The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-04-23
"A CATHEDRAL SINGER. .

"A CATHEDRAL SINGER"
 Bye James Lane Allen, Frontispiece by
 Sigismond de Ivanowsky. The Century
 company, publishers, New York
 In James Lane Aliens latest book, "A Cathedral Singer" the celebrated novel; ist deserts the blue grass country, with which his fame has been so closely as- socated, for his adopted home, New York city. The new story is woven about the rising cathedral of St. John the Di- vine, and some of the scenes are laid in the studios of the National Academy of Design. close by. The story is that of a mothers love for a boy of mar vicious promise, and how it was revealed in hope and in tragedy, to the students ol an art class. The story turns upon one of the commonest and most heart breaking accidents incident to life in a large city, a too frequent kind of acci- dent which is enlisting public spirited paign
 MT. Allen has avowed that his pur- pose in writing "A Cathedral Singer" is to establish the new Cathedral of St. John the Divine more securely in the heart of the nation. Nothing that man has ever been able to build, he says, is loved for so many reasons as a cathedral
  for the arts that enter into its struc- ture, for the action of nature upon it through sunlight and rain and the brief mortality of the blossom on its walls But it is above all the literature which gathers about a cathedral, MT. Allen says, that makes it loved, linking It to innumerable human lives and transfig- uring it to human affection. American literature entering the service of our great cathedral can complete its destiny as an American cathedral, MT. Allen be- lieves, and only when American liter ature has done it's share in making it an inspiring force in American lives, will it have become in the full and final sense an American cathedral-a. cathedral of the soil, as well as of the soul.
 One day the art class had before it a new model, so the story runs. There was that in her bearing and in her face that thrilled them to extraordinary efforts. Each day the light in her eyes, in her changing countenance, told the same dim, wonderful story, whose details the young artists did not know-the same story yes, but a new chapter every time she appeared. And then one day she did not come. The canvases had to be laid aside there could be no substitute for the lost model.
 After awhile she came back. The first story was gone from her face; it was 
 was there, and it too revealed it's fascin ating progress at each sitting.
 So James Lane Allen weaves the mar rative of "A Cathedral Singer" The reader is made to see and feel what was denied the eager students: the reader is told one of the most exquisite and touch- ing stories in recent American literature.
 THE ABYSS
 By Nathan kussy The Macmillan com pany, publishers. New York.
 The Abyss" by Nathan Kussy, is story of wonderful proportions, well writ ten and graphically told.
 It is a story of the underworld of tramps and thieves and beggars and joss house and jail, all of which furnish splen. diG material for a gripping story which the author has caught with tremendous force
 The hero of ''The Abyss" is a little Jewish boy, born of decent parents and brought up in poverty stricken but per- fectly respectable surroundings until the death of his mother-his father had died when he was a aby-left him alone in the world to get along as best he could. Sc he fell into the hands of a hobo" and fake bling beggar, Blinkey Sam, who found him useful and treated him fairly