The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-06-25

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 liant novels of a decade. It has. all
 the humor and literary charm of the
 authors earlier book Joseph Vance"
 and is delightfully."- satisfying and ab-
 sorbing, despite its great length-5T5
 pages-and it's innumerable digres-
 sions and amplifcations. It is not
 able literary production and singu- larly human narrative of English life
 reviving the best traditions of the Victorian era in it's method and flaw
 or, yet a story of recent years.
 Throughout, the author meanders along following his own pleasure. in
 delineating his characters and unfold
 ling the tale yet the reader, though vexed with the prolixity finds the
 charm of a master mind is there and
 wades on unable to leave the story or
 skip a page. MT. De Morgan's hero l inc enters the pages as a small child tamid dismal and poverty stricken
 hearthstone surroundings which speed [ fly become the scene of a tragedy in which her father, a broken down shop 1 keeper commits suicide after having nearly killed her mother in a drunken
 quarrel Alice, Cinderella like emerges
 shortly as a beautifully dressed little
 girl cared for in a house Of luxury, ! through the benevolenee of her kind
 protectors, Charles Heath and his sis
 ter who discovered her in her forlorn home and surroundings just before
 the inquest. There are, as before said
 many brilliant passages iHaathe book
 but the progress tf the story is ob-
 scured by the superabundance of di-
 gressions, which Timber up the road.
 Still there is food for thought in these
 digressions and a vein of humor that
 atones. The authors style is tender
 and realistic and suggestive of Thack-
 cray in these features and in its di- gressions and discussiYeness. The love
 story concerns Alice and the young
 artist, Charles Heath, who rescued her
 from her slum home and into whose
 parental mansion she was taken. The
 book has two parts, the first devoted
 to Alice as waif and what happened
 to her in childhood and girlhood; the second devoted to Alice at the mar
 riageable age and to the evolution of
 a ghost story-a mystery of skele-
 ton and ring and the restoration of
 memory to an aged woman after she had been sixty years an inmate of an asylum, the restoration being effected
 by means of a surgical operation. De-
 spite it's defects the book is masterly the product of a man of big brain, large wisdom and vast fund of in formation, knowledge sifted and refn- ed. But to fully enjoy it, 1t must be read with patience. Perhaps it does not quite equal his Joseph Vance, which came as a surprise to the liter
 ary world, and is still in great demand but 1t is far and away superior to the general run of novels of the day.
 MT. De Morgan is not a septuagena- rian as has been extensively reported but he is well into the sixties, Con- corning him the following will inter- est the thousands of readers of his books:
 William Frend DeMorgan, author of Joseph Vance of Augustus De- Morgan, the Mathematician, and grandson, great-grandson and great great-grandson respectively of three officers in the old East India Co.'S ser- yice-was educated at University Col lege, Grower street. London, and be- gan to study as an artist in 1858; be- came student of Royal Academy in 1859; practiced the Arts and Crafts in some form or other till early in the present century, when he wrote the beginning of Joseph Vance" to see if he had turn for fiction, He decid- ed in the negative, but his wife found the MS and made him finish it.
 The pottery and tile works known as ware was begun in '72 eff not earlier), and twenty years later MT. DeMorgan published all the par- ticulars of the lustre process, that was one of it's most interesting features. (See Journal of Soc. of Arts, June 24 '92). In his opinion secrets have as little to do with success in the Arts as pigments and vehicles have to do with the particular art of painting. The tile-manufacture has | only recently terminated, and 1t is not l now even certain that it may not be revived, as it's extinction was not due to ordinary commercial failure. In | fact, three months ago it was thought likely it would continue How | ever, at the present moment there is no doubt that MT. DeMorgan and Daniel l Defoe are the only two British novel; | ists who have had to give up a tile | making business under compulsion.
 An impression that Joseph Vance" was in some sort founded on it's au- thor's own experience is an entirely | false one, although 1t is not uncommon | among readers of that work, %Joseph | Vance" and his author have nothing In common, unless 1t Is a love of en- gineering. MT. DeMorgan is the in- ventor in his own conceit of the best duplex bicycle and the most effective | sieve in existence-but then one knows what authors are! Otherwise. there is no character in the book that could pc identified with a living creature, past or present, except the putting | sweep. whom it's author found in a newspaper more than forty years ago, IS he supposes. The characters in 'Alice-for-Short' are just equally Nevertheless, its readers gre certain to imagine that Charles Heath reflects his fabricators own ex- No two people, however, could be much more unlike. Of course Ill an authors facts are jottings from he world he has seen, and quicquid agunt homines is just as much the far ago of MT DeMorgan's libellus as anyone else's-only perhaps his tales,
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