“The book is a statesmanlike consideration of the present status of affairs in Ireland and of the most pressing needs of the unhappy isle, and a masterly plea for fair play, friendliness, tolerance, and justice on both sides of the Irish channel.”
| + − | N. Y. Times. 12: 414. Je. 29, ’07. 1410w. | |
| + | Outlook. 86: 742. Ag. 3, ’07. 1680w. |
“From the beginning to the end of his book there is hardly a chapter in which he does not either shut his eyes to palpable facts, or at least regard them through some distorting medium of national prejudice, with the result that, however well intended his advice, it will scarcely commend itself to those who have given calm consideration to the Irish problem.”
| − − + | Spec. 98: 290. F. 23, ’07. 2020w. |
During, Stella M. Disinherited; with a frontispiece by Paula B. M. Himmelsbach. †$1.50. Lippincott.
7–20512.
Set in England this story with its tangled threads and continuous action shows how an inheritance proved a pitfall. A naive, unconscionable girl marries the gouty old Sir Peter—of a less irascible temperament, tho in many points not unlike Sheridan’s Sir Peter—and does it to save herself from the battle for bread. After the sudden death of Sir Peter a daughter is born, and the mother, finding that the bulk of the estate had been willed to a nephew, begins a long series of sham proceedings which, to hold the property for herself, require that the child be brought up as a boy. At sixteen the child takes things into her own hands, apparently drowns, reappears as a twin sister who, so the fiction ran, had for family reasons been sent to California in infancy, restores to the cousin his property, falls in love with this cousin, and, heart-broken because it is not returned and because she has all thru life served only as her mother’s tool, drowns herself. Plot and counter-plot abound.
“The ultra crudities of the opening, where Avice makes her entrance into society, so little prepare the reader for any display of ingenuity that the latter absurdities prove a rather welcome relief.”
| − + | Nation. 85: 79. Jl. 25, ’07. 220w. |