Stoopers To Folly

THEY STOOPED TO FOLLY--Ellen Glasgow--Doubleday, Doran ($2.50).

Milly Burden became pregnant in a small Virginia town. Her lover, Martin Welding, a nervewracked U. S. soldier, had returned to France after the War. Yet Lawyer Littlepage, to whom Milly was secretary, forbore to dismiss her despite her flippancy, her sullen desire to live her own life regardless of the opinions of others. Furthermore Milly reminded Lawyer Littlepage of his daughter, Mary Victoria. Encouraged by softness, Milly confided her worry over Welding's nerves. In return, Lawyer Littlepage had Mary Victoria, who was in Europe, look Welding up.

This Mary did, so successfully and with such persistence and missionary zeal that the two returned from Europe as man and wife. Soon Mary Victoria was pregnant, too, but that did not prevent Welding from deserting her "to find a place where there are high mountains and snows that never melt and nothing else except loneliness." Mary Victoria remained with her father because, "even though I have lost love, I may become a power for good in the life of my child." Milly went to New York on the trail of "something worth loving."

Other folly-stoopers in the story are Aunt Agatha, still mourning in a third-story back bedroom because she was "betrayed by a Southern gentleman who moved in the best circles but was married already"; and Mrs. Dalrymple, divorced for infidelity. She "looked as much like a king's mistress as if she had stepped straight out of profane history, had been obliged to seek moral climes more congenial in profligate Europe."

Author Glasgow, pride of the South, is a good stylist, competent, prolific, weakly satiric, with a high artistic reputation and more than a trace of sentiment.