The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1896-08-30

of Jake's inchoate existence lies in
| the loss of this sense Of Importance
consequent upon the announcement
that he is a married man, and his one
faltering step toward moral evolution
| Is taken when he makes an effort to
hide his shame that Gitl, the newly ar
! rived peasant wife, is 'greenhornish,"
and tries to be patient during the pro-
cess or her superficial AmericaniZation
| III the matters of dress and CUSTOMS
! Ihe effort is not a success GitI be-
comes Jealous and Jake gets angry,
A divorce follows, and in the final chap
ter we leave Gitl about to be married
to one Bernstein, a scholarly shop-mate
who appreciates Jake's wife for pre-
clSely those domestic virtues and re-
ng1ouS and national prejudices which
mad come to seem very tireSome to
Jake himself, whose adherence to what
ne conceiyes to be the American Gus
toms is as earnest as it is crude and
superficial. The same chapter leaves
Jake himself on board a Third avenue
cable car, being triumphantly con-
veyed to the mayors Office with mat
rfmonial intent, by Mamie, the Polish
girl whose magnificent bank account Of
three hundred and forty dollars had
furnished the means to paclfy Gill and
pay for the divorce. And as the cable
car lurcheS onward, Jake's heart sinks.
faction in obtaining his hearts desire
as a more highly-evolved man would
have experienced under the circum-
stances.
| There is good work done In drawing
THIS primitive, inarticulate personality
or Jake, but the writer has hardly used
| his absolutely new material to the hest
advantage, and, on the whole has repre-
scented his characters as on such
low plane, not only Of DEVELOPMENT,
but Of possibility, that they hardly seem
worth while. a certain amount of moral
evolution, or Of developed and coherent
Wlll-power in such personages as those
depicted here is necessary to awaken
! the readers sense Of human kinship
and interest. Nevertheless. the book Is
we'll worth reading and contains a.
promise of strong future work.
| c'Yekl," by A. Cahon. New York D. AID
pleton & Co. 81. For sale by the ST. Paul
| Book and Stationery company
| Checkers introduces circumstan-
! TALLY novel and interesting charac-
ter to American fiction. 1t is the ap-
! parently veracious story Of the hard
luck of tout" encountered at the
| Chicago Derby by a young man of that
town Who fell an easy victim to the
| persuasive eloquence of Checkers /"
| tongue. Checkers himself is simply
| delightful. He handles an enormous
! vocabulary of slang with more ex-
! pert tongue even than that Of his pre-
decessor, "Chimmie Fadden," and for
! individual cleverness he certainly takes
| the palm away from our friend of the
Bowery. "Chimmie'' might have de-
scribed his best clothes as glad rags
which Isl somehow q very adequate
and fetching Observation-Disclosures have
said of a man who had a horrible
sorry on that 1.-The wheels were buzz
zfv IN hi f1o4 I,,osI L..
fingers in his ears they would have
been cut off, but 1t would hardly have
| occurred to him to describe subur-
banite as having to get down town
so early that when he was coming
home at night he used to meet himself
| starting out in the morning"
Checkers is too absolutely life-Iike
| a character to have been invented
| He was obviously studied from the
| living model with patience and enthu-
siasm, and Mr.. Blossom Is to be con-
| graduated both upon his choice Of
character to transcribe and his accu-
| racy of method in making the tran
| scription.
| (''Checkers, by Henry NJ. Blossom. Chi
cago. H. S. Stone & Co. S25 For sale
by the st. Paul Book and Stationery COM
pany.)
Miss POOLS new novel, Mrs. Ger
| aid" marks in certain ways a distinct
| advance over her previous work. 1t
is more dramatic, more strongly cut,
and moves toward its end more firm
| ~. The background is well worked
up, and the characters are presented
with less Partially for certain of her
creations than this popular author
sometimes shows. The first twenty
chapters are especially satisfactory
from the critics point Of view, for they
are free from Observation-Disclosures how
ever, we readily admit could hardly
have failed to follow Judith's marriage
and in all Miss POOLS pictures of New
England life she has done nothing
better than Hanford Growers rattle Of