JOHN CHANCELLOR MAKES ME CRY

Mrs. Siddons is a youngish advertising woman, second wife to a man with four children, casual homemaker and hostess given to ""anonymous casseroles,"" writer of short pieces like these (from the Atlanta Magazine and House Beautiful) who also cries three times a week during the 7 o'clock news. Inexplicably. If she's a soft touch she's not sloppy about it generally (there was one ""well of poignance"") and she writes offhandedly about the flu or jury duty or New Year's Eve resolutions or suburbia or her grandfather or a devastating visit to New York -- unseen for some years. The pieces are arranged around the year and have some nice moments -- like that old mountain woman Miz Rosa Sham Turnipseed -- without any of the creeping clematis sentimentality which often afflicts this kind of writing from this part of the world. Pleasant.