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This is mighty well said, and the like things that are said of Petrina’s sister-in-law, who has married an English title, are mighty well, too. “She had inherited a countenance whose expression was like the light which lingers in the sky long after sunset–the light of some ancestral fire gone out. If in her face there were prayers, they had been said by Pepperells and Vassalls now sleeping in Massachusetts churchyards. If in her voice there were tears, they had been shed by those who would weep no more. She mirrored the emotions she had never felt; and all that was left of joys and sorrows and spiritual aspirations which had once thrilled human hearts was in that plaintive echo they had given to this woman’s tone, and the light of petition they had left burning in her eyes.”

No one who reads such passages can deny that the author of “Let Not Man Put Asunder” can think subtly as well as say clearly, and the book abounds in proofs of his ability to portray human nature in its lighter aspects. Lady de Bohun, with her pathetic face, is a most amusing creature, with all her tragedy, and she is on the whole the most perfectly characterized personality in the story. The author gives you a real sense of her beauty, her grace, her being always charmingly in a hurry and always late. The greatest scene is hers: the scene in which she meets her divorced husband with his second wife. One may suspect some of the other scenes, but one must accept that scene as one of genuine dramatic worth. Too much of the drama in the book is theatre rather than drama, and yet the author’s gift is essentially dramatic. He knows how to tell a story on his stage that holds you to the fall of the curtain, and makes you almost patient of the muted violins and the limelight of the closing scene. Such things, you say, do not happen in Brookline, Mass., whatever happens in London or in English country houses; and yet the people have at one time or other convinced you of their verity. Of the things that are not natural, you feel like saying that they are supernatural rather than unnatural, and you own that at its worst the book is worth while in a time when most novels are not worth while.

Footnotes

“The Right of Way.” A Novel. By Gilbert Parker. Harper & Brothers.

“The Ruling Passion. Tales of nature and human nature.” By Henry Van Dyke. Charles Scribner’s Sons.

“Spoils and Stratagems Stories of love and politics.” By Wm. Allen White. Charles Scribner’s Sons.

“Foma Gordyeeff.” By Maxim Gorky. Translated from the Russian by Isabel F. Hapgood. Charles Scribner’s Sons.

“Circumstances.” By S. Weir Mitchell, M.D. The Century Company.

“A Japanese Nightingale.” By Onoto Watana. Harper & Brothers.

“The Marrow of Tradition.” By Charles W. Chesnutt. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

“Lay Down Your Arms. The autobiography of Martha von Tilling.” By Bertha von Suttner. Authorized Translation. By T. Holmes. Longmans, Green & Co.

“Let Not Man Put Asunder.” By Basil King. Harper & Brothers.