luxury of catastrophe, which the reader interested in the
psychology of the story may take as little account of as he
likes. Without so much of them he might have made a
sculpturesque romance as clearly and nobly definite as "The
Scarlet Letter"; with them he has made a most picturesque
romantic novel. His work, as I began by saying, or hinting, is
the work of a poet, in conception, and I wish that in some
details of diction it were as elect as the author's verse is.
But one must not expect everything; and in what it is, "The Right
of Way" satisfies a reasonable demand on the side of literature,
while it more than meets a reasonable expectation on the side of
psychological interest. Distinctly it marks an epoch in
contemporary noveling, and mounts far above the average best
toward the day of better things which I hope it is not rash to
image dawning.

II.

I am sure I do not merely fancy the auroral light in a group of
stories by another poet. "The Ruling Passion," Dr. Henry Van Dyke
calls his book, which relates itself by a double tie to Mr.
Parker's novel through kinship of Canadian landscape and
character, and through the prevalence of psychologism over
determinism in it. In the situations and incidents studied with
sentiment that saves itself from sentimentality sometimes with
greater and sometimes with less ease, but saves itself, the
appeal is from the soul in the character to the soul in the
reader, and not from brute event to his sensation. I believe
that I like best among these charming things the two
sketches--they are hardly stories--"A Year of Nobility" and "The