The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-12-01

By Juliet Wilbor Tompkins. The Bobbs-
 Merrill company, publishers, Indian apolis.
 "A Girl Named Mary" By Juliet Will bor Tompkins is deliciously original, wholesome and readable story, all of this authors stories are; there's genuine human interest, sympathy and wit and humor contained in the pages of "A Girl Named Mary" and any Mary, old or young, will enjoy perusing it's pages.
 Juliet Wilbor Tompkins starts with the original idea of a collection of gaxls named Mary" who are closely studied for an appealing reason. Years before the story opens a baby was stolen from her mother by the cold hearted father, who thought thus to coerce his wife into giving up her plan for a separation. He meant to keep the child only few days, till the mother was effectually frightened, but he was suddenly killed in train wreck, leaving no clue to the babys where abouts.
 The mother devotes her time and her fortune to tracing clues that might lead to the recovery of her child. She will not listen when friends tell her that there is no hope of finding her little daughter. She sees new flash of hope every time she hears of girl named Mary, only to be bitterly disap- pointed again and again. But she be- friends all the girls she knows that bear her child's name, and mothers many instead of one, though all the while hungering for her own. The plot is fairly well worked out with various plausible complications, cleverly handled clues and solution that seems natural. In a conventional story using this theme the troubles A,r11 ,I1 Ike ,IA xxrhn 1n he daughter Is found-as, of course, she must be! But here the complications really begin with that event
 The characters are well drawn, on the whole natural, and human and likable. Mary, the Mary, is a clever, capable, original young girl, who has been used to making her living and being independent, and to whom the idea of the cottonwood life that the daughters of the rich lead does not in the least appeal. Her vivacity and so phosticated naivette, her sponstaneous conversation, her Illuminating com ments on persons she knows furnish considerable entertafnment for the book. Her dialogue is very slangy, but she is clean at heart.
 Mary is taken to the play, but in- sists that the drama isn't true to life
 There's that typewriter girl--she couldn't have held her job week in a real office"
 Why not?"
 "Oh, she never could have worked up any speed using her hands in that fancy way. And no girl with sense enough to buy ticket on the subway is going to be taken Tn by big stiff like that broker. There was one in our office and we liked him about the way we liked poison"
 MISS MINK'S SOLDIER AND OTHER
 STORIES"
 By Alice Hogan Rice. The Century Co, publishers, New York city. Miss Mink s>6oldier and Other Stories" Is collection of perfectly charming short stories by Alice Hogan Rice. combining all those qualities of authorship and of human relationship which have endeared the creator of Mrs. Wiggs'' to so many million readers in all parts of the world. The short story is mode of literary expression which especially appeals to the American reader, and it is mode especially suited to Mrs Rice. Even Mrs. Wiggs'' was long short story A book of short stories really offers a gifted author much more varied op- portunities of gratifying and satisfying her readers than does novel, To a degree not possible in novel the author may pass from the comic to the tragic.