Evening Star Newspaper, April 17, 1937, Page 16

B—2 K ‘. THE EVENING STAR, WASHINGTON, AUTHOR SURPASSES SUBJECT Clever Writer Maintains Interest in Old Frigate’s Cruise Among the Seas—Epic Lines Give Force to Volume on Quo- tations—Modern Greek Produces Again. By Mary-Carter Roberts. CRUISE OF THE CONRAD. By Alan Villiers. New York: Charles Bcribner's Sons. HIS book, written in musical, wise prose, has caused the re- viewer to realize afresh how rash it is to deal in general- ities. For she has been wont to gen- eralize most unkindly about travel books; yet this book (written in mu- sical, wise prose) is a travel book, and there is nothing in it to arouse any reviewer’s unkindness. Oh, more than that. This is a travel book which must have reviewers’ and all well-read persons' praise. For it dem- onstrates once more that no book is its subject but only its author, that “material” is not found in any place save in & man’s mind and that the hundred times repeated tasteless treat- ment of any theme does not prevent it from standing forth clear and won- derful when at last, heaven decree- ing, a real writer sets his hand to writing of it. “Cruise of the Conrad,” then, is, first of all, & Book. It is of travel only unimportantly. It is the book of a man, and that describes it better than any other word. It is the book of a man who, | incidentally, loved the sea and the | tradition of spiritual sufficiency which | the more difficult aspects of sea train- ing have for long bred. Prior to writing, though not for the savage commercial purpose of “material” he took a 50-year-old frigate, the last of her kind in existence, around the world. He carried no cargo on this journey, he earned no money by it and thought to earn none. He manned his vessel, as far as possible, with mariners who would understand his purpose without talking of «it. His only passengers were cadets, youths from 14 to 18, whom he undertook to train in the profession of deep- water salling. They went out of Ipswich to Ma- deira and crossed the Atlantic to| Nassau. They turned north there to | New York. From New York they went to Rio and crossed the South Atlantic to the Cape of Good Hope. | Then they sailed to Australia and cruised extensively in the South Sea | Islands, coming finally to Tahiti. After | that, in the middle of Winter, they rounded the Horn and beat back north- ward to New York. That this (‘Ouk‘li have been a banal performance the author was aware, for he says of the whole idea when he decided on it: “True, this is overdone in our day, when, upon any morning of the week, at least twelve small yachts are some- | where battling around the world and &ny one may make & circumnavigation who pushes the fare across an office | table; when cruising liners set out in long procession upon much-adver- tised excursions to the ends of the earth and back again, all in four months, with surprising cheapness; when airplanes span all of the con- | tinents and most of the seas. But there was still room in the ocean for | a full-rigged ship * * *.” And he goes on, saying that he knew that he would be able to make only | one voyage: “Then let it be a grand | gesture, a long wandering! I thought that, havirg now almost the same kind of ship in which all the great navigators had sailed—Cook, Wallis, Bougainville, Carteret, Bligh, le Maire | and all those other blazers of the Pacific trail—I might try to make such & voyage as they had made, not as a planned stunt, not as a programmed, advertised excursion, but quietly, as they had gone—quietly against the sea, without benefit of canals or of engines. | “It was & biggish thing to try. But | the more I thought of it, the more I | liked it. I was steadfastly opposed | to all the shams and stupidities with which many voyages in these days have been unduly concerned. I would make no films, advertise nothing, per- form no stunts, engage in no radio programs. I was no scientist and I would not pretend to be one. There was nothing to discover—no lands or islands—and I knew it. I had been sround the world nine times already and there was no novelty in that. But I could keep a form of art alive upon an earth which had grown, it thought, beyond the need of it; and I could #ail for the sailing’s sake, for the sake of the health and the life and the clean wind and all the joy of being there * ¢ *» And so, as he says, one day he did sail. And his book is not a record merely of sailing experiences or of sights seen, but of the action of a mind, & mind which should be clear to any perceptive reader from any two or three of the lines quoted above. It is the mind, obviously, of & man of long-bred taste and standards. And it is coupled, providentially, with abil- ity to write prose of fine movement and discrimination. Yet it should not be thought that the book is one of mere personal specu- lation or meditation. It is the record of a voyage, clear and hard. But it is that record set down by a more than merely intelligent man and a good art- ist. That is the important point. As the author himself says, almost any one can go around the world today, and, alas, most of those who do seem to write books about it. But the world, even duly circumnavigated, has no more interest than the individual can glve it, and no story has ever been superfor to its teller. “Cruise of the Conrad” as a book Mmakes the choice of the Polish writer’s name for the ship unpretentious. Is that enough? If not, why then, “Cruise of the Conrad” seems fit to take its place with the work of a rarely gifted traveler, H. M. Tomlinson. This last statement is made cautiously; it might, on maturer reflection, be withdrawn. But that it was considered is a great deal. What—travel writing being as it 1s—could one say more? HAVE YOU ANYTHING TO DE- CLARE? By Maurice Baring. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 'HIS is nothing more than Mr. Bar- ing's notebook of favorite quota- tions—from the Greek Homer down through the nineteenth century and later. He records that he dreamed once that he had died and, having crossed & preliminary river, was confronted by & customs official “who had inscribed in golden letters on his cap, ‘Chemins de fer de I'Enfer’” This personage said to him, “‘Have you anything to declare?’” And it turned out then that the dutiable articles were the lit- erary baggage with which he had trav- eled during his life, and that he needed to declare only the things of which he had a permanent record, either in memory or notebook. This volume is what he declared. As Mr. Baring is both poet and scholar, his collection naturally has WALTER HAVIGHURST, Author of “The Quiet Shore.” (Macmillan.) and Latin, medieval Latin and Italian, medieval and modern French, early and modern English, some German, some Russian and some Spanish. Be- ing taken from so wide a range, and being also the choices of a cultivated taste, it has naturally a special kind of interest. It is doubtful, however, that any man’s collection is intrinsic- ally more interesting than any other man’s. Such declarations must reveal, in cunning fashion, much more about the declarer—and vastly more relevant stuff—than the most heavily scientific questionnaire prepared by a psycholo- gist. Mr. Baring's selections are chiefly poetry, and they show, on superficial examination, a taste for the more fate- ful lines of epic verse and the more passionate stanzas of lyric. Yet, of all the several hundred quotations, the reviewer's own favorites were four taken from prose—one from Tacitus, one from Boswell, one from Flaubert and one, of course, from Cervantes. She gives them here, for the sheer lux- ury. The first is from the “Histories,” Book I, Chapter 6. Speaking of jus- tice, the Roman remarked: “Tardum Galbae iter et cruentum, interfectis Cingonio Varrone consule designato, et Petronio Turpiliano con- sulari; ille ut Nymphidii socius, hic ut dux Neronis, inauditi atque indefensi, tamquam innocentes perierant.” And this Mr. Baring renders as fol- lows: “Varro and Turpilianus were condemned unheard and undefended, so that they might just as well have been innocent.” Again much the same theme occurs in the Boswell quotation (“The Life of Johnson"), which Mr. Baring says he wrote down in 1899, when the Drey- | fus case was a matter of importance to many people. It is: “Talking of a court-martial that was sitting upon a very momentous public occasion, he expressed much doubt of an enlightened decision, and said that perhaps there was not & member of it who in the whole course | of his life had ever spent an hour by | himseif in balancing probabilities.” All of which is summed up by Flau- bert in the shortest quotation of the three, “Notre ignorance de I'histoire nous fait calomnier notre temps. On a toujours ete comme ca.” As for the Cervantes lines, there is no point at all in giving them save the one which doubtless made Mr. Baring include them—that they are supremely good, in that special manner of good- ness which defies analysis. They have to do with Don Quixote’s opinion of here does not exist a poet’ he said, ‘who is not arrogant and does not think that he is the greatest poet in the world.” *“‘There is no rule without excep- tion,” answered Don Lorenzo, there is such a thing as a poet who is great, but who does not think so." “‘Few,’ answered Don Quixote.” ““(Pocos, respondio Don Quijote.)" How excellent was the conversation which produced that “Pocos!” This book is great fun and must surely result in a great dusting off of scrapbooks and notebooks in many studies. One need not commend it particularly. Those who will want to will come by it. A good hook is like a good dog; it will ind an owner. BY DAY AND BY NIGHT. By Johan Bojer. Translated from the Nor- wegian by Solvi and Richard Bate- son. New York: D. Appleton- Century Co. IT SHOULD never be forgotten, of course, that Johan Bojer wrote “The Last of the Vikings.” That great story entitles him to sincere reverence, and it should not be withheld. But —how grievously evangelical are some of his other books, to be sure! The present one is in that tradition. It belongs with “The Great Hunger” rather than with the magnificent pa- gan story of the passing of the Viking life. As such, it is a disappointment to the reviewer. But the large public, which applauded “The Great Hunger,” will doubtless receive it with Ppleasure. It is very much the same sort of thing. It carries on Mr. Bojer's theme, expresssed in the earlier book, that the' practice of Christianity on earth involves a degree of love and hu- mility of which even the most sincere Christians have never concetved. The story is one which demonstrates this conviction with ruthless complete- ness— the story of a rich man who gave all his goods to the poor to follow Christ, only to find that the road leads to Calvary for the follower, even as for the leader. This is the essential theme of the novel, but it is expressed in the specific modern terms of pacificism, the hero being an inventor of a machine gun for which all the governments of the earth are feverishly bidding. But he tears up his patents, throws his model into the river and begins life as a simple carpenter when he realizes the evil for his fellows that is latent in his invention. His fellows then, hav- ing hoped to get rich on shares in a new armament factory, persecute him until he kills himself. The symbolism is ponderously heavy, but then one knows, of course, that when a Norwegian turns sym- bolist it is wise to stand rapidly from under. What is more trying in this book is the equal heaviness of the detail, the obvious regimenting of the plot to prove the theme, the weightily overacted simplicity. The first chapter, the first page even, is bristling with signposts stating clearly to what point the story is going, and the road is marked out been drawn from the whole field of Buropean literature—ancient Greek before one from the beginning, clear and efficiently freed of obstructions. ~ ‘and | Suspense of interest under the cir- cumstances is impossible. Boredom on the other hand is not. Mr. Bojer's work has not infre- quently been called “Greek” because of this same inescapability of the plot from the grooves into which he sets it. But it is not the Greek tragedians’ concept of inesecapable fate which he brings to his execution. They veiled the inevitability of their de- nouments in awfulness and mystery. Man's destiny, they mourned, could not be eluded, but it was the inscrutable will of the gods which made it so. Man, meeting his doom, partook of the attributes of the gods from whom it came. Not so the hero of “By Day and By Night.” He is victimized by the petty, whose spite he has aroused by behavior which is both devoid of intelligence and highly improbable in a man of the qualities which his author tells us are his. The result is that Mr. Bojer's work proves his theme but belies his men and wom- en. The reviewer cannot concede that this belongs to the Greek tradition. It seems, instead, the prostitution of & good writer to evangelical ends. WILDERNESS WANDERERS. By Wendell and Lucie Chapman. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. T CANNOT be regarded today as a very original venture for & young married couple to go somewhere into a wiiderness and assiduously gather material for a book. It has been done too often. It is, of course, a pleasant thing to know that there are young people who prefer a difficult outdoor existence to regimented suburban rou- tine, but that is hardly a question for & book reviewer to take up. It is the books which they write after return- ing from these exoduses which a critic must consider, and, whether the couple in question has been shooting lions in Africa or, as in the present case, merely photographing bears in & well-rangered national park, the books show & great similarity. At best they are competent journalism. At worst they are full of strained bright- ness and somewhat darling anecdotes of animals whose behavior, one feels, is being interpreted strictly from the “copy” point of view. The present collection, by a young man and woman who went out to Yellowstone and industriously waded about in its deepest snows to take snapshots of jackr:bbits, rams, weasels, martens, elk, moose, beavers, bears (these feeding before a grand- stand of tourists at a park hotel gar- bage dump) and buffalo (being moved by park officials from one pasture to another in accordance with their sea- sonal habit) partakes of the cus- tomary good and bad about equally. Granting that the conduct of animals in their native environments is in- teresting, there is a substantial amount of interest in this work. At the same time, one can hardly share the book’s frequently reiterated state- ment that all this snapshotting was | adventurous, since young Mr. and Mrs. Chapman were in what is vir- tually 8 200, and one of the most vigorously policed and regulated zoos in the world, at that. Moreover, this ruthless zeal for photographing seems to the reviewer a thing hardly devoid of offense to | persons of taste, and the statement | Is made without sentimentality. The bear which is roused from its hiber- nation to be snapped probably does | not concern himself about the rea- son for the disturbance. But what grace is there in rousing him at all? | Still, this is a “right, readable book. Some of the photographs so arduously | gotten are reproduced in it, and they | are effective pictires. The “Indians” | who assisted in running the buffalo | | were white men gotten up in costume | for benefit of the movies; the dan- gerous grizzlies were at all times under the range of a park guard's gun. But none of this shows in the photographs, and so, what of it? “Material” has been put to material's uses—another book has been made. One can even hope that Hollywood's blessings light upon the young au- thors, for they made movies, too. They confess it. FOOL'S MELODY. By the author of “Miss Tiverton Goes Out,” and Michael Cape-Meadows. Indian- apolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co. 'HE information that thi: novel was, in part at least, the work of the anonymous author of “Miss Tiverton Goes Out” caused the reviewer to take it up with interest. The promise, how- ever, was not fulfilled. The book does not have the merits of the earlier novel and what merits it does have are hard to define. It is one of those stories about a group of people suffering from personal griefs and burdens, and how they found happiness. Now, it is doubtful on the face of it that any- body ever finds happiness, and it seems even more doubtful that the commod- ity could be attained by the methods outlined by these collaborators—that is, by reliance on the counsel of an insane man. But there it is—he (the mad one) plays the part of good angel to his fellows in a private sanitarium until they are variously disposed of, and then, with rather heavy fateful- ness, he dies. The motto seems to be that those who save others cannot save themselves. But the question which is apt to come to a reader's mind is whether any one has ever saved an- other human being, or whether, for that matter, any one can. In addition to these objections, the book s wordy and badly written. There is 8 reality in some of the characters, but it is lost in the general vagueness of the treatment. It is a long way indeed from “Miss Tiverton.” WRITTEN IN HEAVEN. By Frances Parkinson Keyes. New York: Ju- lian Messner. RS. Keyes writes here a simple, charming narrative of the life of that Therese Martin who has be- come known to the world as the Little Flower of Lisieux, and who is named in the Roman Catholic calendar of saints as Therese de 'Enfant-Jesus. It is & brief and limpid tale, but it has been the result of careful research. In- deed, it. was written in the Carmelite convent at Lisieux where the saint spent her life. Mrs. Keyes was given the use of the room there which had been the refectory of the school at the time the child Therese was a pupil. St. Therese de I'Enfant-Jesus was born in Normandy in 1873 of devout, but not unusually religious, parents. She entered the Carmelite convent at the early age of 15. She died when she ‘was little more than 20. Her miracles were the power of her prayers and celestial visions. Her book, “L’Histoire d'une Ame,” was published after her death and caused an astounding num- ber of conversions. Mrs. Keyes writes with reverence and sympathy of the child nun, devoting ber special attention to capturing the N [ D. C., SATURDAY, APRIL 17, 1937. Illustration by Theobold Holsopple for “Little Daughter of Mexico,” by Catharine Ulmer Stoker. Brief Reviews of Books GENERAL NON-FICTION. BUPERIOR CHILDREN. By John Ed- ward Bentley. New York: W. W. Norton Co. A careful study of the problems pre- sented by the exceptional child, with attention to determining special apti- tudes and plans for training. By the professor of education and psychology at American University. THE CIVIL WAR AND RECON- STRUCTION. By J. G. Randall. New York: D. C. Heath & Co. A detailed study of the period in question by the professor of American history at the University of Tllinois. CASTE AND CLASS IN A SOUTH- ERN TOWN. By John Dollard. New Haven: Yale University Press. One of those “cross-section” studies of one of those “typical” towns. Should be delightful to sociologists. SUPREME COURT PRIMER. By Er- nest Angell. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock. Some facts about our highest trib- unal, given in concise brief form. By a member of the New York bar. YOGA By Kovoor T. Behanan. York: The MacMillan Co. Declared to be a scientific explana- tion. EDGAR ALLAN POE. By Edward | Shanks. New York: The Mac- Millan Co. A new critical biography. found but interesting. AE'S LETTERS TO MINANLABAIN. With an introduction by Lucy Kingsley Porter. New York: The Macmillan Co. ' The poet's letters to his friends, Kingsley Porter and Mrs. Porter. In- teresting, but not particularly rich. TRAVEL. WASHINGTON CITY AND CAPITAL. Prepared by the Works Progress Administration. Information about the city to the | weight of 514 pounds and the length of over half a million words. A state- ment from the Works Progress Admin- istration indicates that the cost is ap- New Not pro- | BEYOND THE BADLANDS. proximately 25 cents a word—that is, the informant stated that the project | had had “only” $3,000.000 and planned | to publish 12,000,000 words. The' present volume would make an effec. tive, though not particularly orna- mental, doorstop. RETRACING GENGHIS KHAN. By John H. Herrmann and Cecil Robert Borg. New York: Lothrop Lee & Shepard. Two Americans go over the route of the famous conqueror. ROAMING IN HAWAIL With Harry A. Franck. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co. ‘The professional traveler gets around to the islands. THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS. By Laura Thornborough. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co An informal guide for tourists. Fiction. THE PRODIGAL MOLL. By Sara Christy. New York: John H. Hop- kins & Son Gangster and heiress and, of course, Iove. By Stephen Payne. New York: John H. Hopkins & Son. Western stuff. THE TRAIL OF GOLD. By Dane Coolidge. New York: E. P. Dut- ton Co. Western stuff. RIVER GEORGE. By George W. Lee. New York: The Macaulay Co. Persecuted Negro sharecropper fights back. By a Negro author. Mysteries. THE LAUGHING BUDDHA. By Carl Glick. New York: Lothrop Lee & Shepard. Four citizens disappear and the case is solved by the curious reporter. THE CANDLE. By Linton C. Hopkins. New York: Lee Furman Mystery conducted through agony columns of the daily papers DEAD RECKONING. By Hamilton Husband kills wife perfect murder Juveniles, WILDERNESS ROAD. By Katherine Clugston and Richard Stevenson. New York: Blue Ribbon Books. ‘The Daniel Boone trail for young folks. Bruce in the almost NS Jacket design by Leja Gorska for “The Quiet Shore,” by Walter Havighurst. (Macmillan.) “little way” which made Therese so beloved. There is a quality about the book which should make it appealing to any reader. A LONG WAY FROM HOME. By Claude McKay. New York: Lee Furman. IT IS generally a mistake for any artist to foresake his medium, and Claude McKay, who is a good poet, does himself no particular credit in this work of prose. 1t purports to tell of his wanderings about the world after he had gained his first recogni- tion as a poet of the American Negro. It is a volume of wide variability. Sometimes it is shrewd, sometimes amazingly naive; the sense of values by which the author judges the work of his contemporaries would seem to be their attitude toward his own race; the exposition of Negro qualities in himself is done, as it seems, self-con- sciously and deliberately, instead of by the natural process of implication, and, on the whole, the book gives an effect of being undigested and super- ficial. One regrets the necessity of saying this, for Mr. McKay's verses are often accomplished. However, he has said it himself more plainly than any one elsa, It is only fair to add, of course, L that the book contains some excellent anecdotes and many character sketches of amusing people. Mr. Mc- Kay, writing of his casual acquaint- ances here and there about the world, does very well, particularly when these acquaintances are not themselves literary people. But when he writes of art and artists—and he writes of art and artists a great deal—it is always in the circumscribed terms of race. That race should be a problem to an educated and talented Negro one can well understand. But it is a personal problem, not an artistic one. The Negro poet functions in the world exactly as any other poet does—in re- lation to his poetry. There have been enough “personal documents” written lately. There have, indeed, been al- together too many. One cannot but feel, remembering their insistence, that, unless a man'’s private life is of public importance, he might as well keep it to himself. This is true of any writer—be he of whatever racial persuasion. LITTLE DAUGHTER OF MEXICO. By Catherine Ulmer Stoker. Il- lustrated by Theobold Holsopple. Dallas: Dealey & Lowe. TH!B attractive juvenile about Mex- ico has the somewhat exceptional ~ AX GRINDING FROWNED UPON - New Magazine Devoted to Interest in One-Act Plays Gives All Sides a Chance From Political Standpoint—How to Determine Left or Right Tendencies. BY M.C.R. NEW magazine announces its initial appearance for April 19. It is to be called the One Act Play Magazine, and will come out monthly. Its editors say that it will contain four or five original plays in each issue, together with reviews by prominent contribu- tors on the drama and a regular arti- cle on the one-act play by Dr. Isaac Goldberg.” They also make the interesting an- nouncement that plays accepted for publication will not be selected be- cause of any bias in politics. “The sole criterion,” they say, “in publish- ing a play, whether by a known or an unknown playwright, will be that of dramatic and literary value’ With this purpose in mind, since the One Act Play Magazine has no ‘political ax to grind, it will include plays— ‘left’ and ‘right'—which will have & definite appeal to adherents of both groups.” grind, why all this anticipation? And what, by the way, is a play to the “right”? One knows, of course, what & play to the “left” is. The big scene is a riot between the strikers and strike-breakers, in which the hero's old mother is ridden down by a brutal policeman, and his little child, sick at by the hand of his own buddy—but they forgive one another. All that has been done. But what is a play to the “right”? The reviewer cannot somehow remember. The new magazine will be edited by William Kozlenko, and it has among its contributors A. A. Milne, Philip Freund, Paul Green, Stefan Zweig, Ference Molnar and yet oth- ers, presumably both left and right. IN THE May Ladies’ Home Journal Mrs. Roosevelt continues her “Story.” The reviewer has already informed readers how they may dis- tinguish between Mrs. Roosevelt's “Story” and Mrs. Roosevelt's “Day,” since it would be undesirable to get the two confused. The “Story” is running in the monthly and covers the history of Mrs. Roosevelt's life up to the time she became the First Lady of America. The “Day” ap- pears daily, appropriately enough, in newspapers and recounts in the first person what Mrs. Roosevelt does every 24 hours of the present. The second installment of the “Story” now tells us how Mrs. Roose- Winter as a young woman and wore |it until Spring. As far as the re- viewer knows, Mrs. Roosevelt is the only First Lady who has taken the public into her confidence on point. If there is a personal rec- ord of when Martha Washington or Mrs. Taft, for example, changed to flannels “from neck to ankles” the re- viewer does not know where it is. Perhaps research should be made into | the subject, now that such revela- tions are approved. .THE reviewer is probably lacking in & proper appreciation of the beautiful. Anyway, without having | seen Master Robert Taylor in any of lhu screen appearances, she protests | the cover of the May Photoplay. She | protests it as being the ugliest maga- But if it has no political ax to | home, is killed by a stray bullet fired | velt put on flannel underwear each | this | A.E. (GEORGE) RUSSELL. | zine cover which she has seen in a long time—and that is saying much. | It shows Miss Jean Harlow and Mr. | Robert Taylor together. pretty ghastly. If this be beauty, then | let us look on the sideshows, ‘WITH the circus imminent, readers might be amused by a story that appears in the current Stage. Here it 1s. “At the crossroads the man in the car saw a signpost saying DALLAS 12 MILES. Underneath a poster advertising The Greatest Show On Earth a colored boy trudged toward town. “Braking his car, the driver asked, ‘Like a lift, Sam?" *“‘How’d you know mah name, Boss?" ‘Sam, I'm taking you to the circus this afternoon.’ “‘Boss! Dat's jes’ wunnerful. ain’t never seed no curcus.’ “What the goggle eyed Sam en- joyed most at the circus was hard to determine. “‘The clowns?" sho’ was de funnies’ thing ah evah | seed’ But you knew it wasn't the | clowns he liked best “‘The elephants?’ The eyes showed | large areas of white. ‘Yeh, Boss | dose elephants was sho' de smartes’ |thing ah evah seed’ But it wasn't the elephants. “‘The trapeze performers? The | horses? The band? Sam had en- | thusiasm for all but final acclaim for none “‘Oh, come, Sam, tell me what you liked best?" | “'Oh, Ah don't rightly know, Boss | Ah liked it all. .. But didn’t them cam | els have the grandes’ S-M-E-L-L?' Ah | In the current fiction parade there are “seven unusual poems” reprinted |from Ruth Pitter's “A Trophy of Arms.” Of the seven, the reviewer | picks this one | Buried Treasure. Truth T sought, and truth I found, | Wandering enchanted ground, Where among the dusty rocks Grows the twin-stemmed Paradox Throwing from the single root Sable flower and golden fruit There I watched till I could tell The effect is | ‘Boss, dose clowns | Where her midnight shadow fell, And delved a diamond from the sand Too heavy for my human hand. Hold me not false that cannot bring Nor show to you the magic thing; Under the dual I divine The one, but cannot make it mine, EI.SEWHERE on this page is printed 8 list of best-selling books as Washington does its buying. The Publishers’ Weekly gives the follow- ing lists as the whole Nation's choice, fiction and non-fiction: Fiction, “Gone With the Wind,” by Mar- garet Mitchell; “Drums Along the Mohawk,” by Walter D, Edmunds; “The Late George Apley,” by John P. Marquand; “Yang and Yin,” by Alice Tisdale Hobart; “White Ban- ners,” by Lloyd Douglas; “The Street, of the Fishing Cat,” by Johan Foldes; /Cities of Refuge,” by Philip Gibbs. “Of Lena Geyer,” by Marcia Daven- port; “The Sisters,” by Myron Brinig, and “Rich Man Poor Man,” by Janet Ayer Fairbank. Non-Fiction, “How to Win Priends and Influenca People.” by Dale Carnegie; “An Amer- ican Doctor'’s Odyssey,” by Victor Heiser; “The Hundred Years,” by Philip Guedalla; “The Nine Old Men, " by Drew Pearson and Robert S, Allen; “Live Alone and Like It by Marjorie Hillis; “Inside Europe,” by John Gunther; “The Bible Designed to Be Read as Living Literature,” edited by Ernest Sutherland Bates; “Man ths Unknown,” by Alexis Carrel; “The Return to Religion,” by Henry C. Lin s | and “Wake Up and Live!” by Dorothea | Brande. Well, it is all very curious. Thers have been one or two books published | this year fit to be called works of art, but they do not appear on the lis | Not that the reviewer disagrees with all the selections. But she is puzzled about the criterion of popularity, Some | of these works are quite good, you see. | And others, equally in demand, are | vulgar and insincere to the point of downright blatancy. What accounts the grouping of the two kinds of work together? Any light thrown on the subject will be received wita gratitude. which is generally | pretty fur has been for a long time patiently bringing out, bit by precious bit, or, as its editors usually choose to put it, “fragment” by frag- ment, a new work by James Joyce, and in their current issue they publish fragment No. 17. With, as it were, bated breath, they also make the an- nouncement that the novel of which these fragments have been part now at last drawing to completion and will be published simultaneously by Faber & Faber in London and the Viking Press in New York City. Say the editors of Transition, . .. the mysterious title of the new | work has, in reality, been definitely established since the first inception of the book in 1921, and . . . only two people are privy to the name the work will ultimately have on its appearance, These two persons are James Joyce and his wife.” 1In other words, my friends, it's a secret. TRANSITIO v, is woman who has been for 20 years a resident of the country of the subject. It is the story of a little Mexican girl who lived in the mountains close to the silver mines. She has experiences of the colorful kind; they take in bullfighting, bear hunting, boating and, of course, flestas. But there is charm in the work, and the illustra- tions, by a Washington artist inci- dentally, are very attractive. Among the great number of child’s books on the southern republic, this one de- serves an honorable place. THE QUIET SHORE. Havighurst. millan Co. 'HE struggle between the city and the farm is the theme of this novel. It is not a new idea, to be sure, but Mr. Havighurst gives it such a passionately sincere treatment that one can only admire his production. After the Civil War Roger Bradley established his domain high on a cliff above Iake Erie. He had two wives: The first, a fine woman of the soll; the second, :. ¢ity woman. Each bore him children. An unfortunate accident severed relations between the two branches of the family and for years there was hatred and jealousy. It al! comes to a climax in the Sum- mer which the novel covers. Both sides gain victories and suffer defeats, but it was inevitable that it should be that way. One has no quarrel with the nar- rative which, in spite of its familiarity, is quietly absorbing; and there can be only praise for the simple, firm style; but, as is so often the case in books of this type, the characters are more types than people. The minor characters—Ansel, with his une quenchable levity; Tatum, the hired man who counted automobile tags on the highway, and even poor Ursula, whose mind stopped when she was a child—are more moving than those who carry the main burden of the book. By Walter Mr. Havighurst, it goes without saying, stacks the cards in favor of BEST SELLERS FOR THE WEEK ENDING APRIL 10. Fiction. ‘Theatre. Maugham. day-Doran. Of Mice and Men. Steinbeck. Covici Friede. Paradise. Forbes. Harcourt, Brace & Co. ‘We Are Not Alone. Little Brown. The Years. Woolf. Brace. The Street of the Fishing Cat. Foldes. Farrar & Rinehart. Non-Fiction. How to Win Friends and In- fluence People. Carnegie. Simon & Schuster. Present Indicative. Doubleday-Doran. ‘We or They. Armstrong. Mac- millan. Something of Myself. Kipling. Doubleday-Doran. Return to Religion. Macmillan. The Hundred Years. Guedalla. Doubleday Doran. Double- Hilton. Harcourt, Coward. Link. merit of having been written by a| New York: The Mac- | the rural life, but he does it with such a firm conviction that his occasional pleading may be pardoned. E. T. LAND OF TOMORROW. Seifert. New York: M Co., Inc. 'HE story of a home place from the time it was wrested from the wilderness to the present, it is hard to determine whether this novel tries to portray the fascination and influ- ence of a piece of real estate, more definitely a piece of Kentucky real | estate. or whether it tries to trace the fortunes of a particularly domi- nant strain and the effect of that | strain on the real estate. Whatever the morals of the thing may be, it is | an interesting story, well told. The Shirley S, Mill delineation of some of the charac- ters, especially in the early chapters of the book. is clear cut and convinc- ing. But it seems that the closer to her own times the author approaches, the less sure she is of her people. Jake, the last of the Ormondys, is too bad to be true. And what is more, he is bad without sufficient motiva- tion, either internal or external. The manner of his death, presumably at the hands of his mother, is too lurid. Nor does it seem in keeping with the psychology of Jndith Ormondy as portrayed in the rest of the bock However, his death is necessary to the fulfillment of the plot, and in a book that is interesting, although not great, that much artistic latitude maj ' be allowed the author. R.R. T it. I bope that it is put in all ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT —_——————s “A companion-piece 1o the clarion writing that Tom Paine did by firelight long ago on & drumhead at Valley Forge.” ROBERT E. SHERWOOD “It speaks simply, sincerely, elfectively for all of us. ‘We or They’ is a fine book for an American fo have written and for Americans 1o read.” JOHN GUNTHIR “One of the most brillianily aloquent and stimulating books that I have read in a long time.” DOROTHY THOMPSON, noted commentator, in the course of a 2,700-word article devoted entirely to recommendation of this one book, declareds "Once in & great while & deep conviction, rooted in spirinal and intellectual sources, finds limpid and sloguent expression. When it does, ome gets a piece of literature . . ', Sueb is, HAMILTON FISH ARMSTRONG'S ‘We or They’ "It deserves 10 be read by as many people as there are Americans - o« T wish I bad written this book. 1 am glad that I have read may reaffirm their love of freedom and prepare to work and to Miss Thompson's striking endorsement is but the latest in the unvaried acclaim from prominent persons for Mr. Armstrong's stirring and vinally important volume. A few examples: at all bookstores . .31.50 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY the bigh schools, that Americans FELIX FRANKFURTER “A brave, wise examination of what devotion 10 democracy means in action.” NEWTON D. BAKER “It is splendid! The more Americans who will read it, the safer I shall feel.” THEODORE ROOSEVELT “Personally I consider it one of the most significant and best thought out books of the past yoar. 1t is one that should be read and pondered by the American people.” * NEW YORK