Books: The Nimble Camel*

Mr. Train Discourses on the Threading of Needles

The Story. You can’t sit on both sides of a fence simultaneously without great discomfort. And the way of the capitalist is not as easy as you think. John Graham, youngest director of the banking house of Graham & Co., was seriously handicapped by having on his hands simultaneously one of the world’s greater fortunes, a labor war in a coal district, and a love affair with socialistic Rhoda, who will have none of him unless he first gets rid of his money.

Pressure is brought to bear on all sides, pushing him industriously in carefully differentiated directions. He feels that to shirk the responsibilities of his wealth would be cowardly. He wants to deal justly and humanely with the men in his coal mines, with the public, with Rhoda, with his firm, most of whose members are related to him. Rhoda refuses to believe in his good faith or in the limitations of his power for good.

An attempt to meet the inflamed miners halfway results disagreeably in mob violence, several variously assorted murders, a broken head for John, explosions, collapse in the value of the property. An outsider, unhampered by humanitarian scruples, buys a controlling interest in the mines for a fraction of their value.

Uncle Shiras Graham, general octogenarian reprobate, whose life was saddened when he bought his way out of the Civil War draft, dies after the heartbreaking discovery that $50,000,000 could not all be profitably used in the interests of monkey glands.

John, setting the Graham inferior maxillary against blackmailers’ threats, is saved from ruin by Rhoda, who at last concedes that he has done his best against the dragon of his riches. Incidentally, she has found that the labor workers, her ex-associates, are not as disinterested as they look. John and Rhoda find new strength for the battle of society on the shores of the Central Park reservoir at sunrise.

The Significance. Arthur Train has never done better. His gift lies not in narration, though his style is eminently readable. His plots are usually negligible. But he is past master of the art of dramatizing the problems—social, legal, economic—of tangled modern life. His characters are in many cases vividly drawn, but in the main they are subordinate to the examination of the intricacies of the social structure. Peculiarly in a position to know the very rich and the very poor, together with the legal mechanism of their interrelationships, he has the knack of dragging dull facts out of the textbooks into moving existence.

One of the major interests in this volume lies in Mr. Train’s fleeting sketches of subordinate characters— old Uncle Shiras; Doctor Dominick, “the most valuable man in the world;” Degoutet, outspoken sculptor. Most of them may be recognized as more or less thinly veiled snapshots from real life.* All of them are, it must be confessed, more interesting than the comparatively insignificant hero and heroine.

The Author. Arthur Train is a small man, keenly interested in life and those who live it. A Harvard graduate, a lawyer, he has passed some time as Assistant District Attorney of New York. Among his earlier works are The Goldfish, True Stories of Crime, The Earthquake (War book), Tutt and Mr. Tutt (short stories), His Children’s Children (TIME, Mar. 24, 1923). Some of the characters from the latter book reappear in the present volume. He is a regular contributor to The Saturday Evening Post.

*THE NEEDLE’S EYE—Arthur Train—Scribner’s ($2.00).

*Coincidental resemblances, for example, have been noted between the firm of Graham & Co. and that of J. P. Morgan & Co., between a certain minor character and John D. Rockefeller Jr., between Dr. Dominick and a certain distinguished laboratory physician now at the Rockefeller Institute.