The greater portion of the novel, then, deals with the influence of the realized wealth upon the unformed, colorless little girl, Adelle, the last of the Clarks. It is a masterly piece of work--the gradual development of the pale rooming-house drudge into the silly and insolent woman of fashion, and slowly but certainly into a human being with a soul. Less promising stuff for a heroine neither fate nor Mr. Herrick could have chosen; the latter delights in ample admissions throughout the book of Adelle's lack of beauty, brains, and charm. Yet he is always sufficiently temperate to escape the danger of caricature. Adelle is a convincing figure. The slow dawning upon her consciousness of the power of money, her "magic lamp" which she need only rub to gratify any desire, is followed by swift and constant use of the new weapon. It brings her a fresh assurance, a few scatter-brained friends, some stylish clothes, and, at length, a callow youth for a husband. It never brings her contact with a real person or friendship with a stimulating individual; nor can it save her from the failure of her marriage, nor compensate her for the death of her little boy. Adelle's story, then, turns out to be what we least expected it,--a hopeful one. It leaves us with almost a sense of security, for is she not one of those who can "derive good from her mistakes," and therefore "the safest sort of human being to raise in this garden plot of souls"? And although we are still saddled with "that absurd code of inheritance and property rights that the Anglo-Saxon peoples have preserved from their ancient tribal days in the gloomy forests of the lower Rhine," the situation is not without hope, since it has yielded a man of the judge's type, in whom the beauty of a past idealism is coupled with the freshness of a new vision of responsibility. To hark back to the recent article in _The Yale Review_, we believe that Mr. Herrick himself has given us an American novel--thoroughly American in situation, character, treatment, and even in philosophy. We, as a people, are beginning to suspect our boastful optimism as we become aware of the sordidness beneath the fair exterior of our glorious civilization. And in accordance with the western temperament, the awareness of wrong leads not to bitter cynicism but to sturdy efforts toward amelioration. Such, then, is the spirit of _Clark's Field_--a hopefulness in the power of courage, and labor, and a growing sense of social responsibility to move mounds that seem to have become immovable mountains through a tenacious fostering of tradition. --Marguerite Swawite. THE "SAVAGE" PAINTERS _Cubists and Post Impressionism_, by Arthur Jerome Eddy. [A. C. McClurg and Company, Chicago.]