Evening star., 1914-11-14

| Africa. To only mere handful of peo-
pie on the inside, however, is he
prodigal at all, for only these know
maine mali wen went a. away W T to africa. $4,000
from the bank where he was an ap-
prentice clerk went with him. Family
friendships covered the loss. and
blanketed Johns mother and brother
theft This romance has to do with
Tremaine's career in Virginia, after
what must have been prodigious
achievements in the short decade and
proceeds to retrieve the fallen for
tunes of his family with an amplitude
of manner and genius of initiative
| that in his best days Cecil Rhodes
himself might have envied. The dyna-
mic career of the man jars pretty
much the whole. of Virginia out of
! it's easy groove and lands it irr the
very middle of tremendous business
activity and about every other kind
of progressive movement. The story
way of what Big Tremaine accom-
| plishes not only for his family, but
| for his neighborhood and state as we'll
| Its pauses and suspenses come through
| business and politics and love, by the
little group that. out of an unforget-
| table past, look upon his course with
distrust and fear. In the course of
events it is made plain. to be sure,
that it was not John Tremaine who
| stole the $4,000. This fact turns him
! out as a hero of uncommon and ap-
| pealing pattern. Arrived at this dis
| covery, the story glides swiftly to a
happy ending. 1t is spirited romance
of distinct personality and much of in
| teresting incident. Its hero sets out
! to be realistic figure, the type of
leader in modern industrialism. Such
he would have been, too. had the au-
/ fh~. hnny, nrf fr n m
John TremaiDe's skin. Not willing, or
able, to do this, Tremaine gives the
overstocked effect that marks the
purely romantic hero of fiction. But
greatly exacting about his consisten-
cies and harmonies. So. to the world
of novel readers, big Tremaine" will
stand, as it in the main deserves to
stand, as a vivid and colorful story of
modern life. an uncommonly fresh and
| interesting novel.
THE COST OF A PROMISE. BY Mrs.
Baillie Reynolds, author of 1.-The
! Girl From Nowhere etc. New York:
| Geprge H. Doran Company.
| One would think that motive so
out of the ordinary of either probabil
ity or plausibility as the one underly-
ing this romance would keep an author
up and doing, in order to secure for it
| enough of flesh and clothes to carry
it across to the acceptance of readers.
1t is an astonishment that. with so un-
toward theme, one could do as we'll
as Mrs. Reynolds has done. A little
| girl of ten, or thereabouts, makes
wellnigh successful attempt against
the life of her sole benefactor, in the
role of Charlotte Corday, and inspired,
| like that historic person, to lay tyrant
: low. To keep this sanguinary attack
/ secret gives rise to the promise"
whose itemized cost elaborates the
details of this romance. AS one soon
| foresees that it will. the story goes on
| through goodly number of ups and
| downs to the marriage of the young
woman with the man upon whose life she
| had years before made such masterly
attack. Out in life such an epiSode
| would have no story aspect. In the
good old days the girl would have
been spanked and kept away from in
fammatory reading so far beyond her
years. In the new day some rescue"
| or other would have taken her in hand
! and philanthropic ladies would have
swarmed about her in perfect buzz