FRATERNITY VILLAGE,

by Ben AmesWilliams '10. Houghton Mifflin Company,1949. 336 pp. $3.

"A thing gone, but well remembered, is not lost. Rather it becomes by a sort of compound interest more deeply to be treasured through the years." (p. 220) The author's sixteen stories of a Maine village he calls Fraternity are written in this spirit. Two of them, "Mine Enemy's Dog," and "Old Tantrybogus" were published in Thrifty Stock (Dutton, 1923); all have appeared in magazines. All are eminently worth reprinting for here Ben Ames Williams, with loving care, and with masculine force and precision, tells his stories of men and women he has known for more than thirty years in Searsmont, Maine.

There are thirty-six books in Baker Library written by Ben Ames Williams. In any study made of this famous American story teller his tales of Fraternity must play an important part as he himself says. "Another Man's Poison," his first Fraternity story appropriately leads off in this volume. It is a little more melodramatic than most of them. His stories are all character sketches and anyone who knows New England, and in particular Maine, will recognize his people. Maine in the fall as it looks to the hunter is well painted on the dust wrapper by Andrew Wyeth. Inside the book is Maine as it really is. I have been to Searsmont, and in the book I have returned several times again. I want to go back. I hope Ben will sometime take me there, which is another way of saying that I hope the author tells some more stories of Fraternity Village.