the railway corporations. Suppose he should show us a multi-millionaire, a railway king, a coal baron, or one of the mighty few who corner the food products of the world, and should tell us that because he made his money through unscrupulous methods, the last estate of this man was worse than the first-he must take his choice between two methods. He must either frankly use the old Greek fate motive, the doctrine of the avenging furies, and punish his man by earthquake or pestilence, disaster by flood and fire, or he may follow the subtler, the only modern way, that of studying nature's method of punishing such a man, and showing us how, with all his outward. success, the achievement of his life's ambitions, there comes at times a vague misgiving, the sting of a newspaper jibe, the reproach of an old-time friend, that give the taint of dead sea fruit to his prosperity. Such a novel may be truly said to accomplish a purpose-and none the less if the author gives no hint from the first page to the last whether he has the slightest personal bias regarding the hero's standards of morality. By all means, let us have more problem novels, if by that we are to understand novels dealing with the serious issues of modern life; but let them be strictly impersonal. Let life be trusted to teach its lessons in its own relentless, inevitable way. And let the author remember that the more interesting and convincing he makes his characters and his problem, just so much the more does the reader resent the obtrusion of the author's private opinions.

Thoughts similar to these were suggested by reading the latest volume by Professor Robert Herrick, The Memoirs of an American Citizen. Whether the author was influenced in his choice of subject by the present vogue of Lawsonism and kindred attacks on "graft" and corruption; and whether his novel is at roman à clef, built up, like Old Gorgon Graham, around a well-known personality in the Chicago world, are questions for the news columns, not for serious criticism. They are questions necessarily of local and ephemeral interest. Whether the book itself is of ephemeral or enduring worth is the question that concerns the critic.

"The Memoirs of an American Citizen."

The first thing that one feels impelled to say of these Memoirs of an American Citizen is that no other American novel in many months has equalled it in point of pure, impersonal realism. No more absolute, unswerving merger of the author in the character of his hero, of his selfeffacement in the interest of good art, could even be conceived of. The biographer of Professor Herrick, if forced to rely upon this volume for a character sketch, would search in vain for a single tangible expression of opinion on any point of religion, morality or business integrity. And yet—and here, perhaps, is where the finest art of all comes in-one lays down the book with the profound conviction that the author had the subtlest of purposes in every line he wrote, and that while he did not allow himself to transgress the observed facts of life, he shrewdly chose and emphasised those facts that would persistently beat home the meaning of the lesson with the tireless iteration of a trip-hammer.

When we first make Harrington's acquaintance, he is sleeping, among a miscellaneous herd of men in hard luck, on a strip of waste land, along the Chicago lake front. More bad luck lands him within twenty-four hours in jail, accused of theft, and only an honest face and a straightforward story save him from the penitentiary. Harrington told his own story in his own way to the shrewd old judge; in his own way he is allowed to tell it to us throughout the book. From the opening page one gets a clear-cut impression of energy, resourcefulness and great business shrewdness, coupled with a conviction that all is fair on the battlefield of commercial strife. With unblushing frankness he pictures each successive step in his steady, rapid, almost Aladdin-like progress; his use of the dollar the old judge had given him; his first job, tying up parcels in a retail market; his big upward stride, as driver for one of the large wholesale packers; his first small speculation in pork; his private venture in a special brand of sausage to be sold later on for a small fortune to the great Strauss & Co.; his rise to a position of control in the con

servative house of Dround & Co.; his giant scheme to consolidate a dozen of the smaller houses, already tottering to their fall, to form one vast combination, and by acquiring certain railroads. and building others, to control the market of the Southwest-a carefully planned campaign of many years. All of these things he does-honestly when he can, but he does them. If there is a bright, hard-working little stenographer or bookkeeper whose personal interest will help his advancement, he multiplies his attentions to the verge of a proposal; then, when her usefulness is waning, throws her aside without compunction. When the employer who has trusted him is in desperate straits, he calmly prepares to desert to the enemy, but at the last moment, convinced that his own interest will be best served by remaining and risking a "big gamble," with equal readiness throws over the enemy, who counted upon his promise. When his company is incorporated, there is always a big block of stock waiting for those who can smooth his upward path. If an injunction is issued against the company, he says, "Tell that judge there is $25,000 waiting for him the day the injunction is dissolved." If a new city ordinance will help his plans, he buys the aldermen; if a new railway must be put through, he buys the legislature. And when the time comes for his political ambitions to ripen, he buys his way into the United States Senate.

All this, as already intimated, is told with an unblushing assumption that it is something to be genuinely proud of, an achievement due to shrewd, unflagging observance of legitimate, twentieth-century business methods. His attitude towards his critics is not a pose; it is simply the frank incomprehension of a mind on a different moral plane, where a meeting of minds is impossible. But the finest art in the whole book, the subtle touch which gives it an ethical value superior to any sermon, is the depression which from time to time steals over this successful modern robberbaron-a depression that arises from the knowledge that he is despised by just a few persons whose respect would be very precious to him: the sister-in-law,

who would rather starve than let her husband take one penny from his hand; the crotchety old New England banker, who bravely stood by him in the early years, but revolted before the scandal of bribing a judge; the lawyer, Slocum, whom he has used as a tool for twenty years, and whom he is at last powerless to reward, because the one thing that Slocum has ever coveted is something that mere money could never buy-a seat in the Supreme Court of the United States. That these few, and some others his own brother, his own wife— despise him, Harrington cannot forget, and although he never can understand their attitude, it rankles persistently.

"The Man of the Hour"

In The Man of the Hour, Octave Thanet's first venture in the form of a full-fledged novel, there is no such subtle veiling of the author's purpose as in Robert Herrick's book. The errors and the dangers of socialism are the subject of her sermon in fiction, and while the story is not lacking in strength, nor in that finer character-drawing that the writer's previous work has associated with her name, one feels more than once that the plot has been moulded to fit a preconceived thesis. The man of the title-rôle is the victim of clashing instincts, inherited partly from the Russian princess, his mother, whose socialistic doctrines banished her from the land of her birth; and partly from the methodical, far-sighted man of business, his father, whose tolerance for the whims of the Russian princess became exhausted when she disturbed the peace of their home in a Western manufacturing town by harbouring a nest of Russian nihilists. Little Johnny-Ivan, his very name proclaiming his mixed origin, grew up under a curious strain, his father and mother rivalling each other in filling his small brain with their opposing views. Consequently, when he arrived at manhood, an orphan deprived by his father's will of the greater part of the latter's fortune, he finds that he is strangely at war with himself. On the one side is the shrewd business instinct, the hereditary love for the old mill his father built up and ran prosperously for so many years.

On the other is his inherited sympathy for his mother's protégé and friends, the socialists. For a time the latter instinct conquers, and he becomes a champion of labour and a fellow-labourer among the roughest classes that the Chicago machine shops boast. But finally, through practical lessons learned amid strikes and riots and bloodshed, he learns the useful lesson of the value of law and order, and through this eventually becomes the "Man of the Hour." Herein lies the artificiality of the plot. One feels that in real life Johnny-Ivan would never have learned his lesson, or else he would have died from the severity of it.

That calm, clear-sighted writer, who chooses to mask her identity under the

"The Sign of the Fox."

name of "Barbara," boasts of no more pronounced purpose than that of making us realise the superior attractions. of a simple, wholesome life, apart from the roar and bustle of the "Whirlpool City." At the Sign of the Fox is not a story that can claim any special strength, but it has the unmistakable charm of good breeding, wholesome philosophy and a genuine love of nature. There is a tranquil old New England farm, which Brook Lawton in her childhood once christened her "River Kingdom," little thinking the refuge it was destined to be in later years. The Lawtons are a family of importance in the Whirlpool City, both socially and financially; but one night Brook's father is found in his room, stricken with cerebral hemorrhage; and the next day the city is ringing with the details of a financial crash that is further embittered with the taint of dishonour. The only flotsam from the wreckage is that little bit of New England farm land; and hither Brook takes her invalid mother, her stricken father, her brave courage, and her ideals; and here she works out a practical scheme of life; and here the simple romance of her life comes to a fulfilment. The book is one of those that leave a pleasant taste behind them, even though one may gravely question whether a woman could meet the man she loves day after day, in the guise of a farm-hand, and never once suspect his identity.

reality. Yet in his latest story, The Boss of Little Arcady, one feels that for once he has written primarily for the story's sake, and that whatever purpose the reader gleans from between the lines is of that half unconscious sort that comes from the faithful interpretation of simple, average lives. Indeed, the nearest approach one can make to a concrete statement of a definite motive is, that Mr. Wilson has tried to make us feel how narrow a dividing line there is between the poetry and the prose of life, and how full of romance is the narrow sphere of the usual man and woman, if we could only see it. But to see it, he adds, we must retain our early faith in the sufficiency of our own little town or village; we must go back "to the days of a boy's Little Arcady, when all the world beyond was but a place from which to order merchandise." It is a whimsical book that Mr. Wilson has given us this time, a book that is scarcely a novel at all, in the accepted sense, a book that drags somewhat at the start, at the same time that it is surreptitiously fastening its hold upon you,—and then suddenly you find that certain of its characters have twined themselves into your affections, and that you cannot lay the book down until you have assured yourself that at last all has gone quite well with them. A veteran of our Civil War, who has come back from his four years' service with an empty sleeve, and the rank of major; a fine old Southern lady, whom fate had stripped of all her possessions save her daughter, her household furniture, and the loyalty of one old darkey; Uncle Maje, Miss Caroline, Little Miss and Clem, these are the four that one feels it something of a privilege to have known. All the rest, down to the Boss of Little Arcady himself, are but the background, the stage setting, the sceneshifter's devices for imparting reality to that Little Country which "exists no more save as a wraith in remembering minds."

"The Missourian."

It may be laid down as a working rule that the writer of an historical novel has no profounder purpose than to make recorded history cast an illusion of reality over a series of adventures which, if accredited to our own time and country, would read like grotesque and arrant nonsense. There are probably enough exceptions to prove the rule, but The Missourian, by Eugene P. Lyle, Jr., is not one of them. It is easy to see that the author knows his Dumas to some purpose. Without slavishly following the formula, he has produced a volume every bit as readable as the average Stanley Weyman novel,-and with rather more virility of treatment. The setting of the book is Mexico during the brief reign of Maximilian. The plot shows how an army of Confederate soldiers might have saved the Emperor his crown, and how a Frenchwoman, working in the interest of Napoleon III., caused him to lose it. The hero of the story, of course, is the Missourian,-a sort of distant cousin to Mr. Wister's Virginian,-who comes to Maximilian with a tempting proposition from the Confederate armies; and there are times when he quite wins your admiration, with his nonchalance, his soft voice and his wonderful readiness with his pistol. But after a while you get so used to having him arrested, court-martialed and sentenced to be shot; so used to having him captured by brigands, or mistaken for the wrong man, or betrayed by the woman he loves; and always reprieved or rescued in the very nick of time,—that

at last the sensation palls on the palate, like too prolonged a use of high condiments. Here, for instance, is an example of literary over-seasoning, which, far from being exceptional, is fairly characteristic of the book's style. The Missourian has once again been captured by Maximilian's troops, and sentenced to be shot on the morrow. He is imprisoned, along with his own horse, in a solid adobe hut. He has just learned that the Frenchwoman loves him, and tells himself theatrically, "Now I am not going to die!" Adobe walls will crumble easily if wet, so he persuades his gaoler to bring him a bath, because Protestants always take a bath before they are executed, and spends the night softening and excavating the wall of his gaol,-not making a complete hole, if you please, although this he might easily have done, but leaving a thin film of moistened brick, so that the next morning, when the soldiers come to shoot him, he can surprise them by galloping away apparently through a solid brick wall,-and he times his movement so nicely that his horse makes its spring through the wall just after the soldiers fire, but before the bullets have time to reach the hero. One recalls no case of such astounding timeliness in fiction since Georges Ohnet made the heroine of Le Maître de Forges reach the duelling ground in time to catch in her hand the bullet aimed at her husband, just as it left his adversary's pistol. On second thoughts, perhaps the secret purpose of Mr. Lyle was to see how far he could tax his reader's credulity.

Frederick Taber Cooper.

RIBALD sun held one last carouse at "Horizon Tavern" and then blearily reeled over, terminating a long and heated August bacchanal. The relief from his sodden tyranny was electric and the reek and fume at once cleared away. Throttling vapours relaxed their death-grip on mountain and on meadow. Crag faces cleared. Someone wiped the lake's blurred surface and Nature complacently resumed her prinking. Clouds peacocked past it, trailing rich brocades; busy bird commuters paused in their homeward rush hour to straighten dusty bonnets, while, alone in her poppyin her poppypetalled canoe, a girl smiled at her own purged reflection and lightly scrambled a frothy omelet of dreams.

During the past year Vienna Lansing's world had slowly turned to gingham. The grey martyrdom of days had told upon her sadly, though each night brought its liberal hiatus to a temperament all imagination. And especially after such an ordeal as had just passed, the lush call of the dark was more than ordinarily compelling.

As she had ballooned her way along

the shore, wide-skirted and scarce touching foot to earth in her so buoyant acceptance, the stammering leaves that blundered in her path had needed no apology. She revelled in the placid festival. A sullen rose smote her; she caught it and bore it swooning on her breast. Night shook out lilac chiffons, foppish stars thronged inquisitively, an abundant moon spoke to her of harvests, -in such wise had Vienna Lansing come to her own again.

And even as she drifted up and down in her light craft, muffled in the worsted of soft thoughts she would will true, a strong man swung himself far out upon a derrick and dropped into the seat opposite her. Her heart went purple, her white teeth quivered, her tongue churned heavily, but no words came, and still she failed his punctual eyes. She yielded him a hand of pith. At last: "Oh, Pod!" she purred.