The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-06-30

>John Halifax, Gentleman" just misses being really great novel. AS it Is, 1t has decidedly high place in English ltera- ture, and 1t can be said of 1t that its in fuence Is wholly good.
 Dinah Maria MulocN was approaching % when she became Mrs. Craik, and it was under her unromantic maiden name that hr literary fame was achieved. Of all her works-and she wrote both poe try and prose-"John Halifax, Gentle man. is the best known. It came out in 1857, and delighted our parents and grand parents as, doubtless, 1t will our children and grandchildren. If Miss Mulock could have drawn her characters with little more strength, could have put a little more human inconsistency into them, she would have rivaled Dickens and Thack- cray. On reading John Halifax" one feels regret that one who had so much genius should not have had little more. But one who has not read this story should read it-and will be a better man pr woman for doing so.
 LIE was only a boy of IA, wander
 ing, vagabond boy, when Abel \ A Fletcher, the wealthy Quaker tan- ner of Norton Bury, encountered him on the street and hired him for penny to see his son Phineas safe home-poor lit tie, sick1y. crippled Phineas, orphaned Of his mother and with no sisters or broth CTS. or indeed, any other children to play with. It was rather a wonderful thing that Abel Fletcher should have so far trusted the unknown lad; but there was something so manly and straightforward about John Halifax, and so much or certain dignity, too, and he answered the stern old Quakers catechism so frankly that Abel trusted him.
 fnIxa xxith marked eyebrows a nose like most other Saxon noses, nothing particular; lips well shaped, lying one upon the other hrm and close; a square, sharply outlined, reso- lute chin; John Halifax might have been, for his looks, three years older than IA The hard school of poverty, want, labor the constant habit and necessity of sell relance-had made him in bearing man.
 To lonely, sickly Phineas. this great strong. self-reliant boy seemed so exactly what he would like to be himself and was not, and John was so tender in help inr him along, that the acquaintance thus begun waxed into a sudden, strong friend shin ..and the soul of Jonathan was knit unto the soul of David; and Jonathan loved David as his own soul"
 John remembered his father as sad, stately man, fond of reading-'a gentle man and scholar" he had once heard him called. After his fathers death he 
 since her death the boy had wandered about the country, helping on the farms working when he could, starving when he must.
 John was taken into the employ of Abel Fletcher at the lanyard and after while the boys were at times allowed to be to- gether. but not often, for the Quaker would not trust his son much in the com panionship of boy whom he had not as vet thoroughly tested. One day John, who could read. but not write. took out little Greek Testament from his pocket and said to Phineas: q wish you would write something for me-" On the fyleaf was written:
 Guy Halifax, his book.
 Guy Halifax gentleman, married Mu- riel Joyce, spinster, May r, in the year or our Lord 1719
 John Halifax, their son, born June IS. 17so."
 There was one more entry in feeble, illiterate, female hand-"Guy Halifax died Ianuary A. 1791." Write" said John, Mu- riel Halifax died January 1, 1794.'
 That was all John ever knew of his pedgree-all he ev@ cared to know. His father had been Guy Halifax, gentleman, and he would be John Halifax, gentle man That was enough.
 On that first day, just before his good fortune threw him in the way of the
  with Phineas, an incident occurred which John never forgot. for 1t was the begin ming of his life's romance. As he stopped to stare with his gaunt, hungry eyes at the fine front of the Mayors house, with its fourteen windows, in one of which clustered the towheads Of happy children, A little girl came running to the door with loaf of bread in one hand ana Knite In the other.
 .Here poor boy, you look hungry, cried the little girl, cutting off a slice of bread A nurse girl rushed out and seized her and exclaimed: You must not, Miss Ursula. you must not" dragged her into the house; not without struggle, how ever. and not until Ursula had thrown the piece of bread to John.
 It was wheaton bread such as poor folk in England did not often get in those days John ate it medtatively. He could scarcely remember having tasted that kind of bread before and the face of the child who had given it seemed very beau- uful to him.
 John Halifax, gentleman, hated the tan ward with it's smell and unclean work, but nevertheless he labored there assidiously and faithfully, and when he read The Pilgrims Progress he called the strong desire to give up his task and fly away to try the world again his Apollyon and fought it down. So John increased in years and strength and in his masters favor until at last, he came practically to manage the business for the rapidly falling Abel Fletcher; and all the time he was educating himself with the help of Phineas until the latter confessed that his pupil had outstripped him.
 Old Abel let the young men be together as much as they pleased now. It had been his ambition to have Phineas suc- ceed him in his business. but though Phineas grew somewhat stronger as he grew older he was never anything but delicate, nor ever would be: and Abel be- gan to lok upon John as some one who should be shield and help for his son when the time came that he himself must go hence and be non more.
 Phineas gave John his first writing les son on hill overlooking the flooded Avon. using a stick as a pen and stretch of sand as copybook. In that one lesson John learned to write his own name: but before the lesson was completed the boys saw a boat with two men in it in danger of being swamped by the dreaded eager "a sudden rush of tidal water which came swinging up the stream.
 John got the boat to the sksre and res cued the two. One was MT. Brithwood. the