Books: Seven Men

PRIMA DONNA—Pitts Sanborn—Longmans, Green, 2 vols. ($5).

Seven men and music make the story of Helma Seymour, a pretentious life cycle of a U. S. prima donna which begins in a mid-western town and revolves ironically to a prosperous and almost respectable middle-age.

Helma was an offish, disdainful girl, daughter of a lawyer in Byzantium, Ohio. She went to the local college where a freshwater esthete named Winfield Gaines (but called "Phoebe") was her friend until he was expelled. She studied singing with a local teacher who had a book called Lyra Operatica, full of...

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