Life — March 19, 1925 — page 23: what you’re looking at

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

LOYD DELL’S new novel, “This Mad Ideal” (Knopf), was a dis- intment because it abandoned its heroine unbeautifully, leaving her headed for New York with lots of hope hat little money. It wasn't in Mr. Dell's artistic scope to do much better by Judith Valentine, since he began 1 her as such a little girl, standing gingham-gowned and elvish ona railway platform waving wistfully to the pas- Boston expresses which ever stopped at her native New Eng- land village. But, like Mr. Milne’s King, “I do like a little bit of butter to my bread,” and surely no harm would have been done by a short final chapter revealing Judith standing in a brocade moyen-age gown on the platform of Volian Hall reading from her world- famous poems to a swanky metropolitan ud The best we get is a be- tyeen-the-lines intimation that such a ene will come to pass. This Mad Ideal” is an interesting, if unexciting, contemporary American portrait, with the sex so soft-pedalled it there is no danger of its meeting the fate of “Janet March.” sengers of nee. HE YOUNG VISITERS” was all right in its way, whether Barrie did didn't write it, but it is the sort of ling of which one example will do quite nicely for any literary generation. Those who revel in the type of uncon- ious humor deriving from the at- tempts of the unsophisticated to paddle heyond their depths may find amuse- ment in “The Prince of Washington Square” (Stokes), the work of Harry V Liscomb, an alleged (as the careful newspaperman would word it) lad of It is written in the heroic manner of Horatio Alger, and the pub- hers have placed great faith in such aive nuances of style as “She intro- duced him to her socially prominent parents.” I doubt gravely whether its contemporary slang will mean as much tu students of the American language s the jacket predicts. ineteen, “\JAL SINESTRA,” by Martha Morton (Dutton), is the stuff which movies are—or, at least, used to he—made of. The author stops at nothing to get on with her story. The fatality hanging about Julie Gonzola and Martin Streele in the opening chapters can be cut with a knife, with- out the revelation that both of them have old grandfathers imprisoned in the third story of their respective domiciles. From the minute that Julie, loving Martin with a latent intensity peculiar to her Spanish-Hebrew antecedents, marries the patrician Floyd Garrison, the reader can lay odds on subsequent gunplay and bloodshed. What he may not expect is that Julie's hair will turn white overnight after a love scene with Martin; that the Garrison house will burn down in a few hours to end an argument; that rich friends will lose their money between chapters with no reference to their calamity; that four of the principals will turn up from different ends of the earth at the same spot in the Swiss Alps during a severe thunder-storm; that Martin will sud- denly suffer complete loss of memory four convenance; that Father Cabe will fall over dead at a strong state- ment made by Julie's son; that Julic Martin, will go back to New York and live happily ever after; that Martin will emerge as a famous painter, and not dead at all. Yet all of the fore- going comes true. And if that isn't hit- ting the high spots in narration, I don't know, as Nero said to Poppzxa, what is I ou are interested in the measure ments of your own mentality, you will find great diversion and some ex citement in “Brain-Tests” (Putnam), a book which John Monk Saunders a George Palmer Putnam have de as a counter-irritant to the crossword puzzle c There are forty-five tests in all, and their variety is such that can find out from them what kind ¢ witness you'd make, whether or not you're honest, how good you are at re solving disarranged letters, how quickly and accurately you can carry out di rections, what you can do with a pencil with your eyes shut, and so forth. I took “Brain-Tests” to a party the other evening and innocently displayed it (Continued on paye 30) MADGE, Y" DON'T MEAN T’ TELL ME YOU'RE MARRYING TH’ GU “YEAH. oO” prom SO 1 DECIDED TO LET 1 FOUND OUT HE DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH TO PAY ME F'R BRINGIN’ BREACH HIM DO THE RIGHT THING BY ME.” comicbooks.com