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BOSTON EVENING TRANSCRIPT Jan. 25, 1930. By Dorothea Lawrance Mann [bold] THE leopard does not change his spots easily nor is it easy for a newspaper man to forget his trade. What strikes the reader first and last and always through this book is that is is a great news story which is breaking. We are not suggesting that Mr. Roberts has un-earthed so large an item of undiscovered history as this, but that he has very suc-cessfully discovered a means of placing a new emphasis so that the story reads as the thrilling and tremendous adven-ture which it actually was. There has never been such a thing as non-partisan history, and naturally enough it has never been easy for American writers to see Benedict Arnold uncolored by the fact that he proved himself a traitor to the colonies. Nor is it in the American temperament to be able to view any of the important figures in the history of the country without prejudice of one kind or another. American reason is always intertwined with American emo-tion--a fact which makes it exceedingly difficult to discover the truth of things. This book is not a brief for Benedict Arnold, nor does it contain any special pleading. All reader may not realize how much of this sort of thing Mr. Rob-erts has succeeded in keeping out of his story. He sticks quite closely to our modern ideal of a news story, for his effort is to tell the story, for his effort is to tell the story as it happened, without emotional please either for or against the men who participate in it. As a matter of fact, it is not a tale which required special plleading. The men who participated in this expedition across the wild country of Maine to the stronghold of Quebec may have had any number of faults or virtues, but they had to be men of extraordinary bravery and endurance to come through such a test as this one. This expedition against Quebec takes up only part of the book, but it is the part of the story which is going to make it remembered, and incidentally makes this expedition of Arnold's known and re-membered, as in all justice it should be, quite without regard to whatever the men did either before or after this time. --- The scene is the Kennebunk counyr where Mr. Roberts lives part of each year, and where his family have lived for generations. The name Kennebunk does not occur at this period, but the country itself is easily recognizable. Steven Na-son's father conducts both the ferry and the inn, and even as a little boy Steven Nason knows a great deal about Indians which made certain tribes extremely dan-gerous, while others were friendly and would teach the white boy much of the lore which the Indian children them-selves learned. Steven tells the story in the first person, and he begins with a prologue describing how his family cam to be in this particular section and in-troducing us to the life of a colonial child with the many points which differ from the life of a child of the present day. From the beginning Steven is a strongly individualized character made quite vivid to us with the rater ponder-ous faithfulness and perseverance and the accompanying heaviness of wit which so frequently hoes with these other qual-ities in very large men. There are mo-ments when we cannot but admit that Steven in inclined to be stupid. He takes a long while to perceive what more imble-whitted persons would take in very quickly. Similarly, it is characteristic that Steven should accept without ques-tion the devotion of the child Mary Mal-linson and should not doubt that through the course of the years Mary is as eager to return to him and to Arundel as she had seemed in her childish days. One must accept Steven as he is, and it is quite clear that not even the irritating and amusing Pheobe has any real ex-pectation of changing his greatly. Even granting that in colonial times marriages took place at a much earlier age than they do today, it seems a little strange that Steven's parents should have accepted as unalterable the assertion of a twelve-year-old boy that he had fallen in love with a little girl of the same age and that he intended later to marry her. It is quite true that Steven does carry with him the image of Mary Mal-linson through many years, and does make it the aim of his life to find the girl and bring her back to Arundel. We personally felt rather relieved when Mary herself did not achieve such pre-cocious fidelity! It strikes one as curious that so many people who come in contact with Steven accept with the same serious-ness the steadfastness of so young a boy. Today it would rarely be believed that a boy ten years older than Steven knew his mind so certainly. It is not so sur-prising that Steven can remember the girl's kisses and can convince himself that there can never be an other woman in his life, for youth has a way of taking itself seriously. It is, however, remark-able and not wholly convincing to the reader that so many grown people, and not all of them inexperienced people, should accept his dictum. Next in interest to the great expedition is the search made by Steven and his father immediately after Mary Mallin-son's father has been killed and the pretty little girl has been spirited away by the Frenchman. Indeed this search is an excellent introduction for readers as well as for Steven to the rigors which an expedition through this country must undergo. It is on this search that the boy gets his first inkling of what his father's relations with the Indians have been. Here is another curious sidelight, on Colonial life that the boy accepts with so little shock the obvious relationship between his own father and the Indian woman and her child. It is the fashion of the hour to point out that our Puritan ancestors were far from being so virtuous as we once supposed, but it is probably that few twentieth century boys could rival Steven's sophistication on this occasion. One of the reasons why the story is so successful in maintaining its inter-est lies in the character of Phoebe. Phoebe is decidedly different from most heroines and certainly from most women of her day, but there can be no doubt that she possesses to a high degree the power of keeping herself in men's thoughts. There is never any doubt, either, of how great an irritation she manages to be to Steven. Phoebe knows her psychology, however, for Steven with his absorbtion in his dreams of Mary Mallinson would never have noticed Phoebe at all if she had not proved a thorn in his flesh. If he would have relegated her to the pleasantly inde-terminate background to which he rele-gated most women he would have for-gotten Phoebe in short time. Phoebe, however, had no idea of allowing herself to be forgotten. She made a place for herself at the inn and later she con-vinced Steven that there was no reason why he should not immediately have a ship of his own to carry his goods to Boston, and Phoebe not only managed to get the ship built to suit her but she sailed it herself and she made money for the all. Steven with all his threats and all his determination is never a march for Phoebe. She gets almost everything she wants from Steven and she is shrewd enough to realized that part of the intensity of his irritation with her is due to the fact that he likes her far better than he dreams he can. Phoebe is like most women, a realist. Mr. Roberts could not very well write a story which does not contain some touches of humor. It is not too obvious in these pages, but the humor bubbles to the surgace here and there and is especially memorable in some of the ob-servations he makes on his characters. Moreover, the comments of his charac-ters have often a decidedly racy tinge. Most of us are accustomed to the idea of the prevalence of Southern colonels, but here is Aaron Burr remarking: "I have met hundreds of Massachusetts men and they are all colonels. The blow of meeting, in the very heart of Massachu-setts, a man who is neither a colonel nor a Massachusetter is like to sit ill on me." Among the special minor points of in-terest in the book is the freshness with which old ideas are presented. We all know that there were thirteen colonies which made war on England, but the actual way in which men of the various colonies regarded men of other colonies, the way men of Massachusetts looked down upon men of Maine or Rhode Is-land or Connecticut or New York, gives us a new outlook in t he difficulties faced by the leaders in making a fighting force out of men who had almost as soon fight each other as fight England. Then again, as Mr. Roberts describes the activities of the Sons of Liberty we are similarly startled by the insight he gives us into what this period of revolution and pre-revolution seemed like to men and women living in it. It is always a question whether in an historical novel an author should attempt when he pictures conditions and thoughts of another period, at the same time to reproduce the speech of the period. Archaic phrases are sometimes a nuisance to a reader, but nevertheless it is startling to hear the forefathers using distinctly twentieth century slang and colloquialisms!
Fundamentally this is a story of action. Arnold, Burr, Washington's false teeth and Burr's in-digestion are likely to be added to our impressions of these men. The book, however, is not a book intended to throw fresh light on historical characters. Even Phoebe is not a comment on eighteenth century womankind but rather the com-edy touch which lightens the rigors of that terrible journey to Quebec. She is the comic relief which acts both as mak-ing tragedy bearable and at the same time intensifying the impressiveness of the darker portions of the story. The biggest achievement of the book is the manner in which Mr. Roberts makes the experience of this march so vivid that we hope and suffer and strain onward with these men and women whose only chance of living lies in their ability to endure to the end of the march. Arundel. Being the Recollections of Steven Nason of Arundel, in the Province of Maine. Attached to the Secret Expedition Led by Colonel Benedict Arnold Against Quebec. By Kenneth Roberts. $2.50. Garden City, N. Y.: Double-day, Doran & Co., Inc.