"The King's Gallant" is deserving of recognition, in that it is not only a novelization of the earliest of Dumas' plays, but it marks a distinct triumph in his career.
If this production is full of the rushing vigor of youth, it is because its celebrated author was but a youth when he penned it, yet it was the stepping stone which led to that upward flight wherein he was speedily hailed as the "Wizard of Fiction."
It is a volume full of action with a strong plot and a truly masterful deliniation of character.
When two women love one man there is usually trouble brewing. Nor is the story which Mr. Bishop has to tell an exception. His hero is a manly New Yorker, who is fired with a zeal to "make good" a defalcation accredited to his dead father.
In quest of gold he visits Mexico and there meets a dreamy-eyed maid who straightway gives him first place in her heart. But an American girl has already won his love. It is a pathetic situation and if one true woman's heart breaks before the man's mission is ended who is to blame?
There are many touching incidents in the book, but none more full of pathos than when the woman who loves bares her soul to the woman who is loved.
Not one story, but a number of charming storyettes, terse, snappy and absorbingly interesting.
There is a delightful pen sketch of a woman of small means who aspires to a connection with the smart set. Her attempts to disguise the true state of affairs from her out-of-town friends are laughable; but the fun becomes tinged with pathos when she borrows a furnished mansion for an evening, and a rich relative, invited to dine with her, uncloaks the pitiable fraud.
The promising boy and the fond patroness are the chief characters in another brilliant character study in "Queer People."
Here is a volume of unique interest, dealing as it does with the fortunes and misfortunes of the various "freaks" to be found in a Dime Museum. It relates the woes of the original Wild Man of Borneo, tells how the Fat Woman tried to elope, of the marvelous mechanical tail the dwarf invented, of how the Mermaid boiled her tail, and of a thrilling plot hatched out by the Giant and others. Full of telling illustrations. Easily one of the best works this gifted writer has ever produced.