The New York herald., 1922-03-19

from this as well as other peculiari-
ties Of style and arrangement.
Technically 1t has to be classed as
a historical novel. In reality It is
sometimes history, sometimes biog-
raphy, and sometimes pure fiction.
In so far as it pursues any one Of
these lines it falls a little short along
the other two. and 1t will probably
suffer accordingly in the hands Of
readers whose interests are strongly
set in one or the other of the three
directions indicated. But the author
has undoubtedly acted with full
knowledge of what he did, and just
such a mixture may have been
needed to drive home the lesson in
his mind. For there is lesson in
this remarkable book-a lesson nei-
ther conceived nor conveyed in any
priggish spirit. but with a bigness of
mind and scope of vision that COM
mand our most respectful attention
in spite of all possible disagreements
of opinion.
Although truly historical in its
setting and representing an honest
as well as successful endeavor to re-
produce the actual life of one of the
most significant epochs q our exist
ence as nation, the book. at bottom,
Is written for and at the present day.
We Americans now living are "the
children of the market place." and
we are SO because of what happened
in those days when Douglas strug-
gled against Lincoln and the Repub-
lican party on one side and against
what Mr.. Masters calls "the slayoc-
racy" on the other. And one of the
strange charms of the book lies in
the fact that it shows so clearly how
no one of the leaders in that gigan-
tic struggle was quite right, and, how
all of them were pushed onward to
unsuspected goals by forces stronger
than themselves.
Children of the Market Place In
primarily the story of young Eng
lishman. James Miles, who was born
in the year of Waterloo and came to
this country at the age Of Is to look
up large tract Of land in central
Illinois left him by his deceased
father. There he stayed not only
for the sake of the property, but
because there was something about
the region and the people and the
events unfolding under his eyes that
captivated his mind and made an
American Of him before he quite
realized what had happened to him.
He lived to be IS, and the story is
told long afterward. when the great
struggle Of which he witnessed the
beginnings had already become
shadowy unreality to many of those
whose most intimate circumstances
Of life had been determined by its
outcome.
With the story of James Miles
himself-and I wonder, by the by,
whether Mr.. Masters knows that
there really was James Miles in
those days, noted clergyman and
Hebrew scholar, born in 1S19-we
need not be greatly concerned here,
though it is interesting and touching
enough to warrant careful attention
James Miles Is, and must be, only
the mirror in which we see the
events for the sake of which not only
he but all those nearest and dearest
to him were created by the author.
Mr.. Masters knows how to make a
fictitious character take on the flesh
and blood of reality, and time and
again in the course of this new work
OF his he has stepped aside from
more important pursuits to practice
the art that made a classic of the
Spoon River Anthology" The
women in articular-Dorothy and
Abigail, Zoe and Isabel--come to our
minds as more real than do such
figures as Captain Grant" and Ma
jor Sherman" But turn the COM
parison another way, and they fade
into seeming unreality beside the
compelling figure of Stephen Doug
las, the little giant who in his
own day seemed so vastly more i'm
portant and powerful than Lincoln,
and Who. to our time lives chiefly