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RANT, ROBERT, an American jurist, novelist and essayist; born at Boston, Mass., January 24, 1852. He was graduated from Harvard in 1873, and from the Harvard Law School in 1879. In the same year he began the practice of law in his native city. In 1888 he was appointed one of the Water Commissioners of Boston, and in 1893 became judge of probate and insolvency for Suffolk County. His first novel, The Little Tin God on Wheels, was published in 1879. This was followed by The Confessions of a Frivolous Girl in 1880; both novels attracting unusual attention. Then followed The Lambs (1882); Yankee Doodle, a poem delivered at Harvard (1883); and An Average Man (1883). The last named work was the author's first serial story, and was published in the Century Magazine. Mr. Grant's other works are The King's Men (1884); The Knave of Hearts (1885); The Romantic Young Lady (1886); Face to Face (1886); a poem entitled The Oldest School in America, delivered in 1885, on the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Boston Latin school; Jack Hall (1887); Jack in the Bush (1888); The Reflections of a Married Man (1892); The Opinions of a Philosopher (1893); The Art of Living (1895); The Bachelor's Christmas (1895); Search Light Letters (1899); Unleavened Bread (1900); The Undercurrent (1904); and The Orchid; a story of American society (1905).

Of all the literary work of Robert Grant none roused so much public discussion as the series of articles published in Scribner's Magazine entitled “The Art of Living." The newspapers in particular criti

cised the author more or less severely upon his views of the income nccdful for a man of refined tastes and habits. "I have been entirely misunderstood," he says, "upon that point of income. My contention was that of two men of equal tastes and desires of living, the one with from seven to ten thousand a year could get much more out of life than the one who had, perhaps, only three thousand. It seems to me this is self-evident. But it was assumed and heralded abroad that I had declared that no man with less than seven thousand a year could live decently. That was a very erroneous interpretation and wholly unjustifiable."

“Judge Grant's novel The Undercurrent," says the New York Times, "is a close study of the ordinary American life which we are all living, with its greed for money, its eager competition, its lack of ideals, its falling away from the consolations of religion. The central personages are a young man of commercial aspirations, with abundant faith in himself, a limited imagination, and a restless disposition, and a young women bred quietly in a country town by wellmeaning parents, inheriting a reverence for Christian ideals, but possessing little more knowledge of the world or of literature than her husband, whose library is the Sunday newspaper. The early married life of these two persons is described for us with painstaking skill, and the truthfulness of the description is easily recognized. Thus far, besides the two principal characters, only one other has had to do with the development of the story, an energetic minister of the Gospel, who tries hard to keep in touch with his parishioners and to avoid clerical formula' in his everyday conversation. As the fourth chapter ends,

Emil Stuart and Constance, his wife, seem to be reaching a domestic tragedy.

"Because of its obvious truth to life, and the sincerity of the author, which fairly shines through the narrative, The Undercurrent, promises to rank among the noteworthy novels of the year.

"There is only one point in which the absolute verity of this narrative, as far as it has gone, seems to us open to question. Emil Stuart has given up a situation with a lumber firm and established a business of his own, on a small capital, because he considered that his employers cherished old fogy ideas, and were not alive to the possibilities of commercial progress.

"He proceeded during the first year to carry out several enterprises which he had vainly called to their attention while in their service, and he had the satisfaction of proving his wisdom and of doubling the firm's assets at the same time. Emil's plans were essentially on a large scale, and he was confessedly cramped even after this success. He explained to his wife that if only he had the necessary capital, he would be able at one fell swoop to control the lumber yards and lumber market of Benham. As it was, he must wait and probably see others appropriate ideas which he had suggested by his novel and brilliant operations. The prophecy indeed proved true, and Emil saw with a morose eye what he had called his harvest gleaned by others.

"This seems to us, as the author explains it, either more or less than the truth. Surely, a young business man who had, in a single year, put into operation new commercial ideas which had doubled his assets would have little difficulty thereafter in securing all the capi

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