The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-03-19
A GREAT BOOK

making, each reader can follow for him. self
 We return to our beginning, wherein we ventured the surmise that the book was a happy accident and to support this surmise we have Mr. Farnops own hero asserting, Great books never are written.
 And the Tinker: 'Young fellow, what do you mean by that?"
 Hero: "I mean that truly great books only happen, and very rarely.''
 Blessed be our day and time, into which this great book happened to fall.
 "Tlie Dweller on The Threshold" By
 Robert Kitchens. Century Co.,, New
 York $1.10).
 A book of the marvellous Itself a mar vel. It's keen insight, it's clear facility of expression cuts ncisively into the mind of the reader. It's impression remains like gaping gash slashed through sen tiency. Tire sensation left of the reading is like that experienced on leaving the dissecting table.
 Here it is the soul that is dlssected the innermost Individuality that one veils from one S self, that is investigated and scrutinzed.
 The story of the book may be told ill a dozen words: The lately dominating popular Rector Marcus Harding of a fashionable London church loses by slow degree his hold upon himself, his wife, his, congregation, his career
 Tn corresponding degree the senior cu- rate, Henry Chichester, heretofore sim pie, loveable, saintly fellow. gains n'con- fidenees of himself, in eloquence, in force, in effect predominates that world that his rector late commanded as one ''in- tended by nature to dominate"
 Given this plain outline MT. Hichens raises in the mind of his reader as many unanswered questions as are to be found on an examination paper fresh from the educational board.
 Is this marked change of powers, nay, even of personality, due to mental tele- pathy set in force by certain "sittings" in which secretly the rector and his cu- rate strive (with, however, at first far differing motves) to cross that forbidden threshold '-to open that door which shuts off from the region that the dead have entered?
 Are readers to believe that MT. Hich- ems has taken us into new realms of knowledge. into farthest fields of re- search: or are we to find in Professor Stepton's suggestions a perfectly natural, though most unpleasant, solution of the mystery?
 Stepston fwhom may be called consult ing psychic physician Do you think Harding whited sepulcher?' Mailing .(who may be called psychic physician in charge of the case) "Possi- bly,
 stepton: And do you think his saint ly curate has found it out?'' Mailing: Do you think that would SUD- ply a natural explanation of the mys- tery?'
 Stepton: Should you prefer to search for it in that malefic region which is the abiding place of nervous dyspepsia? Acute nervous dyspepsia, complicated by q series of sittings under the rose, might eat away the most brazen self-confi- dence-"
 If we are to hold fast to realism, to grasp materialsm with both hands, then we have in this book the most harrow ing story of the cankering quality of sin, of the insidious corrisiveness of a lie, of the destructive force of confidence be- trayed, of the ruthlessness of revenge pursued. The merciess, ruthless stalking that Chichester keeps upon the soul of Marcus Harding, the cruel vigilant, tireless track ing of soul after soul, grows torturins in it's intensity and persistency. There is that in the conception more appalling than anything found in the grim invention of "Dr. Jekyl and MT. Hyde' While in Stevenson's creation we have the frightful spectacle of a soul at war with itself, in MT. Hichens' we have the more abhorrent one of an alien soul playing havoc with the hidden tremors, fears, fateIings and falls of another soul. The intolerable spectacle of one soul invading another and itself becom- ing with each encroachment upon re- serve more malevolent, more repacious
 When in the progress of invention the soul -battering has grown all but unbearable the tension is relieved by