The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-03-10

IAN IDAHO 1D1 l.. By hdlHeilHe ilop- kins Chapman. Illustrated by W. Her | bert Dunton. A. c. McClurg, Chicago.
 "The Fusing Force" IS charmingly told story of some agreeable Alabama people | seeking health and wealth in ldaho-one l Dr. Bondnrant, his sister Charlotte and l wife Marion. On visit to St Louis dur l ing the great fair they met and became interested in westerner named Giistrop. The acquaintance (which began in a | crowded street car) was continued by cor respondence long after the two men had
 gone back respectively to Alabama and Idaho A mining deal financed by Bondu- rant and engineered by Gilstrop struck
 pay dirt" in the Sawtooth mountains. The overworked surgeon dropped his patients and sought the crystalline a1r of Idahos mountains, sending for wife and
 sister to join him and trough it' in Pc liteness Pays" camp, a. raw little outpost
 where nature was mystic and humanity | crude beyond words-where southerners,
 northerners, Irish, Sweedes, keen wesfern- | CTS and stray bishop and Russian eX- | ile were jumbled into queer proximity. l The camp of "Politeness Pays" consist | ed of log bunk for the dozen miners, | tiny commissary, a blacksmith shop Tor | keeping the mems tools and the horses l hoofs in good condition; wiclxiup-local
 name for the combination kitchen and eat
 ing room and the officers tent previously | occupied by Gilstrop, but now made ready
 for the doctors wife and sister.
 The author Gan Alabamian, by the way, | from Selma), shows at every turn won derful love of and appreciation for nature.
 As the two ladies in their buckboards toll | up the steep zigzag road to Galena sum-
 init she points the scene for us in a few | bold words
 | Jagged peaks on either side had long | since crowded out the valley; the road | was now carved out of the mountains | bony shoulder; fir trees, tall majestic, | crowded together in awesome gloom lower down-at this altitude had dwipdled to
 trim pointed cones of spicy greenery." In contrast to this, listen to her descrip- | ton of her native cotton fields. She tells l the little Jensen children:
 1 ''There flowers bloom all winter and l snow seldom falls. But the fields are
 crowded with fleecy white flakes. These
 are not cold, however, but soft and warm, l the cotton of which clothes are made for | half the world! These cotton plants are 1 the prettiest things! Imagine long rows, | whole fields of glossy green plants, about l five feet high, with leaves like a maple
 and covered with big flowers. These flow
 CTS resemble hibiscus. You don't know how hibiscus looks? Well, it's like q
 satin bell with velvet spots. The first day they bloom out the flowers are cream
 colored; the second they are red, and the
 third day they drop off. So one plant will
 show three colors at one time"
 Mrs Chapman shows power in the DOT
 trayal of human nature also, for daintier,
 more magnetic maid than pretty Charlotte
 Bondurant is seldom found in the pages of a book-a bit freakish and hard to please al first, she tells Knox Kellog:
 "Pd be afraid to marry you, even if I loved you.' When he questions:
 "Afraid Why?" she answers.
 "Oh, because our rearing, our environ ment and training have been so different.
 All your life you've looked on and lived
 with crowds of strangers. I've lived in q social southern town where l know every
 body and like everybody. Local attach
 ment has no hold on you; to me it is all most as irresistible as gravity. You (any | city bred man) would probably consider an apartment in some huge cliff building | home but to me, gardens, fruit, flowers, vegetables. chickens, mean more than the | numbers or quality of rooms in house. | I wouldn't be happy to live anywhere but | in the south. I wuz bon ah' bred in de brier patch as Uncle Remus says of Brer Rabbit"
 Yet this same tantallzing Charlotte who laughs at love, finding her lover mena ced by desperate danger, realizes in a light
 ming flash of illumination that she loves nm, and paSSlOned 10 warn and save nm
 at any cost to self-in fact eliminating self absolutely-(the tender heart of her wild with love and horror), she rides all night alone over an unknown trail full of Indians, wolves, bears and many other things a woman fears-intent only on warning and saving him. That she does both the folks who knew her kind during
 the civil war win be quick to admit. Such love as she paints between these results from no arrow prick from the mischievous bow of Cupid-rather is 1t a bolt from the hands of Jove-a lightning bolt fusing two hearts into one forever.
 Mrs. Chapman, by her cleverness in The Fusing Force" has placed herself | in the front rank of writers of today, and with her remarkable power of delineation
 of character. her delightful word painting 1 her keen perceptve qualities are an in-
 domitable force, she has Interested a | large reading public, who awaits another l novel from her gifted pen with uncom- l mon interest