The Position of Peggy Harper

A thoroughgoing understanding of the stage and stage folk lies back of Mr. Merrick's story of the struggles and hardships Incident to the mummer's life. The hero is a stage struck youth who allows no amount of ill luck to dampen his ardor or to interfere with an early attachment for a cheap little actress who offers him companionship. "It is the story's business to portray how gradually he is disillusioned of her, finds another girl more suited to him, quits the stage to become a dramatist, and finally wins success in that difficult employ, after much rebuff, while Peggy strikes luck beyond her deserts and on the strength of a-London hit patronizes her lover and makes a spectacle of herself in her silly vanity, out of which the author extracts a good deal of satiric amusement for our benefit. One recognizes it all as an accurate picture of the weakness of mummers, although their good side, too, is given due credit."

--Book Review Digest, Volume 8