Evening star., 1926-03-07
REVIEWS OF WINTER BOOKS
Mencken Given High Place Letter-Lgts British Do
minion in India Prove Interesting Several Other
Volumes Are Discussed by Reviewer.

I with the wholly engaging means OF
| his conversion to the very good
| thought that an American would bet
ter lend hand toward making his
country a desirable place for all Of her
children than to turn tail and run off
to some supposedly rarer and better
atmosphere. Understand, you are not
| to despise Andrew Bride. He is as en-
gaging as any one you've met in a
long time. Trust Mr.. Harrison for
that He was just mistaken as youth
Is likely to be. The story throughout
| gives the satisfaction that any touch
of art, finer than the average does
give. regardless of the importance or
no Importance Of it's theme.
** 4 y
EAST OF EDEN. BY Lynn Montross.
New York: Harper & Bros.
l. goes back for it's beginning to
1917, that moment when the farmer.
under the urgency of war, was reap
ing gold in the shape Of grain. And.
somehow, the farmer thought that his
prosperity had come to stay. He
couldn't have reasoned that the war
was going to last forever. Probably
he didn't reason at all. Too busy. In
stead, he maneuyered and scrambled
for more land in order to secure big
ger harvests and more and more
money. Then the war ended Prices
fell Acres. unpaid for, brought the
farmer to the very edge of things.
Then began, that which is now going
on, the efforts of farmers to set their
business house in order. This meant,
, as a matter of fact, beginning to learn
the alphabet of business, a lesson that
the farmer had deliberately neglected
as having nothing to do with his
! case Of an individualism that has, in
all history, never been before ap-
preached.
Then began the experiments in CO.
operation around which associations
and bureaus sprang in night an
vanished in a day--all with loss, and
disillusion and hatreds and new ven
lures of rehabilitation. That which
all other industries had long ago
achieved agriculture was then, is now.
| just beginning to learn with pain and
labor East Of Eden" is a clear NOV
ing picture Of this situation, narrowed
for the purposes of drama. to a COM
munity and. in specific point, to a
single family. And this Is not NOV
ing picture of artif1cially constructed
castles and make-believe hazards and
triumphant issues. No, the camera
moved right beside these fields, right
into the hearts of the people so deeply
affected by the new experimentation
in the laws of economic stability. 1t
| snapshots hope and despair in their
actual alternations and. with courage
and invincible logic, it brings the mat
ter to the only ending that, at this
stage and in the situation set down
here, could possibly come. More of a
document than a romance. Yet. it
does contain the elements of romance
of tragic cast. Stark realism is East
of Eden"
| MR.. GUELPA. BY Vance Thompson.
author of THE Pointed Tower"
etc. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-M
rill Co.
| A MAN dies and his stricken widow
~ gathers in a fat insurance. A
| few years later another man dies and
| his widow, also stricken. takes up his
| substantial insurance. There is moth
| ing strange about this. 1t happens
every day. BY one of those odd COM
binations, however, that as a class
clearly belongs to the management
| of some power more orderly than
| mere chance, it was the same agent
| who, years apart, paid over these two
| insurances. And despite the years.
with their thousands of intervening
| details, he realized that these two
| women were one and the same This