The red rose blossoms somewhere-a rich land, With not an inch of earth within its bound Of such a land have men in dungeons dreamed, Wide open and unguarded stand our gates, These bringing with them unknown gods and rites, Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew! O Liberty, white Goddess! is it well To leave the gates unguarded? On thy breast WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS. No one can deny to Mr. Howells some of the most attractive literary graces. Long since the critic, E. P. Whipple, declared: "He has no rival in half-tints, in modulations, in subtle phrases that touch the edge of an assertion and yet stop short of it. He is like a skater who executes a hundred graceful curves within the limits of a pool a few yards square." Mr. Howells himself has stated that his principle is to look away from the great passions and to study and report the commonplace. "As in literature," he says, "the true artist will shun the use even of real events if they are of an improbable character, so the sincere observer of man will not desire to look upon his heroic or occasional phases, but will seek him in his habitual moods of vacancy and tiresomeness." It must be admitted that he has made the commonplace entertaining by his great charm of style, and that occasionally in some of his best work he has transgressed his own canon. William Dean Howells was born at Martin's Ferry, Ohio, on March 1, 1837. He learned to set type when a boy, and helped his father in issuing a country paper. The contributions of the younger Howells attracted some attention, and he was made news-editor of the State Journal, at Columbus, Ohio. Upon the nomination of Abraham Lincoln, Howells wrote a campaign biography, and later received the appointment of Consul at Venice, where he resided from 1861 to 1865. "Venetian Life" and "Italian Journeys" are fruits of this residence abroad. After his return he was connected with the New York Tribune and the Atlantic Monthly, being editor of the latter from 1872 to 1881. He has since resided in New York, where, aside from other literary work, he has conducted a critical department in Harper's Magazine. Mr. Howells' first novel, "A Chance Acquaintance," was published in 1873. Besides this, his most noted novels are, "The Lady of the Aroostook," "The Undiscovered Country,' "A Modern Instance," "The Rise of Silas Lapham," "Indian Summer," "The World of Chance," "A Hazard of New Fortunes," and "The Landlord of the Lion Head." He has also written some clever parlor farces, among which are "The Parlor Car," "The Sleeping Car," and "The Register." In his younger days he published a volume of poems together with J. J. Piatt, entitled "Poems of Two Friends." More recently he has published a volume of "Poems," and "Stops from Various Quills," and has edited "Modern Italian Poets." Howells has a keen eye for the social distinctions in American life. His special province is manners rather than character, or character as depicted through manners. He is a miniature portrait painter, but a master in an art which requires the greatest delicacy of finish. He holds the mirror up to nature, but his mirror is a small one, and only a small part of nature is reflected. THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM. Lapham had the pride which comes of self-making, and he would not openly lower his crest to the young fellow he had taken into his business. He was going to be obviously master in his own place to every one; and during the hours of business he did nothing to distinguish Corey from the half dozen other clerks and bookkeepers in the outer office, but he was not silent about the fact that Bromfield Corey's son had taken a fancy to come to him. "Did you notice that fellow at the desk facing my typewriter girl? Well, sir, that's the son of Bromfield Corey-old Phillips Corey's grandson. And I'll say this for him, that there isn't a man in the office that looks after his work better. There isn't anything he's too good for. He's right here at nine every morning, before the clock gets in the word. I guess it's his grandfather coming out in him. He's got charge of the foreign correspondence. We're pushing the paint everywhere." He flattered himself that he did not lug the matter in. He had been warned against that by his wife, but he had the right to do Corey justice, and his brag took the form of illustration. "Talk about training for business. I tell you it's all in the man himself! I used to believe in what old Horace Greeley said about college graduates being the poorest kind of horned cattle, but I've changed my mind a little. You take that fellow Corey. He's been through Harvard, and he's had about every advantage that a fellow could have. Been everywhere, and talks half a dozen languages like English. I suppose he's got money enough to live without lifting a hand, any more than his father does; son of Bromfield Corey, you know. But the thing was in him. He's a natural born business man; and I've had many a fellow with me that had come up out of the street, and worked hard all his life, without ever losing his original opposition to the thing. But Corey likes it. I believe the fellow would like to stick at that desk of his night and day. I don't know where he got it. I guess it must be his grandfather, old Phillips Corey; it often skips a generation, you know. But what I say is, a thing has got to be born in a man; and if it ain't born in him, all the privations in the world won't put it there, and if it is, all the college training won't take it out." Sometimes Lapham advanced these ideas at his own table, to a guest whom he brought to Nantasket for the night. Then he suffered exposure and ridicule at the hands of his wife, when opportunity offered. She would not let him bring Corey down to Nantasket at all. "No, indeed!" she said. "I am not going to have them think we're running after him. If he wants to see Irene, he can find out ways of doing it for himself." "Who wants him to see Irene?" retorted the Colonel angrily. "I do," said Mrs. Lapham. "And I want him to see her without any of your connivance, Silas. I'm not going to have it said that I put my girls at anybody. Why don't you invite some of your other clerks?" "He ain't just like other clerks. He's going to take charge of a part of the business. It's quite another thing." "Oh, indeed!" said Mrs. Lapham vexatiously. "Then you are going to take a partner." "I shall ask him down if I choose!" retorted the Colonel. disdaining her insinuation. His wife laughed with the fearlessness of a woman who knows her husband. "But you won't choose when you've thought it over, Si." Then she applied an emollient to his chafed surface. "Don't you suppose I feel as you do about it? I know just how proud you are, and I'm not going to have you do anything that will make you feel meeching afterward. You just let things take their course. If he wants Irene, he's going to find out some way of seeing her; and if he don't, all the plotting and planning in the world isn't going to make him." "Who's plotting?" again retorted the Colonel, shuddering at the utterance of hopes and ambitions which a man hides with shame, but a woman talks over as freely and coolly as if they were items of a milliner's bill. want. "Oh, not you!" exulted his wife. "I understand what you You want to get this fellow, who is neither partner nor clerk, down here to talk business with him. Well, now, you just talk business with him at the office." The only social attention which Lapham succeeded in offering Corey was to take him in his buggy, now and then, for a spin out over the Milldam. He kept the mare in town, and on a pleasant afternoon he liked to knock off early, as he phrased it, and let the mare out a little. Corey understood something about horses, though in a passionless way, and he would have preferred to talk business when obliged to talk horse. But he deferred to his business superior with the sense of discipline which is innate in the apparently insubordinate American nature. If Corey could hardly help feeling the social difference between Lapham and himself, in his presence he silenced his traditions, and showed him all the respect that he could have exacted from any of his clerks. He talked horse with him, and when the Colonel wished he talked house. Besides himself and his paint Lapham had not many other topics, and if he had a choice between the mare and the edifice on the water side of Beacon street, it was just now the latter. Sometimes, in driving in or out, he stopped at the house, and made Corey his guest there, if he might not at Nantasket; and one day it happened that the young man met Irene there again. She had come up with her mother alone, and they were in the house, interviewing the carpenter as before, when the Colonel jumped out of his buggy and cast anchor at the pavement. More exactly, Mrs. Lapham was interviewing the carpenter, and Irene was sitting in the bowwindow on a trestle, and looking out at the driving. She saw him come up with her father, and bowed and blushed. Her father went on upstairs to find her mother, and Corey |