The Republican journal., 1912-10-24

err in the current of swiftly moving
story. In manner the tale is as leisurely
as ''Eben Holden;" it has quiet charm
and electrical effect.
The Hon. Socrates Potter tells the
story, and it deals as before with the
follies of Pointview Young Harry Van
Alstyne never paid for anything in cash
he chargedit. He would not pay for any
thing in any way except in time. His
father was rich, and Harry didn't have
to worry. He was sound at heart, but
he was just a little too inclined to do
things and then ''charge it. The habit
was general. Everybody in Pointview
wanted things that were not hard to get
with money and credit. They got them
and enlarged it," They charged it
against their self-respect and common
sense, against the normal balance OF
happiness that belongs to everyone.
There were some financial failures. Soc
rates discovered all this through his init
mate friendship with Harry, which be-
gan with the episode of the Bishops
head.
Among the things that Pointview
wanted were ancestors, and among Har-
rvs putative ancestors was the Bishop
of St. Clare, who died in 1712. While
in England, Harry bribed the verger of
St. Mary's to leave him alone in the
crypt, and he purloined the Bishops
skull. Afterward, panic stricken, he
tried to get rid of the evidence of his
crime The manner in which the Bishop
pursued him and rebuked him with kind
ly irony makes most entertaining story
in itself.
One of the most hopeful things about
Harry was his love for Marie Benson,
Socrates Potter's ward. Socrates ap-
proved of this, but he wanted to put
handspring into the young man. An ac-
quaintance of Harry's had ruined him
self financially by following the principle
of "charge it, little too far. Socrates
convinced Harry that he was responsible
and induced him to pay the cost. Then
he sent him to ranch in the West to
economic and acquire handspring.
Socrates and his wife Betsey-former-
ly Betsey Smead-then attacked the
manifestations of the new New England
in Pointview. They found the problem
to be largely one of demand and supply.
There was great demand for splendor,
but after the triumphantly splendid SER
wants ball which Socrates engineered
the supply proved more than adequate.
| The same principle was etticacious in the
matter of ancestors and armorial crests.
Socrates sent out Marie with mission
to restrain the over-suppy of talk and
as she was one of those chiefly response
BILE, she got prompt and instructive re-
actions. The smashing of the dragand-
tandem monopoly the adventures with
new thought and psychological hair, the
skirmishes with swamp fiction" and the
flank movement upon the churches which
fed their congregations with "corned beef
and kippered thoughts '-are incidents
nightly amusing and full of sound COM
mon sense.
At last Harry came back and assaulted
the old New England. Marie's grand
father, old Deacon Benson, had taken
her to live with him upon an island far
from the madding crowd. He had no
use whatever for Harry; but when the
young man arrived one day in an aero
plane, he capitulated. The new main
spring worked perfectly.
From beginning to end the story is
thought-compelling, laugh-provoking and
heart-warming.