Evening Star Newspaper, April 24, 1937, Page 18

B—2 THE EVENING STAR SATURDAY APRIL 24, 1937 FEMININE PIONEER IN LAW Ellen Spencer Mussey, Known to Many Washingtonians, Entered Upon a Career Through Necessity, Biographer Says—Italian Sutgeon Writes “Life and Death.” By Mary-Carter Roberts. FATE RIDES A TORTOISE. By Grace Hathaway. Philadelphia: John C. Winston Co. HIS is the biography of Ellen Spencer Mussey, a lady well known to Americans generally for her work in welfare and in women’s organizations, and especially known and honored by Washing- tonians, in whose city she long made her home. Mrs. Mussey was a ploneer in many fields and brought to all of them the courage, cheerful- ness and persistence which character- ized the pioneers. She was one of the first women lawyers. She founded the Washington College of Law, which was the first law school in the world created primarily for women. She fought consistently to secure legisla- tion for equal rights for women. She was active in the Red Cross in war work. She won honors in all these en- deavors and time has vindicated her rightness. She was also a wife and mother. It is perhaps the one really strange thing in her career that she entered on the duties of wife and mother thinking that they would be her whole life. She was not a feminist from Rrbit conviction, but grew into one grad v as her widening view of social conditions impressed upon her the need which women had for Independent position the study of law only through circumstance that her husband's ill- ness made it necessary for her to help him in his practice. When he died she found it obligatory to take over that practice for the sake of her chil- dren. She was by then a competent lawyer, but she could not get admis~ sion to the bar because she was not a man, It was only after long pleading, and then by the special intervention of her husband’s friend. Gen. Eaton, that she finally was vouchsafed an examination. She entered at once upon & consistently successful prac- tice. Her venture in opening the College of Law came about as the result of many applications which she received from young women who wanted to study for the bar, but were denied admission to all schools except Howard University, amazing as that seems to- day. Some determined young women did enter the Negro college and take their work there, but others felt that | nation of the white schools | the disc ggainst them might be met in other ways. They applied to Mrs, Mussey end she, with Miss Emma Gillett, un- dertook to train six of them. When her students were ready for their examinations she was once more con- fronted with the problem of getting | them admitted. She appealed to various colleges to accept them, with- out avail. ended the matter with most women or men, but she persisted. Finally, on the advice of eminent lawyers who knew her ability and sympathized with her, she opened her own school. With typical sportsmanship and liberalism, | she made it co-educational. It had difficult times, but succeeded in get- ting through them and becoming one of the city’s outstanding institutions of legal training. Among the students trained there are former Judge Mary O'Toole, Miss Caroline Griesheimer, first woman to be detailed as civil service examiner, Miss Pearl McCall, first woman assist- ant district attorney in the District; Miss Agnes O'Neil, first woman assist- ant solicitor of the Department of State; Mrs, Flora Warren Seymour, first woman on the Board of Indian Commissioners; Miss Annabel Mat- thews, first woman member of the United States Board of Tax Appeals; Miss Alice B. Birdsall, first woman re- porter of the Supreme Court of & State; Miss Katherine Pike, first woman of the law in the Customs Serv- ice and first woman to go to sea as & customs officer. From this brave piece of pioneering it was inevitable that Mrs. Mussey should go on to yet other fields in se- curing recognition for women, and she did so. The story of her battles and victories is ably and quite simply told in Miss Hathaway's biography. It is written from the viewpoint of the pio- neer in feminism whose reason for her ploneering was not careerism or to seek an outlet for the crusading spirit, but was rather a solid respect for justice and common sense, Mrs. Mussey never epproved extreme measures and her victories were founded on the sound- ness of her reasoning and not the sen- sationalism of her tactics. This picture of her is presented admirably in Miss Hathaway's excellent book. THE DU MAURIERS. By Daphne du | Maurier. Garden City: Doubleday Doran & Co. 'HIS biography of three genera- tions of the Du Maurier family, written by a member of that family, may not wholly convince readers that its author's forbears were as fascinat- ing a group of people as she herself seems to believe, but that is nothing against the book she has written. It is fascinating. It is that without qualification. holding attention, it is one of the best biographies yet published in this high- | ly biographical year. Miss du Maurier, it would seem, is at her best when writing about her family. As & novelist, she is compe- tent, but unremarkable. One has the feeling, reading her fiction, that she writes it because she has decided to &nd is conscientious about self-prom- ises. But when she undertakes a bit of the history of her people—as wit- ness her previously published biog- raphy of her father, “Gerald, a Por- trait”—she uses an unmistakable love for her theme and blends with that &n astonishingly intimate understand- ing. She writes books then that are alive, and, however insignificant may be the particular Du Maurier about ‘whom she is telling us, she endows him with the roundness of life, and its plausibility and implausibility in life- like proportion. Her present work begins in the early nineteenth century with the progenitress of that du Maurier line in which are to found George du Maurier, the author of “Peter Ibbet- son” and ‘Trilby,” and the famous actor-manager, Gerald du Maurier. This maternal ancestor was no other than Mary Anne Clarke, who spent her life as a courtesan, but in the grand manner of courtesanship which was a fashion of the eighteenth century. At the opening of the present ac- count, in 1810, she is shown as about to retire and giving her mind to the | problem of securing the well-being of | her two children, Genref and Ellen. ‘To this end she entered 'on & contract She took up | the | Such obstacles would have | From the standpoint of | MRS. MARY S. GRIFFITH, Author of “Gardening on Nothing a Year,” which has just been published by Hale, Cushman & Flint of Boston. with the Duke of York, receiving from for the assurance that she had de- stroyed all of the love letters which he had written her. It would appear | that the noble lord was somewhat over-trusting in his part of the agree~ ment, for Mary Anne, as her present biographer tells it, cheerfully kept one packet of the missives from the fire and departed for France with the first payment of the annuity and this same packet cuddled together in | highly improper propinquity in her muff. It is a completely realistic portrait | which Miss du Maurier gives us of this ancestress in her entrancing | beauty, her frank wantoness, her love of luxury, her impulsive generosity, him an annuity, which on her death | was to go to her daughter in exchange | 1 in Milan when his calls took him to the poorest and most depraved sections of the city. He tells of his military life, when he sometimes performed 20 operations in a day. But chiefly he tells, between the lines, of his attitude toward his work, the dedicated atti- tude that is utterly without cant, pre- tense or self-interest, the attitude that has more than once caused the physi- cian to be likened to the priest. His book is plain but full of this manner of personality. When, for ex- ample, he writes of a “villainous cere- bral tumor,” one feels that he is speak- ing without the slightest facetiousness. ‘Tumors are villains to him. It is his mission to destroy such evils. It takes him into grim places, but he goes carrying cleanness and knowledge. A book written in such & spirit is | more than a life history. It becomes | & part of the literature of science. | A BOOK OF HOURS. By Donald | Culross Peattie. Decorations by | Lynd Ward. New York: G. P. Put- nam's Sons. IT SEEMS absurd that in a collection of 24 essays one should be unable to pick a favorite. Yet not many col- lections of 24 essays are all good, and that on a level of written goodness which seems likely to meet all tastes, whether one is seeking beauty of lan- guage, subtle perfection of the essay form, sententiousness of expression, compactness of thought or whatever virtue. Miraculous as it seems, this is true of the present collection. If the reviewer were to make any suggestion at all of change in it, it would be sim- ply that the group should be bound separately, for each separate piece of the two dozen is so fine as to be, of it- self, a little masterpiece. This is a rarely lovely book. Its 24 essays are ranged around the clock, beginning with “Three, Ante Meridian,” and ending with “Two, Ante Meridian.” In the rounding of the cycle Mr. Peattie treats of nature, | man, religion, philosophy and any | growing from a young belle, whose | high spirits and gay wit saved even her broadest innuendoes from offen- | siveness, into a shocking old lady | whose conversation was such that her | grandchildren frequently had to be | hurried from her presence. Whatever | her morals, Mary Anne clearly was hearty and healthy and in love with | life and impatient of sham, and its is not the first time in history that a race of artists has sprung from such & progenitress. | There is an authentic breath of the | eighteenth century about Mary Anne and similarly there is the spirit of | | the times in Ellen, her prim, intel- lectual daughter, who married Louis- | Mathurin Busson du Maurier and | | who believed all her life (lhflukh" | mistakenly) that she was the daugh- ter of royalty, since it had been | whispered to her as a child that her | father was the Duke of York. That | Mary Anne did not meet the duke | until after Ellen was born is the fact, says the author, but apparently Ellen | never knew this and her life was lived in the light of the romantic illusion. The realities of her existence were, however, sadly at variance with her dream, for her husband was through- out his life incapable of acquiring money by any means except borrow- | ing, and her days were spent in count- | ing small sums and wondering how she might afford the education for | her sons which their royal blood, as | she imagined, demanded. He, too, | had a dream; with little foundation | | he believed himself to be scion of an | 'arm!ocrnllc family which had lost its | | wealth in the revolution. He also | | thought of himself as a brilliant | | scientist and squandered his slender | means consistently on “inventions” which were to revolutionize all in- dustry, but which with monotonous regularity generally turned into liabil- ities or lawsuits. Yet both he and Ellen had culti- vated tastes and minds; a love of good literature and music was one of the | great realities of their existence to- | gether, and similarly they shared a | passionate attachment to the idea of | intellectual freedom. In their most | impecunious days their home was & | place of culture and they possessed | that manner of good-breeding which may not be lost. They were in many ways typical ninetenth century mid- dle class intellectuals. These were the parents of the author of “Trilby,” George du Maurier. They had a second son and a daughter, but of the three only George achieved a famous name. The book ends with his marriage at the age of 29 to Miss Emma Wightwick, daughter of a pros- perous English merchant. He as at that time a rising young artist, doing {llustrations for Punch. There are other characters in this richly human book—Louise, the sister of Louis-Mathurin, who had a blight- | ed romance and lived a life of religious | contemplation thereafter; George, the | son of Mary Anne, who became a | solid conservative English gentleman; | Georgina, his flirtatious wife, who, on | being left & widow, joined the Salva- | tlon Army; “Gyggy” the ne'er-do-well son of Louis and Ellen; Isobel, his sis- ter, & young lady who could play a “50-page piece” of piano music at sight—and still others. There is an | astonishing quality of real acquaint- | ance in Miss du Maurier’s treatment of them all. She writes of them not | a8 subjects of research, but as if she had been in conversation with them | half an hour before. As has been said, she makes a fascinating book. The | least of her ancestors takes on com- | pelling interest in her understanding | and accomplished hands. LIFE AND DEATH. By Andrea Ma- jocchi, Translated from the Italian by Wallace Brockway. New York: Knight Publications. THIB 1is an autobiography, coming in a year when autobiographies are no novelty. But it is of that kind which | is always able to command respect— the unassuming, profoundly clear writ- ing of a man of science whose achieve- ments are established. Dr. Majocchi 18 one of the leading surgeons of Italy. He has seen military service. He has been honored by most of the international medical associations. His life is writ- ten here with simplicity which comes from minds whose realities are fraught with constant grave responsibility. The fact that his autobiography is written in a time that is producing many in- ferfor life histories need not even be considered. He tells how he came of poor people, how his father, a physician, died of an infection in a day when science was still unprepared to deal with such eventualities. He tells of his struggles to gain his own medicy education, of his early service as | book, then, taken as it is out of the |actual time under examination, and | American, the business man of intelli- other matters that might come into a naturalist’s mind in such an under- taking. There is a disarming quality of | spontaneity about the work, but i will hardly deceive any one. It is only | the seeming spontaneity of the pf*rrn’.t ! performance. Mr. Peattie may be a naturalist, but prose such as his is not a product of nature. It does not grow on any mental bush. It is the result | of sifting, grinding, polishing and planning, down to the last syllable. So, it would seem, as an artist this | essayist has emulated his science well His prose flowers, its tendrils take hold | upon zhe[;nmd. its outline has the sym- metry and balance of a natural growth, His book ought to go into the gsh»l\'es | of every reader who values these at- tributes in writing. A nature column written by Mr. Peattie ran in The Star for many vears, and he has, as a consequence, numer- ous local friends and admirers, FORTY YEARS ON MAIN STREET. By William Allen White, C()m: piled by Russell H. Fitzgibbon from the columns of the Emporia Ga- | Zette, Foreward by Frank C. Clough. New York: Farrar & Rhinehart, IN THIS book are collected the edito- rials of the famous Kansas writer on leading questions as he has seen them from 1897 to the present. The | work Is divided into chapters covering | the various subjects. There is a chapter on Kansas politics, one on national politics, one on the 1936 cam- | Paign, one on the World War, one on | international questions and one de- signed to show Mr. White's personal development from the reactionary Re- publicanism which he professed in the nineties to his position as a liberal today. | There are also chapters on his per- | sonal background, on Emporia as he | saw it, and samples of his humor and his miscellaneous writings. The fa- mous editorial, “What's the Matter With Kansas?” is included, as is the | almost equally famous one which he | wrote after the death of his daughter | Mary. It makes really a rather wonderful book. It reflects with almost un- believable versimilitude the growth of middle class American thought. To read it was for the reviewer (at least after she came to the parts which are within her memery) to live over recol- lections of almost every political con- versation which she has heard between intelligently conservative people. There has been a great overproduction of works lately on “interpreting” Ameri- can change throughout the century, and, while many of these works are futile performances in themselves, their number would indicate a genuine interest in our drift. Mr. White's not from the vantage point of some individual's desirous thinking, would seem to give the clearest picture yet as to where we have come from where. For his opinions can be accepted a8 & mean. They are neither re- actionary nor radical. They incline no more to lonely intellectualism than to rabble rousing, which is not at all. They show with uncanny precision the views of the average middle-class gence and keen political interest, the man who believes in the American ideal of individual liberty and private ownership of property, and is not without humanity toward the in-| evitable mass of mankind which has to be assisted if it is to live. The | problem of how to carry this mass | without wrecking the system—since | the mass, he feels, will be there whate | ever the system—Is the central pre- | occupation of Mr. White's political thinking. In 1898 he was outspoken against the doctrine that “the users are para- mount to the owners.” By 1906 he had reversed himself on this point. In 1912 he was a Bull Mooser. He greatly admired Woodrow Wilson, al- though he ocriticized him freely on certain issues. He went the way of all flesh during the war period—we were not fighting the German people, but the German government; we were fighting a war to end war; we must not stop until imperialism and mili- tarism were eradicated from the earth —he went through all the phases. He | had no hysteria, however, but only | reacted as intelligence and our over- strained idealism seemed to indicate to all of us in those troubled times. He rebuked the extremists who banned | German music and the like. He cried out against the 20s as a “sordid decade.” In 1920 he said: “Socialism is a vast stupidity.” But somewhat later he approved the incorporation of certain socialistic principles into legislation, saying that we accept the substance but “gag §¢ the form.” He aw in 's a000d election & DR. ANDREA MAJOCCHI, Author of “Life and Death,” Wallace Brockway (Knight Publications). Brief Reviews of Books GENERAL NON-FICTION. THE POWER TO GOVERN. By Wil- liam H. Hamilton and Douglass Adair, New York: W. W. Norton Co. A study of the meaning of the Con- stitution, based on the times in which it was written. GARDENING ON NOTHING A YEAR By Mary §. Griffith Boston: Hale, Cushman & Flint. A book of gardening instructions, which takes the income into consid- eration. THE BIRTH OF CHINA. By Herrlee Glessner Creel. New York: Reynal & Hitcheock. A survey of the formative period in Chinese history, its government and culture, based on the most recent archeological discoveries. By the in- structor in Chinese history at the University of Chicago. THE SHANGHAI PROBLEM. By William C. Johnstone. Stanford University Press A most comprehensive study of the city of Shanghai and the inter- national problems associated with it. By the associate professor of political science at George Washington Uni- versity. OUR PERENNIAL BIBLE. By Helen Nicolay. New York: D. Appleton Century Co. A study of the Bible in the light of new researches made since the be- ginning of the century. SEARCHING FOR YOUR ANCES- TORS. By Gilbert Harry Doane. New York: Whittlesey House. A book of instructions for the indi- vidual who has always thought that he would like to look up his family tree but has never got around to it. Simple and informative. BIOGRAPHY. A COMMONER MARRIED A KING As told by Baroness de Vaughn to DONALD CULROSS PEATTIE, Author of “An Almanac for Moderns,” “Singing in the Wilder- ness” and “Green Laurels,” has just been awarded a second Guggenheim fellowship. His “Book of Hours,” a companion volume to “An Almanac for Moderns” is just out. A newspaper column written by Mr. Peattie ran in The Star for many years (C. P. Putnam’s Sons.) totally new kind of American Gov- ernment in prospect, but bowed to the idea, since it had been voted in by & majority. He concentrated al- ways on issues and hated the issue- clouding tactics of professional politi- cians. He has made a book for all intelligent Americans who have neither the weight of great wealth to shape their political hopes nor the spur of conscious inferiority to accomplish the same end for them. A book, in other | words, for—or even, for that matter, about—most of us. JUAN BELMONTE: KILLER OF BULLS. Translated from the Spanish, with an introduction by Leslie Charteris. Garden City: Doubleday, Doran & Co. NOTHER individual success story, but with a gratefully different aroma, appears in the autobiography of Spain’s foremost exponent of the bullfight in the heyday of that sport. Juan Belmonte’s origin was as close to the fallow elements of a Spanish street as any one's could have been, and his eventual ascent to the place | @bled enough (by virtue of numerous | Very frankly, sparing neither himself of king of the professional bull-fighting world very nearly approaches fable. He was born in one of the poorest sec- tions of Sevilla and departed from that region of vice and waywardness only after reaching his 20s, when he began to gain some hard-won recogni- tion as an apt student of matadoring. Until the fire of matching wits and strength with fighting bulls settled in | ing. was content to shift with e lsck-virtue his blood around, IDEAS ON DOMINANT WOMEN translated from the Italian by Paul Faure. Washburn. The story of the life of the com- moner, Baroness de Vaughn, who married Leopold II of Belgium. TRAVEL. THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT. By Michael J. Leahy and Maurice Crain. New York: Funk & Wag- nalls. An account of the exploration of | New Guinea which resulted in open ing the hitherto unknown interior. FICTION. THE MARRIAGE OF NICHOLAS | COTTER. My Nellie M. Scanlon. | New York: Hillman Curl | Conflict between brother-and-sister | love and marriage. Unremarkable PECOS BILL. By James Cloyd Bow- | man. Chicago: Albert Whitman & Co. A cowboy extravaganza in the Paul Bunyan vein. | JUVENILES. KING RICHARD'S SQUIRE. By Regina Kelly. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co. A tale of Chaucer’s England for boys and girls of the teen age. COPY KITTEN. By Helen and Alf Evers. Chicago: Rand McNally New York: Ives Co. A kitten story for the very young. | Black and white illustrations. | | WHISKERS. By Marjorie Barrow. Photographs by Harry Whittier Frees. Chicago: Rand McNally Co. The story of & naughty Kitten; illustrated with photographs. For the‘ | very young. TERMITE CITY. By Alfred E. Em- | erson and Eleanor Fish. With a foreword by Wililam Beebe. Illus- tration by Keith Ward | The story of the ant. and not so young. For young | | | \ganz of similar urchins, whose main- | tenance came from stealing and whose |Magazine Writer Contributes Sensible Comments on This Present Subject of Debate—Story of Kipling’s Anger—Again the Share Cropper’s Plight. By M.-C. R. | HE reviewer has had occasion, several times in recent months, | to comment on articles mven‘ over to lamenting the passing | of privilege and authority from the possession of American men to that of American women. Scribner's Mag- azine has had one such article, and | later published a reply to it. The American Mercury has also mourned | in its pages for man's vanishing glory, And there have been other stories on the same theme. The reviewer, on reading most of them, has put them down as appeals for popular reading, since, as every one knows, there is no argument so intriguing to most people as one which raises, in light and in- offensive form, the question of rela- tive sex merits. Now, in the May Forum, Struthers | Burt takes up the subject once again, and it may be that the Forum's edi- tors are being no less canny than those of the Mercury and Scribner's. But it seems to the reviewer than Mr. | Burt is a great deal nearer to talking | sense. He finds that the prestige of the American male is in no way endan- gered by che bestowal upon woman of certain elementary human rights, and admits frankly that the com- placence which derives from this prestige is even thicker in America | than in countries where women do | not have these rights. This opin- | fon, he admits, is not generally held, | but in its support he says he will have “one multiple element, the in- telligent women of the United States.” And he continues: “Take them aside sometime and get them to tell the truth (they won't do it, Mr.| Burt)—those, that is, who are not so completely enslaved that they are to- tally unable to separate the letter of | the law from its reality. Ask them what is the response of the average American man, intelligent or other- | wise, to their opinions, unless these heppen to coincide with his. Ask | them what is his attitude and tone of voice if they happen to contradict | him . Ask why it is that all business and professional women, ex- cept those who have definitely arrived, | and wives and mothers and fiancees as well, have to bear in mind a tech- nigue utterly unknown to the male | consciousness. Ask any woman in | business what, at all events, her earlier | experiences were. Ask any of these, and if the ladies are at all truthful, they will tell you that every apparent | proof of feminization in the United States is, in reality, a proof of un- conscious male domination.” And Mr. Burt has said a great deal with that little three-syllable word, unconscious.” For it is quite true that men do not deliberately “domi- nate.” That takes a kind of force which few people want in their per- sonal and domestic affairs. It is too | tiring. The truth is, and Mr. Burt | tells it, that women, from the cradle | up, 80 encourage men to this “domi- | nation” that they are in it without knowing it. It is the old domestic technique that dates from the first cave household. The modern compli- cation is that men have gotten so ac- customed to it in home relaticns that they expect it in the new relations |of business and the professions. A woman who, coming into a profession as an equal with its men, speaks her mind impartially and without false reverence becomes an object of down- right impropriety; she is “unwomanly But why should she be “womanly” in business or professional conduct? Why introduce sex there? Is that proper—really? The reason is not that very many professional or busi- | ness women want to, but that they cannot get on with their man asso- | ciates unless they do. | Mr. Burt is lucid on these points and still others and is throughout amiably amusing. And while he is much more encouraging as to the fu- ture of men than other writers on this | subject have been, it is curiously likely | that fewer men will agree with him than with those others. But, as he says himself, intelligent women will. THERE is an interesting article on the late Rudyard Kipling in the May Harper's Magazine. It deals with | the famous feud which the writer had with his American brother-in-law, | Beatty Balestier, the feud, which, the article says, was the reason why | into campfire and shares a delicious meal | > | BEIRNE LAY, Jr., | Author of “I Wanted Wings” | (Harper & Bros.). Kipling left America and why he kept, so profound & dislike of all American things as part of his life to its very | end. i That he did cherish this hatred deep and long is unquestionable. His last work, his autobiography, written after he was 70 years of age, contains more than one blistering sentence de- voted to American institutions, man- ners and habits. And he makes no attempt to be rational about it. It is plainly pure hatred, emotional and unrelenting. The Harper's article, by Frederic F. Van De Water, undertakes to trace this hatred to its cause. Whether it is accurate or not, it makes highly interesting reading. | According to Mr. Van de Water, Kipling was in a fair way to adopt America when the trouble occurred. | He had built a home in Vermont, | and it was a large, substantial house, far beyond the immediate needs of his family t looked as if he meant to stay. He was, cautiously and al- most timidly to be sure. making friendly advances toward his Yankee neighbors; he had struck up an in-| timacy with one Joe Gilbert, a log- ger, and also with David Carey, the baggage master of the Brattleboro station. Then his cantankerous broth- er-in-law involved him in a legal ac- tion which brought upon him such a flood of publicity and entangled him in such unfair (as he felt) representa- tions that he lost all kindness for the land where he had so suffered, and precipitately fled The 1ns and outs of the law suit are gone into in Mr. Van de Water's piece, in about as much detail as is possi- ble after s0 long a time. If all that he writes is true, then Kipling did have a bad time in our country. But it was hardly the country's fault, and it seems curious that so isolated an instance could have brought from so clear a mind such a wholesale con- demnation. Anyway, the piece is well worth reading. | ments, and this is o) cne gypsy encampment, and in that instance while the old, old woman of the tribe was telling her fortune the young, young children were taking her rear tire quietly off its rack. But then all of us do not have just the same experiences. Anyway, Mr, Bercovici tells in this Harper's story how he went to the land in a trailer and traveled 10,000, miles, keeping his family of four and the trailer, too, on less than $7 a day. This story, like the “Folding Bedouins"” book, marks a new mark in trailer literature. It is the first account of the new mode of travel to be written by a writer who also is what is known as & man of letters. Well, some way or other, Mr. Ber- covici, man of letters or not, does not seem to be quite as much at home among the truck drivers, hitch hikers, tourist campers and other quaint folk figures of the American highwayvs (or folkways?) as he is with his native Rumanians and their colorful czardas. Not quite. He tells us how he listened to three chauffeurs talking in a gaso- line station lunch room outside Rich- mond, and was impressed with the rich, American quality of their talk That is grand, of course. What if they had talked Senegambian? “Mark Twain,” he says, “and Rabe- lais and Homer and all the of robust tellers of stories w given their right ears for the privi of hearing them with their left.” Not a bit of it, Mr. Bercovici. an American, the review dec! to speak for Rabelais or Homer, Mark Twain would have been right in there with the boys, going them one better. If you can forget, sometimes, that you are a man of letters, it doesn’t hurt your style a particle. Anyway, it never hurt Mark’s, Mr. Bercovici is writing in install- ly the first. Per- haps in the second he some gypsies, and then we w what happens to his rear tire. AVID L. COH: wrote last year an in! sympathetic book on the Ne the Delta country, a people whom he has known most of his life led it “God Shakes Creation” which, he said, was a phrase he picked up from a Negro preacher who was discoursing on the providence of God in orda ing the seasons. It was & mig | speech and its climax was when the minister came to the waking time of the year. Then he said, “In the Spring, God shakes creation.” In the May Atlantic Monthly Mr. Cohn writes again of the Delta peo- ple, dealing particularly with the share croppers, of whose problems & much has been heard lately. Mr. Cohn, from the vantage point of long acquaintance with these people, con= siders the New Deal proclamation that something must be done for them. He then sums up: “Share cropping has continued for 70 years because no one has found a better system to take its place. No sudden change could safely take plac within a capitalist democracy ) viding land ownership for m | 1andless and unprepared people | vast and enormously complex prob- A MEMBER of The Star stafl com- mented to the reviewer recently that the best title given to any travel book in recent years was, in his estimation, the one bestowed upon a record of a trailer tour, it being, neatly, “Folding Bedouins.” The reviewer has forgotten who wrote this little book—it was a Chi- | cago newspaper man, if that helps— but remembers the work as the firat | of a growing family, all devoted to the joys or pains of trailing | Now in the May Harper's no less & | | literary man than Konrad Bercovici | comes out with a piece on the gentle ! trailing art. Mr. Bercovici, as the world knows, is a literary gypsy, and wherever he goes he runs right into gypsies, and then when he has run them he sits down by their | with them, a beautiful young gypsy maid dances for him and finally the | old, old man of the tribe tells him a wonderful story, which he remembers later, word for every word. This has always seemed to the re- viewer a perfectly grand method of getting material,” but somehow or other she does not run into gypsies | in just that way. She never met but | lem . “It must be remembered that Negro was ruthlessly del 1862 into a freedom for whict not prepared. And once the Gove ernment had achieved the ideal of h freedom he was abandoned and f gotten. It must also be remembered that the growth of large plantations and farm tenancy is not an isolated phenomenon. In industry the con- trol of the instruments of production and of distribution has tended ever the | since the close of the Civil War to be concentrated in hands . “It will not be enough for the Gov= ernment to buy land for them (the share croppers) and regard the prob- lem as solved. Not only must they have land, but they must have un= remitting supervision for many vears . They must, in short, be recast and re-created. That is a problem for the years He does not say so, but sound also like an addition to the alphabet of bureaus t would seem to be what happens to most of these problems in practical applica- tion. The article is excellently impart! It sounds like sense and not sent mentality. fewer and fewer it would incidents of his youth and his ovm‘ characteristics and impressions. ‘Though you may be opposed to bull- fighting on the grounds of cruelty to animals, you will still get a clearer insight into the sport from reading about Belmonte, besides the fact that the subject matter is off the pounded paths of narrative. Leslie Charteris, Who translated the work, contributes an introductory treatise on bullfighting . J. s. IN THE AMERICAN JUNGLE, 1925- | 1936. By Waldo Frank. New York: Farrar & Rhinehart. | HIS is a collection of critical | essays devoted to our ways and customs in these United States. They are selections which have been pub- | lished heretofore in various periodicals, ranging from the New Yorker to that | pleasure was coarsely to affront the unfortunate residents of the vicinity, | When the urge came to try a hand | at the sport, an apparently inborn urge | !in all Spanish youth, Belmonte | promptly felt that he was a cattle-kill- | er “with a message,” as the saying has it. With this conviction he forgot vir- tually all his previous interests in his | zeal to test his skill and practice on any cow, bull or calf available. | In time, despite a fragile physique, which created some doubt as to his | abllity, he arrived. He brushed with | some of the “right” people, who, realiz- ing a likely investment, promptly ad= ‘ vertised him loudly as a revolutionizer lof the art. And he actually did make over the art by his new and daring | tactics of handling the bulls. The | sensation he created is seen in the | records of his appearances all over !lhe country, day after day without | resplte. A scorner of vacations and rests, he made most of his appear- | ances while he was ill enough or dis- gorings) to warant “bed with doctor’s care.”” Ample compensation was of- fered in the wild acclaim habitually | awarded him as well as an opportunity | to travel—so he felt. | Truly an idol, he now rests in re- tirement and waxes sad over the de- cline of that which he firmly believes an art comperable to music and painte unfailing, catchall for bright pieces, | the New Masses. They are pungently written and stimulating reading. Mr. | Frank is attacking, as a general thing, | and a good attack is always readable. | Of course, in this day. we have heard most of the/arguments on both sides | of everythifig American; we have been analyzed, We have been synthesized, | we have bden psychoanalyzed, we have | been instrycted, berated, encouraged, patronized \and damned. It doesn’t | positively surprise us any more when & writer comes out with another book | of strong, bracing whacks, all designed | to do us no end of good if we cln: take it. But here it is, and, as among others of its kind, it is all right. There will be another ome next week, or maybe there will be two. 1 WANTED WINGS. By Beirne Lay, jr. New York: Harper & Bros. ERE is & book which should be | read by any young man Wwho dreams of going into aviation, either as & military or commercial pilot. | nor others, Lay tells of his experiences in the Army Air Corps Training Cen- ter at San Antonio, Tex., and of his active duty service at Langley Field, | Va. He paints the hardships, trials | and the transcendental thrills which await the student flyer. He confesses that the first time he flew a highly sensitive, powerful Army pursuit airplane he feit like an im- The authdr surprises with his can- ad of the vigorous, ribald postor, “admortal with & magic wand in his hani” | tlmo Returning to civilian life after three | years of military flying, Lay finds that, no matter what lies ahead, he has “no proper grounds for com- plaint. “I am already too far ahead of the game. I can't lose, because I have already won more than I can ever lose. I have & hottomless three-year | treasury to draw from. Not that a man can live on memories. But there are other dreams and other fulfill- ments. “I am the man in a million who has had a dream, his own particular | dream—to hiwt unattainable—and lived it.” There are copious notes for the lay- man, which makes the work of some ! value as a text for beginners. Whether | or not you are in aviation or intend to be, you will find entertainment and excitement in this volume. For those | who, like Lay, hav gone through “hell month” at Randolph, the book | must arouse the keenest memories, for it is based upon the life stuff of | which aviation careers have been built. J.8. E THIS WAY TO BEAUTY. By Hel- ena Rubinstein. 188 pages. New | York: Dodge Publishing Co. | NEW book dealing with the va- rious means by which physical beauty may be acquired becomes a “must have” for every woman who sees it. Such a book is Helena Ru- binstein's latest publication, “This Way to Beauty,” in which she sets forth her knowledge of this subject as gleaned from a quarter century of successful experimentation. Mme. Rubinstein, internationally known as an outstanding beautician and also as a chemist with a back- ground of medical training, makes her own formulas and continues to im- prove them from season to season. Her book presents short, concise | chapters in an engaging and modern | form with sketches and helpful dia- grams. It is easy and pleasant read- | ing, and from the very first chapter | Mme. Rubinstein creates in every | reader a determination to “lift her- | self above the plain or mediocre and become a vital and lovely person.” She says: “So few women have the slightest conception of their possibille keep young and lovely.” intense desire for beauty, and believes that the lack of sufficient will power to ‘“‘carry through" is the greatest stumbling block for most women. Self-indulgence, false unselfishness and complacency with a big “C" are considered the arch enemies of suce cess on the road to beau Having awakened a soldier sy her reader, she o a wi ned beauty regime, then takes various phases of beauty culture in detall, beginning with the care of the skin, the use of cosmetics, continuing with the care of hands and hair. Different diets are described both for increasing and decreasing weight. Exercises for posture and better pro- portions are given with accompanying diagrams. In fact, you will find that this little book contains just about everything a woman needs to know in order to make herself lovelier. Mme. Rubinstein leaves you this comforting thought: “At 40, and even 60, & woman should be at her best, and can be. The brave stay young.” M. W. BEST SELLERS FOR THE WEEK ENDING APRIL 17. Fiction. THEATRE. Maugham. Double- day Doran, THE YEARS. Woolf. Brace. OF MICE AND MEN. Bteinbeck. Covici Friede. PARADISE. Forbes. Brace. ‘WE ARE NOT ALONE. Hilton. Little Brown. THE LATE GEORGE APLEY. Marquand. Little Brown. Harcourt Harcourt Non-Fiction, HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE. Car- negie. Simon & Schuster. PRESENT INDICATIVE. Cow- ard. Doubleday Doran. AMERICAN DOCTOR'S ODYS- SEY. Heiser. Norton. RETURN TO RELIGION. Link. Macmillan. SOMETHING OF MYSELF. Kipling. Doubleday Doran. WE OR THEY. Armstrong. Mac- millan, emphaaises the necessity of an