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.