was when I married him. He was just "We should call it impossible." "Because no man is worthy of it. Because it would serve him right if those girls were allowed to leave with the impression of his folly and rudeness unmitigated by his wife's devotion." "You are a suffragist, then?" "What has that to do with it?" so pleased us could not spoil our pleasure in it, but it brought us a vexation which we could escape only by recurring to the book, where we lost the sense of the wrong done the author. We lost ourselves altogether in it as we strayed from one delightful paper to another, and tasted the quality of his delicate humor, and experienced once more the charm of his serene, philosophy. He has a view-point of his own, which is always that of a high humanity, a wise generosity. There is never anything illiberal in his ideas; and in these essays the dramatic instinct is constantly at work, clothing his opinions in delightful character, and making life the theater of argument. One will be a sublime allegory, another the masterly study of personality, in another a casual event takes lasting significance under his hand. It is a pity that such a book, in our "As much as anything we have been dearth of essays, should not find its way saying. "What we mean is that love in women exalts itself through their perpetual selfsacrifice in marriage, and in men it debases itself through their constant selfassertion. A man could say what Señor Rojas did because his wife was worthy of it; but a woman could not say what Señora Rojas did because her husband would not be worthy of it, and women always speak the truth." Oh, that's what you mean, is it?" and the Cynic, who had risen, went away, laughing satanically. to English readers out of the Spanish, where it is so beautiful. It is beautiful not only because it is full of lovely art, but because it is so true, and because it is so kind. The touch in it is everywhere light; the excellent artist insists no more on his convictions than on his impressions. When we come from philosophic speculation, from the fancy that. plays with thought and fact, in the same graceful spirit, to matters of religion, our novelist knows, as few moralists have known, how to penetrate the heart of it, where Catholicism and Protestantism His travesty of the passage which had alike cease, and Christianity alone is. Editor's Study E - NGLISH-SPEAKING people-certainly those of them intelligent enough to read books and periodicals, even newspapers are not so much given to diversions as they are devoted to the serious purposes of life. For better or for worse, their past social history has disclosed a predominantly Puritanic disposition. Whatever of looseness there may have been in the sports and pastimes of the aristocratic and of the idle rich, popular entertainments of every kind have been held to rigid moral standards. The restraint of public opinion has been effectual, to the extent of imposing hypocrisy upon the reactionary, suppressing even innocent abandonment. In our time seriousness has become earnestness, or is at least in the way to become that. The present generation wears a more open countenance than the last, more frankly confessing itself for what it is, daring to express itself naturally because it is more tolerant of what is natural. Thus it happens that, while there is larger and deeper sociability and less individualism, there is more spontaneous variation of individuality and a freer play of individual disposition. Life, like nature, has its way with them that accept it; and because it is thus boldly accepted some of the elders uncomprehendingly complain that their juniors are impatient of restraint and discipline and lack reverence. These elders, following their own elders, emphasized preceptual wisdom, imposed authority, and the formation. of character through conformity; they thought of sin as "imputed," of judgment as external, of redemption as something extra-territorially accomplished for the soul. Contrary to the Gospel and to nature, they considered what went into a man more essential than what proceeded out of him. Thus they attempted to formulate life; but whatever was of lasting excellence in their own doing and being implied the reversal or some off-guard forgetfulness of their formal chart, when they confessed to a kingdom of heaven within them-to the mastery of life. The old seriousness tended to make men and women afraid of life, apprehensive of nature; and cowardice is the mother of hypocrisy. But we, who take a different attitude, are apt as uncomprehendingly to judge our elders as they are to judge us. They came of a race whose history is a record of revolts. Puritanism began in nonconformity; it was the heritage of heroic convictions which, though beclouded by an obstinate bigotry, were steadfastly held in the fear of God and at peril of martyrdom. We owe to that race our freedom, our courage, the conditions of our spiritual emancipation. Its fervor has become our light, its seriousness our earnestness. Its art and literature have reflected the lights and shadows of its somber faith, taking a course which has always been ethically quite distinct from that taken by the art and literature of the Latin races— its matter dominating its manner, its spirit its form. Whenever in the last two centuries the English race has settled down into more static conditions, as notably in the eighteenth, it has been the form that survived, disguising the spirit. Didacticism, fastidious elegance, and conventionalism have displaced the heroic impulse. The living spirit was evoked by the Romantic Revival-was indeed renascent in Tennyson and Matthew Arnold, who, because they had a vision of the future, could livingly recall the glory of the past. But those, still lingering on the stage, who deprecate the irreverence of the present generation for old customs do not justify their own reverence upon real grounds. It is the new age which, re-embodying the spirit of the old, does it true honor. The new attitude toward life and nature is most significantly indicated in English and American fiction. This art more than any other has for its distinct function the portrayal of life, and, among English-speaking peoples, it has to-day, as it has had since Richardson and Fanny Burney, especial reference to the purpose and meaning of life. In the whole body of this fiction there is very little art for art's sake," as compared with French examples. Exemplification is unnecessary. Even when entertainment has been the novelist's chief object, his course has been determined by the interests and concerns of an audience perhaps too intolerant of idle diversion. The The degree of detachment from the common plane of life has differed with different authors and sometimes in the same author, as in the case of George Eliot, at different stages of artistic development; but the picture, however lifted and in whatever setting, has, in theme and motive, been held more or less faithfully to the living pattern. tendency has been toward less detachment, until, in twentieth-century fiction, we have surprising examples of a realism in which the pattern is the picture itself. There has never before been produced so great a variety of fiction as is laid before the readers of to-day, and so much of which by virtue of its artistic excellence belongs to literature. There is not one of these variations having that distinction the pleasure of which we would willingly forego. Each has justification in its separate delight, though it may not be an example of the kind of realism we have described. And, in addition to these, we have the wonderful as well as delightful variations of nineteenthcentury fiction. As to any of these, past or present, the critic is ready with some special attribution of excellence, noting also the defects of that excellence, and some special characterization of the writer's art-his individual style, and the secret of his magic. But in the course of this fiction one line of advance is distinctly seen-toward a new sense of life, through the release of imagination from traditional limitations imposed upon it by bigotry and sophistry. The interpretation of life in its own living terms led to its representation in these terms. That is what creative realism in our modern fiction means; and it is as distinctly characteristic of the evolution of humanity in this twentieth century as the philosophy of Henri Bergson is, or that of William James. Our living experience is no more real to us than that of all peoples in all ages was to them, but our sense of life is more immediately derived from it and more completely expels everything not directly pertinent to it. It is not merely an individual but a race experience, with mysterious hereditary filaments; and, in our day, a vastly expanded consciousness becomes a collective, a world sense of life. We see how this expanded sense underlies individual integrations in the psychical realism of Henry James's fiction. The radical change in the portrayal of life is obviously apparent even in such fiction as is not clearly realisticin the disappearance of the old didactic strain, in the passing of the "problem novel," and in the absence of rhetorical devices, of typical impersonations and dramatic disguises. Masterly invention and artifice still survive for our diversion, and we frankly confess to their allurement, as we do to that of melodrama. But in the main current of fiction the purpose and meaning of life are more or less dramatically and even luminously eloquent. These reflections concerning fiction, perhaps often enough hitherto dwelt upon in the Study, recur freshly to our mind in connection with Mrs. Deland's novel, The Iron Woman, concluded in the October number of this Magazine, and now before a wider public through its publication in book form. It is all so fresh in the memory of our readers that we need not characterize the story here. As the scene is laid in Mercer, Dr. Lavendar does not appear, and it is very much to say for so stressful a drama that his presence is not missed, though Helena Richie is there, to be near him. Youth and the impulses of youth are dominant in the novel as in no previous work of fiction by Mrs. Deland, and the crises precipitated by the headlong current are not such as could be helped or hindered by even so strong a minister of grace as Dr. Lavendar proved to be in the Old Chester Tales and in The Awaken ing of Helena Richie. There he was needed, but in the culminating scene of The Iron Woman it is Mrs. Richie herself who is called to an office of ministration which no other could take. If Mrs. Deland should write no more, this novel would give her the foremost place as a writer of vital fiction, fully rounding out the career which she began in her short stories about Old Chester people. And how familiar all these people seem to her readers-as if they had lived just those lives she has portrayed and in just the scenes where she has, not placed, but found them! She We comment on other works of fiction, saying of this, that, and another, "How amusing!" "How brilliant!" "What a sense of the comedy of life!" "What wonderful perfection of style!" But we never say these things about Mrs. Deland's work. We dare not even say, "How real!" lest the reality should seem an accomplishment, and so vanish. seems herself to avoid the appearance of anything inviting remark. The more work she bestows upon a story-and she not only produces slowly, but her revisions are a terror to the compositorthe less elaborate it seems. Her eliminations clear the impression; her additions give ampler life to the embodiment. She is not thinking of technique, and shuns effectivism. Everything is subordinated to the meaning - and that meaning is vital. The result is not a finished picture of still life. The motive is dynamic, springing from the heart of life, and thus profoundly moves the hearts of readers, who feel the dramatic tension, pulse, and rhythm, in Nature's Own measure. The picture so absorbs the living pattern into itself that there is nothing of that detachment which is traditionally associated with art. Yet the imaginative projection is complete. Thus, in that scene of "At the Stuffed Animal House," which is laid in Mercer, whither Dr. Willy King takes Harriet Hutchinson to consult the "big doctor," who gives her sentence of death within six months, the pathos of this doomin itself impressive, though a common tragedy of life is not allowed to fall upon the reader's heart with a mortal thud; it is made the foil to the woman's courage. But how is the impression of this courage to be conveyed to the reader, in all its buoyancy, and as reality, beyond any pretense? As Dr. Willy goes out of the Mercer doctor's office with Harriet, he tries to comfort her. "It's perfectly possible that he is mistaken.' "I guess not, Willy,' she said, simply. 'Come, now, don't be such a wet string; . . . let's have a spree! We'll have a good dinner, and will do something interesting. Hurrah!” After their good dinner Harriet proposed that they should go to the circus. "It's in town; I saw the tents. I haven't been to a circus for forty years.'" 66 6 So they "went sauntering along the hot, grimy street in the direction of the open lots beyond the blast - furnaces, where, under a deep June sky, dazzling even though it was smudged by coils of smoke, were stretched the circus-tents, brave with flags and slapping and billowing in a joyous wind. William King held onto his hat and looked at the great, white clouds, domed and shining, piled all along the west. 'We'll get a shower, I'm afraid, Miss Harriet.' "Well, take a pill, Willy, and then it won't hurt you,' she told him, with a laugh that belonged to the sun and wind, to the flags whipping out on their halyards and the signs of the side-shows bellying from their guy - ropes, to the blare of music and the eager circus crowd-that crowd that never changes with changing generations." So everything, under those threatening white clouds takes its bravery of motion from Harriet's own courage, as if a part of it. We are not calling this scene to the reader's mind to the depreciation of the portrayals made by the great masters of fiction. But this is different. There is no indirection; and, much as we admire indirections as an allurement—a high intellectual satisfaction in Meredith and Henry James, we recognize something nearer to nature in Mrs. Deland's immediate and sure grasp of the common material of human life. Hers is not a conscious method. It is a new attitude toward life and nature characteristic of the new century-significantly illustrated in this author's fiction because of her wonderful intuition and creative faculty. F you see a gentleman will you please tell him I'm in the dress goods? Oh! I thought you were never coming. Thank you it's all right, he's come. Oh, I thought you were the one I asked to tell a gentleman, excuse me! I guess that's the one. No matter, I've got him. I came up here, dear, because I thought maybe you had forgotten where I told you. Why I said the middle door, opposite the ribbons, just by the elevator next to the glove counter. What could be simpler? You couldn't have been there half an hour because I was back there a few minutes ago. I couldn't stay there, but I kept going back. What's the matter? Is that straight? (Gives her hat a poke.) Well come on now, we have so little time if I don't get one here I can't go, I've looked everywhere else. Coats? Right down this way? Oh just look at these portières, aren't they lovely? I wish I had looked here last fall, they're just the same as thosewait a minute, I just want to . . how much are those portières? Now isn't that aggravating? No I don't want any, I said it was aggravating because I got some just like them in Philadelphia last fall that cost twice as much. My sister's living there-yes I'm coming-and we don't often get a chance to go shopping together, so I got them while I was there. We've always been together a great deal, there's only a year and a half between us. I suppose these portières will clean nicely? Yes I'm coming. I've a good mind to get a pair of those- I know we don't, but they are so cheap and we may never see them again. Well, all right. Now I'm all turned around. Didn't he say this aisle? Come on, George, we've got so little time, I've got to meet Addie in the stockings at four. What are you looking at? Which one? No, I don't see anything pretty about her. Coats, please. Under the bridge? Oh, yes, of course. Isn't that a pretty dress? Just look at those ruffles! Why it fastens down there in the front, that goes over that way and this comes across, then that rever hooks down there and this ruffle falls over and hides the hooks, don't you see? What are you looking for? Oh they don't have them in those plain skirts. Why where could you put one in a skirt like that? Oh you have to stick it in here or up your sleeve. VOL. CXXIII.-No. 738.-120 Silly? Well I don't think it's as bad as those full skirts where you never could find them-I'd rather have no pocket at all and be able to find it than- Don't you remember the one I put those theater tickets in. And we never found them again till the dress was unripped! Well that's a lovely dress! I know, dear, of course. It's much too expensive, but I suppose I can look at it. It's just what I want. Isn't it cute? No, I'm |