A CHAT ABOUT SAMUEL MERWIN By ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY ( LIBRARY BELONGS To A CHAT ABOUT SAMUEL MERWIN SAMUEL MERWIX A CHAT ABOUT SAMUEL MERWIN Containing also a list of his pub lished volumes, together with sundry excerpts from critical appreciations BY ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY AUTHOR OF Walking Stick Papers, Broom Street Straws, etc., etc. Portrait Frontispiece INDIANAPOLIS THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS Copyright 1921 THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY Printed in the United States of America A CHAT ABOUT SAMUEL MERWIN BY ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY ONLY quite recently there has been manifest in the United States a tendency to possess our own authors more fully with our minds to, so to say, take them apart and see what makes them tick. . You haven t really come into the full, rich ownership of an automobile until you have tinkered with its innards. Same way with books. Just to ride in them (fancy way of saying just to read them) does not give you anything like the intimate regard for books that you get by (in a man ner of speaking) crawling in under them on your back and looking up at their works; possessing them and their creators more fully with our minds. Yes, that is what I want to say. The English have had this "possession of 5 SAMUEL M ERWIN their authors" for a long time; they know about their popular writers, they weigh them and appraise them, give thoughtful considera tion to them and value them for what they are worth. In this land of ours where everybody can read and few do, we dismiss the author as a man who has written a book, and let it go at that. We like to meet him, or at least we like to say we have met him; but when we do we don t know what to say to him. We feel we ought to talk about his books but we are afraid of getting in over our heads. If we knew the author as well as his books, we d know better than to talk to him about them, and so would not suffer from literary stage fright at the mere thought of breaking bread with a best seller. I have heard it offered as a strange anomaly that we remember titles of stories and of books, but forget the names of the authors responsible for them. It isn t strange when you come to think about it. We are simply more familiar with the product than we are with the producer. We say Linda Condon; but when we do we don t register Her- 6 SAMUEL M ERWI N gesheimer. You do, of course. I m not talk ing about the literary in-group ; but only about the outlander who reads because he must to kill time. If he can be given an interest in the author as an author, if he can get through a dis cussion of the man something of a critical interpretation of his work, it would be stimu lating both to the appreciation and the production of a real native literature. It is a highly pleasurable thing, I think, to enjoy one by one the novels of some writer, more or less heedless of anything beyond their power to entertain, and then, being lured (through their attraction as stories) into a more thoughtful scrutiny of them in a bunch, to discover that their author is a good deal more of an artist than you had taken the trouble to suspect than perhaps he is popularly supposed to be. This has just been my experience with the books of the man I am here venturing to talk about, talk much more briefly than I should like in considering him and his output. I have lately undertaken to put two and two together in my head about Samuel Merwin, and I find SAMUEL M ERWIN (very much to my satisfaction) that in his case the result is five. I cannot say, and certainly I didn t mean to imply, that I am the fellow who discovered that Mr. Merwin is an American author of real consequence. Maybe you yourself found out that sometime ago. At any rate, the fact was discovered and by a "furriner" too. It took foreigners (they tell me) to discover the genius of Poe and Whitman. And we over here, who are foreigners to them over there, first (I have heard) gave substantial appreciation to Carlyle and Meredith. How ever all that may be (and I have no thought of placing Mr. Merwin in the company of the illustrious dead), away back in the first month of 1912, Mr. Arnold Bennett was writing in the North American Review on The Future of the American Novel. He ob served that "all the minute depicting of the thousand forms of local life in America, which is now so prominent a feature of American fiction, is a mere preliminary." In his view, "the great novels of the future will spring from the action and reaction of place on place and activity on activity." And 8 SAMUEL M ERWIN "They will certainly be of two kinds the two kinds that have always persisted and always will persist the purely romantic and the romantic-sociological, the Dumas kind and the Balzac kind. Of the former two clever prototypical specimens that have im pressed me are T^he Short Line War and Calumet K, both written in collaboration by Messrs. S. Merwin and H. K. Webster. Calumet K especially disengages the sheer romance that lies concealed, for instance, in grain elevators, contract jobs, and wheat manipulations." Then Mr. Bennett passed on to declare that in this kind of thing Frank Norris s Octopus "succeeds where M. Zola has again and again failed." And, by the by, in the way of another early "testimonial," I seem to have heard that Cyrus Curtis has always given credit to Calu met K for having had much to do with put ting The Saturday Evening Post on its more than a million legs. Why is it, I ask myself, that Mr. Merwin is to my own view so interesting a writer? First, of course, because I find him so enter- SAMUEL M ERWIN taining. And (to employ our current popu lar colloquial exclamation), How does he get that way? Well, for one thing, Mr. Merwin is en tertaining because his books are full of ad venture, whether the scene is the society of flappers and hobbledehoys in a Chicago sub urb, as in Temperamental Henry and Henry Is Twenty; politics and newspaperdom in a Middle Western town as in The Citadel; "Village" life adjacent to Washington Square as in The Trufflers, or perhaps best of all the colorful, mystery-laden, polyglot cities of far China : The Charmed Life of Miss Austin, Hills of Han f and his latest story, In Red and Gold. Speaking of adventure pure and undefiled, if anybody knows of a book with more ad ventures in it to the square inch than in The Charmed Life of Miss Austin, I wish that "anybody" would tip me off. These tales of the Quixotic madcap of a slip of an American girl who moves through an Oriental scene amidst a maze of thrills, saving people s lives, setting them on their feet, and never quite getting destroyed, have the zest and go 10 SAMUEL M ERWI N of Stevenson s New Arabian Nights, and Miss Austin is altogether as delightful in her way as the celebrated young man with the cream tarts whose "spirit, sir, is one of mockery." If it is rather difficult to give complete credence to such a series of rapid fire adventures as are here encountered, you at least believe in the people themselves, every time. The little character sketches are quickly, neatly and very surely done. Though Merwin is usually a novelist, and sometimes a rather deliberately moving novelist, the chapters here are models of the brisk, O. Henry type of short story, with a whip cracker at the end. Then, another thing, literary critics have observed that humor is a quality conducive to entertainment. This has also been a fact of my own experience. Well, diligence is not required to discover abundant humor in Mr. Merwin. Indeed, I should say that a very high degree of diligence would be necessary for the reader to avoid being drenched by humor in such books as, say, Temperamental Henry and Henry Is Twenty, those hugely hilarious and scientifically sound stories of ii SAMUEL MERWIN a square peg in a round hole. They, the first two "Henry" books, have something the flavor of Barrie s Sentimental Tommy, some thing the flair of Arnold Bennett s Denry the Audacious, but they go very much further in their shrewd examination of an exceptional boy. Mr. Merwin has carried his abounding curiosity even beyond Mr. Tarkington s mirror of the phenomenon of adolescence in Penrod and Seventeen and has afflicted his hero with a temperament of genius as well as the idiosyncratic character of youth. Now a genius in a book is in this, very like a genius in life: it is rarely that you find a real one. "Henry," though the expressions of his na ture are perhaps somewhat magnified, is es sentially authentic. I should be inclined to say offhand that he is the most deliciously impressionable being within the range of my reading. And I con fess that I do not recall in recent books any thing to my mind more amusing than his first journey to "li l ol New York" in his own fancy, a thorough man of the world, travel ing on the most exclusive and expensive vesti- buled train in the world, to see the Navy 12 SAMUEL M ERWIN Yard, and Central Park and Dead Man s Curve and the Bowery and Doctor Park- hurst s church; and bewildered, thrilled and frightened by the intoxicating society of no less august person than Lillian Russell, picked up with such miraculous ease on the train. Then the awful crash, earthquake and eclipse, and the prodigal s tragic return to Sunbury, Illinois. Exceptional characters add a great deal to the interest of the book. And you run into any number of queer coves in the company of Mr. Merwin; meet folk you don t see everywhere. There, for just one distin guished instance, is the great Carpentier him self in The Honey Bee. And along the China coast one consorts in Mr. Merwin s pages with all sorts of strange victims of the wanderlust Doane, the fighting, falling mis sionary; Dixie Carmichael from the Barbary Coast; Tex Connor, the international crook, all to be met in In Red and Gold. Also, what is equally beguiling, in these pages you find, with the thrill of recognition, a steady going and coming of persons that you do see every day, a stream of old acquaintances, 13 SAMUEL M ERW I N as it were. Mr. Merwin s American girl is all about us. His Middle Western burghers his fictional aunts and uncles, for example, have very much the flavor of your aunts and uncles and of mine. "Henry s" uncle is an excellent case of uncle. And Mr. Wilberly, Miss Austin s "uncle by marriage," is con versationally quite lovely as "a practical busi ness man," who always breathed heavily be fore he said anything jocular, offhand. Then, it is interesting to have your author know intimately a lot of things. Mr. Mer- win has surprisingly intimate knowledge of a great lot of things; things unrelated and widely separated. Anthony, in Anthony the Absolute, is, most charmingly, a "bug" on the subject of musical notation. A crisis in his life is his discovery of one of the old stone chimes, the Pien Ch ing, a perfect specimen of the basic musical scale of the Eastern world. A piece of art that, Anthony the Absolute, of exquisite humor and fra grant aroma, akin, in the charm of its con ception of Anthony s character and the easy finish of its style, to Mr. Tarkington s Beau tiful Lady and Eeaucaire. And a rapidly 14 SAMUEL M ERWIN moving tale of dark passion and dramatic deeds as well. Certainly I don t know where you may go in books of to-day or any day, to partake of the excitement of prize fighting to the degree that you can when you walk along with Mr. Merwin. Miss Austin s charmed life in Shanghai opens, almost, with a rous ing impromptu pugilistic match. And The Honey Bee is, among a variety of other things, an extensive education in the whole science of the prize ring, though its under lying theme is, indeed, the pathos of the "un- sexed female" who does nothing but work. Hilda Wilson, of that book, (to continue a mention at random of a few of the curious miscellany of things that Mr. Merwin knows about) in circumstances of a most romantic nature pursues a very up-to-date course in the care and feeding of tiny infants. A deeply initiated view of the business of modern ad vertising is given the reader of The Pas sionate Pilgrim in the offices of Holmes Hitt, Inc. A decidedly enjoyable and illuminating experience it is, too. Mr. Merwin s "drunks" the fool Mayor in The Passionate Pil- 15 SAMUEL M ERWIN cfrim, Crocker, with his murderous obsession in Anthony the Absolute, are, like Mr. Tark- ington s hard drinkers, scientifically observed and well understood cases of alcoholism. The escape of the Mayor, in an emotional crisis, from the institution where he has just about completed a "cure" to the beginning of another debauch, is a gorgeous stroke of a very knowing irony. And so on and so on and so on. What I am getting at is this: Mr. Merwin is an investigator, a man with an itch for getting the picture right, the sort of a person who will set his alarm-clock for three in the morn ing, that he may note exactly how milk wagons sound going through the streets at that hour. Persons with a fancy for marking "How true!" or something, alongside telling pas sages in the books they read certainly should be kept alert by Mr. Merwin s abundant and frequently perspicacious commentary. Hy (otherwise Henry) Lowe, managing editor of My Brother s Keeper, in The Trufflers, is classified as a city bachelor, "a seasoned, hardened city bachelor." And "the one pros- id SAMUEL MERWIN pect that instantly and utterly terrifies a hardened city bachelor is that of admitting that another has a moral claim on him. The essence of bachelordom is the avoidance of personal responsibility." Which observation has a good deal the ring of some of Somerset Maugham s worldly wisdom. A very fair little trifle of a "gift book," I think, could be got up under the label, The Wit and Wis dom of Samuel Merwin. Though I should add that Mr. Merwin does not in any way give the effect of posing as an oracle. He frequently adopts the diffident device of put ting his sage reflections into the mouth of one of his characters, as where he has Miss Austin say, "Wonder why it s never the good men that are so terrible conservative about women, but the bad ones?" When he adds, "After which sweeping and curiously accurate half truth, she drifted slowly into dreamland." After his friendly separation from Henry Kitchell Webster, Mr. Merwin reacted sharply from the business novel and wan dered off into the region of historic romance with The Road to Fontenac. This was fol- SAMUEL M ERWI N lowed by The Whip Hand, His Little World, a charming romance of Lake Michi gan; The Merry Anne; The Road Builders, Drugging a Nation an expose of the opium trade and then The Citadel which was in large part an attempted presentation of American political conditions at the time of its publication, about 1912. And his political corruption was very corrupt indeed. He has continued to be an artist of decided sociological purpose. Way on into The Pas sionate Pilgrim the great rumpus is caused by Henry Calverly s simple-minded inno cence of "local business interests" and par tisan politics. Throughout nearly all of his books runs a vivid sense of young women as the game of human birds of prey, a revolt against "the lie about life," a satiric note concerning the "pretense of civilization," a disdain for "newspaper reputations," and above all, a keen perception that life is usually very diffi cult. In The Citadel, Mr. Merwin was early in presenting a picture of a personality newer then than now, that is in the "new woman," as she was then called, and her pal-like rela- 18 tions with mankind. His studies in modern feminine psychology have not abated. That genius in practical affairs, young Mr. Widdi- combe, gives it straight to Henry Calverly, "I tell you, Hen, the one time when you ve got to be a business man every m>*uite, it s when you re with a girl." Miss Betty Dpane, in Hills of Han, saw in marriage what evxy girl sees when life is pressing. And the modern spirit, the "real battle cry of woman s freedom," is the wheel that makes The Truf- flers go round. Mr. Merwin is not, of course, a novelist who puts a caption to his "morals," but he has not abandoned the tradition of the great days of the English novel, that a philosophy of life adorns a tale. And his point of view is clear, that the soul s love is best. Several years ago a reviewer who is not given to exuberant enthusiasms had this to say: "In all of Samuel Merwin s novels there is apparent a deep insight into human nature, while it is evident that with every year his interest in the study of characters and their development is steadily growing stronger. The cumulative effect of his work 19 SAMUEL MERWIN is beginning to make itself felt, and in him we are approaching that long desired result, the psychological novelist who reveals to us the hidden drama of the mind in the setting of an absorbing and even an adventurous story." A word may very easily be said, and by a captious critic a good many words very likely would be said, about Mr. Merwin s being an uneven writer most novelists are. He is on occasion melodramatic through avowed principle, repeatedly declaring that "life is more primitive than fiction." I don t know- exactly what he means by that dictum. There are various kinds of life, and there are vari ous kinds of fiction. But I should say that Mr. Merwin s drama occasionally is more "primitive" as fiction than at other times. In this respect I should cite The Citadel as per haps the least successful of his books. And to my mind the third of the Henry books, The Passionate Pilgrim, is a sad successor to the preceding volumes of the trilogy. It is somewhat of a puzzle to me how a man who had through two volumes so rigorously eschewed sentimentality would suddenly ad- 20 SAMUEL M ERWI N mit it in such measure in the third book. While some of Mr. Merwin s fights, both in and out of the ring, are thundering affairs, putting the reader to a tense strain as to the outcome, others, the one in the Muscovy Restaurant, for instance, in The Trufflers, do not at all, as Miss Amy Lowell says, "ring my bell." Also now and then, in the midst of affairs which have the ring of pene trating veracity, one comes upon a matter which it is too much of a wrench to accept as a probability. I do not refer to hair- raising happenings. It is, for example, far easier to accept as in artistic truth the wildest adventure of Miss Austin, or in Hills of Han or In Red and Gold, than it is to believe that Henry Calverly could have written the great biography of the Pacific Railroad king. One does not, I should say, perceive an even advance in Mr. Merwin s style through one book after another. That is because his style is a changing medium, adapted to the type of tale in hand. In some books it is quick and sparkling, in others moving with a steadier current. But his ease and power 21 SAMUEL MERWIN to-day are far, far away from the early awk wardness of The Citadel. Merwin once said: "My professional goal is to learn as much as possible about the business of writing." That s a key to the man s character. He is always learning; he always will learn. He will never arrive be cause he will never stop going, or growing. And while I am chatting about him, I d better say that nothing comes his way that doesn t challenge his consideration. Life first and then the technique to transcribe it. Fan nie Hurst said of him not long ago: "Mr. Merwin has the faculty of folding and stir ring into his fiction the subtile flavor of ac tuality," which may justify me in observing that even in his moments of high romance he does not fear to cut into the solid sub stance of real life. Who s Who tells me it was at Evanston, Illinois, in the year 1874 that Samuel Mer win began his interesting career. He was a shy youngster, observing, reticent, thought ful; developing early a fondness for music, a high forehead and a passion for spectacles. The niceties of dress appealed to him; pos- 22 sibly because he saw the impression clothes made on the Evanston flappers, for Samuel soon realized that if he was one day to write The Passionate Pilgrim he could not hold himself aloof from the dominant sex. And he didn t. He was born into the social life of Chicago s famous suburb and he made the most of his inheritance. Men and women, regardless of age or occupation, stirred his young imagination and aroused his early spring emotions. They became his chief in terest in life and have continued to hold his acquisitive attention unabated. But in spite of his shyness and his glasses he was every inch a boy, and so it came about that he found, a few blocks down the shady street on which he lived, another lad whose mind ran along with his, who saw the Evans- ton world through the same glasses, (though he didn t wear them), who was going to the same school and reading the same inflamma tory literature. This lad was Henry Kitchell Webster. When the Northwestern University turned these boys out to sink or swim they were bound together by a common ambition which 23 SAMUEL M ERWIN very shortly disclosed itself to the world in The Short-Line War and Calumet K. The success of these initial excursions into the fastness of fiction settled the future for both these, by this time, young men, and though they dissolved the literary partnership, each to fight his own fight in his own way, they held firmly to their boyhood friendship, to their mutual admiration. The disintegrating years have only worked to strengthen these binding ties. Speaking of his beginnings, Merwin has said: "I didn t have a cent when I started out to write. I had taken special courses at Northwestern and was doing some work for the newspapers. Then I wrote several comic operas and fooled around with that game to some extent with my Tom Brown friend, Henry Kitchell Webster, staging plays in which I always took part. "When I was twenty, one of the operettas attracted the attention of a Chicago paper and for a time I thought seriously of becom ing a comic opera comedian. However, I stuck to writing. This successful musical piece was called The Medicine Man. Perhaps 24 SAMUEL M ERWIN you will remember it was produced back in 1897? "My friendship with Henry Kitchell Web ster has been a most amazing one. As boys we grew up together. During the short time we were in high school we worked on the school paper, and wrote many foolish little skits together. I turned out a few stories and sent them to the Youth s Companion. The first that brought me any money was sold to the Irving Bacheller Syndicate for fifteen glorious dollars. I had almost de cided to accept a job with a big harvester company, go into business for all time and let literature struggle along as best it could, when The Youth s Companion bought one of my stories and sent me a check for thirty- five dollars. That settled me for good, or bad, in the writing game. The harvester company lost what would have been a thor oughly inefficient clerk. "Finally I got enough money to take me to New York, and while I was there I tore off a lot of stuff and sold it to McClure s, The Youth s Companion and other publica tions. In the meantime, Webster, who had 25 SAMUEL MERWIN been teaching in New York State, came back to Evanston, and, as of old, we joined forces and wrote the novel, The Short Line W ar. It was the first of the so-called business ro mances. Then we did Calumet K which ap peared in The Saturday Evening Post. "Strange parallel, Webster s life and mine. There is less than a year s difference in our ages. While both very young, we inaugu rated one of those until-death-do-us-part friendships. We married college room mates, and our children came within a year of each other. "In 1901, Mrs. Merwin and I spent a year in France. At the end of our visit, the Websters came over and took the house we had occupied. There have been long periods when we haven t seen each other, yet our lives ran along together surprisingly alike. We broke out about the same time, he in The Saturday Evening Post and I in McClure s. "Then each of us did a novel, neither knowing what the other was doing. Another time he wrote a story called The Butterfly and I wrote one called Anthony the Absolute, 26 SAMUEL M ERWI N and when the stories were printed they were strangely similar. His was told by a pro fessor, and mine by a scientist; mine was about a young woman singer and his about a dancer. "His novel, The Real Adventure and mine, The Honey Bee, were so completely opposite that two men might have been writing the same story one pro and the other con. "The two youngsters back there in Evans- ton swapping ideas, years ago, certainly showed in our later efforts." Webster s inclination to "stay put" devel oped, and has held him firmly and happily to his native soil. Merwin s tendency to in- quisitiveness grew beyond control; he broke camp and went out to meet experience half way. New York swallowed him; Success (the magazine) broke him; hard necessity drove him! He fled to China, sent back a book on the opium trade, came home by way of Paris, and after several localizing experi ments, he found his complement his perfect state, in Concord, Mass. IN RED AND GOLD MR. MERWIN can always be counted on to give us an interesting story. No listener nods in the chimney corner when this famous teller of tales lights his pipe and sets out on a "Once upon a time" voyage. This reputa tion is more than sustained by his latest romance In Red and Gold. Indeed it is brilliantly height ened, for the moment you set foot on the Yen Hsin, which you do on page one, and begin the thrilling and picturesque journey up the great Yangtze River to Hankow, from that moment you are wholly ab sorbed in your fellow passengers, and deeply en grossed in the drama they enact. You are given a place at the Captain s table where you meet two school teachers from the States; a Manchu Princess, dressed in Fifth Avenue clothes and carrying home a sheepskin from a Massachusetts college ; an inter national crook, who claims the world for his hunt ing-ground ; a millionaire seeking rest and invest ment ; his son, weak and bad until strength and goodness are demanded of him; a girl from the Barbary Coast, who neither looks it nor admits it ; the first mate, whom you met in Hills of Han but 28 SAMUEL M ERWIN wearing a different cut of clothes; and the old Viceroy who, under sentence of death, is on his way to his ancestral home in order that he may finish his life in proper dignity as fine and noble a figure as you will meet in life or in literature. With this company of conflicting characters and motives; in this intimate setting, on the greatest of rivers, rich in memories of the endless human drama; with a revolution brewing, and the plans forming for a great jewel robbery, what chance is there for a drab or a dull moment? It may be said by some that Mr. Merwin has shown China at her best and America at her worst ; but surely we are big enough to be told our faults, while nothing could be more opportune in a political way than the lights he gives us on China s virtues, upon her proffered gifts to Western civilization, on her art, her poetry, her patience, her philosophy. That Mr. Merwin s knowledge is intensive, his sympathy and admiration great, no one can deny. He doubtless believes that "one of the worthiest tasks left in the world is to explain the East to the West." Certainly with seriousness and sincerity he does his bit in this most engaging of all his romances. THE HONEY BEE "The author has given to the study of the emo tional life of a modern business woman most careful workmanship. The story is a singularly complete one. There are no loose ends to this narrative. Every development of plot is thoughtfully worked out, every event occurs naturally, yet all contribute to a completely rounded, intense and tragic story. Every sentence has its relation to the tale as a whole. Characters are wonderfully consistent and glowing with personality. Even those individuals who flit out again are vivid and arresting. Above all, it is not a hysterical story. The modern business woman is not hysterical. She rises above her sisters of whatever class in poise. She may suffer, she may even collapse, but she does not weep nor rend the air with lamentations. Yet she is a woman all right, every inch of her. Mr. Merwin has been just to the type." Baltimore Sun. "A decidedly unusual novel it is, and one of obviously feministic import. The humanizing of an American business woman under unconventional and bohemian circumstances is the theme, and the 30 SAMUEL M ERWIN author deserves credit for carrying his story to its logical and consistent conclusion instead of begging the question by weakingly marrying his heroine to some eligible man as the customery sop to those sentimental souls who sternly demand the conven tional romance." Philadelphia Press. "While the Honey Bee is a problem story, what is more important, it is a deeply human story of a dramatic year in a woman s life. For the most part, Paris is the scene of action, with a manly pugilist and minor singers and dancers of the halls furnishing Hilda distraction for a while. From the first Mr. Merwin has shown marked facility. He has supple technique now, and with the under standing of humanity that makes his characters be lievable things. The Honey Bee is the best thing he has done." Boston Herald. "It is an interesting, well-written story, full of amazing hints of the workings of a woman s mind and the aspirations of her soul. It may be the reflex of an actual woman s life, up to a certain stage, but it is so embellished with Mr. Merwin s imagination that it may be accepted as wholly a work of fiction, behind which is the author s purpose to show by what a narrow wall woman s mortality is after all immured." Philadelphia Record. "Once in a while there comes a novel which is so distinctive that it rises far above the common 31 SAMUEL M ERWIN level even of good fiction and assumes a permanent place in current literature. Such a novel is The Honey Bee, by Samuel Merwin, whose Anthony the Absolute, was a surprise to those who had followed his successful career. It is a study in feminine psychology, which is so just and so true that one wonders how a man could have written it. ... "The great charm and the power of this book is in its excellent characterization and especially of the heroine. The book reads like the autobiography of a human soul that has experienced much, but has not yet found itself. This is the best novel of the spring and one of the best of recent times." Philadelphia Inquirer. "A mark of high credit must be given for the quality of The Honey Bee and the admirable man ner of its telling." New York World. "The Honey Bee is richly suggestive of searching thought withal it is a most excellent, a most read able novel, admirably well constructed and well written." New York Tribune. "The description of the prize fight between Moran and the redoubtable Carpentier, the en thusiasm of the vulgar Mrs. Huybers, wife of Moran s manager, the bewildering emotions at con flict within Hilda as she watches, makes one of the most interesting passages in current fiction." Los Angeles Sunday Times. 32 SAMUEL M ERWI N "The book is a serious contribution to the dis cussion of the complex question of woman s new status. It is richly suggestive of searching thought, but withal it is from first to last an excellent, a most readable novel, admirably well constructed and well written. Incidentally it may be mentioned to amateurs that Mr. Merwin s description of the great championship prizefight between Carpentier and Blink Moran is worth their while." New York Tribune. "The social problem presented by the woman in business is the main theme of Samuel Merwin s The Honey Bee a story of real distinction, owing to its charm of style, novel atmosphere and presenta tion of a situation that must be ever-present in the business world since women have invaded that world in such numbers and with so much success. Mr. Merwin s book is decidedly novel and unusual. His pictures of the problem of woman in business are wide enough to cover their moral and ethical aspects with a solution that may be said to be inevitable, granting the kind of woman Hilda is. His sketches of life in Paris are as stimulating as the very air of the city of Light itself; while his portrait of Blink Moran and more especially the description of that boxer s fight with Carpentier is really a superb piece of work. And with these excellences there is the charm of his English, which makes one 33 SAMUEL M ERWI N feel that another one of our writers has fallen under the spell of the great beauty of French prose and has reproduced in English not a little of the supreme magic of its texture. This is, decidedly, one of the finest novels of the last decade." New York Press. THE TRUFFLERS "As a careful appraisal of the modern girl it pos sesses exceptional value." Christian World, Cleve land. "The Trufflers, a story by Samuel Merwin, is a brilliant author s most brilliant book. Into this anarchic society of the Village, Mr. Merwin boldly plunges his readers, and here we see how plays are made, how bachelor girls live, how a charming emancipated heroine can unblushingly receive an invitation to elope into an unwedded union, in fact how life is lived at its freest by some who pose, many who merely talk, and a few who put their anarchic creed into their deed. Mr. Merwin has skilfully given the argument for both self- abnegation and liberty, and has not committed a single dull sentence in the course of his demonstra tion." Vogue, New York. "I will not be responsible for recommending this novel to a Methodist audience, but I will confess that I enjoyed it and found in it several lessons worthwhile." Methodist Protestant, Baltimore. "One of the best and most enjoyable novels of the 35 season, and you will want to read to the very last page." Citizen, Brooklyn. "The author of that masterful piece of writing, The Honey Bee, again strikes the note of the un usual, and coins a word that we ll all be using before we know it." Pittsburg Leader. "This book isn t a mere story. It is a great novel, worthy of Balzac, because it teaches without pro fessing to do so, it illuminates life without priggish- ness or preaching. It tells some fundamental les sons in ways that only truth can present. It reveals to us that the underlying principles of society are correct and that to fight against conventions as if they were most important is absurd. In the end every human being goes to his own place according to heredity, environment, education, will power and moral principle. It is an illuminating story of life written with unusual power." Inquirer, Philadel phia. "The tall, thin young man meets at a street cross ing a boyishly slender, graceful, short-haired, green- eyed girl. They speak. So much for the beginning of Samuel Merwin s The Trufflers. The reader is prepared for the conventional novel, his mind leaps obstacles and envisages the ending. And in so doing he makes a mistake. For Mr. Merwin is not a conventional novelist. If he is not a realist, 36 SAMUEL M ERWIN he is at least an observer at close range of certain aspects of life ; he understands how certain types react and especially does he know how to portray an impressionable young egoist with a touch of genius." Indianapolis News. "Mr. Merwin has written an interesting novel. Praise is due him. He is an advocate of real life and writes about it with an originality that is unique, withal carrying through the book a thorough ness that admits of no erotic forms of situation. He has proved in The Trufflers that the exceptions of the human species (which are his characters) have surface values only and that underneath the super ficial aspects of character we are all alike." Pitts burgh Sun. "The author writes with unusual directness; he gives the arguments for and against the modern in dependence of woman; he describes many familiar and many not so well known bits of New York; he props up the Greenwich Village legend ; he paints some picturesque figures, male and female ; above all he jeers amusingly at many things, and presents us with a girl that can be liked through all her blunderings and a lover that is wholly satisfactory. It is a graphic picture." New York Sun. "Mr. Merwin s picture of his region and his people is impressive. He treats of certain strong tendencies 37 SAMUEL M ERWIN in urban life that look attractive, but which in prac tice are of life s direst dregs. The warning is not untimely. But the lesson is not alone for the feminine seekers of liberty. There are many mascu line trufflers, and the irony of the story lies in the revelation that the chief reformer of the idle women of the village, the loudest declaimer against the truffler is himself the greatest truffler of them all." Philadelphia Record. "The quality that gives The Trufflers its deep interest and vitality as a story is its fine fairness, its admirable balance. There can be no doubt about the author s personal sentiments and views, but he never once distorts his drama of human relationship arbitrarily to strengthen his own viewpoint. But the reality of his Sue Wilde, his Zann, his Worm, his Hy Love and of Peter Eric Mann above all of the last named will be recognized instantly by all who have encountered their prototypes in daily life." Philadelphia Press. "The Trufflers has plenty of incident, some excit ing moments, and more than a few touches of satire, but it is primarily as the study of the modern girl that it commands attention. It is in many ways a much better novel than The Honey Bee, clearer in thought, less drawn out, more convincing. With The Charmed Life of Miss dustin, Mr. Merwin 38 SAMUEL M ERWIN proved himself possessed of an unusual amount of sympathy and insight regarding that complicated person we call the modern girl. These qualities of his have grown and developed, with the result that in The Trufflers, we have a thoroughly worth-while book, sane, unprejudiced, spiced with humor, holding one s interest from the first page to the last a novel which can not only be read, but even re-read with pleasure and profit." New York Times, "In Sue Wilde, the heroine of The Trufflers, Mr. Merwin has presented with sympathy and with understanding a fine type of the modern girl who revolts and seeks freedom, welcomes with young, whole-hearted enthusiasm doctrines which seem to be embodied truth, makes of them a religion and presently dicovers that there is often a gulf between fact and theory, that there is sometimes a lot of bunk in this freedom theory, that the majority of the really admirable men and women aren t wor ried about their liberty, while with the others it is very often all words. Sue has a conscience ; she has been honest in her beliefs, and when she finds out that for her at least it is impossible for her to put into practice the kind of freedom she has been talking about, she makes a sincere and determined effort to find herself. In this attempt she turns to the other extreme, only to realize that suppression and denial have their dangers, too, that 39 SAMUEL M ERWI N the new spirit of freedom has a contribution to make quite as valuable as the Puritan tradition. She is both a type and an individual, a vivid, ardent, plucky creature, enthusiastic, spirited, honest with that most difficult kind of honesty the refusal to de ceive one s self." New York Times. TEMPERAMENTAL HENRY "If Samuel Merwin s new novel, Temperamental Henry, did nothing more than shock us out of our blind and middle-aged complacency it would justify its existence. But it does this and a good deal more besides, for it introduces us to half a dozen young people who prove so unconsciously entertaining and so tragically amusing that we forget to pay our income tax. And these really are young people. Henry is only eighteen, and Clem and Ernestine and Martha and the rest are younger. Henry isn t the twenty-seven-year-old hero who has drained the cup of life and speaks in clever cynicisms; nor the typical bad boy of fiction who melts limburger cheese on the schoolroom stove. Henry is an individual with a distinct personality and Mr. Merwin has analyzed him with all the loving care that he might have given to the most complex man of the world. As a result Henry lives for us and we live for him. We know him and sympathize with him, love him and laugh at him, and recall the boy in our crowd who played the guitar and who didn t seem to get on, except with the girls. But Henry isn t all the story, by a good deal." New Haven Saturday Chronicle. 41 SAMUEL MERWIN "A large part of the fun of the book lies in the serious and semi-serious love affairs which dot Henry s summer. Mr. Merwin seems to have cap tured the very spirit of youth itself in the happy go-lucky way in which Henry finds himself in love affair after love affair, while at heart he cherishes a dim understanding that underneath the momentary feeling he does not want these to be serious happen ings, because he wants to be free a while longer. And after all there is more than a little seriousness under the comedy, and Mr. Merwin has a serious intention in portraying Henry s inability to cope with what seems on the surface a harmless habit. He does not preach, but we can imagine him sug gesting that all the habits which injure the will are not those commonly preached against. In fact it is these unheroic qualities of Henry which make him seem so real and which endear him to the reader. The ability to bestow so complete a sense of reality upon a character must be acknowledged as fine art." Boston Evening Transcript. "This time Mr. Merwin has written his most realistic novel of character. It is quite an achieve ment this, creating a hero who is a perfect fool and yet making him human and interesting. Curiosity makes you read this novel to the very last chapter." Portland Oregonian. "Henry is not a mere figment of the imagination. 42 SAMUEL MERWIN Mr. Merwin makes him a decided reality even in moments of his wildest eccentricities. One does not grow impatient with him, even when he flits from one passion to another and is guilty of the most irresponsible acts. The author keeps before the reader that Henry has temperament, and has never learned habits of responsibility or ideas of conventional conduct. This is not an unmixed evil, for Henry is always delightfully naive, even when most egotistical. Understanding his simplicity, good habits and good intentions, plus his temperament, whatever the psychological explanation of that phenomenon may be, one readily accepts Henry as an actual personality whose extremes of moods and im pulsive adventures furnish a most entertaining tale." Springfield Republican. , "Samuel Merwin always writes an entertaining story. It makes little difference what is his theme or his scenario, because interest inheres almost en tirely in his characters. He is a profound psycholo gist, and as people are the most interesting things in the world, he always scores a success. The great value of this book is that it reveals to every man the manner of boy that he was himself. It is an amazingly fine analysis of adolescence. In many respects this may be deemed Mr. Merwin s best piece of work." Philadelphia Enquirer. "Mr. Merwin has done a surpassingly able thing. 43 SAMUEL M ERWIN Henry is a rare creation, and although he is the tour de force of the volume, its general truth to provincial American society is delicious, while Henry s sweethearts are differentiated with rare discrimination." Vogue. "The author knows how to enter sympathetically into all the emotional experiences of youth and to interpret them for those who have long since for gotten that they too were once young. This story is one with the dew still on the grass and the bloom on the fruit, before contact with this rough old workaday world has brushed them off. It is full of youth s confidence and optimism, alert with great expectations and the keenness of an unsated appetite, and bubbling over with the sheer joy of living. It will bring back vividly to you your own days when life was in its springtime and the birds were singing in all the trees. It will do you a world of good to read it." Cleveland Christian World. "Mr. Merwin has caught the psychology of 18 with subtlety and sympathy and he makes luminous the puzzling mental processes by which youth regulates its sprightly journey to the age when life is not less serious, but is better understood. Henry is a boy who will give readers many happy moments ; and the girls who come within his perview will be found equally entertaining." Philadelphia Record. "Mr. Merwin has painted with utmost fidelity 44 SAMUEL M ERWIN and not a little humor the raw, quick soul of seven teen. It is really and truly a classic. Willie Baxter amused hugely. Henry tickles a little more subtly and it hurts." Chicago News. "Here is a delightful story of a healthy young fellow who is just beginning to find himself and consequently learns that few people are able to sym pathize with him except the girls. Yet there is such an intensely human tenderness in the presenta tion of the boy s loves and sorrows that no one can fail to enjoy the recital of his experiences. It is really a refreshing book." San Francisco Call. "Mr. Merwin is very respectful to the youth em bodied in Henry if not always to Henry himself respectful, sympathetic, understanding, and he has endeavored, and perhaps succeeded, as far as the thing is possible to reduce to some sort of under standable order the complicated surges of emotion and the vague, tangled helter-skelter of motives that impel adolescence to action. The story ought to be particularly interesting to parents with children in their teens. They will probably find out from it many things they w r ould never have guessed and will have made clear to their understanding other things that have been hopelessly mystifying puzzles." Neiv York Times. "In this irresistibly delightful story of Henry Cal- verly, Mr. Merwin has entered into the very heart 45 SAMUEL M ERWIN of hearts of temperamental adolescence. There is not a moment in which Henry is not 100 per cent alive and true to life. We laugh at him and weep over him ; we blame him and we praise him ; but we always sympathize with him and feel ourselves bound by the irresistible spell of youth. His ex travagances never go beyond the limit ; he is a character, not a caricature. Of course he makes a fool of himself, as does every young man ; but he does so in a decent fashion, clean and self-respecting. It is a most engaging picture that Mr. Merwin draws, and we bespeak for it a place on the line in the gallery of real life." New York Tribune. "Henry is 18, so if you are not too old to care any longer for the young people about you and their frivolities, why just beg, borrow or steal a copy of this book, and if you have not on a broad grin before the end of the first episode, you are indeed a grouch and there is no hope." Philadel phia Sunday Despatch. HENRY IS TWENTY "Mr. Merwin has the faculty of presenting his characters in a most life-like manner. The reader lives with them and almost feels that he knows their innermost thoughts." Brooklyn Standard Union. "There is no doubt in my mind that Mr. Merwin has written in this book a story which has more appeal to the majority of readers than had Tem peramental Henry. There is nothing which is so essentially pleasing as the story of sudden success the old instinct for the magic wand which turns the everyday Henry of yesterday into the desirable per son of today, the sought-after man of tomorrow. This is the story of Henry Is Twenty. It has the thrilling magic of success in it. It is all the more wonderful because we have read the earlier book, seen Henry when he was not wonderful, but only a boy with a talent for doing the wrong thing at the wrong moment." Boston Evening Transcript. "A study of the struggles, spiritual and physical mainly spiritual of a boy of 2O, is made with extraordinary insight and fidelity and much humor by Samuel Merwin in his new novel Henry Is 47 SAMUEL M ERWI N Twenty. The hero of Temperamental Henry, a previous story, reappears here, but one need not have met the boy in that story to enjoy the experi ences of the Henry of the older age. Mr. Merwin has gone into the field that Eden Philpofts explored in his From the Angle of Seventeen, and that Booth Tarkington essayed in Seventeen, and no reader will say Mr. Merwin has any apologies to offer to either of the distinguished writers for invading the same domain." Philadelphia Record. "It is a commendably entertaining book, poignant, piercing, palpitant. Possibly there are not enough people in the world who are at once unconvention ally minded and sympathetic with aberrancy to make such a work a popular success but one never knows. One can only hope that it may reach those who are weary of the machine-made hero and can appreciate a work of subtlety and finesse." Reedy s Mirror, St. Louis. "Inarticulate genius is at the bottom of all his difficulties. It is not to be expected, perhaps, that his home folk could discern, let alone give recogni tion to, this quality in Henry. But here we find the deftness and subtle craft in Mr. Merwin s work. There is always present an over-whelming tempta tion to emphasize the ludicrous in Henry s extremes of behavior. But the author never loses sight of the governing impulse in his hero s character. Henry 48 SAMUEL MERWIN ecstatically in love, or Henry oppressed with some thing to live down, never cuts a ridiculous figure. Even while his erratic behavior drives his friends and well-wishers to distraction, there shines through his apparent instability of character a quality of strength and a yearning for expression that incline the reader to patience until the youth s nebulous character solidifies and he finds its proper vocation." Springfield Republican. "Henry s mad plunge into real authorship is the triumph of the book, and is one of the best things of the kind ever written. No one that knows Mr. Merwin s writings needs to be told that the book is charming from beginning to end ; but it is more than fascinating; it arouses the sympathies, stirs the imagination, and makes one gentler toward his brothers." Christian Endeavor World, Boston. "Mr. Merwin has no little real knowledge of the heart of an impulsive youth of twenty. Henry, as we have said, convinces us that he is real ; his emo tional responsiveness to feminine prettiness, his earnest but blundering efforts to teach his wayward self concentration and purposefulness, his alterna tions of callow boyishness and stalwart manliness, are true to nature and appealing." New York Evening Post. "In the main, Mr. Merwin treats him with a sort of gentle mercilessness for it is evident that he loves 49 SAMUEL MERWIN his creation as a father loves his son, but he spares no uncovering of Henry s guileless heart, raw sensi bilities and over-grown self-consciousness. His in sight into all the quirks and contradictions and convolutions of the adolescent mind and soul is deep and clear and he makes all that he sees luminous for the reader s understanding. But Henry, central figure though he is of the canvas, is only one of many. The story of his twentieth Summer entangles in its threads numerous other characters, men and women, and Mr. Merwin tells it all with the finest art he has yet shown in any of his novels." New York Times. "It is keen understanding of the least understand able period and phases of human life. Thus to portray the adolescent and his salad problems may seem to some an almost frivolous matter. It is in fact a more formidable undertaking than similar dealing with more mature aspects of life, for a rea son which must be obvious. And the high degree of success which Mr. Merwin has attained entitles him to the palm of literary merit." New York Tribune. "Mr. Merwin has made an exceedingly fine analysis of the psychology of boyhood." The Inde pendent. "The story, to our thinking, is a classic of adoles cence so keen is it and so sympathetic, so charged 50 with the wisdom and the gayety of age, yet so tender to youth, its ignorance, its solemnities. Mr. Mer- win laughs at Henry, but the laughter has no sting; it is, rather, a sort of indulgent chuckle with a note of fondness in it and of pride that is almost paternal." Louisville Post. "There is just this difference between Mr. Mer- win s Henry and Mr. Barrie s Tommy the latter was sentimental, the former, temperamental. How ever, the terms are fairly interchangeable, only Tommy was younger ; hence his sentiment was less dangerous a trait. But Henry at twenty! Well, Mr. Merwin \vas twenty once and he has not for gotten it ; that is the secret of the success of his Henry Is Twenty. It comes to you, fresh, spon taneous it is, in fact, Youth itself. Youth, bold, daring, foolish, rash and all the other adjectives belonging to twenty, and they cluster about Henry as a convolvulus entwines itself about any tree trunk within convenient reach." Richmond (Va.) Jour nal. THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM "Against a large and dramatic background some where in our Middle West, Mr. Merwin has drawn Henry Calverly full length. One is reminded of ten league canvases and brushes of comet s hair. His local color is admirable. Many characters, widely divergent, play their parts in shaping Henry s life, in rounding it out and bringing it to a happy and successful climax. Life is ofttimes melodramatic, and Mr. Merwin is not afraid of life. He has written many scenes, exciting, poignant and beauti ful. These are unfolded as young Calverly develops from a crushed and broken soul into a man of pur pose with hope in his heart and love stretching out its supposedly healing hands to him. The Passionate Pilgrim is an excellent novel, remarkably well done." Baltimore News. "One of the great scenes in The Passionate Pil grim describes the reawakening of his literary power in the soul of the discouraged genius. A big creative idea takes possession of him in a rap turous flood. He is transformed from craven fear, despair, and subserviency into a young god. The passion of composition carries with it the mastery 52 SAMUEL M ERWIN of men and of events. The chapters that paint this restoration are a splendid piece of writing." Boston Christian Endeavor. "The new novel is quiet, dramatic, if you will, but quiet, intense, and fraught with emotion. It is even occasionally morbid, but in the main cleverly, carefully quiet. Thus it has power. It is as though the novelist, leaving those shifting currents of life in which he used to be tossed, has reached the deep water below." Boston Transcript. "Although Mr. Merwin s purpose in writing this story was to tell an entertaining story, he goes much further. He gives a most remarkable demonstration of the psychology of genius, and he expresses, through his characters, views on many phases of life that cannot fail to awaken the interest of a large circle of readers." Brooklyn Standard Union. "Many characters, widely divergent, play their parts in shaping this eventful year of Henry Cal- verly s life, and many scenes, dramatic and beautiful, are unfolded as Henry develops. The characters are all human and the scenes are all natural. The Passionate Pilgrim is easily Mr. Merwin s greatest achievement yet in the world of letters." Brooklyn Standard Union. "The Passionate Pilgrim is a stimulating book. It is written without affectation. It is direct; it is sincere. It would be worth while if only for the 53 SAMUEL M ERWIN sturdy manner in which it exposes our national Puritanism in regard to our great men. It is the convincing revelation of this national weakness which gives the book its ethical value. It is the straightforward manner in which it tells a compli cated and interesting story which gives it literary value." Detroit News Tribune. "Having read this book with unusual interest and enjoyment, we cordially commend it to our readers as a strong, stirring and distinctly superior story." Hartford Courant. "A novel that can be strongly recommended to discriminating readers in search of entertaining fic tion is Samuel Merwin s The Passionate Pilgrim. It is, perhaps, not too much to say that its delinea tion of American Life and character and its glimpses into some of our interlocking social, commercial and political conditions make it the most striking novel of the season." Indianapolis Star. "We have no desire to spoil a superb story by telling it. This is one certain to tell itself to a million or more appreciative and delighted readers." Los Angeles Examiner. "The story is told in Mr. Merwin s usual cap tivating vein, its keen analysis of human qualities being true to nature and garnished with a humor that is altogether pleasing. The Passionate Pilgrim 54 SAMUEL M ERWIN is a worthy sequel to its predecessors." Philadelphia Evening Ledger. "Mr. Merwin believes that life is largely melo dramatic. Right. He aims to tell an absorbing story. He does. He aims to utter, naturally, and in place, through the mouths of his characters, views on news papers, modern advertising, American small city politics, the writing of biography and a fairish lot of other subjects. And he gets away with it abso lutely, or at least 99.44 per cent, of the time. This is, in fact, his greatest achievement in The Passion ate Pilgrim because, as any experienced story teller will tell you, it is the most difficult essay possible in fiction. Fiction and such things don t ordinarily mix at all. But Mr. Merwin has been more than ordinarily cunning. He has dissolved his powder in his potion. You ll hardly taste it. And if you do after all, you may rather like the taste." New York Sun. HILLS OF HAN "By the time we had crossed the China sea and were anchored in the muddy Woosung off Shanghai I was ready to admit that Samuel Merwin had read wisely and well of the Far East. When he touched in an easy, familiar way on Hankow and Peking I was willing to grant that^r** had possibly taken a tourist s survey from the windows of the Peking- Hankow express. But when we picked up the dusty road leading into the Hills of Han my last doubt disappeared. On every page I found scenes that took me back to the land where I spent my child hood." Chicago Daily News. "The book is merely a mature piece of work, the outgrowth of a dozen years of brooding, the whole plot being based on hard-earned first-hand experience and knowledge. The thing came about this way: Thirteen years ago I was sent out to China and on around the world by a magazine to make a journal istic study of the opium problem. I spent several months in China and during that time traveled up the Yangtse-Kiang to Hankow and through north central China via the Hankow-Peking railway. I wandered through parts of Shansi Province, north- 56 SAMUEL M ERWI N western China, traveling by cart and mule-litter, and sleeping in native inns. At the city of Fai Yuan-fu (the Tainan-fu of Hills of Han), I was placed under arrest because of a difficulty over a passport, and also because I was thought to be an investigator or spy for a European mining concern which was at that time a cause of trouble in the province. I had later to appear before, a mandarin of high degree, who supplied me with a mounted soldier and guard that stayed with me until I got back to the railroad, and who went to some trouble to inform me regardir o the local problems. Thus, while I saw no such actual fighting as takes place in the story, still the background narrative over the trouble with the Ho-Shan Company is based on first-hand observation of a similar controversy. At one time during my travels in the Chinese interior, I spent nearly all of a night listening to the con fession of a missionary who felt that he had chosen the wrong calling, but that the discovery had come too late in his life. The situation seemed to me, even then, to contain the germ of a drama. Many times during the past dozen years I have taken out my notes of those days and looked them over, but the drama (for Hills of Han seems essentially to me dramatic) did not take form in my mind until the winter of 1918-1919, when it suddenly combined itself with some old documents of the gentry and 57 people I had made quotations from while in the heart of China during the period following my arrest. All in a moment almost the present story took form. I sat down at once it happened to be in a New York hotel, and I was supposed to be working at a play and wrote the opening chapters straight off. The girl, Betty, stepped into the story just as she is. Her father, Griggsby Doane, stepped in right after her, full size; and I felt at once that I had long known and loved him. Branchey, too curious wanderer sprang at once into life. And as a result of twelve years of brooding in some half- glimpsed subconscious region, the whole story very nearly wrote itself. It was a joy to do from start to finish." Interview with Samuel Merwin, in Boston Post. "The definite knowledge of this field possessed by the author, coupled with keen insight and the dramatic power of producing actual people and situa tions, serves to produce a novel of unusual sub stance and interest." Washington Star. "Unless there is some monstrous falling off in the last hundred pages of Samuel Merwin s Hills of Han, we have at last succeeded in finding an adven ture story which is not written wholly for children and moving picture fans. There is incident enough in the book to please the most exacting reader, and 58 yet it is all developed sanely and logically." New York Tribune, "The most interesting figure in the book is Griggsby Doane, who has outgrown the narrow dogmas of his evangelical denomination and only through suf fering and what he regards as terrible sin wins through to freedom and peace. The interior of China, its mandarins with their subtle and devious policies and their ceremonial, the point of view of young China combining the culture of the West with the apathy and fatalism of the East all this is strik ingly pictured, with the result that the book makes an appeal for more reasons than its story." In dianapolis News. "Personally, the reviewer can say that Hills of Han is one of those all-night books; once reading you must reach the end before you turn to other tasks. This is Mr. Merwin s knack, a gift made perfect by the practise of more than a dozen novels." Detroit News. Mr. Merwin s Novels The Citadel The Trufflers Temperamental Henry Henry Is Twenty The Passionate Pilgrim In Red and Gold Anthony the Absolute Hills of Han The Honey Bee The Charmed Life of Miss Austin THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY, Publishers A 000 783 371 8