Mrs. Fiske scored heavily as a playwright. There were two other one-act dramas from her pen—“The Rose” and “The Eyes of the Heart.” The latter made an excellent impression, but it was in “A Light from St. Agnes” that she stamped herself indelibly upon the season.
FOR BOOK LOVERS
By Archibald Lowery Sessions
Practical purposes served by stories of trade and commerce. Something more than entertainment. Among the interesting new books are “The Common Lot,” by Robert Herrick; “The Master Word,” by L. H. Hammond; “The Plum Tree,” by David Graham Phillips.
Spring has brought with it a multitude of gay volumes. American bookbinding has at last reached such a point that, whatever the nature of its contents, a novel may at least make an impression by its good clothes.
Trade stories almost overcrowd this brilliant assemblage. Of course, it is what might be expected of American commercialism, that our literature should open its doors to all phases of business and manufacture. Most of us feel particularly at home and in our element, as it were, when finding amusement for a leisure hour among mills or stock markets.
And these tales, like the Rollo books, impart much valuable information to the uninitiated. We can remember feeling a slight degree of impatience some years ago, when Mr. Hopkinson Smith gave us his careful demonstration of the building of stone piers in the pages of “Caleb West.” But in the end we recognized thriftily that he had given us, for the small price of the book, enough points to be available for carrying on an intelligent conversation with a stone mason; a decided addition to one’s accomplishments in those days of social misunderstanding.