The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-04-18
HAPPY HOUSE"

 HAPPY HOUSE"
 By Baroness von Hutton. George 1T.
 Doran Company, hublishers. New York
 City.
 In her new book, Happy House"
 the Baroness Won Hutton has sketched
 charming picture of an unusual and delightful personality. Violet Wal bridge, successful novelist and object of ill-concealed and supercilious de- rision to her unsuccessful husband and her very modern sons and daughters Oliver Wick. young man of consid- erable perception, falls in love with Griseida, the youngest daughter. Of all her family and acquaintance he
 alone sees the pure gold of character | in Violet, and she opens to his confi- dent affection as a flower to the sun Out of this situation grows a tragi- comic story, told with humor and sym often met with, a sense of reality seen | through the eye of an understanding at%once just and tender.
 Happy House" is an unusually de- | lightful book. It comes under the head of light fiction, but it is written seriously and sincerely.
 FROM PLACE TO PLACE" By Irwin S. Cobb. George H. Doran Company. Publishers, New York City Once again MT. Cobb serves up to us a delightful and original dish in From Place to Place" The subtitle of the book is Stories About Ourselves"
 which in itself is startling when we find that the first tale is the story of the public hangman. Bogus politicians, superstitious murderers, old black Sharley, who spends the earnings of her lifetime to send her quality folks III J..1- t1-s. and Peep O'Day, and lady elephant
 named Emily. all consort cheerfully to- gether in these pages, and we laugh and cry over their experiences, which are in true Irwin S. Cobb manner. Live stories of Americans for Ameri- | cans. all of them.
 | The title of MT. Cobb's new volume | clearly implies promise of variety. | promise which the contents very | thoroughly and satisfactorily fulfills. | Prom Place to Place. is in fact sort l Of literary Jack Horner pic. without l the uniform, and one canno. but sus- | pect rather wearisome, clumsiness of that far-f famed connection. One may put in ones thumb and pull out, so to | speak, different tasting frut each l time. Indeed, should any rsader as I yet unacquainted with MT Copb's rro- | auctions desire to sample his work in each of it's definite flavors he could scarcely do better than give his at- | tenrion to this his most recent and very characteristic. volume.
 1 For here we have MT. Cobb in all his varying moods of farce and path os, I tragedy. The tale which opens the book. "The Gallowsmith, manifestly | belongs to him who wrote The Escape 1 of MT Trimm," and the wonderful mar rative of "The Bell Buzzard"
 1 All the tales contained in the vol
 l ume have, we believe, already ap- peared in different magazines, and one, "The Thunders of Silence" which 1 comes directly after "The Gallow- | smith," has also been published in book form. A good deal commented upon
 on its first appearance, It is quite as l timely and as applicable now as 1t was then. Boys will Be Boys" the quaint, halfhumorous and half-pa- 1 thetic tale of our dear ole friend I Judge Priest and poor, ignorant Peep ODay. who at sixty-odd reyeIed in the l joys denied to his starve1 youth. was I dramatized and acted here in New York l not very long ago. and consequently is no doubt still fresh in the minds of l many persons.
 "The Luck Piece with it's close rca- SOnlng and us tOucneS or grim nuIhpf, tells how a very clever high grade confidence man who had so far for gotten his usual wariness as to commit murder. planned his getaway, and very nearly succeeded in carrying it | through. Cool and callous. clear -hs ad- | ed and quick-witted, Trencher had I just one weakness-and that one weak ness ruined him The tale is n.odci | of it's kind, absorbingly interesting, l absolutely convincing. It is mech ] better story than "Hoodwinkei.' He 1 spy tale which resembles 1t nore near | ly than any other in the boox, though l "Hoodwinked' is ingenious. plausible, | and of course well told, with clever | idea at its core. From this spy :.tory one's thoughts naturally .'ass to John 1 J. Coincidence" the tale of an Italian | and a Jew, who as boys fought to- ] gether outside the public school in | Henry street, who men met pro- | fessionally when one was a gangster
 and the other a policeman. Both were
 1 of the Metropolitan Division of the
 American Expeditionary Force and
 l, what the war did to them. and how it
 enabled Hyman Ginsburg 70 keep his
 VOW. forms the climax of their ad-
 ventures The tragedy of d practical
 joke When August the Second was
 April the First" Is particularly good in