Part 26

The title of the story hints at a reliance upon mere setting. And the hepatica bed, with all that its associations signify, certainly makes its generous atmospheric contribution to the charm of the narrative. But as domestic entanglements begin to ensue, our interest in the flowers is soon shifted to plot and theme. Our sustained sympathy rests with the mother--the mother who has created in her home an atmosphere of the truest and most sensibly refined culture. The promising son, sharing this atmosphere and even enriching it, yields while at Aldershot before the war to the superficial charm of a chorus girl, and marries her. Her loud and garish presence in the home of quiet beauty and repose provides an interesting but tragic study in contrast, and makes us continually more anxious as we watch its influence upon the mother, yearning pityingly for her absent son, yet plaintively relieved when news comes that he has been killed in the war. Death has released him from the grim necessity of living his mismated life and caring for the child born of parents of such divergent types. The supreme merit of the mother's character lies in her willing acceptance of the burdening problem. The strength of the story, as we view it in its entirety, rests in a skillful merging of effects which allows final emphasis upon character portrayal and thematic situation.

POSSESSING PRUDENCE

Amy Wentworth Stone is a resident of Boston, who combines a pleasant sense of the ludicrous with a rare understanding of the spirit of childhood.

This miniature sketch of Amy Wentworth Stone's is admirably handled, and sparkles with the best and kindliest humor--a humor that is in no sense spoiled by the sins that rest so lightly upon the imaginative soul of little Prudence Jane. Her sins hark quickly back to the childhood periods of each reader who sympathetically remembers the world of fancy which conflicted so loudly with dull realism. The charm of this humorous tracery will invite a rereading of Miss Stone's similar triumph in _Capital Punishments_, published in the _Atlantic_ for November, 1913.

THE GLORY-BOX

Elizabeth Ashe is the pen name of Georgiana Pentlarge, a young and promising story-writer living in Boston.

_The Glory-Box_ is an unforgettable story. Its accuracy in the matter of minor household details and commonplace neighborliness creates an atmosphere of intimate realism which readily wins our sympathetic credence in situation and event. We grow easily familiar with the three or four characters who are introduced, and then we discover our interest centering in two of these--Eunice, the sweetheart, and Stephen, the lover--as, in their separated lives, each in fancy penetrates the daily routine and comes fondly to rest in thoughts and plans of marriage. The story interest is enhanced by the contrast of their daily routine. Eunice's time is spent in teaching, relieved by friendly village companionship; Stephen's in the arduous work of the Columbia Law School, relieved by glimpses of fashionable life in Washington Square. All this routine and hope and relaxation end in the tragedy that the earlier realism of the story grimly accentuates and intensifies. The art of the story lies in the author's quiet control of situations which might so easily, in the hands of a lesser craftsman, run a riotous course in the field of pseudo-sentiment.

THE SPIRIT OF THE HERD

Dallas Lore Sharp, well known as a keen observer both of nature and of human nature, is Professor of English at Boston University.

I have asked permission to extract this episode from a longer article. Professor Sharp was as generous in this as he has been helpful in other matters relating to selections which make up this volume of narratives.

The paragraphs which precede the present beginning are expository in nature, and while they bear interestingly upon the incident, they are not a necessary part of the narrative. The selection breathes the very atmosphere of highly hazardous adventure; and even though the writer quickly generates in us a feeling of confidence in the superior powers of Ranchman Wade and Peroxide Jim, we nevertheless restlessly live through the moments of the wild stampede as it makes its mad and frightened way along the perilous edge of the rim-rock.

IN THE PASHA'S GARDEN

H. G. Dwight is the son of an American missionary to the Near East, and lived for many years in Constantinople. Being compelled to leave Turkey after her entrance into the war, he returned to the United States and is now in the government service.

Mr. Dwight in this Stamboul romance has invested his scenes with the languorous and mystical spirit of the orientalism in which his characters so naturally move. We are here far away from the O. Henry type of story, with its startling cleverness, crisp humor, and ingenious surprise. We share instead the leisure and luxury of this eastern way of living--felt all the more strongly because of the presence of the French wife whose independent customs and bearing offend the servants of the easy-going Pasha. The interest, however, is not confined to the atmosphere. We are soon breathing the mystery of the kiosque--a mystery which the author never fully solves, but leaves silently merged in the intangible charm of the pervading orientalism.

LITTLE SELVES

Mary Lerner, a story-writer of Cambridge, Massachusetts, first won attention by the publication of 'Little Selves' in the _Atlantic Monthly_.

I have included this selection because it reveals so delicately and so immediately that quality which we may somewhat paradoxically call _romantic realism_. The scenes which Miss Lerner's old Irish woman so intimately recalls are all peopled by the real creatures of a remembered past, principally her little selves as they lived through their childish joys and sorrows and swiftly sequent perplexities. But each of these experiences, so intimately and realistically portrayed, is seen through memories tinged with the charm of a happy Celtic romance.

THE FAILURE

Charles Caldwell Dobie is a young writer living in San Francisco.

Mr. Dobie has in this story shown himself more than a mere realist. The realistic details of John Scidmore's home, the early-morning routine of the insurance office, the evening splendor of Julia Norris's hotel apartments,--all are graphically re-created. But the central idea is an ethical one--John Scidmore's wavering action in the midst of a business situation where a frank admission of gross neglect was morally imperative. His immediate failure to meet the situation is grimly contrasted with his wife's expressed faith in his honesty. The story presents a graphic instance of a righteous act silently directed by a strongly influencing personality. It closes with this particular problem solved; but we end the reading with many interesting and conflicting surmises concerning the future domestic life in the Scidmore home.

BUSINESS IS BUSINESS

Henry Seidel Canby, essayist and critic and occasional writer of stories, is a Professor of English at the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale University. His books include several volumes on the short story.

The commercial theme has been freely exploited by the popular magazine writers. When it is written merely for the sake of getting in line with a popular trend, it is likely to be empty and blusterous. In Mr. Canby's story we are, of course, interested in the business atmosphere; but we are more deeply interested in the portrayal of character. Cargan is most fully drawn, and we watch him with increasing keenness as we see him dominated by the various moods which the other personalities and the shifting incidents and the changing environment engender. The skill shown in the rapid but graphic sketching of Mrs. Cargan and Mrs. Waldron is equally engaging. The story is perfect in its mastery of narrative technique.

NOTHING

Zephine Humphrey (Mrs. Fahnestock), long a contributor of essays and stories to the _Atlantic_, is the author of a novel entitled _Grail-Fire_.

In this and other contributions to the _Atlantic_ Miss Humphrey has shown an acute sensitiveness to atmosphere and personality. We are here charmingly led into an intimate understanding of the surroundings and character of the little blind woman who lives her lonely life in the simple cottage where, in preparation for the imminent affliction, she had long ago learned to do her work in the silent dark. The story has almost no plot interest, for we trace no significant movement of events--except the few which are fragmentarily imparted in confidential retrospect. The quietness of the style is in thorough keeping with the secured tone--one of those happy revelations so difficult to accomplish, yet when once accomplished suggesting, by its inevitable touch, the easy process of mastership.

A MOTH OF PEACE

Mrs. Katharine Fullerton Gerould, distinguished as a writer of essays and stories and novels, is the wife of Gordon Hall Gerould, Professor at Princeton.

Aside from the unusually strong and flowing style here so impressively revealed, we have a story marked by a sympathetic penetration into the atmosphere of Andecy--an atmosphere, when first felt, richly laden with the languor of a lonely and pervading provincial peace. This peace is suddenly broken by the rumors and processes of war, and we feel the dread of the impending German attack and the personal solicitude of Miss Stanley, the American heroine lovingly anxious for the fate of her English fiance. Nearer and nearer comes the threatened danger. Finally the heroine goes out to meet the troop of enemy soldiers without the gates--whether to meet a tragic end, the author does not say.

There is little dialogue and little haste in the action. The narrative is continuously guided by the controlling spirit of Miss Stanley, who grimly triumphs over the fear and dread of the perilous situation. Her body may have suffered defeat; her soul is splendidly victorious. The author's skill at the end is finely revealed in the graphic portrayal of the psychology of the situation.

IN NO STRANGE LAND

Katharine Butler, a young writer of few and distinctive stories, lives at Danvers, Massachusetts.

The significant merit of this story is the mystical creation of a man's experience with death. The things of earth and heaven become perplexingly intermingled. Realism becomes strongly blended with the thoughts that move in weird circles on the tenuous wings of wanton fancy, and we live a puzzled moment as we try to visualize the man's experiences in his new realm of consciousness with its 'incredible freedom and joy.' The whole narrative is wrought in the delicate tracery of one whose temperament is obviously the temperament of a poet.

LITTLE BROTHER

Madeleine Z. Doty, of New York, learned the true story of 'Little Brother' when at The Hague, in the summer of 1915, as a delegate to the Woman's International Congress. Miss Doty is a lawyer by profession; by practice, a writer, investigator, and traveler.

With terrible concreteness _Little Brother_ weights our soul-sense with the horror and tragedy of war. The story is told with a bared realism which the poignancy of the occasion freely extenuates. In short crisp sentences the opening scene is exposed. There follow in dizzy succession and in the same quick-breathing style the little tragic ordeals that fill the story with a terrible passion. It penetrates the very essence of our being and starkly confronts us with the bleak mystery of the existing condition of world-carnage--a carnage that wantonly wreaks its unselected vengeance on little sufferers unskilled and unschooled in squaring their strength to ill-proportioned trials.

WHAT ROAD GOETH HE?

'F. J. Louriet' is a pseudonym representing the dual authorship of Captain and Mrs. F. J. Green, long of Australia and now of Honolulu.

By the free but not too lavish use of sea terms and common sailor talk, we are brought into immediate and intimate knowledge of the affairs of a ship floundering in a storm. Through graphic sensory images, with their vivid and varied appeals, the whole perilous situation is wonderfully intensified. Seldom indeed are details better massed to secure an intended effect. But the interest later comes to centre in the great theme of sacrifice--a sacrifice all the more significant because it is performed with such absolute spontaneity. The story is a noteworthy example of strong effect secured with great economy of time and material.

THE CLEARER SIGHT

Ernest Starr, a writer of occasional stories, lives in North Carolina.

The most interesting element in Mr. Ernest Starr's narrative is the dramatic conflict of emotions. Placed first in the gnomish atmosphere of a chemical laboratory, the tone soon changes from scientific to ethical--each interest being intensified and directed by the deep emotion of romantic love. A serious accident in the laboratory creates the crisis; it reveals to Noakes, the young scientist, the inexcusable baseness in his character--a baseness which allowed him to act with direct disloyalty to his employer and with somewhat obvious disloyalty to the ideals cherished by the girl whom he loved. The situation is finally relieved by his confessions and by the physician's hope that the young scientist's physical blindness is not necessarily permanent.

The author shows unusual skill in dialogue, in analysis, and in the handling of both conventional and dramatic situations.

THE GARDEN OF MEMORIES

C. A. Mercer is an American author who has, unfortunately, been altogether silent of late years.

In this story the traditions and influence of Hawthorne are picturesquely revived. The experience is one which is a bit fragile and tenuous, but to readers who reproduce in their fancy the more delicate picturings of their childhood, who delight in the re-creation of mood, who frequently re-live their childhood sentiments--to all such will come a sense of pleasure in the contemplation of the tracery here so artistically etched.

THE CLEAREST VOICE

Margaret Sherwood, a singularly sincere and graceful writer, is Professor of English Literature at Wellesley College.

The clear voice which here speaks under Miss Sherwood's guidance is the voice of the absent. And, individually, as we read the story, we listen sympathetically to the separate messages of those voices which have entered sympathetically into our past experiences and wisely guided or wisely thwarted our separate deeds.

A Harvard graduate who had taken Professor Charles Eliot Norton's course in fine arts was years afterward selecting a cravat pin in a jeweler's shop in Paris. As he finally decided upon one of plain, simple, and silently impressive design, he said, 'I think Professor Norton would have chosen this.' In decisions minor and in decisions major, we are almost invariably influenced by the unconscious thought of those whose counsel we value. This significant truth Miss Sherwood has impressively revealed in _The Clearest Voice_.

THE MARBLE CHILD

E. Nesbit (Mrs. Hubert Bland) is an English writer who for many years has enjoyed widespread and deserved popularity as a writer of children's books.

'The world where children live is so full of amazing and incredible-looking things that turn out to be quite real.' This sentence from the story supplies us with the theme the wording of the bald analyst requires. For him who simply reads for the mere narrative, no such analyzing is really necessary--provided there still linger with him the manifold fancies that peopled his childhood. Of course Ernest was an extraordinary child--like Shelley or William Blake, it may be. Just such a child as Hawthorne would adore. To appreciate the story in all its fineness, we must ourselves have something of that abnormality. Else we shall be as impervious as the crinolined aunts, and as unsympathetic toward Ernest's experience as are some readers to Hawthorne's fanciful _Snow Image_.

THE ONE LEFT

E. V. Lucas is an English essayist, a lover and biographer of Lamb, known for many delicate and appreciative essays, and for books of travel in familiar places. It is semi-occasionally only that Mr. Lucas addresses himself to fiction.

This admirably written story--so brief as to be little more than a sketch--is rich in emotional values which are safely held within the bonds of restraint. Scientifically, I am told there is nothing wrong in the description of the ingenious device which provides the means for the expression of the emotion, though readers unfamiliar with such devices may question the verisimilitude of the action. It is but one instance among thousands which provide modern literature with a broadened range within the field of realism.

THE LEGACY OF RICHARD HUGHES

Margaret Lynn, member of the English Department of the State University of Kansas, at Lawrence, is best known for her sympathetic appreciation of prairie life.

This story is a tragedy--the tragedy of a wife's failure to understand the finer side of her husband's nature. She learns her misjudgment all too late--when the husband lies dead. The emotional values are the greater because the reader inevitably contemplates the long years they lived together in their isolation. The psychology of the situation is portrayed with remarkable clarity. The method is very different from the method of such writers as de Maupassant. De Maupassant's analysis and dissecting is usually done with cold and relentless indifference; Miss Lynn's processes are here carried out determinedly, but with full and lingering sympathy.

OF WATER AND THE SPIRIT

Margaret P. Montague, living among the West Virginia mountains, has written many successful stories of the Hill people whom she knows so well.

The chain of incidents narrated by the simple-hearted Virginia dressmaker is of absorbing interest, and seems to be the real experiences of one who had actually endured the tragedy of having lived in the horror of the aftermath of battle. But even more interesting than these scenes of pitiful suffering is the effect produced upon the woman who endures it all. Her whole attitude toward life was changed. What matters it now that her father was not an aristocratic Virginian? What if she were a poor dressmaker at the little village of Johnson's Falls? What though she was not elected a member of the Laurel Literary Society? She had been face to face with war and death and Hell and God. The little things of life had unconsciously sunk away and the great enduring themes had boldly emerged to re-create her spiritual self.

MR. SQUEM

Reverend Arthur Russell Taylor, Rector of the Episcopal Church at York, Pennsylvania, whose career as a writer of fiction opened so auspiciously with 'Mr. Squem' and a few companion stories, died very suddenly early in January, 1918.

Here the central interest is in character. In creating such a personage as Mr. Squem, the writer of this story has boldly penetrated the veneer of culture and shown us that the character elements which are of enduring worth may be far aloof from any knowledge of art or religion or philosophy, or any form of polite learning.

It is interesting to note the part which the railroad wreck plays in this story. While there is enough in the situation to have made the wreck a point of central objective interest, it is utilized here simply as the background for the display of Mr. Squem--genial, direct, efficient, ingenuous, dominating, interestingly crude.

In the February, 1918, _Atlantic_ Mr. Squem is equally interesting in a different environment.

Soon after the death of Reverend Arthur Russell Taylor, Bishop James Henry Darlington sent to the Atlantic office an interesting appreciation of Dr. Taylor's work and character. From Bishop Darlington we learn that Dr. Taylor 'had for years been suffering from a tumor on the brain which had totally destroyed the sight of one eye and which by its pressure caused him constant pain, sleepless nights, and the gradual failing of the other eye. Like Robert Louis Stevenson, he was cheerful and brightened the lives of others until the very last, and almost his final writings were sent to _The Atlantic_.'

* * * * *

The following corrections were made by the etext transcriber:

the chops looks so tasty=>the chops look so tasty

had never critized=>had never criticized

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _The Atlantic Monthly_, vol. 113, p. 733.

[2] _The Atlantic Monthly_, vol. 86, p. 180.

[3] Atlantic stories.

[4] Atlantic stories.

[5] Atlantic stories.

[6] Atlantic stories.

[7] Published also in Professor Sharp's book, _Where Rolls the Oregon_, and here reprinted through the courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Company.

[8] Published also in book form and here republished through the courtesy of E. P. Dutton & Co.