His publisher asserts that "there is no living author
who writes about Yorkshire as does Mr. RILEY." I daresay he is quite
right, but at least as far as the present book is concerned I don't
think that I should have bothered to mention it.
* * * * *
Those--and I suspect they are many--whose first real enthusiasm for
ABRAHAM LINCOLN was kindled by Mr. JOHN DRINKWATER'S romantic morality
play can profitably take up Mr. IRVING BACHELLER'S _A Man for the
Ages_ (CONSTABLE) for an engaging account of the early days of the
great Democrat. They will forgive a certain flamboyance about the
author's preliminaries. Hero-worship, if the hero be worthy, is a very
pardonable weakness, and they should certainly admire the skill and
humour with which he has patched together, or invented where seemly,
the story of lanky ABE, with his axeman's skill, his immense physical
strength, his poor head for shopkeeping, his passion for books, his
lean purse and "shrinking pants," his wit, courage and resource. A
romance of reasonable interest and plausibility is woven round young
Lincoln's story. Perhaps Mr. BACHELLER makes his hero speak a little
too sententiously at times, and certainly some of his other folk say
queer things, such as, "What so vile as a cheap aristocracy, growing
up in idleness, too noble to be restrained, with every brutal passion
broad-blown as flush as May?" What indeed! The picture of pioneering
America in the thirties is a fresh and interesting one.
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