Abstract

Two American Traditions

The book "Lost Valley" by Katherine Fullerton Gerould, is a story of the austere New England tradition, though this time in its humbler aspects, and is, as one might expect, a work of icy virtuosity with frequent touches of the grotesque. The opening pages in which is evoked the life in a forgotten and decaying pocket of hills are finely done. The other book "The Parlor Begat Amos," by Arthur S. Hildebrand, is also a story of an American tradition, but of a tradition of a far different sort. The parlor did not exactly beget the physical Amos but it was the triumphant hereditary factor in his soul. To his parents the parlor was, with its unused piano, its unopened book, and the expensive ugliness of its seldom used furniture, the symbol of their success in life, demonstrating by its very uselessness their inclusion within the class to whom superfluities are possible.