The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 59, July 1955 - April, 1956 Page: 394

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

the Hayes administration is doubtful. Hayes was a good man,
honest, modest, generally without dissimulation, and therefore
colorless. And so, though his were times of trouble and change,
somehow Hayes fails to take charge of the reader's interest and
carry him along. This lack is more the fault of Hayes than of his
author, who has turned out an expert performance.
Perhaps no more penetrating portrait of the generally affable
Hayes appears than in the one sentence in which Barnard sug-
gests that Hayes actually would have preferred to have been
President than to be President. He enjoyed the honor of having
held high office; the power, the responsibility, and the opportunity
held little allure.
On the whole Rutherford B. Hayes and His America should
stand up as the best biography of one of our good, if not one of
our great, Presidents for a long time to come.
JOE B. FRANTZ
The University of Texas
Fabulous San Antonio. By Albert Curtis. San Antonio (The
Naylor Company), 1955. Pp. ix+298. Photographs. $5.00.
The books that have been written in whole or in part about San
Antonio would fill many shelves. The ancient city, which began
officially in 17 i8 with the founding of San Antonio de Bexar Pre-
sidio, has been an irresistible attraction to countless writers. In
1881 appeared George P. Goff's San Antonio and Environs. Since
then books of many types about San Antonio have been written
by both local and visiting authors. To most students of San An-
tonioana the best of the lot is William Corner's San Antonio de
Bexar, A Guide and History (including Sidney Lanier's In San
Antonio de Bexar, A Historical Sketch), published in 189o. The
Border Ruffians by R. H. Williams, an Englishman, appeared in
1907. Now highly prized and eagerly sought by Texana collectors,
it is a kind of scandal book of the Alamo City in the period just
before and during the War between the States.
The newest of the San Antonio books is Fabulous San Antonio
by Albert Curtis, rather suggestive in title, style, and subject mat-
ter of the late Frank H. Bushick's Fabulous Days, first published
in 1934.

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