Books: Classic

GOD'S STEPCHILDREN—Sarah Gertrude Millin—Boni, Liveright ($2.00). The literature of miscegenation, as written by whites, insists that bearers of black blood are inevitably bearers of sorrow and shame. Here a black-brown-yellow sequence is put in motion —'amid veld, Boers, oxen and other carefully-selected South African atmosphere—by a gaunt, buck-toothed missionary to the Hottentots. His act is a kind of sexual piety. His seed, of whom Mrs. Millin tells with Old Testament-like baldness, power and monotony, continue ashamed until an octoroon of the fourth generation "passes over"—that is, becomes white enough to be ashamed of...