CONTENTS: A Master of Cobwebs--The Eighth Deadly Sin--The Purse of
Aholibah--Rebels of the Moon--The Spiral Road--A Mock
Sun--Antichrist--The Eternal Duel--The Enchanted Yodler--The Third
Kingdom--The Haunted Harpsichord--The Tragic Wall--A Sentimental
Rebellion--Hall of the Missing Footsteps--The Cursory Light--An
Iron Fan--The Woman Who Loved Chopin--The Tune of Time--Nada--Pan.
"The author's style is sometimes grotesque in its desire both to startle
and to find true expression. He has not followed those great novelists
who write French a child may read and understand. He calls the moon 'a
spiritual gray wafer'; it faints in 'a red wind'; 'truth beats at the
bars of a man's bosom'; the sun is 'a sulphur-colored cymbal'; a man
moves with 'the jaunty grace of a young elephant.' But even these
oddities are significant and to be placed high above the slipshod
sequences of words that have done duty till they are as meaningless as
the imprint on a worn-out coin.
"Besides, in nearly every story the reader is arrested by the idea, and
only a little troubled now and then by an over-elaborate style. If most
of us are sane, the ideas cherished by these visionaries are insane; but
the imagination of the author so illuminates them that we follow
wondering and spellbound. In 'The Spiral Road' and in some of the other
stories both fantasy and narrative may be compared with Hawthorne in his
most unearthly moods. The younger man has read his Nietzsche and has
cast off his heritage of simple morals. Hawthorne's Puritanism finds no
echo in these modern souls, all sceptical, wavering and unblessed. But
Hawthorne's splendor of vision and his power of sympathy with a
tormented mind do live again in the best of Mr. Huneker's
stories."--_London Academy_ (Feb. 3, 1906).