+ Nation 111:276 S 4 ’20 350w
“They are typical of the kind of studied work in short-story writing which carefully applies principles of preparation, suspense, contributing effect, and climax, and never achieves the dynamic impulsion and the artistic inevitability of a directly told unpremeditated tale.”
+ − N Y Evening Post p20 O 23 ’20 360w
“This book will prove her to have advanced in her art. Mrs Martin is too good an artist to let the purpose obtrude itself. It is there, none the less, and it gives her book a permanent value aside from its quality as fiction.” Hildegarde Hawthorne
+ N Y Times p24 O 3 ’20 1550w Outlook 125:647 Ag 11 ’20 60w
“A broad vein of humor runs through the tales, but invariably there is a serious note at the ending.”
+ Springf’d Republican p5a Ja 23 ’21 140w Wis Lib Bul 16:195 N ’20 80w
MARTIN, HELEN REIMENSNYDER (MRS FREDERIC C. MARTIN). Schoolmaster of Hessville. *$1.90 (3c) Doubleday
20–16342
The schoolmaster of Hessville, a Pennsylvania Dutch village, was John Wimmer, fine and strong of character but with the cravings of youth in his young body. It was flesh calling to flesh that made him love Irene, the glowing beauty with the coarse instincts. She played cat and mouse with him and her wiles were finally responsible for John’s marriage to Minnie, Irene’s opposite. Minnie’s winsomeness never quite compensated John for Irene’s more sensuous charms and when a cruel accident deprives Minnie of her reason leaving John with two motherless children on his hands, the now, on her part, widowed Irene, offers her services as housekeeper and becomes John’s mistress. He has fallen an easy prey but in time his eyes are opened, and when a successful operation restores Minnie to him he blesses her breadth of view that can condone his lapse.