The Clarksburg telegram. [volume] (Clarksburg, W. Va.) 1874-1926, 1900-01-12
ATTRACTS NATIONAL ATTENTION
The Daughter OF the Elm Highly Com
plimented by ST. Louis Globe
Democrat.

The following able criticism of
Granville Dawson Halls book, '"The
Daughter of the Elm" appeared in
the Sunday st. Louis Globe-Demo-
,crat, December3l, 1899:
.sThat truth is stranger than fiction
we have long been told. but few who
speak the truth have ventured to
claim that it is quite as interesting.
An author, therefore, who can make
the nice connection and give you a
tale as true as truth, yet deliciously
thrilling as intensest fiction, is not
one to be ignored. Granville DAWSON
Hall is a new writer-in the line of
romance-yet he has brought into the
field little 'foundling," as he puts
ii, with such wide eyes of truth and
shining garments of adventure, that
life and story are at one with each
{. other in the interest he awakens. He
calls IL Daughter of the Elm. Story
.sof the West Virginia Hills" and it
Z reflects the beauty of the hills, and
the soft sweetness OF the valleys won
through the dark and turbulent days
before the war wherewith its lot is
cast. Nor could 1.-THE Daughter of a
Hundred Earls" display more fineness
q soul and fiber than stamps its
gentle heroine, though she was born to
gross and criminal surroundings that
might have detiled an angel.
ut is no smallpar of the skill of
the writer to bear this fair daughter
Of the Elm" stainless through the
foul and murky atmosphere that en-
yelops her, and the manner in which
he explains her is worth nothing.
Lorraine Esmond was like the wild
rose that lifts the tender grace of its
beauty in the midst Of noxious growths
assimilating through the divine chem
istry OF nature, only the element re-
onired to nurture its delicate lowell
ness from the same soil that supplies
the erosser essences to the rank rag
wort and the pestilent thistle" Con-
corning her place In family of Grim
inals where even the mother accepted
the situation without scruple or
Doubt. he writes more strongly still:
.She was stray in that flock, rein
carnation, by freak of heredity, OF
some finer and statelier soul that had
dlpnified the family tree before the
devil came into later possession
The master stroke of the book, how
ever, is not in the delineation OF
character, nor cleyerness of plot, nor
striking situations strong as all these
polnts are, but in the remarkable
manner in which the author has
STAMPED it with that impress of trnth
which is at once the dream and
desnairN OF all writers. That every
AAuc happened as he relates it, even
sk the slightest incident or most
thrilling detail, is the inevitable con-
ylctiop of the reader as he follows the
s.simple graphic words wherein TINS
Serrlble drama OF life is told. The
! whole thing is so out of the line OF the
conventional or made up that MOTH
ing hut real life can account for 1t.
The william in the plot is so unlike the
ordinary type of villain that only the
man who knows him personally, as
the author did, would ever have dared
put him in story, and only as you so
hack to classic writer's and their
gentlemen devils, can you find any
thing ike his counterpart in litera-
ture Even athe ways OF love follow
the pathetic life lines, for the ideal
love, the perfect romance, never
eliminates but leaves the common