The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1898-08-07
1.-THE Juggier.

Miss Murfree has the gift of extract
ing the sting from melodrama. She
can take a thoroughly exciting and
we'll made plot, and write 1t up in SO
dignif1ed, gentle and repressive a way
that some readers can go through the
book without finding out that they are
perusing an exciting story until the
very end, when the fact is perforce
borne in upon them if they are per-
sons of any intelligence. Now this is a
good gift, and it has it's uses, but in
this day and generation 1T would serve
art quite as we'll and the author better
did she trim her style to accord with
her subject and strip off the redundant
verbiage of her manner, leaving the
strong, sinewy tales that she has to tell
clad in such a word-garment as BELTS
their substance. 1.-The Juggler" as 1t
stands is a most agreeable tale, but if
it had been written with CONCESSION and
fire it would have been, in the parlance
Of the day, "a sumner"
The hero is young man Of birth and
breeding. who belongs to a great mer-
camille firm in St. Louis. He has an
Interest in the company, in addition to
being employed by them, and before the
story opens has been collecting money
for them in the South. This money is
necessary to prevent their failure. 1t
is stolen from young Royce by friend
who shares his stateroom on a Missis-
sippi steamer. In a. midnight accident
the friend gets away with Royce's
clothes and the money belt, is killed
and robbed by river pirates, and Royce,
who is saved, becomes aware of the
fact and aware that the other mans
body has been identified as his own.
Here is the weakest point of the story.
In real life young Royce would have
no tn CHI
he be afraid to be thought to have rob-
bed and so brought about the down.
fall of firm whose interests were his
own? It Is a bit Of abSurdity, and even
more absurd Is his fear that the
Gerault-Bonley Marble company, who
hold lease Of valuable quarries for
the term Of his life, will be interested
as nice. safe. long-lived place for
man to be. threat of suicide under
such circumstances would so surely
have brought the marble company to
his aid. no matter what his involve
ments, that the reader grows very i'm
patient with the youth who persists in
burying his good life In the mountains,
earning his scant living by the rehear-
sal of tricks Of sleight-of- hand, a
favorite amusement of his better days,
ard getting himself into several kinds
Of sentimental difficulties before the
melodramatic end Of the story brings
his sad release. But one must grant
novelists some absurdities. To make
novels without them is to create bricks
without straw Once admitting that Lu-
Glen Royce could think it better for
himself to remain dead to the world
that had known him, the rest Of the
story is natural and inevitable. 1t is
touching as well, and did Miss Murfree
but love a little more the characters
she can create, and but love a little less
the mountains and her descriptions Of
them, and the quiet dignity Of her style,
the book would be moving, and we
should thrill to it's appeal
s'The Jugger," by Charles Egbert Craddock
Boston. Houghton. Miffiin G Co., s125. For
sale by the st. Paul Book and Stationery
company.