Mr. Wister and Mr. Churchill have one great interest in
common,--they are deeply concerned with American character and
experience. Mr. Churchill has dramatized our history in a series
of works, beginning with “Richard Carvel” of the Colonial period;
continued in “The Crossing,” of the period of the first great
westward emigration through the passes of the Alleghenies; in
“The Crisis,” a picture of struggles between the old North and the
old South, between 1861 and 1865, localized in St. Louis; and in
“Mr. Crewe’s Career,” a study of the “machine” in politics and the
beginnings of the struggle for popular government which has become
a national movement. Mr. Churchill draws with a free hand on a
large canvas, and his works have epic quality, emphasizing large
and significant movements and defining the place of individuals in
them, rather than presenting delicately sketched portraits of men
and women in the narrower range of personal experience.
[Illustration: HARLEKENDEN HOUSE, THE HOME OF WINSTON CHURCHILL IN
CORNISH, N.H.]
[Illustration: MUSIC ROOM IN HARLEKENDEN HOUSE]