Part 32 (2/2)

”May the strangers who come to this Holy Pa.s.sion Play become, by reading this book, more friendly with Ammergau; and may it sometimes, after they have returned to their homes, renew in them the memory of this quiet mountain valley.”

University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge.

FOOTNOTE:

[9] Betrothed.

_Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications._

RAMONA: A STORY.

BY HELEN JACKSON (H. H.).

12mo Cloth. Price $1.50

_The Atlantic Monthly_ says of the author that she is ”a Murillo in literature,” and that the story ”is one of the most artistic creations of American literature.” Says a lady: ”To me it is the most distinctive piece of work we have had in this country since 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' and its exquisite finish of style is beyond that cla.s.sic.” ”The book is truly an American novel,” says the _Boston Advertiser_. ”Ramona is one of the most charming creations of modern fiction,” says Charles D Warner. ”The romance of the story is irresistibly fascinating,” says _The Independent_.

”The best novel written by a woman since George Eliot died, as it seems to me, is Mrs. Jackson's 'Ramona.' What action is there! What motion! How _entrainant_ it is! It carries us along as if mounted on a swift horse's back, from beginning to end, and it is only when we return for a second reading that we can appreciate the fine handling of the characters, and especially the Spanish mother, drawn with a stroke as keen and firm as that which portrayed George Eliot's 'Dorothea.'”--_T. W. Higginson._

Unsolicited tribute of a stranger, a lady in Wisconsin:--

”I beg leave to thank you with an intense heartiness for your public espousal of the cause of the Indian. In your 'Century of Dishonor' you showed to the country its own disgrace. In 'Ramona' you have dealt most tenderly with the Indians as men and women. You have shown that their stoicism is not indifference, that their squalor is not always of their own choosing. You have shown the tender grandeur of their love, the endurance of their constancy. While, by 'Ramona,' you have made your name immortal, you have done something which is far greater.

You are but one: they are many. You have helped those who cannot help themselves. As a novel, 'Ramona' must stand beside 'Romola,' both as regards literary excellence and the portrayal of life's deepest, most vital, most solemn interests. I think nothing in literature since Goldsmith's 'Vicar of Wakefield' equals your description of the flight of Ramona and Alessandro. Such delicate pathos and tender joy, such pure conception of life's realities, and such loftiness of self-abnegating love! How much richer and happier the world is with 'Ramona' in it!”

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