The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-06-06

none is more readable and enjoyable than 'The Workings"
 To Neil Munro has fallen the honor
 of writing the introduction to The
 Worldings." following the idea of tae
 authors s edition" each Merrick noves having an introduction by some we'll known author, and in his short and in
 tcresting essay Neil Munro has wisely
 drawn attention to MT. Merrick's re-
 markahle gift for vraisemblance in topog-
 raphy-wisely, because this particular
 gift of his is nowhere better illustrated
 than in the novel under discussion. For
 '"The Worldlings' opens in South Africa,
 with few brief paragraphs describing
 the diamond fields near Kimberley; and
 those few brief paragraphs give the read CT better, clearer impression of the country than would pages penned by the hand of a lesser writer. We know eN- aotly what it all looked like to Maurice
 Blake, nearly 10 years old. a gentleman in the true sense of that much-abused word, a man who had never shirked nor stinted endeavor, never neglected an op- portunity, never committed a dishonor- able act, and who now, with his youth almost gone, was a failure. And as we see the diamond fields, so. too. do we see Croft Court. Oakenhurst, Surrey" tne beautiful old English home to which
 Maurice Blake presently came under the name and title of Philip Jardine, only son and heir of Sir Noel Jardine, vNo ! more than twenty years before had quar- ! reled with his father and left his home
 ''The Worldlings'' is the story of an im- personation, and of an impostor and com pared with it ninety-nine out of every | hundred tales of impersonation seem cheap and trite and machine-made. It | is not only that the tale is from be- ginning to en dentirely plausible and entirely convincing, nor even that lhe plot is worke dout, not by external and 1, far less by melodramatic methods, put ] by the natural. logical development or three characters-Lady Helen CleeVe' Rosa Fleming and Maurice Blake him ealf-bllt that it has a fineness as of nure gold. Essentially a love story, tfe love story. moreover of a man who was an impostor and of a woman who was S WIG ldling. it is also tale Of rederSos on in which there is nothing of mawklsh- ness nor of preachiness. Blake, II IS true has long since won the reader sN'h pathv and liking, won them, In tact, rom
 the very beginning. That ne snoulu " su,nb to the one great temptation seems
 almost unavoidable, ana
 when the second confronts him, backee
 hv an array of circumstances whNn
 wake his fight against it all but m
 a,ritabIv A losing one, we are ready 10
 feel as did the woman to who mhe cr'N
 at the last: I struggled' For we too'
 know how desperate that struggle was
 and what were the odds against him.
 It is. of course. a somewhat melo-
 dramatic theme which he has chosen Tor
 this and for this only among all ms
 novels. But real people sometimes ma
 themselves placed in melodramatlc situ-
 ations. and there is no reason why thls
 should not be true of fiction as it is of life. Maurice Blake sins and IS pun
 isbed: but his punishment comes from
 the fact that he is an honorapie maj. who has acted in violation of the laws or
 his own nature, so that he suffers where one who was innately ignoble might well have escaped scot-free. He had ln- deed believed himself to be wrong-dolng no one. for the Sir Noel Jardine of his ina gination was not person who could have been really injured by such an lh- posture. But the Sir Noel of fact was very different person from the Sir Noel of his sons presenting, and the honorable lie which at the last Maurice tells with will" even while marvel ing that "a further falsehood could be so abhorrent to him secures the peace of a most lovable old man.
 Absolutely logical in it's development, absorbingly interesting full of the sharp est contrast in character and in situ- W ing novel It is necessarily without the whimsical gayety of some of MT. Mer- rick'e other tales, but it is no less fine in construction and style and artistry, no less extraordinary in it's understands ing of human nature Every character in it lives and breathes, from the just glimpsed men at the Bultfontein board- ing house to the detestable little Agatha Savile, while the picture of Maurice g T ic rOnvinriDp aS ~thn sketch of his existence in South Africa.
 Those whose primary demand is for a story" will find in this book a series Of events as enthralling and often as unexpected as any one could wish those who care principally for style will find here the simplicity and clarity, the
 brevity charm, and compelling use of
 words which they have learned 10 expect
 from this particular writer, while those
 who wish to see humanity portrayed
 truly portrayed with it's foibles and
 weaknesses and potentalities for great
 ness, will scarcely need to be advised
 to read manuel which bears upon It's
 title page the name of Leonard Merrcll.
 THE MAN OF THE FOREST"
 By Zane Grey Gllustrated) Harper
 Brothers, publishers, New York city. The scene of Zane Grey's latest mover, lne Man or the fOreSt, IS lalu in Arizona, partly on huge ranch.
 partly in the magnificent "senaca
 where Milt Dale, the man of the for
 est" and of course the hero of the
 book, lived alone. wonderful region
 of hills and dales and rocks and wood-
 land. isolated on all sides by the
 southern Arizona desert--the virgin
 home of elk and deer and bear and
 lion, of wolf and fox. and the birth
 land, as well as the hiding place, of the
 fierce Apache" still something of a
 menace at the rather indefinite period
 to which the tale belongs. To Helen
 Rayner, aged twenty, and the hand
 somest of all the handsome Auchin-
 closses one particular section of this
 region a section she named Paradise