The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-05-29
SOME VIEW BOOKS.
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BY PAUL PRY.

success. by unimportant rumors to vast proportions blown. To play his game for dominion or destruction John Dumont had had himself arrayed in wine-color- ed, wadded silf dressings gown over his white silk pajamas and had stretched himself on divan in his sitting room in lis palace. A telephone and stock ticker within easy reach were his field glasses and his aides-the stock ticker would show him second by second the precise posture of the battle, the tele- phone would enable him to direct 1t to the minutest maneuver. The telephone led to the ear of his chief of staff Tav- istock, who wes at the desk in his privat- est office in the Mills building. aDout him telephone straight to the ears of the di- vision commanders. They would blndly obey orders, ignorant who was aiming the guns they fired and at whom these guns were aimed. Instead of shot and shell and regiments of cannon food, there are battalons of capital the paper certificates of the stored-up toll and trickery of men; instead of mangled bodies and dead there are minds in the torment of financial peril or numb with the dspair of financial ruin. But the stakes are the same old stakes-power and glory and wealth for a few, thou sands on thousands dragged or cozened into the battle in whose victorX they share scantily If at all, although they bear the heaviest losses on both sides"
 The description continues in detail and graphic words in no way need the illum- ination of the final illustration of the look. although 1t adds rather than de- tracts from the denouement.
 An exceedingly dramatic climax is found in the chapter Pauline Goes Into Politics." where the heroine, who has kindly placed fc1ty-five thousand dollars belonging to a number of politicians in her safe in her country palace for safe keeping. refuses to give 1t up at a crit ical moment when she discovers that 1t Is to be used for ignoble campaign pur- poses.
 .'Charm and Courtesy in Conversation"
 by Frances Bennett Galloway, Dodd,
 Mead & Co.
 With the quotation ''The right spirit is to get all the good and give all," this little volume so atractvely bound is pre- sented. It Is divided into some eighteen chapters with nost suggestive and help ful and inspiring thoughts and quotations upon "Companionshp'' and conversation. For the author says, "The merchandise of 1t is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine god.''
 In Chapter II the author says: "The mind is often lazy as well as the body, and working heedlessly and thoughtlessly through the five senses gathers in con- fused and inaccurate impressions. The inc ccurate :mprt ssicns crowded in dim, shapeless forms into the memory need much patient reflection to restore them to any semblance of truth, but patient re- fiection means work, and the indolent mind finds 1t much easier to shape and color it's impressions with any passing fancy or persor al Keeling that may be entertained for the time Such impress sions distorted with suspicion or preju- dice colored with envy, jealousy or an unreasonable temper now become false, fut sent out unscrupuously as true, nat urally lead to all manner of misunder- standings and n1isrepresentations. Neigh bots and friends are wrongfully accused, business interests unsettled lovers sepa- rated families turned against each other, and the most secred and beautiful rela-