Watson's Magazine, Vol. IV, No. 2, April, 1906Various
History
Watson's Magazine, Vol. IV, No. 2, April, 1906
Various
United States -- Politics and government -- Periodicals
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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