The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-06-18

THEY OF THE HIGH TRAILS
 Publishers, New York
 The west has lent itself too long and
 too readily to a superficial romanticism at the hands of writers without knowledge or sympathetic understanding of the peO
 pie of the mountain and the plain, who attempt to invest their types with a senblance of Individuality and to spur them into vital melodrama. Always well
 come, therefore, is volume from a
 writer who really knows the west, and
 whose art is not vitiated by literary sub.
 terfuges.
 Hamlin Garland in his new collection
 of short stories, They of the High
 Trails,'' portrays for us. with an origi-
 Eality that is both refreshing and ar resting, the real west and it's people as they are While the stories are wholly independent of one another, the author has been most happy in giving them a collectivity through their titles so that the whole achieves a unity and we'll roundedness that a volume of short stories seldom presents. Like symbolic
 groups of statuary, adorning some vast monument or the facade of a noble build- HE, tHeSe a6IOTleS are representative or the varied types that have developed in
 the west-"The Grub Stalker" "The Cow Boss" "The Remittance Man. "The | Trail Tramp The Prospector," 'The Outlaw" The Leaser,e' The Forest Ranger" etc. But the stories themselves
 are highly individualized and differentia- ted from one another, just as the charac- ters who play the title roles are men of ! distinct individuality in different fields of activity.
 The stock episodes which we too ire quently encounter in books of western romance are wholly ab sent. In other places we have highly original series of adventures, and yet so convincing in their presentiment that one might almost believe they had been taken from life. Doubtless the explanation lies in the fact that MT. Garland has here distilled from a lifetime of western association these pages, so instinct with vitality. In any case, the Widow Delaney, Roy Pierce. Fan Blondell. Tall Ed Kelly and Abe Kitsong-to name at random from amor g the men and women that live in MT. Garland's pages-are real and unforget- ble people into whose joys and sorrows hates and loves, we verge our own for the while that we are under their spell THE IRISH ORATORS"
 By Claude G. Bowers. Illustrated with 1 many portraits The Bobbs-M Merrill Co., l publishers, Indianapolis.
 1 That a book dealing graphically with | the stirring history of Irelands fight for | religious and political freedom, woven
 about the fascinating personalities of the ! Irish heroes, enthusiastically indorsed as
 work or unique value by leading Irish
 scholars, historians and statesmen. and i carrying a foreword from the pen ot l Cardinal Gibbons. should strongly ap 1 peal to the lovers of Ireland seems in- | evitable. Coming just as this juncture with the eyes of the world turned curi,
 ously upon the ilse of romance and trag-
 edy. the publication of "The Irish Ora
 tors" is peculiarly timely
 1 Through the 500 pages the reader is made a witness to the iniustices of the 1 penal laws. the insurrections the tria $ and executions, the pitiful evictions-- i the whole dramatic story of the strup- 1 gle from the time Flood entered the Irish Parliament and began his fight
 for, the control of the Irish purse ] strings. In the section devoted tn FlooG 1 the reader is witness to the ina gura = ton of the plan to corrup the Irish i parliament and to the mighty struggle
 of the original volunteers to preserve | the liberty of the land: in the chapter l on Grattan to the determines battle i for commercial rights and the marvel.
 ous ebullition of patriotic passion sci ! aflame by the genius of the orator l culminating in the Declaration oi 1 Rights in the Curran chapter to the i reign of terror growing out of thu revolution of 1898 in which Fitzgerald l and Tone gave up their lives. in thai l about Plunkett to the bitter struggl' | against the consummation of tine unior | with its nauseating story of the cor ruption, deception and duplicity through which Castlereagh wrough
 the of his native land; in the Emme chapter to the pathetic and inspiring
 instruction of 1903: in the section or
 O'Connell to the masterful. long draw