• TARBOE. By Gilbert Parker. (Cassell. 6s.)—This, Sir Gilbert Parker
tells us, is the only story he has ever drawn from real life. Frank Tarboe was a professional gambler, whom the writer first met in his young days at Kansas, and whom he subsequently encountered a number of times in America, the South Seas, France, and England. Tarboe was born in the woods, of a French squaw-man and an Indian mother, and he did not see a white woman until he went to Cheyenne City at the age of twenty-one. Accustomed only to shooting game, he took to card-playing for a living, and became a champion " sharper." The story tells of his " scoops " and failures, his accidental killing of two men in a quarrel, and his periods of imprisonment. Yet, " adroit as Machiavelli," Tarboe was also " simple as a chfld." He had his own code of morality, to which he was inflexibly true, and his life was illumined by a love romance of singular devotion and self-sacrifice. This romance, ending in tragedy, is de- scribed with much tenderness and charm, and, incidentally, with some acute commentary on feminine psychology. The tale as a whole is uncommonly fascinating, and of Tarboe we can join with the author in saying : " If you would see one who has descended low, but has ascended high : there is the man."
Previous page
