Evening star., 1909-05-15
BOOK REVIEWS.
THE CLIMBER. BY T. F. Benson. With
frontispiece. New York: Doubleday.
Page & Co.

Page & Co.
r. BENSON'S thorough famili
~ arity with the British socia
vNu world has stocked his literary
storehouSe with a grea
variety of characters. inter
esting and dull. good and bad. hopeful
and hopeless. Miss Lucia Crimson is in
teresting, bad and hopeless. She is utter
" beyond the possibility of redemption.
This is her own self analysis: Il have
always been greedy. and the greedy people
always go from bad to worse. Their
greedness coarsens even that in them
which might have been fine. Even things
like love, which are supposed to ennoble,
get infected with their coarseness- For
them there is no such thing as the light
of love: there are only Jumps of love.
And they eat them up and get stouter.
7 am huge, let me tell You. bloated,
nonstrous. l suck out the juice from
everything and leave dry skins behind
II is always question In the mind
of the discriminating novel reader now
far story is. justified in the teiiing
which deals only with the malevotent.
how far an author should go in forcing
upon his readers attention only the sell
fish. cruel. harsh phases of life Mr.
Benson admits but a single ray OF HSht
into this narrative. in the person OF
Aunt Cathie.' a forbidding appearing
spnster of sixty with the gentlest soul
maginable and the greatest heart. In
decd, The Climber" is glorification of
this old woman. She is the heroic char
acter. With single exception of Maud
Eddis, all the others are prigs. liars,
frauds or pretenders, or have some par
ticularly obnoxious quality
This is simple enough proposition. the
swift social success of an ambitious young
woman who appropriates TO herself every
thing she fancies, and who ultimately
pays heavy penalty for her conscience
less career. Had she been gifted with
one saving virtue she might have been
been saved from this fate. and there is
no regret whatever for the retributlon
which overtaken her when. in the hour
of her deepest shame. she is welcomed
by her once despised aunt to home IN
a cheap suburban villa This is undoubt-
edly Mr. Rensons strongest work in that
II shows the deepest psychological re-
search.
OH! CHRISTINA: BY ]. ]. Bell. au-
thor OF Wee Macgreegor." etc. IL
lustrated New York: Fleming II.
Revell Company.
Christina is such "a comcal. unexpected
little genius that she will entertain a
great number of people who have. per-
haps. little sympathy with Scotch dialect
fiction Mr. Bells quaint concets of
situation and expression render each
chapter Of unusual interest. This is the
story of child adopted by a spinster
Shopkeeper in a small Scotch town She
startles her guardian at every turn with
her extraordinary slang picked up in the
slums of Glasgow. Being of an IN
tensely romantic nature. Christina is an
raI,v, ,,n1-a and noC
the dream of her life to see her aunt
happily married TO the portly middle-aged
travelling salesman who keeps the little
shop supplied with its toys and trinkets
But while this romance is progressing to
It's climax Christina is busily engaged in
the affairs of other people. and the re-
suit is a volume of such interest that II
will be a difficult reader indeed who is
not immensely pleased with Wee Mac
greegorS successor.
THE WHITE SISTER. BY F. Marion
Crawford. With frontispiece. New
York: The Macmillan COMPANY.
Washington: Brentano's.
1t would almost seem at times as
though Mr.. Crawford in his writing of
this story felt that his end was approach
ing. and that this might be his last OPP
portunity to address his readers of many
years There are numerous touches
character bits of confession, disclosures
of the authors processes of mind and in
cidental philosophical digressions. In
the first chapter. indeed. he engages in a
page of remarks regarding the analogy
between great writer's and artists In re-
gard to their impulses and Initiatives.
The story itself is the result of long
residence in a Catholic country and of
close acquaintance with the characteris-
tic institutions. 1t treats dramatically
of the moral right of one who has taken
nuns vows TO withdraw from her obIi-
cations when the man for whose sup
posed death she has chosen such a voca-
tion reappears upon the scene Mr..
strength with his usual expertness of
craftsmanship. He incidently brings
into view the irreconcilable conflict be-
tween the blacks and the whites
the political power of the state and those
who refust to recognize the temporal
rights of the pope. The workings
of a great sisterhood of nursing nuns are
set forth vivdly.
This story is certain to cause a violent
discussion upon the moral side of the
question involved. Yet apart from Its
controversial quality it is altogether one
of the most artistic of the late novelist $
works, powerful in its grip in book form
as it proved to be as a dramatic produc-
tion.
tor Mapes, author of The Undercur-
rent etc. New York: Frederick Il.
Stokes Company.
1t would have been much more inter-
esting if MIR. Mapes had caused his young
counterfeiter to tell story of crime and
remorse instead of narrative of mid
dle-class romance 1t adds little. IL any
thing, to this tale TO have been set forth
by a youth who had served already in a
reformatory and who writes as it were.
from prison. where he is spending a term
for a similar offense. The point of view
of Pie which is the nickname given to
the narrator by his friend. DIR. Joyce is
not necessarily affected by his prison ex-
perience. Yet the story Is interesting
chiefly a character sketch of the on
timistic inventor of trifies and impossibili-
ties who sees a fortune in every turn of
affairs.
DROMINA. BY John Ayscough author
OF MarotZ.' etc. New York: c. =.
Putnams Sons. Washington: Wood
ward d Ilothrop.
Dromina is an old castle on the Irish
coast. Its owner-who would have been
king except that English history went
wrong-lives there in shabby state with
his twin sons and pretty daughter. The
story has for its hero another king, the
sen of Louis XVI of France who hides
his inedtity under the guise of Ludovic
king of the gypsieS. The story Is rather