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TO DRAGMA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI 205
TO DRAGMA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI P R E S S C L I P P I N G S O F P R O M I N E N T A O n*s
3n Entitttg Ufomnrg A STORY OF CHINA
M A B E L DEFOREST STARKWEATHER The Wanderer On a Thousand Hills. By E D I T H W H E R R Y , 2 '07. John Lane
Company. $1.40 net.
Ep silo71
1912 In this delightful story, as in her former book, The Red Lantern, Mrs.
Wherry has demonstrated that there is one place short of "God's judgment eeot"
Died January 3rd, 1919 where East and West may meet, namely, in a mind of wide horizons, of broad
God calls our loved ones, but we lose not wholly human sympathies; one endowed above all with the rare gift of insight. " I
am going to put myself into Mrs. Beanly's skin, and to think with Mrs.
What He hath given; Beanly's mind," says one of Wilkie Collins's characters. Mrs. Wherry has a
They live on earth, in thought and deed, as truly like ability. She puts herself into the skin of the Chinaman, and thinks with
the Oriental mind. Her novel has many facets, and each is luminous. I t
As in Heaven. shows, as did Kim, that a story, void of the master passion, may yet command
a breathless interest; as a picture of Chinese customs it is at once informing
WHITTIER. and full of life and color; it enlightens the reader in regard to the ideals of
Chinese scholarship, and the unwearied toil and patience of those who essay
to win its laurels; without giving an opinion of the results of missionary work
in the East, there is, at least, a hint of the way in which the Christian converts
graft the religion of Jesus upon the religion of Buddha; it disabuses us of our
arrogant, perhaps subconscious, opinion that physically and mentally all Chinese
are run into the same mold, for it presents characters among them as diverse
as are to be found in any novel of western lands. Above all, it is of profound
interest as a study of psychology. Which is the stronger, the call of the blood
or the chain of circumstance—heredity or environment—that is the question?
The problem has fascinated not a few writers. George Eliot, in Silas Mamer,
gives one answer; in The Spanish Gypsy its opposite. In the soul of Mrs.
Wherry's hero, the two conflicting influences struggle, like the waters of the
Arve and the Rhone. To learn which dominates, and with what effect upon a
hyper-sensitive nature, and a mind exhausted by the severe discipline of Chinese
education, the reader is referred to Mrs. Wherry's clear conception and masterly
setting forth of the probabilities in the case. Her account of the boy's early
tendencies and of the character of his supposed mother makes her conclusion as
logical as it is full of pathos. H i s quest among the temples of the Asiatic hills
for St. Paul's lost epistle, which should bring into harmony the religions of the
East and the West, may be taken, not alone as the culmination of this beautiful
story, but as a parable—a lesson to those Christian teachers who would fain win
the East to Christianity, but whose vision is often unequal to their zeal.
However that may be, the literary distinction of Mrs. Wherry's books, their
fidelity, their comprehending sympathy, admit of no dispute. As we read, we
are conscious of more than intellectual enjoyment; we are tarrying a while at
the Interpreter's House.
JESSIE ASHLEY DEAD
SOCIALIST, SUFFRAGIST, AND LAWYER A VICTIM OF PNEUMONIA
Miss Jessie Ashley, lawyer, writer, speaker, Socialist, and woman suffrage
worker, died Monday, January 19, at her home, 102 East Fifty-second Street,
of pneumonia.
Miss Ashley was born in New York City, a daughter of the late Ossian and
Harriet Nash Ashley, and after attending school in New York and in Berlin,

