Evening Star Newspaper, October 17, 1926, Page 60

TH Prize Winners in the Carnegie Institute’s International Exhibi- tion—Pennell Memorial Ehibit in Philadelphia—Art in Washington Schools. BY LEILA MECHLIN. O_John Carroll of Woodstock, N. Y., ope of the much-coveted honorable mentions at the Carnegie Institute’s Interna- tional, which opened last Thursday, was awarded, for a paint- ing entitled “Man with Cuitar,” #hown in the Corcoran Gallery's most m&t cotemporary exhibition last 5. Mr. Carroll, it will be remembered, made two contributions to the ‘exhi- bition here—the “Man with Guitar,” & double figure subject, showing not only the man, but a woman, and a| reclining figure under a pink ‘“cor- rugated” quilt, essentially in the new manner of painting. - Probably the reclining figure attracted more atten- tion and more remark than any other icture In the Corcoran Gallery’'s exhi- ition, not because of admiration but ‘wonderment aroused. That had already been shown in Pittsburgh. Now to the other Carroll painting, which was essentially more conserva- tive, but likewise extremely individual, the international jury has made spe- clal award, There is always great interest at- tached to the prizes given by the Carnegie Institute, because, in the first place, they are generous, and in the second place they are won in & competition wherein the leading artists of many nations take part. The first prize of $1,500 this year went to a young Italian artist,” Ferruccio Ferrazzi of Rome, for a picture of a woman and child entitled “Horitia and Fablola.” From Pittsburgh comes the following statement with reference to this award: “The fact that Ferrazzi took the first prize this year and that young Italian artists have taken the second prize at the last two Carnegie Interna- tionals, indicates that the new Italian renasssance, like the old one, is de- veloping rapidly along artistic as well as political and economic lines. No national group in_the present and the two preceding Internationals has shown such rapid advancement as the Italian.” Those who tonk opportunity to see the Ttalian exhibition held here last Spring in the National Museum (in which, by the w: Ferrazzi was rep- resented) will be prepared to accept | this statement. Art in Italy seems| in the last few years to have taken | on new life. The second prize of $1.000 in the Carnegie International went to K. X Rouseel of Paris, France, for a paint tled “Fiun and Nymph Un-| in Tree.” Roussel was born 5. He is an assoclate of Bonn and Vuillard. His paintings are said commonly to give expression to the Joy of living, and to manifest thus a love of life. The third prize of 2500 went to a most gifted American artist, Robert | Spencer of New Hope, Pa.. whose works are well known in Washington | from exhibition at the Corcoran Gal-| v of Art and inclusion in the per- manent collections of the Corcoran | Gallery and the Phillips Memorial Gal- lery. His subjects are not beautiful. The painting which won the prize in Pittsburgh is entited “Mountebanks and Thieves” and shows a group of degenerates, low-class people, in a ten- ement region of a city, through the midst of which runs a stream. But Mr. Spencer never falls to find and to manifast in these homely subjects ex quisite beauty of light and color, and his manner of painting is restrained 2nd poetic ‘n the extreme. Unlike the | majority of the modernists, he has not given up the pursuit of beauty, and no canvas that comes from his studio fails to find in beauty its dominant note. Without sentimentality. but in- stead pure artistic motives, this painter suggests invariably the inher- ent loveliness of common things. His plctures delight the eyve and are good o Jive with. Four honorable mentions were given. One went to Max Kuehne of New York, born in 1880, a pupil of Kenneth Hayes Miller, Chase and Henrl. Dod Procter (Mrs. Ernest Procter) of Corn. well. England; Antoine Faistauer of Balzburg, Apstria. and John Carroll of Woodstock, N. Y., were the other reciplents | This vea - a special award of $500 | was offered by the Garden Club of Allegheny County for a garden picture and was awarded to Walter Sickert of London, England. an ascociate of the| Royal Academy, for a painting of a bit of the garden at Versailles. This | prize was established by the Garden | Club-in order to call atiention to the opportunities for subjects which artists will find in gardens 3 » encourage people In general to make gardens so artistic that they will he worthy of the | best efforts of the painters. ok HESE prize awards were made by a jury of six artists, presided over | by Homer Saint-Gaudens, director of fine arts. The three foreign members, Pierre Bonnard of Paris, Gilovanni Romagnoli of Bologna, Italy, and Charles Sims of London, it will be re- membered, visited Washington a couple of weeks ago in company with can artists on the jury were Charles W. Hawthorne, Howard Giles and Gifford Beal, all of New York. There are 372 paintings in the exhi- bition. Of these 266 are from Europe and 106 from America. Sixteen na- tions are represented, the largest num- ber in the history™®f the International. These nations, in the order of the num- ber of paintings contributed by each, are as follows: United States, France, Italy, Great Britain, Spain, Germany, Russia, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Austria, Hungary, Czecho- slovakia, Poland and Rumania. A feature of this year's showing is a oneman exhibition of a group of paintings by Glovanni Romagnoli, one of the jury of award. Signor Roma- gnoli was born in 1893 and is a teacher, in the academy at Bologna. He is to' remain in Pittsburgh for some months as a visiting insttuctor in painting at the College of Fine Arts, Carnegie In- stitute_of Technology. He does not speak English, so that his teaching is through the medium of an interpreter, but he is rapidly acquiring the lan- guage. The first Carnegle International was held in 1896, and with the exception of the five years of the Great War has been heid annually since. It is the only one of the kind held in Amer- fca; in fact, the only annual interna- tional exhibition in the world, since the Venetian International occurs only every other vear. Not only is an effort made to include in this exhibition works by the leading artists, but to have the different nations represented by the various schools and tendencies within each, thus offering to the pub- lic the current news of the art world at large. The exhibition will continue through December 5. Immediately thereafter a group of approximately 150 of the European paintings will be sent on a tour, first to the Cleveland Museum of Art, later to the Art Institute of Chicago. It is earnestly to be hoped that they will come to Washington. In what other city would interest in such an exhibition be greater? * % % % T the Corcoran Gallery of Art there is on exhibition in the specially designed cases at the head of the main stairway a collection of extreme- ly fine etchings by Anders Zorn, the great Swedish artist " M. Knoedler & In the gallers of “MAN WITH GUITAR," BY JOHN CARROLL (AMERICAN), IN THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION OF THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTE. Co.. New York. a special and exceed ingly comprehensive exhibition of Zorn's etchings is at this time being held. An introduction to the catalogue of the New York exhibition states that it was 33 vears ago (November, 1893) that the first exhibition of Zorn’s ched works was made in New York. “Five paintings and 31 etchings were wn—suh! tially every print of fmportance up to and including ‘Henry Mr. Saint-Gaudens. The three Ameri- G. Marquand.’ In 1899 a second ex- hibition was made—4 paintings, 5 water color. etchings, and in March-April, 1907, a third—1 paint- ing, 2 water colors, 135 etchings, including numerous ‘trial proofs’ and ‘states’” “By that time,” says this writer, “the pack were in full cry; the hounds of the press were hot upon the scent. For- tunat von Schubert:Soldern’s cata- logue had appeared, that of Loys Del- tell was well under way, a few en- lightened continental museums al- ready had laid the foundations of their Zorn collections, and_in America, where, 14 years before, Zorn's collected etched work had had its first exhibi- tion, the print buyer was active.” Zorn by that time essentlally had an rived. Those who were wise enough or lucky enough to acquire his etch- ings when they were first shown had the exciting experience of witnessing their sudden and tremendous rise in price. The works of few masters zrlng as much today in the open mar- et. To quote again from the current Zorn catalogue: “Among the outstand. ing characteristics and qualitles of Zorn's etchings are an absolute con- trol of his medium. With Rembrandt and Durer the name of Zorn will live forever. He was a conjuror with the etching needle; his work is so simple, 80 bold, that the artistry of the skillful hands is forgotten.” And again, “A peculiarity of Zorn's work is that his drawing is not by lines defining a con- tour, but by light and the incidence of light.” This is particularly notice- able in his etchings of the nude, a fleld in which he has no rival, unless perhaps Childe Hassam be excepted. There are comparatively few etchers of portraiture—Rembrandt, Van Dyke, Whistler, Legros. Degas, Bracque- mond—but the majority of these have only a few plates to their credit, whereas Zorn has many. The Corcoran Gallery collection af- fords uncommonly fine opportunity for observing these characteristics in this master'’s work. To know famil- farly such work as this is to acquire a standard. to cultlvate one's own judgment, to whet one’s appetite for that which is fine. It is Interesting. too, to be able to pass from consideration of these Zorn etchings to an examination of two of Zorn’s portraits in oil, which hang in an adjacent gallery, both like- nesses of David Jayne Hill, tempo- rary loans. They, too, are simple and direct and forceful, and they show that the hand which could so deli- cately employ the etching needle could command the full and virile brush. g o MEMORIAL exhibition of the works of Joseph Pennell is being held this month under the auspices |of the Philadelphia Print Club and |the Pennsylvania Museum in Memorial | Hall, Fairmount Park, Philadelphia. | This exhibition comprises etchings and | lithographs, drawings in pen and ink books—a most comprehensive show- ing assembled by a committee of which H. Devitt Walsh was chairman, and sponsored by the United States, the King of the Belgians, the King of Italy, the King of Spain, the President of the French republic and the Ambassadors to the United States of Spain, Belgium, Great Britain, Ttaly and France. The AND THIEVES,” BY ROBERT SPENCER, N. A. (AMERICAN), WHICH WAS AWARDED THIRD | PRIZE IN THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION OF THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTE. E SUNDAY STAR, WASHIN |and other mediums, water colors and | the President of | GTON, “HORTTIA AND FABIOL up of some of the leading artists and art lovers of the United States and Great Britain, such as Cecilia Beaux, Edwin H. Blashfield, Timothy Cole, Daniel Chester French, Cass Gilbert, S8ir John Lavery and T. Fisher Unwin. It is fitting that such an exhibition should have been assembled and first held by Philadelphians in Phila- delphia,” where Joseph Pennell was born; but it is of particular interest to us here because of Mr. Pennell’s gift to the Nation of his works and a considerable sum of money to the Library of Congress to endow a cal- museum, i to the catalogue of the memorial exhibition in Phila- s written by Dr. John C. , the well known art critic College, New Jers vs that, despite M nell’s scoldings, he loved America best of all. “There is suggestion of this,” Dr. Van Dyke says, “in the last chapter of Mr. Pennell's autobiog- raphy, ‘The Adventures of an Illus- trator’ At the head of the chapter is his mezzotint of the Statue of Lib- erty, looming upward splendidly against the light of the setting sun. The title he gives it is ‘Hail Amer- fca.’” “And,” he adds, “at the end he ‘left (with Mrs. Pennell's consent) all his collections, all his prints, and a not inaonsiderable fortune in money, to the Library of Congress—to Amer- ica The exhibition is arranged according to subject, “Views on the Old Ger- mantown Road, Philadelphia™; “Phila- delphia—1882-1923""; “Washington,” in- cluding four of our Washington Ca- isiana™; “Virginfa”; ng- land"—etchings in London dated 1894; “Germany” and “Belgium.” Then comes the “Wonder of Work" series, the Panama Canal series, the litho- graphs done in_Greece because some lone said that he could not draw a Greek temple. Finally, the New York | series, done between 1904 and 1926, Fand the railroad activities group of {1919, These are all etchings, and they |are no less than 838 in number. {~ Then come the lithographs, also ar- | {ranged by place, and embracing the | English War Work serles, then the drawings in_pen and ink and other mediums. Twenty water colors are |shown, and there are seven portraits |of Joseph Pennell in different me- |diums by different artists. The books |illustrated by him and written by him |in collaboration with others are nu- {merous and delightful. As Dr. Van Dyke says: “His work, | ! 1ooked at today, seems enormous, and | in addition to what can be seen is re- | corded the facts that while he was in | ! London he was connected with the | Chronicle and _other newspapers, | wrote art criticism, fought like a tiger | i for Whistler and Aubrey Beardsley, | was a professor in the Slade School, [ lectured in English towns and later on in Chicago and New York, and up to the last had an etching class in the Art Students’ League. And yet Joseph Pennell never fell victim to the habit of hurry. It is sincerely to be hoped that later on some_such comprehensive exhibi tion of Mr. Pennells works will be held here in the Library of Congress, in order that Washingtonians may have opportunty to Judge.for them- D. C, OCTOBER 17, 1926—PART 2. A PAINTING BY FERRUCCIO FERRAZZI (ITALIAN), WHCH WAS AWARDED THE FIRST PRIZE IN THE TWENTY- FIFTH CARNEGIE INSTITUTE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, PITTS- BURGH. honorary committee, of which John |selves of the quality as well as the . Braun was chairman, was made | quantity of his production, and that due appreciation may be shown for his and Mrs. Pennell's most liberal and far-reaching gift. It may be interesting to those who have collected"Mr. Pennell's works to know that a very interesting illus- trated catalogue of the Memorial Ex- hibition in Philadelphla has been is- sued and may be had at the nominal price of $2. This contains no less than 36 reproductions of his etchings and lithographs and an admirable portrait sketch of Joseph Pennell by Ober- hardt, made in 1918. * % x % ISS WILSON, for more than 50 years a teacher of art in ¢his city and for a great part of that time director of art in our public schools, retired last Jul nd in_her place has been appointed Miss Ethel Bray, a graduate of the Indiana State Normal School, who holds a Ph.D. degree with a major in art from the University of Chicago, as well as an M.A, from Teachers’ College, Columbia Univer- sity. On Wednesday afternoon, October 13, a reception was given Miss Bray in Mr, Many's studio, 237 Randelph place northeast, by Miss Shipman, Mrs. Saugstad, Mr. Many and Mr. Lamb. Those who studied under Miss Wil- son at the Central High School or have been teachers under her for many years will always hold her in affectionate remembrance. It §s hard to estimate the value of the service that such a devoted teacher renders, and Miss Wilson herself can never know to what extent her teaching has helped to raise the standard of art in Washington. Miss Bray comes to us with a full knowledge of current, up-to-date meth- ods of teaching art and its apprecia- tion, and will be undoubtedly a wel- come addition to local art circles. Miss Margaret Yard, Miss Jean Dengler and Miss Catherine Melton, all former students of the Corcoran School of Art, have taken a studio at the rear of 817 Eighteenth street. Miss Yard is specializing in portrait painting and has several studies and an almost finished commission on hand. She is one of the Corcoran honor students and gives every promise- of successful achiavement, as do her con- freres and studio mates. Two well knowA sculptors paid brief visits to Washington this week, Edmond Amateis, the son of the late Louis Amatels of this city, who is an Academy in Rome man and has lately won a competition in sculpture for the War Memorial in Baltimore, and Bruce Wilder Saville, formerly of Co- lumbus, Ohio, now of New York, who is doing a war memorial for Glen Falls, N. Y., and a memorial to John Adams and John Quincy Adams for Quincy, Mass. Mr. Amatels’ two brothers, who likewise spent their boyhood in Washington, are both ar- chitects and winning success in their chosen flald; thus has the talent of the father descended to the sons. BOOKS RECEIVED THE D'’ARBLAY MYSTERY Austin_ Freeman. New Dodd, Mead & Co. MRS. MERIVALE. By Paul Kim- ball. New York: Edward J. Clode, Inc. INTO THE VOID; A Bookshop Mystery. By Florence Converse. . Brown & Co. SUTTER'S By Blaise Cen- drars. Translated from the French by Henry Longan Stuart. Deco- rations designed and cut on wood By R. York: by Harry Cimino. New York: Harper & Brothers. DEVIL-MAY-CARE. By Arthur Somers Roche. New York: The Century Co. MY MUSICAL LIFE. Rv, Walter Damrosch. Revised edition. York: Charles Scribner’'s Sons. MR. BOTTLEBY DOES SOME- THING. By E. Temple Thurston, author of “The City of Beautiful Nonsense, etc. New York: George H. Doran Co. THE HUNTER: A Story of Bush- man Life. By Ernest Glanville, author of “The Yellow-Maned Lion,” etc. Tlustrated by J. gbbc' New York: Harcourt, Brace Co. OUR DOCTORS: A Novel of Today. By Maurice Duplay. Transiation and Preface by Joseph Collins. New York: Harper & Brothers. ON ENGLAND; And Other Ad- dresses. By the Right Hon. Stan- ley Baldwin, first lord of the treasury and prime minister of Great Britain. New York: Fred- erick A. Stokes Co. RVIVAL OF THE DBEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLE; Including the Tariff Issue. By Perry Belmont, author of “National Isolation an Illusion.” New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. FALLODON PAPERS. By Viscount Grey of Fallodon, K. G. Bosto Houghton, Miffiin Co. 8sU. HERE ARE LOVERS. By Hilda Vaughan. New York: Harper & Brothers. AMERICAN LITERATURE (com- plete edition). Texts selected and edited by Robert Shafer, Ph. D, associate professor of literature and fellow of the graduate school, University ot Cincinnati. Mew Xork: Doubleday, Rag! e & Lo New | The Newest Fiction and Some Tall Tales From the Kentucky Mountains—Astronomy Written of in a Manner Appealing to Average Readers. BY IDA GILBERT MYERS. ‘HROUGH THE MOON DOOR. By % Dorgthy Graham. Illustrated by the author. New York: J. H. Sears & Co. N T'S the door of a Chinese house. In the opulent phrase of the East, it is the “moon door” of the “Temple to Let” which served this American pair as home during their stay in Peking. A tairly long and certdinly busy sojourn in China has moved ail of its major activities and many of its minor ones |into this book. A big volume is the |result. But it is a_ well organized | record, its various parts explained and illuminated by an abundance of ex- cellent pictures. The outstanding ex- | cellence of the book is its approach to | a subject that is of necessity more or less remote to the understanding and |interest of American readers. The author, impressed with her modestly | concelved mission of picturing China, | does not jump into the depths of Chi- | nese life.” She is far too astute to try |a hand at Chinese age-old customs. at its succeeding governments, at its | present politics, at its art, or at any other of its deeply-sourced national |and racial life. Instead she moves | into her “temple” through the “moon door,” and immediately engages her. self in the important business of | housekeeping and home-making. In the mere matter:of setting up or lay- ing down the furniture, of marketing for the meals, of taking on native help for this work or for that, of shopping, of the daily walk—in such stmple and necessary daily needs Dor othy Graham comes upon a world that is so new as to need picturing and explaining, not only to hersel but to her friends at home. Much of {his book s in spirit the informal tommunication with the old home. Here is the simplest, the mogt nat- ural, the most intelligible approach to a strange land that can be imagined. In each of these little household con- tacts with the outside there is a long line of custom hidden, a thread of the religion of the country, a hint of its government. And these, this house- Wife gathers in in an understanding that any more formal mode of ‘meet- ing could not have secured. It is from such tmmediacy that the author reaches out, extending each of these commonplace lines to its larger rela- tionships outside until she has com- passed the essential features of the Country itself. A walk one day dis- closes a strangely picturesque temple. obviously ancient in origin, obviously | stin alive to the dally religious im- pulse of the people. Another walk— this a purposeful walk—gathers in more of these old shrines of the spirit. By and by there comes from these many studies a broad picture of the temples of China. And so with every theme brought out here, Its start- ing point has been at lh('_ door of t!m! “temple to let” or within it. Familiar, gradually, with these nearby phases of Chinese life, the author has gradu- ally branched out from these in enough directions to compass finally an all-around view of a country that is at present one of the pivotal points of concern, both within the country itselt and in the world outside. An admirable study of China in its mode of life and thought, admirable chiefly by virture of its method and its sim plicity of purpose. coupled with an Informality of manner that is quite charming. * &k * | Mackaye. Decorations by E. Mac- Kinstry. New York: George H. Doran Co. ERE is a circumstance, better, an event, that brings together two true artists. One of them is “old Sol,” who for most a hundred years— all his life, in fact—lived in the Ken- tucky mountains. The other artist is Percy Mackaye, with an eye for dra- matic stuff and & hand for whipping it into shape. Old Sol was a sort of minstrel crooning along a Kkind of pilgrim—not to Loretto nor to Can- terbury—going about from place to place in the shutin mountain dis- tricts telling the news. Such news! Some even went so far as to say that old Sol's other name was Munchau- sen, for he could dress up his varns fn a way to open the eyes and prick up the ears of every listener. And where did he get these tales? Why. from the soil itself, where they had lain and grown for hundreds of years, and from the gossiping trees, and from all the animals roundabout. with whom old Sol talked as you and 1 converse with Mrs. Smith. When- ever the story didn't quite fit the picture sense of old Sol he dressed it up with the ribbons and fallals of fancy, just as we do when dull fact needs a few extra touches to bring it to life and make it interest- ing. Those were amazing tales, those told by old Sol down in the Kentucky mountains. Or so we find them to be through their retelling by Percy Mackaye, who seems to have rolled them over on his tongue till he has gathered from them every scrap of their first flavor, every tang of their queer-word ways. A person of read- | ing will tell you that these tales sug- | gest the famous local storles told by this author or that one. Don't you believe it! They are of their own kind alone—and a mighty fine kind it is. * ok ok oa THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES. By Florence Armstrong Grondal. New York: The Macmillan Com- pany. Tms s an astronomy for the na- ture lover, rather than for the special scientist himself. That is, the established facts of astronomy have here been brought to life through pic- ture and story, through every art that appeals to the imaginative sense of readers. A spontaneous and en- thusiastic treatment of this subject is made even more appealing by the author’s. use of maps—good maps and many of them, good pictures, too— to guide the student through the strange land of the skies. Here is romance a-plenty. Here Is the story of Andromeda. Here is the | pageant of the constellations. Here, in a word, are the marvelous wonders | of the heavens spread out in a sim- plicity of movement that invites any reader to follow the path set out here so intelligently and so helpfully. mind, one could really look upon the surface of the heavens much as he considers the surface of the earth, dotted with towns and citles. Here are stars and planets and constella- tions, charted for ready recognition, and around each is a wealth of fact, scientifically established, a wealth, | besides, of story and romance. Ev- | erything depends upon the natural cast of one’s mind, but I should think that a boy, or girl, leaning toward skyland would find this book an en- grossing and infallible guide to that high-set domain. * % % CREWE TRAIN. By Rose Macaulay, author of ‘Potterism,” etc. New York: Boni & Liveright. ‘hlfl instant feelings of the savage brought for the first time into what is proudly called the civilized world? red habitual taciturnity by the TALL TALES FROM THE KEN-| TUCKY MOUNTAINS. By Percy | | It | is easy to see that, with this book in | AT, do you think, would be the | be that of recoil from the babel of tongues that runs out to meet him, that gathers him In, that envelops him and buries him under avalanches and tidal waves of words? Clearly, Rose Macaulay has speculated upon the effect of such a circumstance. For- getting, for the moment. the benefits of the acquired art of language. she ponders instead upon it powers of mischief, confusion, insincerity. abuse and general deterforation. She pic- tures in this connection a silent bar- barfan suddenly pushed into this chat- terbox of a world, shut In there with echoing and re-echoing cackle of gen- eral and uninterrupted vocality. Day and night the babble goes on, with no more than shreds of tnought and sense behind the eternal racket of talk. And she sets this picture to drama. London is the stage. The barbarian, English in blood, is brought from the shut-in Pyrenean republic of Andorra. The purpose of the busi- ness is to swing the fair outlander into the current of sophisticate Lon- don social life. The effect of this plan, not only upon the girl herself, but upon the kindly relatives under- taking her case as well, provides oc- casion for the exercise of Rose Macauley's special gift of comedy shaped in satiric comment upon the claptrap of soclal procedure, upon its airs and ‘“make-belleve,” upon its general futility of attitude and be- havior. The shock to the young bar- barian by the strange place and out- look is in a measure balanced by the jar which she herself gives to her London sponsors through her long silence in the midst of nonsensical chatter, through her disregard of crippling rules, through her straight course to the point of her desire. In a new element and not easy to make over, the girl messes up her own life a good deal and, besides, throws a lot of grit into the greased social ma- chinery around her. This is a prime situation for Rose Macaulay. From it she produces a comedy of clean- cut satire whose foundation is built from certain facts of social life where unbridled loquacity is in control for the bewilderment of the few whe are trying to find out what is really under the tremendous noise. The title? A casual matter, indicating that the “Crewe Train” is the wrong one. e THE MAD-SONG. By Mabel Wag- nalls, author of “Opera and its St etc. New York: Funk & Wagnalls Co. 'HE avowed purpose of this novel is to create a more general in- terest in great music, to draw the common public a from its pas- sion for the merely mediocre or plain- | ly erratic aspects of this art. The theme 1s, therefore, music in its high- est manifestations. Realizing that the story provides ome of the best means of reaching the general reader, this author, rejecting analysis and other formal modes of approaching the subject. has created a social drama whose guiding force js great musle in its immediate effects and in- | fluences. Naturally, the setting of | this romance is not America. Rather | it is Europe—Russia, Germany, Ttaly. | France—musical Europe, expressing | itself through a group of men and women more or less absorbed in the music that one or another of these countries has produced. From these are drawn the persons who embody the general theme of this story and who. besides. enact a tense drama where love and sudden madness and retribution culminate in the “mad. song” sung by a young and beautiful genfus. While there is plenty of modern social activity carrying this romance forward, its general effect is remote and somewhat exotic in ef- fect. This not merely because the entire action is of another country than our own. but because it partakes in spirit of the elaborate griefs that characterize opera, because it ex presses the anachronism—as a mode of life—that every part of grand op- era really is. One is not able to read a story upon this theme, developed in this way, as having anything to do with daily existence. an extravagance that bars his appre- ciation of its intrinsic musical worth and beauty. Philistines, the most of us. Very likely. el THE COMEBACK. By Joe Mills. II- lustrated by Howard L. Hastings. New York: J. H. Sears & Co. ITH a dog for his best friend and possessed of words in any degree adequate to fit the case of that friend, why, a man_can't help writing a good | dog story. Here's a man of that sort. | So here’s a good story | one, almost a good The one black mark against it comes from the fact that this writer N eminiscences and Reflecti Mr. Orcutt, combining an the world for the perfect books as the product of an By A. HAMILTON GIBBS “Last year Major Gibbs’ “‘Soundings’ swept the novel- blic. . Labels should do the same. Fourth large printing. WALLS OF GLASS By LARRY BARRETTO { “As interesting a story as | have read in months. . . . Mr. Barretto proves himself a first- class novelist."— john Farrar. Third large printing. $2.00 By M. A. DeWOLFE HOWE | An astonishingly varied group of stimulating biographical studies of prominent Americans. i $4.00 FI By An authoril ive inte: whose inner knowl passed by any living man. With British statesmen. Two volumes. operations of nature around immediate impulse him, yyould not his In spite of his | desire it is bound to shade off into| raphy with a facile pen, makes this search throu, encountered in his pilgrimage. color and 84 remarkable illustrations, many reproduced from old and rare books and manuscripts. Second printing. is a realist. Now, realism fs all right when it engages itself with the hu- man family. Maybe there are morals and things done up in the gray real ism of this author and that one en. gaged in portraying us as mean as we actually are. But when it comes to including a dog in our class it is time to call that writer off, time to send him jogging on his way in search | of a better job. As I have already | aamitted, this is almost a good story Jane was a peach of a collie—a jov of friendship, a marvel of intuitive companionship. But, finally, Jane went astray, as Young women some. times do. She went back to the wild. where a little streak of blood in her turned her f{rresistibly, even away from the man that she loved. The story tells of Jane's coming back in spite of herself. just as she went away in spite of herself. That's a fine story. Why not let it alone at that? No matter if the other thing did happen. Why not let us have the “happy ending" of the novel that is designed for pleasure and not for exact truth? With folks it may be all right to tell the facts right to the bitter end. Not with dogs, though. A beautiful story. or would have been if its author hadn’t been such a Purf tan, afraid 0! a bit of decent lying. * ok % % THE FOUR WIND:! By S8inclair Gluck, author of “Thieves' Honor." etc. New York: Dodd, Mead & (o EALLY, Jimmy Marsh got all that ‘was coming to him in this mys terious matter. Good young men shouldn’'t venture into gambling houses in a hig city, no matter how decorously they are conducted, as this one certainly was. If he had stayed away from it he wouldn't have been involved in the ultimate goings on at “The Four Winds,” a_ hidden house outside the city limits. Bandits—that's what they were, nothing more nor less, that made this old house a regu- lar nest of iniquitous deeds, coming so fast upon the heels of one another that a mere reader must needs be on the perpetual jump to keep up with even half that takes places Good folks and bad ones are so mixed up together here that one is in a steady fog of uncertainty as to which I« which. A clear love story lifts out of the maze of more sinister stuff. much to the pleasure of the average reader, since love I8 more in most people’s Line than are plots for murder and banditry And while Jimmy Marsh should be punished for getting into so much that is none of his busi- ness, still one is glad, after all, that the girl turns out to be good enough for him. A greatly exciting matter all around. A trifle overloaded, per- haps, but the general greed of readers for the most that villainy can almost —but not quite—achleve just natu- rally leads an author into extrava gance trying to meet that common appetite for wickedness. | Old Gaelic Language Falling Into Disuse The report of the commission ap pointed by the Saorstat government to inquire into the position of the Irish langu: in the native-speaking dis trigts shows that those districts 7.406 speakers of Irish. There were 436,758 in 1911 No_district now éxists into the English language has not pene. trated and does not tend to an ascendancy. Many persons who can speak Irish do not speak it habitually Only a small proportion of the civil service employes speak Irish. The commission recommends reforms in the®system of primary education and urges the immedlate disuse of English as a language of instruction in the Trish-speaking districts. Mussolini to Control Italy’s Literary Output Mussolini is out to control Iiterature and curb its extravagances. Pensions |have been legisiated for worthy au | thors. Publications have been cur | tailed so that in 1926 only 6,000 hooks | will be published, as against the 12,400 in 1925. Also it is being attempted to trade unionize Italian authors, who | henceforth will be expected to join the Fascist State Literary Confeder ation. Meanwhile Minister of Justice Rocco is at work on a hook to be called “The Transformation of the State,” an offi- cial history of the rise of Fascism The book will include the “Stato Mus- solintano,” or code of new laws. on tain 2 which | Little, Brown & Company especially recommend these new books— QUEST OF THE PERFECT BOOK ons of a Bookman y WILLIAM DANA ORCUTT expert knowledge of t. t book a fascinating study of £ art and of the personalities he With a frontispiece in 5.00 WAYS OF ESCAPE By NOEL FORREST “A notable first novel. It leaves the reader with a feeling that the time t on it was worthwhile."—New York Times. Fourth large printing. $2.00 *INTO THE VOID By FLORENCE CONVERSE A gay and sophisticated mystery story woven about a college book-shop. Witty and unussu-l, 2.00 OKLAHOMA B - COURTNEY RYLEY COOPER “In some ways a_more_signif- icant novel than Covered Wagon'."—Boston Trnmtr;pl‘ 1.00 FTY YEARS OF BRITISH PARLIAMENT THE EARL OF OXFORD AND ASQUITH, K.G. rpretation of an British political Jife by the former Prime Minister Herbert H. king half-century of o Asquith, of British state affairs is probably not sur- sixteen portraits in gravure of famous In bozx. $8.00 *Indicates “An Adantic Monthly Press Publication” These books are for sale at all booksellers