Miss Ferrell is lighter in manner; her people are less burdened with experience, but have.even smaller claims to verisimilitude. Jenny Morris, a widow, marries Philip, 20 years her junior. Unfortunately, even before their wedding Philip (though he does not realize it, being: fallen in love with Jenny's daughter Gillian. Miss Ferrell avoids. the rather ugly possibilities of her theme, but only by a series of coincidences which finally hurls Gillian into the arms of an ex-officer, so terribly disfigured. that he lives in complete solitude, Parts of the story are not without humour and observation. The best thing in the book is the subsidiary story of Raymond Morris and his entangle-_ ment with Mrs. Hepburn. In the telling of that Miss Ferrell displays more energy, more temper and a good sense of dramatic effect. She shares, however, one fault with Mr. Floyd' Dell. Each of these books reads more like an essay with illastrations than a novel about people. charge no one could inst Senor Ibanez. 1 imagine "The Temptress" is a comparatively early work of his, 'The book is good, old-fashioned melodrama—a" modern, vulgarized rendering of the Helen' legend, now Known in the States as the Vamp movie, Ibanes even calls his enchant tress Blene; but he makes the fatal mistake of bringing her often the stage.
"Helen should remain as mysterious as her fascination; and 1 never find myself: crediting' this common, greedy, inconsiderate little crea ture's fatal lure. She is the wife of an Italian Marquis—Torre Bianca—ud ruins him. He is rescued by' hi friend Robledo, who takes both of them to a small town in Pata-gonia, where Elena upsets the whole community by her frantic pas {for attention. She stages a which tare out in the end a disaster for herself, and the story ends with Robledo's discovery of her, worn out, broken and oblivious of her past, ina cheap Paris cafe. What merit the novel has lies not in the main is your-letter, but for-God's sake
Mr., Damrosch tells us that he yas conducting Beethoven's Ninth symphony before a hushed. fence, When one of his braces sudden: ly mapped, "and-for the rest of the performance I was in mortal fear that my trousers would not stay, up." The sublimity of this com osser's work seems to have been special target for these incongraf ties. On another occasion, at, the end of a concert given in Nebraska town.
My double-bass player told me that with a colleague whose head was devoid of hair, he had. stood directly below a proscenium box in which a group of cowboys were seated. While the orchestra was playing the Fifth Symphony, one of these cowboys, who was chews {ng tobacco violently, amused himself by spitting frequently, and always aiming for the bald' head of the bass-player, who had to Keep one agitated eye on the con-@uctor and the other on this hor= ly resourceful listener, in order to avoid his only too well directed shots.
Mr, Damrosch's book is full of such reminiscences, and is sure of wide welcome among those who like to take their doses of lite and music in brief and. pleasant draughts.—"Daily News,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.