The Birmingham age-herald., 1913-04-20

the vicssitudes of dangerous, mysterious
Hindustan. Handicapped though he is,
as he grows older. he dares and accom-
plishes. Mounting to the very summit of
the Brahmin Olympus, he enters the for
bidden temple and beholds the living god
dess of perfect beauty. She is Sarasvati,
the human idol of the Hindu faith, the
Daughter of Grahma, to whom the ma
tives lift their voices in supplication and
prayer. To Sarasvati. David does not
appear the impotent weakling. She sees
in him the potent man and answers his
call of love. She leaves the temple,
abandons the faith of her ancestors to go
with him to England. But soon she feels
the veneer of European culture crumb-
ling. Again she becomes the elemental
Oriental. She fees, reaches India, re-en-
ters the temple, becoms the divinity
again and her name the rallying cry of a
new uprising. But as David has grown
into manhood the little English girl who
once Knocked him has grown into fair,
generous, courageous womanhood. She
comes to admire him and love him, and
when he returns to India and sees Saras-
vati taken from him forever it is to this
playmate of his childhood that he goes
for consolation and sympathy.
vtaly mtermingling the lives of the
native Indian and the English. Miss
w we SHOWS Tue tlt1iltHtdl IidN VI raw
on race end character on character. She
portrays the grim strugge-on the one
hand for survival. on the other for SUI
premacy--that has been going ON for
decades in this land of unfathomable
enigma between the world-oid mystical
east and the new progressive west. She
pictures the trials, the hardships, the
social life of the English i'll this land
whose people. subdued but not con-
auered, are held by force of superior
power and not by bonds Of sympathy
She gives an insight into the lives of the
natives that is not obtained by the tour
ist, the soldier or the alien dweller. Miss
Nylie knows her India through and
through, knows its bazars and native vii
lagos, its Wonderful temples and splendid
barbaric rites just as she knows her
England, its insularity and prejudices, its
traditions its patriotism and its personal
honor.
india, with its wierd native practices
and superstitious unbeief, half-hdden in
the murlSy veil of fraud and mysticism
fanatical. bloodthirsty, tenlperamental;
England. with its stern possibilities, bru-
tai certainties, cold reserve, skeptical
hypocrisy and daring assertiveness, tow
ering tiger-like and threatcning-these
she portrays in bold antthesis In her
book Pervaded by a vital, urgent sus-
pense the story holds the reader to 1t
by veritable hypnotic power and en-
velops him in poetic haze. It's scenes
are vivid; its characters are living
breathing striving people. and Its de-
nouement is one not easily to be erased
from the memory.
Tho Daughter of Brahma is big book
in the same sense that Kim and The
Broken Road are big books. 1t is
powerful story that portrays successfully
to the western mind the real conditions
in India.
THE DRAGoMAN."
ny George X. Stiles. Harper Brothers.
New York.
1t 10 delightful to pick up book which
has to do with real love-in setting OF
allurement as attractive as the Nile coun-
try where Cleopatra with all her wiles
lived out the greatest love story Of the
ages.
Somehow one always associates that
section of the globe with poetry and love
and charm and grace
In '.The Dragoman," George K. Stiles
has written a real love story
Tho heroine is an American g1ri-wh1ie
the hero is a young Englishman.
The scene is laid in Egypt-not the
Egypt Of hotels and tourists, but the
grim hinterland of the upper Nile, where
strange things happen and few white
men ever venture. The east and its mys-
terry, the inner workings of International
diplomacy, the mighty power of Moham-
mechanism, are all elements which make
the story one of extraordinary and fas-
cinating interest.
SCIENTIFIC AUCTION
BY f. v. Shepard. Harper Brothers, New
York.
No game OF cards has been more popu-
lar than Auction Bridge and a treatise
on tile subject Is always gladly perused
by the card lover.
Especially Is this true when it Is writ