NOVELS.
THE GIANT'S STRENGTH.* Ifit. Beam KING has chosen a theme round which a great novel—a novel which should be bone of the bone of our own age—might be written. We have here the curiously com- pounded character of a millionaire, of the head of a Trust. Only the perfectly thoughtless could assume that the motives of such a character are wholly unjustifiable or wholly justi- fiable. The very largeness of comprehension which makes a man think in millions must have some counterpart in his conception of his own domestic life, of friendship, of love, and so forth. This must be so even if his largeness in things which are good be only an accident, if his generosity to one man be only a reaction from the squeezing of another. And then, however much a millionaire may be a giant, and have the strength of a giant, in his own commercial world, he is very often a mere weakling, a babe, in his ability to release his judgment from his circumstances. To him "business is business," and he is fairly snug, and perhaps smug, in the assurance that the world thinks all fair in competition, and consequently in competition as conducted by him ; a man can rise only by standing on his fellows. Or, again, commerce is a game of cards; and players do not renounce the winnings which combined skill and luck have brought them because they are too tender-hearted to profit by others' loss. Commerce, when managed on the very highest scale of prosperity, is frequently based on a gigantic moral assumption,—the assumption that it is worth while to buy se (x being the undefined and indefinable something which wealth can procure) at the cost of knowing that others are thereby made miserable, and perhaps utterly broken. And in such cases this assumption, so far from becoming less firm, grows stronger in proportion as the millionaire's wealth passes beyond what economists used to call the margin of utility. The less it is worth his while to
• The Giant's Strength. By Basil King. Leaden; Harper and Brothers. [Cs.] break people, the more the millionaire breaks them. Haire millionaires, who are really a modern product (our classical novelists did not know them), yet faced this question? Whether. they do or do not, their character presents a fine field for the novelist. Mr. King has not bestowed on -the persons in his story those continuous small industrious touches
which amount in the mass to real significance. But he has written a direct story, all of one piece, which is interesting throughout, and frequently dramatic. Indeed, we found our- selves several times reconstructing the situations as they would appear in a play, and we fancy that they could be translated into that medium with but small alterations. This may not be high praise of the work as a novel, but it, shows it to possess qualities which are at all events distinct. The author produces his contrast between the too easily accepted views of the financial world—the " evolutionary " views as one might call them, for they demand without extenuation the survival of the fittest—and those of ordinary persons by making Paula Trafford refuse to digest the excuses of her father, the Coal King. It ought to be remembered that, however much the methods of a crushingly successful business man be connived at generally—Paul Trafford is a pillar of half the churches and philanthropic institutions in the United States—they are never excused by the victims of them. Paula happens to have come in contact with the son of the chief victim. Her very jealousy for the honour of her father makes her harbour agonising suspicions. The confusion of her incentives is excellently described ; her whole ambition in life becomes to repair a wrong of which she does not admit the existence. How could she admit it while preserving her devotion to her father ? Her distraction varies in form and intensity as she is pulled this way and that by the claims of her rival lovers. On the one hand she is overwhelmed by her love for Roger Winship, who stands for the victims; on the other she is drawn by the sobering advice and sterling good qualities of the Duke of Wiltshire. By the way, we are amused by the author's reluctance to allow himself to be oppressed by such Olympian characters as a millionaire • and a Duke, and his consequent determination to insist upon the grocer-like appearance of the Duke. Paul Trafford, the millionaire, has such unfailing acumen, and is so generous to his opponents in the private relations of life, that we can hardly believe in his inability at once to see that Paula's engagement to Roger Winship would settle all difficulties, saving his daughter's conscience and his own rapidly growing one at the same time. However, the scene in which Roger Winship, safe in the consciousness of requited affection, "gets back" on the millionaire, and in a glorious moment denounces him and all his fortune, and refuses to accept the daughter if she brings with her a penny of the ill-gotten money, is the most dramatic in the story. How the millionaire makes restitution must not be told here. We quote a passage in which Paula is hearing from her cousin a narrative of her father's rise to pros- perity :—
"'Oh, Laura, don't tell me any more.'—'It was all Marshall's fault, dear. Your father didn't make him shoot himself. That was perfectly gratuitous on Marshall's part. But it's about the old Miss Marshalls that I want to tell you. After their father died and they were so poor, they had to turn their hands to any- thing for a living. They did sewing and made cake and put up pickles and painted doilies—'—` Oh, how dreadful, Laura! '= And they did pretty well till the eldest one fell ill. That was the very summer I was married; and one day, in the winter after, I happened to mention them to your father.'—` Oh, I'm so glad. I know he was good to them !'—` Yes ; he sent them a thousand dollars, anonymously, through their minister. He gave the strictest orders that his name was never to be known, but when they had spent a couple of hundred of it the foolish clergyman told them. That was enough. The sick one got up out of her dying bed and went to work. It was as if her pride had healed her. For two years they toiled and saved till they had got together as much as they had spent. Then they returned the full thousand to your father. He told me about it, and I know it cut him to the quick. He's forgiven them, though, great heart that he is ! And he's asked me several times to do what I can for them."
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