The times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1897-1901, 1898-03-06
"a Passionate Pilgrim"

"A Passionate Pilgrim by Percy
White, is a scarlet-covered book whose
title is rather misleading 1t is the sto-
~ of a youth, befooled by a girl at
eighteen. who takes his rejection very
philosophically, and after some vicissi-
tudes, including the girls marriage to
a lord and the subsequent death of her
husband, he marries his first and only
love and lives happy ever after. The
tale is an entertaining one, and here and
there are bits of reflection like the fol-
lowing:
Once, in the olive season, | Numbered across
the orchard of a sun-dried, underfed Italian peas
ant, 10 the inapprecable damage OF crop OF fall
en- berries. Some deep agrarian wrong III the
must have been stirred, for he rayed at
The disproportion between his anger and my Of
Tense incalculable. A few small coins, how
ever, and such apologies as a limited vocabulary
permitted, more than atoned for the injury, and
sent him 10 the other pole of feeling. He beamed
like courteous walnut. Milford was most gra-
cious! Smiles led to exchange OF confidence.
| was 4 traveller seeking pleasure. And finding it?
Yes, in his beautiful land Then the wrinkled
grcy-grCcn olive hills. Pleasure, said his face,
rarely came his way. Then / learnt there a
son with the army in Africa and al home. in the
arid village, wife-a erone. ! saw her before her
door, a bundle OF gnarled miseries, weeping for
the second lad crushed to death in the marble
quarTies and buried yesterday. Yet all the man s
powers of mind and body were concentrated in
the poor patch Of olives where stood. Here
was a tragedy in the thinnest key of sorrow--
attenuatcd a bat cry of discomfort Death on
one side, the consultations OF minute thrift as
an anti-climaX on the other; 10 bridge them over
was the old mothers grief. All the wrinkled
mans philosophy OF resignation squandered
on his SOL; none was left to help him over his
olives.
Then can remember thinking that it must be
the theatrical and literary view OF life which
makes it so unintelligible. Fear OF death, fear
OF hunger, and love the three elements from
which vicissitude weaves crude tragedies. They
may begin with death, and end with a quarrel
! over an underakcr's bill We clamor for poetic
justice and dramatic curtains to hide the sordid
| ugliness clinging TO most human troubles
And there are other epigrammatic and
| Slightly cynical utterances:
| Until a man can see the sun rise and set with
| out entangling the phenomenon with his own the
atTlCal emotions, he has not learnt much.
We pen our youth up ia schools and colleges
and mould them in the same mill till they come
! out as much alike cartridges OF the cali
| Der. We need deep bath OF solitude to teach
| US real place in nature.
| Following this simple line Of thought man
easily persuades himself that he is the victim OF
Dcstiny-a fate Is meaningless il is comfortable
| 10 seltesteem, for IL assumes that destiny has
made especial efforts to prevent Us obtaining
what IS justly due 10 merits.
| The character sketchinG is done easily
| and clearly, and the portrait of a little
| Jewish gentleman who used to be Solo
mon Baruch. but is later known as Sol
| lie Brookes, is a work of art as a sketch.
He 1t is who. in his millionairedom, sue
ceeds in entertaining chosen men of the
| Stock Exchange, whom no splendour can
| dazzle, and whose brains are active
| spasms of mental arithmetic"
The book is brimful of cleverness of
subdued and matter-of-fact kind, and
though, when all is said and done, there
| is not much in it. STILL whatever there
Is has been we'll handled.
New York: ID. Appleton e Co. Wash
| ington: All bOoksellers.)