THE HERITAGE OF HATCHER IDE

I was keenly disappointed in this. I had heard, from those who had read it in sharply abridged form in the Post, that here was another Seventeen. Yes, an echo of Seventeen with Hatcher as Billy Baxter, with Frances as Jane, with a middle-aged vampire instead of a giggling glamor girl. His adolescent is equally hobledehoy, though moved up to twenty one, just home from college to find the family fortunes on the skids, the first families socially and financially eclipsed, and his father's firm on the verge of some sort of disgrace. As the story developed, along very obvious lines, I felt that it was a feeble imitation of itself, a story that dated, no matter how sharply the period was labelled, The Present. The Tarkington name will insure substantial sales, but it does not add to his fame.