New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1912-11-16
FICTION
The Civil War, Opera and
Romance.
vIcKssuRo TO APPoMATTox.

VIcKS5uRG TO APPoMATToX.
| CEASE FIRING. BY Mary Johnston.
| With illustrations by n. c. Wyeth.
l2mo. PIP 457. Boston,: The Houghton
Mifiin Company.
| This voluminous story is the continu-
alton and the conclusion Of the fic-
tional military history Of the Civil
War begun by Miss Johnston in THE
Long Roll" The completed work Is a
monument Of sheer ability, Of dextTous
handling and marshalling of a Devil
dering mass Of material, from strategy
in outline TO minute pictures OF soldiers
| in camp on the march, in skirmish and
battle and in captivity; pictures OF suf-
| fering, privation and hunger and want,
Of high courage and logged persistence
and bitter detection, OF loyalty to and
! faith in a cause, Of waste and desola-
ton in city and home and fields, OF fire
and death, with woman's crushing
share of the burden that she has borne
ever since war began kept well in the
| foreground. IT is a picture of the
virtues that war hammers out OF the
human material, as well as Of all It's
horrors and miseries, but in the end 1t
remains a picture Of details Of episodes
seen too close and massed too closely to
allow of the larger perspective, the
wider retrospect. This, however, may
well be due to the fact that the close OF
the struggle was tagging energies, fail
ing resources, gradual disintegration,
progressive failure. There was no cli-
max; only an end.
Stonewall Jackson was the historical
hero of "The Long Roll" None of his
brothers-in- arms Of the Confederacy,
none. Of her later great commanders,
takes his place in this new volume. No
such portrait as his can be found In
these pages to place beside It, John
ston we see in the beginning; we have
glimpses Of Jefferson Davis, Of Hil,
"Jeb" Stuart, Joe" Wheeler, Hood and
many others, but they are glimpses and
no more, caught through the smoke of
battle. And the picture of Robert Il.
Lee In the field is that drawn for US by
a Confederate soldier long ago. There
is an impression Of Grant that in its
brevity is worth quoting:
A plain. straightforward, not over
! imaginative. retrospective or sopnlsu-
Gated person, he did not so much plan
great campaigns as take, uns%erVngly,
| the next commonsense step. HIS merit
was that, in the all-pervading fog OF war,
II was usually upon firm ground that he
| - l. 10 osn Nnk al
It is not only as history that this
book is the continuation and conclusion
Of 1.-THE Long Roll" AS fiction, too, 1t
requires familiarity with that story,
whose characters reappear In 1t and
run their appointed courses. Cease
Firing" has Its own romance, however,
romance begun during halt In the
march, forced by the compelling waters
| Of the Mississippi broken from their
bonds; Il has its tragic ending under
| the shadow of the black wings Of Death
reaping the battlefield. No more ro-
mantle pages have ever flown from
Miss Johnston's pen than the opening
chapter of this episode OF love and
loyalty and reunion in the last sleep.
There are memorable passages else
where, touched with deep feeling, pas
sages also tense with the fortunes of
battle and its obscure, nameless indi.
yidual tragedies. The work as whole
J is not the epic Of the war for the Con-
federacy of which it's author may well
have dreamt. The field of action, the
struggle. will remain too large for the