FICTION.

A STUDY IN TEMPERAMENTS.* Mn. IIEywooD BROM,' is well known in America as a journalist, but—unless we are mistaken----this is his first novel. The first thing that strikes us about the book is the sharp, clean proficiency of its execution. This is not only because it

is almost entirely about efficient, businesslike people : it is because the writer himself is efficient and businesslike. He knows what he wants to say and, being an efficient person, he says it with precision and vigour. There is no waste of words or effects. Nor is this efficiency merely superficial. The characterization and the psychology are equally right. Mr.

Broun, we feel, has studied psychology—possibly, realizing the practical utility of psychology nowadays, he took a course in it—and so, when the development of his story requires psychological detail, it gets it—just the right kind and the right amount. Similarly, in order that there shall be no mistake about the realism, Mr. Broun incidentally introduces real characters. We catch a fleeting glimpse of " Copey," otherwise Professor Copeland of Harvard, and also—more surprising still—of Mr. Heywood Broun himself .

" There's a newspaper man over in that corner I'd like to have you meet,' said Peter.

' Who is it ? '

' His name's Heywood Broun. He's on The World.'

' Which one do you mean ? The one with the shave I' ' No, the other one.'

' I'm too busy,' said Pat. I can't be bothered . . . "

This is not egotism : it is simply correctness. Mr. Broun is a well-known newspaper man and a well-known newspaper man is required, so in goes Mr. Broun. That Mr. Broun happens also to be the author of the novel is a pure coincidence. Nor is the passing peep at real people a device for achieving a superficial effect of realism. It is merely a high light here and there among the fictional realism.

A reader who had followed us to this point might conclude, from what we have said, that The Boy Grew Older is a purely machine-made production, an empty simulacrum of no human significance. Nothing of the kind : for the chief virtue of the book is that it is alive. The characters are alive and engage our sympathies, and the story has a human pathos entirely free from sentimentality.

This is the story. Peter Neale, a successful sporting journalist, falls in love with and marries Maria Algarez, a famous dancer. His temperament and ideals are practical, utilitarian, businesslike : hers are purely artistic.

Soon after the birth of their son, Maria, whose artistic tem- perament conflicts with and revolts against maternity, dis- appears, and Peter is left to take care of the child with the help of an old Irish servant. Years pass. The child occupies and absorbs him more and more as time goes on. Meanwhile, he hears again from Maria, who is in Europe. She has been compelled, after the birth of the child, to abandon dancing,

but she has taken up singing, and now, after years of study, is famous as a singer throughout Europe. Peter is determined that Pat shall be ha son, with his temperament and ideals, but at moments he is haunted by the fear that the boy may take to art—become a singer like his mother. Peter

cannot understand the attraction and significance of a musical career. "Newspaper work's real," he says. "It's got roots into life. It is life. It makes people in the world a little different. Singing is just something you go and hear in the evening." That is his view, but at the back of that view lies the real reason for his antipathy. Singing, dancing, the artistic temperament, represent for Peter the force which drove Maria from him and may some day rob him of his beloved Pat. For Maria, on the other hand, art and emotion are the prime realities. We get a charming glimpse into her character in a conversation with Peter, when they meet seventeen years later, in Paris. "Now let's both make a solemn promise, Maria," says Peter, "to tell nothing but the truth without letting emotion or anything like that come in."

But then," Maria replies, "it would not be the truth."

The rest of the story may be told in a few words. Pat becomes, like his father, a journalist, but he is dissatisfied. The ideals of the efficient journalist are not his ideals. He is fond of literature and music, and when Maria comes to New • The Boy Grew Older. By Heywood Bram. London: Putnam. I7a. dd. neLl York he and Peter and Maria meet and Maria tries his voice and encourages him to go with her to study in Paris. The boy goes, but Peter refuses to go with them. In spite of his love for them, his own practical newspaper ideal holds him and we leave him absorbed in a huge new journalistic scheme.

The danger in such a story—the story of a contrast in tem- peraments—is that the characters will tend to become types representing each the attitude towards life for which he stands with a rigid consistency impossible to real human beings. Mr. Broun by his breadth of outlook escapes this completely. lie knows—and he shows in his story—that behind typical classes of temperament there is a common humanity, a single great class of human beings each trying to achieve a vague, half realized ideal towards which he is impelled by inescapable instincts. The ideal may be symbolized in a great variety of temporal forms, forms which afford to each individual some scope for self-expression ; but under this pursuit of the form —whether the form be sporting journalism, operatic singing, the governing of an Empire or the cobbling of boots—is hidden the unceasing pursuit of a fuller and fuller life.