f the Inn_,
Renault in _Together_, Holden in _The Healer_--all of them utter and
live a gospel of health which obviously corresponds to Mr. Herrick's
belief. When the world grows too loud one may withdraw from it; there
are still uncrowded spaces where existence marches simply. Remembering
them, Mr. Herrick's imagination, held commonly on so tight a fist, slips
its hood off and takes wing. And yet he knows that the north woods into
which a few favored men and women may withdraw are not cure enough for
the multitude. They must practise, or some one must practise for their
benefit, honorable refusals in the midst of life. The architect's wife
in _The Common Lot_, Harrington's sister in _The Memoirs of an American
Citizen_, the clear-eyed Johnstons in _Together_--they have or attain
the knowledge, which seems a paradox, that selfishness can fatally
entangle the individual in the perplexities of existence and that the
best chance for disentanglement may come from intelligent unselfishness.

_Clark's Field_ amply illustrates this paradox. The field has for many
years lain idle in the midst of a growing town because of a flaw in the
title, and when eventually the title is quieted and the land is sold it
pours wealth upon heads not educated to use it with wisdom. Here is
unearned increment made flesh and converted into drama: the field that
might have been home and garden and playground becomes a machine, a
monster, which gradually visits evil upon all concerned. Then Adelle and
her proletarian cousin, aware that the field through the corruption of a
well-meant law has grown malevolent, resolve to break the spell by
surrendering their selfish interests and accepting the position of
unselfish trustees to the estate until--if that time ever comes--some
better means may be devised for making the earth serve the purposes of
those who live upon it.

The solution does not entirely satisfy, of course. At best it is a
makeshift if considered in its larger bearings. It comes near, however,
to solving the problems as individuals of Adelle and her cousin, who
save more in character than they lose in pocket. And it might possibly
have come nearer still were it not for the handicap under which Mr.
Herrick, for all his intelligence and conscience, has labored as an
artist. That handicap is a certain stiffness on the plastic side of his
imagination. His conceptions come to him, if criticism can be any judge,
with a large touch of the abstra