for it is growing daily, but it is long enough as
it stands to show that every section of our country has, or soon will
have, its own painter and historian, whose works will live and become a
permanent part of our literature in just the degree that they are
artistically true. Some of these writers have already produced many
books, while others have gained general recognition and even fame by the
vividness and power of a single study, like Mr. Howe with The Story of a
Country Town. But each one, it will be noticed, has chosen for his field
of work that part of our country wherein he passed the early and
formative years of his life; a natural selection that is, perhaps, an
unconscious affirmation of David Harum's aphorism: "Ev'ry hoss c'n do a
thing better 'n' spryer if he's ben broke to it as a colt."

In the case of the present volume the conditions are identical with
those just mentioned. Most of the scenes are laid in central New York,
where the author, Edward Noyes Westcott, was born, September 24, 1847,
and where he died of consumption, March 31, 1898. Nearly all his life
was passed in his native city of Syracuse, and although banking and not
authorship was the occupation of his active years, yet his sensitive and
impressionable temperament had become so saturated with the local
atmosphere, and his retentive memory so charged with facts, that when at
length he took up the pen he was able to create in David Harum a
character so original, so true, and so strong, yet withal so
delightfully quaint and humorous, that we are at once compelled to admit
that here is a new and permanent addition to the long list of American
literary portraits.

The book is a novel, and throughout it runs a love story which is
characterized by sympathetic treatment and a constantly increasing
interest; but the title role is taken by the old country banker,
David Harum: dry, quaint, somewhat illiterate, no doubt, but possessing
an amazing amount of knowledge not found in printed books, and holding
fast to the cheerful belief that there is nothing wholly bad or useless
in this world. Or, in his own words: "A reasonable amount of fleas
is good for a dog--they keep him f'm broodin' on bein' a dog."
This horse-trading country banker and reputed Shylock, but real
philanthropist, is an accurate portrayal of a type that exists in the
rural districts of central New York to-day. Variations of him may be
seen daily, driving about in their road wagons o