ding out commonplace books, just as each generation goes on
busily reproducing its own mediocrity. When in this enormous output
of ink and paper, these thousands of volumes that are yearly rushed
upon the shelves of the book stores, one appears which contains both
power and promise, the reader may be pardoned some enthusiasm.
Excellence always surprises: we are never quite prepared for it. In
the case of "McTeague, a Story of San Francisco," it is even more
surprising than usual. In the first place the title is not alluring,
and not until you have read the book, can you know that there is an
admirable consistency in the stiff, uncompromising commonplaceness
of that title. In the second place the name of the author is as yet
comparatively unfamiliar, and finally the book is dedicated to a
member of the Harvard faculty, suggesting that whether it be a story
of San Francisco or Dawson City, it must necessarily be vaporous,
introspective and chiefly concerned with "literary" impressions. Mr.
Norris is, indeed, a "Harvard man," but that he is a good many other
kinds of a man is self-evident. His book is, in the language of Mr.
Norman Hapgood, the work of "a large human being, with a firm
stomach, who knows and loves the people."

In a novel of such high merit as this, the subject matter is the
least important consideration. Every newspaper contains the
essential material for another "Comedie Humaine." In this case
"McTeague," the central figure, happens to be a dentist practicing
in a little side street of San Francisco. The novel opens with this
description of him:

"It was Sunday, and, according to his custom on that day,
McTeague took his dinner at two in the afternoon at the car
conductor's coffee joint on Polk street. He had a thick,
gray soup, heavy, underdone meat, very hot, on a cold plate;
two kinds of vegetables; and a sort of suet pudding, full of
strong butter and sugar. Once in his office, or, as he
called it on his sign-board, 'Dental Parlors,' he took off
his coat and shoes, unbuttoned his vest, and, having crammed
his little stove with coke, he lay back in his operating
chair at the bay window, reading the paper, drinking steam
beer, and smoking his huge porcelain pipe while his food
digested; crop-full, stupid and warm."

McTeague had grown up in a mining camp in the mountains. He
remembered the years he had spent there trundling heavy cars of ore
in and o