Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-03-15

effect. Where, too the white woman sets
herself against the new officer, who cannot see
her as she desires to be seen. You know the
old saw about the woman scorned She wins.
That is the story.
It's telling is something else. If Harry Hervey
set out to portray prison life at its worst in
some remote quarter, surely he chose the place
with a knowing discrimination. For the action
itself this writer drove deep into the basic
bestiality Oman? Yes, that Is the issue with.
out question. That is the story, too. II you
are of the reforming stripe, why not start some
thing about prisons the world over-after you
have read this terrible story Of prisons and their
effect upon the human?
MY HUSBANDS FRIENDS BY Katherine
Bellamann New York: The Century Co.
THE prize mark of this story Is its generally
transcriptive effect Purely personal in
aim and disclosure, it, nevertheless becomes q
clear record of fact for all the wives in the uni
verse respecting the various tribal friends Of
their spouses.
First early in the marriage adventure there
is the boy friend, the husbands old pal who
comes a-visting, of course, to the refrain Of
your house as much as it is mine, Jim" And
so it turns out. Then, to mention but one
more of these familiars to every household,
there is the group of women who, first at
tached to the wife, begin to wonder among
themselves "how in the world so fine fellow
as he is saw anything In her. A nice girl, Of
course-but. look at him'
Such is the of this wise and witty survey
over the field of MY Husbands Friends" The
wit is obvious from the start The wisdom
is less Immediately observable. For this wife is
Of the silent sort, the kind that knows the
efficacy of quietly overlooking one with sweets
and deIcacies and delights. case in point
she was not the one to ask if that boy friend
was going to take up permanent abiding place
In the new home. Not that woman. 1t was
left for the husband himself to begin low
growls about never being by ourselves" and to
grumble speculatively on what the deuce Jim's
thinkin' about anyway" So the amusing mat
ter runs along very literal course that be-
comes laughable by virtue of the fact that It Is
our own case, our own situation-saving one
feature. We did not have the sense of this
woman in the story nor the artfulness nor the
ultimate triumph. No. we did the growing
thereby enlisting my husband" on the side Of
the friends" All Of us did that very thing,
except this sapient woman Of the story book.
ON CONTRACT. BY Mile BruhI Friedrich.
Boston: The Stratford Co.
A MARRIAGE contract approached by way
of pure bargaining. A girl rich but
unattractive The man, one of those things
that caterwaul through drawing rooms under
the belief that they sound like lion cut for
conquest preliminary meeting in the South
OF France few years earlier opens the matter
indicated by this title. Of purely formal con-
tent was the marriage to be. The dickering
between the pair may have run something like
this: you are rich, but you never register
socially nor with the man class alone. You
are not attractive. I'm poor, but I'm a wizard
at creating beauty in women. mere matter
OF clothes Of complexion, Of hairdressing You
marry me and you'll have beauty and the at
tention that you crave, that every woman
Graves. And, as for me- III have a pocket
book Of good substance"-or words running
to that end Seems odd that the girl listened.
1t is odd. But she did and the official mar
rage became fact The business of the story
is to make record Of the experiment.
What can an author do with situation
whose only nature is to throw up distractions
and Illustrations? Surmount them, of courses
Yet some difficulties of authorship are so
wide and deep as to preclude credible and
acceptable issue. This one is. After effort
that certainly does credit to the grit and per-
sistence Of the writer, after many a turn
toward some sort Of realistic handling of so
unreal theme, this particular novelist frank
~ accepts the age-old Cinderella theme in its
essential Of true love rewarded at the last.
A hard theme. An unlikely progression, an
emotional and condoning somersault at the
end-with every reasonable promise that the
two will "live happy ever AFTER