The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-04-04
Literary Lights and 5badObs
BY s. MAYS BALL

LeRlanc was the general trouble maker ill ]
 the neighborhood. He had strong pred
 leotons for alcohol and for wild fife. to say nothing of charming Aline. Numa l WAS cut-up; that he was. Aline had maternal grandfather, Mon | sieur Naran, rich, as was her paternul srandfaJ Jher, Later in life the Monsieur
 Verain fs enabled 10 make restitution for his early wrong to Aline's molaer Allne, brought up as it were with tie Cajuns of Louisiana, those people of TO-
 mantle Evangel.ne fame came to be
 known as a CaJub. But the reader can
 see that at the proper time the denoue-
 ment will, as 1t did eome-and all will be well. The plot in this story is first rate. You might not judge so from this attempte1
 synopsis. or glimpse of it-but it is really
 first rate Aid better than that, the teil- I ing the unraveling Of the scheme Is much 1 better, far better than the plot itsets "A]inc of the Grand Woods Is one of l the good books that have come from the l press recently, There hasn't been too 1 many Of that kind either so the dis
 eriminatlng should take tie hint, more CT | less subtley contained in this review, and i Do it now
 "A Rube's 20 Years Adventures-The Ups 1 and Downs of a Clodhopper and His
 Famous Trip To tie Land of Gold and 1 the Sagebrush" by Thomas S. Kinder. l Qard & Lee).
 This bok is bundle of rollieklng good | natured and at times quite broad, but within the limits, fun. It is a pleasure l to state that the humor does not de- i pend upon misplaced capital letters and smplihed spelling. The book deserves l great deal for only that. The fun , contained consists in the mirth provoking ! nature of the incidents related. The rube
 tells his own story. always of a jolly,
 good natured. dry fun character. Begin
 ming with his boyhood life on the farm
 where he struggled with the calf for
 mastery of the stuation his ups and
 downs as travelling agent for the Wild
 cat Medicine company; his experiences as
 a patent churn agent and his thrill
 ing doings as railway agent and store
 keeper combined, down to the time of
 his great trip to Puget Sound country
 and Seattle, together with his return to
 his own fresde, old Rube, Rueben, I've
 been thinking, was constantly on the
 gawk. He never passed a skyscraper
 without seeing the top, nor missed a
 confidence man in the entire United
 States
 The book is really very funny in it's
 way. It weighs much, too for peo-
 pie who like that kind of fun. The
 book is well illustrated with comical
 cuts.
 Trolley Folly" by Henry Wallace PhiI- lips (Bobbs- Merrill Co)
 This book contains a collection of short
 stories, the best of those written by
 MT. Henry Wallace Phillips. Most of
 them, maybe all, have heretofore appeared 1 in magazines, but in book form they
 seem to be all new, very charming and 1 some unusually funny
 The book takes it's name from the | firsst story of the collection, to-wit | Trolley Folly, or Jimmie Horgans Fore 1 taste of Fortune" Jimmy received a leg i acy of 5000 from a relative he never l even heard of. Drawing bit of the l money from the attorney who broke the 1 news to Chames, the fortunate fellow | who was a motorman on the trolley line l of his city, after bending his elbow a l few times enlists in his cause the con- | ductor of his street car for to have
 a good but quite unusual time with the | car No. S09 Chames and his friend not l caring after lighting their lamps, so to l speak, whether school kept or not had l a fine time of 1t. MT. PnIIlIps will give
 you the particulars, which are worth :. 1 while. l There are Ii stories in Trolley Fol | ly." all very good. First class volume 1 to take along on a railway journey. "The Spell" by William Dana Orcutt; 1 CHarper Brothers). 1 In this book, which is a good one, l l interesting, well written, conscientious | 1 ly and wisely put together, there is a | 1 young husband, the hero. with very l charming wife, both of whom have to | 1 a more or less extent the artistic tenn | perament. Artistic temperaments have | 1 been responsible for many things in | l this day and generation. That tempera- i | ment like appendicitis is an invention I of this age only. What?
 Now, this beautiful young wife with | | the handsome literary husband with | 1 money to icinerate had dearest girl | | friend" who falls in love with the | | aforesaid husband even during the | honeymoon of the married pair The | | honeymoon was spent in a Florentine | villa and the house guest, that dearest 1 friend before mentioned, goes with | i, hubby to the Laurentian library and | | works every day with him there until | | all tn Florentine- American colony is 1 l gossiping. The dearest friend acted | as literary adviser, cheer-up to hubby | who loved old manuscripts, old times l 1 and things of that sort, and he began | to think that possibly the wife didn't [ | quite understand him. The dearest | 1 friend of the wife was something of 1 1 serpent, and while she thought so pos l sibly, really the husband had not the l slightest idea of falling in love with | l her, on the affinity plan. He loved his | wife and was proud of it. He was, | however, a pompous ass whose little | 1 learning had affected his wh cells, but he did love his wife, in a way you know, | as much as the artistic temperament | would permit. Armstrong. the husband, | 1 got jolt after bit which jostled him | off his perch when he found that Helen, | the wife was thousand times too l good for him, as she was. But Helen was worrying all the time that the | artistic temperament held sway. She seemingly indorsed so much of the dearest friends's going ons" with hub by that the reader will think that somebody should have boxed Helen's