The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-02-27

faith of youth in all the kindly virtues.
 It was his nature to see beauty and
 forget ugliness. His very first paragraph
 glances at Broadway on rain drenched
 night and sees it's asphalt 'splashed with
 liquid jewels afloat in molten gold
 Mir. Smith, like his Irish hero. has discovered that the great middle class is
 the backbone of New York, and that the i self-restraint, sanity, and cleanliness of
 this class marks the normal in the tide
 gauge of the city's activities, the hys-
 teria of the rich and the despair of the
 poor being the two extremes He found his large hearted, Dickensy type of this class ill The Avenue, as it's denizens
 used to call Fourth avenue between Mad f lson Square Garden and the tunnel, in the days when that section was a little city in itself. Otto Kings second hand furniture shop was here, where Felix 0 ODay, penniless and staggering under
 mysterious sorrow, found employment; and across the street was Kitty Cleary,
 the expressman's wife, whose kind Irish
 heart helped to bring light out of dark ness for Felix The corner grocer the
 florist, the baker and the rest prove to be good neighbors, especially on that
 memorable evening, when Felix forgets his own sorrow to bring Joy to little
 l-asle Kling by celebrating her eleventh birthday with a wonderful party. Now even the houses they lived in are gone. The author himself says of this great change:
 Hardly a trace is now left of one of them, so sudden and overwhelming mas been the march of modern prog
 ress. Even the little Peter Cooper house, picked up bodily by that worthy philanthropist and set down here nearly 1VO years ago, is gone, and so are the row of musty, -bricked houses at
 the lower end of the Little City in It. self And with the disappearance of these old landmarks-and if all took | place within less than 10 years-there disappeared also the old family life of The Avenue in which each home shared in the good fellowship of the whole all Of them contributing to that one sane and sustaining stratum, if we did but know 1t, of our civic structure-facts that out few New Workers either recognize or value" One of the most lovable characters in | this wholesome book is Kitty Cleary and one of the cleyerest of her observations IS what she says about divorces and women who 80 wrong. After paying nei respects to the men, she says: fauits on both sides maybe. If it's the woman's fault it always begins when she lets the man do all the work. Look up and down The Avenue here! Every Wlie IS helpin her husband in the busi- ness, and every wife knows as much about 1t as the man does. That ain't the way up around Central park Half of
 em aint out of bed till purity nigh lunch tune. I've heard 'em all talk; and worse 1 yet. they glory in it. What can we ex- peet when there aint five of 'enl to al block who knows whether her husband I has made million in the past year or whether he's flat broke, except what he tells her? No wonder, wen trouble comes, I they shift husbands as they do their pet | tiOcAfS trV ;v1 rs&1, l ore!,,
 f"TEE HIGH PRIESTESSs' By Robert Grant. Charles Scribner' S Sons, publishers. New York.
 l Robert Grants novel, "The High Pries- 1 tess is a story that will attract a lot ! of attention and cause a great deal of | discussion.
 ! To be sure the plot is as old as the | h1lfs-the eternaf triangle of the man and 1 the woman who marry with lofty ideals
 ahead of then drift apart-tlie other
 won1ans-4an md the reconcilia ton q fer heart | lches and shattered ideals; l The three characters in "The High 1 oriestess,'' Oliver Randall, Mary Arnold, and Sybil Fielding are up-to-date, twen- | tieth century people,
 l Oliver and Mary begin their married | life under the most auspicuous circum-
 stances, mutual equality and mutual | LSi DSelA eiiScs pSiIlS tIelr 1nOtLO. l Tn the course of winning a national reputation she made me comfortable by proxy and took my political ambitions | too lightly. But after all she was really on the defensive. a3 At heart | l wanted her to be the old-fashioned idoliz- ! ing wife whose opinions were sound be- l cause they reiterated mine, and whose | talents were playthings. thought of Mary as an amateur" This he ad- | mits to himself and to Sybil, and the admission implies quite amazing stupid \ ity. For Mary was successful as land scape gardener, an architect and sculp- l tor earned about ten thousand year. and was a celebrity. But if Oliver was dense, so was she-utterly blind to his political interests and to the ability which l finally made him governor of the state Indeed, it seems to the reader as though a certain mutual selfishness and stupidity had more to do with the trouble than anything else-except the fact that the author has developed his characters from his theme, and not his theme from his characters.
 The scene is laid in "Benham." which is favorite spot with MT. Grant, some of his other stories being woven about this place. The High Priestess" is easily one of Mir. Grants very best contributions to literature. It is sure to have host of readers and many conflicting interpretations will un- doubtedly be put upon it.
 SPEAKING OF OPERATIONS" By Irwin S. Cobb. Illustrated by Tony Sarc. George H. Doran Co.,, publishers, New York.
 Spealking of Operations" is the fun
 niest book yet written by Irwin $. Cobb.
 This is the funniest book ever writ
 ten about operations.
 This Is the funniest book We know of
 A portion of Speaking of Operations" appeared in the Saturday Evening Post
 and aroused wide comment, and Mr. Cobb has enlarged and changed it for book publication. Speaking of Opera tions'' tells humorously MT. Cobbs own experiences in a recent operation, from his first interview with the gentleman who made the diagnosis through hedge of whiskers to his final recupera- tion, and his protest, when he was first permitted to smoke, and an expensive weed failed to give him the accustomed
 taste, that he hadn't asked for ''cook- ing cigar"
 OTHER BOOKS RECEIvED-RE-
 VIEWS LATER
 ''HANDLE WITH CARE" By Mar garet Turnbull. Harper Brothers, pub- fishers, New York.
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