New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1921-08-22

Mr.. Charles G. Norris, like many 9TH
ers, is a student of the torments and
Joys that lie in the small circle of
wedding ring. He finds, as Mr.. Gilbert
Canaan did, for instance, in one of his
essays, that it is in the matter of love
oppression, and that in their subsection
to its rules it becomes a nuisance and
a heavy drag upon human comfort. As
the text of Brass, a novel of marriage
Browning's
Annul marriage? It's impossiblel
Though Ring about your neck be Brass
Needs must it clasp. gangrene you all the
same
Thereupon Mr.. Norris abandons at
once propaganda and sets forth upon a
graphic tale of wedlocls hard by the
Golden Gate. The participants are re-
markedly human as pictured by Mr..
Norris's vivid stylus -ranchmen and
ranchwomen, insurance agents, bankers,
real estate merchants, moving picture
celebrities, clerks, typists and host of
other atoms. The neck upon which the
yoke Of matrimony rests uneasiest,
however, is that of Philip Baldwin,
lusty young male from Pleasant Valley.
He goes to San Francisco, and there he
snatches unhappily from the merry go
round of sex that which Mr. Browning
calls the Brass Ring
You will be appalled, at the complete
ness of Mr.. Norris's inventory of the
impcdiments to being happy. though
married. There were Leila's cold feet,
for example. Leila was Philips second
wife; he was divorced from Marjorie,
his first, because she became addicted
to late hours and the cabarets. Leila
was q splendid creature, he thought
when he married her. native daughter
with dark, somnolent eyes, thick golden
lair, red mouth and inviting lips; and
she was prominent in San Francisco
society. But she was troubled with
poor circulation, and when she got
into bed at night she Immediately
placed her cold feet against Philip's
legs. There was something peculiarly
rcpellent to Philip about his wifes feet"
Mr.. Norris says. "They were unusually
long and flat, and the toes spread out
like the end of half-curled fan; there
was no arch to the instep and they
looked unhealthy, tallow-hued, dead.
The touch of them invariably sent a
mild shiver through him; his flesh re
belled from the contact But he en-
dured this nightly annoyance without
protest He could never quite bring
himself to the point of telling her that
he found it dstasteful.v
Leila was not unconscious Of this de-
feet among her charms, though she did
nothing to hide it. "She would step out
of her low shoes and sit for a quarter
of an hour or longer with her feet
propped against the open stove door
in the kitchen. She would rub her feet
with salt, slap them and dip them in
hot water, with small result Massac-
ing them, it seems, stirred the slug
glsh blood, but as soon as the rubbing
ceased the deadly bite of cold re-
turned. Leila fell into the habit of
striking her heels whenever she moved. |
The sound was in the house from the
time she got up in the morning until
she went to bed at night. She would
murmur about her distress incessantly
ooh h-h-cold heels oh-such mis-
erablo cold heels! Cold heels,
Cold heelsl'"
X X
Thus Mr.. Norris threads his nara
tive with pungent details describing
countless obstacles to married bliss.