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.
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.”
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[Pg 25] 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.
EMERSON HOUGH
Besides all these there are Joseph C. Lincoln and Cyrus Townsend Brady, the first one in high favor for his breezy stories of Cape Cod life and character, redolent of the salt sea air, the latter for his many entertaining tales of plain and desert; and Sewell Ford, who created the slangy but very human “Shorty McCabe” and “Torchy”; and those two pungent writers of Western episodes, Peter Kyne and Charles E. Van Loan. Emerson Hough has given us rousing tales of the Middle and Far West, of the Kentucky mountains and Alaska. Holman Day’s excellent stories breathe of the Maine woods, and Roy Norton has rendered tribute to the sea. Harris Dickson, a son of Mississippi, has woven into story form some throbbing incidents of Southern history, and has depicted numerous sunny corners of every-day existence below the Mason and Dixon line. James Branch Cabell is a spinner of charming romances; some of the best have a medieval French flavor. Harold Bell Wright is well known as the author of “Barbara Worth” and several other books whose sales have climbed into the hundreds of thousands. Richard Washburn Child is a young American who wields a vigorous pen in the portrayal of national character, and James Oppenheim, not to be confused with the Englishman, E. Phillips Oppenheim, represents vital phases of present-day city life. Joseph Hergesheimer has won a place among writers by reason of his picturesque style and original invention. A comprehensive list of American-born novelists must also include the names of Leroy Scott, Henry B. Fuller, Frank H. Spearman, Earl Derr Biggers and Arthur Reeve, all of whom have within late years produced popular successes.
The roll of the makers of modern American fiction is a long one, yet none can gainsay that the average of achievement is high.
SUPPLEMENTARY READING
THE MEN WHO MAKE OUR NOVELS.
By Burton Rascoe, Literary Editor, Chicago Tribune.
SOME AMERICAN STORY-TELLERS.
By F. T. Cooper.