PAGE EIGHT TIE MICHIGAN DAILY
4PAIN THE WORLDJ OF BOOKS
SUNDAY, NOV. 1, 1906
Inte lectuCl Considers South A
Symbol Of Intolerant World
PARRISH,
Preoccupied With Man's,
Relationship To
Nature
DISNEY
Tells Harrowing Tale Of
. Gore, Gloom and Murder
Our Cousins, The English
Here is one of the amusing stories
told by Mary Ellen Chase, author of
Mary Peters and Silas Crockett, in
_her new book, This England.
-
COURTHOUSE SQUARE: Hamilton
Basso.
By LEON OVSIEW
In Courthouse Square the South
stands as a symbol of a world rife
purchase of the ruined old Legendre
mansion, the proudest remnant of the
town's former splendor. Spurred by
Pick Eustis and Dan Lamar the town
rises in revenge upon the effrontery
of the negro, and the defiance of the
DEATH IN THE BACK SEAT by
Dorothy Cameron Disney. Random
House. $2.
GOLDEN WEDDING, by
rish; (Harpers).
Anne Par-
with intolerance and hatred; of a Judge.
society ruled by prejudice and. steeped1 The problem set by the book may
in ignorance. It is a world which best be stated in Hamilton Basso'sl
has always hounded with a vindic- own words: "Are the legend and
tive cruelty those independent spirits memory of man to perish in a bog of
who have attempted to live life hon- mud and mire-the mud of intoler-
estly and beautifully, and have ex- ance, the mire of hate?" And his an-
pected the golden rule return from 3wer: "There is much talk of causes,
society. but in the babel of voices we forget
Such an idealist is David Baron- the only cause there is-the cause of*
dess, son and grandson of other man, himself."
Barondesses who stood armed against Here, then, is the problem of the
society in defense of their liberty as modern world's ills as seen and as
individuals to live by truth. But answered by an intellectual and an
Macedon, the South, the world de- idealistic liberal. For him both fas-
feated these men. Yet, disgusted cism and communism are unfree, in-
with the shallowness and the trivial tolerant, and full of hatreds. In
meannesses of New York, and ill in these directions man cannot expect
soul and spirit by the tragic acci- to discover truth and beauty in life.
dent which lost him his unborn child These are life-killing, leading man
and the love of his wife, David comes backward into those dark ages before
back to his native city, Macedon. fI-eason and idealism lighted the world.
An author of some reputation, he Man cannot live, cannot create a
plans to set to work upon the biogra- genuine civilization except that man
phy of his grandfather, Edward 3e free and at liberty to guide his
Barondess, who earned the town's life by these "stars" of reason and
undying hatred by fighting with the idealism, by beauty and by truth.
Yankee forces - because he believed This is a book to be read by those
in abolition, honestly and sincerely. Whowish a vivid and remarkably co-
In the family home on "Abolition gent expression of the solution that
Hill" out "in the country" of Mace- the social liberal has to offer to the
don, David is stirred and impassioned problems by which contemporary civ-
by the figure of his father, mentally ilization is beset. It is a vigorous re-
dead and spiritually beaten by the affirmation of the idealistic faith in
town's revenge. He had dared, as man's ability to develop strong and
Judge, to refuse to sentence an ille- clear-seeing individuality. It is an
gally convicted negro. honorable faith with a tradition that
In this Southern town, still living takes it straight back to Plato. But
as it does in the mental environment it is also an intellectual's faith, and
of the year eighteen sixty, David is no one better proves it than Basso
an intruder. Surrounded by enmity, himself. In this novel of the South
personified in Pick Eustis, the neu- which is so intimately concerned with
rotic sex-starved editor of the weekly 'he manifold problems of the slave
Macedon Mercury, Dan, Lamar, the population of the South, Basso can
grown-up town bully, and a "nigger offer nothing to the Negro except the
hater" of note, and Daisy Button- promise that he, and his fellow in-
wood, the gossiping social leader of tellectuals, will attempt to save them
Macedon, David is hurt and disgust- from the immediate harm offered
ed. Tense and nervous, he decides to "them by the intolerant and the hat-
leave the town at once. But the in- I(ng. To the Negro he offers nothing,
exorability of events makes escape tolerance he wants for himself. But
'impossible. to this reviewer the weakness of the
Alcide Fauget, the negro druggist book is its analysis. The problem must
who had saved the life of a white remain; is intolerance the cause of
child by a penknife operation and the breaking down of our liberal cul-
who had so gained a certain measure ture, or is it itself the effect of a
of patronizing recognition, had dis- deeper-lying cause, the economic sys-
played the temerity to negotiate, Lem? Of this problem Basso has
through Judge Barondess, for the, little to say.
IT IS possible that the author of
"The Perennial Bachelor and "All
Kneeling" has decided to write the
family saga to end all family sagas.
At any rate, Anne Parrish's Golden
Wedding has that effect.
Miss Parrish has, when she wants
By ARNOLD DANIELS
A young New York couple, vaca-
tioning in Crockford, Conn., drove in-
to New Haven on a rainy evening to
do a favor for their aristocratic oldl
landlady, and reached home with a
dead man in their rumble seat.
But the dead man had shaved off
his mustache a few days before, wore
Crockford, however, is not a typi- reader has a definite feeling that he Englishman, who had been on a rie
cal small town. Its people are as has helped in solving the crimes, and business trip to Canada and the
vicious as novelists usually make thus the book is more than ordinarily United States, invited me to a con-
them, and not particularly real. Small interesting. test. I was to write all the counties
towns in the East differ greatly from Miss Disney's style is pleasant, and of England which I knew, and he as
those in other sections. They have I easy to read. It flows along quite many as he could of the 48 states of
acquired a mellowness and candorI .the Union. Since I have spent much
which are charming, and every sec- I smoothly, and adapts itself readilym;
ond housewife is not a gossip. Age I to the problem of presenting the en-i ness is the teaching of English liter-
has added to the life of such towns a tire story through the mind of an in- ature, I necessarily know that Cum-
L+A±n Hisniav n.rnthv niUJ v hay tnllinnv t40Jtj *Jvfl :----n in- ns is the teachin o E n t
cel uain fulgilay. ^ l.Juluully Li1bi1Cy llaa
li
i .. ,
to use it, a razor-edged keenness, false glasses, and used an alias. And
with which she can penerate to the because Mrs. Coatesnash, their land-
core of whatever she inspects, and lady, and owner of Hilltop House, was
lay bare its faults-and virtues. In in Europe, it is impossible to discover
Golden Wedding she has substituted who the man really is. Into the rather
a type of Victorian procedure which, confused situation are projected Les-
ter Harkway of the Connecticut State
carried to excess. leads readers to -.
suicide. This is the constant habit
of referring everything to Nature. The
characters of Golden Wedding, the
sensitive ones, that is, are always
looking at our resembling butter-
flies, bees, daffodils and whatnot. The
other characters are forever ignoring
or misinterpreting these things.
It throws her study off center. She
is writing about a success. Her Dan
is the modern Midas who from youth
suffers from the slights he imagines
his poverty has brought him, and re-
sentfully determines to redress the
slights with the kudos money brings.
Everything he does makes money;
he foresees every panic, and' gets out
in time.
When agricultural machinery is the
best outlet, he forces the factory-
for which he works into making them.
He works the railroad racket, and he
foresees and utilizes to his ends the
motor car business. He ends up
fabulously rich, the keystone of an
arch, the separate stones of which
are the dependent members of his
own and every other family he has
touched.
But he has married Laura, and
Laura is one of those vacantly sensi-
tive girls who resents her husband's
preoccupation with business but de-t
;
Police, and John Standish, Crockford
Chief of Police. Then follow mur-
ders, attempted murders, howling
dogs and villians who chuckle at the
plight of their hapless victims.
It is all quite dramatic, and onf
too many occassions melodramtic.
For instance, "The door began to
close, slowly and deliberately as it
had opened. Fantastically, in the
darkness, I heard a low soft chuckle."
And what prevented the marauder,
who later turns out to be killer and
kidnaper, from adding, "You're in
my power, m'proud beauty." Animal
cupidity, perhaps.
But the plot is interesting, and
there is an ample supply of clues. By
using a smattering of animal cupidity
yourself, you may be able to solve the
numerous murders before the book is,
done. The young couple who are
drawn into the mess through no fault
of their own have a rather hard time
of it, however, Jack coming pretty
close to death once when his head is
bashed in by an unknown marauder.
There are many marauders in the
tale, most of them not unwilling to
commit mayhem of any sort, and
this helps keep up interest.
The two policemen who attempt to
solve the series of crimes-three mur-
ders, the cremation of a blooded mas-
tiff and a suicide in Paris-are treat-
pictured Crockford in an unfortu-
nate light. She has been distinctly
unfair.
Aside from this, the background is
well-suited to the plot. Hilltop
House is a huge, lonely mansion, with
30 dusty, dark unused rooms andI
three rooms which are used by Mrs.
Coatesnash and her companion,
Laura Twining. Early in the story,
this gloomy place is left empty and
deserted, and within it most of the
book's action is centered. There
Silas, the handy-man is brutally
beaten to death with a'kitchen chair,
and in the big refrigerator is found
the body of Franklyn Elliott. In the
old furnace is found a piece of bone
which proves.later to be all that re-
mains of Mrs. Coatensnash's pet mas-
tiff. And the crimes are finally solved
as the old mansion burns down.
Had not the plot been worked out
as well as it is, the solution might
tax the reader's patience and im-
agination. As it is, however, it
seems quite logical, and it makes one
wonder if these aren't pretty mad
days, because it carries with it a defi-
nite sense of reality.
"Death in The Back Seat" (modernf
America calls it the rumble seat) isl
unique in that the persons who solve
the mystery are, not brilliant de-
tectives, are not tough reporters, are
not retiring and scholarly, do not
breed scotties, do not smoke long,
perfumed cigarettes, and have not the
faintest idea of who the murderer is
until he commits -suicide under their
very noses. And this is as it should
be, because the case is a very com-
plex one, and the murderer is very
clever, and his motives are many and
varied.
r
3
telligent, emotional young woman. berland is in the Lake region, that
This, also, is unique in the mystery Stratford-on-Avon is in Warwick-
form of novel. The few weak points shire, and that Yorkshire does not
in the book are successfully out- protrude into the English Channel.
balanced by the good ones, and the My list of 30 out of the 39 English
result is entertaining. Probably you counties was somewhat less than
won't stop reading it once you have might- have been expected of me.
started, and that is the acid test. Since he had never been before in any
part of the United States, and since
his mission while there had had to
Best Sellers Of The Week do with New York business blocks, it
may be that his performance was ex-
GONE WITH THE WIND, Margaret plainable if not excusable. His list
Mitchell. Macmillan. $3. of nine out of 48 was as follows:
WHITE BANNERS, Lloyd C. Douglas. "L Vermont (which he pronounced
Houghton Mifflin. $2.50. with a French accent).
WHITEOAK HARVEST, Mazo De La 2. Susquehanna
Roche. Little, Brown. $2.50. 3. California
DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK, 4. Philadelphia
Walter D. Edmonds. Little, Brown 5. Ohigho
$2.50.-6. New York
ANTHONY ADVERSE, Hervey Allen. 7. Tex-ass
Farrar & Rinehart. $2. 8. Virginia
AN AMERICAN DOCTOR'S9.Ceaak"
ODYSSEY, Victor Heiser. Norton. Most of Miss Chase's stories are
$3.50. Y tmore complimentary to the English
than this one. She writes delightfully
LIVE ALONE AND LIKE IT, Marjorie of English characteristics, customs,
Hillis. Boobs-Merrill. $1.50. and places as she has seen them dur-
MAN THE UNKNOWN, Alexis Carrel. ing many visits in England.
Harper. $3.50.
WAKE UP AND LIVE, Dorothea
Brande. Simon & Schuster. $1.75. Forthcoming Books
AROUND THE WORLD IN ELEVEN
YEARS, by Patience, Richard and I FOUND NO PEACE by Webb Miller.
John Abbe. Stokes. $2.. Simon & Schuster. $3.50.
INSIDE EUROPE, John Gunther. I'M LOOKING FOR A BOOK, Amy
Harper. $3.50. Loveman. Dodd Mead. $2.
termines to be the good wife. Laura ed more kindly than is usually
has a gay father who drinks; a super- case. Standish, the small-town
sensitive brother who can't do any- tective, is a pleasant character,v
thing. Dan's father is slack, but his a lot of native common sense,
mother is a hard-bitten small town Harkway, of the State Police,i
business woman. His sister is a pleasant young chap, with
fool, but endurable. sharp wits hidden under a bulky
All these family stresses Miss Par- terior, rosy cheeks and a plea
rish studies. Dan is another of those habit of blushing at the right ti
Victorian capitalists. Laura spends -
her time being sensitive. And nothing
whatever happens, from page 1 to
page 343.
the,
de-
with
and
is a
very
ex-
asing
mes.
So many persons are placed under
suspicion, and so many reasonable
motives for murder are presented,
that only the reader, with his broad
perspective, has any notion of what
is really happening and any under-
standing of the significance of all the
clues. When the book has ended, the
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