"It is treating the poor as a class and employing any method of
handling them that I object to.... Why can't they be treated as
individuals, the same as other people? What would the rich think of
my impertinence if I went about the world treating them in a peculiar
manner,--as if they were not real people, at all, but only 'the rich,'
in my knowledge? "--Hester Carr, in _Differences_.
"_Difference_ is an extraordinary book.... The labor question
is its primary concern, and the caste barrier which modern
conditions have erected between the man who works and the man
who merely lives. This is no new theme, yet _Differences_ is
new, and its place in thoughtful literature awaits it. The
only argument presented by Mr. White is contained in the
picture he spreads before us. It is real, and set out with
bold, firm strokes, and there is no attempt to be merely
artistic. Genevieve Radcliffe, the rich society girl,
who goes to work charity with the poor, and John Wade,
the workman, whose situation involves all the tragedy of
metropolitan poverty, are human, if they be not typical. They
embody the 'differences', and, if they do not point the way
to equality, it is because American civilization is not yet
ripe for them. Withal, the book is not a tract. It is worth a
thousand such. Informed throughout with a tender simplicity,
a sense of the beauty of common things, and a sincerity that
brooks no question, it carries equal appeal to the student of
economics and to the lover of human feeling."--_Philadelphia
North American._
"There is no end of philosophy in books about the poor
and how to reach them and send rays of sunshine into their
world; but few books get at the real 'Differences' that exist
between the wealthy classes and the poor as does Mr. Hervey
White.... _Difference_ is vitally interesting, both as a
story and as a moral lesson.... It is written with wholesome
enthusiasm and an intelligent survey of real facts."--_Boston
Herald._
"The method employed by Mr. Hervey White in _Differences_
is not like that of any author I have ever read in the
English language. It resembles strongly the work of the
best Russian novelists, it seems to me, and particularly
that of Dostolevsky, and yet it is in no sense an imitation
of those writers: it is apparently like them merely because
the author's motives and ways of thought and observation are
like them.... I have never before read any such treatment
in the English language of the life and thought of laboring
people."--Joseph Edgar Chamberlin, in _Boston Transcript_.
A Powerful Realistic Novel of American Life.
QUICKSAND
By HERVEY WHITE.