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predicated in the case of Miss Larcom’s work, and 
a thorough reading of it has made us wish that, with 
such high intentions, and such a knowledge of the 
life to be described, the poetess had cast her story in 
a more elastic form. All along through this tale of 
mill-girls’ life there are gleams of that austere, pa- 
thetic kind of beauty which has made the far more 
meager peasant-life of Norway, for example, famous. 
A natural error seems to have led to the adop- 
tion of the (in some ways) most poetic of all forms 
but the pure dramatic, in order to escape a strong 
sub-current of prosiness in the scenery. But this has 
only emphasized the obstacles. The verses are 
broken on the mill-ivheels, as it were, at every 
turn ; whereas a strong, musical prose would have 
put a spell on the machinery, and made the com- 
monplace forcible and attractive in spite of itself. 
Take this scrap of talk : 
She might be— my third cousin.” 
“ May be— is” 
“That is her native State.” 
To call upon her with you.” 
This is clear and unrelieved prose, and is by no 
means an exceptional passage. Yet we sympathize 
entirely with Miss Larcom’s brave effort to rescue, 
even by a mistaken method, the recondite and valu- 
able romance of obscure lives; and we must add 
that, not only is her sentiment always true and dig- 
nified, but often her expression is very fortunate. 
These two facts, two extracts will prove : 
“Woman can rise no higher than womanhood, 
Whatever be her title.” 
This has the right luster, but in a more successful 
setting it might have met readier recognition. 
“One baby sister blossoms like a 
Among her thorny brothers, all 
With farm-work,” 
rough 
ing New England. Mr. Shook thus acquired a com- 
mon law right of property in the manuscript, just 
the same as he would in a lot of scenery or costumes- 
purchased in Paris. The Court protected this right 
as a common law right, and not under the copyright 
statutes. This general principle of law was not dis- 
puted by Mr. Daly, but he had also bought a copy 
of the manuscript which purported to come from an 
alleged assignee of the author in England. The 
question, therefore, before the Court was, whether 
Daly’s title was good as against Shook’s, and the 
decision was in favor of the latter. Daly, therefore,, 
himself claiming title from the author, was not in a 
position to raise the question whether the public 
representation of the play in Paris was an abandon- 
ment of the author’s rights. If this issue had been 
raised, it could have been argued only on the 
ground that the play had been obtained through the 
memory of one or more persons who had witnessed 
the performance in Paris. But it is probable that 
even this theory will never again meet with any 
favor in our courts, which will, doubtless, hold to 
the better doctrine, that the representation of a 
manuscript play is not a publication destructive of 
the author’s proprietary rights. 
Some of the comments on the decision in the case 
of “ Rose Michel ” assume that the rights here ac- 
corded to a foreign dramatist are withheld from other 
foreign authors. This, however, is not so. Any 
foreign author has the right to make exclusive pub- 
lic use of his work in this country, provided it be 
kept in manuscript. The same protection thrown 
around the play of “ Rose Michel ” will be extended 
to a lecture or a musical composition given from 
manuscript to the public, or to an original painting 
on exhibition, notwithstanding they are foreign pro- 
ductions. Mr. Charles Reade may read in public a 
manuscript novel from New York to San Francisco, 
and his common law right of property therein will 
be protected by our courts. 
is like a breath of pure country air. 
The plot is light and vague, but, with more dis- 
tinctness and a poetic pitch more clearly sustained, 
the book might have been what we may still look 
to its author for, a long lever to advance American 
poetry on its true path. 
A Reading-Room for the Blind. 
To the Editor of “Scribner's Monthly” : Within the 
limits of New York city, there are now about six hundred blind. 
Nearly all of the children thus afflicted are in the Institution for 
the Blind on Ninth Avenue, near Thirty-fourth street ; a few 
are in the Asylum on Blackwell’s Island. Of the men, most 
have become blind since they reached manhood, and sadly 
“ Foreign Dramatists under American Laws.’ 
The recent case in the New York Superior Court, 
brought by Mr. Sheridan Shook of the Union Square 
Theater, to prevent Mr. Augustin Daly from pro- 
ducing at the Fifth Avenue Theater the French 
play “ Rose Michel,” is the same in its main features 
as those discussed in our article on “ Foreign Dram- 
atists under American Laws.” “Rose Michel” is 
a manuscript play from the pen of M. Blum, a 
French dramatist. It has been represented in Paris, 
but has not been printed there or here. A copy of 
the French manuscript, and one of the English 
translation, were purchased from the assignee of the 
author by Mr. Shook, with the exclusive privilege 
of representing the play in the United States, except- 
volumes of this print are cumbrous and expensive, the Bible 
consisting of some eight volumes, of a total weight of fifty 
pounds. Despite the greatest care of experienced attendants, 
the raised letter often becomes flattened by finger-reading, and 
wholly illegible to the blind. To the greater number of those 
who are educated in it, finger-reading is a process too slow and 
and can spare neither the money to buy such books, nor the 
time to read them to their sightless friends, were the books pro- 
vided. Very few are self-supporting ; their life is one of enforced' 
Botanical 
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