New-York tribune., 1910-08-20
RECENT FICTION
Some Pleasant Stories, Chiefly of
American Life.

American Lille.
THE MEDDLINGs OF EYE. By William
J. Hopkins 12mo, PIP. 2s7. Boston: The
Houghton Mifflin Company.
HAPPY ISLAND. 4 New Uncle, win,
lam Story BY jeanette Lee Colored
! frontispiece. limo, PIP. $50 The Cen
tury Company.
FORBIDDEN GROUND. BY Gilbert Wat
son. 12mo PIP. S24. The John Lane Com
pany.
THE GOLD TRAIL. BY Harold Bind
loss. Colored frontispiece by Edwin
Stokes Company.
OUR LADY OF DARKNESS. BY Albert
Dorrington and A. G. Stephens. Illus
trations by John Rae. 12Ino, PIP. 371-
The Macau1ay Company
COMRADES OF THE TRAIL. BY G. E.
Theodore Roberts illustrations and
decoTafions bv Charles Livingston Bull.
12mo, PIP. 30S Boston: L. c. Page &
Co.
1.-The Clammer'' and his wife play
parts in Mr.. Hopkinss new book, THE
Weddings of Eve" and so do their two
children, lovable tots both Of them, but
the reader who has missed the earlier
story will not have the slightest diff
Guilty with the twos shorter ones that
! constitute the new volume Eve med
dies not too much, in the love affair of
! Cecily in the first tale and with that of
Margaret in the second, but there is
! third case of young love and the rough
'nesses which it makes for it's own feet
running through both, that of Alice Car
bonnet which appeals to US most of all
The material is diaphanous, amusingly
! 81,
pears to be to married folks. and the
| manner is that of ''The Clammer," per-
| haps a little less spontaneous now, but
sufficient unto its end, which is the
] spinning of two light summer stories.
The simple life Of all these people is
made nightly attractive by enough
money distributed judiciously among
them to make them easy
Uncle William sounds as real in Mrs.
Lees new chronicle of his doings and
sayings and philosophy Of life as he did
when first she introduced him to US.
Happy Island it is, indeed, and.
though she keeps its name and its ex
act location from us, we feel that it is
real nay more, that we, too, can find 1t
/ IT We DuI ltdsSl uO" IL i-oot did up clohS
| looking for il with her eyes. One for
gets that this is excellent work in the
pleasure of realizing the sea and the
rocks, the sky and the sunshine, Uncle
| Williams snug house, put in order now
by Celia. who turns the old man into
the craftiest. most delightful Of match
makers-in the realization Of this sane.
genuine simple life of which the ma
| iority of us get but a brief glimpse from
| time TO time in the scant hours of our
| leisure To busy workers the story will
prove benefit as well as a delight, a
! bit of the open in crowded days and
! places. q moments repose in the midst
of the struggle, a smile from human nat
ure at it's truest and simplest best
In the Albanian mountains d relig-
/ ious fanatic loves a maid for day,
then deserts her in an agony of selfish
| rernorse, to expiate his sin and save his
soul in a monastery. Only one course
is left open to the girl, daughter Of
the warlike Arnauts, to reha bilitate
herself in the eyes of. her family and
her viIlage-she must kill him herself.
for she has no brothers to avenge her,
and her father is an invalid. So. dis
gused in mans clothes and armed with
her uncle's yataghan, which has washed
MS honor clean in blood many a time.
she follows the man to his retreat on
the heights-"Forbidden Ground" for a
woman-and gains admission as a lay
brother. Here begins the many complf-
| cations of a story whose remoteness of
! scene and characters gives it the merit
OF comparative novelty. One must take
the authors pictures Of the region and
of the ways and views of its wild inhab-
itants on trust, and find his profit in
doing SO 1t is ali primitively violent,
there on the age old selyage OF Chris
tendon, and sufficiently well done to be
worth reading, even though the author
has fallen short OF writing the excep-
tional book that, one feels, could have
been made with such material.
Mr. Bindloss has made the great
Northwest his province, and from it
quarries stories whose numbers do not
affect their quality; he always gives us
the best that is apparently in him. and
Il is always readable, If not of excep-
tionally high quality. He has his favor
ite formula for his plots-the English
immigrant, the Canadian empire builder
and his daughter. hard work at the from
tier, good luck and reverses, adventures
in the wilderness, love and ultimate sue
cess being the chief ingredients; he pre-
sents many types produced by a life that
resembles in so much that Of our own
frontier fifty years ago. but as yet has
not succeeded in placing a single one
that will live beside the gallery of nota-
BILE pioneer portraits in our own fiction.
This is. however. asking more than he
even pretends to give US. Within his
limitations he is always entertaining
and informing.
For a shilling snocker Our Lady of