In 1875 there lived in Boston a rich, well-contented man whose calling was the manufacture of mineral paint. He was a primitive; his wealth had been the result of unflagging luck and savage industry. The little family--there were two girls--lived in Nankeen Square, the East End and their's was the happy, quiet life of unoriginal, elementary people.

Then came ambition, not financial, or political, but social, and hard upon its heels came tragedy. There was to be a house in Back Bay, for Back Bay fifty, years ago was very much the same as it is today, and so, unfortunately, was the East End. There was the gradual acquaintance with one of the good families who lived on coupons and the wealth of sea faring ancestors--very much in their time like paint manufacturers in 1875. But it couldn't be done. There were heartbreaks and failures, there were blunders and embarrassments, there were snobbery and humiliations. The paint man couldn't understand, he never understood, why his daughters, the one so pretty the other so clever, could not be accepted by the great granddaughters of sea faring men. Then came business failure, the selling of the nearly completed house on Beacon Street, and the removal to the old farm in Vermont from whence he had sprung. Such was the rise of Silas Lapham.

William Dean Howells was the first realist. Quite different from the trenchant, sensual realism of Heminway or D. H. Lawrence. For his was, as Emerson has suggested, the harvest of the quiet eye. His novels were dull with the dull ache of life, or they held the mild amusement which enters the life of everyman. Things seem to stagnate, as in "The Chance Acquaintance" or "The Silver Wedding Journey," or they advance slowly forward with the inevitability of passing years.

Today in Harvard 6, Professor Matthiessen will speak on Howells and James at ten o'clock.

TODAY

10 o'clock

"Coleridge," Professor Lowes, Sever 11.

"The Novel--Howells and James," Professor Matthiessen, Harvard 6.

"La Seconde Moitie du XIXe Siecle," Professor Morize, Emerson 211.

"The Scots, Barbour, and the King's Quair," Professor K. G. T. Webster, Sever 18.

11 o'clock

"John Masefield," Professor Murray, Harvard 3.

12 o'clock

"The French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution," Professor Whitney, Emerson 211.

TOMORROW

9 o'clock

"The Severi and the Third Century," Mr. Hammond, Sever 18.

"The Restoration and the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848," Professor Webster, New Lecture Hall.

"History--A Type of Literature," Mr. White, Emerson A.

"Arnold," Professor Rollins, Emerson F.

10 o'clock

"Hume: On Religion," Professor Eaton, Emerson D.

"Three Epic Poets of the Flavian Age," Professor Rand.

"Bismarck and the Socialists," Professor Fay, Harvard 1.

"Bosch and Memling," Dr. Kuhn, Fogg Museum.

"Mark Twain," Professor Murdock, Sever 11.