The Washington herald., 1913-09-07

Disgusting the more important Of its
| characters" (SicO
Since, with the exception Of the occa-
! sional Martin Conrad interludes, the
story is a woman's narrative of her own
! personal experience, Mr.. Caine set him
self no easy task and one rarely attempt
! ed. And whatever we think of the novel
as a novel, however much We may be
wearied by its moral conflicts and by the
! perturbations of its heroine's soul, we
must acknowledge that it Is actually a
womans story of a womans life, told
| from a wOman's standpoint. Granting
that Mary O'Neill passed through the
mOmentOus experiences set down in these
/ pages. this is certainly the story as she
would have told it. The novelist has
foun, the heart and soul of a woman
and he has laid them bare.
1t required Hall Gaines hand to tell
such story. 70 summary of its plot
! can be made with justice to anybody-to
the novelist, to the prospective reader,
or to ourselve7. 1t is divided into seven
parts-"My Girlhood," MY Marriage" 4"
II Fall in Love-" Il become a Mother" 8"
'I Am Lost" and 81 Am Found"-and
it relates Mary O'NeilTs experiences of
mind and body from infancy, until a few
hours before her death. 1t is the story
OF two men and one woman, of the wom-
al at Ine DeneSI OF an ambitious
father to a man she loathes, and of her
fate when she deserts him for the love
of another man. Its action is on an Irish
island known as ELAN. in Rome, in
London, and lin Martin Conrad's narra-
tive in the regions near the south pole
Its theme is the great trials a woman
must endure when she is alone in the
world, and in many of his episodes. es-
pecially in the reticence with which
Mary O'Neill tells of the birth of her
child, and in the movement and variety
OF her account of her walk with her
baby from Bayswater to IIford, Mr..
Caine shows his old-tfme mastery of the
art of storytelling. For pages at a time.
however, Mr.. Caine compels us to read
the commonplace arguments for and
against the Catholic doctrines of mar
rlage and divorce. He describes them
well; he states each side with equal We
hemence and fairness, but thew are
wearisome because they are well known
and well worn and because they easily
might have come from the pages of a
religious tract on the one hand or of a
secular pamphlet on the other In former
Gays We should be asked by the novelist
TO look with horror upon the conduct
OF Mary O'Neill and to consider her suf
ferings and early death as a righteous
Judgment upon her wrongdoing and sin
out Mr.. Game asks our sympathy for
her ana seeks to convince us that she did
what she thought was right
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE ANGLO.
SAXON RACE: By NJ. v B. Knox. Boston-
Sherman, French Co.
The Anglo-SaNon is pre-eminentIy a
practical man, and he has always under
stood that his religion compeIs him TO
use the economic agency as ordained of
God. To more than any other race the
Anglo-Saxon has combined utilitarfsnism
and mysticism. Hence his land hunger.
his trading vessels in every port, his
language the speech of commerce; run
ming parallel with these. is the religious
fact that six of every seven missionaries
who go to foreign lands are Anglo
Saxon.
We should not be surprised then, to
have the author say that, while his pur-
pose is to trace the forces of religious
life that have aided the English speak
ing race to become so mighty and sc
successful, he includes in the religious
forces many means besides the distinctly
church beliefs and practices
The Anglo-Saxon, like all other peoples,
always has been religious, but he has not |
always been a Christian But his pre-
Christian history has been of such small
that two pasas of this