Review of Reviews, 1/10/06. 



Notable Books of the Month. 



409 



their votes. Despite the delusive protection of the 

 ballot, the mortgagee knew that if he did not vote 

 straight his mortgage would be foreclosed. Upon 

 the moneylender's capacity to deal out ruin to his 

 debtors, Mr. Winston Churchill would have us be- 

 lieve the power of the rural Boss is built up. It 

 is the money power in its simplest elements invad- 

 ing and subduing the power of the democracy. Yet 

 the money powder is but the sceptre in the hands 

 of a real man and a born ruler of men. Such a 

 man was Richard Croker, who lived in the odour 

 of sanctity as an English countr)' squire at Wantage 

 after having reigned as Boss in New York; and 

 such a man is Jethro Bass, to whom we are intro- 

 duced in the pages of " Coniston.'' Of him we feel 

 like Lem, the stage driver: — 



•' Well," said Lem, " I hain't afeared of him, that's bo. 

 For the lite of me, I can't help likin' him, though he does 

 things that I wouldn't do for all the powers m Christen- 

 dom."— (P. 112.) 



Jethro Bass, when the story begins, is but a youth 

 of no standing, but his capacity had already im 

 pressed the discerning: — 



Jethro Bass." said Jock, who by reason of his 

 capability was a privileged character. ' Mark my words. 

 Cynthia Jethro Bass is an all-fired sight smarter than 

 folks in this town think he be. They don't take notice of 

 him l)efause he don't say much, and stutter.s. He hain't 

 be'n eddicated a great deal, but I wouldn't l)e afeared to 

 warrant he'd make a racket in the world some of these 

 days."— (P. 4.) 



Jock was right. Jethro never said much, and he 

 stuttered to the end of the chapter, but power in 

 America does not depend upon the " gift of the 

 gab," and many of the greatest Bosses have been 

 almost as inarticulate as General Grant. Cynthia 

 the First was the minister's daughter. Jethro fell 

 in love with her. She lent him a Life of Napoleon, 

 whose achievements fired the ambition of the coun- 

 try tanner. He spelled out the story with difficulty. 

 \Vhat fascinated him was the fact that the Bonapartes 

 were country folks who came from not a big place. 

 Napoleon was a smart man. who had one thing that 

 helped him : " he got a smart woman for his wife — 

 a smart woman." And Jethro, with these ideas 

 brooding in his head, conceived the idea of making 

 Cynthia his wife. Alas for him, his passion and his 

 politics soon came into collision. This village 

 Napoleon, having by his mortgages secured strong 

 hold upon the rural electors, conceived the idea of 

 being elected Chairman of the Board of Selectmen. 

 His design was well masked. Cynthia, however, 

 divined what he was after, and went to ask him to 

 abandon it. Before she could explain the object 

 of her visit, Jethro had made a passionate declara- 

 tion of love: — 



He caught her, struggling wildl.v, terror-stricken, in his 

 arms. Ijeat down her iiands, flung back her hood, and 

 kissed her forehead — her hair, blown by the wind— her 

 lips. In that moment .she felt the mystery of heaven and 

 hell, of all kinds of power. In that moment she was like 

 a seed flying in the storm .above the mountain spruces— 

 whither, she knew not. cared not. There was one thought 

 that drifted across the chaos like a blue light of the 

 spirit : Could she control the storm ? Could she say 



whither the winds might blow, where the seed might be 

 planted ? Then she t'oimd lier.self listening-, struggling- no 

 longer, for he held her powerless. Strangest of all — most 

 hoi>eful of all—his own mind was working, though his 

 soul rocked with passion. — (P. 54.) 



He pressed her to marry him. She demanded 



that if he loved her he should prevent the election 



of his own nominee. Jethro was stricken dumb. 



'• That wind which he himself had loosed which was 



to topple over institutions was rising, and he could 



no more have stopped it then than, he could have 



hushed the storm.'" She did not understand that, 



and she departed in wrath : " You must never speak 



to me again.'' But although they parted, he to be 



elected, as he had planned, and she to marry a weak 



but affectionate husband, they never ceased to cherish 



each for the other a deep, unquenchable love, of 



which Cynthia made no secret to the man whom 



she married as a nurse rather than as a wife. Jethro 



Bass found such consolation as he might in the 



triumph of his political ambitions. Cynthia had 



departed, but the mortgaged electors voted for him, 



and he became a ruler in the land : — 



Jethro Bass, Chairman of the Board of Selectmen, in 

 the honoured place of Deacon Moses Hatch! Bourbon 

 Royalist^s never looked with greater abhorrence on the 

 Corsican adventurer and usurper of the throne than did 

 the ortliodox of Coniston on this tanner. . . . From this 

 time forth that chair became a seat of power, and of 

 dominion over a State. — (P. 60.) 



Years pass. Cynthia, after having given birth to 

 a daughter, who is named after her, dies, and the 

 widowed father and little Cynthia find themselves 

 once more in Coniston. There Jethro meets the 

 child of his first and only love. He had become 

 the master of the State. His word was law. From 

 the throne room in the capital he issued orders 

 which were obeyed. This stuttering, taciturn man, 

 who made his pile by levying blackmail upon his 

 neighbours, and who used his ill-gotten wealth still 

 further to extend the yoke of his mortgages, is 

 painted in vivid colours. The story of how he car- 

 ried the Truro Railway Bill through the legislature 

 is capitally told, and the portraits of the various ac- 

 tors in the drama of corruption are painted to the 

 life and apparently from the life. Mr. Wiiiston 

 Churchill deserves our congratulations upon the skill 

 with which he makes the political life of America 

 live and breathe and palpitate before us. Over 

 and above all his compeers towers the figure of 

 Jethro Bass — Ruler by right of eminent domain. 

 King by virtue of his own intrinsic sovereign charac- 

 ter. A Russian friend once said to me that when 

 hf saw " Ivan the Terrible " played on the Moscow 

 stage, he felt that, cruel tyrant though Ivan was, 

 there was not another man on the stage for whom 

 he would have been so willing to die. So it is with 

 Jethro. He is the heaven-sent Tsar, the Boss by 

 natural right divine : and as we read we understand 

 whv men obey him as one who.se word is law. 



Cvnthia IT. comes before us first as a little girl, 

 to whom Jethro gives an illustrated " Robinson Cru- 

 soe," and for whoso sake he buvs up her father's 



