When _Birth_ appeared some people were bewildered. One reviewer asked pathetically what had become of the Zona Gale of _Friendship Village_. But those whose saturation-point for sentimentality is decidedly, and, as we believe, healthfully low, gave a great shout of satisfaction to which added sounds of admiration formed a contrapuntal bass. For _Birth_ is a thing Thomas Hardy would not be ashamed to put his name to. Nor, we suspect, George Meredith, either. We like to think that were George Eliot living to-day, and mistress of the art of fiction (which, bless her, she never was) she would have written such a book. The fact that at this writing _Birth_ has not been “discovered” by the large public which such a book ultimately commands is of little importance. That will come. The failure of many book reviewers and book reporters to detect and proclaim its distinction is an indictment of book “reviewing” more specific and damning than any generality in which we might indulge. The real elements of the book’s excellence may best be recorded in the words of a daughter of Henry Mills Alden, Constance Murray Greene, who said (_Books and the Book World_ of _The Sun_, New York, November 24, 1918): “The charm consists in delightful and continuous humor, often sharp and never overkind, which isn’t at all what people mean by ‘charming’ in the new and popular sense. But here is the real substance of things more to be desired than the fine gold of sunshine. Miss Gale is incurably funny and we love her for it--witness the delivery horse, ‘hanging out its tongue, not at all because of fast driving but from preference,’ and Mis’ Henry Bates, whose stomach wouldn’t allow her to drink coffee. ‘She always spoke’ (to quote directly) ‘as if her stomach stood back of her chair.’ ... _Birth_ achieves the rare result of being both mystical and colloquial.” How? You may well ask. The setting is a tiny Wisconsin town, except for some scenes in Chicago. The “hero” is a traveling salesman handling pickle and fruit products; insignificant; with long, thin, freckled wrists and a coat that gave the effect of blowing when there was no wind; with no graces. You sicken over the little man’s humiliations in such social life as Burage, Wisconsin, boasted. He marries a girl of the village, a girl of some social gifts and quite ordinary and silly feminine ambitions--and becomes a paperhanger, though knowing nothing of the business. Barbara Pitt, Marshall Pitt’s wife, is dropped abruptly from the story--daring technique but justified in the result--and the novel develops as a narrative of the life-relation of father and son. This little man, this Marshall Pitt, being human, had his immortal moments. Zona Gale can put them on paper: