The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-09-05

MT. Davis has ever done, and or which we occasionally hear he Is now heartily ashamed in his days of great success. To recall these two collections of stories and then turn to, and worse, have to read "The White Mice"-wel-simply let 1t go at thatl
 Mr Davis has, as have a number of other successful novelists who are now producing tommy-rot books, a certain great number of admirers who will read anything Mr. Davis and his ilk, who have grown oareless-or something or other produces.
 There is hardly any excuse whatsoever for "The White Mice''-although no doubt it Is one of the ''best seliers"-such a. book usually is. The hero of this cheap, melodramatic production was Rodman Forester, a young Yale graduate; one Of the usual sort that fits in nicely as MT. Davis heroes. Forester never did any thing in his life useful to himself or any one else. Of course, he had a rich fath- er You could get Forester into any kind of fool scheme though, in which he would work harder than a day laborer. Forrester's father, cold-blooded con tractor. sent his son to Japan to secure bit of contract work, but all Roddy did was to organize in Japan ''The Order Of the White Mice" the object of which was to "savt everybody's life" After young brainless Forester had failed in Japan, his father shipped him to Venezuela to inspect the construction of a breakwater which the Forester Construction oompa- nv was building. It Is in Venezuela that Roddy hears of the Imprisonment Of one Gen. Don Miguel Rojas for unlady-like designs upon the government. Peter de Peyster. one of the White Mice," came to venezuela to assist Roddy Forester in liberating the general; all of the time, of course, Papa Forrester's business there. abouts was going to the bow-wows.
 The beeyootiful Senorita Inez Rojas gets into the game with Roddy, who, as the reader will guess, develops into such great schemer that he defeats all the im- prisoned generals enemies, who are his fathers political agents.
 Oh. but what's the use7 In these days MT Davis has-got- 'em-a1l- 1l-beat-to-a- stand-still in producing, say, things like '.The White Mice"
 .'The Hungry Heart" by David Graham
 Phillips. CD. Appleton & Co)
 MT. Phillips Is another writer who has ..changed" since success gently slapped him on the left wrist-or maybe 1t was the right one.
 MT. Phillips has like Mir Davis written some charming stories; he Is now pro- ducing what might be called vulgar nov els.
 Did you ever think, too how the peoples tastes seem to be changing? How only a few years ago books that now adorn our most select library tables or shelves, would not have been permitted to pass through the U. S. mails?
 ''rhe Hungry Heart which, If 1t and the readers could have stood 1t, might have been given Force, or even Grape Nuts, is simply the story of very at tractive liaison between ''misunder- stood" wife and the man who always seems to be ready at hand The husband of the misunderstood" wife was cele- brated chemist in search of an universal fuel which was to revolutionize economic conditions and didn't. Immediately after the honeymoon the husband hides him. self daily in the laboratory and seeming ly forgets all about the wife, she who was to be misunderstood. The wife is anxious to assist her husband, but he doesn't care to have her about him at work. The husband believed that the place of a wife was in "the home" where he intended keeping his. The young man who now enters, to fall in love with the wife, was from Philadelphia-jus think of 1t! Misunder- stood wife and MT. Philadelphia fall in love; the husband finds 1t out and promptly says to them in effect: Go hence and get your divorce. no intolerance from me. Tho divorce was secured. but