The interest of the story centers about Laddie Macallister, an over-sensitive, introspective young man whose self-questionings and doubtings make him feel hopelessly adrift and unstable for all his solid foundation of a clean and honest manhood. We meet him first as newspaper correspondent for an English paper in Paris; later as literary secretary for a radical London weekly. The anchor, the “something-firm-to-cling-to” which he craves he finds in Janet Tring, daughter of a country squire and a singularly well-poised, straightforward bit of young womanhood. It is the character-drawing rather than the plot that is significant in the story. Some of the other characters that stand out are Laddie’s father, the country parson, whose mellow wisdom and dependable love for his son are the latter’s safe armor; Dermot Gill, the very odd, very lovable and very radical Irishman, whose friendship Laddie picked up en route; Janet’s cousin, the militant suffragette, proud of her prison record; and the wily newspaper woman whose vindictive designs on Laddie rebound from Janet’s good sense.
“The sentimentality of such fiction lies in its slavish worship of youngness—the mere state and act of being young, of muddling through youth.” H. W. Boynton
+ − Review 2:489 My 8 ’20 900w
“The story is lacking in form and consistency; the latter half, which tells the love story, has the greater driving force. The character of Laddie is, within limits, fairly clear and truthful. Mr Sadler’s method is psychological, but not unduly so, and the story of the partial love affairs which accompany his great love is done with some originality and insight.”
+ Springf’d Republican p11a Je 13 ’20 480w
SAFRONI-MIDDLETON, A. South Sea foam. *$2 (2c) Doran 919.6
20–18944
In “the romantic adventures of a modern Don Quixote in the southern seas” (Sub-title) the author has attempted to capture and hold for all times, some of the earliest “poetic babblings” of the children of nature of the South Sea islands before, with the advent of the missionary, “island mythology and heathen legends were sponged off the map of existence.” He has attempted to see the mysteries of nature with the eyes of the primitive man and, in retelling the legends of some old Polynesian chiefs, to remain as faithful to primitive conceptions as is possible to a sophisticated mind. The contents give glimpses of the author’s own adventurous youth in following the call of the “true poetry of life” and some of his island reminiscences in: Fae Fae; The heathen’s garden of Eden; In old Fiji; Kasawayo and the serpent; O Le Langi the pagan poet; An old Marquesan queen; Charity organization of the South Seas.