The Golden Ladder. By Margaret Potter. (Harper and Brothers. 6s.)—Miss
Margaret Potter calls her novel "an American comedy of gold." It will be strange to English readers that a book of this nature should be called a "comedy." The novel describes in great detail the business career of John Kildare, a young man who hails from Wisconsin, and, beginning life in Chicago, finally acquires name and fortune in New York itself. Interwoven with his story is that of the daughter of his boarding-house keeper, Kitty Clephane, a girl predestined by love of the material good things of life to become a member of the "half world." At first the mistress of John Kildare, she declines to marry him because of his poverty, and goes on the stage in musical comedy in New York. The whole picture of the aims and objects of this American middle-class world is sordid and disagreeable to a degree. The success of John Kildare seems very little less ideal in its aims than the career of the unfortunate Kitty herself. Yet the book is impressive because, unlike many American stories, it is kept low in tone, and the reader feels convinced of its truth. From the preface and dedication, it appears that it has been written as a warning to the American people as to the prevalent national commercialism. It is perhaps a pity that some finer ideal is not, at any rate, suggested in its pages, the part played by the little French couple, Monsieur and Madame Briand, not being sufficiently developed to balance adequately the unwo rthy aims of the principal characters of the book. The novel, if a little long, is decidedly clever, but it is by no means pleasant reading.
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