SMALL-TOWN LAWYER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24421, 5 October 1940, Page 4

SMALL-TOWN LAWYER

STORY OF UNIVERSAL APPEAL Country Lawyer (The Story of My Father). By Bellamy Partridge (Harrap) 12s 6d. There are many Americas, and of them all perhaps the most typical, because it is the soil wherein that country’s roots are embedded, is the small-town America. This is the story of a lawyer who settled in a small town in New York State in the late sixties, built up his practice there, and for 50 years lived his lives, social, professional, and personal, in the little town he had chosen. Like all biographies, this one is episodic. It contains many good stories, both of the law and of life. The classic story of the man who sued the local churchmen because they prayed for rain and his property suffered in the subsequent thunderstorm is one that every lawyer will enjoy. Tales of horse-dealing cases, in which Mr Partridge was something of an expert, and of curious testaments, will be of universal interest—both for the human and universal quality of the disputes and for the skilful way in which they are retailed. From the whole story the subject, Mr Samuel Selden Partridge, emerges as a complete and definite character. He served his community well and he enjoyed doing so. A great deal of that enjoyment is transmitted to the readers of this book. His son and biographer has obviously the greatest personal admiration for his father, but this book is no mere monument to filial piety. It is written with ability and discretion, and the quality of the story is matched by the quality of its telling. One feels that it would have been a privilege to have known Mr Partridge, and one feels also that the world in those days was in many ways a better place to live in than it is now whatever refinements of civilisation may have been missing. The American small town of the last century was a place in which every character was submitted to merciless scrutiny by his neighbours. but along with the gossip and the prying the human virtues flourished sturdily. Men were assessed at very: close to their true value, and children were brought up under a healthy and clear moral code. One knew what was “ done ” and what was “ not done.” a background which many of us nowadays sadly miss. The author was one of a very large family, and his tales of his own childhood, which fit naturally into the biography of his father complete the picture of the time. It is not surprising that Country Lawyer has proved a “ best-seller ” in America It is likely to be equally popular in all English-speaking countries, especially in such times as the present, for its re-creation of a vanished but delightful period, and of an interesting personality. P. H. W. N.

Epidemic American Reviewing approvingly W. R. Burnett's High Sierra, a notice of which appeared recently on this page, a critic for the Literary Supplement of The Times is quite carried away by the American vernacular. A typical excerpt from his review: "After he had served six years of a stiff sentence Roy Earle, an Indiana bank robber, was ' sprung' —pardoned—by the grace of a decaying big shot. Big Mac, who had a job to crack at a fashionable resort in the California mountains. Three punks were" already on it: Big Mac wanted a real guy to take charge "