New-York tribune., 1903-08-23

PRINCE or SINNERS. BY E. Phillips Open
T sss 9sT4ted BostoB ie Py oIer Brd Wson ~ Emo PIP
THE PRICE OF FREEDOM; OR IN THE GRIP
or FAIE BY Arthur W Marchmont. Illus
Amsterdam Book Company
THE MAN IN THE CAMLET CLOAK Being an
It 90 wiring Transcribed ana Edited by CarIen
i3no pp $40 Akron The saaifd %F PubIishng q5iSGi
Company.
Mr.. Allen propounds a moral question in The
AIettle of the Pasture" asking us to be inter
ested in the struggle superinduced between love
and conscience in the nature of his heroine
When she is confronted with the necessity Of
forgiving ana forgetting a wrong done by her
lover, or sending him from her to lasting bit
terneSs. 1t is a dramatic issue, but the tone Of
the novel has a certain quietude as BELTS its
scene This is laid in old fashioned Amer
lean town where families have endured for gen
erations and have preserved throughout the
habits and manners of earlier and stately
time. The heroine, Isabel Conyers has known
all her life the man whom she has made up
her mind to marry, Rowan Meredith Their
very upbringing, the very atmosphere Of the
society in which they move are such as TO
foster traits of dignity and honor IsabeTs is
a spotless soul. Rowan, less fine at bottom
than she is, has nevertheless slipped from the
straight path at a time of youthful weakness.
makes his confession on the very night which
is to witness their betrothal, he is scorned for
his pains. That he did right in confessing goes
without saying. Was Isabel right in rejecting
him? The problem makes the substance of Mr.
Aliens book. How he answers his own quee-
ton it would be unfair to reveal. All we need
say is that he answers it i'll way suitable to
the construction of a good story.
Incidentally THE AIette of the Pasture
ing characters, better drawn than any which
we have hitherto known at Mr.. Aliens hands
Rowan and Isabel are both engaging persOnali-
ties. Old Judge Morris is u quaint figure, and
the heroine's venOmous but superticially charm
ing grandmother is almost more attractive than
the central figures in the book. The spirit of
the town in which these people live is deli
cately expressed, and whenever the author has
occasion to put landscape sketch into his mar
rative he does it very well. The defect of the
book is the defect of all of Mr.. Aliens writ
ings, a morbid sentimentality, the wearying in
fluence of which it takes all his skill
elist to counteract The main idea of this novel
ought to be bracing, but, matter of fact
Mr.. Allen leaves US at the end Vividly con-
scious of a strain of weakness in his work 1t
is the weakness of something bred in hot
house and heavily luxuriant. His style only
deepens this impression. Never in what he has
to say in the way in which he says II, do we
apprehend a clear, strong and wholesome note.
Very Mephistophelian, indeed, is the gentle
man who gives Mr.. Oppenheims new novel its
title. He is indeed, "A Prince of Sinners but
very deftly does the author gradually excite
the sympathy of the reader for his hero. He
does this in the course of developing a fairly
we'll invented plot. Young Kingston Brooks.
whom We meet in the first chapter, has then no
| of of he
more who suddenly comes upon the scene to
render him services. Neither does the reader
| guess how the history of the nObeman is TO
unfold itself. When revelations arrive they
are of the sort to bewilder everybody concerned.
| Lord Arranmore has been a good man in his
day. then he has been a very wicked one, and
at the time of his entrance into BrOokss life
! it is hard to say what one is to think of him.
| Meanwhile the incidents of a mildly exciting
tale follow one another with admirable alacrlty,
and our attention is held down to the last chap
ter. 1t is u story rather light in weight more
or less cIeyerly told
| The Price of Freedom" belongs in much the
! same category with A Prince of Sinners,
though the gist of it has a cruder, more melo-
dramatic quality and the style is not fin
! ished Here we have woman and her daugh-
ter. accompanied by a strange girl from India,
who are suddenly Iured into the tolls of a mon
grel who looked the type of an English peer
and was as unscrupulous man as any nation
ality could have produced" He insists upon