The closeness with which Mr. Wilson follows Mr. Kane's beautifully descriptive passages, however, will best be seen and appreciated when placed in parallel paragraphs, as follows:
| Mr. Wilson. "The Dead City." | Mr. Kane. "The Deserted City." |
| "The city without life lay handsomely along a river in the early sunlight of a September morning. … .From the half-circle around which the broad river bent its moody current, the neat houses, set in cool green gardens, were terraced up the high hill, and from the summit of this a stately marble temple, glittering of newness, towered far above them in placid benediction." | "Half encircled by the bend of the river, a beautiful city lay glittering in the fresh [autumn] morning sun; its bright new dwellings, set in cool green gardens, ranging up around a stately dome shaped hill which was crowned by a noble marble edifice, whose high tapering spire was radiant with white and gold." |
| "Mile after mile the streets lay silent, along the river front, up to the hilltop, and beyond into the level. … And when they had run their length, and the outlying fields were reached, there, too, the same brooding spell-and the land stretched away in the hush and haze." | "The city appeared to cover several miles; and beyond it, in the background, there rolled off a fair country, checquered by the careful lines of fruitful husbandry." |
| "The yellow grain, heavy-headed with richness, lay beaten down and rotting, for there were no reapers. The city, it seemed, had died calmly, painlessly, drowsily, as if overcome by sleep." | "Fields upon fields of heavy headed yellow grain lay rotting ungathered upon the ground. No one was at hand to take in their rich harvest. As far as the eye could reach, they stretched away, they sleeping, too, in the hazy air of autumn." |
| "He started wonderingly up a street that led from the i waterside. … He was now passing empty workshops, hesitating door after door with ever mounting alarm. … . Growing bolder, he tried some of the doors and found them to yield. … . He passed an empty rode walk, the hemp strewn about, as if the workers had left hurriedly. He peered curiously at idle looms and deserted spinning wheels—deserted apparently but the instant before he came … He entered a carpenter's shop. On the bench was an unfinished door, a plane where it had been shoved half the length of its edge, the fresh pine shaving still curling over the side. … . He turned into a baker's shop and saw freshly chopped kindling piled against the oven, and dough actually on the kneading tray. In a tanner's vat he found fresh bark. In a blacksmith's shod he entered next the fire was out, but there was coal headed beside the forge, with the ladling pool and the crooked water horn, and on the anvil was a horseshoe that had cooled before it was finished." | "I walked through the solitary streets. … I went about unchecked. I went into empty workshops, ropewalks and smithies. The spinner's wheel was idle; the carpenter had gone from his work bench and shavings, his unfinished sash and casing. Fresh bark was in the tanner's vat, and the fresh chopped lightwood stood piled against the baker's oven. The blacksmith shop was cold, but his coal heap, and lading pool, and crooked water horn were all there as if he had just gone off for a holiday." |
| "He entered one of the gardens, clinking the gate-latch loudly after him, but no one challenged. He drew a drink from the Well with its loud rattling chain and clumsy water-bucket, but no one called. At the door of the house he pounded, and at last flung it open with all the noise he could make. Still his hungry ears fed on nothing but sinister echoes, and barren husks of his clamour. There was no curt voice of a man, no quick questioning tread of a woman. There were dead white ashes on the hearth, and the silence was grimly kept by the dumb household gods." | "If I went into the gardens, linking the wicket latch after me, to pull the marigolds, heart's ease and lady slippers and draw a drink with the water-sodden bucket and its noisy chain, or knocked off with my stick the tall headed dahlias and sunflowers, hunting over the beds for cucumbers and love-apples; no one called out to me from any open window, or dog sprang forward to bark alarm. I could have supposed the people hidden in their houses, but the doors were unfastened; and when at last I timidly entered them, I found dead ashes white upon the hearth, and had to tread a-tip-toe as if walking down the aisles of a country church." |
Mr. Wilson certainly has a remarkably similar taste to that of Colonel Kane for flowers and gardens. Young Rae meets Prudence in the gardens—now observe:
| Mr. Wilson. | Mr. Kane. |
| "He ran to her—over beds of marigolds, heart's ease and lady slippers, through a row of drowsy looking heavy headed dahlias, and passed other withering flowers, all but choked out by the rank garden growths of late summer." | "If I went into the gardens … to pull the marigolds, heart's ease and lady slippers, … or knock off the tall, heavy headed dahlias and the sunflowers, hunting over the beds for cucumbers and love-apples—no one called out to me." |
After Mr. Wilson had followed General Kane in the matter of flowers so closely, one marvels that he did not go with him as far as the "sunflowers and love-apples;" but General Kane was hunting "over beds of cucumbers," and perhaps the author of the "Lions of the Lord" found that his taste for vegetables did not run so closely with the General's in the vegetable line as in the matter of flowers. But seriously, does not the code of ethics in literature require that our rising young author should either have the grace to put these descriptive passages in quotation marks, or else frankly give the source whence he draws the prettiest bits of description in his much-vaunted book? In the event of the work reaching a second edition, I suggest that he adopt the whole of General Kane's description of "The Deserted City," for his opening chapter; for beautiful as his own is, it but shines with a borrowed light, and when compared with the General's it appears to great disadvantage.
A word as to the purpose of the "Lions of the Lord;" for Mr. Wilson's performance must be classified with the "purpose novel." Undoubtedly there is such a thing as instructive fiction, and the "purpose novel" has its place as one of the agencies which contribute to the enlightenment of humanity. But if it takes hold of our respect it must be, in harmony with the truth—though fiction, it must speak truly; and keep within the probabilities of the subject in hand. Or, to slightly paraphrase an utterance in Mr. Wilson's preface, if the writer now and again has to divine certain things that do not show—yet must be—surely this must not be less than truth. For a writer of "purpose fiction" to do other than this is to make himself as much liable to censure as the historian who would pervert the truth which he is in honor bound to state whether it fits in with his personal theories or not. In his preface, Mr. Wilson informs us that he designed to make a tale from his observations of western life in Salt Lake and Utah; but in his search for things on which to found his fiction he was so dismayed by facts so much more thrilling than any fiction he might have imagined, that he turned from his first purpose in order "to try to tell what had really been." "In this story then," says he, "the things that are strangest have most truth. The make-believe is hardly more than a cement to join the queerly wrought stones of fact that were found ready." Hence we are to be turned from considering his work as fiction in order to regard it as truth.
It is exactly at this point that I arraign Mr. Wilson before the bar of public opinion, and tell him that what he represents as true I denounce as false; and this quite apart from any books from which he has paraphrased much of the matter he weaves into his story. The trouble is that the sources whence he makes his deductions are as untrue in their statements as his paraphrases of them are. Mr. Wilson is as one who walks through some splendid orchard and gathers here and there the worm-eaten, frost-bitten, wind-blasted, growth-stunted and rotten fruit, which in spite of the best of care is to be found in every orchard; bringing this to us he says: "This is the fruit of yonder orchard; you see how worthless it is; an orchard growing such fruit is ready for the burning." Whereas, the fact may be that there are tons and tons of beautiful, luscious fruit, as pleasing to the eye as it would be agreeable to the palate, remaining