The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-07-07

Tn his preface to the second edition of Elsie venner" pr. Holmes tells of Q dear old lady. good friend of his, who refused to read his book because . she said. Tt is a medicated novel. " And the genial doctor admits the jus tice of the criticism.
 There are matters lying in the Dor derland between medical science and a dim. weird realm with which physicians of repute are chary of dealing scien- tifically. In one of these subjects that of prenatal influences-Olive Wendell Holmes became greatly in- terested, and he chose fiction as the only proper method for treating it. The result was Elsie Venner"-a novel which is not appreciated as it should be-
 Dr. Holmes's description of New Eng land life and character are inimitable and the discourses on theology, religion and human life he intersperses through the book are worth reading over and over. The subject of the story is it. self fascinating one.
 Rockiand would have had nothing to distinguish it from other fine. con- servative old New England towns of its kind had it not been for ''The Noun I dI. nence. which lowered above it and which was never referred to by any other name. cast sinister reputation far and wide, in which the town shared to degree. Its forest solitudes were shunned as places accursed; for they were tenanted by those frightful rep tiles that distil fiercer venom under our northern skies than the cobra in the land of tropic poisons. So numer- ous were they on The Mountain" that the heart of the forbidden place was Ledge, and the constant threat of the serpents cast a strange, subdued fear over the town.
 The people of neighboring villages had saying that one could not rattle a dry bean pod in Rockland without making all within hearing start and turn pale with sudden terror-es- pecially since one fearful day years ago when a rattlesnake had played a part In happening that made story whose horror time could not lessen.
 Into this town came Bernard c. Lang don' a young medical student, when financial stress forced him to inter- rupt his professional studies by a season of school teaching at the Rock land Female Institute. He belonged to the Brahmin caste of New England that harmless, untitled aristocracy which an observant man settled in that section soon learns to recognize at a glance by it's physical and mental characteristics. In the New England Brahmin caste a scholar is, in a large proportion of cases, the son of a scholar or of scholarly persons. Generations of this make the New Eng land Brahmin. The millionocracy is merely a perpetual fact of money with 8 variable human element which the philosopher might leave out of con- sideration without falling into serious error. But the Brahmin caste is a matter of families and persons
 The Brahmin caste often gets blend ed with families of political or com merciaI distinction and 1t Is a charm ing thing for the Brahmin when his fortune carries him this way The grandfather of Bernard was one of those. He had married Wentworth: : but two generations of many children each and the consequent division and subdivision of property had resolved the grandson back into unalloyed Brah- mintsm.
 Immediately on his entrance into the academy Bernard met and was drawn to a fellow Brahmin-pale. blue-eyed, overworn-Helen Darley. a poor de- pendent in the hard grasp of the prin- cipal of the school, Silas Peckham, who