The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1897-07-27
HAmL1N GAR1AND's STORIES.

(From the Chicago Tribune.)
There is just one thing in Mr.. Gar
lands new book of stories that recalls
the solitary horseman of G. P. r. James
almost forgotten novels. In the begin
ming of most of these stories solitary
railway train may be seen vending its
way through the stockyards or some
equally attractive portion of the Chi
cago landscape. Each of these trains
| bears with it a young student fresh
from some western college setting
/ forth to make his fortune, and-though
he knows it MOTTO meet his matrimon-
ial fate.
But this is anticipating. These young
heroes, being in the clutch of Mr.. Car
lands brand of the realistic story, must
be made to see as much dirt and disa-
greeableneSS as possible, along with the
few bright scenes that are admitted in
to Mr.. Garland's fiction world. AS the
trains keep a-wending the heroes keep
a-looking, and they see all the old tin
cans, garbage heaps, muck holes, and
moral liberation within the radius of
their vision. And Mr.. Garland, with
his trusty snapshot camera in hand,
photographs each bit of disagreed BILE
ness for the delectation of his readers.
Being a great believer in the SOIL he
conscientiOusly gives his admirers their
moneys worth of assorted Fertilizers,
and when he momentarily forgets him
self and writes a pretty story he makes
amends by touching it up here and
there with aboriginal prairie mud.
The result is a fine aggregation of
local color" that will form valuable
and instructive reading in that far age
when Mr.. Be1lamy'S Utopia shall have
eliminated all such things from the
earth In the meantime it is cheaper,
and, on the whole, almost as pleasant,
to get all these sights and smells at
first hand by taking a southwark trip
on a Halstead street car.
It must not be imagined from the
foregoing that the whole of Mr.. Gar
lands book is filled with unpleasant
things. Far from it. The criticism in
tended is only this-that the persistent
introduction of that sort of thing no
matter no wsnan the doses, is utterly
and eternally inartistic, multiplying by
just so much the finer work over which
it is daubed. The thirteen stories and
sketches in this volume are by no
means uniformly marred with the dirt
element, but the final impression one
carries away on closing the book is a
sense of unpleasantnesS.
1t is at least an encourag ing sign that
Mr. Garland has arranged these stories
in an order reversing his own theory
or that his publishers have wisely done
ii for him. At any rate, the brightest
and cleanest stories are the first in the
somber by rapid degrees, until they
take on a hue that would make mis-
anthrope of Mark Tapley.
If all the stories were as good as the
first, "A Preachers Love Story one
would have to speak of the book in al
together different terms Here Mr.
Garland's realism has chosen to deal
with some of the truly romantic and
dramatic elements of western life. 1t
is the story of a young college gradu-
ate who goes to a country town to
teach. but at once feels call to
preach and to put an end to a bitter
church feud that is sapping the spirit
ual life of the town. The style in
which he achieves his end, at the same
time winning a fair and buxom young
country girl to be his wife, is at once
charming and inspiring. Mr. Gar
land is seen at his best in this and only
Slightly less so in the next story "A
Meeting in the Foothills in which a
plucky American college boy, working
on a rich Englishman's ranch, wins his
employers pretty daughter, despite the
bar of caste prejudice.
One of the secondary characters in
"a Preachers Love Story will no
doubt grieve the moralists and the
sticklers for what Charles Dudley War
ner calls the Signboard" in fiction We
refer to Herman Allen, the reckless
youth who begins by losing the money
for his college course in the Chicago
wheat pit, who frankly continues to