Eager

Eager RUSTLE OF SPRING-- Clare Cameron--Doran ($2). When Clare Cameron was a little girl she lived, like her contemporary, Author Thomas Burke, in the slums of London. Her parents were stodgy, honest, bourgeois, with numerous aunts and cousins. Clare grew up with a longing for "finer things." This document of her callow years is marred by an overdose of sentimental estheticism and a dismaying lack of humor. She seems a little too sure that she was an unusual little girl. When, in school, "we were given the choice of three subjects for com position: 'The Autobiography of a Weathercock,' 'A Day in the Country,' and 'What I would do with Five Pounds.' I thought them much better subjects than usual, and immediately felt ideas pouring into my head for 'The Weathercock.' Yes, there he was on the church tower ... up in the wind . . . Jenny sat beside me biting her pen and looking cross and unhappy. ... The bell rang. 'Oh teacher . . i.!' 'Still haven't finished Clare? Afraid you can't have any more time today.' I experienced all the pangs of thwarted ambition, denial in che midst of white hot creation, death in the midst of life, and could have wept." The many assurances of Author Cameron's eagerness to express herself arouse the suspicion that she would have done better to curb her eagerness until she was eager to express more than her eagerness to express herself.