Books: Quiet, Please

HUDSON RIVER BRACKETED—Edith Wharton—Appleton ($2.50). Vance Weston, son of a small-town real-estate operator who has made, not a "pile" exactly but a neat mound, feels immortal longings in him. He writes poetry and learns about a small part of life from a wanton wench. When he catches his own grandfather with the same clay-footed goddess, the shock brings on an attack of typhoid. When he is convalescent, his family are so relieved at his recovery that they humor his literary ambition and let him go east. In a sleepy little village...