Life — November 14, 1907 — page 14: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

DITH WHARTON’S new novel, The Fruit of the Tree, is addressed, even more exclusively than was The House of Mirth, to the understanding instead of to the sentiment of her readers. Even their sympathy, the true harvest of understanding, is left far more coldly and more precariously to flower and ripen unaided. In fact Mrs. Wharton, having conceived and adopted her characters and their situation, maintains toward them throughout the relation of an ab- stract and nonpartisan intelligence, re- cording with crystalline precision of diction, and with pitiless and inexorable logic, the story of their self-fulfillment. And it is, upon the perfection of these qualities, and not upon the long story itself, that our appreciation centers. Mr. Randall Parrish’s melodramatic romance of the Colorado gold fields, Beth Norvell, is as various and as head- long as a three ringed circus. In addi- tion to intrigue, treachery, murder and misunderstanding, the author keeps five dialects going at one time, and the effort at adjustment to the alternating broken English of a German, a Swede, an Irish- man, a Spaniard and a stutterer, becomes as disconcerting as the demands of that familiar game wherein someone sud- denly turns upon you and shouts “Bird!” and you are expected instant! to supply an example. The heroine is a young and interesting actress with a mysterious past; the book is a thriller with a possible present, but no future. Professor Barrett Wendell, who in 1904-5 lectured at the various universities of France as the representative of Harvard, has published the results of his personal observation in a most inter- esting volume called The France of To- Day. Mr. Wendell’s differs very vitally from the ordinary traveler’s book. His equipment, as well as his opportunities, were exceptional; and as his mission was to bring America more justly within the comprehension of the French, so his book brings them more clearly within our own. Wild Animal Celebrities is the title of a volume in which Ellen Velvin tells a number of facts about individual animals which have been in captivity or on ex- hibition here and abroad. The spirit of the book is purely reportorial and the work represents the Sunday Supplement at its best. The author is a Fellow of the Zoological society and has been “personally acquainted” with many of the animals. The other stories she has gathered from the directors of public collections and trainers of wild animals. Warren Cheney, who has written several romances of the former Russian outposts in Alaska, has made good play with the special opportunities of those times and of that region in his new story, His Wife. The book aims at little more than casual entertainment, and one reads it with no very serious conviction either of its probability in outline or of its authenticity of detail. But its characters are agreeable and the mystery which it exploits for our benefit is capped by an adequate explanation and a happy ending. Helen R. Martin, the literary dis- coverer of the Pennsylvania Dutch, has published a further volume of short stories under the title of The Betrothal of Elypholate. Mrs. Martin’s appreciation and understanding of these picturesque and pig-headed gentry has, from the first, been more evident than her constructive skill or her perception of dramatic values. That understanding having served its turn; our interest in these types, as types, having been aroused and satisfied; the stories now offered to us are obliged to stand unsupported on their own feet. And unhappily they possess none. One of the more attractive, as well as the more novel, of the holiday treats for the youngsters is The Russian Fairy Book, translated by Nathan H. Dole and illustrated in color from Russian draw- ings. Read aloud, these tales will bring the gratifying response of widely staring little eyes and widely opened little mouths; while the reader will discover that European fairies, like European royal families, must have intermarried until they are all cousins. J. B. Kerfoot. « The Fruit of the Tree, by Edith Wharton. (Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.50.) Bath Norvell, by Randall Parrish. (A. C. McClurg and Company, Chicago, $1.0.) The France ef To-Day, by (Charles Scribner's Sons. 81.50.) Wild Animal Celebrities, by Ellen Velvin. (Moffat, Yard and Company. $1.00.) His Wife, by Warren Cheney. (The Bobbs: Merrill Company, Indianapolis. $1.50.) The Barothat of Elypholate, by Helen R. Martin (The Century Company. $1.50.) The Russian Fairy Book (T. ¥. Crowell and Company. $2.00.) A Deferred Opinion HEATRICAL M. GER: Do you think you are fully adequate to that scene? Great ACTRE I can tell better when my clothes come from the dress- maker. Barrett Wendell Ruin! R, BEETLE (the insurance solicitor) : You don’t mean to say you issued a policy to that centipede? Mr. Sprper (the agent jor the Insects’ Prudential): Why not? “Why, Spider, alive! we have to pay him $5,000 for every leg he loses! “A” SNOW BAWL” comicbooks.com