New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1910-08-06

tiful. but she happens also 70 he an I'M
fl.tlcated bore The fair Miss Buchanan
IS likewise supposed TO be clever, but
she gives 70 tangible evidences of being
ANYTHING save an artificial and entirely
ENJOYABLE mink. Gerald Is the merast
lay figure Everybody talks and talks
necessarily, about themselves or one
another, until the essential impression
received by the reader is of morbid in
trospcctfon run to seed. There are a
few mild flashes of insight into human
nature in the book. one comes upon
them with sigh of relief. And there
are several moments in which Franklin,
in the character of a Bayard from Bos-
ton. quietly triurnphing over his re-
sembIance to a cheap cigar and the au-
thor's determined patronage, eXcltes 4
certain compassionate sympathy. But
what in the world has become of Mrs.
De Selincourt's talent the talent that
gave us in II Fountain Sealed one of
the best novels of the last few years,
we cannot even begin to guess.
Alice and Claude Askew's first South
u
turned into a successful English melo-
drama, and st is likely that they mad d
possible tramatization in MIND when
they wrote The Rod of Justice. The
veldt is again the scene, and once more
Boer and Briton are mingled and OPP
posed in the plot y young EnsIsh
woman, fleeing from her love for mar
,ied rnan--oh. these married men of cur
rent fiction, and oh. those married
women too.-SeeISs forgetfulnesS in
South Africa. She finds hospitality Oh d
Boe- farm, and marries its owner. hop
ing thus to put behind her forever her
,,nhappy love. But on the day of the
Wedding the Englishlnan arrives: his
wife has died-he is freet 1t is she nov
who is bound. This is the situation from
which the meIodrama OF the story
snrings a tragical complication being
furnished by the jealousy of Boer girl.
Il is all very primitive and violent. TIE
authors, knowing their business, have
provided happy ending.
The heroine is a Tennessee mountain
sjrI-that "goes without saying in a
novel by Mrs. Grace MACEDONIAN Cooke
This time however. the scene is laid III
Southern manufacturing town as we'll
as in the mountains. There Is also a
rich. Young, handsome mill owner which
we s,,ppose is to be expected in the case
of a story which appears to have been
written with the chief purpose of enter
tanning the women readers of a periodl-
cal of very large circulation. There is
a great deal OF plot, ranging all the way
from a silver mine and mechanical IN
ventjon 10 a feud, and there are incl
dental pictures, not without their UNI
mistaxahle aim, of conditions in the
Southern cotton spinning mills and or
the crushing labor OF the women VINO
work in them. Incidentally, also, the
author satirizes the futility, self-coh-
seriousness and condescension of Ger
tain kind of "uplift'' work among the
poor.
NJ. Edmond Jaloux is literary
detutant, and. as his work proves, a
very Young one at that. There is not 3
grain of originality in these tales and
sketches; from first to last all are echoes
Of others the earlier NJ. Bourget-the
psychologist who preceded the moral
ist'' of day-predominating. NJ. ia
lcuxs style lacks distinction, his book
is notable for nothing but sophomore
pose Of worldly wisdom. Of disillusionized
familiarity with all the wickednes5 Of
this world. or at least Of Paris, which
generally suftices, certainly so far as
French fiction is concerned. One IS di-
vitied between Irritation and an impulse
TO laugh. and in the end the hulnor OF
Il nreTaiiS