Chapter 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_.'

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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

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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.