A certain letter of the alphabet for a time seemed to exert a
cabalistic influence on Louis Joseph Vance. “The Brass Bowl” appeared
in 1907. The book of the next year was “The Black Bag.” In 1909 it
was “The Bronze Bell.” There ended the use of the double B, but in
1912, Mr. Vance wrote “The Bandbox.” In the meantime had appeared
“The Pool of Flame,” “The Fortune Hunter,” “No Man’s Land,” and
“Cynthia-of-the-Minute.” Among the books that have followed “The
Bandbox” are “The Day of Days,” “Joan Thursday,” showing Mr. Vance at
his best, “The Lone Wolf,” and very recently, “The False Faces,” in
which the Lone Wolf returns to play a great part in the World War.
[Illustration: EDWIN LEFEVRE]
_Each Holds a Place of His Own_
The Law has ever had countless stories to tell. There is hardly a tale
by Arthur Train that does not, in some way, lead back to one of the
offices that cluster about the Criminal Courts Building facing Centre
Street, on the lower end of Manhattan Island. In that neighborhood
swung the shingle of the law firm of Gottlieb & Quibble, as related
in “The Confessions of Artemas Quibble.” Mr. Train’s first book,
“McAllister and His Double” (1905), began in a Fifth Avenue club, but
before a dozen pages had been finished, fate had carried McAllister
to the Tombs Prison. The thrice-told tales of Pontin’s Restaurant in
Franklin Street, where the lawyers gather at the noon hour, went to
make “The Prisoner at the Bar,” “True Stories of Crime” and “Courts,
Criminals and the Camorra.” Like Mr. Train, William Hamilton Osborne
has also achieved a place in Literature as well as Law.
[Illustration: ARTHUR TRAIN]
There are readers who regard the very facility of Gouverneur Morris as
a curse, believing that if writing to him had been harder work, his
present achievement would be considerably greater. His first book, “A
Bunch of Grapes,” dates back to his undergraduate days at Yale. Four
years later, in 1901, “Tom Beauling” appeared, to be followed the next
year by “Aladdin O’Brien.” “Yellow Men and White” showed what he could
do in the vein of “Treasure Island.” Of more enduring quality was “The
Voice in the Rice.” It is not surprising that many of our novelists
have begun with tales of undergraduate life. “Princeton Stories” was
the first book of Jesse Lynch Williams. “Harvard Episodes” of Charles
M. Flandrau. Will Irwin’s first fling at the game of writing was
“Stanford Stories” (1910). That book was done in collaboration. Also
in collaboration, this time with Gelett Burgess, the creator of “The
Purple Cow,” the editor of _The Lark_, and a humorist of rare whim,
were written Mr. Irwin’s next two books. It was a short sketch of the
old San Francisco before the earthquake, called “The City That Was,”
that first made Will Irwin’s name widely known. Of more substantial
proportions were “The House of Mystery,” “The Readjustment” and
“Beating Back.”
[Illustration: ROBERT HERRICK]
Of a certain genuine importance has been the work of Robert Herrick.
The author, like his heroes, has been finding the threads of life’s
web in a rather sorry tangle, and groping for a solution of the
world’s real meaning. It was of problems big and vital in our American
civilization that Mr. Herrick wrote in “The Memoirs of an American
Citizen,” “The Common Lot,” “The Web of Life,” “The Real World,”
“The Gospel of Freedom,” and “Together.” In “The Master of the Inn”
he has achieved an exceptional short story. Also deserving of high
attention is Meredith Nicholson, who began in 1903 with “The Main
Chance,” and achieved unusual popular success somewhat later with “The
House of a Thousand Candles” and “The Port of Missing Men.” Among
Mr. Nicholson’s more recent books are “The Lords of High Decision,”
“Hoosier Chronicle,” “Otherwise Phyllis” and “The Siege of the Seven
Suitors.” For tales breathing the spirit of the West and intricate
mystery stories, Zane Grey and Burton Egbert Stevenson are known
respectively. Mr. Grey’s best known books are “The Heritage of the
Desert,” “The Light of Western Stars,” “The Lone Star Ranger,” “The
Heart of the Desert” and “The U. P. Trail.” Wherever a well-told yarn
of intricate mystery is appreciated, such books as Mr. Stevenson’s “The
Marathon Mystery,” “The Destroyer” and “The Boule Cabinet” have found
generous welcome. Will Payne is the author of “Jerry the Dreamer,” the
striking “Story of Eva,” “Mr. Salt” and “The Losing Game”; Edward W.
Townsend in writing of Chimmie Fadden did not forfeit the place as a
novelist to which he is entitled by reason of such books as “A Daughter
of the Tenements,” “Days Like These” and “Lees and Leaven”; and Harry
Leon Wilson, who years ago made a definite impression with “The Seeker”
and “The Spenders,” and who of late has been moving a continent to
laughter by the dexterity with which he confronted the very British
Ruggles with the complicated problems of social life in the town of Red
Gap--somewhere in America.
[Illustration: CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY]
[Illustration: Moffett studios, Chicago