[Illustration: A SWEAT-SHOP GIRL MOVES HIS FANCY DEEPLY]
"Unpleasant" is a word which many an American would give to _Yekl_ on account of its subject. Strong compensating qualities are necessary to induce a publisher or editor to print anything which they think is in subject disagreeable to the big body of American readers, most of whom are women. Without attempting to criticise the "voice of the people," it may be pointed out that there are at least two ways in which a book may be "unpleasant." It may be so in the formal theme, the characters, the result--things may come out unhappily, vice triumphant, and the section of life portrayed may be a sordid one. This is the kind of unpleasantness which publishers particularly object to; and in this sense _Yekl_ may fairly be called "unpleasant." Turgenieff's _Torrents of Spring_ is also in this sense "unpleasant," for it tells how a young man's sincere and poetic first love is turned to failure and misery by the illegitimate temporary attraction of a fascinating woman of the world. But Turgenieff's novel is nevertheless full of buoyant vitality, full of freshness and charm, of youth and grace, full of life-giving qualities; because of it we all may live more abundantly. The same may be said of many another book. When there is sweetness, strength and early vigor in a book the reader is refreshed notwithstanding the theme. And it is noticeable that youth is not afraid of "subjects."
Another way in which a book may be "unpleasant" is in the quality of deadness. Many books with pleasant and moral themes and endings are unpoetic and unpleasantly mature. Even a book great in subject, with much philosophy in it, may show a lack of sensitiveness to the vital qualities, to the effects of spring, to the joy in mere physical life, which are so marked and so genuinely invigorating in the best Russian fiction. The extreme of this kind of unpleasantness is shown in the case of some modern Frenchmen and Italians; not primarily in the theme, but in the lack of poetry and vigor, of hope; in a sodden maturity, often indeed combined with great qualities of intellect and workmanship, but dead to the little things of life, dead to the feeling of spring in the blood, to naïve readiness for experience. An American who is the antithesis of this kind of thing is Walt Whitman. His quality put into prose is what we have in the best Russian novels. In the latter acceptation of the word unpleasant, too, it cannot be applied to _Yekl_; for _Yekl_ is youthful and vital. There is buoyant spring in the lines and robust joy in truth whatever it may be.