Elizabeth Ashe is the pen name of Georgiana Pentlarge, a young and
promising story-writer living in Boston.
_The Glory-Box_ is an unforgettable story. Its accuracy in the matter of
minor household details and commonplace neighborliness creates an
atmosphere of intimate realism which readily wins our sympathetic
credence in situation and event. We grow easily familiar with the three
or four characters who are introduced, and then we discover our interest
centering in two of these--Eunice, the sweetheart, and Stephen, the
lover--as, in their separated lives, each in fancy penetrates the daily
routine and comes fondly to rest in thoughts and plans of marriage. The
story interest is enhanced by the contrast of their daily routine.
Eunice's time is spent in teaching, relieved by friendly village
companionship; Stephen's in the arduous work of the Columbia Law School,
relieved by glimpses of fashionable life in Washington Square. All this
routine and hope and relaxation end in the tragedy that the earlier
realism of the story grimly accentuates and intensifies. The art of the
story lies in the author's quiet control of situations which might so
easily, in the hands of a lesser craftsman, run a riotous course in the
field of pseudo-sentiment.