The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-04-02


 and great battles.
 Whirlgigs. By O. Henry. Doubleday,
 Page x Co.,, New York, $1.20. o. Henry was Americas greatest story teller. His stories were for and of not only four million, but for and of the ninety-odd million of our union. It will be to o. Henry's work that the foreigner and the next generation will turn to learn of the types and the life of our day The selection of the stories of this volume was almost the last work to which the author gave his attention. To read these is to look upon the life of ourselves and ours as lived from the flat town Summit in Alabama, to the foot hills of the Blue Ridge. From the Chap arral wilds of the southwest to the sum mer home of the hundred million man of Long Island From the ball rooms of Newport to the se1f-banished, or crime banished, compatriot dwelling in sleepy Central or South American hooks and corners. From the too gay lights of Broadway to the palm isle of Ratona, situated somewhere in somnolent seas. So over all the reach of our varied land twirls the whirligig of fancy, of keenest observation. Madame Bo-Peep of tho Ranches" goes from Fifth avenue man sion, lost to her by the death of a specu-
 
 lation of her own, to discover an old lover with a new mended lung in south west Texas newly mended love affair follows
 In "Georgia's Rulings the miracle of a ehild's profile appearing upon a survey CTS map foils the schemes of land sharks
 A Dollars Worth'-love and counter felt money on the Rio Grande
 A Newspaper Story'-a tangle of the gayety and the grief, the splendor and the sQualor of New York. "The World and the Door, tells the tale of how quickly love leaves by the door that opens to let in wider opportunity. "A Little Locat Color presents a slang sllnglng-professor of upper New York and polished young author of the BoWery who If he's ever been above Blocker has kept it to himself"
 From the office of "Dodson and Decker of Wall Street. to pretty love making on old Chartres of New Orleans the whirliglg turns. This latter story is one of the wisest and tenderest bits of the group: Blind Mans Holiday" A man freed by the jury is yet soul-sick with self accu- sations and blinded with shifting point of perspective.' It Is easy for even such an one to love in the Rue Chartres-the street of ghosts, where every flagstone has its groove worn by footsteps going royalty ito the wooing and the fighting where every house has a princey heart break easy to love a dream girl about whose real life he of a broken life knows nothing. But the broken link in life's chain needs to be welded to a link sound and good, it was Father Rogan who re- peated such a text to young Lorison: You forget that repentant sin must not compromise but look up, for redemption to the purest and best You went to Norah with a fine spun sophistry that peace could be found in mutual guilt and she, fearful of losing what her heart so craved, thought 1t worth the price to buy it with desperate, pure, beautiful lie"
 There is the limp of the maimed. the soreness of the wounded, the blueness of the bruised in lifes battle, the tank of the bitter in most of the stories, and therein lies much of the people of the pages for whose passes the long road without shining or being sinned against and how similar the pain and the punish ment that falls to the culpab ble and to the l victim of the offence of another These pages are written as with the wisdom of | one who knows life to the core and | deeper-who has bitten Into the flesh of the peach, has cracked the stone and | tasted of the bitter kernel