Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 211, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 September 1910 — Men and Animals. [ARTICLE]

Men and Animals.

It is difficult to make out just why at this period of history there should be a Sudden multiplication of plays in which the animal and vegetable kingdoms take the- chief parts. The genre is, of course, as old as Aepop, but the new century has touched it with a fresh tenderness, a new sense of the kinship of all life. Some day a German doctor of sociology will make research studies and decide what hidden influences are at work. In the middle of the nineteenth century the peasant and the plain man rose suddenly to the pinnacle of romantic attraction. Up to this time literature had concerned itself chiefly with the aristocracy. If the peasant was introduced, it was as a jester, a moneymaker, a laughing interlude. But the tragedies, difficulties, the shining gifts of life seemed to belong only to those of distinguished social position. Is it the influx of religious ideas from the east; is it, perhaps, an effect of the renewed interest in the mystic consciousness, “the Call of the Whole,.” the sense of the unbroken links of life, that has sent the drama itself to the life of the trees and inanimate objects, of barnyard fowls and insects, for characters?—Harper’s Weekly.