Evening star., 1917-09-09

ana II Is TO the character or
~ Cousin Julia that the writer
devotes an uncommon whole
ness of view. an uncommon skill in
preserving and intensifying this unity
of personality. Cousin Julia is indomi
BILE and ambitious. This is her
groundwork. Two daughters, some
money. with more steadily coming in
from a patient and absorbed business
husband. and the best of standing in a
upon which this character develops.
Naturally. marriage suitable to the de-
sires of the mother is the pathway for
this family aggrandizement. A story of
vivid and appropriate incident serves,
in this match-ma king campaign, to
turn an almost unbroken attention to
the single minded, answering deter
m!nation of the principal character.
Many will read this as a frst-rate ex-
ample of modern social realism. Some.
however. will give il its highest trib-
ute IS an exceptional study of highly
focused personality.
THE WAGES OF VIRTUE. BY Capt.
percival {. Wren |. A. R. author of
Dew and Mildew. etc. New York:
Frederick a. Stokes Company.
A prologue here sets the cause of the
lifelong exile of Sir Montague Merline,
both from his home in England and
from his military command in India.
This done, the writer gives himself
over to mastery incarnation of the
French Foreign Legion, in which Mer-
line has taken refuge and lost himself
TO all old associations. Merline and a
young Englishman. who comes into the
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tif1cation with it, serve the story for its
continuity and plot. The brilliant
changeful. bewildering filling-in, how
ever IS made by the many-sourced le-
gion itself, in its activities its hrutali-
ties. its unconauerable courage, its en-
durance and its Kaleidoscope play of
movement and color. Only a military
man could have seen this unique or
ganization in its totality. Only a pic
turesque and forceful writer could have
seized it and put it into drama so tense
and suspended as this one is re-
markable achievement that, just now,
takes on additional point
A son OF THE MIDDLE BORDER. By
Hamlin Garland. Illustrations by
Alice Barber Stephens. New York:
The Macmillan Company.
For the beginnings of this local chron-
icle Mr.. Garland goes back to the time
when he. then only four years old
saw strange soldier man walking up
the path leading to his mothers house.
That man was his father come home
tral picture innumerable others group,
each forming a part of the life of the
Garland family, settled in corner of
western Wisconsin. This family story
scope and in the character of its de
tails until it sums to a full generation
of circumStantial record of local events
and meanings. In effect it is a piece of
homely realism built around the life of
the American pioneer. AS such it is a
pointedly personal way it is the story
of individual struggle against rough
region that has not yet been taught to
a accommodate itself to the convenience
of its tenants Through the medium of
A true family story, the book serves to
preserve, in intimate appeal, the pictur-
esque conditions that preceded the pc
riod of railway expansion and indus
trial growth following upon the civil
war.
FAIRHOPE. The Annals of a Country
Church. By Edgar Dewitt Jones.
Frontispiece by Herbert Deland Will
liams. New York: The Macmillan
Company.
These sketches Of the men and women
of "Fairhope,' to whom the church
stood as the community center of every
sort of interest. belong to the old
fashioned photograph album of red
plush, wherein families and friends were
gathered to furnish standard entertain
ment upon all occasions. There is. how
ever, a striking difference between these
sketches and the photograph Of twenty
Ave years ago. This camera man has
possessed himself of the art of catching
his subjects alive and whole, rather
than. as in the old days. Of hattening
them completely against a background.
Very real and human are these folks of
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