302
Kansas University Weekly.
as it is, there is in this volume the "promise and potency" of better things to come. Some time Mr. White will write stories and, perhaps, a great novel, and we are assured by what we have here that there will be real human flesh and blood in it, and faithful observation of scenery, true local color. Perhaps, for the very reason that we are seldom given to see the whole of an episode in other peoples' histories, these flash-light hints of stories are more real, more true to life. Certainly they are enjoyable, and every Kansan, if not every Westerner, will find in them scenes and faces that he knows. "The Real Issue" is capital, despite the mild cynicism in its clever ending. "The Story of Aqua Pura" is a tragically true picture of the rise and fall of a "boom town." What important truth there is in this introduction! "People who write about Kansas, as a rule, write ignorantly, and speak of the state as a finished product. Kansas, like Gaul of old, is divided into three parts, differing as widely, each from the other, as any three countries in the same latitude on the globe. * * * Eastern Kansas is a finished community like New York or Pennsylvania. Central Kansas is finished, but not quite paid for; and Western Kansas, the only place where there is any suffering from drouth or crop failures, is a new country—old only in a pluck which is slowly conquering the desert."
Mr. White's forte hitherto has been humor. In many of these sketches he tries his hand at pathos. The pathos is genuine, and often touching, but sometimes it is a bit conscious like the love of the King of Boyville. Is it probable that Mrs. Colonel Hucks, who is fifty, and says "like it is," and calls the Colonel "Pa," would apostrophize him, in recalling his youthful appearance, as follows: "What's become of my boy—my young—sweet—strong—glorious boy?" Hardly. I knew Mrs. Colonel Hucks, and while she was capable of such feelings, she couldn't talk like that.
Mr. White has studied the art of beginning and ending, and has learned it well. Here is the end of "Aqua Pura:" "And with this the
old man went into the house. There, when the five days' rain had ceased, and when the great river that flooded the barren plain had shrunk, the rescuing party found him. Beside his bed were his balanced books and his legal papers. In his dead eyes were a thousand dreams." And thus begins "The Prodigal Daughter:" "A few years ago the Beasly girl worked in the over-all factory. She was a pretty girl then, and naturally the neighbors talked about her, for the people who live along Jersey Creek are really no better than they who live on Independence avenue, in spite of the theories that poverty and charity go together." This is making a long story short. It is artistic.
And it is a good style here, in the main: crisp sentences, phrases that tell more than they say, strong, bold words. The recklessness and too-much-ness of the newspaper man are toned down, and only the good of his language left. In "A Story of the Highlands," which has a strong resemblance to Mrs. Elia Peattie's "Jim Lancy's Waterloo," occur these touches. "All winter they would not admit to each other that they were living on aid." "In the spring many men went east looking for work. They left their wives with God and the county commissioners." But I cannot quote forever, and I want to leave the best things for the buyer of the book. Take this to close with: "It was a vulnerable aristocracy, and the scoffers made sad havoc with it. Fathers who had carried their sweethearts—now their wives—across the Big Muddy on their backs to and from the dances at Jack Armstrong's ranch, were too common, and too voluble in Willow Creek, to permit the daughters and sons of the town to assume very much dignity. If a family put on many airs, the members of a dozen families in town would tell newcomers how the would-be fashionables had received 'aid' from the committee in the grasshopper year."
"The Real Issue and Other Sketches" is a historical document. The student of the making of Kansas will have to read it. The East, which has smacked its lips over "What's the Matter with Kansas," should read it also, for here is the antidote. Get the book and take it home, for Christmas; be assured that "The Home-coming of Colonel Hucks" will touch the heart (and perchance soften that organ in some cases) of every old settler of Kansas.
W. H. C.