Boys' kites can be kept from plunging by making both the wood cross pieces in the form of a bow, instead of flat. The string is placed a little above the centre of the upright bow, and a very light tail attached. These kites are very steady, and if a string attached to one side of the centre is pulled after the kite has risen, it can be made to fly as much as thirty degrees from the wind. For this reason it is proposed to use kites for bringing a vessel to windward.
CURRENT LITERATURE.
Mrs. Annie Edwards's last book[K] does not open well in point of style. The first paragraph of the first chapter is: "She was a woman of nearly thirty when I first saw her; a woman spiritless and worn beyond her years," etc. This beginning not only a chapter but a book with a pronoun implying an antecedent is very bad, in the low and vulgar way of badness. It brings to mind the superhuman daily efforts of the "American humorist" of journalism to be funny; and it should be left to him and to his kind. And in the next paragraph Mrs. Edwards describes her heroine as "walking wearily along the weary street of Chesterford St. Mary." Bad style again, and this time in the way of affectation. A man's way may be weary if he is tired or weak; but not even then should it be so called, when he has just been spoken of as weary himself, or as walking wearily; and weary as applied descriptively to a village street is almost nonsense. These defects are not important, but they arrest attention as being at the very opening of the story. And it must be confessed that for a chapter or two "A Point of Honor" is rather slight in texture and commonplace. It is, however, interesting enough to lead us on, and the reader who holds his way into the third or fourth chapter is repaid. The authoress then warms up to her work, and begins to show her quality, which is that of a true literary artist. We do not say a great artist, be it observed, but a true artist. She paints only genre pictures; but unlike most works of that class (on canvas at least), they are not mere representations of pretty faces and pretty clothes. She works with a real knowledge of the human heart, and her work is full of feeling. She does nothing in the grand style; even her most loving women do not have grand passions; but all her work is truthful and warm with real life, and her earnest people are really in earnest. The story of "A Point of Honor" is interesting, although its incidents are not all out of the common way. Gifford Mohun, the handsome young heir of Yatton, an estate in Devonshire, loves, when he is only twenty, one Jane Grand, a beautiful and sweet-natured girl who is only a year younger than himself. Nothing is known of her history. She herself does not know her own parentage. All this has been concealed from her at her father's request, and with some reason; for it comes out that she is the daughter of a felon, who died in the hulks, by a minor French actress, a modification of whose name, Grandet, she bears. When she knows this, she refuses to taint Mohun's name and life with such dishonor, and he accepts her decision; doing so with two implications on the part of the authoress: first, that he was selfish in doing so at all; next, that doing it he did it coldly and with a false affectation of feeling. He leaves Yatton and its neighborhood, and plunges into dissipation. Jane remains at Chesterford, leading her solitary life and loving him. Meantime the vicar, Mr. Follett, a man of strong nature, much tenderness, and great tact, whose character is admirably drawn, loves Jane, and quietly bides his time. After ten years, however, Mohun returns, walks into Jane's parlor, and asks her to be friends with him. She, loving him no less than ever, assents gladly, and thereafter he is almost domesticated in her cottage. He has become somewhat gross in manner and in speech, as well as in person; but Jane loves him, and watches for his coming, day by day, as when she was a girl. This goes on for some months, with a slight admixture of the curate, when all at once a new personage appears upon the scene. Mohun receives a letter, which he shows to Jane, and asks her advice about. It is from a Matty Fergusson, whom he remembers as the untidy little daughter of some disreputable people he knew something of at a German watering place. She tells a sad tale of destitution, and asks him to recommend her to some of his friends as a governess or companion. He is disgusted and angered at the intrusion, and proposes to send her a five-pound note, or perhaps ten pounds, and so end the matter. But Jane, whom he asks to write the letter for him, is touched with pity for the poor girl's forlornness and suffering, and writes an invitation to her to come to Chesterford and visit her for a week. She brings a Greek horse within the walls of her little Troy. She and Gifford expect to see a poor, meek, limp, shabbily dressed slip of a girl; but Miss Matty Fergusson enters the cottage a tall and magnificently beautiful young woman; her grandeur both of toilet and person quite dwarfing the poor little cottage and its poor little mistress. The end is now visible. Matty Fergusson is the adventuress daughter of an adventuress mother. Nothing was true in her letter except the story of her poverty; and she has played this game with the direct purpose of catching the master of Yatton. She succeeds; and when Jane speaks to him about its being time for his overwhelming young friend to depart, he becomes rude and makes a brutal speech, which undeceives Jane, and kills her love for him. Mohun, however, does not give himself up to the Fergusson without an attempt at freedom, and an endeavor to resume his relations with Jane, whom he now appreciates at her full worth. He confesses and deplores his fault and begs forgiveness, and offers to break with Miss Fergusson at any cost, if Jane will give him back her love. But she, although she forgives, will not receive him again on the old footing, and he drives off with his handsome adventuress wife, and Jane loves and is married to Mr. Follett. The story is told with great and yet with very simple skill, and the characters of the few personages are revealed rather than portrayed. And by the way, we remark upon Mrs. Edwards's ability to interest her readers and work out a story with few materials. She rarely depends for her effects upon more than four or five personages. She is equally reserved in her manner. She does not paint black and white, but with human tints only in light and shadow. In this book Mohun's selfishness is shown with a very delicate hand, and although we are left in no doubt as to his real character, he is dealt with in such an impartial and artistic spirit, that some similarly selfish men will apologize for him and some others will, it may be hoped, read themselves in him and struggle against the worse part of their natures. Jane is, perhaps, more angel than woman, but then a good woman who loves is so often truly angelic with an admixture of human passion that makes her more loveable as well as more loving than any angel ever was, that we cannot find fault with poor Jane's perfection. In reading this book we cannot but remark the common nature of its subject in women's novels nowadays. The themes on which they write endless variations are the selfishness of men, and the unselfishness of women in love. Of the men in the women-written novels of the day, so many are plausible, agreeable, clever, accomplished, heartless creatures; only a few escape the general condemnation, and they are those queer creatures "women's men"—impossible, and bores, like Daniel Deronda. The heroines, major and minor, love devotedly. But George Eliot does not fall into the latter blunder. For some reason she is able to see the feminine as well as the masculine side of social and sexual selfishness. This treatment of men on the part of the sex is remarkable, for women themselves will admit and do admit, in unguarded moments, that there is somewhat less of disinterestedness in this matter on woman's side than on man's. But the point, we suppose, is this, that woman, when she does love with all her heart, loves with a blind devotion, an exclusiveness of admiration and of passion, and a persistency, which she demands from man, which, not having, she doubts whether she is loved at all, and which, it must be confessed, rare in woman, is much more rare in man, with whom indeed it is exceptional. The truth is that man's love is as different from woman's as his body is; but it is, therefore, none the less worth having if she would only think so. Man is made to have less exclusiveness of feeling in this respect than woman has. He would not be man else, nor she woman if she were otherwise. The mistake is in her expectation of receiving exactly the same as she gives. She has found out that she does not get it, or does so very rarely, and the men in women's novels of the Gifford Mohun type are one of the ways in which she proclaims and avenges her wrongs.
—"The Barton Experiment," by "the author of 'Helen's Babies,'"[L] cannot be called a novel—hardly a tale—and yet it is a story—the story of a great "temperance movement" at Barton, which is supposed to be a village somewhere at the west—in Kentucky, we should say, from certain local references. We do not know who the author of Helen's Babies is—he, and Helen, and her babies being alike strangers to us; but he is a clever writer, and a humorist, with no little dramatic power. His personages are studies from nature, and have individuality and life; albeit they reveal a somewhat narrow horizon of observation. He uses largely, but always humorously, the western style of exaggeration; as, for example, when he makes one of his reformers tell a steamboat captain that if he will stop drinking whiskey, he will make a reputation, and "be as famous as the Red River raft or the Mammoth Cave—the only thing of the sort west of the Alleghanies." He describes his people in a way that shows that he has them in the eye of his imagination; as in this portrait of a Mrs. Tappelmine: "With face, hair, eyes, and garments of the same color, the color itself being neutral; small, thin, faded, inconspicuous, poorly clad, bent with labors which had yielded no return, as dead to the world as saints strive to be, yet remaining in the world for the sake of those whom she had often wished out of it," etc. The book is in every way clever, and its purpose is admirable—the lesson which it is written to teach being that personal effort and personal sacrifice on the part of reformers is necessary to reclaim hard drinkers. But the radical fault of all such moral story writing is that the writer makes his puppets do as he likes. The drinking steamboat captain yields to the persuasions of his friend, and even submits to necessary personal restraint. But how if he had not yielded? Old Tappelmine gives up his whiskey for the sake of money and employment, which inducements are strongly backed by his neutral-colored wife; but how if he had been brutally selfish and immovable? In both these cases, and in all the others, failure was at least quite as likely as success. People in real life cannot be managed as they can upon paper. Still the book contains a truth, and is likely to do good.
—The same publishers have also brought out an illustrated book by Bayard Taylor,[M] which is suitable to the coming holiday season. It is a collection of short tales of adventure in different parts of the world, in which boys take a prominent part. It is one of the fruits of the author's extended travels, and is manly, simple, and healthy—a very good sort of book for those for whom it is intended, which, in these days of mawkish or feverish "juvenile" literature, is saying much for it.
—Why Miss Thacher should call a little book, which contains a little collection of little sketches, "Seashore and Prairie," we do not see. It is rather a big and an affected name for such a slight thing. But it is bright and pleasant, and well suited to the needs of those who cannot fix their attention long upon any subject. We regret to see in it marks of that extravagance and affectation in the use of language which are such common blemishes of style in our ephemeral literature. For example: a very sensible and much needed plea for the preservation of birds, is called "The Massacre of the Innocents;" and we are told that "a St. Bartholomew of birds has been inaugurated." Miss Thacher should leave this style of writing to the newspaper reporters.
—The large circle of readers who are interested in Palestine, and the lands and waters round about it, will find Mr. Warner's last book of travel[N] very pleasant reading—full of information and suggestion. He observes closely, describes nature with a true feeling for her beauties, and men with spirit and a fine apprehension of their peculiarities. He is not very reverent, and breaks some idols which have been worshipped. He is not an admirer of the Hebrews, or of anything that is theirs, except their literature. His style is lively and agreeable, but we cannot call it either elegant or correct. He tells some "traveller's stories;" for instance, one about catching an eagle's feather on horseback (pp. 103, 104). True he "has the feather to show;" but on the whole he makes not too many overdrafts upon the credulity of his readers, and does not color much too highly.
—In his latest tale[O] Mr. Yates introduces American characters, following what seems to be the prevailing fashion among English authors, especially those who are not of the first rank. Mr. Yates manages his foreign scenes and characters with good judgment, but his Americans we should not recognize as such without his introduction. The scene of the story is in England. Sir Frederick Randall, a dissolute young nobleman, is condemned to imprisonment, under an assumed name, for forgery. Making his escape, he woos a beautiful and innocent American girl, the daughter of a petroleum millionaire from Oil City. As he is already married, it is necessary to dispose of one wife before he takes another. This he does by throwing madam over a cliff by the seashore. Caught by projecting bushes, she is, without his knowledge, rescued alive by some Americans, who are yachting off the coast. One of these Americans has long loved Minnie Adams, the pretty American girl, but she and her parents are fascinated by Sir Frederick's title and the expected introduction to high-class English society. Minnie marries the would-be murderer, and after a year of trouble and brutal treatment, severe sickness ensues, during which she is nursed by her husband's first and only legal wife. Finally Sir Frederick is murdered by an old comrade of his debaucheries, and the two wives are equitably distributed between the two American gentlemen.