The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-03-18
ncW Book ncWS

I ity, and he spent sleepless nights evoiv- l ing innocent pleasures for those about him, but his excess of goodness inva- riably resulted in producing petty an- noyances if not serious inconvcniences. So his virtues had come to be regarded
 with timidity. and there was an ever present anxiety in the air as to what Uncle Percival was doing in his mind. The Virginia mother, transplanted with old silver tea-service to New York apartment house. where she gos- sips in a most lady-like manner with the char woman! enquires after the sick In adjacent lodgings. "reminiscences
 with the young girl from Virginia,
 whose aunt refused fifty offers of mar riage ere reaching the age of 25, is portrayed with a touch as facile and clear as Winters on canvas.
 Gertrude BrideweIl, preserving her marvellous beauty by more self-denials than a yelled nun practices for her souls saving, is equally well-drawn with her unfailing love for Bridewell
 of the errant fancy. her contradictory
 coduetries, her Carefully cultivated cynicisms, her parked bon -mots be- tween cigarette puffs.
 Isn't 1t a little contrary to science 1 that black coffee before breakfast and six cigarettes at a sitting should not make against that carefully preserved ] beauty.
 Connie Adams. with her silly fiutter-
 ings around society she can never enter, and Trent with his successful first play, are all we'll pictured
 The whole book, however, is far from being as satisfactory as are the au-
 thor's works placed on the soil of her own Virginia. The view of New York and its varied social centres Is not that of an intimate, 1t is always the skillful work of an outsider, of one whose innate sympathies and expectations, though equally as good and fine as those portrayed, are yet always to the present field foreign.
 The book also shows unmistakable signs of haste. There is little or no plot and that little Is all too hastily served up. Trent is literally flung into a profession of love for Laura Wilde merely. it seems, In order to let us know that 1t Is possible to fall Tn love with a literary reputation and imagine that it's a woman" With equal suddenness, he is made to under stand in a moment that he truly loves Christina Coles of the steadfast blue eyes and heaps of returned manuscripts. Very good stun for q romance in these hits all too hurriedly handed out, the
 wonder is that Miss Glasgow let the
 opportunity to do something completely Eppu W llu oAAP OS hCAs
 Laura, with her immense soulfulness,
 is disappointment Her intensities only serve to incommode all about her In all her questioning, unsatis- factory love for Arnold Kemper, she Is | necessarily looking for soul" wonder ing If the handsome figure of flesh holds spirit" She accepts the facts
 of divorced wife in the background,
 a late love for a prima- donna, she mo- -T.- N-AE do her love epistles, Yours with my
 whole heart and soul, Arnold only to fall most ignobly at the first shadow of temptation. The prima- donna com ing to Kemper's rooms. finds Laura
 Wilde there under the chaperonage of Mrs. Bridewell, Quite openly she seats herself at Kempers desk and writes a letter which she requests Laura to deliver to Temper. It is three days before their wedding day. Laura's and Kemper's Laura, con- stunned with an unreasoning jealousy, burns the letter. Then after sundry reserves to tell of her misdeed. she fails to do so till Kemper, three days before their intended marriage. receives a letter from the prina donna asking why he has not sold the stocks he held for her as she had requested him to do In letter his 1ancee was asked to deliver. His failure to do SO has cost some thousand dollars This is the climax of all that may be called plot.
 Kemper, though wondrously cons1d- crate in his interview with Laura yet looks his anger and disgust at the d-ing of so puerile and ignoble an act. The lock Is moro than Laura's soulful ness can bear She leaves her home and wanders in q semi-conscious state to a ferry crosses, walks to a lighted house on the highway and drops with exhaustion, fortunately in kindly care of a good soul of a woman. There she remains three days unmindful of the anguish Of her family and friends anx- ions only to escape kemper who would.
 she realizes. rather marry her even after that look" rather than undergo
 the mortihcatlon of calling off a we'd
 ding and returning presents. She adds
 to the disc omfart of all by her soulful and intense selhshncss After the man
 ner of soulful souls she never con
 siders that all her own disillusionment under that look and all the distress
 of others is fruit of her own inane act.
 The heroi" Adams, editor Of the Tn teruational who loved her before
 ever the worlds were. also fails to at tach any blame to Laura So Gerty