The times., 1899-09-24

L
romance of a new type, motive and all,
and that is rare, in a love story.
! But the finest bit of work in the book,
and one of the best in recent magazine
| fiction, is .Jepson's Third Adjective
sketch of this will in no way diminish the
pleasure OF reading it, since the delicacy
! with which the idea is worked out constl-
tutes the charm of the story. Jepson was
young colegian who had an idea that the
| expressing of ideas by correctly chosen
words was the only thing in human exist
ence. After leaving college, in conyersa-
! tion with a friend, he expressed the belief
| that life might be summed up in t1reo
words-three adjectives. The first was
suggested by the spectacle of a bald head
ed orchestra leader sitting unmoved while
matchless actress played Juliet, an1
reading the while a letter from his third
wife. who had gone to Chicago, and who
/ had, said Jepson, as much mind as an oys-
ter and as much figure as a doughndt.
That gave him the adjective 'droll. He
hunted a long time for the others. and
they came TO him in the course o. his ex-
perience; and that is the story.
A new book of short stories by Richard
| Harding Davis is THE Lion and the Uni
1 corn 1t contains five tales in Mr.. Davis
we'll known manner, four of which indicate
that he has been trying to utilize some of
the spoils of a material hunt. If there is
one kind of literary man who is particular
ly intolerable TO a real lover of romance
| the true story of human life-it is the man
who goes through life with note-b book and
pencil, on still hunt for types He gets
theni-a man generally gets thing after
which he goes with single minded devo-
| tion-but types are not and never will be
| human. Mr.. Davis is one of the best ex-
amples of this school of fiction in fact,
! he is its archangel and its prototype In
reading his stories you may almost put
your finger on the things he saw and iotted
down with stolid and panstaking fidelity,
and those which he had to make UP. There
is no imaginative fire to weld the whole
| into one harmonious concept, of which one
never asks whether or not it is true, but
| knows that it must be true because it ap-
peals to that inner sense of the fitness of
! things which is the salvation of mankind.
ION the Fever Ship" for example, is
evidently drawn from Mr.. Davis observa-
tions during his Cuban experience. ''The
Man With One Talent is a forceful story,
! spilled all over it. 1.-The Last Ride To-
| gether' is a glimpse of one Of the Jameson
raiders, and THE yagrant' is evidently
CLEANED from something that happened in
some out-of-the-way corner of the Carib-
bean Sea.
THE Lion and the Unicorn" is the one
real story out of all this touched-up kodak
! photography. 1t deals with the struggles
of young playwright in London, and is
| quite in the manner of some OF the au-
thors earlier and better work. The hero
is one of those perfectly correct and in
tensely psychological youths whom. by
choice. Mr.. Davis causes to do things
The heroine is Gibson girl, and there
is another Gibson girl who plays sort
of soubrette part. The hero is supposed
TO be Door. but he never gets to a point
at which the wolf can really do much more
I than serenade him at a distance. He
| pawns his watch and ring, it is true, but
! there is a large majority of human beings
on this earth who cannot pawn seal rings
! and watches, because they have not got
| them, OF anything else that pawnbroker
| would look at, and who have no remorseful
sweethearts to rescue these chatteis at the
expense of selling diamond-studded
| trinkets. 1t is Impossible to get up much
| sympathy for a Van Bibber. Still, there
are many young ladies who go to matipees
and weep over tailor-Tnade heroes, and
they will like this book immensely. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.25.)
''Mammon & Co." is a new novel by Mr..
E. f. Benson, and, all things considered,
it is the most artistic work he has done.
1t is a novel of London society, in which
Mr.. Benson is much more at home than
in writing about Greek girls of heroic
stature and emotional proclivities. It is
| characterized by the same brilliancy and
| scintillating smartness which made
| ''Dodo" a success, but there is some kind
OF a moral in it, a thing which the former
book appeared to be without. Moreover
1 tt,- sr s III t.
fascinating story, which holds the atten-
tion of the reader from the first page to
| the last.
Mr. Benson's weakness, when he writes
| about London society, is the introduction
of real people under thin disguise, and he
usually misses the facts in his portrayals.
"Dodo," as everyone knows, was not an
invention. but a real girl-Margot Ten
nant. now Mrs. Asquith, and she has mar
lied very much the sort of man that Dodo
| chose, but without any such horrifying
results. On the contrary, she has become
| model wife and mother. In the present
| book the author takes occasion to intro
duce an American millionaire's wife and
daughter, and the mother is certainly
| drawn from the popular conception of
| certain wealthy American woman gem
| orally accused of making the most astound-
ing hash of the English language. AS in
| the former case, Mr.. Benson has twisted
his facts, for the lady in question never
| said the things attributed to her. But
| that does not prevent his Mrs Murchison
| from being extremely amusing, though
| sometimes a little wearing. She is made
| TO say, when asked il her daughter is
| delicate, "Oh, no; quite indelicate, / as
| sure you and TO remark that she could
listen to the thunder of a river until she
| was an octogeranium.
AS for the rest of the realism, some of it
undeniably comes either from the Hooley
scandals or something like them. The plot
| concerns the same sort of thing handled
so successfully in Frederic's "The Market
/ Place"-the noblemen who agree to act
| as tools in money making for a .bounder
| in order to retrieve their damaged for
| tunes One of these noblemen has very
| pretty and fascinating wife. who is Dodo
| over again. In fact, several types intro
| duced in this book are only refinements
| of those in the authors first successful
novel, but without the bizarre effect. The
| thing for which this book will be read Is
the brilliancy of its wit, not the construc-
| ton of it's plot In one of the earlier
| chapters there Is an excellent description
of the ordinary crowded function, which
| Is compared to one of those wicker crates
in which fowls are taken to sea. The
author calmly comments
One or two very tall men had their heads free;
few Others stood by windows, and could breathe;
but the majority could neither breathe hear,
nor see farther than their immediate neighbors
They could only quack. And they quacked.
When Lady Conybeare, otherwise Kit,
is told that middle class people would
| think her wicked - and replieS Precisely.