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Out of a mere thread of a plot and a few characters Mr. Howells weaves a very charming little comedy. His characters consist of Miss Constance Wyatt, her father and mother, a Mr. Bartlett, a painter and his friend Rev. Arthur Cummings. The scene opens in the parlor of the Ponkwasset Hotel, the time being in the fall, and the house almost deserted by boarders. Mr. Bartlett and his friend are in the midst of a discussion of Mr. Bartlett's affairs, when Gen. Wyatt and his daughter enter the room, having but recently come from Paris. Constance, at the sight of Bartlett, faints and Gen. Wyatt behaves like a crazy man. Bartlett's anger is aroused, and he is about leaving the house, where he had just determined to spend the fall, when an explanation is offered him of the extraordinary scene he had witnessed. It seems he possesses a remarkable resemblance to a former lover of Constance, whom she imagines has jilted her, and for whom she is dying. The scenes which follow, in which Constance and Bartlett learn to love each other and the full baseness of the first lover is made known, are full of wit, sentiment, and fire.

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A large part of Howell's time in Venice was given up to a critical study of life in that city, and in his «Venetian Life,» which appeared in 1866, he has given to the world the result of his observation and study. The book abounds in dainty pen pictures of the beauties of Venice ; as he tells us of the Grand canal, we can almost hear the dipping paddles of passing gondolas, and the barcarolle wafted on the evening breeze. It may seem almost sacrilege to lovers of the old legends, that he explains away the romanticism of the Doge's palace, and denominates the Bridge of Sighs a « pathetic swindle». The book's finish was such as to reveal the highly interesting literary individuality of the author.

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"A Counterfeit Presentment; and, The Parlour Car" by William Dean Howells. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

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"A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories" by William Dean Howells. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

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In this book of travels Mr. Howells relates the incidents and impressions of his trip through Spain. In a leisurely, discursive fashion he notes what most appealed to him as he journeyed from San Sebastian through Burgos, Madrid, Toledo, Cordova, Seville to Granada, Ronda, Algecirus, and Tarifa. Like a glorified cinemacolor film, he passes in review Spanish scenery, the architecture of cathedrals and palaces; theatres and hotels; picturesque street-scenes, Moorish remains; the King and Queen; beggars and guides; gypsies and donkeys. And back of all this living present, adding richness to the scene like a figured tapestry, is the romantic history of Spain's past.

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No one can complain that in this story Mr. Howells has taken his type from the commonplace. It is a study of life in New York, and the author has brought together such a gallery of odd and strongly differentiated characters as could perhaps be found in no other city on the continent, while the conditions and phases of social life represented are not less distinctive and peculiar. The Marches, it is true, are from Boston, but they serve the purpose of external points of observation, whence to note and sufficiently to emphasize those features of our city life which of necessity strike strangers and outsiders most forcibly and with the greatest freshness of suggestion. A new magazine is founded with the money of old Dryfoos, a «natural gas millionaire,» whose primary object is to give his son Conrad – a youth of saint-like character and dominant altruism – opportunity to become a businessman. The prime mover of the venture is Fulkerson, a true Western Yankee, if the phrase be allowable, whose engaging impudence, fluent slang, indomitable assurance, and substantial loyalty and goodness of heart are sure to make him as great a favorite with the reader as he is with all who know him in the story. The Marches, too, are fantastic, and nowhere has Mr. Howells better presented that peculiar American humor which finds motives for half-sarcastic jest and quip in even the most serious things, less out of lightness of heart than from an almost desperate conscious ness of hopeless incongruities and perplexities inherent in the general scheme. The picture is in itself a condemnation of and protest against that rank growth of naked materialism which is the most depressing feature of our time. The character and the faults of society are shown plainly but temperately – the spirit of levity, the love of spectacle, the repugnance to serious thinking, the absence of jealousy of popular rights, constantly encroached upon, ignored and subordinated to selfish corporate or individual interests. The aspects of the city are also most graphically and admirably described in many a wandering of the Marches, and the book exhibits an amount of local study undertaken by the author which speaks well for his conscientiousness, and adds much to the charm and permanent interest of the story. There is, as we have intimated, an unwonted variety and an unwonted force in « A Hazard of New Fortunes.» If it can hardly be said to have a dominant note, it is none the less a faithful and carefully elaborated study of New York life, and it presents some of the most salient characteristics of that life in a very impressive and artistic manner. Most readers will, we think, agree with us that the change in method here shown is a change for the better. Never, certainly, has Mr. Howells written more brilliantly, more clearly, more firmly, or more attractively, than in this instance. The reversion to these strong individualizations seems to have put new vigor into his hands, and he deals with the deeper tragedies, the graver emotions of life, with a power which may perhaps be regarded as a practical demonstration of the ultimate supremacy destined to be attained by Nature over Art ; by the true over the false Realism.

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How many of the intelligent play-goers of this intelligent land and of the present period could tell, without the play-bills in their hands, that Alfieri was the creator of Ristori's «Mirra» and of Salvini's «Saul» ? How many of the general readers of English verse know who Alfieri was or what he did ? And yet Vittorio Alfieri is the most familiar figure among the score of 'Modern Italian Poets' upon whom Mr. Howells dwells in his volume of Essays and Versions. Tommaso Grossi, Giacomo Leopardi, Giuseppe Giusti, Aleardo Aleardi, and their contemporaries, who flourished in Italy between the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the last quarter of this, mean as little today to Cambridge or to Chicago as the names of George P. Morris, Fitz-Greene Halleck, Clement C. Moore, and McDonald Clark mean to the cultured circles of Florence or Milan. A hundred years ago Literary Academics, so called, were the fashion in Italy. They bore fanciful and grotesque names, such as «The Ardent», «The Illuminated,» or «The Insipid,» and according to Mr. Howells they were all devoted to one purpose, namely, the perpetration and the perpetuation of twaddle. It was a time when every person of breeding devoted himself, or herself, to the cult of some muse or other ; and if he belonged to the sterner sex, he established himself as the conventional admirer of his neighbor's wife ; the great Academy of Arcadia, founded to restore good taste in poetry, prescribing conditions by which anybody, without respect to age or gender, could become a poetaster, and good society expecting every gentle man and lady to be in love! Mr. Howells shows that Arcadia still exists in Italy, although the age of gallantry has long passed away ; and it is the survival of the fittest of the Arcadians which he here records. In Tuscan cities and in the Venetian days of twenty- years ago, under Italian suns and with all the delightful advantages of atmosphere and place, Mr. Howells began the studies out of which this book has grown, and nothing of their Italian glow and fervor have they lost in their continuation and completion under the northern skies of the modern Belmont or in the bleak east winds of Boston, Massachusetts. The Italian poetry of the period which it chronologically covers seems to be fully represented here, although Mr. Howells in his preface half confesses that he himself does not consider it complete, and that he has succeeded in doing little more than indicate the character of his subjects and of their work. He certainly has done himself an injustice in this respect. He has not ignored any one among the principal Italian poets of the great movement which resulted in national freedom and unity ; and his history of poetry in Italy during the hundred years ending in 1870 most assuredly is neither desultory nor slight. He has not only prepared critical and biographical sketches from which much can be learned of the poets themselves, of their surroundings, of their sympathies, and of their aims, but he has given his readers a taste of their rhythmic quality by presenting faithful and careful translations of their verse ; from whole scenes of Alfieri's tragedy of «Orestes,» to the charming lullaby of Giulio Carcano, «Sleep, sleep, sleep! my little girl.»

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With 'The Minister's Charge' Mr. Howells has reached the point where his books are less interesting individually than as parts of a series, and one has the satisfaction with these later works of being able to read them by the light of the author's own canons of criticism. These show that Mr. Howells cannot only preach a philosophy, but live up to it ; for the story of Lemuel Barker, so far as it is told, has the « respect for probability, the fidelity to conditions, human and social, which,» he has told us, « can alone justify the reading and writing of novels.» We say, «so far as it is told,» for Lemuel, with characteristic reticence, has taken most of his story back with him to Willoughby's Pastures, and leaves us to make what we can of the little we know.

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Mr. Howells is giving us in ' Indian Summer' some of the very best work he has ever done ; full of the same dainty piquantness, but alive with deeper sympathies and meanings. This is full, not merely of what average people say and do, but of what average people think and feel behind what they say and do. The difference between 'Silas Lapham' and 'Indian Summer' is like the difference between a pearl and an opal : the opal has a soul. Nothing could be more entertaining than the letter of Mrs. Bowen as a perfect illustration of a poor woman trying to be just, but unconsciously adding a touch to make it seem that the other woman has not won so much after all; while Colville's bright talk, Mr. Howells's allusion to his own work, and bits of description of the beautiful old garden, are as amusing as anything Mr. Howells has ever given; and to all this there is added a depth of significance lending dignity to the funniness.

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