Stories of the unseen world that may lie about us have appeared in all ages. Sometimes such stories have been beautiful and fanciful, and sometimes filled with the spirit of fear. In the latter part of the eighteenth century and the first of the nineteenth it became quite the fashion to tell stories of ghosts and strange terrors. Ernst Hoffmann and Ludwig Tieck in Germany set an example that was followed by Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe in this country, as well as by many other writers since their time.
There is another and more healthful attitude of mind. Instead of the horror of Gothic romance it presents the fancy of Celtic thought. In stories of this gentler type one does not feel that the unseen world is wholly to be feared.
Such a story is Wood-Ladies, in which the spirit of Celtic fancy has found full play. In this story everything is woodsy, delicate, half-seen, as though one were treading the very edges of fairyland without knowing it. Mother-love fills the whole story and gives it a noble beauty. And yet, in a certain sense, the child, conscious of another world, is wiser than the mother. A story of this sort, dealing with the supernatural, rests the mind like sweet music.
Perceval Gibbon was born in Carmarthenshire in South Wales, in 1870. He has spent much time in the merchant service on British, French, and American vessels. He has done unusual work as war correspondent. Among his literary works are Souls in Bondage, The Adventures of Miss Gregory, The Second Class Passenger, and a collection of Poems. His work is marked by originality, and a clever mastery of technique.
ON THE FEVER SHIP
By RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
Love is so essential a part of life that it must also be a part of literature; therefore romantic love has been a leading literary theme for centuries. Some of the world’s greatest stories of love flash into our minds when we repeat the names of Juliet, Rosalind, Portia, Elaine, and Evangeline. Such stories suggest depth of emotion, charm, womanly worth, pure and innocent love, or a love that lasts beyond the years. In the days of chivalry the knight bore his lady’s token, and fought in her honor. to-day men love just as deeply, and fight for land and hearth and sweetheart just as truly as men did in the long ago.
On the Fever Ship is the story of a modern knight,—a soldier who went into his country’s war, bearing in his heart the memory of one he loved. When he is wounded, and lies fever-stricken on the deck of a transport, he does not think at all of himself but only of the one who is far away. That is the story, an abiding love in absence, with dreams at last made true.
The author makes the story notably strong and tender. Without formal introduction he presents the realistic picture of the fever ship,—the inexplicable monotony, the dream-world, the child-likeness of the wounded man’s life. Old scenes and faces come before the wounded soldier in tantalizing dreams. Little by little the author draws us closer into sympathy with the central figure. He makes us share in the man’s intensity of feeling. We feel the force of the strong episode of the somewhat unfeeling nurse, and become indignant in the man’s behalf. Finally, lifted by the power of the story, we rise with it into full comprehension of the depth of the hero’s love. Then, quickly and with artistic effect, the story comes to an end. Simply, surely, strongly, with real sentiment instead of sentimentality, it has made us realize the all-powerful force of love.
The story is written with much sympathy and evident tenderness of spirit, and is so touched with real pathos, that it comes to us as a transcription of some real story the author had found in his work as war correspondent.
Richard Harding Davis was one of the most romantic figures in recent literary life. As war correspondent he saw fighting in the Spanish-American War, the Boer War, the Japanese-Russian War, and the Great War. He traveled in all parts of Europe, in Central and in South America, and in the little-visited districts of the Congo in Africa. He saw the magnificent coronation ceremonies of the King of Spain, the King of England, and the Czar of Russia. He attended gorgeous state occasions in various lands. He also lived the hard field and camp life of a soldier and an explorer.