Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 2, Number 42, DeMotte, Jasper County, 2 March 1933 — READING OF TODAY AND THE LONG AGO [ARTICLE]

READING OF TODAY AND THE LONG AGO

It is curious how long-forgotten things come floating into the mind from nowhere. Once there was a story in a popular magazine written ion the installment plan. The same story was given each month, as it might have been told by some wellknown writer such as Howells or James, but the name of the author was withheld until after the tenth number when the list of authors was given, and you could compare it with your own guesses. I believe that I was not absolutely sure of many of them except the one by Henry James, whose long, precise and sometimes involved sentences were not to be disguised. As an exercise in the recognition of differing styles among story writers, it was interesting. Few children of today have ever heard of the “Prudy Parlin” and “Dottie Dimple” series by Sophie May. But we knew them all by heart and could tell you how they put Prudy in a great hogshead when she was naughty; how she scared them all by climbing to the top of the house on a painter’s ladder, in search of heaven; how she followed sister Susie to school, and amused herself by trying to see if her knitting needle would come out the other side if pushed through her seat-mate’s ear. There were many stories about these little folk of Portland, Maine, and we read them over and over. I have heard many objections to stories in series, probably because they go beyond the period of childhood and approach courtship and marriage, but the Prudy books committed no such indiscretion. Of course we read “The Wide, Wide World” and “Queechy,” after we had finished weeping over the Elsie' Dinsmore books (which were legion). “An Old-Fashioned Girl” was quite as pleasing to me as “Little Women,” though not so often read. In the Sunday school library we found the Pansy books, “The Five Little Peppers,” “Sara Crewe” and “Little Lord Fauntleroy.” One of the enthusiasms of my youth was “The Princess of Thule,” by William Black, who wrote many other novels, among them “The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton” (some one asked the other day, what was a phaeton). I have lately renewed my acquaintance with his “Judith Shakespeare,” which is a good portrayal of the environment of the poet. Akin to the “Princess of Thule” was “Thelma,” by Marie Corelli. “Peg Woffington,” by Charles Reade, was the story of an Eight-

eenth century actress, a friend of David Garrick. I do not recall the story, but might ask a certain relative who makes a point of reading once a year the novels of Charles Reade and Anthony Trollope. I think he regards the Barsetshire people as personal friends, especially those of the little house at Allington. In my youth detective stories were associated in my unsophisticated mind with small boys behind barns gloating over yellow-backed paper books, my own harmless favorites requiring no such secrecy. At school, we were obliged to read the “Gold Bug” and the “Murders of the Rue Morgue,” as being the pioneers of the current detective novels. Not being detectively inclined, 1 did not like them, though it was heresy to say so, and later I could not see why

anyone should want to harrow up her soul, and freeze her young blood by poring over the “Moonstone,” by Wilkie Collins. We domestic ones wore out the “Last Days of Pompeii,” “Lorna Doone,” “John Halifax, Gentleman,” “Jane Eyre” and many others, including “Molly Bawn,” “Red as a Rose Is She,” “St. Elmo”' and the like. Frivolous they might have been, but harmless compared to some of the stories read by girls of today.--M. O. W., in the Indianapolis News.