Los Angeles herald., 1909-07-16
LATE BOOK NEWS

tion 1t deserves at the hands of Sc
rious critics. Mr.. Brennan's hero is an
old-school manager, who has passed
through many Vicissitudes of fortune.
Two decades of failure have made deep
burrows in his forehead, "every one
representing a show venture that had
been taken out on the road by him
loaded with rosy hopes. only to be
wound up by unfeeling sheriffs loaded
with fatal writs of attachment" The
| atrical shipWrecks are his speciality.
| Yet, we are told, in the days when
! 'shoe-string" management tiourished,
| Bill Truetell was a king among his
brethren. In that day a manager pos
sessed of a surplus over the amount
! of money required to move his attrac-
| tions to the first stand was regarded
with distrust by the fraternity. OF
such distrust, we are assured, Bill was
never the object. Mr.. Brennan, being
| manager himselfs has seen the
| heights and depths of the actors pro-
| fession and has charmingly crystal
| lized in his book the spirit of a period
| which, thanks to the theatrical syn
dicate, whatever may be it's sins, has
now vanished forever. The opening
chapter finds Bill engaged in tying his
necktie and in the still more difficult
task of discovering a way, without
| counting the ties" of getting "The
Cay Gothamites alluringly announced
! as "A Merry Melange of Mirth and
Melody" from New York to Branton
| Conn, distance of twenty-five miles.
| The financial difficulties attendant
upon the company in various rustic
communities exhaust" to quote one
review, "the gamut in the history of
| impecuniosity." At one town the male
| performers of the unfortunate man
| ager strike and he resorts to the in
| genious device of employing as sub
stitutes the various landlords whose
bills he has left unpaid and whom the
destinations of the chorus girls and
the distant prospect of payment have
tempted to accompany the troupe from
town to town. In this manner, Bill
acquires more than a sufficiency of
tenors and is finally compelled to send
this telegram to his advance agent;
Hereafter book company in hotels
where landlords sing bass We havs
! tenors to burn" One of the grotesdue
features of the book is the engage
ment of Mr.. Steelson, the heavy ira
gedian, with a Shakespearean roper
toire. Mr.. Steelson was of medium
height and middle age. His face was
smooth, sallow and classically fea-
tured He wore tall, shabby silk hat.
and a long, shabby ulster, the collar
and cuffs of which We're trimmed with
furry material that had been intend
I III.
but had long ceased to carry out its
end of the contract A glossy black
WIG extended to his shoulders in a sue
cession of waves. There could be no
mistake in guessing his profession:
one-night stands were written all over
| him from head to toe.
The town tour ends, of course, with
complete fiasco, and at last Bits
spirit is broken. He is down and
| out and is about to commit suicide
When salvation comes to him in n
shape of a sweet-natured girl who had
been his leading lady. But, to quote
the philadelphia Item. this conven-
tlonal happy ending seems a bit more
natural than is usual
Mr.. Brennan, remarks the Rochester
st-EXpress, has a strong sense of
the ridiculous. There is an abundance
or caricature, though scarcely more
than we find i'm the Sketches by Boz"
and In Recksniff. STILL It adds, the
misfortunes of Bill Truetell. although
treated by their chronicler as ludi-
crous vicissitudes. very closely ap-
proach the really tragic. The humor-
Gus note, however, preponderates
throughout, In the opinion OF the
Pittsburg Post the book stamps the
author as "a humorist of the first
magnitude"
Bill Truetell BY George H. Bren-
nan. Chicago: A. c. McCiurg & CO.
"Inns of Court"
On the south side of Fleet street. in
London, there Is an unobtrusive gate
way with the efflgy of a lamb above
1t. which the unwary traveller might
pass dozen times and not notice But
II he does notice it. and if he enters,
he will pass at once into another age,
For thls Is the entrance to the Temple,
and in all London there is nothing
rlcher in memories and pictures of the
past than these courts and gardens
and ancient buildings ip the heart of
the city How they and their neighbors
or Llncoln's Inn, Grays Inn and the
inns of Chancery look today, with
something of their history and as
sociations. is told In the latest addition
10 the well-known Macmillan Color
Books, Inns of Court The twenty
full-page paintings in this volume are
by Gordon Home, and Cecil Headlam
is the author The origin of the Inns
is discussed. there is a chapter on the
knights Templar and another on their
within the Temple. The rest of the
book is devoted to the Middle and
Inner Temple and to the other Inns.
Inns of Court. BY Cecil Headlam and
Gordon Home. New York: McMillan's
several
cultfes in the writing of his new book,
Italian Highways and Byways from
Motor Car First. there was his sub
Ject. Italy has Inspired so many writ
erS from Horace to F. Marion Craw-
ford, that one sympathizes with our au-
thor, and wonders whether he really
has anything new to tell us, outside of
the rates at various Italian garages.
And there was the second objection
that, as Mr.. Miltoun says, European
travel is all things to all men," Could
such a book be made interesting to the
person whose dream of driving his own
car reaches its highest realization on
that mad concession, "The Witching
Waves? Among The other problems
there was that'of the cities. Imagine
being forced to dispose of Venice in ten
pages and of Rome in nine
1t was a task, we admit, but even So
Mr., Miltoun disappointed us. An auto
mobilist in Italy would very probably
find the book both fascinating and use
full: but cursory descriptions of un-
heard of italian towns are only mildly
interesting to the stay-at-home. We
had hoped for more intimacy with the
people of the "byways''; we mean those
people who have never learned to ask
the tourist "buona mano"; but after
one chapter of italian Men" we meet
very few natives. A redeeming strain
of humor runs through the book, how
ever, showing itself occasionally in his
torical stories about the numerous viii
lagos.
Of course, Mr.. Miltoun says some
things which have been said before. He
even tells us that Venice is sad" But
there are frequent original and inter-
esting passages. While in the village
of Massarosa for example, he discov-