Curtain.
[WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT]
Will Levington Comfort, "the new style novelist," was born at Kalamazoo, Michigan, January 17, 1878. He was educated in the grammar and high schools of Detroit, and was at Albion College, Albion, Michigan, for a short time. Mr. Comfort was a newspaper reporter in Detroit for a few months, but, in 1898, he did his first real reporting on papers in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Covington, Kentucky. During the Spanish-American War he served in the Fifth United States Cavalry; and in 1899 he was war correspondent in the Philippines and China for the "Detroit Journal Newspaper Syndicate;" and in 1904 he was in Russia and Japan during the war for the "Pittsburgh Dispatch Newspaper Syndicate." Thus he followed the war-god almost around the world; and out of his experiences he wrote his anti-war novel, Routledge Rides Alone (Philadelphia, 1909). This proved to be one of the most popular of recent American novels, now in its ninth edition. It was followed by She Buildeth Her House (Philadelphia, 1911), his quasi-Kentucky novel. In order to get the local color for this book, Mr. Comfort spent some months at Danville, Kentucky, the Danube of the story, and of his stay in the little town, together with his opinion of the Kentucky actress in the book, Selma Cross, he has written: "I always considered Selma Cross the real thing. I had quite a wonderful time doing her, and she came to be most emphatically in Kentucky. It was a night in Danville when some amateur theatricals were put on, that I got the first idea of a big crude woman with a handicap of beauty-lack, but big enough to win against every law. She had to go on the anvil, hard and long. I was interested to watch her in the sharp odor of decadence to which her life carried her. She wabbles, becomes tainted a bit, but rises to shake it all off. I did the Selma Cross part of She Buildeth Her House in the Clemons House, Danville.... I also did a novelette while I was in Kentucky. The Lippincotts published it under the caption, Lady Thoroughbred, Kentuckian." No critic has written nearer the truth of Selma Cross than the author himself: "She was a bit strong medicine for most people." Mr. Comfort has made many horseback trips through Kentucky, and he has "come to feel authoritative and warmly tender in all that concerns the folk and the land." His latest novel, Fate Knocks at the Door (Philadelphia, 1912), is far and away the strongest story he has written. Mr. Comfort has created a style that the critics are calling "new, big, but crude in spots;" and it certainly does isolate him from any other American novelist of today. Whatever may be said for or against his style, this much is certain: he who runs may read it—some other time! His work is seldom clear at first glances. Mr. Comfort devoted the year 1912 to the writing of a new novel, The Road of Living Men, which will be issued by his publishers, the Lippincotts, in March, 1913. He has an attractive home and family at Detroit.
Bibliography. Lippincott's Magazine (March, 1908); Lippincott's Magazine (March; April; August, 1912).
AN ACTRESS'S HEART[93]
[From She Buildeth Her House (Philadelphia, 1911)]
Selma Cross was sick for a friend, sick from containing herself. On this night of achievement there was something pitiful in the need of her heart.
"New York has turned rather too many pages of life before my eyes, Selma, for me to feel far above any one whose struggles I have not endured."