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 his shame. Ironically, pathetically, he goes, as his great-great-grandfather went before him, "to help people." Some call this book an unnecessary bore. Others call it almost indubitably a classic.