Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1913-02-01

verton. Chicago: r. q. Browne d
Co.
4 y uncommonly fine story. Rather
"a new in conception--or. if not just
~ this. it is at the least thing
of fresh personality. something
to accept as the consistent UNI
foIdiuc, of an abs orbnS and plauSiole
matter at the hands of half q dozen IN
tcrcsting and bclicvable human beings
1t is the story of stolen play OF us
tremendous success: of the agencies pE
which the THETA brilliant and highly
thoucht-of Journalists restored not only
to his own decenter self. but also 10 the
w;Iolc-hearted friendship of the man
from whom he filched the play under the
Spe,ious euise of an old and insignificant
compact. Clearly, there is more than one
kind Of excellence in this development
The most obvious of these is the staging
OF this stolen play. wherein the author
does notable work in producing an atmoS-
phere of the stage end of the theater,
by way of an inseeing and ynpathetic
grasp of the feelings and attitudes of the
actors. the manager and the piay-maker
toward the play itself. Beneath this,
however, there Is admirable study or
En0th Wentworth. of the complex of feel
IngS and desires under which ne dOSgediy
persisted in the sacrifice of himself and
MS friend i'll KIND of Irresistible i'm
puIsion. At the last, and in most natU-
ral way, the author develops the psychic
logical baSis-a GuaSi-Scientitc theory-Of
the lapse OF Enoch Wentworth. 1ndis-
putably, sustained, we'll rounded story
of picturesque and dramatic substance.
The HAPPY WARRIOR. By A. S NJ
Hutchinson. author of "Once Aboard
the LugSer - Boston: Little,
Grown ~ Co.
\ remarkable novel, whose hero is
after the pattern of Wordsworths
Happy Warrior: generous. c.ean
playing. clean-fighting young English
man. This is big story. an impressive
piece of work, with IL fine distinction of
personal manner everything its other
nigh literary values. Out of a splendid
crop or English novels, one is slowly
beginning 10 sit up to the fact that the
Eng 1snman-not so markedly the Eng
liShWoman-iS, for real power and finish
i'll writing, overlapping all other writer's
OF fiction In this connection. it is not
eXtraVagant to say that the author of
The Happy Warrior promises to take
d distinguished place in this high COM
pdny.
THE COST OF 1T. BY Elenor Nor
daunI. author of The Garden of
Contentment," etc. New YORK: Sturgis
Walton Company.
Somewhere in the far east there is an
isiand-or, for the purposes of this
strange tale, there is supposed to he
this iSland-possesSed by the English
and peopled by an astonishing medley
of races and nationalities. and by the
miserable half-cdSte blends of these. 1t
is with this last. with this mongrel
type and its trail of tragic implications
that the main thread of this remarkable
story has to do. The poignant situation
expanded here with such mastery of
detail. with such skill of projection, is
that of youth, who, repudiating Eng
land. where he was reared, and the
titled father whom he was trained to
succeed. takes up life in this remote
corner of the seas in behalf of his half
breed mother, the lawful wife of Sir
James youth, and these twenty Gears
abandoned and forgotten. The queer
tale rises to is highest level with the
authors brilliant embodying of this
weirdly exotic spot where English,
French and natives, with the unhappy
Eurasian by-products of all these human
clements, weave into an astonishing and
copvincfng ensemble of daily life. New
ing through the marriage of its hero
with a girl of pure English strain, the
story comes to a close with the two IN
fear and trembling, facing parentheod
The whole is a powerful-and right
characterization of the train of con-
sequences set i'll motion by single un-
considered act.
THE COMING OF THE LAW. By
Charles Alden Settler, author of
The Range-Riders." etc. New York:
outing Publishing Company.
One would say. offhand. that there is
positively not d single new and fresh
thing to be said. by way of novel. about
the wild west as such. The west is
now so thoroughly "domesticated' out of
It's overworked 'wlldness tnat the regu-
Iation drama of cattle ranch and cowboy
begins to take on the remotenesS of the
adventures OF Ulysses and Jason, and
other classic freebooters. This particular
novel, of the west comes as substantial
evidence that what story IS ABOUT does
not, after all. matter much. but that. IN
stead. the storyteller himself is the thing
of supreme Importance For instance, the
somewhat weathered theme of this tale
$ the displacement of lawlesSnesS by law
on the cattle ranches of New Mexico. y
resolute and highly trained young tender
foot, with those OF this laWleSS commu-
nifty whom he is able to draw to himself
IS the agent OF this new order. There is
absolutely not new element i'll the Sltud-
ton nor in its Development NeVerthe-
less. il is one of the most absorbing tales
imagina BILE of liza I'd life in rough regions
In the first place. there is not a blob Of
Eat in the story anywhere; no padding;
no hanging around To make fiorid de-
Scriptions of the distant mountains, or the
sky, or the plains, or any other OF the
scenic stock in trade OF the slack-twisted
writer. II is every thread lean and sim
envy. leaping i'll swift movement from
page 10 page in episode and incident. each
of which-and all-is crowded with the
vital cross-cuts of primitive men in pur-
suit Of their desires. Any eXuberancc
here comes out of the subject itself, and
not from Il matchmaking passion on the
part of the author. On the contrary. one
FEELS that he refuses much that seeks adj
mission rightfully. in order that he may
hold this story clean and lean and vital.
PARTNERS FOR FAIR. BY Alice Cal
houn Haines, author of Cock "a
Doodle HILL" etc. New York: Henry
Holt & Co
Just plain boy and dog. all by them