it ever will be. At least, it seems scarcely worth wrangling over. The
spirit seeking to release itself from trivial conditions behaves most
intelligently when it discreetly takes them into account and concerns
itself with them only enough to escape entanglements. Mr. Dell leaves it
to the moralists and the satirists to whip offenders, while he himself
goes on to construct some monument of beauty upon the ground which
moralism and satire are laboring to clear.

_Moon-Calf_ is very beautiful. Felix has a poetic gift sufficient to
warm the record with fine verses and delicate susceptibilities upon
which his adventures leave exquisite impressions. Even when his
rebellion is at its highest pitch he wastes little energy in hating and
so avoids the astringency and perturbation of a state of mind which is
always perilous. To say Felix Fay is more or less to mean Floyd Dell,
for the narrative is obviously autobiographic at many points. But were
it entirely invention it would testify none the less to the affection
with which this novelist feels his world and the lucidity with which he
represents it. He has a genuine zest for human life, enjoying it, even
when it invites mirth or anger, because of the form and color and
movement which he perceives everywhere and particularly because of the
solid texture of reality of which he is admirably aware. Hatred closes
the eyes to a multitude of charms. If Mr. Dell suffered from it he
could never have enriched his fabric as he has with so many
circumstances chosen with an unargumentative hand; he could never have
extracted so much drama out of dusty people. Had he been a
sentimentalist he might have fallen into the soft processes of the local
color school when it came to portraying the various communities through
which Felix takes his way. Instead, the story is everywhere stiffened
with intelligence. Felix has no adventures more exciting than his
successive discoveries of new ideas. Even the women he loves fit into