The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-03-17
THOMAS LAWSON'S
 NOVEL OF FINANCE His Style Leaps and WeepS,
 RearS and Tears CALLED FRIDAY THE 18TH A Story Full of Love and Tragedy and a Bitter Arraignment of the
 Wall Street System" Says
 Enthusiastic Critic.
CALLED FRIDAY THE 18TH

New York, March 16.-Thomas w. Law sons novel, "Friday the Thirteenth" has created something of a furor. Not only has it had lively sale in the book stores and news stands, but many daily papers throughout the country are print ing it in installments. Of the book the Sun says edtorially:
 ",rhe foremost poet and seer of Boston, the copper captain, has completed his first long piece of fiction. His mastery of shorter story telling has been acllnowl- edged for years. In this more sustained flight Ee scars with grander pinions. The style leaps and weeps. It rears and tears. 1t plunges and shorts. It whistles like siren and chugehugs like a devil wagon. It now melts into sorrow, now maddens to crime"
 It may be interesting to quote some of the choicest bits of MT. Lawson's master piece. Here's the keynote:
 Friday, the 18th! l thought as much! If Bob has started there will be hell"'
 In these words Thomas w. Lawson makes his bow as a writer of fiction. They form the first paragraph of the spectacular financiers first novel. A few paragraphs further on Bob, giving or ders to his brokers in quoted as saying:
 ..Give the thieves every share they will take, and when they won't take any more ram as much again down their crops until they spit up all they have been buying for the last three months.
 We will continue the synopsis by quot ing from the World, which Is equally as enthusiastic but takes MT. Lawson's book more seriously than the Sun. The World says:
 Tt is. as might be expected, novel with a purpose. It's plot, while intense with throbbing interest, is the axle around which the great fly-wheel of lesson re- wolves This lesson is simply that any man with a seat on the Stock Exchange can make himself bilionaire if he have but nerve enough and sufficiently cal loused conscience. Money is not neces- sary to begin with. MT. Lawson describes how Bob Brownley, to win woman and to obtain revenge. creates panic such as has never been known, wreeks half the banks and trusts in America and causes brokers and millonaires. wolves and lambs, to kill themselves rath- CT than face the ruin.'
 The story, which is published by Doubleday, Page & Co.,, and copyrighted bv them, is supposedly written by Jim Randolph head of the old firm of Ran dolph & Randolph, stock brokers Bob Brownley is his college chum, son of an old but poor Maryland family and one of the most skillful brokers in Wall street; but to quote Bobs own words
 erhe southern gambling blood that made my grandfather, on one Of his trips pack from New York though he had more land and slaves than he could use, stake his land and slaves-yes, and grand nother's too-on card game. and-lose. and change the whole face of the Brown lev destiny-those same gambling microbes are in my blood. and when they begin to claw and gnaw | want to do something; and. Jim, if those microbes ever get unleashed, there'n be mischief to pay on the foor-sure there will!
 Bod had never been touched by a wo- mans smiles until one fine Saturday ait ernoon when he and Jim Randolph were about to start for the latter's yacht on which Mrs Randolph was waiting to take them up to Newport, when Beulah Sands arrived with letter of introduc- tion from her father, Judge Sands or Sands Landing, Va. a former governor, United States senator and judge.
 Then Mir Lawson shows what he can do in the way of describing woman:
 "Beulah Sands was beauty beyond cavil superior to all analysis. as definite as the evening str against the twilight sky. In height medium. girlish, but with figure maturely modelled. charmingly full and rounded, yet by very perfection of proportion escaping suggestion or .nInnnpress,' The head, surrounded and crowned with wealth of dark golden hair. rested on neck that would have seemed short had it's slender column sprung less graciously from the lovely lines of the breast and shoulders pe- heath.
 .It was on the face, however. and final lv on the eyes that ones glances ln- evitably lingered-the face rose tinted with dmples in either of the full checks. entering laughing protest against the sad droop that brought slightly ooWn tne cor ners of a mouth too large perhaps for beauty, if the coral curve of the lips had been less exqusitely perfect. The