The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-04-29

The Quickenin@. By Francis Lynde A Truly Southern novel with not one word about the negro problem. wonder and a blessing in this our day! The large audience won by Francis Lynde with "The Grafters" will find that "The Quickening" will add to his fame.
 Thomas Jefferson Gordon. not the first boy named after the great sage of Monticello, was much handicapped in the search for spirituality by an exhorting uncle. Baptist preacher who could rouse his heroes to pitch of frenzy wherein they could not dis cern between great fright and true re- pentance; also by an honest but "un- professing' father, moved by the best of motives who has called him to preach the word" ere his first word is spoken.
 He is put to daily tasks of psalms and verses and fits his every day deeds to those of the only men of literature Of which he has any cog nizance: At the cliffs foot was a dripping spring-there was a time when Thomas Jefferson used to lie flat on his stomach and quench his thirst with his face thrust into the pool. But that was when he had got no far ther than the Book of Joshua in his daily chapter reading of the Bible. Now he was past Judges. so he knelt
 
 men of Gideon's chosen three hun dred."
 Thomas Jefferson had his first lesson on social prestige versus church prece- dence, when he listened at meeting to earnest prayers from his uncle for the Major great man of the section under the appellation of the Man of Sin.'' Just what the distinction was between a man of sin and sinner-spelled with small 's'--was something which Thomas Jefferson could never quite de- termine."
 Yet what deference always met the overload" of the community from his uncle himself. from his father, from his mother, from every soul in the mountain enclosed neighborhood. Why such deference to the Man of Sin?" A deference based on true respect and joyful homage.
 The first hint of the rise of the spirit of the New South was the resentment that the boy Tom Jeff felt at the evil dent deference paid by his people to their good neighbor as fine interiors to a superior by birth.
 'Ske war made the first break in those laws of caste. ever unwritten. but felt to the marrow by every individual of the old regime and ever adhered to, "a law Draconian in the Old South" a lost quibble to the new-except where C. Few old ones remember while they tell themselves 1t were better to for get.
 There is more in the spirit of the New South than wealth of coal and iron and industry It is the binding of all the Anglo Saxon race as brothers the leYeling of all caste among those of the great race whose motto has ever been victory even in seeing defeat, the tire less Anglo-Saxon. Never has this union of all classes been better told than in the scene when Caleb, with the old gun, goes with his foundry hands to the rescue of the Majors lands from railway prospectors. Calebs "ar- tillery" won the day and the Majors eternal gratitude
 The plot of the story is vigorous some real as life itself. The develop ment of indenties. the development of men to handle them is strongly told The sprinsing up Of towns as by magic Is true as history, IS one history of the past two decades.
 The characters of a back woods com munity are well drawn, characters that remain true to their type when the back woods has been transferred into