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I A PLAIN TALE FROM ".THE…

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I A PLAIN TALE FROM ".THE HILLS, A novel treating either directly or indirectly of wwtei? sh ,,fe is such' a ranl* in these days of Vast ¥m« hat its local interest, quite apart from any possessed literary merit, should assure such a volume a hearty welcome from readers in the Princi- plity. In" Heavens of Brass" we have, from the pen of a rising English writer, W. Scott King, the life tragedy of Ph.lhp Drew, the ? of a Welsh collier. The lurid white light of local colour," as that vigorous word-painter Kipling term it. is used with a lavish brush -? an effective, in this pen picture, constituting tt?he principal ground for any claim the author may lay to the title of a realist. Th. story opens with a vivid and faithful panorama of the colliery village of Lower Deep, a type of scores of villages in the hills, where, with a dozen exceptions, every able-bodied male worked in the pits, "rose at the call of the same hooter, blundered into the dark road in identical corduroys and caps with I tomm v boxes,' and lamps of the same pattern and bought at the same company shop, and deoo,guding the SRme shaft, toiled in precisely similar < hfwffi » ^*n k* same 'hooter' summoned them i m the evenings to dwellings of uniform size and uniform squalor." i; Jti ^ther of the hero (or rather the ?fctim) T? contentedly ? a farm labourer in Monmouth- s?hire nu?nt.1 fv, news came of the discovery of coal in fhAe .TnfifihK fl?• lng valleys, ?°. ?vin?isp?ou? b?ehh?w.th his wife and child migrated to that region of fabn W P!0va'6e- Then en^ed the bitterness of disillSn !ie!Ca intensity of which the mother on her death-bed induced her husband to rSnft ?'? shall never  ?cr? pits." Faithfully ^ad Eli Drew kept that promise, strainedly gazing into the darkness of the ?futTe '?wSw ?ne infinitel, pathetic, 8t™«gliog with a view nhe J felt absolutely powerless to fulfil. "He would not break his word-never! and vet he could not keep it. At a Cymmanfa, while listening to the Rev. Peter Evano, "a florid emotional, yet withal musically eloquent," speaker, Phillip gets the in- < spiration that he too must be a preacher, and in a i ? Vr appeal to his father uees- the arm chair as a Pulpit and Prodigal Son as a text for his fir8' appeal. COT b0met com? home to your father's love! to y™ounr rffatuher >s house! ?- is waiting for you—has thefatwS H'8l"ir ?r°w° whitewili>•>* | the fatted calf th Eli gazed at the young bypnotiat with positive awe orate? a8fhuhi t st«ruck him, and the next instant both embrace chair'baok were folded in one frantic cmbrace. With truly Celtic fervour, the father nourished this ambition, unattainable for lack of this world's gcods. A strike at the colliery, the defeat of the men, and their return to work brings up m them the wrath of an excited mob of strikers from a neighbouring valley, After a skirmish between the two factions, the viotors, full of the lust of victory, make for the shattered house of a miserable money-lending hunohbick, Old Jimmy." On nearing the miser's house, Eli Drew runs ahead, thinking to warn the old man, who appears at an upper window. A few injudicious words and "Jimmy" falls fatally wounded by a stoned snowball. In the rush for the door, Drew is forced into the house, and accidentally finds the miser's hoard, which he secretes. The mob, unable to find the hidden wealth, turn their attention to the wounded man, and, realising the serious result of their foolish enter- prise, discreetly disperse. There being no claimant, the collier is in a dilemma as to the disposal of the dead man's money, and after a consultation with his pastor, Rev David Pugh, in which he is advised to "restore it 'to the Lord," decides to use it in his son's education for the ministry, imagining he would theteby make some atonement for his "crime." He e4 'e. from Lower Deep, and Phillip is accepted ast?hudent for the Nonconformist ministry. The iaSuenoe ud3.t fr student Dacre, a cynical hypocrite, soon shakes the foundation of our hero's rather unstable belief, while that of Dr Mollinby, a cultured Unitarian, and his daughter Gabrielle complete his moral disintegration. Phiilip, suffering from a serious lack of perspective, at the conclusion of his college career determines to renounce his vacation. Returning home, thfre ensues a painful scene between father and son, when Phillip, telling of bis deternunatton, sh?gs the oicer man to contession of how he bad procured the money for his education. After his father's death, Phillip returns to Lower Deep, where he lives in the house of "Old Jimmy," and enters upon a vague plan of an educational atonement." How he teaches Ruth, who reveals to him that she is the miser's heiress how the rude pit girl learnt to love her teacher, whose death upon the mountain brings to a fitting conclusion an interesting story, is all well told. Yet, although the story is well told, it is not flawless. Of Phillip Drew we can say little that is good; too emotional and impulsive to be an Englishman, too impractical to be a Welshman, he seems to have inherited the bad qualities of both his Saxon mother and his Celtic father; any other theory makes him an impossible creation. It is ridiculous to think that even a collier's son should, after a grammar school training, have said that "Martin Luther was the author of I the Reformation,, and that the Bible was first written in English and then translated into Welsh." In Eli Drew we have depicted an accurate portrait of a better class Welsh collier- superstitious, narrow- minded, of simple life, and slight ambition, who dies of a broken heart, a constant, lovable man, a type of the weaker who goes to the wall. It seems hard to understand that the artist who has portrayed Eli so admirably should have been capable of so far forgetting his mission as to produce Dr Moliinby and Gabrielle, two of the most inanimate beings imaginable. We could tolerate Dr Mollinby -his unorthodoxy has a feeble charm of its own;; but his daughter, with her pedantic utterance and false Bohemianism, is a perpetual contradiction of nature. Yet, although Gabrielle does not appeal to our fancy, the girl of the pit bank, Ruth, is an admirable creation. Mr Scott King's treatment of our national customs and characteristics is in the main appreciative, and we can allow to pass his exaggerated dictum that Welsh is the language sacred to unreality," especially when we remember a very sane remark of Gabrielle's, that I it is common for young men fired with a certain ambition generally go in for being oynics." Taken altogether, Heavens of Brass indicates that our author has struck a rich and hitherto un- exploited vein. This volume is one of promise and prophecy. We look with interest for the future execution and fulfilment. [* Heavens of Brass."—W. Soott King.—Unicorn Press.—6s.]

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