The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1903-06-14
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GORDON KEITH by Thomas Nelson
Page. Illustrations by George Wright
Cloth. IL mo. PIP. SIS. Publishers:
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.
Though this novel is unlike anything
else that Mr. Page has written. it really
reads more like an autobiography of a
real man than work of fiction. Indeed.
we more than suspect than in its material
features it is the tenlng of the true story
of the life of more than one Southern boy
who fought the adverse conditions result
ing from war and conquered them. AS
such, it is the sequel in some sense Of Mr..
Pages stories of war and reconstruction.
In his short stories which have been trans
lated into every language and given him
worldwide reputation, Mr.. Page has given
a picture of the Old South. In Red Rock
he painted the dark picture of Recon
struction, with an appreciation of the
spirit which enabled the South to come
again to its own. Gordon Keith" is a
high-born Virginian, a boy at the close
of the war, all his patrimony swept away
by the war. His father, with splendid
self-relance, becomes overseer on an es-
tate owned by his ancestors. The young
boy early develops the highest traits of
manhood, meets and overcomes the diff
ficu,ties that beset his path, and shows the
stuff which enabled many young South
ern man to rise superior to the conditions
that threatened to overwhelm him.
The love stories have the genuine
Southern flavor and are of absorbing in
terest Mr.. Page is always at his best
when he writes of human love and suffer-
ing and sympathy
Those who have been delighted with
"Marse Chan and "Red Rock" will well
come Mr.. Pages new book. The period
of which he treats affords less incidents for
romance than his former stories and it
cannot be said to be so engrossing as the
shorter stories. But it deals with period
of Southern history that called for real
nerve, character manhood to make bricks
without straw There are many Gordon
Keiths in every Southern State, made
more self-reliant and successful by the
poverty that followed war than if they
had inherited the estates which were lost
to them The industrial prosperity of the
South is in chief part due to the industry
and skill of Southern young men whom
poverty drove to hard labor and called
forth their every exertion Mr.. Page now
and then turns aside to contrast the civ
ilization of the South with the smart set
He does this, however, with excellent
taste and without any spirit of narrow
sectionahsm. Concluding an extended re-
view Of Gordon Keith" NJ. G. 2. r., in
the New York Times, says:
Gordon Keith" is written with SIN
cerity- and strength; its tone is elevated;
1t message rings true and clear. AS a
picture of post-bellum conditions in Vir-
ginia, as a story of what man may
achieve, and of Wat many young South
erners actually did achieve under circum-
stances the most crushing; as a portrait
of a gentleman-of two gentlemen-to
whom when "all is lost save honor"
nothing is lost, who rise always superior
to externals, the book will be read with
absorbed interest, and IS worthy Of all
praise. In its literary artistry it is hardly
equal to Mr.. Pages best work. 1t would
be too much to demand of a novel of such
amp.e proportions the finish, the flawless-
ness, the charm of that group of short
stories which won for Mr. Page his
laurels. But, besides the more than
doubtful possibilities already noted, Ger
tain of the characters lack that reality
which never fails his virginians, and the
reader now and then escapes the grasp Of
the author-a thing fatal to novels
magic spell. There Is really too much Of
the story, not only in the number of its
pages, but in the multitudinous diversity
of its criticism of life." Mr.. Page works
with a, surer hand upon smaller and less
crowded canvas, and, we may add, when
he portrays those types and scenes that
have entered into his very blood and
fibre.
There are enough of these, however, in
Gordon Keith" to give it the eachet that
belongs to Mr.. Page, and to make the
book not only racy and admirable as fic-
tion, but historically valuable as a study Of
actual conditions, and ethically elevating
in its ideals. Like all Mr.. Page has writ
ten, it is on the side of whatsoever
things are true, whatsoever things are
honest, whatsoever things are pure" 1t
deserves the large public it is sure to
have, and vii leave them the better for
the reading"
APATRI0TIC WORK.