It has become the fashion of late to drag in Freudianism, Communism, and homosexualism into our novels as often as not when they would have been best omitted. [The Eagle on the Coin] in particular suffers from their intrusion. If the author has tried to show that the little town of Riverton, somewhere on the borderline of North and South, is reluctant to elect a Negro to its school board, surely it clouds the issue to have the chief mover of the idea turn out to be a homosexual and thus sway the public against the Negro's election. As Tom Kettle was a radical, a complex-ridden individual, a homosexual, and a saloon-keeper to boot, you could scarcely blame the public of Riverton for looking askance. It would have been better for the story and for the author's thesis if he had Tom Kettle psychoanalyzed at the beginning and not at the end, if this unsavory character had to be analyzed at all. Scarcely less irrational is the notion that a man writing on a famous abolitionist of more than a hundred years ago should find it necessary to identify his cause with the present to the extent of participating in the political fight. After all, Cameron is a professor, not a politician, and scarcely a reader but will feel that it was only right that he should come a cropper. All of which is a pity, because the novelist is not without writing skill and storytelling ability, which he might have turned to better advan-tage if he could have eliminated modern superfluities which are in such great danger of becoming formulas.