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In the long list of Mrs. Atherton’s books with which this chapter concludes it would be desirable, but it is hardly possible, to follow the example of guidebooks and star and doublestar her more important novels. It is impracticable because any such designations would have to be those of a single taste or of a coterie of tastes. Patience Sparhawk, the dramatized biography of Alexander Hamilton called The Conqueror, and possibly her recent novel of a German revolution, or the revolt of the German women under the leadership of Gisela Niebuhr, would be marked with the double star; certainly The Conqueror would. The present writer would singlestar Senator North and the novels of early California—The Doomswoman, Rezanov, The Splendid Idle Forties and The Californians. Of The Living Present we must speak to call attention to the final paper in the book’s second part, a tribute to four New York women, of whom one is Honoré Willsie, the subject of a later chapter in this book. The Living Present is not a novel. The first half is concerned with French women in war time, the fruit of Mrs. Atherton’s observations and experience in war work; the second half has the general title Feminism in Peace and War. Perch of the Devil must be doublestarred, so probably must Ancestors and Tower of Ivory. Such books as Rulers of Kings and The Travelling Thirds are least important. Mrs. Balfame, as a capital mystery story, the result doubtless of Mrs. Atherton’s attendance at a celebrated murder trial in the interests of a New York newspaper, must be single starred in any list. The Valiant Runaways, long out of print, has been republished this fall (1918). It is a story for boys, of Spanish California, with an encounter with a savage bear, a rescue from a dangerous river, capture by Indians and an escape on wild mustangs capped by a revolutionary battle! The performance may be considered a final reminder of Mrs. Atherton’s versatility. No one has ever found fault with her for not being versatile!

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