The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-05-16


enough told; plot to follow there IS
none; from the beginning we see the
end the book itself takes hardly more
than an hour in the reading-and yet,
it has quality that fastens 1t IN the
memOry-and. sad as the story itseif IS,
it nullifies the gloom of half dozen
pessimistic novels that do not leave life
worth living.
The book has all the charm Of style
that we find in Miss Browns essays,
and the materials yield to the same
firm and conscious handling which
characterizes her shorter stories.
c.The Day of His Youth" by Alice Brown.
Houghton, Miffiin Co.. Boston. Leo For
sale by E. w. Porter Co.. St. Paul)
A novel of quite unusual character
and oyerpoWering interest Is FREDERICK
Thickstun Clark's 1.-The Mistress OF the
Ranch" It is difficult to decide wheth-
er the book attains its highest success
as a sensational novel, whose plot is
too enthralling to leave it unraveled
over night, or as study IN psy-
chology so trenchant and clear that MT.
Clark may we'll take rank win those
who have great insight into the human
soul. A Colorado ranch is left by Dan
Thompson to Amy. the younger and
decidedly the more winsOme OF his two
sisters. The two Thompson girls, from
Nebraska, arrive at the station where
they are to be met by Sam Tinker,
their brothers "pardner," who is to re-
main in Anny's service as foreman.
Phoebe Ellen, with her usual habit OF
assumption and appropriation Of her
sisters interests, takes affairs into her
own hands and, when Sam fails to
meet them on time, flies into pas
sion so shrewish and masterful that
her character stands revealed at the
same time that the impression is given,
to her hearers, quite unlntentlonadly,
that she is mistress of the ranch and
it's affairs.
Before the ranch is reached the party
is caught in land slide which leaves
Amy unconscious with fracture Of
the skull that results in an imbecility
both beautiful and terrible in it's noble
gentleness and conscious emptiness.
Phoebe Ellen, Influenced by motives
that her character makes natural
enough maintains the mistake which
construed her mistress of the ranch,
The gradual development Of her
cruel passionate grasping of her
sisters life and identity. contending
with her natural love and human Inn
pulses fostered by the constant care
which she lavishes, in self justification,
on the helpless invalid, is study subtle
as the splitting Of a hair. Nevertheless
MIR. Clark does the drawing with a-sbig-
brush and comprehensive strokes and
the human passions he paints with are
as primitive and intense as the primary
colors themselves
The character Of Sam Tinker Is as
big and reposeful as an Egyptian god
wrought on a mammoth scale and the
finish, too. is as conscientious as the
polish of those enduring granite mono
liths.
In book where suffering is common
and a happy ending is only reached
through strife and pain the most
tragic figure is that of the consumptive
doctor. A burning, uncanny, hungry
brain imprisoned in a decaying, mis-
cradle body,-such is the man-and his
bitterness one almost shares. ITO go
on breathing and thinking after one is
really dead-to eat and sleep and move
about, and see things that really be-
long to a past world-it's a horrible
life to live, a ghosts life. tell you !!
To survive ones ambitions, ones
imagine what it's like? =. =.
would you like to be asked in the
next world what you had done in this,
and be obliged to answer only I had
consumption And his bitter fate
goes with him to the end What any
man would count a life work he ac-