Heart’s Content

By RALPH HENRY BARBOUR

Illustrations in color by H. Weston Taylor. Page Decorations by Edward Stratton Holloway. Handsome cloth binding. In sealed packet $1.50 net

This is the tale of a summer love affair carried on by an unusual but altogether bewitching lover in a small summer resort in New England. Allan Shortland, a gentleman, a tramp, a poet and withal the happiest of happy men is the hero. Beryl Vernon, as pretty as the ripple of her name, is the heroine. Two more appealing personalities are seldom found within the covers of a book. Fun and plenty of it, romance and plenty of it, and an end full of happiness for the characters, and to the reader regret that the story is over. The illustrations by H. Weston Taylor, the decorations by Edward Stratton Holloway, and the tasteful sealed package are exquisite

(Not something I’m reading, by the way. Just an entertaining ad.)

Left End Edwards

Since I was pretty pleased with The New Boy at Hilltop, I decided to read another Ralph Henry Barbour, Left End Edwards. Now, either Barbour is better at short stories than novels, “Barbour” is a pseudonym for multiple people, some of whom could write better than others, or this book has no excuse for being stupid. I did try to figure out whether Barbour was a pseudonym — I got suspicious when the advertisements at the end of the book were all for Stratemeyer series — and I couldn’t find anything specific, but on the whole I think it wasn’t. Some of the other titles credited to Barbour seem to be romances, which makes it look like he was one guy with a couple of niches. There were certainly Stratemeyer pseudonyms that were credited with multiple series, but they tend to be in the same vein — Laura Lee Hope with “The Bobbsey Twins” and “Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue”, or Alice Emerson with “Ruth Fielding” and “Betty Gordon” — and they were all children’s books.

I’m quite willing to accept the excuse that he was better with short stories, but the fact remains that this book requires an excuse. See, there’s this idiot named Steve — a fifteen year old boy who’s supposed to be pretty good at football. And there’s his best friend, an idiot named Tom who’s only supposed to be okay at football but who does have an incredibly small amount of common sense, which is more than I can say for Steve.

The New Boy at Hilltop

After all those Ruth Fielding books, I was kind of sick of girls, so I set out to find a fun boys’ book. I ended up reading The New Boy at Hilltop, and Other Stories, by Ralph Henry Barbour, except that I didn’t notice the subtitle at first, so I was kind of surprised when I got to what I thought was the second chapter and Kenneth Garwood wasn’t one of the characters. But it really is a boys’ book, so I’m not that disappointed.

Kenneth is the hero of the first story. He arrives at Hilltop, his new school, after Christmas, and is told by the principal that he’ll be rooming with Joseph Brewster, a model student. Ken is sure he’ll dislike Joe, and Joe is kind of upset when he gets back to school and finds that he has a roommate now. So of course they immediately get into a fight, and after that they’re friends.