Deming, Philander. Story of a pathfinder. **$1.25. Houghton.
7–17047.
In this volume Mr. Deming “gathers up some loose threads of autobiography and romance.... The six chapters or sections are chiefly reprints from ... periodicals. Opening with an account of his rise to the dignity and emoluments of a court stenographer, Mr. Deming goes on to relate how he wrote his first successful story, then gives a few tastes of his quality as a narrator of fiction, and concludes with another bit of autobiographic reminiscence.”—Dial.
“His style, easy and conversational, is attractive; and the plots of his tales, which have the touch of real life, are ingenious without being involved, and all end with a fine-conceived and unexpected stroke that pleasingly caps the already well-developed climax.”
| + + | Dial. 43: 19. Jl. 1, ’07. 330w. |
“After reading his little volume, full of unobtrusive sincerity and penetrated with that sort of poetry which marks the evening of certain lives, one feels in contact with one of those rare personalities which give biography its chief charm.”
| + + | Lit. D. 35: 97. Jl. 20, ’07. 400w. |
“Although written at a much later date, both his stories and preface bear rather the impress of the fifties than of the postbellum newspaper world. It is the atmosphere of Greeley’s Memoirs, with all the mildness and restraint of what might be called the middle Victorian period in American fiction.”
| + | Nation. 84: 568. Je. 20, ’07. 170w. |