*The Fashionable Adventures of*
*JOSHUA CRAIG*
Concerning this story, the London _Times_ said: "Until the modern Balzac
actually arrives, perhaps Mr. David Graham Phillips may be permitted to
fill the gap"; and of the hero it said: "Joshua Craig, a Lincoln adapted
for the use of latter-day Americans."
It is the story of a strong, virile personality set among the frothy
superficialities of society life in Washington. Joshua Craig, a young
Western lawyer, is striving to make a name for himself in national
politics, and carries everything before him by his cyclonic
forcefulness. In spite of his bourgeois birth, he tears down the
barriers of society, and his utter disregard of conventionalities makes
him the sensation of the season. And yet, for all his frank contempt of
the methods of Aristocracy, their plots and littleness, he finds among
them one "woman," Margaret Severance. He lays siege to her with all his
impulsiveness and the assurance of success, and makes her own honest
self do battle with the scheming smallnesses of her aristocratic
bringing up. He carries her away with a masterfulness that is
characteristic of him, and marries her before she can get her breath.
Big and rough and crude, repelling and yet compelling, he fights for the
supremacy of his fundamental ideas, and step by step the "lady" in her
gives way to the "woman," always struggling, always battling. She
finally yields to his will--to become the quiescent wife of a candidate
for governor.