The San Francisco call., 1910-07-10
"a Life for a Life"
By Robert Herrick. p

By Robert Herrick. Published by Macmillan
Co., New York. Price S1.5o.
The Robert Herrick who wrote "A
Life for a Life" will hardly be be-
lieved to be the same who gave us
Together last year. Here he has de-
liberately abandoned realism and made
an attempt at symbolism, which. while
not quite smooth or convincing, has
many points decidedly worth consid-
ering. The book is in reality a mono
graph on the evils of capitalism. There
is little or no story and the setting of
it is deliberately vague. Hugh Grant.
the hero. does. not impress his person
ality upon the reader at any point;
he is simply a type of clean young
American manhood. And Alexandra
Arnold, the heroine, is scarcely more
human. She. too, is a type of young
American womanhood. and more un-
Jerstandingly drawn than Hugh.
The Anarch, an attic philosopher,
makes friends with Hugh early in the
game, and in a speech of his we find
the title and thence of the story: You
are thinking that there is a
way of pleasant compromise.to own
your own soul and eat your own cake.
But the hour will come when you will
understand the truth of my words
that he who will not eat his brother
must be eaten. The law of this world
is life for a life
The hero is a founding, taken in by
q kind farmer, where he grows up as
one of the children. At the death of
his foster father he goes to the city to
seek his fortune. Much of the de-
scription of the city appears to be New
York, but at last we think of it as
San Francisco. Any very large city
will do-the conditions are the same.
One man in the great city he knows.
He has heard his foster father speak
of having sold him some land years
before. SO he hunts out this man, Alex
ander Arnold. This figure, as a charac-
ter, is quite as vague as the others; he
is power incarnate."
The youth begins at the bottom of
the ladder in Arnold's bank. but rises
soon to a position of trust. Then he
is sent away, perhaps to the north
west, somewhere, to develop a power
plant. There he spends three years
with the common people and learns
through the work he is doing that he
is injuring the present and future of
the little community. At last he goes
to Washington to protest against the
iniquities of the system, but his case is
pigeon holed" and he is laughed at
At this point in the story Hugh, in
company with his insurgent friend, the
Anarch. goes on a sort of eye opening
tour of inspection of mines and fac
tories. The realization that all this is
to give more luxury to Alexandra
Arnold, the woman he loves is dread
full to Hugh, and he is sure she can not
know of the horrors he has seen. He
tells her all he has seen.
ITO Alexandra, who loves me, it is
death She laughs. You do not un-
derstand. You can not see the flesh
and blood that you eat. The
thing is bitter. 1t is a life for a life
Your life against many others,
many. many-far, far down-among
the silent multitude
But l do not know them, she said,
with perplexed eyes. i do not care
for your many, many others. My life
is good to me.
Come with me because of love, the
love now between us and the greater
love to be. Come with me to my fate,
poverty and hunger it may be, and in
our love you will understand ~alll'
That is not the way to speak to
the heart of a woman! Tell
me to come with you to victory, to
achievement, to the fullness of life
and / will follow you to the ends of
your earth. I am my fathers
daughter, and I love the world he has
made into which ! was born. / love
the power and the luxury and the
beauty, no matter whose blood is
spilled in the getting. I find
it all good. Only the weak abuse it. Z"
So Hugh loses his happiness and she,
too. He will not do the evil work Ar
mold wishes and retires from his fine
position. Just why. in making a fresh