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ROOK REVIEWS
THE WHEEL OF LIFE.
Doubleday, Page & Co.
The iconoclast is one with whom we have little
sympathy—far be it from us to pull down where
we would build up,—at the same time, we are
frank to say we cannot subscribe to general opinion
simply because it is that. “The Wheel of Life”
is Miss Ellen Glasgow’s best book. We grant that.
But that it is the great book it is claimed, we are
not so fast to agree. There are points which take
away from an otherwise highly finished work. The
four distinct groups of characters are rather many,
seeing that one at least bears little relation to the
others; and the very style of high-sounding phrase
ology lauded by some becomes at times a little
difficult without close attention.
We have no desire to criticise, but simply rather
to dissent from a universality which appear to us too
easily satisfied. And this we must do, even though
it leave us as lonely as was Laura Wilde in the
house of her family; a family, by the way, extra
ordinary, to put it most mildly, in its makeup. Un
cle Percival who in our first meeting delivers him
self of a remarkable string of worldly wisdom, and
thereafter lapses into a senility as painful to
the reader as to himself, is hardly less trying than
the aunt in the closed room above; and we can
never turn us toward the house in Gramercy Park
wherein the divine Laura erects the altar to which
all the men of the story bring their offerings with
out a sense of the decay and futility of all things
earthly. That picture of the aunt pacing up and
down, back and forth, endlessly in her self-appoint
ed cloister, and eating her heart out with shame
over the one mistake of her youth, is a most un
necessary blot on the canvas. Laura’s home was
an unfortunate one to place a heroine, though she
might have been as self-centered anywhere else.
Connie is another difficult creation. And Adam’s
goodness may be a little overdrawn. His high char
acter, which sets him apart, is hard to reconcile with
the attraction existing between himself and Kemper,
and between him and Bridewell. That he is one of
the finest characters in modern fiction, will hardly
be disputed, but how such a high culture can exist
in such environment and continue to grow upward
and lift others with it, rather staggers the compre
hension. That so fine a soul should find its best in
Laura, the disappointed and irresponsible, appears
but the final crucifixion of one born to suffering.
It is a fine story, could the author have waited a
year before giving it permanent form. At the end
of that time she would doubtless have seen that
it could have been told in less than five hundred
pages, and even with something left out altogether.
AT THE EMPEROR’S WISH. .
D. Appleton & Co.
Oscar King Davis, the war correspondent, has
written a most delightful little Japanese story,
which he gives the suggestive title of “At the Em
peror’s Wish.” “The Emperor’s law reaches ev
erywhere and touches everything,” the heroine,
O-Mitsu-san, reminds her Samurai lover; but what
so sensibly impresses the reader is the devotion of
his people, regardless of caste o" “’ondition—his
Excellency’s wish is law, and to abide by it the high
est honor and happiness his loyal subject can know.
Eta, or Samurai, it is the same; individual will or
preference there is none, but to be chosen for the
Emperor’s service, even if it mean certain death,
is the very height and sum of a young Japanese’s
ambition, and the fulfillment of the best that his
parents have had in their dreams for him. The joy
of this parental offering is the most touching trait
of the national character, particularly, as set forth
in the story, in the Eta, the outsast, whose lot has
been a hard one, indeed, until the edict of the Em
peror which shook off his shackles and restored him
From an Unbiased Viewpoint.
By A. E. RA MSA UR.
The Golden Age for March 8, 1906.
to manhood, permitting his son to do what had
never been permitted him—to bear arms for his
country.
The story is that of the house of Kudo Jukichi,
gentleman, reduced to poverty and need, and his
Eta neighbor, Kutami Chobei, whose success in bus
iness has made him rich and useful despite his
despised name of Commoner. Each has a son, the
hope and pride of his father, and Jukichi has also
a lovely daughter, but between the children of the
two families is a great gulf fixed—the impassable
gulf of caste. The haughty Samurai youth has
naught but scorn and persecution for the son of
the Eta, but his sister, shyly and without the know
ledge of her father and brother, forms an attach
ment for the strong, noble boy who is kind to her
at the school they all attend. This is the begin
ning. And out of it ripens the romance that such
conditions would result in.
Without Jukichi’s knowing it, Chobei, the Com
moner, has befriended him, and through a success
fully planned scheme provided for the military
training of the sons of both. Jukichi, the younger,
ignorant of this, is insultingly overbearing to the
son of his benefactor, at the school and later in the
army where he, a Samurai officer, is over the Eta
private. But the Eta has in him the stuff that he
roes are made of ; he is too guarded and soldierly
for the watchful and unfreindly Jukichi; and his
heroism, when his hour offers, is such that even
Jukichi surrenders before it.
The love story is charming, and its setting al
together so, as in imagination we stand near the
old Shinto shrine and look down to where “the
verdure-covered hills*ring in the town, and beyond
the billowing roofs of blue-gray thatch and tile
stretches the shining, island-dotted sea, warm and
soft in the enormous blaze of summer.”
Os all the Japanese stories that have come our
way, this pleases us most. Written from the Oc
cidental point of view it appeals to us more.
TOM DUNHAM’S NEW WORK.
Col. Tom Dunham by permission of Rev. Sam P.
Jones, has recently issued a neat little book contain
ing three of the great sermons of the noted evan
gelist. These sermons make a hand book of about
172 pages that can be easily read in an evening.
Through the courtesy of Col. Dunham we have
received a copy of this little book and found it so
fascinating that we read it through at one sitting.
Nobody but Sam Jones could ever have produced
such sermons. They are rich, rare and racy, yet
through them runs a vein of deep seriousness that
■cannot fail to stir the noblest feelings of one’s better
nature.
We sincerely wish that a copy of this little book
could find its way into every home in Georgia. The
price is only fen cents and Col. Dunham expects the
first edition of ten thousand copies to be speedily
sold.
Price, 10 cents; SI.OO per dozen; $7.00 per hun
dred by mail.
Tom Dunham.
Cartersville, Ga.
The woman who toils and struggles in the garish
light of publicity, in fields however high of human
endeavor, may do her work and receive her plaudits
in the public’s presence and in the commendation of
the multitudes and in the vigorous applause of men.
Is it too much to say that the nobler woman and
the nobler service is that which makes the home
the factory of men, of citizens and of publicists?
And although unheralded and by the world unknown,
a woman builds best in her faithful aspiration and
in her gentle inspiration the monuments that en
dure when factories crumble and when stately tem
ples are in the dust.—Exchange.
V// 1* *
i $
REV. J. C. SOLOMON,
Superintendent Georgia Anti-Saloon League.
Startling Honesty.
A Saloonkeeper Tells it All.
According to a recent story in the New York
Tribune, Tombstone, Arizona, claims credit for the
frankest saloon-keeper in the United States. He
keeps the Temple Bar Saloon, and advertises his
business with most surprising frankness. “Allow
me to inform you that you are fools,” he says, yet
his place is usually filled. He maintains that he is
an honest saloon-keeper, and that it will not hurt
his business to tell the truth about it. He has had
printed an advertising card which would make an
excellent manuscript for a temperance lecture.
Copies are being circulated through the Western
states and are attracting much attention. The card
reads as follows.
“Friends and neighbors, I am grateful for past
favors, and having supplied my store with a fine
line of choice liquors, allow me to inform you that
I shall continue to make drunkards, paupers and
beggars for the sober, industrious, respectable part
of the community to support. My liquors will ex
ci I e riot, robbery and bloodshed.
They will diminish your comforts, increase your
expenses and shorten life. I shall confidently recom
mend them as sure to multiply fatal accidents and
incurable diseases.
They will deprive some of life, others of reason,
many of character, and all of peace. They will
make fathers fiends, wives widows, children or
phans and all poor. I will train your sons in infi
delity, dissipation, ignorance, lewdness and every
other vice. I will corrupt the ministers of religion,
obstruct the gospel, defile the church and cause as
much temporal and eternal death as I can. I will
thus “accommodate the public,” it may be at the
loss of my never dying soul. But I have a family to
support—the business pays—and the public en
courages it.
I have paid my license and the traffic is lawful;
and if I don’t sell it somebody will. I know the
Bible says: “Thou shalt not kill, no drunkard
shall enter the kingdom of heaven,” and I do not
expect the drunkard-maker to fare any better, but
I want an easy living and I have resolved to gather
the wages of iniquity and fatten on the ruin of my
species.
I shall, therefore, carry on my business with en
ergy, and do my best to diminish the wealth of the
nation and endanger the safety of the state. As
my business flourishes in proportion to your sen
sibility and ignorance, I will do my best to prevent
moral purity and intellectual growth.
Should you doubt my ability, I refer you to the
pawnshops, the poorhouse, the police court, the hos
pital, the penitentiary and the gallows, where you
will find many of my best customers have gone. A
sight of them will convince you that I do what I
say.
Allow me to inform you that you are fools, and
that I am an honest saloon-keeper.”
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