed the capital of those who have interested themselves in them. The old Hudson River tunnel {s without doubt the costliest hole in the ground in the world, At the present time it is a long, deep excavation, filled almost to the top with water. To the eve of the casual observer who was not up in tun- AN ART GEM IN ONE OF OUR CEMETERIES HERE is an art gem tucked away in a corner of the section set apart for children, in one of our largest cemeteries. It is not an elaborate vault of elegantly carved marble, nor a delicately fas- hioned shaft, nor yet an idealized fig- ure of perfect workmanship; but mere- 1y a simple slab and lying upon it are two little children wrapped in each other's arms. Yet the hand of true art is there, for the divine spark of life has been breathed into the group. The pose s so natural that they seem to be but resting as in life when watched by those to whom they were so dear—in peaceful sleep. It brings the lump In the throat and touches the heart strings, and that af- ter all, is the true sign of an artistie success. They represent little twins of six years of age who died in 1883, and there is no inscription to tell who the two little ones were; only the cemetery's mortuary record shows that. Thelr forms were thus reproduced only for those who mourned their early death. In spite of the ravages of time on the rough plaster in which they were casl, the figures still display the original grace of pose and molding. Sixteen years of exposure to wind and rain, to heat and cold, have crack- ed and worn the monument until now it closely resembles many of the an- tiques of Greek or Roman art. It is to The Grave of the Little Twins. ing nature, as in a few years more they will crumble to dust. be regretted that the material in which they were cast is not of a more endur- nel lore it does not look as If it was worth the trouble of pumping it out and yet this is all that is left to show for more than $4,000,000, and the loss of twenty-one lives. It was early In the seventies that Colo- nel de Witt Clinton Haskins conceived the scheme of constructing a tunnel under the Hudson River. He had made money in the Union Pacific Railroad and his rep- utation as an engineer enabled him to in- terest such men as Senator Jones of Ne- vada and Millionaire Park in his project. Together they subscribed $2,000,000 to carry out the plans and when the money had “been spent they stopped work. Dur- ing this period, however, the tunnel sprung a leak and twenty-one men were drowned like rats in a trap. At the time when the work on the tunnel was brought to a standstill the hole was not half com- pleted. As there seemed to be no more money in this country avallable for such a scheme an effort was made to interest English capital and it succeeded admirably. SIr Benjamin Baker, Sir John Fowler and others of the nobility of the old world thought they saw an excellent opportuni- ty to take adavantage of the money that had already been expended and they sent 2,000,000 more. That, too, went into the ole. Again the funds gave out and in 1892 the tunnel was walled up and left to itself. Now it has been sold once more and this time, it is eaid, the work will be completed. The prospects for the completion of the other tunnei schemes are almost equally as bright, for when such men as Roths- child, Rockefeller, Wh![neg’, ‘Widener, El- kins, Flower and Brady re in a syn- dicate formed for a specific purpose he would be a rash Frophel who would dare to predict the failure of the project. For some time past these men, whose names are almost synonymous for money, have been accumulating street railway inter- ests in all parts of the country. Just what they have succeeded in accomplish- ing in and around New York is still some- what of a mystery, but there is no doubt that the time will soon come when the railway Interests of Manhattan and Brooklyn will unite in one great street railroad trust. To better accomplish the aims of these magnates the tunnels are to be built—not one, but several, for the traffic plans that they have outlinec con- stitnte one of the most gigantic traiupor- tation schemes ever conceived in the brain of man. Subways are to be laid from one end of New York City to the other, tunnels are to cross the rivers in almost every direction, connecting with practically every available point. 1n fact, the now distinct and separate sections o the Greater New York are to be united in every sense of the word.