Evening star., 1944-04-30
By Mary.Carfer Roberts.
The Way Our People Lived

This Is a series of vignettes de.
signed to illustrate American Gus
toms from the middle of the 17th
century to the early 20th. 1t In
pleasant to read and also reason
ably accurate. Boston In Cotton
Mather's time, an early 18th century
Virginia plantation, New York In
1850, Philadelphia at the time OF the
Continental Congress, early 18th
century Georgia, a journey from
New York to the Ohio as made by
a lady unattended in 1886, the gold
rush, the rise of Chicago, the South
In reconstruction-the are the
locales and times covered. The
form of each is that of q narrative,
q sort Of school-text presentation
OF facts fictionalized for easy read
ing purposes, and the tone Is, on
the whole, kindly complimentary to
our country's past. This latter Is q
little surprising for w. e. Wood
ward has, before now, rather spe-
cialized in assaulting as bunk" the
beliefs which Americans have had
as to the virtue or intelligence Of
their inherited traditions. One sup
poses that, in his view, when his
country is at war, 1t deserves en-
couragement. At any rate, 1t Is safe
to predict that the "debunk" school
will not be heard of until, say, at
least f8 months after the coming
peace. by which time 1t will be on
the up-and-up for fearless truth
seekers once more triumphantly to
rattle the skeletons in our histori-
cal closets.
Bedford Village
By Heruey Allen. (Farrar &
RinehGrt.)
When Hervey Aliens last novel,
"The Forest and the Fort" ap-
peared, the publisher announced
that it was the first of an impos-
ingly long series. The subject of
the works was to be the struggle OF
the English colonial government to
establish a frontier in Western
Pennsylvania. Each novel was to be
a story in itself, but the series as q
whole was to portray the conquest
of that important territory. THE
Forest and the Fort" showed the
extreme edge of the Anglo-Saxon
push, where, at the outpost of Fort
Pitt, tiny concentration of white
forces faced the great loose host of
the Indians. The opponents were
dramatized in the figure of an Eng
lisf boy, Salathiel Albine, who had
been kidnapped and reared by the
Shawnees. The earlier novel tells iof
the return of this boy to white
society. He comes to the Fort Pitt,
and there becomes an assistant to
the commanding officer.
The present book carries on in
terms of Salathiel's experiences.
The outfit of British grenadiers to
which he Is attached goes into
winter quarters at Bedford Village,
to, the east of Fort Pitt, q device
which allows Mr. Allen to portray in
detail the life of an 18th century
frontier settlement. Salathiel him.
self engages in series of raids
against the Indians, which Is an
other device for describing frontier
conditions, for the raids are made,
not with troops in the manner Of
civilized warfare, but by a handful
of picked wilderness men of Boone
like qualifications. The picture OF
the teeming life of the village, its
Inconvenience, its primitiyeness, its
community feeling. is thrown into
contrast with that of the lonely
Indian fighters creeping through the
forest depending for their lives on
their ability to better the red man
at his own method OF making war.
There Is some lively writing on both
sides of the story. ....-
But, on the whole, there is a very
limited amount of story for so much
wordage, and one feels that Mr..
Allen has padded quite a bit. One
feels, also, that his concept OF 18th
century gusto is sometimes a 10th
century product. His characters
illustrate themselves rather con-.
sciously. When one has skipped the
long dissertations on irrelevant sub
jects, however, one has a good his
toric tale Of, perhaps, novelette,
length.