20 NOVEMBER 1915, Page 33

The Son of His Father. By Ridgwell Cullum. (Chapman and

Hall. Ss.)—Mr. Cullum tells us of one Gordon Carbhoy, who, having at the age of twenty-four a bill of one hundred thousand dollars to wine, women, and gambling, interviewed his father and cleared out, to make good. After a scrap with the sharp of a grafted train boss, he got himself fixed at Snake's Flat and then at Buffalo Point. There he hit Hazel Mallinsbee, who was a hell of a smart girl ; bat the villain, David Sloeson, chief grafter, called her bluff several times before the hero gave him his medicine, good and plenty. After that all went well, and the whole story goes to prove that "a feller can spend a lifetime making a bright man of himself, while it only bakes a pretty girl five seconds yanking oat one of the key-stones to the edifice he's built." Mr. Cullum, as will be seen, is defiantly generous with stage Americanisms ; but his novel, if we forgot to be critical, in great fun, and helps us to understand the sometimes puzzling popularity of American drama.