The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, May 28, 1905, Page 25

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL. SUNDAY, MAY; 28,. 1905. < g << o UQOrRKT. <> < Kropotkin wrote it. To int of the great Russians i @ big privilege, and atness by his criticisms e cannot regret left out from Some of the himself inci- h which ed 1it- description must, be sub- istic aim d speaking = strives to get rid of boyhood and girl- only proper way is to young mind new, broad » free it from superstition and on a and espec Teat cause and with the to view of to struggle for that rees the capacity of e toward some- to prepare for it—is the rvation from all that de- forces of man: vice, dis- pation and so on.” Probably no other mind and heart could have been so much desired by us to give us a concise study of Russian ers up to date. The only other who ave spoken so inte 3 that woul t do, oy is too big to be left out ok as a_study by a great man 1f. Kropotkin's work will 7 incite a desire to look. more nto the great things of Rus- ature. He knows well the is for of stingly sian 1 art of quotation, and the brief extracts gives ickly from the master writers arouse appetite to read their els, short stories and philosophical criticiems. Only briefly cag some of the greater writers studied in this volume be men- Of Turgueneff, whom Kropot- thous: He called mates the greatest novelist of C .. i tury, we are told: “In common with all great writers, Turgueneft combined the qualities of a pessimist and a lover of mankind,” and that he knew the human heart deeply, especially the héart of a young girl when she awakes to higher feelings and ideag, and that awakening takes, for the have worked to that art has a raison without Rer realizing it, the shape of . n the service of | Jove . s toward rai€ing | Concerning the wit and humor of - anitarian concep- | Gogol's novels: “It is the good- which are prope: istinguish it from sclence.” the Russian critics was T | hearted laughter of a young man who himself enjoys the fullness of life and himself laughs at the comical po- v; df’dk' st year, It is to| sitions in which he has put his he- ropot spells some of | roes.” And then comes a quot of the famous Russians with | 1 Gogsta from the poet, Pushkin, about Gogol's productions: “Behind his | ¥ou feel hi& unseen tears.” it | Fine, almost lovingly fine, is tho ap- ca. and we are toldl that | preciative sketch of the remarkable s not yet come to fully eppre- | poet, Nekrasoff, who was the poet sy- work | perlative above all others in singing tkin speaks his love and respect for his mother. He was fed continually on black mis- ery. For three years he was hungry every day — living on bread. “In whatever Nekrasoff wrote there is an he way in wh omed to seeing them set Mihallovskly, criticism took o 5 laughter Krop richness of the Russian language, it hav- very highly of the ng many uivalents for a given idea than the languages of Western Eu- pe, and by these the varied shades of more equ me; -—'.fix' may be given It has especial | inper force, and this force suggests we or expressing human feeling—| to him images which are rightly con ess and love, sadness Wnd merri- - - | sidered the pearls of Russian poetry. i &nd no other language equals it in In the very interesting account of Tol. wer to take into itself the beauties | gthy's works the author saye: “He has f forelgn authors by translation. OWIng | fearlessly stated the moral aspects of all ts wonderful musical character forelgn | the burning questions of the day, in a &n be rendered into it in the same | form so deeply impressive that whoever of the original. Nearly eighty | nas read any one of his writings can no f people speak this superior Rus- | jonger forget these questions or set them age, (the Great-Russian), and | agide. In millions of coples his works some fifteen millions Who speak | are read in all languages. Tolstoy is now e-Russian, which is a patols. the most loved man—the most touchingly & selection of ohe of | joved man—in the world.” : features that run through all Best of all things Ih. the book fis fhé utiful study of Russian litera- | siudy of that Maxim Gorkly who has. so - of mention should fall | cyddenly established a literary reputa- ¢ perfection of its realism—realism | tjon, He is estimated as a great artist gher forms as distinguished from | and a poet, and he “has found at last t narrowed type of-reallsm which | that happy gombination of realism with gives offense to the taste of many, and | jaealism for which the Russian folk-nov- which might be called Zolaism; and the | s have been striving for so many progress of this realism up to Its UNION | vears” One of the great things ‘about b ideslism, the idealistic-reallsm. | Gorkiy is the new trumpet note of cour- made the success of Maxim age and energy he puts inta Russian lit- erature and gives to all his readers. He | cannot stand whining, Take - this one ; sentence about one of his tramp charac- ters, miserably poor, but making no vir- tue of his helplessness:” “He dreams of the moment when ‘we,’ once ‘the poor,’ shall vanish, after having enriehed the Croesuses with the richness of the spiri | and_the power of life.” . t was the Russian poet, Pushkin, who m. it was that its best sense, and ropotkin says afterward became | stic of the whole of Russian | Speaking of this Iyric poet, | or says that his verses are 0 | t after having read them twice or t knows them by heart, and | (McClure, Phillips & Co., New York. $2) that they pleased h refined und phil- | @ osophical poets as Turgueneft, and are the " light of millions of peasant cutiaren. | “TUSTIN' WINGATE, . s writings are full of the bright love of life snd respect for women. He had a TERN STO power of poetical creation out of the] A WES S RY ings of everyds stoy life which only Tol- £ has to the same extent. John H. Winston, the author of ‘“Bar- Perhape the most interesting thing | bara, & Woman of the West” and of sbout this new study of Russian litera- | “The Rainbow Chasers,” has written & hilist ph.iosopher re- | | good Western story in his “Justin th-l gate, Ranchman.” ‘It gives vivid de- | scriptions of cowboy life; it contains some good love stories; the conflict be- | tween the farmers who wished to till the range lands and the cattlemen, who’ wanted open range, makes complications | of business, political ambition and love | that give interest to the story; and per-! haps best worth while of all is his en- | deavor to make the world know what he | well calls “the tragedy of the range.” | That tragedy of the range comes when the cattle by thousands starve, freeze, | die of agony or, probably worst of all, | endure the prolonged torture of a winter | on the unprotected plains in emaciation, thirst, hunger and shivering cold because there is not focd enough on the ground to keep them warm and their owners prepare no stacks of forage for these frequent severe winters. The stockman estimates that if only 20 per cent of his cattle die outright and the S0 per cent en- dure a lving death all winter, but re- vive in the spring, then there is still| money in the merciless treatment of the brutes committed to his care. Some day public opinion will brand this great cruelty which makes the tragedy of nearly all the plains of the West as a national shame and force a change in the system of our beef production. If the book had no other purpose that just to make widely known the horrors of the “Tragedy of the Range” it would have been worth its writing. Justin Wingate 1§ a waif taken from a prairie wagon and nurtured for a while by a preacher who had been left strand- ed in the wreck of what once had been a boom town. The preacher is a dreamer and with a pitiful faith looks forward to the time when the unfruitful wilderness of the arid plains is to be made blossom as the rose, even as the Bcripture text he quotes. Later the waif finds a triend in a dootor, Curtis Clayton, who 15 one of the chief characters of the atory. Clayton'is a scholar and he sees to it thut Justin Wingate gets a good oduce- tion, dnd so he grows up into & cowboy with all the strength of the strenuons outdoor life, but yet with the culture the Eastern scholar gives him. He develops into a thoroughly fine char- acter and the tale shows his marhood put to proof in many ways. His life is 80 linked with both the cattlemen who favor the open range and with the small farmers whose interests antagonize the stockmen that he is able to understand the feelinge of the contenders and to sympathize with them all. Howaver, he 1akes most kindly to the welfare of the farmers, because the cruelty of the range system of letting the stock suffer so ter- ribly in the winter's cold has mads a strong impression on his young mind. He 1s in love with a fine girl and he becomes ambitious_to be something more than a ; cowboy. Hig¢ ambition is gratified by his election to the Legislature, and he gues earnestly into polities to protect the j rights of his constituents. His ‘love for the daughter of one of the big cattlemen, whose business interests are opposed to those of the farmers, makes it difficult for him to resolve how to act. The story of the unhappy love affair of the doctor, Curtis Clayton, who ed- ucated Justin, is of almost as much | interest as the hero’s career. n ! gives the love of his whole life to a | beautiful woman who is false to him, and at last he volunfarily goes to a terrible death for her sake. After she finds herself being neglected she wishes to go back to Clayton, whose wife she had once been, and while he 1s strug- gling with thé problem whether to | trust her again there comes upon the | pair the exciting danger of a stampede | of cattle, and Clayton's answer to her wish to return to him fs that he dies to save her. The chapter describing it P T MAN WHO HAS WRI IAN LITERATURE AUTHORS HE DESCRIBES. is called “The Ride With Death,” and 18 the best in the book. (Little, Brown & Co., Boston: $150.) LLOYD OSBOURNE'S BOOK OF STORIES “The Motormaniacs” 1s the title of the first of four short stories in the book of that name by Liloyd Osbourne, the step- son and collaborator of Robert Louls Stevenson. Most of them are about au- tomobiles and are therefore timely to this age of motormaniacs. The fourth and last story is called plain “Jones,” and is the episode of a hesitating suitor. The little trait of human nature which by its mo- tive power made a story, and an amus- ingly romantic one, for this Jones and an- other man, was the dellcate reluctance of the younger and handsomer of two sisters to marry her suitor before the elder was mated, and the prospects for this last were so improbable that it set the Inventive genius of the sweeter girl's persuader to work at forcing events to come his way. His problem was to get the elderly Eleanor Van Coort married off, but the only man she had ever fancied was one she had met long ago, this “Jones” of the story, and he had got lost iy the mul- titude of Joneses. To find him was aif- ficult, but not sufficient, for he, though a loving, was a hesitating suitor, and many complications stood to baffle the desire of the younger ¢ouple to have him linked with Eleanor. What's in a name, but Jones' name came near barring his way to conjugal bliss, for Eleagor did not like it—she being vain because she was a Van Coort. The hesitations lasted 130 pages and on all of them we laugh, but feel sad with uncertainty for the fate of the lover of the little girl who hesitated synchron- ously with her big sister's beau. “The Motormaniacs” shows great fa- miliarity with the mechanism of motor cars and the running of them. The story goes with an automobile rush, but the top of the climax of the romance of it comes when thé machine balks and the girl who owned and overworked it gets out of patience with Captain Cart- wright, “that Englishman with the eye- glass,” to whom she is ON AND can't make the motor go, in conse- quence, the girl being irritable, he can’t make his engagement go any®further than the black half-hour of that unfor- tunate episode of his failure to be com- bination gentleman and engineer. The Englishman is angry with the lady because, ignoring his protest, she had run the car too fast and far, and she is angry with his “I-told-you-so” B rhe mredicasnent i¥ Put &n eha »; 'he pi nt 1 to by _the coming of Gerard im, a for- mer silent-for-sensible-reason lover of Cartwright's flancée. Maleolm is an ex- pert motormanfac. He has a buggy ana a girl which he gives to the English- man to go home with, while he stays to mend the machine of the sweethbart he ‘wanted but never wooed. This g %:l out how the two you can maniacs behaved x to themselves by reading Mr. Osbourne’s book. This Malcolm is intended to be a fine fellow and a lady's ideal, but he told an awful lie in the very act of win- | ning the best admiration of the girl's life. However, this is neither here nor there in stories which were intended to be utterly other than serious. (Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapo- lis; 75 cents.), -+ “HOUSE IN THE MIST, BY ANNA K. GREEN A little plece of strongly designed and finely finished literary work is the story | called “The House in tue Mist,” by Anna Katharine Green, the author of the muck-read “‘Millionaire Baby” and the “Filagree Ball.” It is especially so in the first chapter called “The Open Door,” which by a spell of author art gradually prepares the mind to a sensitive and ex- pectant state fit to know prophetically that a strong and strange story is com- ing to the adventurous young man who crosses the threshold of that open door to the weird house in the mist. That pre- lude has a power f& it that strongly re— minds of Hawthorne's art. The first touches are so sure that we feel them an evidence of something strong and satis- { fying to follow and to justify that skilled jarrest of our attention. Like the assur- ance of a speaker who has something worth saying and can say it well makes the mood of listening inevitably come, 80 is the certainty of these preliminary touches, haif-hypnotic, of a mistress of tale-telling. She wills that we expect an interesting mystery, and we do—and halt the power of the effect of its unfolding will have been due to the spell of ex- pectancy with which she made us await. The story is a mingling of the beau- tiful and the horrible, but that is what lite 1s, and the use here made of the grewsome is art's right. There are shudder-causing descriptions of a num- ber of repulsive human beings, but they serve as foil to the splendid pres- ence of the woman who comes Into the midst of these inferior creatures and compels our admiration. It's a use of contrast to heighten effect, and suc- cess crowns that use S0 thoroughly that the literary mechanism by which the fine result is achieved vanishes to let the thing it made stand forth alone, as it wholly done by magic or by mir- aclé—just as Hawthorne does such things and the trick of the method of their doing escapes us and we do not wish to unveil it. There is an inner force to this story which speaks to the soul with a suggestion of judgment to come, and the dead man who had by the drawing up of a clever will planned the tragedy of retribution whose ful- filiment the story relates might be im- agined as being in ghostly presence, Uke an avenging angel, in that strange housé in the mist while the lawyar read the will to the greedy heirs. The prevision of the will to save any one who might be penitent, and the beau- tiful way it worked out in actuality for the one woman who deserved its mercy, seem like a veiled warning that behind every human act there is an un- seen will-maker watching to frustrate the selfish and bring people to their reward of good or evil. 1t 18 & gbod story just for the story's sake, but it 18 also art in the sense of an especial way of révealing truths that will serve and upiift humanity. The weird account of the house in the mist will fasten itself in the imagin- ‘ation like a dream of kismet, and prompt the hope or fear that all des- tiny is a will cleverly designed as the one read to the heirs in the clever and tale. (Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapo- 1e; 75 cents.) o article {s illustrated is one of Daniel H. Burnham, the famous architect, who is spending a year’s time at work for the association -on the general designs of adornment. The bungalow built for him by the association on the top of Twin Peaks is shown, together with a part of the grand panorama of the city and bay which from that height he overlooks and gathers inspiration for the great work of | art which he has undertaken. Mr. Burnham has had wide experience | to it him for the task he has under- | taken. He designed the White City at| Chicago, and be has made plans for the adornment of Baltimore, Washington and Cleveland. The association, which | was formed January 15, 194, has such a | number of strong names on its list of | members as to Insure the success of the | outlining of a beautiful general plan and the gradual working toward its fulfill- ment. | A pretty view given of a fragment of | the city is one looking from the corner ot Alta Plaza and showing the magnificent | new Jewish - synagogue. The article | closes with this from Willlam Morris: “Art will make our streets as beautiful as | the woods and as elevating as the moun- tain sides.” {NOTES OF AUTHORS AND THEIR BOOKS So much has been written and sald of Maxim Gorky as the tramp au- thor,” the assoclate and leader of the poorest working men in Russia, that it is somewhat surprising to learn that he himself is far from being a poor man. Not only has he a great popular following as an author, but he has shown remarkable business | shrewdness in organizing and building | up a great publishing establishment in | St. Petersburg, of which he is now the head. Associating with bimself the four most prominent authors of the new Russian school—Andreyev, Chiri- kov, Yushkevich and Bunine—he formed the. Knowledge Publishing Company, | which for the past few years has| issued not only the books written by the five members of the firm, but also those of Petershov, Yablonovsky and other well-known Russian authors. So successful has this venture been that it is sald Gorky has made more than a quarter of a million rubles (3125, 000) in the business. All of theése au- thors, the most successful and popu- lar of the younger Russians, will be represented by storfes in forthcoming numbers of Tales, the new magazine of fiction. | May 81 is the date set by the Mac- millan Company for the publication of Jack London’s new story, “The Game.” The volume will be enriched with full- page plates in color, also with many drawings in the text and decorations. It will be brought out in specially at- tractive form. s s . Abraham Lincoln’s maxims were: } “Do not worry; eat three squars meals | a day; say your prayers; think of your wife; be courteous to your creditors; keep your digestion good; steer clear of billousness; exercise; go slow and | easy. Maybe there are other things | that your especial case requires to make you happy, but, my friend, these, I reckon will give you a good life.”"— Sauce Piquante. I De _ole owl 1ibs in a lonely place— "Way in de woods, an’ nobody dah! Eyes iak sunflowers in his face— "Way in de woods, an’ nobod: Sets Set h an’ moan an’ moan, ‘When de silvah moon goes down— "Way In de woods, O beah d¢ lomaly S pet it smplainis ewlm: Qo.:um .m’ still— de woods, an’ nobody dah! Dah de wand'rin’ aight winds stray, Dah de groanin’ branches sway, an’ witches lose deh way. "Way in de woods, an’ nobody dah. 'Way down in ma Bouthern home— Dais s plkes 1 jone io foam —From “The Black Cat Club,” by James D. Corrothers. s s There are two ways of loving—one Is Joyous, active, sane, without question- ings and without bitterness—the young and beautiful love which makes life charming and is its recompense. The [other sardonie, agitiated, complaining, | | more full of tears than laughter, makes | i its victims idle, cowardly, cruel and ca- | pricious.—John Oliver Hobbes, in “Love | and the Soul Hunters.” . e . A feature of the June Century will be | Thomas M. Semme, Pupil's Recollec- tions of ‘Stonew: Jackson,” dealing with incidents of the great general's ten years at the Virginia Military Institute: Major Jackson was appointed professor of natural and experimental philosophy and artfllery at the V. M. L in 1351, where his odditled of appearance and personality evidently made him the mark of his mis- chievous students, until he was appointed a colonel of Virginia forces in 1361 “With feelings of wonder and of pleased sul . Writes Mr. Bemmes, “we | ‘watched. his upward course, and as each | {to us) new and brilliant cnaracteristic of thé man burst forth under the pressure of action, we took no small-shame to our- selves for our lack of penetration, and ! | acknowledged gladly how greatly we had | mistaken and underrated- his endow- . charming article, full of literary reminis- cences, for the June Scribmer’s. [ e The Czar has been the most active re- cent risk in English companies, says a writer in Leslie’s Monthly for June. Up to a week before last Christmas the rate on his life was 5 per cent per annum. On December 23 holders of Russian bonds who insured him with Lioyd's for some tens of thousands of pounds had to pay 15 per cent for a policy running only ten months. After the assassimation of Grand Duke Sergius and the terrorisc threat to wipe out the imperial family, the Czar suddenly retired from activity as an insurance risk. Nobody wanted him at the price the underwriters piaced on his life. “The Mankiller” is the title which Da- vid Buffum gives to his sad history of & horse-in the May 18 issue of The Youti's Companion. The unhappy creature was the victim of inherited waywardness and the brutality of his masters. Ope cannot read the story without the conviction that a horse’s heart knows joy and fury and incurable despalr, even If he may not possess reasoning powers. The author had charge of the horses in the New York street cleaning department in Col- onel Waring’s time, and is an expert on horse nature and care and government. BECS 4 S5 8 S8, BOOKS RECEIVED. POVERTY, by Robert Hunter. millan Company, New York. MASS AND CLASS, by W. G. Gheat. Macmillan Company, New York. Mac- RIDING AND DRIVING, by E. A. An- derson. Macmillan Company, New York; $2. EXPERIMENTS WITH PLANTS, by ‘W. J. V. Osterhout. Maemillan Compa~ ny, New York; $1 25. FOND ADVENTURES, by Maurice Hewlett. Harper & Brothers, New York: 1 50. * RUSSIAN LITERATURE, by P. Kro- potkin. McClure, Phillips & Co., New York; $2 THE MOTORMANIACS, by Lloyd Os- bourne. Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indi- anapolis; 75 cents. HOUSE IN THE MIST, by Anna Katherine Green. Bobbs-Merrill Com~ pany, Indianapolis; 75 cents. THE GOLDEN FLOOD, by Edwin Le- fevre. McClure, Phillips & Co., ?h' York. MY OWN STORY, by Caleb Powers. iBubbl-Merflll Company, Indianapolls. PARDNERS, by Rex E. Beach. Me- Clure, Phillips & Co., New York. THE WING OF LOVE, by Katherine M. C. Meredith. McClure, Phillips & Co., New York. MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE, by Felix Adler. McClure, Philllps & Co., New York. THE WEIRD PICTURE, by John C. Carling. Little, Brown & Co., Boston. THE CRIMSON BLIND, by Fred M. White. R. F. Fenno & Co., New York. THE BREATH OF THE GODS, by Sidney McCall. Little, Brown & Co.. Boston; $1 50. THE CHILD VIVIEN, by Charlotta J. Ciprianl. Rand, McNally & Co., New York. LADY NOGGS, PEERESS, by Edgar | Jepson. MecClure, Phillips & Co., New York. GIOTTO, by Basil de Selincourt. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York; $2. THE AFTERMATH OF SLAVERY, by Willlam A. Sinclair. Small, Maynard & Co., Boston. THE UNFOLDING OF THE AGES, by Ford C. Ottman. Baker & Taylor Com- pany, New York: $2. MODERN MASTERS IN PULPIT DIS- COURSE, by W. C. Wilkinson. Funk & ‘Wagnalls Company, New York. $§1 60. ————— EARL OF SUFFOLK WILL ENTER THE RACING GAME Leiter Millions Will Now Enable Him to Become a Patrom of the Track. LONDON, May 27.—It is reported in sporting circles that the Earl of Suf- folk will set up a racing stabls next year and that he will have his herses trained at his place near Malmesbury, in Wiltshire. Since the race track lost the support of such stalwarts as the late Duke of Westminster, Captain Mac- Calmont, Sir John Blundell Maple and Captain Mitchell, members of the Jockey Club have been trying to get wealthy men to take up the sport and among others approached was the Earl of Suffolk, who ceased to be regarded as an impecunious peer when he mar- ried Miss Daisy Leiter. His American bride, it is said, quite approves of his decision. Horse racing is one of the passports to royal faver. In other forms of sport the Earl is an | enthusiast and probably is as well highly iInteresting volume, entitled “The Encyclopedia of Sport.” ———— CARNEGIE WILL INCREASE HIS HOUSEHOLD STAFY creasing appreciation of living. He is now for a few weeks while the put in proper shape. forth. that the household g