Centenary Chronicle

THE BRIGHT LAND--Janet Ayer Fair-bank--H ought on Mifflin ($2.50). Call me pet names, dearest! Call me a

bird!. . . Oh, my sad heart is pining for one fond

word. Call me pet names, dearest! Call me a

bird!

If Authoress Fairbank had done nothing else in her 525 pages, reprinting this popular song of the early 1800's would make it worth the price of admission. Critical readers may find her U. S. chronicle of 100 years ago vigorous in outline, feeble in detail. But there are plenty of doings in The Bright Land; they and its scenery keep the reader's interest, even if its people rarely move him to sympathetic belief.

Abby-Delight was eldest of a big New England brood. Her father, Samuel Flagg, ruled his family with the same dour thrift he used on his millworkers. Abby-Delight's one taste of freedom was a year at Abbot's Female Academy at Andover. Just when domestic tension was getting too much for her along came rich, lavish Stephen Blanchard, full of tales of the prodigal West, fell in love with her and carried her off with him. In Galena, Ill., then a much livelier town than Chicago, Abby-Delight bore her children, cautiously made friends, was gradually glad to become acclimatized. In the boom years of expansion Stephen prospered exceedingly. Then came the Civil War, break-up of friendships and family. Stephen and Abby-Delight weathered the storm fairly well, lived to see one daughter elope, one son killed before he broke their hearts. When Stephen died Abby-Delight was left alone in her big house, but with a friend to whom she could still talk, in a town the times had left behind.

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