Word: squalidity
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...Significance. In Riceyman Steps, Mr. Bennett successfully re-turns to the rich, discursive, detailed manner of Clayhanger and The Old Wives' Tale. A slighter book than these, it is nevertheless quite as able. The bare outline of the plot necessarily makes the novel sound some-what squalid and overly grim?but it is neither. There is much humor in it, excellent portraiture, great fidelity to life. The years have not diminished Mr. Bennett's extraordinary curiosity about practically everything and person in this transient world...
...York Times: "The few characters in the book are all sordid, not to say squalid. . . . But the book is full of an atmosphere of spiritual charm and even beauty...
...latter, of "The New England Grandmother" is straightforward, simple and homely; so much so, in fact, that the solemn verse quotation with which it concludes has a serio-comic effect which seems hardly in place. Mr. Burlingame's story perhaps depends too much, for its impression, on the squalid and the revolting; and his narrative is inferior, on the whole, to his description. Mr. Rogers's account of "Griggs," the English butler, on the other hand, is effective as narrative. The method of suspense is employed with some skill, and a single point of view is well maintained...
There are three short stories: an account of a prize-fight,--still Mars,--a story of a squalid seduction,--Venus following the camp-fires,--and a study of an Idiot, Boy who inadvertently slew a pet cricket. The first two are by Mr. T. Pulsifer. As for the prize-fight, in "The Champion," there is some vivid realism in the style that gives promise of an eventually competent reporter. The anther should study the great classic in this genre,--the account by Mr. John I., Sullivan of the Corbett-Fitzsimmons fight, in, I think, The New York Journal...
...true account of the development of a class, written in a straight forward manner with convincing earnestness. Two stories, "Tufa," by L. M. Crosbie '04, and "The Night College House Burned," by S. A. Welldon '04, are both unusually good bits of narrative. The first is a trifle squalid, perhaps, and is a not altogether new idea, but is most skillfully put together, rapid and full of vivid color and incident. The second has a distinct Cambridge atmosphere, is convincing in spite of apparent improbability, and but for the somewhat unjustified tragic ending, is very well written...