The San Francisco call., 1898-06-12

heroine It is then that the generous in- stincts of the sex are further revealed She who is called upon to play Fate and zeal out imaginary fame and fortune ana beauty ana virtue does 1t with no misery nand From the abundance which she hath.the more she gives the more she mas, Tor truly. imaginative wealth is inf1- ii.- ni,ile-sne bestows with a motherly nper- alty upon her minds children. Nothing IS too good; nothing is too great for them. F'or-they are hers.
 story of sentiment and song that Mans held Is now playing in New York-which succeeds despite the dramatic critics, just as the book did in the teeth of book re- views-her devotion to her mental off, spring compelled her to make Eugene a count Or was 1t a shrewd knowledge or what her sex, the foreordained readers of the book, would require of her? In the same spirit M. B. Francis marries off her two charming little Hungarian heroines. one to the greatest pianist in the world, IS "colossally rich, young, not yet 32, handsome, healthy, and, moreover, hon estly interested in life and in his fellow creatures"
 But the .'Duenna of a Genius has what memory denies to "The First Violin"-a very good drawing of character in the adorable Hungarian heroines; one or two excellent situations, such as that where the genius pouts and pretends to be un- able to speak English. and another which describes their unsuccessful concert; a sense of humor; a certain degree of ar tistic taste in the arrangement of the story; story ana one chapter, that in which the serenade in the woods, to the great pianist whom she loves, which is very pretty and pastoral and impossible,
 musically captioned chapters, is not to be read with ones critical cap on. Take 1t up when you don't feel like reading, when your brain doesn't crave loftier entertain ment when your doubting spirit Is dulled by fatigue or illness, and let it Hull your pessimism to sleep. It's fairy story for prineesses instead of one, and two knights instead of one, to rescue them from poverty and obscurity and that still greater calamity. old maidenhood.
 The Love of an Obsolete Woman.
 ''The Love of an Obsolete Woman" chronicled by her anonymous self. is an immoral story, very we'll written, which makes it doubly immoral. But its im- morality Is not of the sort that makes converts to the outraging of convention ality. For this obsolete woman was as unhappy as though, she were not out Of date, but alive and suffering now with the rest of the nineteenth century world. Her wickedness lies in her unrepentance, which she reiterates to the very last lino of the stron artistic autobiography which has the vivid keenness of real Self-portrayal
 Not long ago." says this obsolete woman. T heard a young woman-a re- fined, cultivated, carefully reared crea- ture-talking of a man with whom she had been thrown in contact I could never have cared for him in the least she said, "but he was so unusually well off that If he had asked me 1 should not have felt justified in refusing him. l am glad he didn't It was then that a sense of my primordial antiquity fell upon me-; in that moment I found the title of this book"
 It's a good title and an interesting story, and an unusual one, for 1t gives the other side-the other woman's side of the old tragedy of one man and two women The story of the obsolete woman is not the glorification of Camille. It's self-analysis Is pitiless, frank. not senti- mental, and the telling of 1t Is an example of direct, forceful brevity.