A Chat about New Books [pp. 552-562]

A CHAT ABOUT NEW BOOKS.
land, and long for the green lanes and picturesque coppices
painted by English writers, it does not make them worthy of
severe criticism. But it shows that the sentiment of patriotism
is weakened at the root. The American who has not the feeling
of love for the little things of his native land may be willing to
sacrifice much for her, but his sacrifice will always lack the fervor and spontaneity of the men who love Scottish moors, Irish
bogs, or English lanes with a tenderness that, in comparison,
makes the luxuriance of the tropics seem bleak and colorless.
Until Americans feel this their patriotism will always seem to be
boastful in spite of its sincerity, and half-hearted in spite of its
strength. The novels invest the English squire, the vicar, the
curates, and the lady of the manor with a glamour of the light
that never was on sea or land. The young American woman
fixes her eyes on that delightful country where men can play
lawn-tennis all the afternoon, where five-o'clock tea is a leisurely
prelude to dinner, and where titles are possible. The young
American of the male sex, who gets his views from newspaper
correspondence and such novels as he reads, creases the legs of
his trousers and regrets that "they cawn't make good claret-cup
in this country."
These are only surface indications. They probably show nothing servile or imitative at heart. But, as the novels of a country are as effective as the ballads used to be, it would be well if
the American author were saved from extinction by the protection of a law which would at the same time protect his English
brother from constant robbery.
The latest American novels are the work of two young menSydney Luska (Henry Harland) and H. C. Bunner. Sydney
Luska made a success in his novel of Hebrew New York life,
As It Was Written. He followed with an inferior book, Mrs.
Peixada. His third volume is called The Yoke of the Thorak.
It is the best of his novels. It is intensely local. Mr. Luska
has saturated himself with the life of New York. He loves its
movement, he has found its picturesqueness, its romance, its
charm. The river at Blackwell's Island does not remind him of
any foreign place. He is satisfied to look from the street on its
wonderful beauty at sunset without longing to be anywhere else.
He has made us interested in the brown-stone fronts of the streets
in the Sixties, and he does not disdain to use the University Place
cars as conveyances for the fortunes of his characters. And all
sane-minded people, who ought by this time to be weary of the
flood of frothy English stories, must be thankful for it.
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