The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1919-11-02

OOA4ChA4hCC cONO1o4 VA ehCAA NoNh AA-S@S
laughable than the last. The talk is bright
and even the necessary dulness of scene
shifting and backgrounds happily brief
But it is in the climax that the author ap-
proacbes originality. Lady Maud is de-
ivered from the snare of an earlier entan-
clement, by finding that the lover unseen
for whole year has grown literally but
ter Fat and that he has been triAe tickle.
Afterward George has his innings and his
winnings. Perhaps this should be left to
the readers discovery, but advance knowl-
edge cannot mar a story whose charm lies
as much in the telling as the tale itself.
Modern India through French eyes, even
when refracted by translation, should af-
ford high colored romance. And so 1t
does, partially, in Pdrvdsi, a story by Rob
ert Chauvelot, translated by Helen Daven-
port Gibson. A love story whose back
ground is almost tiresomely Oriental, its
atmosphere is wholly French, r
Parvati, official but unlovbd wife to the
Maharajah of Jeypore, unhesitatingly
falls for Gilbert Desroches, the handsome
French artist to whom she sits for her por-'
trait. Yet the. situation can hardly be
ranked among common triangies, since the
Maharajah has for consolation ready to
his hand a whole zenanaful of parti-
colored beauties
Local color is almost recklessly laid on.
Its source does not in the least matter;
the picturings are picturesque. The bath
ing pool blotched and splotched with the
yellow, the black and the white is rendered
in all the starkness Of nature with the
royal lord and master looking on. Durbar
splendors abound Observation-Disclosures are
tiger hunts and stranglings enough to
satisfy the most bloody minded. By the
help of the stranglings Parvati gets away
from her palace prison and joins Gilbert.
After perilous idyllic interval, when they
are about to sail to safety, she is appar-
emily crushed under the wheels of Jugger
naut's car. Was she crushed? Go ask the
book
Fiction has fashions not less than frocks
and frills-when any special model has
caught on inevitably it is repeated all
down the line. if literature had a goat
quarter you could easily people it with
near Mrs. Wiggses or fill an astral institu-
ton with understudies to Mary Carey, to
say nothing of her cousin in ordinary
Daddy Longlegs. And there are the i'm
memorial persistent types-for example,
the impossibly humble, impossibly noble
yokel in love with high born damsel,
winning at last by good hap to her favor,
to the confusion of pride and blood. John
Ridd, vassal extraordinary TO his Lorna,
was far from being the first of him, as
Christopher Laird is likely to be far from
being the last.
Chris, think, grew upon his creator in
spite of herself. At first, as slow witted
drunkard's child, be appears to have been
cast for teaching Great Biologic Lesson
on the perils of alcohol The Laird cabin
stands somewhere between the sky and the
zone of moonshine. Moonshine gets Pap
Laird after getting most OF his substance;
snuff and neurology" get Ma Laird-So
heredity does not promise much in Chris
and his two sisters.
Heredity, avaunt says your determined
tale teIlerl So Ossie, the eldest girl, takes
up the white woman's burden of hard
work, and carries it grandly, shielding and
sparing the beautiful Leezer, so she may
be soft, fair and smooth handed, fit for
any fate. The fate duly arrives, in the
guise of lost huntsman, who sees, is in
stantly conquered and very shortly carries
off Leezer, happy bride, to. his home
town beyond the mountains.
Ossie, left behind for while, works
harder than ever, meanwhile striving to
educate herself and Chris, without mean
while letting the world outside know their
ignorance She succeeds partly in her
own ease Chris is hopeless proposition
for ever so long, but after being trans
planted to town and there falling under