Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1915-10-31
|E:zzK H. feR galnl1 Literature anaArt@ G1nF

| with the government to round up the
BLACK Stone conspirators and defeat
their design to send stolen admiralty
secrets to Germany on the owe of tho
great war. This is one Of the most en-
| 'srtaining of the many works of 10
ton prompted by the European strug-
gle.
| A ROGUE BY CONFUSION, An Affair
Of the Secret Service. By Victor
Bridges. New York. G. P. Putnam
Sons.
Neil Lyndon, wrongly imprisoned in
Dartmoor for murder. effected his es-
cape by chance, taking advantage of
another convict's sudden break for lib
erty. He fell into the hands OF q gang
of German agents, who for their own
purposes. to obtain the secret of q pow
erful explosive Lyndon was on the
point of perfecting when arrested for
crime, undertook to conceal him. One
of them altered his appearance ef-
! fectively by amending the shape OF
his nose with hot paraffin injected I'M
der the skin, and raised his forehead
oy burning off the skin with X-rays-
Thus disguised, Lyndon was enabled
to return to London, where he was REQ
ognized only by the girl for whose
sake he had beaten up the man whose
subsequent murder had been charged
upon tilHl- LylluoH IIlduc thc poWuei,
but before surrendering his secret be-
came acquainted with the designs of
his supposed allies and played into the
hands of the British secret service.
with the result of thwarting the plot
to supply England's enemy with tre-
mendously effective war agency. and
also of clearing himself completely of
the accusation of murder. Mr.. Bridges
| has written a thrilling romance that
holds the interest grippingly.
THE PASSPORT. By Emile voute
New York: Mitchell Kennerley.
A young American stood under the
stars of a black German sky and con-
versed unflinchingly with the emperor,
whose armies lay a few hundred yards
away. To this ruler of men, holding
| in his hands the power to inflict death
upon thousands, Richard Warden laid
down his terms. If Germany did not
stop the war upon conditions accept
able to her enemies he would supply
the latter with an agency which would
quickly overwhelm all German forces.
a gas capable of being carried by ex-
plosive shells which would render
unconscious for four hours all within
its range The kaiser. prevented from
selling Warden as his prisoner by GER
tain elements that Warden had craftiiy
devised for retaliation in case he was
molested permitted him to pass into
France. There the gas was used, with
the effect of ending the war In few
days. Prior to this elimination of his
plans. Warden had had many exciting
experiences, due to his discovery of
widely ramified plot to embroil the
United States and Germany and to
create an army within this country
hostile to the government. Warden's
activities saved the United States from
this peril in addition to bringing the
European slaughter to an end. An in
genious and fascinating tale of inven-
ton, intrigue and romance.
RUSSIAN SILFOUETTES: More Stories
of Russian Life. BY Anton Tchekoff
Translated from the Russian by
Marian Fell. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons. Washington: Wood
ward G. Lothrop.
Human nature does not always make
pleasant reading; fact which ac-
counts for the SILVER which the author
puts into some of these literary snap
shots of Russian life. Others picture
pastoral people, each just bit more
wholes omely fine than his neighbor.
and many vision for the reader the
morning fancies of childhood and the
darkeptng shadows of age. There Is
the youth who taught a girl to love
him without committing himself and
then went out of her life to look back
a the inctdent as "a joke" There 10
the father who, after q night of revel,
acts me norOSe tyfant at the Dreak-
fast table, and then, returning without
a Crouch. wonders why the insulted
family fails to respond gayly to his
change of mood. There is the bad girl
who gives her last jewel to the wife of
q worthless lover. The woman who
grows old, alone, because of a fancied
barrier between herself and the man
she loved. The fiddler-carpenter who
realized while at work on his wifes
coffin that he has never given her a
tender word in the half century they
were together. though-"she had lit
the stove every day, and had cooked
and baked and fetched water and chop
ped wood and when he had come home
drunk from wedding she had hung
his fiddle reverently on nail each
time, and had silently put him to bed
with a timid, anxious look on her face
- These are but here and there plot
glimpses of stories which one feels are
true revelations of Russian life and
character, because each reflects so ac-
curately the human nature of the rest
of the world.
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