LISTEN FOR THE LAUGHTER

Fair to poor pap, this story of Jonathan, of his great love for his wife Amanda, who dies in childbirth, and of the transference of that love to Roxana, the baby daughter she leaves behind. The story is all bound up in emotional elaboration. Jonathan takes to drinking exorbitantly, throws up his pharmacy business, goes on the road peddling a phoney tonic to Negroes. He leaves his daughter in his sister's care; he falls in love with Lucy, victim of a domineering mother, but cannot convince her that he has freed himself from the dominance of Amanda's memory, and loses her. Years pass -- he comes close to wrecking his daughter's chances of happiness, but eventually gets his balance, allows her marriage, and seeks out Lucy for himself.