"KAISER BACK TO THE FRONT."
(Attempted illustration to a recent poster of the evening press.)
At one time, I hope for ever gone, Mr. Percy White's sense of irony ran away with him. He seemed to have said to himself, "I can write witty dialogue and I have a shrewd eye for foibles, and if you are not satisfied with that you can take it or leave it." I for one took it, but always with a feeling that he was offering me a sparkling wine of a quality not first-rate, whereas with a little more trouble and expense he could have offered me an unimpeachable brand. Now that Cairo (Constable) has provided me with what I have been waiting for, I am more than delighted to present my acknowledgments. Mr. White's subject is pat to the moment; moreover it is handled with such unobtrusive skill that one absorbs a serious problem without being anxiously conscious that all the play of intrigue and adventure is covering a much deeper motive. When Mr. White sent Daniel Addington to Egypt to meet Abdul Sayed, who had been at Oxford and was a leader of the Young Egyptian party, he gave himself a chance of which he has taken full advantage. It is true that Addington cried a pest on all politics as soon as he fell a victim to the charms of Ann Donne, a widow of excessive sprightliness; but by that time he was too deeply enmeshed in the nets of intrigue to escape the just reward of those amateurs who dabble with critical situations. Abdul regarded him as a "milksop," and so he was from Abdul's full-blooded point of view; but I can also see in him a fresh testimony to the courage of our race. For he married the widow Ann, and that was a very plucky thing to do.
The only thing that I didn't like about Molly, My Heart's Delight (Smith, Elder) was the title. But to allow yourself to be put off by this will be to miss one of the pleasantest books of the season. What I might call true fiction has always held a peculiar charm for me. In the present work that clever writer, Katharine Tynan, has been lucky and astute enough to find an ideal heroine, ready made to her hand, in the person of the charming woman who married Dean Delany. Upon the basis of her diaries and letters the romance has been built up, with the excellent result of a blend of art and actuality that is most engaging. Molly is the gayest of creatures in her girlhood. We see her character develop gradually, tamed and half broken by her unhappy first marriage (an episode exquisitely treated, so that even the ugly side of it bears yet some precious jewels of charity and long-suffering), tried in the fire of romantic adoration, and finally reaching its appointed destiny in the comradeship with "kind, tender, faithful D.D." Lovers of diaries and memoirs, equally with those who like a graceful tale well told, will find what they want here, from the moment when its heroine goes, a girl-bride, to the romantically gloomy house of Rhoscrow, to that other moment when the placid mistress of the Deanery hears of the death of Bellamy, the man whom all her life she really loved. This book of Molly should be a "heart's delight" to many.
"ARIZONA BILL VIOLATES TREATIES."—New York Times.