Beaucaire Exhumed

WANTON MALLY--Booth Tarkington--Donbleday, Doran ($2). Thirty-two years ago, Booth Tarkington hit the popular fancy in a vital spot with a sentimental trifle called Monsieur Beaucaire. Publishers, like children, want their entertainers to do it again. Often enough the entertainer would if he could, but too often the magic virtue has gone out of him. Wanton Mally makes pleasant enough reading, but. . . . M. de Grammont, banished from the French Court, whiles away exile in Charles II's London, soon finds a partner for his madcap follies in Jinny Wilmot, an attractively odd-looking Bright Young Person of the time. One night they go too far by roughing up a Bishop, who is shot in the scuffle. They flee to the country for their lives. Jinny leads them to the house of one Colpoys, an erstwhile flame of hers, lately suspected of having forsworn his wild ways and turned Quaker. Sure enough, he has. He will not even defend himself when angry Jinny sets de Grammont on him to provoke him into a fight. But, lightweight that he may be. de Grammont is a perfect gentleman, sees that Jinny really loves Colpoys still. When the troopers surround them the Frenchman makes good the others' escape, saves his skin by great presence of mind and highly ingenious lying, lives to get a grateful letter from Jinny, now Mrs. Colpoys, on her way to the Quaker Plantations.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.