A Detail
The tiny old lady in the black dress and curious little black bonnet had at first seemed alarmed at the sound made by her feet upon the stone pavements. But later she forgot about it, for she suddenly came into the tempest of the Sixth Avenue shopping district, where from the streams of people and vehicles went up a roar like that from headlong mountain torrents.
She seemed then like a chip that catches, recoils, turns and wheels, a reluctant thing in the clutch of the impetuous river. She hesitated, faltered, debated with herself. Frequently she seemed about to address people; then of a sudden she would evidently lose her courage. Meanwhile the torrent jostled her, swung her this and that way.
At last, however, she saw two young women gazing in at a shop-window. They were well-dressed girls; they wore gowns with enormous sleeves that made them look like full-rigged ships with all sails set. They seemed to have plenty of time; they leisurely scanned the goods in the window. Other people had made the tiny old woman much afraid because obviously they were speeding to keep such tremendously important engagements. She went close to the girls and peered in at the same window. She watched them furtively for a time. Then finally she said—
“Excuse me!”
The girls looked down at this old face with its two large eyes turned towards them.
“Excuse me, can you tell me where I can get any work?”
For an instant the two girls stared. Then they seemed about to exchange a smile, but, at the last moment, they checked it. The tiny old lady’s eyes were upon them. She was quaintly serious, silently expectant. She made one marvel that in that face the wrinkles showed no trace of experience, knowledge; they were simply little, soft, innocent creases. As for her glance, it had the trustfulness of ignorance and the candour of babyhood.
“I want to get something to do, because I need the money,” she continued since, in their astonishment, they had not replied to her first question. “Of course I’m not strong and I couldn’t do very much, but I can sew well; and in a house where there was a good many men folks, I could do all the mending. Do you know any place where they would like me to come?”
The young women did then exchange a smile, but it was a subtle tender smile, the edge of personal grief.
“Well, no, madame,” hesitatingly said one of them at last; “I don’t think I know any one.”
A shade passed over the tiny old lady’s face, a shadow of the wing of disappointment.
“Don’t you?” she said, with a little struggle to be brave, in her voice.
Then the girl hastily continued—“But if you will give me your address, I may find some one, and if I do, I will surely let you know of it.”
The tiny old lady dictated her address, bending over to watch the girl write on a visiting card with a little silver pencil. Then she said—
“I thank you very much.” She bowed to them, smiling, and went on down the avenue.
As for the two girls, they walked to the curb and watched this aged figure, small and frail, in its black gown and curious black bonnet. At last, the crowd, the innumerable wagons, intermingling and changing with uproar and riot, suddenly engulfed it.
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
London & Bungay.
THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE
[PIONEER SERIES.
The Saturday Review—“Mr. Stephen Crane’s picture of the effect of actual fighting on a raw regiment is simply unapproached in intimate knowledge and sustained imaginative strength. In the supreme moments of the fight he is possessed by the fiery breath of battle, and finds an inspired utterance that will reach the universal heart of man. This extraordinary book will appeal strongly to the insatiable desire to know the psychology of war—how the sights and sounds, the terrible details of the drama of battle, affect the senses and the soul of man.”
St. James’s Gazette—“This is not merely a remarkable book; it is a revelation Mr. Crane has laid the War God on the dissecting-table, and exposed his every bone and nerve and sinew and artery to the public gaze.”
The Speaker—“Every page is crowded, not merely with incidents such as the war correspondent describes, but with the tragedy of life. The reader sees the battle, not from afar, but from the inside. He hears the laboured breathing of the wearied soldiers, sees the colour rising and falling in their cheeks, and feels at heart as they themselves did in this first act in the tremendous drama which so many people talk about and so few understand.... As a work of art, The Red Badge of Courage deserves high praise. As a moral lesson that mankind still needs, the praise it deserves is higher still.”
THE LITTLE REGIMENT
[PIONEER SERIES.
The Athenæum—“The extraordinary power of imagination is more wonderful than that of Defoe. It is in dialogue that he is at his strongest, for in this the words are used as the soldiers would have used them.”
London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
THE THIRD VIOLET
The Athenæum—“A vividness of portraiture which puts The Third Violet on a high level—higher, we think, than Mr. Crane’s very different Maggie, though perhaps lower than The Little Regiment, which is also very different. In his present book Mr. Crane is more the rival of Mr. Henry James than of Mr. Rudyard Kipling. But he is intensely American, which can hardly be said of Mr. Henry James, and it is possible that if he continues in his present line of writing he may be the author who will introduce the United States to the ordinary English world. We have never come across a book that brought certain sections of American society so perfectly before the reader as does The Third Violet. The picture is an extremely pleasant one, and its truth appeals to the English reader, so that the effect of the book is to draw him nearer to his American cousins. The Third Violet incidentally contains the best dog that we have come across in modern fiction. Mr. Crane’s dialogue is excellent, and it is dialogue of a type for which neither The Red Badge of Courage nor his other books had prepared us.”
The Academy—“By this latest product of his genius our impression of Mr. Crane is confirmed: that for psychological insight, for dramatic intensity, and for potency of phrase he is already in the front rank of English-American writers of fiction, and that he possesses a certain separate quality which places him apart. It is a short story and a slender, but taking it in conjunction with what he has previously given us, there remains, in our judgment, no room for doubt.”
The Bookman—“An idyll, and a very pretty one. In The Red Badge of Courage and Maggie there is an intenser force; but in this slighter effort we feel the same directness, the same true reading of the workings of the mind, the same contempt for conventions and clap-trap sentiment.”
The Sketch—“There is a strong human interest in it, and a boyish vigour which is refreshing.”
The Scotsman—“It is very light, very amusing, and very American. The literary touch is singularly deft and felicitous, the strokes playful but unerring.... The treatment has the distinction which only a vivid imagination, a fine dramatic faculty and an intuitive perception of the deeper things of human nature can give to a book.”
Manchester Guardian—“It is invigorating to follow the breezy mountain life up in the pine woods.... The book abounds in those felicitous descriptions and bright dialogues of which Mr. Crane is master.... One more delightful dog is added to the heroes of fiction.”
Daily Mail—“We would not for the world have it other than it is.... In its short tantalisingly abrupt chapters, the tale gives the history of a wooing, a history clear, simple, and often sparkling as a rill of spring water.”
MAGGIE: A Child of the Streets
The Literary World—“Contains all the force, all the power, and all the reality which Mr. Crane has proved his pen to possess.”
The Black Riders: Verse
London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.