"One Man's Meat"

MEAT--Wilbur Daniel Steele--Harpers--($2.50).

The Story. When Anne India heard of the death of her cousin Tomlin, she exulted in life's restored cleanliness. Cousin Tomlin had been born with a little horn above his left ear. It had vanished during his babyhood leaving only a corneous spot on his skull; but people were glad when Tomlin died.

When Anne India gave birth to a son conceived in the triumph of Cousin Tomlin's demise, her husband implored the doctor to let it die. For baby Rex had a little horn above his left ear. But Rex was not allowed to die. He was cherished and guided from squalling infancy to wobbly-kneed childhood, to brooding, weak-stomached youth; and from the path of his progress Anne cast aside all obstacles. "The world was made for well people to live in," she had cried when she heard of Tomlin's death. Now she said: "If meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh. . . ." A good many things made Rex to offend, and these were quietly deleted from the lives of Sam, her husband and from Flagg and Fern, her healthy twins. The picture of dancing satyrs, the little statue of Venus, the table wine, the Sunday rotogravures--one by one they mysteriously disappeared. Life began to be a queer, suspicious business. Fern was shipped away to school--she would not come back. Flagg overheard his parents quarreling viciously--he ran away. But Rex was pushed at last into young manhood.

When Anne India had accomplished this much of her purpose, she was privileged one summer night to discover Rex sprawled like an inksplotch on the moon-white ground. Around him were empty bottles. From the shadows came uncouth sounds of snoring, soggy laughter, foolish crying. The villagers were still debauching; but Rex was dead.

After the funeral the reunited India family looked doubtfully at each other. Was it too late to salvage something? A little hope astonished the survivors.

The Significance. The number of books with terse culinary titles grows fast. BREAD--OIL--STEEL--have worried bones of social contention. Now MEAT. But if Author Steele started with a social passion he soon abandoned it to fondle various phases of human distortion with apparent fascination. Readers who have long counted on his stories for sound enjoyment, will be astonished to encounter here a collection of picayune obscenities importantly treated, and a legitimate argument abused and invalidated.

The Author claims only to be "a common or garden variety of person," anxious about the welfare of his family, and unable to master income tax returns. Born 42 years ago in Greensboro, N. C., (O. Henry's birthplace) he did an educational zigzag from kindergarten in Berlin to college in Denver. From childhood he was taught to paint, but during a winter (1908-09) in Paris at the Academic Julien, he began to write stories, ignoring many an art class to wrestle with plots. He has written well over a hundred short stories many of which have been published in Harper's and the Pictorial Review. Bubbles and The Man Who Saw Through Heaven were O. Henry prize stories. When Hell Froze was the winner in a Harper contest. Meat is his second novel.