When the guardian and intended husband is dead, and the rejected lover is far away, the hero is subjected to trial and temptation, beset by dangers, marked for destruction by a lustful brute, neglected and hated by family connections. It is then that human interest of the deepest kind centres in the poor orphan girl Panna Anulka, whom we had condemned on account of her readiness to marry old Pan Gideon. We follow her fortunes then with painful attention and we rejoice when she is saved.
While “On the Field of Glory” is not, perhaps, so great a book as “Quo Vadis,” its atmosphere is purer, its store of love more tender and its portrayal of ancient manners and character apparently quite as faithful.
The Strange Story of the Quillmores. By A. L. Chatterton. Stitt Publishing Company, New York.
To write a novel which shall hold the reader with a strong and constant grip, and yet give him no love-story, is a feat not done by everyone that tries it. Mr. Chatterton tells no story of love, but I have not read many books that interested me more than “The Strange Story of the Quillmores.” Mr. Chatterton’s pictures of life are true to life: his men are the men who wear breeches—not impossible abstractions who say or do things which no human beings ever said or did. And his women are as real as his men.
Uncle I’ and his store, where the neighbors buy all sorts of things, from ham to coffins, and where a group of loafers and tattlers is generally on hand, are as well known to the reader as if he had been there. Uncle I’ must be a character taken from life. He is full of quiet humor, homely wisdom, sound common sense, manly courage and loyalty.
Old-fashioned Uncle I’, keeping his old-fashioned carry-all store, swapping stories and repartee with his old-fashioned neighbors, struggling heroically with his old-fashioned telephone, and with it all, living up to the best standards of honesty and usefulness—yes, Uncle I’ is a complete artistic success.
So is Doctor Gus. True, he reminds the reader, in a general way, of Ian Maclaren’s Scotch country doctor, but Doctor Gus is American, and he is stamped with sufficient individuality to make him a very live man to the reader.
What could be better than the old German woman, Mother Treegood? The chapter in which Mother Treegood comes to visit Uncle I’s wife, who is broken with grief on account of her dying daughter, is one that is worthy of Dickens. It has the heart-throb of human sorrow, human sympathy, human love.
I don’t know of anything more touching, in its simple unpretentious way, than the story of how Mother Treegood’s boys, the twins, ran away from home, and how one of them was drowned in the Ohio River, and was sent home for burial.
“My pretty boy was to our house brought, aber no one could him know—he was in the wasser—de water—so long—oh das Kalte, Kalte Wasser! so many, many days. I took more of the fever—und go out of my head—und so I never my Liebling seen again.”