Books: Bugles

BUGLES IN THE NIGHT—Barry Benefield—Century ($2).Remembering that his first novel, The Chicken-Wagon Family, was likened by the critics to Dickens, Barrie, etc., Mr. Benefield dangerously approaches cuteness in Bugles in the Night. He too visibly remembers to be whimsical, to introduce characters named Bullwinkle, Crackle, Wimpfheimer. Easley Wheatley, Confederate soldier, runs away to New York from the old soldiers’ home and, for purposes of protection only, carries along tall and innocent Alice Kibbe, 17. Alice he finds in a bad house, where she by no means belonged. Vicissitudes carry them to live on a scow near a Brooklyn dump heap. Here they meet a rich gentleman who has lost his memory. After much todo, Alice reaches the arms of the restored man of property, and the old soldier hears bugles calling as the curtain falls slowly on a preposterous yarn, told with undeniable but sometimes unmistakably forced charm.