New-York tribune., 1920-11-07
HE central figure in Mary Rob-
erts Rinehart's novel, A Poor
Wisn MN lDnranl Ia Iilv

Wise Man (Doran), is Lily
Cardew, daughter of a steel
magnate. AS the story opens she is re-
turning home after several months of
service in the canteen of an army camp
Her first impressions are recorded as:
"She was suddenly unaccountably glad
to be back again. She liked the smoke
and the noise, the movement, the sense
of things doing. And the sight of her
mother. How familiar it all was.'
At dinner that night Lilly liked the
luxury of it. She liked the immaculate
dinner dress Of the two men, she liked
her mothers beautiful neck and arms;
she even liked herself, moderately, in a
light frock and slippers. But she
watched it all with new interest and
a certain detachment. She felt strange
and aloof, not entirely one of them. She
felt very keenly that no. one of them
was vitality interested in this wonder
year Of hers.
Strange ickness
Ct. Later on people dropped in, and
Lily made a real attempt to get back
into her old groove, but that night,
when she went upstairs to her bed
room, with it's bright fire. its bed
neatly turned down, her dressing gown
and slippers laid out, the shaded lamps
shining on the gold and ivory Of her
dressing table, she was conscious of a
sudden homcsickness. Homesickness
for her bare little room in the camp
barracks, for other young lives, noisy,
chattering, often rather silly, OCCASION
ally unpleasant, but young. Radiantly,
vitality young The great house, with
its stiffness and decorum, oppressed
her. There was no youth in it save
hers
Still later, Lily contemplates her
future:
Here they were, and here they would
always be. their own small circle, care
fully guarded. Always the same faces,
the same small talk. Orchids or violets
at luncheon, white or rose or blue or
yellow frocks at dinners and dances.
Golf at the country club. Travel, in
the Cardew private car, cut off from
fellow travellers who might prove in
teresting Winter at Palm Beach. and
bit of thrill at seeing motion pic
turc stars and theatrical celebrities
playing on the sand. One never had
chance to meet them
How cruel life can be for some, Con-
slider LILY. Nothing to look forward
to but golf. dinner-dances. Palm Beach
and the odiousness of the private carl
And this for girl Who had been frying
real doughnuts for real men. =.
The poor wise man is Willy Cam
cron, prescription chemist. with A
game leg that kept him out of the
regular army. He served in the Red
Cross and came out with a new knowl-
edge Of men.
Got to Know Men
'Hc could not have put into words
what he felt about men, Mrs. Rine-
hart tells Us. 1T was something about
the fundamental simplicity of them. for
one thing. You got pretty close to
them at night, sometimes, especially
when the homesick ones had gone to
bed, and the phonograph vas playing
in corner OF the long. dim room.
There werc some shamcfacod tears
hidden under army blankets those
nights, and Willy Cameron did some
blinking on his own account
"Thcn, under all the blasphemy. the
talk about women. the surface sordid-
ness of their daily lives and thoughts,
there was one instinct common to all,
one love, one hidden purity And tho
keywofd to those depths was home. "
But when Willy went back "to his
little village of plain people and took
up life again as best he could,' he
found the spell OF home" broken.
There were too many mandolins in the
neighborhood "wailing about the long,
long trail" SO he moved Off TO the
city and took a position in the Eagle
Pharmacy, a half hours walk from the
Cardew mansion.
And here the reader karns from
Willy, perhaps with certain skepti-
cism, that 'the real guilt the unbridge-
able chasm, between Lily and himself.
was neither social nor financial.
She did not love him.
These are the two characters about
whom the story revolves in its many
twists and turns. There are strikes,
politlcs' Bolsheviki, plain Russians,
/ AMERICA T