PROCESSION. By Fannie Hurst. (Cape. 7s. (id.)—Miss Fannie Hurst's short
stories have been described as condensed novels, and the five which comprise Procession do suffer froth a deformity or lack of development which might well be overcome in the longer form. There is a sentimental tendency to state a pattern and to make the characters fit in willy-nilly. This is a pity, because most of the characters are alive and some well observed. There is one tale, " Give this little girl a hand," which almost escapes the bondage. It is the story of Rodeo West, a Broadway night club queen, and a maimed man, who have concealed their love from each other, and of how the confession is forced from them. The conclusion is grotesquely sentimental, but the dialogue and the richness of the atmo- sphere are astonishingly good. An arbitrary pattern also binds the tea-taster's wife who has borne her husband a deformed child while he is away, and is afraid of telling him. Here " The Left Hand of God " provides a melodramatic solution which will convince no one. " Hossie-Frossie " shows the attempt—highly doubtful—of a middle-west mother of Dutch extraction to persuade her daughter to break the glutinous domestic traditions of the family. Here again people who are alive and talk as though they were are drilled like clockwork dolls in order to make Miss Hurst's design hold together. For all her vigour and vitality Miss Hurst is fund- amentally a genteel and sentimental author, as this pattern- making and lack of humour show, and in describing Rodeo West as one who " exuded, plunged, cataracted, foamed and sprayed like a tawny waterfall " she has caricatured her own style.
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