The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-12-20

Mr Cable may or may not have found t more agreeable to spend his lattef days far away from his beloved New or leans of which he writes so dehghttully- m one does it better nor nearly SO we'll but his living away from the scene of hls stories does not in the least affect the local color the delightful atmosphere with which he ills his charming stories One always feels that he should apolo- e.ize for the use of the terms "atmos- phere and local colors-they have been abused so much-but in this case nothing would do so well with which to explain that In his books dealing with New Or- leans the creoles. or others who live or have lived in the Crescent City, MT. Ca hle excels any other man or woman who has attempted such writing.
 MT Cable may or may not be persona non erata with southerners when 1t comes to the ever-present negro question as exhibited in his books, "fhe Negro Question" and "The Silent South, To- gether with The Freedman's Case in Equity and the Convict Lease system hut if would be difficult to find a true seutherner who wouldn't thril over MT. Cables pictures of creole life, dear old New Orleans, and the like
 There are 396 closely printed pages in MT Cables new novel, called "Kincaid' Battery" Those readers who are accus- toned to accept their literary enjoyment
  to object to the length of the story. The novel. however is not intended to he read, thrown away and forgotten at the end Of the reading
 ''For the scene of this narrative please take into mind wide quarter-circle of country such as any of the pretty women we are to find in it mieht have covered on the map with her half-opened fan
 ..Iet it's northernmost corner he Vicks- burg the famous. on the Mississippi. Let the easternmost be Mobile and let the most southerly and by far the most inl- portant. the pivotal corner of the far from which all its folds radiate and where the whole pictured thing opens and shuts, he New Orleans.
 Then let the grave moment that ush CTS us in be a long-ago afternoon in the Louisiana delta"
 General Brodnax. veteran of the Mexican war, a rich planter of the delta, with home in New Orleans. an old bache- Tor who had been crossed in love as a youth. had two nephews-Adolph Irhv and Hilary Kincaid-one of whom would be his heir to all the lands. money and slaves after the generals death Mrs Calender a young widow of General Brodnax's lifelong friend. the noted judge of that name. some two years deceased when the story opens Constance and Anna Callender were the widows step-daughters. Anna of you would believe him) a counterpart of her long-lost beautiful mother whose reiec- tion of the soldiers General Brodnax's) suit when he was a mere lieutenant was the well-known cause of his sing1eness" These Calender ladies. prompted by him and with sweet modesty of quiet ness, had just armed new field battery with it's six splendid brass guns"
 :''Flora Valccur and her French grand mother Gas well as her brother of 19 al- ready agag to be off in the war) had but lately come to New Orleans from Mobile" It was General Brodnax's wish that his estate should be left to that one of his nephews who married Anna Callender JFby had been selected at first to com mand the battery of six guns presented to the Confederacy by the Calender ladies. but Flora, the villain in this story, in duced the general now in command around New Orleans to place Kincaid in charge of these guns and to have Irby on his (the generals) staff. Flora loved Hillary KinC aid; Irby ~ved Flora he was her tool all through the story, acting on the generals staff he was able to pro- mitigate orders and so forth that would carry out the villains (Flora s) plans while Hilary, when the novel opens, didn't love anybody, but was open to proposi- tfons.
 sIn New Orleans just at the beginning of the war Was Fred Greenleaf a northern CT, great friend of all the characters in this story, and he loved Anna, who had declined to marry him.
 4lt is with these principal characters that Mir. Cable works out his delightful picture of New Orleans, at the beginning, dur ing and at the end of the civil war The pictures of New Orleans life as it must have been then written by an eye wit ness dor MT. Gable was in New Orleans and thereabruts at that time)-well you can't find anything better, there is no need to try
 The story is too good to tell much about in a review
 Hilary Kircaid fell in love with Anna and it was Flora's duty and pleasure, as she saw it. to keep these lovers apart; she succeeded wonderfully we'll
 That any woman who lives or ever lived south of Mason and Dixons line could be such creature as Flora is pictured by MT Gable, is hardly possible, but it reads all right in the story.
 Flora the evil genius in the story There are so many ramifeations, side lights, intermingng of plots and plot ting in "Xincads Battery" for when Hilary KincaiG took charge of the Cal lender guns the name was changed to the one which is the storys name that one must simply read the book to get the proper idea of it's delight.
 Not take the book up to read and ratch traini But some good winter evening-tnat is the time to give ones self the pleasure that "Kincaid S Battery" ( Furely contains for the discriminating. "A Lord of Lands" by Ramsey Benson.
 CIenry Holt & Co.)
 MT Benson's book is a fictonal ac- count of an experiment in social eco- monies
 It tells now a little colony of 16 fam flies of tla working carnenters truekinen, parbers, railroad men and the like who face the problem of rearing large families on little more than S12 per week, plan to become farmers in some healthful and fertile western state, taking between them c square mile of land, divid- ing it by two roads that cross at right angles in the very center and there building their IS houses in compact little village.
 The book is the history of how this ex- pertinent works out. How a railroad pres fdent is pursUaded that it is to the rail- roads best interest to advance the money needed for the experiment. How the suc- cessive difficulties of the undertaking are one after another faced and overcome and the colony at last gloriously estab- lished on q paying basis and free from debt
 The story is told in the first person. in a sustained note of simplicity, by workingman. an Irish railroad brakeman, who never rises above a certain honest and rather primitive outlook on life.
 HThe railrOpd brakeman tells the story