Inspired Wright*

He Conducts the Largest Moral Kindergarten

The Story. It seems there were two Irish people, Larry O'Shea and his sister. The sister was called Nora. She had mothered the shpalpeen from breechcloth to long pants, and when he got off on a fine big ranch in Arizona she kept writing him to say his prayers and be a good, happy boy. He wrote back that he was all that, and what a grand gentleman was the Mr. Morgan he worked for.

Nora journeyed to Arizona ana found Mr. Morgan going in for drink and devilment. Larry was carrying on with gun-smugglers. Some black villains (including Injun Pete) were getting Mr. Morgan's ranch away from him, simply because he had no good woman to be good and happy for. All the kindhearted cowboys cheered when Nora, with her dear smile and heart of gold, helped Mr. Morgan save his inheritance and married him. Larry repented of his bad ways, just before he was shot.

Specimen Descriptions. "Big Boy" Morgan (hero) : "In years, he was somewhere between 25 and 30, but with a decidedly boyish look on his smooth, deeply tanned face. Standing well over six feet, his back was straight, his shoulders broad, and he bore himself with that air of strength and confidence best described by the good and familiar 'ready for either a fight or a frolic.' It was not at all difficult to guess that he was a great favorite among his fellows."

Jake Zobetser (villain) : "With his huge, rounded shoulders, fat neck and enormous head bent over the desk, and his thin legs that appeared inadequate to carry the bulk of his body, he looked not unlike some uncouth monster of a fairy tale."

The rollicking, nudging, back-slapping cowboys (Curly, Maricopa Bill, Stub, Pablo, Long Jo), are usually "like a band of happy children."

Specimen Great Moments. "He ['Big Boy'] felt he had known her [Nora] always."

"God love you boys [cowboys], there was never a girl had such friends."

"He was within a few steps of the olla, hanging on the ramada post before the cabin door, when Pete called to him sharply."

"He had sternly told himself that as long as his future was unsettled he must not ask the woman he loved to share it."

Specimen Dialect and Moralizing. Wing Foo, cook: "Boss Big Bloy him no catch um happness, nobody catch um happness. Boss Big Bloy him catch um Missee Nola, evlybody catch um happness--that mo bette."

Nora: " 'Tis your own heart must tell you, Dolores, darling, if you'll but listen as you should, how there's no unhappiness can come to a woman like having the wrong father to her little ones."

Pablo (cowboy): "Si, it ees so--jus' like all the time she teach to me how the love it ees everything."

Significance. Tens, hundreds of thousands of men and women will press this book to their bosoms with thanksgiving. Its morals, its figures of Vice and Virtue, could not be made clearer if they were printed in the block capitals and bright colors of a primer. The readers are practically certain to live purer, finer, braver lives afterwards, as are the millions, too unenlightened to buy the book, who will see it at the cinema.

The Author. Harold Bell Wright, "inspired novelist," was born at Rome, N. Y., 53 years ago. He spent two years in the preparatory grades of Hiram College (Hiram, Ohio), then turned to landscape painting. He heard the call, entered the Christian Disciples Ministry, preached in Missouri and Kansas. He intended his first novel (That Printer of Udell's) as a pulpit parable. Its enormous public reception induced him to continue his printed ministry. By degrees he adopted the address of the laity and today instructs the largest moral kindergarten in the world. In Arizona, whither he repaired for his health (and nearly lost it entirely, wrangling broncos), he inhabits a quiet Spanish-mission bungalow near Tucson.

No Saint

THE STROLLING SAINT--Rafael Sabatimi--Houghton, Mifflin ($2.00). What time cavalcades of condottieri, petty tyrants, papal "nephews" and papal bulls charged on horseback, minced on mule-back over the dusty roads of Italy, Agostino d'Anguissola was prenatally vowed to sainthood by his abnormally pious mother, in intercession for the sins of his fiery, hawk-faced Ghibelline father, Giovanni, lord of grim Mondolfo. Dr. Freud could have told the madonna what was bound to happen with never a glance at the patient. Cast in his father's lusty mold, tall young Agostino, after a claustral childhood, took his first draft of life at a gulp--loved a fair leman, slew her husband. The dregs were bitter and he starved, parched, thrashed himself for a year in a mountain hermitage. When his vision came it was not of God but of the lily-maid Bianca. Thereafter he saw that his flesh was undeniable, spent the next few months winning to her through hedges of flickering swords, dark runnels of blood and devious, Sab-atiniquitous labyrinths contrived by diseased, sardonic, pomander-ball-sniffing inquisitors.

Cocktails

THE COCKTAIL BOOK--Issued for the St. Botolph Society -- L. C. Page ($1.25). "A sideboard manual for gentleman " --revised since 1913--may not come amiss in sections of the country where sideboards cling obstinately to functions other than that of supporting dishes of wax fruit. Where the consequences of drink are courted, there should its amenities be cherished, that the iniquitous may come to their doom politely and with grace. No "bartender's guide" is this compendium of long and short concoctions, therefore, but a dignified "recipe book for private use." Lord Byron is invoked, not as libertine but as libator. "Let us have," aid he, "wine, and women, mirth and laughter. Sermons and soda-water the day after."

The cocktail is described under some fourscore guises, from Algonquin to Zelli's Special, with exquisite distinction between citron juice and lime, Holland gin and Tom or Gordon's.

Also there is a charming account of how the lively little possets got their name on the betrothal day of Peggy, bewitching daughter of honest Squire Van Eyck of Yonkers, when Old Lightening, the squire's fighting bird, shed a tail plume into the concoction Peggy was offering to young Master Appleton, mate of the clipper-ship Ranger.

*A Son OF His FATHER--Harold Bell Wright--Appleton ($2.00).