"It is treating the poor as a class and employing any method of
handling them that I object to.... Why can't they be treated as
individuals, the same as other people? What would the rich think of my
impertinence if I went about the world treating them in a peculiar
manner,--as if they were not real people, at all, but only 'the rich,'
in my knowledge?"--Hester Carr, in _Differences_.
"_Differences_ is an extraordinary book.... The labor question is
its primary concern, and the caste barrier which modern conditions
have erected between the man who works and the man who merely
lives. This is no new theme, yet _Differences_ is new, and its
place in thoughtful literature awaits it. The only argument
presented by Mr. White is contained in the picture he spreads
before us. It is real, and set out with bold, firm strokes, and
there is no attempt to be merely artistic. Genevieve Radcliffe, the
rich society girl, who goes to work charity with the poor, and John
Wade, the workman, whose situation involves all the tragedy of
metropolitan poverty, are human, if they be not typical. They
embody the 'differences,' and, if they do not point the way to
equality, it is because American civilization is not yet ripe for
them. Withal, the book is not a tract. It is worth a thousand such.
Informed throughout with a tender simplicity, a sense of the beauty
of common things, and a sincerity that brooks no question, it
carries equal appeal to the student of economics and to the lover
of human feeling."--_Philadelphia North American._
"There is no end of philosophy in books about the poor and how to
reach them and send rays of sunshine into their world; but few
books get at the real 'Differences' that exist between the wealthy
classes and the poor as does Mr. Hervey White.... _Differences_ is
vitally interesting, both as a story and as a moral lesson.... It
is written with wholesome enthusiasm and an intelligent survey of
real facts."--_Boston Herald._
"The method employed by Mr. Hervey White in _Differences_ is not
like that of any author I have ever read in the English language.
It resembles strongly the work of the best Russian novelists, it
seems to me, and particularly that of Dostoievsky, and yet it is in
no sense an imitation of those writers; it is apparently like them
merely because the author's motives and ways of thought and
observation are like them.... I have never before read any such
treatment in the English language of the life and thought of
laboring people."--Joseph Edgar Chamberlin, in _Boston Transcript_.
For sale by all booksellers, or sent, postpaid, by the publishers on
receipt of price.
Small, Maynard & Company,
PIERCE BUILDING
COPLEY SQ., BOSTON
_A Powerful Realistic Novel of American Life._
QUICKSAND
BY HERVEY WHITE.
12mo, cloth, decorative, 328 pages. ~$1.50~
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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