+ School R 28:315 Ap ’20 220w
BRACKETT, CHARLES. Counsel of the ungodly. *$2 (3c) Appleton
20–13703
When Peter van Hoeven, scion of an old and wealthy New York family, lost his fortune at the age of sixty-two, he determined to earn his living as a butler. Luck brought him into a newly rich family, mother and daughter, of whom the mother is exuberantly vulgar and the daughter sensitively aware of their short-comings. Jacob Smith, alias Peter van Hoeven, becomes Mary’s guardian angel and she relies on him and confides in him more and more. When it is subsequently discovered that Mary is not Mrs Davison’s daughter, as the long lost husband with the real daughter turns up, Peter resolves to adopt Mary as his niece, trumping up a story of a lost brother Richard whose daughter she is. That she really is his niece becomes probable later. He now makes himself known to his family to whom he introduces his niece. He also undertakes to cure her of an undesirable love affair by first engineering her into and then out of an engagement by ungodly counsel. As the right fellow is waiting just around the corner it all ends well.
“Light and fairly amusing.”
+ Booklist 17:70 N ’20
“It is a delightful atmosphere into which you are led in this swiftly moving story, where almost every one is pleasant to know.”
+ Lit D p92 O 23 ’20 1550w
“The author’s flexible style and skill in drollery, distinctly above the average, makes one regret that he has not employed his literary ability in a less inconsequential plot.”