Evening star., 1936-12-19

years ago. as the author tells us. That,
of course, Is something about which
every one is painting to know-what
forces were brisk and active in Mis-
souri, hundred years ago? In Mis-
souri,. Not in Arkansas. Not in Idaho.
Well, what?
1t would seem that one Of them
was the force which makes men want
to get out and go places and the other
was the force which makes women
want to settle down and remain Hus-
band represents Force Number One,
Wife represents Force Number Two.
Result-Conflict. and, as the author
says, No Novel. 1t is by Lady Sociol-
ogist. by the way, whose ideas on the
portrayal of conflicts do not include
the elements of grammar. 1t is re-
viewed here, not because it deserves
it, but because the reviewer is getting
tired (oh, plenty tired) of such ex-
ercises If H. G. Wells is responsible
for these symbolistic maunderings, he
should be made to read them.
PAY DIRT. BY Glenn Chesney Quiett.
New York: D. Appleton Century
Co.
A BOARD stuck into the grave Of a
miner in Jack ONeill's Ranch"
a gold-rush graveyard at what now is
Denver, Colo, bears what might well
be the epitaph of thousands of those
hardy prospectors and miners who
opened an empire to civilization.
He done his damnedest;
Angels could do no more"
The crude headstone did not last
long, but the spirit of that nameless
miner burning through the years in
the breasts of an army of his fellows,
is responsible for some of the most
striking episodes in American history.
Quiett's book is the story of those
episodes-the great gold rushes'
which startled the world and sent
motley array of clerks, scholars. riff
raft and blue -bloods into the terrible
vicissitudes of the greatest wilderness
areas on the American continent in
search of gold.
California, Colorado, Oregon, WASH
ington, Idaho. Montana, the South
west, Alaska and Canada-pay dirt
country! Quiett takes you into all of
them with the prospectors and the
miners, gamblers. bandits, dance-hall
girls, real estate sharks and sky pilots
who followed them. Whatever else
may be said for the men who dropped
everything to adventure for gold, they
were "he men" and this is a red
blooded book, in addition to being good
history.
1t is full of entertaining passages,
such as that dealing with the Indian
wife of the miner who struck it rich
and brought her TO the Butler Hotel
in Seattle. She cut notches In the
walnut banisters to blaze a trail back
to her room
A volume for the student of Ameri-
can history or for the man who wants
thrills and entertainment. J. S. e.
IN WARS WAKE: 1914-15. BY
Ernest P. Bicknell. Washington.
Inc American NaJlOnal req Gross.
WAR drums are rolling in Europe
again, and the youth Of its ma
tions Is being taught to love the
giamorous trappings of battle. Amid
the panoply of military exercises for
the next war comes factual report on
the last calculated to give us pause.
In November, 1914, Col. Ernest P.
Bicknell. then national director of the
Red Cross, went to Europe as a MEM
ber of the Rockefeller Foundation War
Relief Commission, to survey the tragic
woes and needs of the civilian popula-
tions, both of the allied and central
powers, who were trampled under the
contending armies. The present book
n the report Of his experiences, and