Ten Cents a Copy Two Dollars a Year A WEEKLY MAGAZINE October U, J906 jjt i* gl SURVEY OF THE -WORLD Mf. Roosevelt on the Control of Corporate Wealth Pacification in Cuba Palma's Early Plea for Intervention Lynch Law in the South The Conflict of Races in Hungary The Fragments of the Turkish Empire New Zealand Labor Laws British Labor and Politics. Impressions of Musical America ..... VINCENT d'INDY The Surrender of Yorfctown (Poem) . . . LEWIS W. SMITH A Litany of Atlanta . . . . * W. E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS The Orchard in October ......... E. P. POWELL The Kronstadt Fiasco ....... KELLOGG DURLAND Westminster Waiting for the Session . . JUSTIN McCARTHY Joseph (Poem) ....... SARAH JEANNETTE BURKE A Medical Specialty for Women .... HENRY T. FINCK The Future of Liberia .... SIR HARRY H. JOHNSTON The Trial by Existence (Poem) ..... ROBERT FROST EDITORIALS Degrading the Judiciary Mr. Rockefeller's Protest Cuba and President Palma Parental Advice Abbe Klein's Complaint Homicide as an Amusement Milk and Alcohol in Medicine Insurance, Financial, Etc. BOOK REVIEWS Robert Chambers's The Fighting Chance Early Western Travels Professor Hermann's Book on Theology The Legendary Diaz The Tides of Barnegat 130 Fulton Street, New York 876 THE INDEPENDENT will not lose interest in the little republic that was founded by her citizens. Tho its future history may be a good deal more concerned with the development of the British colony of Sierra Leone and the French colony of the Ivory Coast, the United States may at any rate take to itself the credit of having founded the first civilized independent negro state in West Africa, a land in which, if the negro have but patience to bear with us for a while, and with our help to frame a civilization of his own to suit his own environment, he may come to find him- self independent of white tutelage, and an equally endowed collaborator with the Caucasian in a world-wide civilization. LONDON, ENGLAND. The Trial by Existence BY ROBERT FROST EVEN the bravest that are slain Shall not dissemble their surprise On waking to find valor reign Even as on earth in para/lise : And where they sought without the sword Wide fields of asphodel fore'er, To find that the utmost reward Of daring should be still to dare. The light of heaven falls whole and white And is not shattered into dyes, The light forever is morning light ; The hills are verdured pasturewise; The angel hosts with freshness go And seek with laughter what to brave ; And binding all is the hushed snow Of the far-distant breaking wave. And from a cliff top is proclaimed The gathering of the souls for birth, The Trial by Existence named, The obscuration upon earth. And the slant spirits trooping by In streams and cross- and counter-streams Can but give ear to that sweet cry For its suggestion of what dreams. And the more loitering are turned To view once more the sacrifice Of those who for some good discerned Will gladly give up paradise. And a white shimmering concourse rolls Toward the throne to witness there The speeding of devoted souls Which God makes his especial care. And none are taken but who will Having first heard the life read out That opens earthward, good and ill Beyond the shadow of a doubt. And very beautifully God limns, And tenderly, life's little dream, But naught extenuates or dims, Setting the thing that is supreme. Nor is there wanting in the press Some spirit to stand simply forth Heroic in its nakedness Against the uttermost of earth. The tale of earth's unhonored things Sounds nobler there than 'neath the sun; And the mind whirls and the heart sings And a shout greets the daring one. But always God speaks at the end : "One thought in agony of life The bravest would have by for friend, The memory that he chose the life; But the pure fate to which you go Admits no memory of choice, Or the woe were not earthly woe To which you give the assenting voice." And so the choice must be again, But the last choice is still the same. And the awe passes wonder then And a hush falls for all acclaim. And God has ta'en a flower of gold And broken it, and used therefrom The mystic link to bind and hold Spirit to matter till death come. 'Tis of the essence of life here, Tho we choose greatly, still to lack The lasting memory, at all clear, That life has for us on the wrack Nothing but what we somehow chose : Thus are we wholly stripped of pride In the pain that has but one close, Bearing it crushed and mystified. \VKST DERBY, N. H. Literature The Fighting Chance THE interpretation which Mrs. Whar- ton attempted of New York society in "The House of Mirth," Robert Cham- bers has really accomplished in his new novel* And it appears that the situation is not so hopeless as she represented. The people are bad, of course, but Chambers shows the reason why, and so at last we get the mitigating circum- stances. They are great sinners, just as the Turks are great sinners, but, like the Turks, they do not know it; therefore not such great sinners after all. At least, not the morbid, self-damned souls that Mrs. Wharton would have us believe. The trouble with Mrs. Wharton is that she has a literary preacher understand- ing. She uses humanity for a text and the good and bad of human conduct to illustrate her preconceived point of view, for a background against which the spire of her ethics shines. This is all very well in a sermon, but it has nothing much to do with a truthful interpreta- tion of life, because she understands not life, but only the good and bad of it. Mr. Chambers is not so much of a preacher, and he has that kind of genius which makes his mind an impartial nega- tive of every line and shade of whatever passes before it and of the very spirit of things. Besides, he has a sort of lit- erary insouciance which enables him to tell with startling inspiration what he sees. The marvelous descriptions of common and uncommon things in this book show that he can describe a man or a world just as God or the devil makes them without the bribery of a word or a sneer. This is to command a daring reality of expression and at the same time escape the fever, the sullen horror, of realism. The picture he draws of so- ciety life in New York is complete, with its accurate and elegant imitation of Englfsh customs, its aquatic phases, quash galleries, water-ball performances, its iniquities and dignified, unconscious snobbery, and it is really the most fright- * THE FiGHTiN'o, CHANCK. By Robert W. Chambers. N.-V. York: P. AjipU-ion & Co. $1.50. ful revelation we have had of this kind of living; but it will not appear to be so to the casual reader, because what he has written is so embedded in life, so much a part of the atmosphere of wealth and of the gilded place generally that it is difficult to realize in terms of moral- ity what is really going. But, primarily, Chambers is not thinking in these terms, he is catching in phrases and sentences every character line of the life, every color and charm of it, the taste and dis- tinction and epicurean spirituality which go to make men and women who are born to gamble, drink and flirt, as others are born to honor and labor and chastity. That is why they are not so bad, these society people, as Mrs. Wharton repre- sented them. They are simply not yet evolved. They are the hereditary out- laws of the moral order, and ought not to be held accountable to the same de- gree that we hold Christian, civilized people accountable. However, there is in all fallen hu- manity a struggling upward might, and in this book it is represented by Si ward, the hero, who has inherited an appetite for liquor. The tale tells, between the orgies of the other characters who have a greater capacity for staying sober un- der inebriating circumstances, of this man's failure in self-control, of his love and despair, how he is never to con- quer, but at best must lead the camp life within of a spirit on guard. And from this the story takes its name. The idea is a good one, typifying all life in a way. and the author has portrayed it with a fine wisdom, where many another would have given the neurasthenic effect of fine nerves. And toward the end we come to the spire of the whole conception, and showing that genius always recognizes the fact . that the ultimate solution of things, the last stand a man makes in such an extremity is always spiritual. 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