FLUTE AND VIOLIN. In 1891 James Lane Allen's 'Flute and Violin,' with its sub title 'Other Kentucky Tales and Romances,' indicated a new departure in Southern litera ture. In a sense the was continuing the work of portraying various aspects of Southern life and scenery begun by George W. Cable, Joel Chandler Harris, Charles Egbert Craddock, Thomas Nelson Page and others. In the first volume of Allen's stories a new province was added — that of the blue grass region of Kentucky. Either because the country itself was richer in its picturesqueness and more romantic in its types of character, or the author himself had a more comprehensive cul ture and a wider perspective of history, there were a'note of idealism in the new volume and a suggestion of the deeper currents of history and of the inner life, than were yet evident in the writings of his colleagues. In this first vol ume of stories were manifest the same qualities that were to be developed and perfected in 'The Choir Invisible' and 'The Kentucky Cardinal.' The story that was most like that of his con temporaries among Southern writers was en titled 'Two Gentlemen of Kentucky' — an old time negro and an old-fashioned Southern aristocrat who could not adjust themselves to the post-bellum life of Kentucky. More dis
tinctive of Allen's art is the story of the 'Flute and Violin' with its historical back ground of the early 19th century and its chief characters, a clergyman-professor in the old Transylvania University, whose inner life found expression in the silver-clear simple melodies of a magic flute, and a boy whose passion for music and for art was utterly in commensurate with the poverty of his life. In the two stories, 'The White Cowl) and 'Sister Dolorosa,' are evidenced all of the author's feeling for nature in her more mystic moods, all of his power to reveal the infinite depths of a struggling soul, and all of his rare visual ization of the mystic springs of life. Never outside of the inmost circle of Catholic devo tees have the poetry and art and the spiritual appeal of the Catholic Church been more sub tly delineated. No American writer has at tempted more than Mr. Allen in such stories as these; his failure to achieve perfection of art is somehow more significant than perfection in a more limited field.