really rather lovable.

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In _The Leatherwood God_ (JENKINS) Mr. W.D. HOWELLS has written a powerful
and very interesting study of an unusual theme. Religious mania, and those
queer manifestations of it that hover uncertainly between fraud and
hysteria, have always provided a subject of attraction for the curious. Mr.
HOWELLS sets his romance in the early days of the last century, at the
backwoods settlement of _Leatherwood_, where the community of the faithful
are perturbed by the arrival amongst them of a stranger, one _Dylks_, who
claims divine origin and the power to work miracles. Actually, this _Dylks_
was about as bad a hat as any made. He had deserted his legal wife,
_Nancy_, and allowed her, in supposed widowhood, to marry a _de facto_
husband whom she adored. So you will see that the turning up again of
Number One, unrecognised and surrounded by the trappings of god-head and
the adoration of the Elect, creates for _Nancy_ a very pretty and absorbing
problem in social ethics. But Mr. HOWELLS has done more than this. Having
shown _Dylks_ as the arch-villain and impostor that he is, he proceeds to
the subtler task of enlisting our sympathy for him. It is this that gives
the story its higher quality. The horror of the poor wretch's position,
driven on by his own words, almost, in time, coming himself to a kind of
belief in them, haunted always by the increasing demands of his dupes, is
most powerfully portrayed. So much so that in the end we hear of his death
(by suicide or accident) with an emotion of relief and pity that is a real
tribute to his creator. _The Leatherwood God_ is not a long story, but for
concentrated power it deserves to be classed amongst the outstanding work
of the season.

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