THE GOWN OF GLORY

A host of readers are demanding just such a heart warming story as this one of a small town Presbyterian minister and his family. Nostalgic, pleasantly romantic, with- and please take this as a compliment faint of an adult Little Women. There's the name sort of staunch family loyalty. There's the same sort of gallant acceptance of poverty, with only occasional rebellion. David and Mary Lyall, when they came to this little Pennsylvania village after their marriage, were sure it was a step on the ladder. Twenty five years later they were still in Ladykirk (not far from Pittsburgh). They were woven into the warp and woof of the town's life. They had a son and two daughters and carefully the savings they could make to give Jerome a college and schooling to give Faith some musical training. Lucy, the youngest, seemed still schoolgirl, but it was on Lucy that the eyes of Ninian Ross, playboy son of a Pittsburgh iron magnate, fell. The , with their ingrained culture, their joyous appreciation of small delights, the philosophical resignation to the inevitable fate of hard-won savings when a missionary -- or even a book salesman- came along, proved a complete rebirth for Ninian. He won the right to Lucy -- and she, in turn, broke down his father's antagonism to his ""marrying outside his class"". The village, with its age-long problems, comes to life in these pages. Mary Lyall, wife and mother, is a fully realized person, David somewhat less so. But the story somehow makes its way into your heart -- a relief after the sordid, depressing atmosphere of too many modern tales. Not another Bishop's Mantle but a book that should find as wide -- though perhaps a less critical- market.