Evening star., 1925-06-28
SMALL.TOWN MAN. B,

A SMALL-TOWN MAN. BY Mary
Austin. author of Lost Borders y
etc. New York: Harper & Bros.
TESUS is 1.-The small-town Man,
whose life under the hand of
Mary Austin becomes as vivid
~ and near as that of your neigh.
Dor and friend-as, indeed, 1t is. A
kindly man, not different in his ways
from others-not at first-who comes
and goes along the streets of the orien-
tai village of his birth and youth like
any other one of that time and place.
just this first effect is great thing
for the author to achieVe-to let us see
Jesus real, as boy and youth and man.
For we do not habituallysso see Him.
He has become too much a part of
formal religion, which is remote
thing and not an interviewer part Of
daily thought and life. And Jesus has
partaken of this general aloofness of
religion. To get Jesus near, to make
Jesus real, to let us see that His
thoughts, His life, His aim, are as
immediate and pointed today as they
were when embodied in His earthly
life. That is the great point OF any
work on this subject.
With quite different motive George
Moore did the same thing in The
Brook kerith." There, in addition to
creating a work of high art, he re-
created also the very place where
Jesus lived and brought it into the
present., vivid, beautiful and be-
lievable thing. So, Mary Austin, un-
der other motive, recreates and sets
before us in terms of current under
standing the Man whose life. is as
potent for human behavior and out.
look today as 1t was when He faced
His disciples and taught them the
ways of peace, the ways of kindness
and understanding. OF race whose
dreaming was all of God, Jesus became
the prophet of a God of loving kind
ness, not of a God of war. His life
and His teachings founded a new
philosophy or gave Interpretation to
the few humane PHILOSOPHERS that pre-
ceded Him. These, the true founda-
tions, today, of constructive and useful
thinking and doing.
In scholarship and keen sympathy
and individual power of thought Mary
Austin follows the life of Jesus, always
under the ultimate purpose of facing
His essential reality and power upon
the present as the greatest hope and
the titteSt instrument for the present
and the future of a humanity whose
ultimate destiny Is to be that of world
builder and not that of world destroyer.
The author presents, last the mystic
role of Jesus. The mystic, knowing
the oneness of Gods nature, conceived
as Spirit, and man the projection of
that Spirit into the world Of sense.
This conception has become the head
of the foundation of modern science;
spirit and matter, energy and form,
one substance, not denied by Jew nor
infidel nor any other persuasion" The
near reality Of Jesus, the efficacy Of
His life in modern circumstance, the
benefits of its acceptance in all things
both spiritual and material-this pro-
lection is the triumph of Mary Aus
tins study as it bears upon the
thoughts of every man. just as the
work itself as whole will be field Of
search and research to the exceptional
man and woman of intellect and feel
ing.
FATHER ABRAHAM. BY Irving
Bachelor, author of "A Man for
the Ages" etc. Indianapolis: The
bs-Merrill Company.
DESPITE the implication of it's title
- this is not a story of Abraham
Lincoln. 1t is the romance of young
American of pioneer background
against whose farther and later
reaches the figure of Lincoln looms in
a lasting inspiration to hero and
reader alike. and as point of actual
contact to the hero himself.
We know enough of our history
we, the native-born of the United
truth of its spirit when this Is pro-
tected by some author Of romance.
Whether or not the spirit Of the story
marches with the time and events
creating it-thiS is a matter OF gen.
eral competent determination among
us. There can be, 1t seems to me, but
one decision in the case of Father
Abraham" Out Of the vital events Of
the first half of the last century Irv-
Sny pno hav $oA
that is truly historic, deeply and in
f1uentially historic. He has animated
this romance with the real American
spirit of that period. Here is, there
fore, tale of homely surfaces, pioneer
in source and feature, since the life of
the pioneer fingered in the locale of
his choosing long after 1t had moved
on In other quarters. Gradually he
here projects into the uneventful life
of the time and place the momen-
tous question that was destined to
throw the brotherhood of the States
into civil war. Into this agitation the
author brings the hero of this Ameri-
can story. csringS him also into the
presence and under the inspiration of
the great spirit of that period, the
great spirit of any period. From this
point the personality of Lincoln be-
comes the animattng force. both in the
the general movement of the time.
1t Is the simple, natural, unobtru-
sive development of Lincoln as a
potency in the world, and in the life
of the individual, that sets the story
itself apart from another romance on
the same subject that might find the
spectacle of the time so irresistible
as to cause neglect of the greater
thing-that of a simple man becoming
world.great through the force Of char
acter alone and it's sequence in deeds
of world import.
POINTS OF HONOR. BY Thomas
Boyd, author Of Through the
Wheat" New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons.
NO one, having read it. will forget
Thomas Boyd's Through the
Wheat" wherein battle stood en-
bodied to the eye, wherein war itself
was brought to judgment. In Points
of Honor" Mr.. Boyd, for the sake of
showing the real man that existed un-
der the enforced make-believe of war
fare, draws off from the groundwork
of his earlier story certain fellow sol
diers at Nerdun, scissors, Belleau
Wood, ST. MihieI. Real portraits of
actual men these, and heroes every
one, each according to his own point
of honor Pathetic and poignant
stories all, with here and there CLINT
of that which might be humor in
other circumstances, under a different
sort of urge. Brought together, they
project the stark human in the face
of supreme personal hazard. And
while these, as a whole, emphasize
the hideousness of war by way of the
individual reaction of it's realities,
they do more thap this. though more
does not in this connection need to be