The New York herald., 1922-03-26
New Fiction in Varied Forms

in your own street and your own
house. Hers are no iurid struggles
between hero and villain. she plunges
her Characters into no pits OF evil,
no desperate reversais Of fortune.
She paints them in the grip of life
as we all experience 1t, in the sweet
ness OF family affection, suffering OF
radiant under the coming OF love,
trying to find the best road between
two that are both somewhat right,
somewhat wrong. Human error she
depicts. selfishness. unkindness; but
she lays her stress on the finer side
of human nature, on its eenerosities
and win TO good, its dread of harm
ing those it loves. its sense OF honor
and fitness.
She has the reporters skill of
quick and accurate pcrtraiture,
whether of person or place, sees WV
Idly what she looks at and catches
what she sees in skillful. sometimes
eloquent, words. There is a strong
sincerity and conviction in what she
does. an honesty Of purpose that
gives her novels a greater value
than the mere story telling quality
OF entertainment. Not that she at
tackS problems, modern or old. She
is content with the depletion Of ave
rage lives meeting average condi-
poignancy they possess. and when
you have finished reading you have
come to know her men and her
women. her young folk and old folk.
as well as you are ever likely to
know any one in real life. And her
people are SO ioyabie. so likable.
In this story. "Lucretia Lorn-
bard" Mrs. Norris takes for her back
ground a pleasant town not very far
from New York--a day by train, let
us say-a town of broad residential
streets shaded by great trees and
edged by lawns on which the COM
Portable houses stand amid their lilac
bushes and flower beds. A town
where there are factories and thriv-
ing businesses. and round which the
lovely country spreads. rising into
mountains where the citizens go for
ti,a x-or.fsor ,aansbo lix-fne, baalfhiI.-
and happily in shacks and simple
cottages. and climbing about in
knickerbockers whether they are men
or women. A thoroughly American
town. with the home-iness that man
ages TO remain part OF our national
life in spite Of the beautiful and
damned element OF which we are be-
ginning to hear so much and from
which we are learning TO expect the
worst.
In this town we meet 4 pleasantly
situated. wei TO do group Of persons.
And this introduction is most clever
~ managed.
In the long drawing room of the
stately home of Judge Samuel Cur
ran and Bessy Emerson Curran. his
wife, there reigned an utter. almost
an uncanny silence. Yet there were
six persons seated there. any one of
whom. under ordinary circumstances.
might have been considered equal to
the demands Of d more or less bril-
liant conversation"
When n length the silence is bro
ken. after Mrs. Norris has had time
to sketch in something If the envi-
ronment. i is ~ young girls voice,
and what she says is. Don't push
ii. Fred
For pianchette is the center Of that
strained silence. and planchette
shortly afterward gets busy. 1t
writes a lot of apparently disjointed
and incomprehensible sentences-but
by the time the story has been told
we find that what planchette said
was fun Of wisdom. adyiet and warn
ing. No one quite explains how it
managed this. no one perhaps entire
CoRiiaacd on Fo!loqriag Page.