The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-23

Master of the N1neyaru, DJ mJiue
 Reed. e. P. Putnam's Sons.)
 In The Aristocrats. Mrs. Gertrude Atherton paid American literature that compliment which has ever remained memorable. The book was written and published at a period when, as now, the influence of the very young thing and Pearl Grits was controlling. The speech, the compliment was put in the mouth of certain popular and successful author, one of the intellectual aristoerats at whom the whole satire was aimed:
 You think I'm an ass" he said, and am. I have to be. l nearly starved try ing to be a man, so became an emascu- lated backboneless poseur to please the. passionless women and timid publishers of the United States. To please the sort of American woman who makes the sue cess of a novelist-the faddist and the gusher-you must tickle her with the idea that she Is a superior being, because she has no passion, and that you are creat- ing a. literature which only she can ap- preciate-she with refinement and a bleached and laundried set of tastes which have made her a tyrannical mid dle-class enthusiast for all that is nn- real and petty in art And very much more not applicable here. by any means.
 Nor does any-certainly not the first portion-of the compliment apply in any way to Miss Myrtle Reed. She is any thing but foolish, and when you come to think of it, she's a wonder, really. It's been a mystery to the writer of this for years as to wherein lies the hold Miss Reed has on her reading public. For she has, they tell us, reading public Of her own; still all authors have that. By investigation this reviewer knows that there is always a large circle of readers waiting for each of Miss Reeds new
 books as It appears. And there is never in any of those volumes life, the human ities as Miss Reed herself must see it, good gracious, yes. In endeavoring to
 work out this problem of the Reed suc- cess, this reviewer won a small prize once with a paper in which he hunted for that mystery, taking the position that 1t must be, as he now is firmly con- vinced, that the success comes from the very fact that the people who buy and read Mrs. Myrtle Reed McCulloughs books don't wish real life therein; they've got enough of their own to struggle with daily They wish a change. Miss Reed understands her clientele all right enough-and why shouldn't she? A pho- tograph from that author to this scribe shows the former as knowing a thing or two, quite lot. Sufficient unto the day to have been, as she mustve been heart fly amused in New Orleans recently when a hostess had Lavender and Old Lace" this. "At the Sign of the Jack O'-Lantern'' that, 'Old Rose and Silver'' the other in the decoration about the house.
 Now, Miss Reed, the Miss Myrtle Reed of Chattanooga, now Mrs. Myrtle Reed Mccullough of Chicago, the lady of the photograph, anyhow, knew when she wrote Master of the Vineyard" that there wasn't any more real life portrayed therein, humanities, than one could find say in a George Barr McCutcheon eff fusion. Pardon the connection-Mr. Me Cutcheon says, too-'T just try to write cheerfully about men and women as l see them. Most persons like cheerfulness, and so I suppose they like my stories. And, of course, the right man always gets the right girl in my books" Why, of course!
 Master of the Vineyard" is supposed to be a honily against divorce. Rather weak honlly, more of hominy or grfts, as Miss Reed doubtless intended it to be to suit her readers, the million or so.
 For in the novel you'll find a young man, the hero. ambitious, teacher in school near by, a reader of Rosetti, and things of that sort, but alack a day. tied to vineyard and the apron l strings of a very lovely but narrow l minded mother the slave of family tra- l ditions Mother wished the old vine- l yard kept up; the son didn't enthuse
 over but kept at the job. We under stand from Miss Reed that like all good l and bad men, the hero needed and wanted a woman's love He Is tied | to the vineyard, he cannot go forth and find, alas so the only love in sight is a homely little girl living bv who adores our hero of the vine ward. He engages himself to marry her and all would have been well, per haps. notwithstanding Rosetti. had not there arrived to visit this quiet home, to secure advice from mother, beau tiful woman-who also read Rosetu and things-and who was unhappily married.
 Then comes madness, as much mad ness as you could expect in Miss Reeds s books, for the young master or the vineyard falls desperately in love with the unhappily married woman and she with him.
 But Miss Reed has made the beautiful woman unhappily married as good as she is beautiful Clear! HearD ana after desperate passages of Rosetti and Rosetti and still more Rosetti, and things, the lovely wife goes back to the husband who had been mean" to her. but who now wished and secured another trial at happiness.
 We read that passion is denied. We see in this novel where the sanctity and permanence of the generally ac- cepted religious view of marriage is placed above sexual and intellectual attraction, above everything, even a hell on earth lived by the unhappily married beautiful woman. Of course, | a matter of choice, religious training, belief, and maybe-"duty.'
 | The master of the vineyard cries out against fate but like good Myrtle Reed hero goes back to work with his vines and under his own fig tree at the suggestion of the lovely woman. | optb hf,c ckop pd toI aa