November 4, 1925

other well-drawn and entertaining characters. Alan is a supremely selfish man, not as elaborately portrayed or of as high social rank as Meredith's Egoist, but rather a British edition of the German husbands so feelingly delineated in "Elizabeth and Her German Garden" and "The Caravaners." Alan's wife acts as his amanuensis, and, since he is as tireless a worker as was Anthony Trollope, the conditions of her life are pitiable. Moreover, she gains but little sympathy from her mother, who was once in love with Alan herself, or her sister Dora, a worldly woman married to a rich man and able to indulge her fancy for costly garments, a hobby that engrosses her waking hours. There comes into this family one Mrs. Probyn, a social pusher of the most virulent type, whose quarry is of the intellectual rather than the titled class. In her vision Alan is the sun around which the lesser planets of her dinner-table revolve, and, as he seldom goes about in society, she regards her capture of him as the most brilliant feather in her richly adorned cap. She squirms her way into the household, using her flattering tongue as a weapon of assault, for the novelist's vanity renders him an easy mark. She soon establishes herself in his study as a temporary amanuensis, in order to relieve the wife of some of her toil, and it is not long before she becomes a permanent fixture beside him. Meanwhile, as every reader will be glad to note, a young cousin appears on the scene and relieves the wife of some of her loneliness. He is an attractive young fellow, and every woman who reads the book, especially those who are reminded by Alan of their own husbands, will wish him well.

THE VIRTUOUS HUSBAND. By Freeman Tilden. The Macmillan Company, New York. $2.50.

Jim Buckbarrow, whose life story is told here, is frank, friendly, and goodnatured. The reader finds him good company through boyhood and during his work in a country-town newspaper office, while his odd friend Jeffcoate, sign-painter, hard drinker, and amateur moralist, is a joy. When Jim goes to the great city, he must by the rules of the fiction game leave a fine girl behind him. Equally inevitable must he in the end renew his love for her. What happens between in the period of urban sophistication explains the title. Incidentally there are shrewd and sensible sideglimpses at modern fads and social questions.

The Scientific American is one of the two magazines every American should read-it is the magazine the leaders in science and industry do read to keep up with the times.

The Scientific American thrills you, not alone with the pleasure of reading the articles themselves, but with the realization that knowing them widens your horizon, adds to your powers. You need it every month.

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The Scientific American Annualog for 1926 is the log of the world for the year-the record of science and industry. It is bound in cloth, 200 pages, 5% x 8%.inches. Some of the many

ous Cape Cod talk, quaint characters, the fresh breeziness of the New England shore life. There is also a sound humannature quality in the main situationthat of Queer Judson, a young man whose innocence and inexperience have involved him in a bankruptcy through which his native villagers have lost their savings. He returns to meet their contemptuous dislike and conquer it. This is at least a fair average Lincoln book; out of the twenty-five or so he has written one might pick, say, three as better, but probably no reader would pick the same three.

By E.

GABRIEL SAMARA, PEACEMAKER.
Phillips Oppenheim. Little, Brown & Co.,
Boston. $2.

Mr. Oppenheim's plots alternate between ordinary crime and international affairs. This novel is of the second class. Samara is for Russia what Mussolini is

for Italy. He has driven out the Bolsheviki, brought about prosperity, and is a

patriotic dictator under the name of

President. He comes to America and negotiates a big loan so that he can work. He even tells the Russian mondemobilize his armies and put them to

archists in America that they may return to Russia, and snaps his fingers at them, so to speak a great mistake. Incidentally he hires a typist from a New York agency, a Miss Borans, finds her indispensable, and takes her to Europe. She turns out to be none other than-but hold on, this is where the story begins to be interesting!

Drama

GLAMOUR: ESSAYS ON THE ART OF THE THEATRE. By Stark Young. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $2.

These essays, many of which have appeared from time to time in recent magazines and journals, impress one with their author's intense preoccupation over the subtleties of theatrical art. Philosophical and speculative, he exhibits the assurance of one competent and thoroughly at home in his field. One apprehends a nations, one that bases judgments on

sensitive spirit capable of nice discrimi

adequate criteria, and cannot be accused of straining interpretation for the sake of

the clever paradox or the smart epigram.

It is a book which should prove valu

able to all who have more than a cursory interest in our stage and makes its appeal to both sides of the footlights. That comparisons need not be odious may be deduced by scanning the "Letters

from Dead Actors," comprising five of the fifteen essays, each addressed by the shade of a historic stage celebrity to a contemporary professional: e. g., David Garrick to John Barrymore, La Corallina to Doris Keane. Mixing praise with

admonition, they show by contrast and parallel in what branches of technique the moderns excel and in what others they still have something to learn from their spiritual ancestors. Indeed, this critic's enthusiasm never blinds him to the limitations of the most shining luminaries, as when in the course of an appreciation of the Moscow Art Theatre he decries Stanislavsky's performance in one of Gorky's plays-"insufferably scored, like the work of a brilliant amateur or of an instructive coach."

One might seek far before finding a more beautiful tribute than the essay on Duse, who could give him "a tragic sense of beauty and completion." Madame Sorel's tour gave occasion for comments on the French tradition, the effect of the social instinct on their art, and a recognition of the kinship that exists between the French classical theater and the Greek.

Mr. Young has the virtuoso's touch in handling his material, if things imponderable may be thus designated. The style is delicate, resilient, supple-admirably suited to the subject.

Philosophy

THE WORLD AND ITS MEANING. An Introduction to Philosophy. By George Thomas White Patrick. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. $3.50.

An interesting and, we think, a valuable book which many persons will be glad to read and to own. It is an introduction to philosophy by the Professor of Philosophy in the University of Iowa. The style is simple, readable, agreeable. It may be read through with profit and enjoyment by any one who wishes to understand modern thought on all the questions which are included in the term "philosophy." There are numerous suggestions for further reading.

Or, suppose that you merely wish a reference book, to enable you to learn, whenever you have the desire, what is meant by pragmatism, or free will, or behaviorism, or pessimism, or evolution, or the unconscious. Or that you would like to have at hand a book to tell you in a few paragraphs or pages what are the teachings of Bergson, or James, or Plato, or Schopenhauer, or Kant, or Freud. Here is the book for you.

Travel

NEW YORK IN SEVEN DAYS. By Helena Smith Dayton and Louise Bascom Barratt. Robert M. McBride & Co., New York. $1.50. This little book will interest the folks from Dubuque as well as those more familiar with their Gotham. It is packed with information, some of it exceedingly valuable, such as, how to know the cheapest taxis. Doubtless all of it is

A New Volume of Mr. Neihardt's Epic Poem of the Great West

The Song

of the Indian Wars

by

John G.Neihardt

In the prelude to his first book, "A Bundle of Myrrh," John G.
Neihardt wrote:

"I would sing as the Wind;

As the autumn Wind, big with rain and sad

with prenatal dread.

I would sing as the Storm;

As the Storm whipped by the lightning and
strong with the despair of giants.

I would sing as the Snow;

Wailing and hissing and writhing in the mer
ciless grasp of the Blizzard.

I would sing as the Prairie;

As the Prairie droning in the heat, satisfied,
drowsy and mystical."

With his newest volume, "The Song of the Indian Wars," this yearning has become achievement. The mighty music of "The Song of the Indian Wars," is compounded of the voices of the wind, the storm, the snow and the prairie. It is a tale Homerically told and it is an Homeric subject which Mr. Neihardt has essayed to handle the last great battle between the prairie Indian tribes and the invading Aryan hordes for the bison pastures of the plains. Price $2.25

Critical Opinions

"A significant poem and a great one."-N. Y. Herald Tribune.
"The greatest Indian fighting, without a doubt, in American
poetry."
-The Bookman.

of value to some one. The writer of this review is not too old to learn for the first time that the Aquarium was once a fortress, that the upkeep of the Statue of Liberty is $5,712 yearly, and that there is in our midst a restaurant which "has had no complaints since 1800." The authors have made a comprehensive list of accurately located shops, restaurants, statues, and other points of interest, to which during the seven days an obliging author takes a lady from his home town. They go to a great many places, including Coney Island and the Bronx Zoo, but reading the book one can realize that New York is hardly to be done in seven days, or seven times seven. In the back of this little sightseer's manual are a useful index and a good pocket map.

THE ROMANCE OF THE EDINBURGH STREETS. By May D. Steuart. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York: $3.

Describes all the great buildings, monuments, and sections of Edinburgh and relates their histories and legends. A fine book to read in preparation for a visit to one of the most beautiful cities in Great Britain.

THE TAMING OF THE FRONTIER. By Ten Authors. Edited by Douglas Aikman. Minton, Balch & Co., New York. $3.

A portrait gallery of ten American cities. The ten portrait painters use the bright and sometimes crude pigments that are nowadays in vogue. They have done their work not unskillfully. They follow Oliver Cromwell's advice and paint the warts; but they do it with an eye to the pictorial effect. The inhabitants in each city pictured may complain of its portrait, but view with something like complacency and enjoyment the portraits of the others. Californians may not relish the description of the settlers of their State as "tuberculars, rheumatics, and retired farmers! A susceptible crew-easy pickin's for the Boston mindhealers and preachers of spiritual uplift." The painter of this portrait finds Los Angeles "tame" because at Long Beach they do not allow petting in public. The sitters for the pictures are El Paso, Ogden, Denver, San Francisco, St. Paul, Portland (Oregon), Kansas City, San Antonio, Los Angeles, and Cheyenne; and each is painted by a different artist.

and "groogle," and humming-birds that grow wilder every hour, and a "Crack Corps of Giant Squids" who, at command, "Present Tentacles! Uncurl Tentacles!" and "Shoot!" a dreadful volley of inedible India ink. Then there are the crowds of funny "Tooting Birds," living on the "Tooting Islands," who stand on one leg and toot in their dreams all through the night. They grow to be a great nuisance, and have to be tricked to the bottom of the sea, which is made so attractive a place that it is surprising that Pegeen and Flips, the children in the story, having once been there, ever want to leave. Probably the more curious of the children who read the book will not rest until they have gone exploring for a "Terrarium" on the bottoms of their own pet oceans. The charm of the book is at least doubled by the line drawings by Clarence Day.

Essays and Criticism

TRADITION AND JAZZ. By Fred Lewis Pattee. The Century Company, New York. $2. Professors, like parsons, are prone to be a little on the defensive in contact with the lay world. Mr. Pattee is a genial and open-minded fellow-citizen, but every page of this very readable book shows him as consciously a professor as Mr. Mencken is an anti-professor. He is never pompous or dull, and he is not more didactic than a critic who knows his mind should be. He has a pretty wit and a mellow humor to offer his miscellaneous audience. But he never quite forgets the cap and gown waiting him in the dressing-room hard by. His criticism of current life and letters is that of a liberally intentioned member of the older generation who is also a long-standing member of an indicted order-criminalis academicus. He

admits the limitations of that order, and

exults in the fact that even its enemies pay tribute to it: "Even Mencken, the captain of the troop that has led the attack upon the campus pundits and 'makers of horn-books for freshmen,' has

admitted to his new 'American Mercury' five major articles by college professors each month." Well, this is keeping tabs.

We believe there is still a great unmenckenized majority which cheerfully recognizes the human value of the college teacher, and which will read with pleas ure these humane observations on life, literature, and the pursuit of happiness. We may not always follow Mr. Pattee's individual judgments-such as his contempt for Edgar Lee Masters and his enthusiasm for Eugene Field. But these pages as a whole are lighted with a charm unattainable by the unacademic

scoffers. Delightful company, the Professor!

Politics and Government

A GRAMMAR OF POLITICS. By Harold J. Laski. The Yale University Press, New Haven. $6.

This is evidently the crown of the lifework of an eminent thinker and writer

on economics and government. His previous works have been, in his own words, "mainly critical or intended to discuss somewhat technical issues in political philosophy." In this book he "attempts

to outline the institutions which his researches have suggested as desirable."

Mr. Laski's talent for analysis and criticism is a very notable one-he has the sharpest of noses for defects in the existing order; but in bidding for recognition as creator, as authentic architect,

of institutions, he bids too high. That is only to say that he may not be reckoned one of a very small group of men of supreme genius. On the other hand, the book abounds in ideas and suggestions that should be useful to the architect, of whom there is such crying need.

RACE OR NATION. By Gino Speranza. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis. $3. According to Mr. Gino Speranza a real danger is threatening the American Nation, a danger which he has fully described in this book. Briefly put, his Briefly put, his theory is this: American civilization is fundamentally Anglo-Saxon and Protestant "because upon it rests, historically and philosophically, the principle of selfgovernment in all things, political, moral, and intellectual." He goes on to say that this does not mean that there is no room here for people of varying beliefs. and views, but he does consider it a menace to this country when bodies of people, for religious, linguistic, or racial reasons, separate themselves from the rest of the community and endeavor to force their social and political ideas upon it. This is his objection to the Roman

Catholic system, with its parochial

schools and allegiance to the Vatican or its representatives. It is also his objection to such communities as persist in ignoring the English language and speak only in the tongues of their forebears. Of course, unlimited immigration is the source of this evil, and Mr. Speranza says that nothing in recorded history short of a race invasion has ever equaled it. It is impossible to do justice to this book in a short notice. There are chapters on our social life, a common language and a common school, and, unlike many critics, he has even a chapter on "Remedies." The book is thoughtful and suggestive and will commend itself to those who have the welfare of this country at heart.

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