Of
course he doesn't succeed, but the attempt furnishes capital entertainment
for everybody concerned, and proves that Mr. Punch's "C.F.S." can write
prose too.
* * * * *
The title of _Gold Must be Tried by Fire_ (MACMILLAN) might be called
axiomatic for the precise type of fiction represented by the story.
Because, if gold hadn't to be tried by fire, you might obviously marry the
hero and heroine on the first page and save everybody much trouble and
expense. Mr. RICHARD AUMERLE MAHER, however, knows his job better than
that. True, he marries his heroine early, but to the wrong man, the Labour
leader and crook, _Will Lewis_, who vanishes just before the entrance of
the strong but unsilent hero, only to reappear (under an alias) in time to
get shot in a strike riot. Mr. MAHER'S book comes, as you may already have
guessed, from that great country where they have replaced alcohol by sugar,
and where (perhaps in consequence) heroines of such super-sentimentality as
_Daidie Grattan_ have no terrors for them. Personally I found her and her
exploits on burning ships, besieged mills and the like a trifle sticky. For
the rest you have some interesting details of the workings of the paper
industry; a style that to the unfamiliar eye is at times startling (as
when, on page 282, the hero's head "snapped erect"); and lots and lots of
love.
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