Books: Richard's Ordeal

THE MORNING WATCH (120 pp.)—James Agee—Houghton M/ffl/n ($2.25).

For twelve-year-old Richard, wakening in the dormitory of his Anglo-Catholic church school in the Tennessee hills, the day had begun with a soul-shaming failure. He had vowed to stay awake all night to share somehow Christ's agony, but before midnight he had fallen asleep. Now, as Father Whitman went from cot to cot waking the boys chosen for the next Good Friday watch, it was nearly 4 a.m., and Richard was suffused with the knowledge of his Lord's ordeal.

"O God, he silently prayed, in solemn and festal exaltation: make me to know Thy suffering...