Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 April 1896 — DUMAS AND GOLDSMITH. [ARTICLE]

DUMAS AND GOLDSMITH.

The Points of Bea*mblance Between thc Two Writers. Dumas the elder had not a few points of resemblance to Oliver Goldsmith. He could not help running into debt, giving alms largely to every one who demanded them without stopping to inquire whether the mendicant were an impostor or an honest man, being a prey to sharp dealers and parasites, and living from hand to mouth. He was also boastful, from a fear of being forgotten or underrated, though without a grain of envy in his genial soul; was fond of the excitement and adventures of the old-fashioned modes of traveling; and had an undying love for the place In which he spent his youth. Throughout his long and varied literary career he nursed the hope of ending his days in the forest-girdled to<wn of Villers-Cotterets, in the ancient province of Valois, where he was born and reared. If ever the thought of saving any of his earnings traversed his brain, the father to it was his lifelong desire "to there return, and die at home at last.” He often talked of buying, when he had the means, the house in the Rue de Lormier in which he was born as day dawned on a July morning, in the second year of this century. Villers-CotteretS was written on his heart, and reacted on most of his after-life impressions. When he revisited the town he was-lionized by great and small, and found that boyish escapades and venial sins of adolescence were still held in kindly remembrance by the old folks. Dumas was a man of warm and ready sympathies, jovial of temperament, and sparkling with ready wit His impressions were vivacious, the fountains were near his eyes, and after laughing and crying, or rather blubbering, for sheer joy at the welcome be received, he lent himself to convivial demonstrations, and delighted all who sat down with him at table by his high spirits and the brilliancy of his conversation.—Century.