The gentleman does not see any way of advancing the human race except by physical heredity—or by domestic influence.
What Shakespeare wrought into the constitution and character of his daughter Judy is all that matters of his life and work. Keats, having no children, contributed nothing to the world. George Washington, childless, was of no social service. Lincoln is to be measured by the number and quality of his offspring. Florence Nightingale, in lifting the grade of nursing for the world, accomplished nothing. Uncle Tom's Cabin was of no service except as it might in some mysterious way "get back into the home." What mortal perversity is it that cannot see Humanity in women as well as Sex; see that Social Service is something in itself, quite over and above all the domestic and personal relations.
This getting back into the race means only the boys. It would do no good for generations of Margaritas to inherit that Golden Voice—each and all must give it up—for Roger. The race gets no music till the bass, barytone or tenor appear.
Books like this are pathetic in their little efforts to check social progress.
We suspect the author's name to be Mr. Partington.
*
(The Life and Times of Anne Royall. By Sarah Harvey Porter, M.A. 12mo.
Cloth, 209 pp. $1.50 net; postage 12 cents.)
Biography has never been a favorite study with me; but I was interested in this book because the woman whose life it described seemed worth while. Reading it, I found not only the life of Anne Royall, but the life of America in the early part of the nineteenth century, in our young, crude, dangerous days of national formation. A novel has been defined as "a corner of life seen through a temperament." If that is a true definition, then this is a novel, for Anne Royall had "temperament" if ever anyone had, and she saw a large corner of life through it.
Who was Anne Royall? An American woman, pioneer born and bred, familiar with the life-and-death struggle of the frontier, and full of the spirit of '76. She was born in 1769, and lived through the War of the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and almost up to the Civil War, dying in 1854. In 1797 she was married to Captain William Royall, an exceptional man, a Virginian, cultivated, liberal, singularly broad-minded and public-spirited, and life with him added years of genuine culture to the energy of a naturally bright mind. Left a widow at the age of forty-four, and, after ten years of travel and experience, defrauded of the property left to her by her husband, she began to live a brave self-supporting independent life at an age when most of the women of her years were white-capped grandmothers.
Instead of sinking into the position of a dependent female relative, she insisted on earning her own living. This she did as so many women do to-day, by the use of her pen, a rarer profession in those times. The more remarkable thing is that in the face of overwhelming odds she stood for a religion, at a period when old-fashioned Calvinism was still a dominant power. The most remarkable, is her absolute devotion to the public interests, to social service as she saw it.