The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, April 24, 1904, Page 6

JSpring Fiction of Good Timber OW ‘that the spring freshet of fiction welling through the channels already worn smooth by the floods that have gone be- fore and the publishers tell us he highwater mark for the { this season of the year has ached and passe it is mot without profit to take a g e of what has been given us to read and en- Geavor to ascertain the character of the fiction which will be the output for the ye Though the publishers aver that t are the ones that c t h fr the practica et profits uct of the American not f a strong, 1 vogue notewc strength carry w's ““The the first wnd strongest b eason, has the powerful ¢ the tobacco belt of Virginia. “Tillic, a Mennoni Helen R. M s book, velops the Pennsylva Dutch coun- try. Elliot Crayton McCants has rolinas In chosen the for his Hilis Henderson Rose ¥ Young, has Missouri for its theater The Rainbow Chasers” of John H Whitson is a strong e of nsas Thus the tale of the story of sectional setting runs. The novel of affairs tics, promotion business poli- and speculation—has not had such representative exponents as it did in the year t. Norris' “The Pit." i Henry Lewis' “Th ’ Brand Whitlock’s “The Thirteenth Dis- trict” have mot been equaled by Spearman's The Close of the Day Brady's “The Cor- per in Coffee” or Robert Shack ton's “The Great Adventurer The story of bull i bear, as the story of politics, has its limitations. It would seem that all the opportunities which these cl. fon present y thoroughly have been ex r must depart as a and that the passing fancy vogue The historical novel, despite all of the prophecies of the wise ones, is with us yet. True probably reached its heyday with We s rare tales and the romances of Conan Doyle, Edward B . et A Mary Johnston’s powerful tale of the Spanish main, “Sir mer,” must in itself demonstrate that there is yet some good that can come out of the hallowed past. Besides her ctory the indefatigable Crockett has furnished another Scottish tale under the cap- tion “Strong Mac”; Josephine Caroline Sawyer has harked back to chivalr for I's Fair in Lov Robert elier,” by Wi m Dea Orcutt, deals with the period of dis ery in Amer- jcan history, “Order No. 11" is Caro- line Abbot Stanley’s vivid tale of the Civil ‘War. The historical novel has evidently builded for itself a place mn our fiction of mo vcrv evanescent a character. It undoubtedly fills a void in the scheme of almost every reader’s literary appreciation, for, when well written—save the mark when it is not —it is something to awaken the imag- ination to healthy activity. There is one class of fiction which seems to be taking a mew lease of life unto itself and that is the fiction of mystery, of the cabalistic and the im- aginative. Within the last three months there have been published three rat- tiing good detective stories, to say nothing of the reincarnation of Sherlock Holmes in one of the weeklies Then Bram Stoker has glven us “The Jewel of Seven Stars,” certainly a book cal- culated to make one afraid to look be- hind his chair while reading it; John Carling has written “The Viking's Skull,” grisly enough; “When It Was Dark,” Guy Thorne's book, has a title suggestive of its story. All of these tales have a wealth of imaginative power and strength of invention which must make them favorites with the readers. Judging from this strong re- vival of the school of Poe, Wilkie Col- line and Gautler, it wourd not be a wild venture to predict that the present year is going to witness a distinct ad- vance into favor again of this fascinat- Jing style of literature. The year is too youpg yet to permit ©of an essay at the quality of the fiction which is to be given us. With London and John Fox away at the seat of war, Mark Twain rusticating in Italy, and the ranks of the writers thinned by the untimely deaths of Gissing, Guy Wet- more Carryl and Henry Seton Merri- man, some of the burden of amusing the great reading public must fall upon new and untried shoulders. The pres- ent season has been marked by = greater number of mew authors who have “broken in” to fiction than ever before. Ezra Brudno's name appears for the first time upon & book which has been one of the notable ones of the spring season—“The Fugitive.” Eliza- beth Miller, another mew comer, has written something promising in “The Yoke.” [Ellen Glasgow, heretofore somewhat obscure and mot altogether pleasing in her morbid psychological stories, has shown by “The Deliver- ance” that she is now in a firm place and a writer to be counted upon for sterling work. All in all, the book year of 1904 has opened auspiciously. A story which may well be taken as representative of the eminently satis- factory character of the ~pring tiction is the one mentioned in the foregoing introduc Y paragraphs, “The Rain- bow Chasers,” by John H. Whitson. By his first book, “Barbara, a Woman of the West.” Mr. Whitson gave prom- ise of doing good Western story, but his in the typical latest story has nd the mark of that promise; as vigorou alwart, a story of the plains as any similar novel writ- ten pting neither those of Owen of Hamlin Garland. It has g, pulsing life to it and a cer- tain fine reflection of the largeness and fruitfulness of the country it depicts which make it & story that holds not only through incident but by its at- mosphere. Whitson lays the opening scenes of his story in the great woods of Arkan- sas. Dick Brewster, a young hotheaded giant, is forced into a murderous quar- rel with the county buily through his love for a weak little comel ced girl: a fight ensues. Dick believes that he is guilty of his rival's murder and soon finds himself sentenced to a life im- prisonmen Through the kindly offices of a fellow-prisoner in his place of tem~ porary detentfon the young hero es- capes from jail and immediately sets forth to lose himself in the “Nation,” where no questic are ed of any man. It is in following the ensuing fortunes of Dick Brewster that the au- thor puts his tale into the great, broad swing of the Western prairies. Dick is whirled into the great land boom which swept over Western Arkansas twenty years ago, and there in the hurry and rush of this wild life of speculation on the wind-swept prairies Dick Brewster, under an assumed name, tries to live down the biot which he feels te be tar- nishing his soul. It is not until he has gzined the the daughter of the very Judge who sentenced him that the gathering shadow of exposure at the hands of a rascally fellow who love of had recognized him is suddenly dis- pelled by the confession of the man whose steaithy knife thrust had put the stamp of murder upon the hero. With Dick Brewster freed from all blot and stain and happy in a true love the story e In delineation of cowboy charac- ter Whitson is particularly happy. Jim Prethro, the squaw man and roving son of the plains, is a refreshingly breezy individual—true cowboy, a type which has been greatly contorted and exaggerated in recent fiction. he is pic- tured by Whitson with none of the hackneyed fantasy of drawing that has made the genus a modern harlequin in many recent books. In stirring inci- dent the story is not lacking. The fight between Brewster, Prethro ard his squaw, squatting behind their broncos, and the desperadoes under Stone Face is intensely vivid and thriliing with dramatic force. The well-drawn pic- ture of the blizzard is another feature which makes this story one of sus- tained interest. (Little, Brown & Co., Boston; f{llus- trated; price $1 50.) “Darrow Enigma” Is a Thriller IVEN six persons sitting in a darkened room of a peaceful sum- mer’s evening, but one exit from that room is open and within plain view of all, every window but one is closed and that exception is raised a few inches only; suddenly one of these persons’leaps to his feet with the wild cry that he has been stabbed and within three minutes ke is dead, with only a slight scratch upon the neck to show where the assassin’s blow fell; how would you solve that mys- tery? That is the puzzie offered in the opening chapters of -“The’ Darrow Enigma,” by Melvin Severy. Surely no detective story ever had a more striking inception. Even the bloody word “Rache,” which gave the only clew to Sherlock Holmes in his “Study in Scarlet” was something more tangi- ble and ready of explanation than this sudden murder dropped into the midst of a room full of people. A detective story, when it is good, is a strong tonic to the satiated taste of the omnivorous reader. The unraveling, bit by bit, of a seemingly inexplicable mystery, the clever inductive reasoning which builds up from trivial circum- stances a convincing scheme of proof, the false clews, the blind gropings after lost threads in the mystery which keep the reader nerved up to a tension—these are the charms of the detective story which have fascination. “The Darrow " is ome of . It is well ‘written in the main, an interest very evenly sustained and a denoue- ment startling in its sudden subversion THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. ot ali the reader's anticipations, is as satisfying a tale of mystery and its solution as the most insistent disciple of Gaboriau or Conan Doyle could wish fo There js one feature of the story vhich the author might have omitted with vrofit and that is the somewhac wearisome incident about the unpleas- a Rama Ragobah, the bloodthirsty Brahman who was just itching to re- venge himself' for the love that was stolen from him. With long excerpts from native Indian testimony concern- ing this same precious Ragobah and with accounts of impraobable hypnotic influences the author wanders a con- siderable distance from his story and can only get back again by the very timely and highly convenient *suicide of his Brahman. With his detective away from the mysterious East. how- ever, and working out a very intricate synthetical solution to_ the problem, Severy is far more sat{sfactorys The climax of the story is meet recompense for the lag in the Indian evisode. (Dodd, Mead & Co., New York; illus- trated; price $1 50.) . A Somber Eudy of Human Hearts Y some indefinable lack H. A. B Mitcheil Keays' novel “He That Eateth Bread With Me” falls just short of being a very ‘powerful book. Perhaps it is that the reader is repelled by the very unusual de- velopment of the plot—revoited might be a word more specific—and is thus prejudiced against recognition of the strength and the tremendous didactic spirit with which it is instinct. Per- haps, this very plot concept seems 80 unnatural, so opposed to all one ex- pects to find in human nature, that it fails to convince. For herein the author gives us a woman, divorced, who sees her husband marry again and become apparently enthralled by the charms of his new love, yet who keeps a place for him in her suffering and shamed heart as steadfastly as if he were yet hers, and is willing, nay happy, to de- light in that man’s vagrant affection when he brings it remorsefully back to his first hearthstone. Out of this situa- ticn the author makes undeniably strong material, she develops the emo- ticnal strength and intellectual strug- gles inherent with a wonderful vigor, but her very premises seem strained. Has the woman no pride that she should welcome this erring affection, come back at second hand? Has any man of the least modicum of moral strength the absolute lack of honor that will prompt him to such a. servile fawning as this man of Keays’ story? Yet it must be admitted that even with this outre order of things the story has the power to impel the sympathetic at- tention of the reader so mightily that it is only when the last page is turned that he pauses and seeks to discover just what that thing is which has made this book fail of real worth. Upon the order of some of Hall Caine’s novels is ‘“He That Eateth Bread With Me,” in that }u whole tenor is one of terrible tragedy—the tragedy of grief sitting in the heart night by night without surcease. Caine sought in “The Manxman” to ply the fiery whips of the nemesis born of a love beyond ‘the law; in this novel Keays pictures the tragedy of an illicit love sanctioned by the divorce court. ‘With terrible earnestness there is por- trayed the agony of a wife forsaken and the bitter regrets of the husband penitent. The high, spiritual tone' of the wife’s affection,” which-sees in a AR DR i MRl e i R4 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THREE SPIRITED STORIES OF THE DAY A o marriage vow an oath taken onee and forever, leads her to keep green the love of her basband; the calls of flesh and ‘blood which lea thg) hus- band iaway are strong for the gnoment only and then fall before thékhigher beck @f the soul.. This is a renjfirkable study of the primzl instincts in“human- ity which the author makes here. The contest between the spiritual and the fleshly she bodies forth with a search- ing penetration. The chastening of the soul by the promptings of the heart is the ehange worked in both the man and the woman of this story. The story has a lesson tc teach. This object of its being negatives any province of mere amusing, for it can- not amuse. The book is a2 moving one: a.harrowing one it may be to those of tender sympathies;, it is written with a keen, nervous energy; but yet there is still_that jarring note. (McClure, Phillips & Co., New York; price $1 50.) Notew;;thy Boolk on Trade Abuses HARLES W. SMITH, a noted English writer on economic and financial topics, somé months ago addressed a polemical letter to Mr. Chamberlain denouncing his new protection scheme and attributing the British financial troubles, not to free trade, but solely to the gambling propensities that have been so exten- sively developed among financial men during the past few decades, which have led to wild struggles in gambling in “futures,” or the buying and selling of hypothetical goods without any tan- gible security. This letter was ignored by Chamberlain, so the author has published it in book form, with numer- ous addenda and appendices, together with outlines of the laws of various countries relating to such speculations. Dealing in futures is not, as some are inclined to believe, a modern method of gambling. Smith quotes M. Vercamer, a celebrated French writer on econom- ics, who has shown in his book on “Gambling on ’'Change and Term- Transactions” that the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Romans and Greeks in- dulged in it to an exfent that rendered legislative interference necessary, and he quotes copious extracts from the Justinian Code and the writings of Cicero and Tacitus referring to the an- cient methods of suppression, that show a wide grasp of the perniciousness of the vice. But' to-day the evil has reached enormous proportions, and is seriously imperiling the commerce of the leading nations. Smith very plaus- ibly Shows that the decline of certain English industries and the depression in the cotton manufacturing centers are, to a considerable extent, if not en- tirely, due to gambling in futures after the manner of those exchange manipu- lations that recently landed Sully and his New York associates in serious financial embarrassments. There can be no doubt that the run- ning up of values of commodities like wheat, copper, irom, tin or cotton to figures altogether out of proportion to those required by the simple economic laws of supply and demand must be far reaching in its economic effects. Neither the producers nor the consum- ers are benefited in the least de- gree by the exchange manipulations, they are purely settled as “differ- like the insurance on overdue ships or bets on horse races. Their ef- fects on trade are generally exceeding- 1y complex. . The iniquities of this canker in commercial circles are becoming recog- nized\ by the more enlightened econo- mists and politicians, and many en- deavers are being made ' to remedy Freshet - of - Ficho By ROBERT W. RITCHIE * them by legislative means. The vari- ous anti-trust bills in England and this country are aimed at one form of the cornering game; but not the worst. The monopolization of the steel, oil, light and fuel markets and of the shares in railway and ship owning corporations that provide the sole means of transportation between larze populations and which lead .to the continuous fieecing of the people pro- duce evily that are patent to every one. Their extent, however, is insignificant in comparison to that produced by the correring of the raw products: of the manufacturing industries and of the various metals and foodstuffs by e change gainblers, and it is a singul. fact, as & h points out, that, al- though every nation excepting Amer- lca and Creat Britain possesses strong enactments against gambling in fu- tures, these two leading nations of the Gay ovenly suffer the flagrant prac- tice of what Is clearly a most sub- sive and denressive hindrance to nmercial expansion. The' author beliaves that this per- nicious evil is suscentible of easy cur- tailment or even comblete suppres- sion by simple means and he. asserts the opinion that all a government has to do is to enact that bear operations of fictitious' dealings are illegal and that all exchange gambling’ “differ- ences” are irrecoverable at law, like horse - race gambling debts. Then trade will quickly regain normal healthy conditions. Smith exhibits a_good mastery of polemical advocacy and treats his sub- ject in a strenuous, convincing man- ner. His work contains a large amount of matter -that throws a new light upon various economic issues relating to the effects of the cornering of mar- kets and industries. It will afford in- terest to those who seek to follow the latest developments in the higher branches of economic and :financial legislation and are desirous’'of gain- ing a clear insight into the stupend- ous, far-reaching revolutions in finan- cial methods now in progress in Eng- land that the followers of Chamber- lain are so vigorously endeavoring to oppose. (P.\S. King & Son, 2s 6d.) When a Monarch Girds the Globe HEY carried’ the royal Hawaiian standard in a little tin box, timor- ously, modestly. When they thought that they might not be snubbed they hoisted it te the masthead and stood in Napoleonic pose, while the thunder of the nation's warships did them honor. They dined with Emper- ors and Princes, or else they took their meals at a restaurant when invitations were not forthcoming. They were given audience by the Pope and back talk by a Philadelphia jehu. Of this, and wauch more ,that is overflowing with a rich humor and genial fun, read in Willlam: N. Armstrong’s reminiscences of King Kalakaua's toug of the world. He calls it ““Around the Wbrld With a King.” ‘There were his Majesty himself, black as a hatter and a genlal good fellow; Colonel Judd, Lord High Chamberlain; Mr. Armstrong, Minister of State— worthy officials both—and Robert, an ex-German Baron, then™ serving as valet to the royal person. This was the imposing muster of notables that set forth from the balmy isles of the Pa- cific to recéive the homage of an awe- struck world. But they were not so sure of the homage adjunct to “their “But because our eountry was only a few dots or elevations in the Pacific London; price Ocean, an msignificant affair so far as ® royal territory went, we modestly an- ticipated no royal receptions. If the monarchs, the brothers of my royal master, gave him a brief audience and shook his hand it would be, we thought, after the manner of rich and powerful men who greet an obscure relation by extending two fingers of the hand, and, if genmerous, serve him some refuse meat in a side chamber. We were ready to be satisfied if we recelved the slightest greeting, and in order to avoid embarrassment had our incognito dress at hand, so that we ceuld quickly jump into it.” ‘What befell this cavalcade of royalty the author recounts with amusing frankness. Sometimes they were snubbed or merely overlooked. Coun- tries which had a “friendly interest”— rare diplomatic term that—in the af- fairs of the Hawaiian state vied with one another to do the dusky monarch honor. In Japan he was entertained by the Emperor as 2 mark of personal regard. China didn’t know that such a person as Kalakaua I existed—official- ly that is, and hesitated not to mani- fest that ignorance. Edward VIL, then Prince of Wales, took the royal visitor at his true worth and made him the lion of the social swim during his stay in England. Germany, Spain and Portugal all accorded him generous hospitality. Without hurt to the memory of.this last of a kingly race, Mr. Armstrong’ livens his narrative with a sly lifting of the curtain from off royalty, show- ing the childlike naivete and the old foibles of his late royal master. When he was doubtful about his reception Kalakaua was very near common born democracy; when he was all aglow with the lavish blandishments of a fellow. monarch the Hawailan King could carrv the mien of Olympian Jove. The idea of the divine right of kings impressed him as being just the thing to fill a long-felt want in Hawaii, Kings’ playthings in uniform delighted him as a child. This part of the au- thor's story, this good natured dissec- tion of a monarchial ego, is the best part of a good book. (F. A. Stokes & Co., illustrated.) Present Needs of Philippines New York; HE Philippines and Far East,” by Homer C. Stuntz, is one of the latest works dealing with the American occupation of the islands and some of the more important political questions arising from their retention. _ The author is a missionary in the Philippines, attached to the Methodist church. He writes with strong religious bias, and devotes a large portion of the (X3 book to eulogies of the various Protestant missions and denunciations of their inveterate opponents, the vriests and friars of the Roman Catho- lic church, who have long been settled in the islands, and are now actually feeling the effects of the competition of the hustling Proteetant missionaries, and the Filipino Catholic church that is advancing to the front under the leadership of Aglipay and other apos- tate Roman Catholic priests. Notwith- standing these palpable defects, the work is not without considerable In- terest to the general reader. The book opens with a general ac- count of the islands, their history and people. Then follow chapters relating to the Roman church, the friar land question, the resources of the islands, the government and financial Institu- tions, commerce and international re- lations. Stuntz puts in his best work when dealing with problems relating to the education of the natives. It was clearly - recognized by the early American officials that the Philippines can only become satis- factorily civilized by means of = thoroughly efficient system of stats education; but as there are over seven- ty different tribes in the islands, speak- ing as many different tongues, the educatignal problems were unusually cemplex and difficult. The author, however, belleves that the Government has grappled with them in a most capa- ble manner and he pays a tribute to the system of state schools that has been successfully introduced. There are now over eight hundred American . teachers in the Philippine state schools, and they are ably assist- ed by 3000 Filipino teachers, who were especially prepared for the work. The primary schools number 2000, and they have a dally attendance of more than 200,000 native children. Visitorg to the R Sslands now find that wherever the American school teacher has carried on his good work, more natives speak or understand English than Spanish, and it is only a question of a few more years when a man may travel through every island in the group and converse with the natives everywhere in Eng- lish. In a work ostensibly written with a view to forwarding the operations of the Protestant missionaries and par- ticularly those of the church in which the author is employed, it may be ex- pected that those who do not follow religious affairs will come in for eriti- cisgn as well as the church's ecclesias- tical opponents, 1In the chapter de- voted to an enumeration of the diffi- culties confronting mission work the reader will find the author scoring the American residents in Manlla in the most caustic language he can com- mand. Stuntz’'s vehemence here de- feats his object. (Jennings & Pye, Cincinnati; fllus- trated; price $1 75.) Facts Retouched to Make Fiction LAS! fine feathers do not make fine birds, nor rare bookbinder’s craft a good novel. “Robert Cave- lier,” a romance of Sieur de La Balle by William Dana Orcutt, is per- fect as to tasty illustrations, delicate decorative headings and fine type upon heavy watermarked paper, but the story itself—that is not much. The au- thor says that the life of the famous explerer is in itself a romance which needs little embellishment to become a narrative of the utmost fascination. He therefore proceeds to add here and there a little of this unnecessary em- bellishment, alway$ with a careful eye to - the records of the historians—too careful, indeed, to make for unity in his story—with the result that he gives us something which is neither good fiction nor good history. Mr. Orcutt must have realized when first he sat him down to his task that even a few years from the busy life of La Salle contained so much of inci- dent and so varied a fleld of activity that the narrow confines of one story could scarce bring out of it all an un- broken thread of unity. Either he must take the' heroic figure of La Salle and weave about it a romance which took not too assiduous note of historical fact, or he must endeavor to build upon facts a superstructure of romance which should bend to the conformities of story structure. Orcutt elected to do the latter, and he has failed of mak- ing a good story by just the measure of his inabifity to fit the rules of fic- tion to the recountal of facts of his- tory. The raison d'etre of a romance of La Salle must be the compelling in- terest in his explorations along the Mississippi; that is what singles him out from all the other worthies of New France and not the fact that he was at outs with the Jesuits or that he was a commander of troops under Frontenac. The epic significance of his fearless journeyings through path- less wildernesses and down waters which had known the keel of no white man’s boat is what should be the key- note and the predominating strain through all of Orcutt’s story; that IS the Story in any romance of La Salle’s life. Yet in this novel the French voy- ager’s journeys of exploration into the Mississippi country are treated only as incidents; the account of his rather colorless experiences at the court of Louis Quatorze is given more attention than his second expedition into the Illinois country and his final discovery of the Father of Waters. Instead of devoting the whole of the stofy to the fascirating romance of exploration, of bold advarices into the darkness of the unknown, and the grappling with grim powers of nature, the author prefers to make those things incidental merely to a very commonplace story of true love under difficulties. From his too earnest desire simply 1o embellish the marvelously romantie annals of La *y's life, Orcutt has sacrificed every canon of story telling as has been hinted above. So closely does he stick to the absolute chron- ology of the events in the life of his hero that at times the thread of his story has to be suddenly dropped until its central figure can go off and per- form some deed which history says he performed on that day and month. He goes to France and Versailles. not be- cause his going develops any crueial situation in the story, but evidently because history declares that he did so do. After reading Orcutt’s “Robert Cav- elier” one cannot but be sorely disap- pointed, for he must feel that the author has sadly overlooked opportu- nities for a really fine story. (A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago; lllus- trated in color; price $1 50.) e it New Books Received. A WOMAN'S WILL, Anne Warner; Little, Brown & Co., Boston; {llus- trated; orice $1 50. BY THE GOOD SAINT ANNE, Anna Chapin Ray; Little, Brown & Co., Boston; price $1 25. WHERE THE TIDE COMES IN, Lucy Meacham Thurston; Little, Brown & Co., Boston; illustrated; price $1 50. THE STORY OF KING SYLVAIN AND QUEEN AIMERB, Margaret Sher- wood; the Macmillan Company, New York; illustrated. STONY LONESOME, Arthur J. Russell; Rand, McNally & Co., Chi- cago; illustrated; price $1. EVEN THY ALTARS, G. J. F'.; tke Nunc Licet Press, Philadeiphfa; price 75 cents. Gtam CHARLES KING HIS LATEST SUCCESS. A Knight of Columbia. An Intensely Interesting Story of Columbia College aand the War. . NEW YORK €ITY