Evening star., 1940-08-11
Tale of Three Cities
By D. L. Murray. NeD York
Alfred A. Knopf.

6y II. l.. murray. NeU IOTk.
Alfred A. Knopt.
We have here a novel which
ranks high in both quantity and
quality. 1t is one of those door,
stop affairs for bulk; it is over 700
pages long. And it is fine,
flourishing period tale, romantic as
all get-out, but keeping its feet on
the ground in the matters of solid
authenticity and good writing. 1t
reminded the reviewer a good deal
of that best-seller of some seasons
back, Johan Fabricius' "Son Of
Marietta" novel which had no
idea beyond the telling of an
elaborate story, but yet one over
which a man of letters had OBJ
viously put in respectable spade
work One cannot, indeed, but
admire the labor which an author
puts into work of this kind,
costuming his characters for their
day, trimming their speech to its
period, painting the scenery against
which they must move and polishing
of their exits and their entrances
with noble sententiousness. One
needs good armchair for the read
ing. The spectacle of labor so arduous
naturally inclines the mind to COM
fort and relaxation.
Well, Mr. Murray begins in the
year 1858 with poor founding, as
so many romantic novelists have
done before him. He gives us a
youth just turned 18, a member
of religious order in Rome in
whose care he was anonymously
left as an infant. Unto him in this
state there enters a lovely lady
who bears great resemblance to
a statue which the youth has long
| admired. She is in trouble; her
brother (and how many times has
the brother of the heroine elected
the services of the heroD is an
anarchist who has just attempted
to blow up the French Emperor;
as consequence of his impulsive-
ness, he is badly wanted. These
events throw the young man out
of his religious seclusion and into
the world with great force. As a
result of the emotions stirred in
him by the lady, he runs of and
goes to England, there to search
for his missing parents.
There follows then some vaga-
bondage-the touch, you see, Of
the picturesque. The young man
plays the part Of poor artist,
of Punch Snowman, of the lover
of his landlady's daughter. And,
finally, he is given letter to a
mysterious character in Paris who,
he is told, will find his parents
for him. The mysterious character
is no less than Napoleon III. And
Napoleon, true enough, does find
the missing papa-the mama being
by now dead.
Aid so we have the young man
set up as the son Of a minor noble
man. And there you have your
three cities-Rome, London and
Paris. And the tale goes on to the
end of the Third Empire. centering
in good part about the Italian
struggle for national unity and the
intriguing between the French
government and the italian patriots.
There is more blood and thunder
| in it then one could possibly re-
count. The young man, in the
meantime, becomes a great sculp-
tor.
1t is genuinely good melodrama.
It has most of the props of its
type, but, as said, its color, its
background and its detail are
authentic. There is something
Hugonian about the authors pas
sion for physical precision in scene
setting. And the story Is quite
entertaining enough. NC. R.
Unconquered Enemy
By Boris Sokolof. NeD York:
Greystone Press.
This is an account Of the present
status of the war of science against
cancer.
It is q fight, as DR.. Sokoloff says,
on a hundred fronts. There have
been, to date, few clear-cut victories.
Cancer remains probably the most
dreaded enemy of mankind. It has
been pushed back trifle, from time
to time, only to regain its lost
ground with the increasing age
mean of the population.
Many promising leads have been
followed, many of them ending in
mazes of contradictions. The heredi-
tary aspect of the disease, or group
of diseases, still is far from clear
after quarter century Of intensive
work. No chemotherapeutic meas
ures, based on animal experiments,
have been of much avail. Much of
the dread of cancer arises from the
mystery Of these unsolved questions.
DR.. Sokolon tells Just how far
research has gone in various direc-