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INTRODUCTION artist, lend to the novels all the charm that love can add to adventure and beautiful language to both.

MOTTKE THE VAGABOND. (Translated into English.) A powerful tale of life in the underworld of Warsaw, and the career of a Yiddish "cellar- child." American critics have found Ash, in this book, comparable in various respects to such authors as Hugo, Dickens and Gorki.

THE SINNER. (Translated into English.) A one-act symbolic play of intense power, which has been likened for its atmosphere to certain of Maeterlinck's dramas. The story, which deals with the refusal of a Jewish grave to receive the corpse of a man who has sinned by marrying out of the faith, is developed with penetrating skill and impartial outlook.

OUR FAITH. A full-length drama upon a theme similar to that just touched upon. The author's refusal to cater to orthodox views shows his artistic independence.

SHORT STORIES. The best of the numerous short stories that Ash has published in his various collections attain a high degree of artistic excellence. That same nervous prose as distinguishes his longer pieces, that same linguistic iridescence,—one might term it,—as he achieves in such remarkable places as Chapter XIII (Part One) of "Meri" and Chapter XLI (Part Two) of "The Road to Self," are encountered often in his many shorter tales. xiii