SHORTER NOTICES.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 2241, 29 August 1914, Page 5

SHORTER NOTICES.

Until quite recently there existed acurious law in Kentucky by which vagabonds could bo sold at public auction, their owners having the benefit of, their service, such as it was worth, for a •certain period. Upon this motif, Credo Harris, the author of "Toby, a Novel of Kentucky" (Small, Maynard'and Co., per George Robertson, has founded a pleasantly written romance. Tbo hero, a man of education, 6inks into degradation through;drink, and finally comes under the operation of the vagabond law. A beautiful girl, from a northern State, moved by the man's pitiablo plight, bids a dollar for.him, and he is taken to her uncle's plantation. Tho girl's kindness strikes a new chord in the vagabond's heart, and ho forthwith makes an internal vow of reformation to which ho rigidly adheres. 1 How the author proceeds, after such a commencement, it would be unfair to him to disclose. Suffice it to say that.lovers of sentiment will 'hugely delight in "Toby." There are, too, soniedeverly drawn subsidiary characters, notably a "moonshiner's" protty daughter, whose evidence comes in tho nick of time to prevent the hero from being found guilty of the murder of which ho has been falsely accused. Gcorgo Tromayne, Trcmnyno tho Universal Provider, is almost a millionaire, and still in tho prime of life. He marries a baronet's daughter, first getting rid of a highly inconvenient first wifo by obtaining her consent to a divorce, a consent gained by, tho mean

and mendacious device that he will then | marry tho woman for whom he had deserted, many years before, his legitimate partner in life. Retribution, however, falls upon him, for the sharp-witted and sharper-tongued,,if kindly hearted, first wife, whose name provides the title of Lincoln Grey's" story, "Surah Midget" (Mothuen and Co.), unwittingly falls across and befriends TremajWe illegitimate eon, and so lays tho train of a series of even stranger happenings which only end with the murder of the "Universal Provider" by. his son's'halfinsane tutor. Tho story drags not a little in places, and would' have been all the better for some judicious compression'. . Publishers are evidently finding profit in the sale of what may be called "white slave traffic" fiction, The 'latest story of this kind, "The Story of Lena," by W. N. Willis, appears in a Shilling edition (John Long, per Whitcombo and Tombs). ' It. IB frankly and crudely sensational and can only appeal to the morbid and prurient-minded. Miss Kebins's and the Kauffmanns' terrible storie3 possessed, at loaet, the merit of being written in decent English. Such productions as those to which Mr. Willie's name is so : frequently attached cin do no good and were.better left unwritten and unprinted. ' ■