The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram., 1912-07-26
BY ESTHER GRIFFIN WHITE.


So goes the lachrymose refrain of
the sentimental old song.
And such might be the motto"
adorning the title page of "A Man in
the Open" by Roger Popock just is
sued through the Bobbs- Merrill Com
pany.
Here is an interesting story.
OF flesh and blood man. Not
clothes-prop or a prig or chump or
cad or the fifty-seven other varie-
ties of masculine incunabula.
But a man as he should be in the
sight of God.
With a few Furnishings up by wo-
man.
1t is to be doubted, however, If
man like Jesse" the hero, really ex-
lists. He's an ideal But the sort you
like to dream about on a summer day
with your hands behind your head.
They talk of the man-gods drawn
by women.
But no woman ever dreamed one
more exalted than the author of "A
Man in the Open" who happens to be
man.
BY the way, the talk about the i'm
possibility OF a woman ever fictional-
ly creating a real man hardly holds
water.
Jane Austen, in instance.
Here was a woman of a genius so
catholic it reached to the farthest
human confine.
And with a humorous appreciation
of the sardonics of human relations.
Her portraits Of men are master
pieces of realism. They squirm un
der her microscopic inspection with
every minute detail outlined as vivid
ly as the whole
Jane Austen knew men as they
really are.
{ She is, therefore, not a favorite save
with the occasional masculine entity.
For men never like a complete ex-
pose of their peculiar psychology
especially if it's by woman.
Men are horrible frauds. And know
II.
But it pleases them to be hypocrit-
ically kowtowed to.
i However, not so is Jesse" the
hero Of the embryonic best seller.
For it will, of course, run the liter
ary marathon.
Otherwise it would not be published
by the BobbsM Merrill Company. zone
! thousand dollars line for that last.)
The story begins in Labrador and
ends in the mountains of the vaguely
defined West.
Jesse" who is the last of an evil
IDENTIFY tubercular family is a gentle
little education and less sophistica-
ton. At least as to the idiosyncra-
cies of femininity.
Hence he gets mixed up in a mat
rmonial combine which all but blights
his life.
Later he meets an opera-singer in
the wilds.
The opera singers husband is Civ
en- to chasing her playfully through
the forest and DER hill and stream with
double-barreled revolver. If there
is such a thing Anyway he makes
it so unpleasant for the lady in the
case that she confesses frankly to a
violent loosening of tension when she
sees him floating dead down stream
after he has been shot up by Jesse.
She smiles rather coolly and twists
up her hair which has tumbled down
in the usual "alluring mass"
Afterwards she and Jesse get mar
ried.
Or think they do.
Unfortunately the first wife, suppos.
edly deader than the traditional cof
fin nail, turns up in the offing where
she carries on a sort of road-house
and country store. and where are held
all sorts of frontier high jinks.
Of course this makes the situation
between Jesse and the opera singer
somewhat anomalous.
But after much melodrama-the
stock company at the Murray has moth
ing in virile dramatics on "A Man in
the Open-the opera singer is restor
ed to the arms of the man-god and the