Arizona republican., 1909-07-26

The story is absorbing as much for the fate that awaits other characters as it is for the issue of John Barclays career. and the reader if of an emotional temperament at all. will find himself q deal more concerned with Barclays pawns than with the lesson that runs through the book-and that is where the publisher and bookseller may hope to have their innings. In these days most people like to have their lessons in political economy and public moral ity sugar coated and Mir. White has secreted the medicine in a most taste full confection.
 A word about that special public that will value the book most highly. those who lived in Kansas during the latter half of the nineteenth century If the author for the purposes of his story has strayed from real life in the finish of his central character. .n all other respects he has recorded the truth with scriutural veraCitT. His des6 6Iiption of scenes, of persons. pl>' es. things and conditions in the early days of Kansas are as vivid IS len can portraT, as realistic Co the memory of one who was of them and among them in the days of their enact ment as though the years were being lived over again No doubt John Bar clay had a prototype in Kansas, in deed there were little John Barclays in every county. but every other char acter in the book is or was an actual reality. whether the author knows it or not
 g.f f1Aa -ba called himself a Kansan at anytime between 1850 and 1880 or even later. once lived in Sycamore Ridge. He has angled in the brooks. nightly driv- en the family COW from the nearby prairie, and as raucous youngster trembled at the passing of the Indians in professional parade He has reveled on the green sward near the creek bank with picnic parties. beneath the shade Of the monster walnut, oak and hickory trees. picked violets and sweet williams in the shady groves. or gath cred wild strawberries in the grass grown ravines of the rolling prairies He has dodged water moccasins in the old swimming hole. and prairie fires on the hills beyond. He has plowed corn with a spavined horse bought at auction at an army post after the war and gorged himself on watermelons and paw paws He has inhaled the fragrance of the liIacs and has gloried in the kaleidoscopic changes of the long timber line that borders the Kansas stream. as it's springtime dressing of red and pink and white and yellow blossoms merges from vernal spiendor into the dense foliage of summer and fades into the varied tints of rainbow coloring when autumn approaches. He has attended fourth of July and Emancipation day celebrations and camp meetings. in the woods near town and returning from the hunt for prairie chickens over the brown acres or squirrels in the tree tops. he has heard the rumbling wheels of the stage coach as if numbered down the Santa Fe trail. He has carried cold corn bread in his dinner pail and viewed with paling face the obscuring of the sun by cloud of grasshoppers. knowing it meant another appeal to the 'aid'i committee in the fall or starvation in the winter. All these people once lived in Sycamore Ridge every character in Mir. Whites new book.
 Whatever the merit of it's philos- ophy. "A Certain Rich Man" will ap- peal to the heart of every loyal Kan san of the past century who has been spared to read it.