"_In JOHN CHARTERIS appeared a man with an inborn sense of the supremeinterest and the overwhelming emotional and spiritual relevancy ofhuman life as it is actually and obscurely lived; a man withunmistakable creative impulses and potentialities; a man who, had helived in a more mature and less self-deluding community--a communitythat did not so rigorously confine its interest in facts to business,and limit its demands upon art to the supplying of illusions--mighthumbly and patiently have schooled his gifts to the service of hisvision. . . . As it was, he accepted defeat and compromisedhalf-heartedly with commercialism._"