The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1903-08-10
JAMES LANE ALLEN
WRITES ONE MORE
POEM IN THE PROSE
"The MettIe of the Pasture !"
Takes the Reader Back to
"The Choir Invisible Some
Clever Letters in the Story by
MCWcker and Collins.

The MettIe of the Pasture-By James
Lane Allen. The Macmillan Co., pub
fishers. For sale by st. Paul Book and
Stationery Co.
II has come to be almost an axiom
among the bookwise that whatever is
written by James Lane Allen is liter
ature. This book, far from being an
exception, perhaps accentuates as
nothing that he has written before has
done that his is the master hand IN
American fiction. 1t, too, has become
a habit among those who read ana
write of his work to separate always
the purely literary side of his LABOR
from the story itself. And so it is With
1.-The Mettle of the Pasture" AS
story it is an ordinary incident enough,
the mere breaking of an engagement
and it's results upon the principal char
acters and the little group of charming
people who go to make up the tale.
But it is the rare way it is done that
leaves the impress upon the reader.
It's scenes are laid in the country of
the spirit and it's activities are OF the
war that men wage with their own
souls There is a completeness about
a story by this remarkable writer,
feeling that when you have laid it down
YOU have learned something of life that
you blindly felt to be so, but that you
could not put into words.
Mr.. Allen has gone back to the Won
derful style that made THE Choir In
visible" a poem in prose, the quiet
strength and the rare choice of words
which makes of each page verbal
picture of beauty. Here is one painted
of Pansy, the little country sweetheart
of the hero's brother:
''This was Pansy, child of plain, poor
farmer folk, immemorially dwelling
close to the soil; unlettered, unambi-
tious, long-liVed, Astounding in chill
dren, without physical beauty, but
marking the track of their generations
by path lustrous with rightdoing. For
more than a hundred years on this
spot the land had lesSened around them,
but the soil had worked upward into
their veins, as into the stalks of plants,
the trunks of trees, and that clean,
thrilling sap of the EARTH that vitality
of the exhaustless mother which never
goes for nothing, had produced one
heavenly flower at last-shooting forth
with irrepressible energy a soul I'M
spoiled and morally sublime. When
the top decays. as it always does in
the lapse of time, whence shall come
regeneration If not from below. 1t
is the plain people who are the eternal
breeding ground of high destinies."
So much for his perfect style. AS to
the story, 1t is mainly of Isabel and
the story opens, are about to plight
their troth. Isabel. in the full glory of
her love, goes forth to meet her lover,
with perfect trust in him, and
he tells her that before they
say the final word he must
tell her the story of his past. The
reader is not informed then of what it
is he tells her, further than it is some
sin of his youth, but she leaves him
and rafncpC n him In
And thus the story of her life comes
to nothing.
The other characters in the book are
well drawn, the splendid Mrs Mere
dith, old Judge Morris, Mrs. Conyers,
and particularly Prof. Hardage and his
sister.
In the end Isabel discovers that after
having once loved as she loved Rowan
it Is impossible to cast him out of
her heart, and she comes back to marry
him, but it is too late. Remorse for.
his past, his one great sin, and separa-
ton from the woman he loves, have
done their work, and after a year or
two of happy married life and the
birth of their son, he leaves Isabel
alone to live her life without him. The
ethics of the point of the story are
much in dispute; whether it is neces-
sary for man to tell his future wife
of his past, which may spoil her life
and break down her faith. Over. this
the critics are beginning to rage.
Of Rowan's death and burial the au-
thor gives us a very beautiful closing
picture:
"a few days later, an afternoon of
the same autumnal Stiffness they bore
him across his threshold with that
gentleness which so often comes too
late-slowly through his many colored
woods, some leaves drifting down up
on the sable plumes and lodging in
them-along the turnpike lined with
dusty thistles-through the watching
town, long procession, to the place
of the unreturning-they laid him
along with his fathers"
A Parish of Two-By Henry GoeIet Nc
Vickar and Percy Collins The 10th
rop Publishing Co.. Boston. For sale
by st. Paul Book and Stationery Co.
Very bright are the letters that go to
make up this little volume, and very
much of contrast, as one set is writ
ten by a society man in the thick of
life and the others by an invalid minis
ter who is condemned to a wheeled
chair and most quiet life. Clever and
we'll written as is the story, never,
surely, was there penned more ride