Books: Hell-Fire Sermon

MARRIAGE IN BLUE—A. E. Fisher— Cosmopolitan ($2). Most good Americans nowadays do not wait till they die to go to Paris; many of them get there before they are grown up. Author Fisher's little blue book shows the cavortings of much the same kind of expatriate crowd Ernest Hemingway exhibited in The Sun Also Rises; but Author Fisher has nothing so concentrated to say. He says it cleverly, but by the time Marriage in Blue lets up you are more than ready for it.

Dion was a young man of fatal charm, fortunately (for him) married to a wife who loved him. He was supposed to be a sculptor, so he wasted most of his days and nights with similarly supposititious bohemians. His wife was apparently unfitted for motherhood: not so Adrienne. Then Rosette annexed him for a while. The Countess d'Ys, though unnatural, tried him and found him wanting. When he rejoined his wife on the Riviera much the same sort of thing went on. Marriage in Blue makes the same impression on you as a hellfire sermon on the Seven Deadly Sins, fills you with a nausea of such rioting and drunkenness.