Article April 22, 1911 Issue

A HOLY PURPOSE

SUE H. MIMS.

That immortal poet of humanity, Shakespeare, has analyzed most wonderfully nearly every phase of mortal thought, to the praise and astonishment of the world. Ruskin said of him that "he had no heroes—only heroines." Was this prophetic of the most heroic woman of the centuries? None of his characters, however, have elicited deeper study and more tender sympathy than that of the melancholy Dane,—Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Here we find a sensitive nature, a brilliant, accomplished man, burdened with a sorrow and a supposed duty of avenging it, a task quite beyond his strength and causing a perpetual struggle between purpose and vacillation; hence, a victim to his own indecision, swayed by contending emotions. With him

the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.