RALPH CONNOR'S LATEST.

Feilding Star, Volume I, Issue 237, 11 April 1907, Page 4

RALPH CONNOR'S LATEST.

« (Contributed.) Among the books recently added t_ the Feilding Library is one that is sure to be much in demand. We refer to Ralph Connor's new story, "The Doctor of Crow's Nest." The publishers, Hodder and Stoughton, have great faith in their author's public, for they announced a first edition of 125,000 copies. That single fact indicates the wide popularity enjoyed by the Presbyterian minister of Winipeg, whose tales of miners, ranchmen, and lumber-men have made many familiar with the character, the habits and tbe speech of the people who laid the foundations of much of modern Canada. We are tempted to ask, why this popularity? We have read with pleasure everything that Ralph Connor has published. Yet when we submitted his work to the test of a second reading we were disappionted. To re-read lan MacLaren, to take a contemporary, is to become increasingly amazed at the skill, the insight and the art exhibited. But to re-read Ralph Connor produces no such satisfactory result. Exaggeration, artificiality and shallowness persist in obtruding themselves. And yet we like Ralph Connor. He is fresh, manly, racy, vigorous and, above all healthy. He hurries us out into the open, makes us run over the hills, fills our lungs with pure air. Our blood grows warm, travels faster, and finally thrill, us. "The Doctor" is as good as his previous best. The idea is original, the scenes are new, the characters very much alive. The story is of two brothers, Dick and Barney Boyle. These two are lovers. The course of their love does not run smoothly. At first in the solitude of the mountains all is well and happy; but aB they move into the larger world of the city changes come. Eventually they separate — loving still, but apart and stubborn. To reconcile them before death, the author resorts to rather doubtful expedients, but ere Doctor Barney dies, he knows Dick's love and Dick knows his. There are two women in the story, who play no smallpart in disturbing and restoring. Tne other characters are of small moment— simply pawns in the game. The ohapters entitled "Be_?s Gang," "For a Lady's Honour," and "Until Seventy Times Seven," are the most stirring chapters of the book. Chapter fourteen is inartistic, to say the least of it, and some other sections suggest that the author was almost atnis wits' end. Yet everyone who can should read "The Doctor," and few wHI calf it dull or uninteresting, though none may call it a great book.