[Illustration: W. D. HOWELLS IN HIS LIBRARY] Born in the Central West, Mr. Howells has kept its democracy of spirit and reinforced it by familiarity with modern languages and literature. In his lighter work he has made studies of the whims and foibles of certain feminine types in this country, of such fidelity that they have disturbed those who believe that Americans should tell the truth about themselves only to themselves, and that to take Europe into the national confidence is a kind of petty treason. But if Mr. Howells has seemed sometimes to draw American women with too light a hand, no one so well as he has conveyed a sense of the purity of American women, and the wholesome tone of American social life outside the very limited circle of what is known as the “Fast Set,”--a group of men and women who are representative not of a nation, but of the attitude toward life so strikingly defined in “The House of Mirth.” In his graver mood Mr. Howells has given us “The Rise of Silas Lapham,” one of the lasting achievements of American fiction, and “A Hazard of New Fortunes,” both original studies of American life during the age of great fortune-making. The charm of Mr. Howells’ art and the refinement of his humor have not given him the popularity of the more dramatic novelists; but he has made a place of high importance for himself in American literature, and in the hearts of a host of readers who have discerned in him a singularly pure and lovable nature. THOMAS NELSON PAGE The aftermath of the war between the States was an idealization of the old social order in the South. Mr. Page and Mr. Allen found in the tradition and habit of the Old South elements of a romance founded on reality. Society in the South before the war received its tone from men and women bred in habits of deference and courtesy, sensitive to any slight put upon honor, and prodigal of hospitality. It had rested on an unstable basis; but it had those delightful qualities which came with leisure, easy conditions, and the absence of commercial spirit. This vanishing order found in Mr. Page’s earliest stories a record true to life and yet enveloped in the air of romance. “Marse Chan,” “Unc’ Edinburg,” and “Meh Lady” gave the country a thrill of pleasure, so sure was their appeal to sentiment, so refreshingly human and unforced, a rich and picturesque life of its own, a fresh field for the romance of spiritual adventure and social habit. [Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF THOMAS NELSON PAGE _Oakland Plantation, Hanover County, Virginia._] In these moving tales, told with unobstrusive artistic skill, the long-suspended literary tradition of Virginia received an impulse which has since given the country a group of stories of original quality. JAMES LANE ALLEN