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called "demi-vierges." Demi-vierges are for the most part cosmopolitan, the result of imprudent grafting of foreign education on our customs, which seem to be, up to the present time, incompatible with that graft. Nothing in " Tony" could lead to such a result. It has been called a moral book by good judges in ethics. Its plot turns entirely about a serious and even austere problem; however, the unworthiness of a father of a family is not one of those subjects which one would willingly place under the eyes of children. Therefore, if I had a daughter, I would not put “ Tony," of which I am the author, into her hands; yet I feel that among my novels which have merited from English critics (I purposely quote their nationality) the epithet of sound, there is not one expressing more forcibly a great moral truth.' But, having written several books purposely for girls, I know that even in good and sound stories confirming great moral truths there is much that may be found unsuitable from our French point of view.

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The young girl has a way of looking at things according to her age which one ought to respect. Read as a premonition the romances which a few of them have written about themselves. There some capital ones; for example, the first work of a Rhoda Broughton, or the "Neuvaine de Colette" "by a Jeanne Schultz; you will find there a warm-hearted enthusiasm and touching naïveté, but also many daring and erroneous opinions. Why wonder at it? It cannot be otherwise. These precocious young women storywriters betray to you in their books the soul-state of the majority of girls, and we would not want them to be different. Who would like to cut the wings of a dove darting upward and holding itself dizzily over the perils and brutality of this world? She will descend, or, alas! perhaps fall, soon enough from the clouds.

To speak of one's self is odious, but sometimes necessary, when there is a

This truth the philosopher Milsand, the great friend of Robert Browning, thus rendered in a letter addressed to me in 1884: "All that comes from without, whether fear or obedience, does not modify the manner of action It is from within that true transformations spring. I believe that your two women in Tony' represent an abridgment of all possible conversions, those producing the remorse of an action which gives to us a horror of ourselves, and those bearing a sentiment of love which awakes in a soul even though that soul be entirely given up to bitterness. You have felt all that, and your inward experience is worth a thousand times more than to know it under a theoretical form."

question of crying "Beware!" I remember what an impression the "Comédie Humaine " of Balzac made upon me when I took up that enormous psychological encyclopædia, that prodigious mass of human documents. I was married, but still under twenty years of age, and I knew very little of the world. The Human Comedy came upon me like a revelation, and it troubled me a long time. I recognized on my way this or that character of the show. I gave to them the names of the heroes and heroines of the great romancer; it was like a violent substitution of his colossal work for so called real life, in which I no longer believed, having seen beyond as through a storm-light. Naturally, these impressions grew calmer; I regained equilibrium. However, many years after, visiting the United States, I remembered it all when in the library of a woman's college the title of that splendid and yet infamous book," Père Goriot," struck my eyes.

"Is it possible," said I to the French teacher who was accompanying me about, "that such a book is left within the reach of your students ?"

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Oh," she replied, "the students do not read it. Very few among them would be able to understand it."

"If there were but one able to understand," I rejoined, "why should she be exposed to encounter this sad exception to the general rule? Why should she know about a father so idolatrous of his daughters as even to favor their sins and to become the confidant of their guilty passions ?"

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Bear in mind that Balzac has no more fervent admirer than myself. I should be sorry had he not written every one of his books, without a single exception. But, save Eugénie Grandet,"." Ursule Mirouet," the "Curé de Tours," and two or three others, perhaps, they ought to be reserved for the age of experience, when the real acquaintanceship with the world becomes harmless. I would even say as much for the books of George Sand, with the exception of that delicious series of rural sketches, and some valuable gems of her maturity, such as "Le Marquis de Villemer," " Jean de la Roche," etc.; or perhaps the works of winged passion and fascinating fantasy of which Consuelo" is, above all, the type.

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Not everything, by far, of what is best from an artistic point of view has been written for girls, and even so-called moral novels are not all for their use. The first duty of the romancer is to paint men just as they are, to observe the bad with the good, to reproduce both with sincerity; in a word, to draw experience from the depths of life with entire liberty. Liberty of course does not authorize license; neither, on the other hand, does it involve the preoccupation of the author with mere education and moral teaching, nor the duty of amusing youthful minds. Those who have not lived, no matter be they ever so cultivated, demand of a story qualities which have nothing to do with art. Such readers naturally expect the triumph of good over evil, and that is often a chimera. If they renounce this wholesome chimera before accepting the trials and the suffering which only years bring, there is in this very acceptance a disposition to an affected pessimism which the reading of novels will never cure quite the contrary.

We French people suppose that it is necessary to preserve youth as far as possible from the sight of evil and of passion. Elsewhere people believe that a kind of veil should be thrown over passions and over evil, at every age of the reader. The causes of this difference are deep. In his "French Traits" Mr. Brownell has touched upon them better, perhaps, than has any one else, in suggesting that the feminine ideal of the American is the type of the young girl, and that he desires the woman to remain as much like it as possible. The ideal of the Frenchman, on the contrary, is the woman, and, for him, the young girl is only the woman in bud. He does not demand a precocious blossoming, but his intellectual relations with married women are generally franker than they are in any other country. Men have not, in the salon where a lady entertains them, that kind of special conversation which men of some other countries quit to talk somewhat differently at the club. And, like men, the lady reads all that, by reason of a broad artistic freedom, is worth while, avoiding, if she is honest and if she has good taste, that which, in any country, may be placed under the head of bad books-that is to say, books which appeal to a certain per

verted curiosity, or which extol the triumph of evil passions over will-power.

But if the French girl cannot read novels, what does she read? In the first place, there are allowable novels, outside even of those written especially for the young; for example: Mme. Caro's "Amour de Jeune Fille" and "Idylle nuptiale," Paul Margueritte's "Ma Grande," Henry Gréville's charming "Dosia" and "Dosia's " many sisters; Jean de la Brète's "Mon Oncle et mon Curé;" several of Léon de Tinseau's society novels, and almost every line from the pen of Henri Ardel, Marianne Damad, Jean Sigaux, Floran, etc. We might give a longer list, if required. Then, through the "Petit Chose" and the "Contes du Lundi," she knows Alphonse Daudet; through "Capitaine Fracasse," Théophile Gautier; through "Pêcheur d'Islande" and "Les Mémoires d'un Enfant," Pierre Loti; through the "Livre de mon Ami," Anatole France; by the "Roman d'un Jeune Homme Pauvre" and 66 Histoire de Sibylle," Octave Feuillet; by "L'Abbé Constantin," Ludovic Halévy; by "Madeleine or Catherine," Jules Sandeau; by "Colomba," Prosper Merimée; by "L'Echéance" or " Un Saint," Paul Bourget; by "La Terre qui meurt," René Bazin; and she is not, therefore, to be pitied. From all among our foremost novelists, Victor Cherbuliez, André Theuriet, even Guy de Maupassant, a mother or an intelligent teacher can find means to glean stories which may be read to a young girl, if not read by her. Moreover, the admirable "Pages Choisies" of great writers suffice to fill a whole library. They comprise even such extremists as Flaubert, Goncourt, and Zola. In many

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cases, as, for instance, in dealing with Chateaubriand or with Mme. de Staël, intelligently made selections save, with young and impatient spirits, much fatigue and boredom to which they would not easily submit.

It is very true that the education given to our French girls has, up to the present, banished the novel on principle. It has done this, not because it was difficult to find a pure novel, a harmless novel, but because we consider the mere habit of diving into even good novels as a

The novels of a ladies' journal edited at Hachette's, "La Mode pratique," are generally of the best kind.

pernicious diversion from really serious. and instructive reading, and I feel sure one is right in so thinking.

George Sand herself said to me one day that it was indispensable to preface the study of man by the history of men. Now, our French literature includes historians who are at the same time writers of genius; it possesses treasures under the general title of Memoirs, and serious books of that kind are, for a large part, read by our young girls outside of school hours; they find them sufficient recreation as long as their imagination has not tasted that cup of passion and of dreams, the novel, properly so called.

I have noticed in the United States, where in all other respects the education of women is carried on so much further than with us, a certain deficiency of knowl. edge of general history. Our girls from the lower grades in schools would, I think, outdistance in this field many young American graduates. And this remark does not apply alone to women in America, but equally to men. It would seem that the past interests Americans rather indifferently, that they need modern life, contemporary life. On this account the success of stories is assured-stories which present the every-day aspect, the realistic appearance, but are perhaps least true in reality. Something which is deep in the fiber of that great Puritan people imposes upon it more or less of conventionality. Of course that does not hinder true talent or stand in the way of the production of very remarkable works; but, all the same, one cannot impute to us as a fault the wish of pushing to a further degree the care to be sincere and the love of artistic form; now, it is this very fact that obliges us to be extremely cautious in the choice of the public invited to the perusal of the books written for the sole pleasure of a fastidious and thoroughly enlightened

taste. We do not disinherit our young girls, however, on account of that; they have always close at hand masterpieces of literature which they would be the last to disdain as "old-fashioned," for they already know enough about style and beauty to recognize by the little which they have read of modern books that the latter are of a much lower standard than the former. The English-speaking people, whose seventeenth century is so poor in literature, do not easily realize the inexhaustible wealth which the same century bequeathed to France. The product of the so-called "great century "—the century of Corneille, Racine, Fénelon, Lafontaine, and Mme. de Sévigné-nourishes the loftiest and most refined sentiments in the intellect of our women.

Now, let us inform their foreign sisters, who reproach us for not being up to date in contemporary literature, that the publication of an excellent "Revue pour les Jeunes Filles " has somewhat filled up the gap. This bi-monthly review, in which a number of our celebrated writers collaborate, gives articles in no way superficial : reviews of French and foreign magazines, the news of the day, scientific notes, a review of people in public life, descriptions of travel and amusement, and, finally, as to fiction, novels signed by a J. H. Rosny, a Jean Bertheroy, and others who have not the reputation of being chiefly purveyors of girls' milk-and-water books. is that the Revue interests all ages. Its subscribers are occasionally called upon to present their views concerning questions special to their sex-art, reading, sport, or even dress; these views being given in a way which ought to show the foreigner just what kind of a personality, in this epoch of transition, is the French girl of to-day.

The fact

Armand Colin et Cie., 5 Rue de Mézières, Paris This firm also publishes "Pages Choisies."

This report of current literature is supplemented by fuller reviews of such books as in the judgment of the editors are of special importance to our readers. Any of these books will be sent by the publishers of The Outlook, postpaid, to any address on receipt of the published price.

By Christus Victor: A Student's Reverie. Henry Nehemiah Dodge. (Second Edition.) G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. 4×54 in. 186 pages. Englishwoman's Love-Letters (An). Double

day, Page & Co., New York. 5×74 in. 322 pages. $1.30.

We

The English literary papers, without excep-
tion so far as we have seen, assume that this
volume is purely a work of the imagination,
not, as it purports to be, made up of letters
actually sent. From one point of view this
conclusion must be welcome to every reader
of sensibility. If the letters were real, then it
is evident that they must have been furnished
for publication by the man to whom they were
addressed, and to whom were given after the
"Englishwoman's" death the last immensely
pathetic letters written (but not sent) after the
engagement had been broken off. When we
remember that the engagement was broken off
by the man, and that to the day of her death
the woman did not know the real cause, it
becomes really inconceivable to suppose that
the man concerned, or his friends after his
death, if he also has died, could have made
the letters public, even without names and
with the omission of circumstances which
might identify the persons concerned.
incline, therefore, to the theory that this book
is in point of fact an imaginative psychological
study of a woman's love, containing a mystery
to which there is no real clue in the book
itself. Various suppositions have been made
as to the cause of the apparent cruel act of
the man concerned, but none of them, to our
feeling, really meets the case. Turning from
the question of authenticity to the letters
themselves, they are undoubtedly clever and
subtle-almost too much so for a woman of
twenty-one. Perhaps they were written by a
professed novelist, for they show the same
kind of study of character and passion that is
found in what is called the psychological
fiction of the day, such, for instance, as Edith
Wharton presents in its most artistic aspects.
The letters include notes on art, on travel,
and on literature which are well worth reading
for themselves. The book has had a very great
success in its sale in England, and doubtless
will be read here with curiosity and interest,
and incite to numberless futile discussions.
Lessons in Love. By Katrina Trask. Har-

per & Bros., New York. 5x73⁄4 in. 138 pages. $1.25. Eight short stories which show a distinct advance in skill, and which are full of the quality which Mrs. Trask's work never lacks-intensity, imaginative fervor, vividness of feeling, and a touch of that passion which is the element of life in much of the best fiction. The stories are by no means without faults, but they are entirely removed from the commonplace.

Linnet.

By Grant Allen. The New Amsterdam Book Co., New York. 5x7 in. 403 pages. $1.50.

Military Reminiscences of the Civil War. By
Jacob Dolson Cox, A.M., LL.D. Charles Scribner's
Sons. New York. 2 vols. 534×9 in. $6.
One of the most important contributions made
to the military history of the Civil War, in
which General Cox tells us his aim has been
to reproduce his own experience in order to
give a clear idea of the way in which the
duties and problems of that great struggle
presented themselves to a man actively en-
gaged in it from its opening to its close. The
work will receive fuller attention.

Rambles in Colonial Byways. By Rufus

Rockwell Wilson. Illustrated. The J. B. Lippin-
cott Co., Philadelphia. 2 vols. 44×7 in.
Two volumes of very agreeably written im-
pressions of localities, churches, homes, and
public structures connected with the earlier
history of the country; taking one over the
whole length of the Atlantic coast, and intro-
ducing the reader, in a discursive but agreeable
manner, to many interesting persons and in-
cidents, and to the manners and customs of a
bygone age. The interest in the lives, habits,
religion, education, and architecture of the
men and women who gave form and direction
to American civilization has immensely in-
creased of late years, and is to be counted one
of the encouraging signs of the times. Such
books as these, although they do not rise to
the dignity of history, are informative, sug-
gestive, and create the interest which history
alone satisfies.

Sharps and Flats. By Eugene Field. Col-
lated by Slason Thompson. 2 vols. Charles Scrib-
ner's Sons, New York. 434×7 in. $2.50.
Eugene Field in his ten years' daily news-
paper work in Chicago wrote not a few mill-
ions of words, mostly on ephemeral topics.
A selection from these slight but characteristic
literary flashes from his oddly droll imagina-
tion has been compiled under the appropriate
title given above. For it must be admitted
that some of these little articles are flat rather
than sharp. A captious critic might suggest
that one volume rather than two would have
been better for this purpose. Criticism aside,
the lover of Field's peculiar genius is aston-
ished to find how much of real humor and
literary insight can be gleaned from his hastily
scribbled paragraphs. Mr. Field's biblioma-
nia, his love for children, his kindly satire on
Chicago ways and Chicago people, furnish
frequent occasions for his lightly burlesque
style.

Three Prophetic Days; or, Sunday the Chris-
tian's Sabbath. By William Frederick. Published
by the Author, Clyde, Ohio. 5x734 in. 232 pages,

$1,

Vol. 67

The Outlook

Shall Negro Disfranchisement

Reduce

Southern Representation?

Published Weekly

January 12, 1901

No. 2

Representative disfranchising every citizen who has not
Olmsted, of resided in the State for a year. The Four-
Pennsylvania, teenth Amendment reads as follows:

sprang a surprise in the House last week by offering a resolution directing the Census Committee to report upon the extent to which different States have abridged the right of adult male citizens to vote, in order that Congress might be enabled by this report to reduce the representation of these States, as the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution requires. When this resolution was offered, the Democratic leaders tried to get it ruled out of order, and, failing in this, they succeeded in preventing its immediate consideration, by the close vote of 81 to 83. No Republican voted with the Democrats on this question, but several Republicans paired with absent Democrats so as to leave thirty-two Republicans absent and unpaired, as against only sixteen Democrats. Two Republicans-Landis, of Indiana, and Mann, of Illinois-answered present, but declined to vote. A day or two later the resolution was referred to the Census Committee without a division, but by this time the debate had made still clearer the fact that the Republicans were not united in favor of carrying out the purpose of the resolution, while the Democrats were united against it. Among other Republicans who showed themselves hostile to reducing the representation of States which disfranchised negroes was Representative Grosvenor, of Ohio, who has often been recognized as the spokes man of the Administration. Mr. Grosvenor's argument was to the effect that it was impracticable to attempt to carry out the provision of the Constitution governing representation, because nearly every State imposed some restriction upon the right of suffrage other than is mentioned in the Constitution-Ohio, for example,

When the right to vote. is denied to male inhabitants twenty-one years of age and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

This stipulation is perfectly definite, and obedience to it is in no wise rendered impracticable by the fact that nearly every State restricts the suffrage to those who have resided therein for a definite period. The present law allows only one Representative for every 174,000 people, and the disfranchisement of citizens who have recently changed their residence would nowhere deprive a State of a Representative. Even the long-standing provision of the Massachusetts Constitution denying illiterates the right to vote does. not lessen the number of Congressmen to which Massachusetts is entitled, for among her native citizens less than one per cent. are illiterate, and among her immigrant population the illiteracy is chiefly confined to aliens. If, however, Massachusetts by her educational qualification did reduce her voting population by one-twelfth, it is clear that she would have a Constitutional right to only eleven Representatives instead of twelve. In several of the Southern States the disfranchisement of negro illiterates does reduce the voting population sufficiently to reduce the number of Congressmen to which these States are Constitutionally entitled. In North Carolina the negro illiterates constitute twenty per cent. of the adult population; in South Carolina, thirtyseven per cent.; in Mississippi, thirtyfive per cent., and in Louisiana thirty-five per cent. These States must each lose

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