Page:The Dial vol. 15 (July 1 - December 16, 1893).djvu/185

 

THE DIAL

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No. 175.

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THE LITERARY WEST PAGE , 173 ECONOMIC AND STATISTICAL STUDIES AT CHICAGO. J. J. Halsey 174 LITERARY TRIBUTES TO THE WORLD'S FAIR 175 By Mary Hartwell Catherwood, Charles Dudley Warner, George W. Cable, Henry B. Fuller, Hjal- mar H. Boyesen, Harriet Monroe (Sonnet), William P. Trent (Sonnet), Paul Bourget, Walter Besant, Richard Watson Gilder (Poem). COMMUNICATIONS 179 Daily Papers and their Readers : A Suggestion. J. H. Crooker. " None but They," etc. F. H. AMERICAN HISTORY FROM AN ENGLISH STANDPOINT. E. G. J 181 PROBLEMS OF RAILWAY FINANCE. A. C. Miller 185 A LIFE WORTH LIVING. William Morton Payne. 189 BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS. . 193 Edmund Gosse's new volume of critical essays. The art of landscape gardening. Classic myths in English literature. A Technological Spanish-English Dic- tionary. An excellent book on the Formation of the Union. An account of Froebel's life and work. Essays and papers of interest to teachers. Narrative of a North American naturalist. An American house-hunter in Europe. BRIEFER MENTION 195 NEW YORK TOPICS. Arthur Stedman 196 LITERARY NOTES AND MISCELLANY .... 197 Whittier's Love of Home. Organization among Lit- erary Workers. According to Standpoint. The Gospel according to St. Peter. Hymn of the Harvest. TOPICS IN LEADING PERIODICALS 199 LIST OF NEW BOOKS. 199

THE LITERARY WEST. Mr. Lowell's famous essay " On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners " is in need of a supplement. "A Certain Condescension in Easterners " is a theme that calls for treatment in similar vein ; but the pen rusts that alone could have dealt with it adequately, that alone could have bestowed upon it the measure and quality of genial satire that it deserves. For many years past the attitude of Eastern writers towards literary activity in the West has been similar to that once assumed by Boston towards New York, and by England towards the United States. It has been an attitude of condescen- sion, of patronizing counsel, of mild surprise that a region so far removed from the centre of the intellectual system should venture to have such things as literary aspirations. " But you are so very far away," was the naive remark recently made to a gathering of American scholars by a foreign guest who was trying to be complimentary, but who could not refrain from coupling surprise with admira- tion. Most Eastern explorers who brave the passes of the Alleghany Mountains, and find their way to the intellectual frontier settle- ments of the Mississippi Valley, return to their homes with a tale from which the element of wonder is rarely missing. Every now and then some weekly paper or monthly magazine of the Atlantic Coast devotes an article to Western literature, and, whatever the aspect it selects for treatment or the writers it singles out for fame, the accent of encouragement is always marked. This display of provincialism is amusing enough to all but the few who live in the in- tellectual corners whence it originates ; but it has one feature which has not been given the prominence that it deserves. As far as con- descension goes, with its patronizing implica- tions, the classical essay already mentioned may possibly be thought to cover the ground, for, mutatis mutandis, its criticism is applicable to New England narrowness as well as to Old England insularity. But the phase of the mat- ter which seems to call for particular com- ment, and upon which Lowell hardly touched, is that illustrated by the kind of literary pro- duction which, in both cases, attracts the atten-