Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/172

GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS village Lincoln of our tale! Les hommes sont rares, and here is one to remember. Such a creation, of itself, lifts Two Men quite above the range of ordinary novels. The author's dramatic gift is illustrated by the picturesque and tragic episode of the quadroon mother and her daughters, the crime of Parke Auster, the fate of Charlotte—that beautiful, helpless, exotic flower of the tropics, blighted in the pitiless North.

Such a book will bear study. I have read it often, each time with a stronger perception of its author's individuality. Mrs. Stoddard's other novels, her short stories, her fugitive poems, are marked by the same qualities—they could be the work of no hand save her own. All seek to answer Parke Auster's question: "Such revelations come so unexpectedly from those who are the nearest to us! There is something appalling behind the screen of every-day life, countenance, custom, clothes. What is it?" Their faults, moreover, are characteristic. A few more readers, a quicker understanding of her work,—there being "something of summer even in the hum of insects"—would have stimulated her to the frequent labor which results in constructive perfection. Yet the wilding flavor of these early novels might have been lost in the process. Let us take them as they are, for so they are worth taking. [158]