The Chicago Evening Post

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THE CHICAGO EVENING POST, FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 1909. 3 MAGAZINE CRITIQUE The various conduct of men and women when their deepest emotions come into conflict with convention and law, forms a theme of irresistible fascination—and real stories are much more interesting than made-up ones. Two of the most interesting of the real stories are recounted by writers in the current Munsey Magazine. Thackeray's love affair with Mrs. Brookfield and that of Cosima, wife of Von Buelow, for Richard Wagner, illustrate the rich possibilities of action in complex and difficult cases. That husbands need not necessarily in a certain banding transform themselves into medieval or barbaric figures of revenge, but may settle their difficulties by both civilized gentleman is shown by both tales. Thackeray, of whom Lyndon Orr tells in his article in a series on "Famous Alfinities of History," when he found himself friend, and the husband, suddenly awakened to the situation by zealous acquaintances, forbidding them the house, made an appeal to the generosity and good sense of Mr. Brookfield in a letter which has never been published. But though the terms of this appeal are not known, the results are familiar to all. The novel, continued his friendship with both man and wife, and in all his multitudinous letters to Mrs. Brookfield never wrote a word which her husband would have resented. In the story of Cosima Wagner there was no such restrain of the emotions. In his account of "the widow of Bayreuth" Willis Steell tells how, when the wife of Von Buelow met the great composer—then poor and scorned by the critics—their attraction fell to each other with irresistible nature. They needed each other, and they did not desire themselves: there was a divorce, and Cosima became the life-long comrade and helper of Richard Wagner. But the three, being civilized beings, continued friends, and Von Buelow was a friend visitor at the house of his former wife. Both articles, which are well written and vivid, are suggestive of the value of good manners in the important crises of life as well as at the dinner table. Accounts of trips through the Yosemite, and the links, usually sound—and with their photographic illustrations, decidedly literature. In "Camping Above the Yosemite," harried Magazine for May, Miss Harriet Monroe achieves a difference. Her enthusiasm over the "sense of intimacy with the grand old earth," while a bit rhetorical, rings genuine. She wisely devotes much of her comment to personal matter, rather than to the overdescribed natural objects of the valley. It is good to read: "We grew accustomed to nights in a sleeping-bag, with only tree tops between us and river stars. . . . We bathed in the icy river at sunrise, and informed into our clothes, there in the women's camp, behind any improvised curtain we could rig up out of a cloak or blanket fastened to the trees. . . . We found it no hardship to wash our dashable clothes in the running stream and dry them unironed, like Hom…