The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 52, July 1948 - April, 1949 Page: 469

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Book Reviews

Viewed as history, When Destiny Called is adequate but hardly
epic. No obvious errors have been detected in the historical pas-
sages, though the number of sources cited would seem to promise
a richer insight into the times than the reading has revealed.
Perhaps anticipation set too high goals. Moreover, the author
has a tendency to introduce extraneous material into his narra-
tive, a practice which produces tedium, not enlightenment. For
example, to what purpose is this sentence? "On the floor of the
Gold Exchange, on Black Friday, September 24, 1869, while
facing a threat that he would be shot, Speyer bought gold for
the account of Jay Gould and Jim Fisk to the extent of $26,-
ooo,ooo." Does it explain in any way the connection of Albert
Speyer, the Chihuahua trader, with the Doniphan expedition?
For the sake of record, Hamele has told the story of the Doni-
phan campaign from the organization of the First Missouri
Mounted Volunteers on "a pleasant afternoon in June, 1846"
until their return to St. Louis, "Friday, the second of July, 1847."
Intermingled with the historic events is the love story of Lieu-
tenant Adam Shelton, fictionally Colonel Doniphan's aide, and
Rosita Navarro, who, despite her Hispanic family name, was an
"heiress to an English estate." Having travelled from St. Louis
to Chihuahua, via Santa Fe and El Paso del Norte, to be near
Shelton at all times (apparently for the purposes of the story),
she returned to St. Louis to accept his proposal of marriage upon
his arrival there, "Friday, the second of July, 1847."
REx W. STRICKLAND
College of Mines
Jefferson Among the Arts. By Eleanor Davidson Berman. New
York (Philosophical Library), 1947. Pp. xviii+305. Illustra-
tions and appendix. $3.75.
This work, as its preface tells us, was prepared as a doctoral
thesis for submission to the graduate faculty in political and
social science in the New School of Social Research. The book is
appropriately titled Jefferson Among the Arts, for although there
are scattered attempts to appraise Jefferson's taste and achieve-
ments in the fields of various arts, the book gives no account of
Jefferson as artist or as consumer of the arts. The author has

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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 52, July 1948 - April, 1949, periodical, 1949; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101121/m1/478/ocr/: accessed March 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.

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