Phase

ROME HAUL--Walter D. Edmonds--Little, Brown ($2.50).

Short hauls to Rome, N. Y., long hauls to Albany, the oldtime "canawlers" of the Erie Canal made with boatloads of machinery and produce. It was a leisurely existence, drifting along four miles an hour behind stout teams that trudged the towpath. For a few months Dan'l Harrow, farmer, was a part of it. Clever with horses, he hired on as driver to a canal captain and then fell heir to the boat. For "cook," meaning servant, companion, and mistress-as-long-as-compatible, he hired vivacious Molly; for driver he hired Fortune Friendly, variously parson and pinochle player. Dan first saw Fortune racing from a village with the entire population thundering hotfooted in his wake. Cornered in a barn, Fortune delivered, gasping, a hell-and-damnation sermon which left not a member of his congregation unchastised. Afterward he explained to Dan'l that he had contracted to give six sermons, but finding only five at the bookstalls, he necessarily made off before the sixth. Sheer terror inspired the extemporaneous barnyard Jeremiad.

On his preaching proceeds, Fortune played pinochle with fat and red-haired Mrs. Lucy Gurget. Dressed in a red flannel petticoat, yellow blouse and beribboned bonnet with improbable cherries that rattled to her constant laughter, Mrs. Gurget "cooked" for Mr. Solomon Tinkle, basked on the deck of his boat.

Rome Haul is well peopled, but it is rather the story of a canal, and the history of a vivid phase in the development of U.S. civilization. Burdened with no plot or proof, it is engrossing for its otherworld, yet essentially new-world, atmosphere.