[Review of The Colonel's Dream]

"THE COLONEL'S DREAM" is the title of the latest book by Charles W. Chestnutt, whose stories of southern life are usually most successful, both in portrayal of southern manners and customs and in the art of story making. In this last particular, however, this novel fails. A southern man, whose mature years have been spent in the north, returns to his boyhood home, surprised to find changed conditions, or, as it may be, his own changed point of view. The striking contradictions of certain phases of southern life today are well presented, but there is no suggested solution of these or of the more human interests of the story. A promising love affair, a reminiscence of the colonel's youth, is lamely turned aside at the last; the colonel practically washes his hands of the whole situation and returns north to wed a widow whose name has been mentioned in the first chapter of the book. If this final impression of incompleteness is the one Mr. Chesnutt wished to convey, he should at any rate have made his intention more clear to the reader. (Doubleday Page & Co.)