Of Practical Value

This new department, then, can be used in a most practical way. First, it will call to your particular notice the most salient features of the current number, some of which might otherwise escape your attention and which you would be very glad not to miss; it will suggest a consideration of the fundamental significance of the questions discussed in the different articles and will, we hope, interest you in the validity, or if you disagree, in the error, of the conclusions that our writers support. A careful and consistent application to the department each month will develop an interest in and an appreciation of the literary aspects of our modern life and thought, will increase one's knowledge of current literature and of what the world is thinking; and then, of course, we aim to make it of practical value in the correlation of THE BOOKMAN as a text with regular study in colleges, academies, schools and study-clubs. The department is being conducted by an experienced teacher of college English, now in editorial work and in touch with the literary world, and who has the assistance and advice of a number of professors of English at Columbia University.

War Books "Best Sellers"

We are also adding this month, in the Book Mart, at the end of the magazine, a schedule of the war books and their relative sales. These books of war experiences are meeting with a demand in many instances greater than that for current fiction, so that, as an indication of the country's interest in books from the point of view of the sales market, this schedule of war book sales is at this time of fully as much value as the regular lists of "best sellers" among books of fiction. Over the Top, the first on the list of best selling war books, is having a

sale in actual numbers probably far in excess of the first title on the list of best selling fiction, The Major, though how the other books on the two lists would compare in volume of sales it would be difficult to say. In this connection it should be remembered that the number of points given to each of the six "best sellers" in the two lists represents merely relativity of sales within each list and does not in any way indicate the actual number of volumes sold. Thus, while Over the Top received 283 points and The Major 205, this would by no means necessarily indicate that these two books were selling in the proportion of 283 to 205, nor do these points in any way furnish a clue to the actual number of volumes sold. On the other hand, the numbers of points within each list may be presumed to give a reasonable approximation of the relative volume of sales of the titles designated; thus, Over the Top, with its 283 points, may be estimated to be selling about four times as fast as Under Fire, the sixth and last title in the war book list, which is accredited with 69 points; and The Major, with its 205 points, may be estimated to be selling about three times as fast as His Last Bow, the last of the fiction list, with its 67 points. This list of "best sellers" among the war books will be continued as long as the public interest in them is maintained at its present high level.

And now that we have talked about ourselves and what we are going to do and what we are Fiction in not going to do at "The undue length, perBookman" haps you will think, permit us to tell you about what somebody else is going to do for us. We take particular pleas ure in announcing the further collaboration in an editorial capacity of Mr. Edward J. O'Brien. It

was Mr. O'Brien who conducted in THE BOOKMAN all last year the interesting experiment of The Masque of Poets, a series that brought out some of the best poetry of the year and some of the most interesting examples of the work of the modern schools

a series that will shortly be published in book form. Mr. O'Brien is even better known as a critic of the contemporary short story-he makes it his business to read every short story of importance published in the leading magazines and once a year to give them a rating in the Boston Transcript (Boston still holds its own in that hoary and venerable institution, its Transcript) and to analyse his conclusions for the best of the stories in THE BOOKMAN. Incidently, of the nine stories published last year in THE BOOKMAN five were included in the Transcript list of distinguished work. Then, Mr. O'Brien's selection of "The Best Short Stories" of the year is published every spring in a volume that reaches the astonishing sale of over fifteen thousand copies. It is in this capacity that Mr. O'Brien is to collaborate in THE BOOKMAN. We have been publishing a small department that we have called Echoes, composed of short stories or sketches that have been characterised more by atmosphere or tone than by the conventional plot and character form of the popular short story-reflections, "echoes" if you will, of the great world that are too delightful, too exquisite to be lost. And of course the greatest event in the world, the one to cast its shadow into every nook and cranny of life, is the war; and so it has been that our "echoes" have reflected the war, have always had the minor chord of the grim reality echoing through their strains. This department will shortly be entirely under the direction of Mr. O'Brien, and it will then be called War Echoes. The sketches will continue of similar character to the former "echoes," they will run between fifteen hundred

The three stories in this volume lay no claim to unity of artistic purpose. The only bond between them is that of the time in which they were written. They belong to the period immediately following the publication of the Nigger of the Narcissus, and preceding the first conception of Nostromo, two books which, it seems to me, stand apart and by themselves in the body of my work.

Even before appearing in book-form Youth was very well received. It lies on me to confess at last, and this is as good a place for it as another, that I have been all my life-all my two lives-the spoiled adopted child of Great Britain and even of the Empire; for it was Australia that gave me my first command. I break out into this declaration not because of a lurk. ing tendency to megalomania, but, on the contrary, as a man who has no very notable illusions about himself. I follow the instincts of vainglory and humility natural to all mankind. For it can hardly be denied that it is not their own deserts that men are most proud of, but rather of their prodigious luck, of their marvellous for. tune: of that in their lives for which thanks and sacrifices must be offered in the altars of the inscrutable gods.

Youth is a feat of memory. It is a record of experience. But that experience, in its facts, in its inwardness and in its outward colouring, begins and ends in my. self. Heart of Darkness is experience too; but it is experience pushed a little (and only very little) beyond the actual facts of the case for the perfectly legitimate, I believe, purpose of bringing it home to the minds and bosoms of the readers. There it was no longer a matter of sincere colouring. It was like another art altogether. That sombre theme had to be given a sinister resonance, a tonality of its own, a continued vibration that, I hoped, would

the last note had been struck.

Patience Worth has the commer

cial instinct.

A Worthy Patience

the

This curious intelligence, whether discarnate spirit, as her sponsors would have us believe, or subconscious mind of her medium," must have observed from its lofty eminence that the marketability of its last book, A Sorry Tale, was seriously impaired by the archaic dialects in which it was written. It might have been a good story, but few people would have the perseverance to wade through the mass of verbiage in which it was buried, and as a result its sale was small and was due more to curiosity probably than to actual enjoyment of the book. At any rate, a new book by Patience is announced for publication in March, and in this work, the advance notice says, she has adopted "standard English of the present day"-it will be most interesting to learn just what "standard English" is to-dayand it will also be free from "grammatical irregularities." Judging from this advance statement, issued by the publishers, this will indeed be a most remarkable book, and from its promise it might even prove available as a first reader in our "pure English" courses in the schools. Its title will be Hope Trueblood and the story is "relatively modern in its time, which is about the middle of the nineteenth century"-relatively modern indeed when one considers the unique and almost geological past with which Patience is accredited. And the book is also said to be a "mid-Victorian novel by a pre-Victorian writer"though why an intelligence that has experienced and observed the life of every brilliant epoch in human history should select the drab midVictorian period to write about is a mystery whose solution can only be known in the topsy-turvy world

patient.

But in a more serious vein, we must all recognise the very great in

Sanity in Spiritualism

sure

terest in spiritualism. In England, so many of whose sons have accepted the supreme sacrifice, the demand for a knowledge and a sane comfort by those who remain behind is both natural, beautiful, and to the observer one of the striking features of conditions there. Possibly many of you will remember Mr. Robert Mountsier's article in the January BOOKMAN, Spiritism in England, which depicted, in a striking way, this pathetic demand, or rather clamour, for comfort and knowledge. And, by the way, this article was declined by one of the leading general maga zines because of its implied criticism of established religion; it then came to THE BOOKMAN and, so far, the Editor has heard only praise and keen appreciation of Mr. Mountsier's sympathetic and unbiased presentation. We wonder if many BOOKMAN readers enjoyed it as we did. this paragraph was started to recommend a book. It is a book on spiritualism-sane, unprejudiced, scientific in its attitude, a rather complete résumé of the subject giving the most important evidence so far obtained, the possible hypotheses, the religious and philosophical conclusions that may be drawn. The book is On the Threshold of the Unseen, by Sir William F. Barrett, professor of Experimental Physics in the Royal College of Science for Ireland from 1873 to 1910 and one of the founders of the Psychical Research Society in 1882. This book is the most com. plete, the most satisfactory and the most reasonable that has come to our attention, and it is a pleasure to recommend it to those interested in its subject. It has just been issued in this country.

But

MAURICE HEWLETT.

That GuestRoom Shelf

Last month we printed a list of books for a guest-room shelf selected by Mr. Christopher Morley, the poet and member of the editorial staff of the Ladies' Home Journal. Mr. Morley rather arbitrarily laid down the conditions that your guests must be of the male sex and have the habit of reading in bed. There must likewise be a reading lamp by the bed and a bookshelf. As a result of THE BOOKMAN'S invitation for further lists Mr. Harold Crawford Stearns, of Dunkirk, New York, sends us the following letter:

Christopher Morley's list of books for a guest-room shelf interested me deeply, and

I am sending you one of my own-not that

I should not be satisfied to snuggle down in bed with any of the volumes he has named.

Now then: Romany Rye and Lavengro, by Borrow; The Fall of the House of Usher, by Poe; The Red Badge of Courage, by Crane; Huckleberry Finn; Browning's Dramatic Lyrics and Romances; Doyle's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Adventures of Gerard; Bob, Son of Battle; Gulliver's Travels; Carlyle's Heroes and Hero-Worship; Tom Jones, by Fielding; The Prisoner of Zenda, by Hope; The Letters of Horace Walpole and The Letters of Madame D'Arblay; She, by Haggard; Essays of Elia; Westward Ho!; The Beloved Vagabond, by Locke; The Poems of François Villon; The Mill оп the Floss; Wuthering Heights; The

Three Musketeers; The Canterbury Tales; Lorna Doone, by Blackmore; Kipling's Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads; The Bible; Shaw's The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet; If Youth But Knew, by A. and E. Castle, and The Oxford Book of English Verse.

If you won't think I am trying to cut in on Carolyn Wells or "F. P. A.," I would like to point out that Wilkie Collins's novel is The Woman in White, and not The Lady.

Harold C. Stearns.

There is only one duplication, one title appearing in both Mr. Morley's and Mr. Stearns's lists-The Bible.

99

Mr. Morley put this book at the end of his list and Mr. Stearns places it fourth from the end; both lists are confined to approximately thirty volumes. Compare the two lists and see if your taste agrees with either selection for your own guest-room shelf; if not, will you not write and tell us what your choice would be? We should be particularly glad to hear from some of our readers of the, dare we call it so, gentler sex. Surely some of our more aggressively inclined feminists will not allow Christopher Morley and his friends to dis