Boston

SPLENDOR--Ben Ames Williams-- Button ($2.50). Quietly and carefully Author Williams tells the story of Henry Beeker, faithful newspaperman. Son of a blacksmith father, Henry enters the employ of a Boston newspaper as an office-boy--just for a summer vacation period. He does his work well and is encouraged to give up school, to remain with the paper. Filled with splendid visions, he agrees. Follow years of small successes, small sorrows, marriage, babies, undimmed visions. Life's autumn finds Henry definitely shelved --almost pensioned--in the profession he has studied so long but never conquered. He still gazes up at glittering, obviously unattainable pinnacles. Author Williams has written without affection a convincing, saddening story of a man who loved beauty and romance but knew not how to find it. His book gives evidence of much painstaking research in the manner of crabbed Sinclair Lewis. Unlike Author Lewis, Mr. Williams has used this research not to indulge in bad-humored thumpings but to speak accurately of events which occurred during the lifetime of his Henry Beeker. The result is a good novel which recalls sundry highlights of the past 40 years in a very satisfactory fashion.