Mrs. Watts’ new book is distinctly modern, a fact that will commend
it to those who will be eager to see if her pen is as facile in this
field as it was in the historical. The story opens about the year
1892 and comes up to the present date. The hero, Van Cleve, is a
young man who finds himself obliged, at the age of twenty, to support
a family of foolish, good-hearted, ill-balanced women, and one
shiftless, pompous old man. Out of this situation grows a story which
is rich in character-drawing, in incident, and in human appeal.