MR. W. D. HOWELLS'S IMPRESSIONS.*

IT is as a writer of stories that we are acquainted with Mr. W. D. Howells, particularly of delicate love-stories, abounding in that quaint humour, that "tossing about of possibilities," that subtle balancing of motives, characteristic of modern American fiction. With a sincere admiration for his stories, we read with much interest Mr. Howells's records of personal " impressions,"—sketches with details and accessories touched in accurately though lightly, as in the chapters on an old- fashioned printing office or a Boston police-court, and pictures dark with the more sombre tints of city problems and the meaner aspects of city life. We suppose that every chance visitor to a police-court receives the impression of being at some form of dramatic representation, but we imagine that " Police Pastorals " soon pall on the regular attendants and officials, who fail to derive amusement even from the witnesses who in apparent good faith damage conclusively the case they are called to support.

Mr. Howells has evidently gone into the question of outdoor relief more thoroughly than his sense of humour will allow him to admit. He has as large-hearted a toleration for

impostors as had Stevenson or Lamb ; theoretically he would not pauperise the beings who beg for money, but practically he regards them as already pauperised, and sums up the argument for and against almsgiving by declaring that if an apparently destitute man asks for alms "one must not be too iocksure it is a sin to give to him." He balances his motives and responsibilities towards his fellow-citizens in the same half-pathetic, half-ho morons fashion that Mr. and Mrs. Elmore weigh their motives for snubbing the Austrian officer in A Fearful Responsibility :- " When I am in the presence of want, or even the appearance Df want, there is something that says to me, Give to him that asketh,' and I have to give, or else go away with a bad conscience, —a thing I hate. Of course I do not give much, for I wish to be a good citizen as well as a good Christian ; and as soon as I obey that voice which 1 cannot disobey, I hear another voice reproach- ing me for encouraging street-beggary."

It may seem hard to refuse the small coin that is asked of us in the name of charity, but it is often an act of pure selfish. ness to give indiscriminate alms. If the writers of begging- letters and the fraudulent impostors who live on the credulity

of their richer neighbours thrive, while the .honest poor who

are too proud to beg go unheeded, is it not offering a premium to dishonesty and idleness P A little investigation will throw light on many dark corners ; if any one really wishes to give alms of that which he bath, let him find a recipient who may be redeemed from utter want and enabled to start afresh by a little timely and judicious help. But investigation takes time and trouble, and of all easy forms of conscience-salving, giving to the nearest beggar is the easiest. Mr. Howells also records his experience of dreams. At the conclusion of a chapter in Across the Plains Stevenson says of the " Brownies " who guided his nightly dreams :- " The other day they gave me a surprise, entertaining me with a love-story, a little April comedy, which I ought certainly to hand over to the author of A Chance Acquaintance, for he could write it as it should be written, and I am sure (although I mean to try) that I cannot. But who would have supposed that a Brownie of mine should invent a tale for Mr. Howells ? "

If dreaming vividly coherent dreams is really a sign of inven- tive genius, then Charles Lamb's idea, that the " degree of the soul's creativeness in sleep might furnish no whimsical

criterion of the quantum of poetical faculty resident in the

same soul waking," is a true one, and not merely one of his whimsical fancies; but we have never heard confirmation of the theory, though we owe " Kubla Khan " to the influence of .•...igilparessions and Experiences. By William D. Howells. Edinburgh: David

sleep, induced, it is true, by a narcotic. Stevenson's essay " On Dreams " is interesting from the relation of personal reminiscences that it contains. We turned at once to see whether Mr. Howells also had plots of stories suggested to him in his sleeping hours, or whether some historic or poetic sprite had brought him ideas properly belong.

ing to an historian or poet ; but he seems to have had only the more usual dream-experiences, the grotesque fancies or fears common to most people. He has never dreamed of the literary personages he has invented, nor have they been the outcome of his dreams ; he owns his belief, or rather terror, that the dreamer is the real man, that his con- science and power of self-control act as a kind of watch-dog over his worse self during the day, but that when the watch- dog is off duty, the primitive or natural man is at liberty to act as he pleases ; his " soul " has left him at the mercy of his own evil nature, and in his dreams he becomes what, except for the grace of God, he might always be. However this may be, "Dreams are the interludes which fancy makes," and we are at a loss to account for the extraordinarily foolish freaks, in which neither our better nor our worse self predominates, but we are merely actors in some ridiculous situation that we could never have imagined in our waking hours, and for which no theory of laws of association or train of ideas can account. We notice that Mr. Howells speaks of a continuous dream that distressed him greatly in his childhood, and was "indescribably appalling." He dreamed that he was gliding down flights of stairs without touching the steps with his feet. This particular dream often comes to the present writer, who glides along a road or passage or downstairs without the mechanical action of walking or running; but instead of being "appalling " it always brings with it a sense of using triumphantly a power which is known to be latent, which power is a source of unbounded satisfaction to the possessor. Sir Thomas Browne speaks of " flying" as a vision of health- ful sleep, but that is a different experience to the experience of gliding along the ground without the fatigue of motion.

We gather nothing but sensations of noise, and ugliness of buildings nineteen or twenty stories high, "a delirium of lines and colours, a savage anarchy of shapes," from the chapter on " New York Streets." We are accustomed to think of our London streets as busy and noisy, but after the following description of New York streets we may congratu- late ourselves on our comparative tranquillity :—

"There are lines of horse-cars perpetually jingling up and down, except on Fifth Avenue, where they have stages, as the New Yorkers call the unwieldy and unsightly vehicles that ply there, and Lexington Avenue, where they have the cable-cars. But the horse-cars run even under the elevated tracks. and no experience of noise can enable you to conceive of the furious din that bursts upon the sense, when at some corner two cars encounter on the parallel tracks below, while two trains roar and shriek and hiss on the rails overhead, and a turmoil of rattling express-waggons, heavy drays and trucks, and carts, hacks, carriages, and huge vans rolls itself between and beneath the prime agents of the uproar."

The human aspects of a great city, the overcrowding and the poverty, the slums but a stone's-throw from the luxurious dwellings of the rich, are aspects common to all great cities. And the problem of housing the poor, which needs grappling with more than any other problem of civic life, is as perplexing in the New World as in the Old. Without decent surroundings, without sufficient light and air, without a plentiful and cheap supply of water, it is impossible to insist upon purity or even decency of life; the reformation of streets and dwelling-houses must be carried out by the laity before spiritual reformation can be insisted on by the clergy. What Mr. Howells says of New York is as sadly true of this vast Metropolis of ours :—" Upon the present terms of leaving the poor to be housed by private landlords, whose interest it is to get the greatest return of money for the money invested, the very poorest must always be housed as they are now.

Nothing but public control in some form or other can secure them a shelter fit for human beings."

Mr. Howells has recorded his impressions of people and places, sketched with microscopical detail, lighted up with a keen sense of humour, and also shaded with seriousness when occasion requires. We know nothing, however, of his literary tastes, though he hints that he chose the poems for the country newspaper edited by his father; perhaps he is keeping these " experiences" for another book ?