The sun., 1919-09-07

Some Stories in the
September Magazines
BY DOROTHY SCARBOROUGH.

IL
~ has its delights and surprises, as
well as its monotony, for one can never
tell what moment he may come upon a
story that has both vitality and beauty.
One can never know when he may dis
cover new writer whose career he will
take keen pleasure in following or find
q best yet story by an author in whom he
has long been interested. He can never be
certain when familiar fictionist will dis
play new style in the cut or material OF
his narrative. 1t is interesting, too, to
note how the standard magazines vary
their contents from month to month.
The Century, for instance, this month
has distinctively poetic tone. The We'd
ding Jest, by James Branch Cabell, is as
delicately wrought, as elusively mysterious
as poem, with its symbolic suggestive
ness and its fooled phrasing. Mr.. Cabell
: knows how to put words together with an
effect Of beauty that is uncommon, and
this story of remote time and land has
originality in its ironic rendering of life.
The Kitchen Gods, by Gulielma Fels AL
sop, is lovely Interpretation of the heart
Of a Chinese woman by one who has lived
long in China. Here "small wife" makes
q supreme sacrifcSefo the sake Of her
husbands soul.
The Heads on the Mountains, by Shaw
Desmond, in Scribner's, is one Of the most
impressive stories Of the year. The young
Irish writer here tells an event Of the re-
bellion in Ireland, Of terrible justice
meted out to traitors. Each detail OF de-
seription helps to carry out the effect Of
sinister fatefulness, rs in a story by Poe,
while the climax is relentless in its Lor-
ror. Shaw Desmond knows how to write
Another sort of story in Scribner's is
Stuart Rivers's The Call Of the Gods,
wherein love and the theatrical game in
New York are played up entertainingly.
An actor who has at As patiently accepted
failure and girl who has just come on to
seek success find that life holds surprises
and that chance-or is it something sub
tler?-plays part in shaping new des-
tiny for them.
Harper's has good story by Alice
Brown that reminds one of her earlier and
best work. In Black Pearls she takes
girl, a couple of men in love with her, n
string Of beads and few emotions and
manipulates them in a surprisingly dra-
matte fashion, with clever characteriza-
ton and quaint huInor.
Pearson,s Magazine has q couple of
good stories this month, both, curiously
enough, about physical deformity. Cap
fipity, BYE. Temple Thurston, is a pite-
sous account of a Gagged lark and man
whose life it symbolizes, a poor creature
with a poets soul and a misshapen body,
who has to earn his living by making the
crowd laugh at his aflietion.
Tho best story in the Metropolitan this
month is The Miracle, by Anzia Yezierska,
an account Of an immigrants quest for
love, of her longing for something higher
than the money bought marriage possible
in her poverty stricken home in Russian
Poland. The climax OF the story is not at
the close, but the scene whese the father
and mother consent to sell their most sa-
cred possessions, the Safer Torah and the
Sabbath candlesticks, in order that she
may have money for her passage to
America 1the land of love" The Metro
pottan publishes some good stories, but it
shows tendency to overemphasize the sex
element
M.nsey's has another of E. K. Means's
stories Of the Southern dafky as he ac-
tually is, which persons hailing from the
cotton belt will find particularly diverting
though who would not like to read Of
Vinegar Ats, pastor of the Shooay
Church; of Skeeter Butts, proprietor Of