The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, December 13, 1903, Page 7

Howard Pyle With Pen and Pencil Pictures Arthur es the Anglo-Saxon loves nd God grant many are certain live down through of these is the green z Arthur and the table - « thousand years this fighting days back ngland has pa generations as f. old story again twentieth century € =8 you—a yarn fit to e nu ong with 0 of Robin Hood knights at Chevy Chas d st for children s th f Arth but what have be folk stories of our litera- e twil father to the of t printed ages but a few precious For the few w yson has immortalized fragment about the ( any who can- old m a quaint semblance of its cycle of Robin bards who first of greenwood \gs the king, banquet 10bles. for it idition of and story of srail. All e Norman of Lac e rest of those ladies roll out f a court bard in text for iliustrations. e decorative fig- ure work it is adorned there i® rit ex mmend the buying of book ike it could come New York: Uniuersit); Spirit and the People as Seen by Jordan VERYTHING that President Da- Starr Jordan writes is pur- poseful; whether he writes in be- of the Alaskan seal or of co-edu- versities, the thing which comes from his pen is strong with a mission. Therefore the reader who picks up “The Voice of the BScholar,” Dr dan’s latest published thought, may do so with the assurance that he wili find therein something which w the sincerity of strong acy of a worthy cause. vid balf cation in ur ring with a an's advc mar This coliection of essays, built upon addresses made by Dr. Jordan before various audiences, is a plea for the univer recognition of the American ur c f the great factors in ional life. Not only éc address his arguments to aded business man who falls to see in a university education anything save four years of frivolity, but he exhe the college man to grasp to itc f extent the conception of the niver as the leaven for the masses—the lever which is his to move The are the vade me- y scholar-citizen, merican Scholar” ars ago, the thirty- s of the scholar-pedant. t essay of collection, of the au- which the title awn, Dr. Jor- sh the mu- jence existing between ersity cuiture. Far arise an educated pro- might easily slip into an garchy of knowledge, the university training, says jordan, makes for the broadening on inteilectuality and the principles too often tacks of uneducated gogues. Says the essayist: re not only raises the man the mass, it turns the masses nen. That the muititude may im- agine themselves men before they hold a man's grasp on life is the greatest danger of democracy. Here again the university plays its part, teaching the relative value of jdeats. Under its criticism men learn that good results are better than good intentions, and they demand a far higher order of skill and courage.” Of the duty of the scholar to speak society &nd from , Erett G i out when the exigencies of national or social tendencies demand it, Dr. Jor- ian gives this clear-cut exposition: “The scholar is silent for the most the rush and hurry of the When he has no reason for = he reserves his strength for his own due season and his own line of ac- ti But he st be free to speak eds arise. The scholar shouid above all influences of passion or it He should speak for the clear, . unylelding, unflattering, unpity- truth. If he enters the arena he must take his chances with the rest. His thoughts must be his only wea- In an essay under the Apology for the American sity,” the auther re s the growth of the typical college of fifty years ago. when men were educated more for the sake of the degree than for the practical value of their knowledge. down to the present exalted concep- tion of a university and its work. With the broader sphere of the university comes the need for broader teache Here is what Dr. Jordan has to say Doubtless the average professor t th $2000 a year.. Doubtless 1 could fill every chair here on § But that js not the point. The fact the average college professor is wo little indeed. It is not a real men that make a un - Some real men you have, and y_are. There is no 0. ve , but Average men and average teachers yo can buy tied in bunches at any price you choose to offer. For real men you must look far and wide, for they are t demand.” Strc words are they, truth is being proven yearly. Upon the much agitated question of co-education the president of Stanford University speaks with no uncertain speech. He belleves that women have a right to higher edu : are, as a rule, fitted for ter of mental qualities that education in the same institutions w men is the best method for accom- plishing the end in view. Stanford’'s president talks; his vigorous but their and rite: ity he as perso. dor nates every sentence. By the direc ness of his diction the clarity of h thought he causes the reader to feel that in eve ssertion he makes he is deadly in earnest. Sincerity is the in- herent quality of the book. (Paul er & Co. n price $1 50.) Two Irhpt;r;dnt Contributions to EconomicScience WO books have appeared within T Francisco; the month which will take a high place in the literature of econom- They are “Getting a Living,” by George L. Bolen, the author of the last Year's standard book on the trusts, and “A History of the Greenbacks,” by Wesley Clair Mitchell of the depart- ment of political economy in the Uni- versity of Chicago. The time for ponderous volumes re- viewing the whole subject of economics ics. is past The subject has become so great that a scholar nowdays may think himself fit to speak if he is learned in ome of the many branches of the science. With the growth of the gubject of economics has come the ten- dency toward specialization. These two important contributions to eco- nomic literature are then the work of speclalists and as such are worthy to be recelved as authoritative. Thelr timeliness and the direct bearing they have upon living issues in the industrial life of to-day are added recommenda- tions. The title of Bolen’s book is somewhat vague and needs the subcaption of “the problem of wealth and poverty, union- ism and socialism,” to convey the pur- pose of the work. Grave questions are these and many have been the frothing screeds written for and against these modern issues since they became such. But it is safe to say that the author of “Getting a Living” has treated these various topics with a fair-mindedness which is unique. It /is the only work of all the partisan literature upon la- bor, capital and soclalism designed to give a fair approach to the whole truth. At the very outset Bolen seeks to clear the cobwebs of controversy away from Henry George's single tax and land ownership theories and show in an impartial way their strong points and their fallacies. Bolen would have it that, far from being a parasite, the landowner does a service to soclety by the very fact of his ownership. The unearned increment from land which, according to Henry George's theory, is the unearned gift of society to the landholder, is really the reward of the landholder’s degree of risk, says Bolen. The author cannot see that George’s theory of taxing all the economic rent ISRy § s THE SUNDAY CALL. THE ZRTILE Wiy TRRLE Kz of land would mean less than robbery if put into practice. Upon co-operation as the only tenet of socialism now in any measure of general ge Bolen contents himself with adducing the statistics of indus- tries which have been carried on on a co-operative basis and asking this n—if the attempts at co-opera- ve not resulted in anything more 1 rtizl successes and those only transient, 1d we do away with in- dividual competition for the sake of the closer brotherhood of man? The delicate question of trades unions, strikes and boycotts the author treats with a sure grasp. He defends the union idea as being within the natural e of the wage-earner. But in a r devoted to questionable policies de unions he censures the union’s general objection to piecework as evine- ing a disposition to render dishonest re- turn for wages, and deplores the ten- deney of unions to form a monopoly of labor by sympathetic strikes. In chapters upon the modern condi- tions of the poor and unemployed, prison labor, labor laws and kindred subjects, Bolen closes his work. A work it is which is not wanting in ex- pression of opinions but is remarkably rich in facts. (The Macmillan York; price $2 00.) Company, New There is a sure place for Mitchell's book on greenbacks. The experience of the United States with the greenbacks is of peculiar interest from both the his and economic points of view. This monograph treats the subject from both points of view, the first part being devoted to the study of the chain of events which led up to the issue of the paper money, and the second part trac- ing in detail the effects of the desertion of a metallic for a paper standard. The elaborate chapter on wages includes a detailed analysis of the Aldrich Report in comparison with the hitherto almost unused material by J. D. Weeks in volume XX of the Census of 1880. An interesting feature is the incidental sta- tistical demonstration of an element of truth in the much despised subsistence theory of wages. Similar studies on rent, interest and profits are followed by a chapter upon “The Greenbacks and the Cost of the Civil War,” show- ing to what degree the paper issues in- creased expense incurred by the Gov- ernment in carrying on the struggle. Not the least valuable feature of Mitchell's book are the statistical ap- pendices. These comprise tables drawn from the most authoritative sources upon the relative prices of commodities during the war period of greenback currency and the relative wage rates during the same period. (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago; price $4 00.) ° Limit Is Reached in Zenda Dariety of Strange Tales WVERY literary tendency goes to E the full swing of the pendulum. That style of story telling set in vogue by the “Zenda” books of An- thony Hope and “Graustark” of Mec-, Cutcheon has doubtless reached the cli- max now. “When I Was Czar,” by Ar- thur W, Marchmount, marks the ulti- mate point of the movement. Anthohy Hope evolved a specles of modern Arabian Night. He used the ordinary nineteenth century individual as his pawn and threw him into the shadow of kings, queeng and castles with such skill that the effect was startling and the public was pleased, A mere succession of wild adventures did not constitute his story, but woven about these bosses in the framework of the plot was such a texture of the every-day, the commonplace, that the whole effect was one of probability. The story scemed real during its entire length. In this latter book, “When I Was Czar,” the Hope idea has run wild. ‘Where the master of the craft content- ed himself with the possibilities of one plot idea, well worked out, his imitator has built a book which is a mere suc- cession of hair-raising adventures, one after another. Hope so skillfully veiled the machinery of his romances that the figures seem to move of their own voli- tion and not with the wooden mechani- cal jerk of the marionette. In March- mount’s story the situations are ob- viously all set and ready to be revealed to the reader with the actors moving precisely in the proper groove—just where the reader expects them to be. Harper C. Denver, an American traveling in Russia for pleasure, hap- pens to look like the Czar. An astute minister seizes upon this fortuitous eir- cumstance to inveigle said American into a secret mission. Notwithstanding the fact that Nicholas never is known to stir out of the palace unattended, the author makes this pseudo Czar go to all sorts of impossible places alone with a fair conspirator, be set upon by Nihil- {sts and brought to look upon sudden death in every chapter. All this be- cause an American citizen happened to regsemblée the Czar of all the Russias. Marchmount must be complimented for his ingenuity. He cannot be praised for his story telllng style, (Frederick W. Stokes, New York; il- lustrated; price $1 50.) A New Detective Story Which Fills All Requirements MYSTERY has ever proved fas- fl cinating to mankind since Pan- dora opened that fatal box and Lot’s wife turned to see what was hap- pening to Sodom. When we have not mysterfes we will read about them, no matter whether they concern the cut- ting of a throat or the loss of a hair- pin. This is why the stories of mystery never go a-begging. This is why Bur- ton E. Stevenson wrote “The Holladay Case.” Some great men confess to a penchant for the 5-cent yellow-back terror about “Qld Sleuth.” It relieves their minds from the cares of state. But the aver- age reader is prone to go a little higher. Sherlock Holmes has stalked thugs and robbers now across the length and breadth of England and America. That engaging scoundrel, Raffles, has been found in almost every situation that the fertile brain of Mr. Hornung can devise. Anna Katherine Green is get- ting tired. Enter then the amateur lawyer-detective of Burton Stevenson. A detective story has first of all to be one of these breathless tales that keeps the reader out of bed until the last page is scanned. It must also have but one theme and that the mystery. The situations must be anything but obvious; the denouement must be sud- den and startling. Not too long; no digressions, but straight, thrilling nar- rative. To these standards the story of Stev- enson answers with hardly an excep- tion. At . first blush the reader is thrown into a Coroner’s inquest in New York City, where circumstantial evi- dence points to a beautiful heiress as the slayer of her father. Because the chief witness is color-blind she is saved from the grip of the law only to fall under the influence of a mysterious Frenchman with the manners of a Chesterfield and the heart of a Ma- chiavelll. She disappears, the French- man reveals his plot by over zealous attentlon to details and then begins an exciting chase o'er seas-to a liftle French fishing village—and the solution of the mystery. The author carries his tale with a wonderful swing and the situations are all fresh and well worked out. It is unfortunate, however, that he should have given in to the demands of the time and added a love thread to the story. Love and sudden death by stab- bing are good combinations for the melodrama (15, 25 and 30 cents admis- sion), but add nothing to & detective .t?l‘:lycnry Holt & Co., New York; price $1 25.) For a Christmas Buyer of Books These Few Hints FOREMOST among the books which present themselves to the Christ- mas buyer is Gibson's collection for 1903. This includes eighty drawings of the illustrator, chief among which are those comprised in the series en- titled “The Weaker Sex.” Some feel that Gibson has done his best work and is now only drawing on his name; oth- ers are as eager to have a copy of Gib- son on the library table as ever. Be the merits of this question what they may, it is certain that the clever portrayer of the American girl has a class by himself and will continue to be popular for many seasons to come. (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York; price $4 20.) If you know a matinee girl who “sim- ply dotes” on any one or all of the gentlemen heroes of the stage, send her John Corbin's little booklet, “The First Loves of Perilla.” In this skit the vete- ran dramatic critic has aptly hit off the average sweet young girl’s first impres- sions of Richard Mansfleld, John Drew, E. H. Sothern and the rest of that noble galaxy. Not only does the little sketch contaln some sharp eriticism upon the art of these respective gentle- men, but it strikes out some good-nat- ured badinage at the expense of the matinee girl herself. (Fox, Duffleld & Co., New York; frontispiece in color by Gilbert.) For - those of & graver trend of mind Edmund Gosse has brought out the old ~Enchiridion” of William Penn, the Quaker, under the title “Some Fruits of Solitude.” In an introductory essay Gosse recalls that it was this little book, picked up in an old San Francisco book store, which cheered the long days of pain of Robert Louls Stevenson when he lived up on Bush street. “If ever in all my ‘human conduct,”” said Stevenson, upon presenting this treas- ured book to a friend, “I have done a better thing to any fellow creature than COPYRIGHTED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SoNs handing on to you this sweet, dignified and wholesome book, I know I shall hear of it on the last day. (H. M. Caldwell & Co., New York.) Paragraphs From the Gossip About Popular Writers HEN William R. Lighton, au- wthor of “The Ultimate Mo- ment,” which a Western paper describes as ‘“the best Omaha story ever written,” was only a small boy, he tried his hand at all sorts of writ- ing—stories, fragments of natural his- tory, verses—and insisted upon send- ing them to magazines. To earn the money for postage stamps he picked cherries “on shares” for a neighbor, and peddled his own share around the town, He made more than $1 that June, and invested in a supply of stamps that kept his MSS. going for several months. Despite this persever- ing spirit of enterprise, it was many years before his MSS. began to be ac- cepted; but with his new nowvel Mr. Lighton seems to have arrived. Messrs. A. S. Barnes & Co. are un- derstood to be undertaking an impor- tant series of books relating to Ameri- can history written by the participants and by some of the most famous ex- plorers of the West. While no full an- nouncement is made as yet, the series is sald to be one which will have a unique value in rendering some of the most interesting and valuable of his- toric explorations and adventures read- ily accessible in a convenient and pop- ular form. In selecting the name of Hunch Ba- deau for the hero of his successful new novel, “His Little World,” Mr. Samuel Merwin apparently chose a name sufficlently unusual, but an in- quiry has been received from a bearer of the latter part of the name as to the identity of Mr. Merwin's character. It would naturally be difficult to trace a relationship with a hero existing only in Mr. Merwin's vivid imagination. Mr. John Morley is to visit the United States next year, coming to de- liver an address at the opening of the 7 Technical College at Pittsburg in Oc- tober, 1904. It is to be hoped that he will find it agreeable to make other public appearances in this country, which he has not visited for more than thirty years. A lecture on Gladstone by Mr. Morley would take the country by storm, and he would be sure of ap- preciative audiences if he would speak on literary topics. The Scottish papers are delighted with Mr. Clifton Johnson's “The Land of Heather.” They all write of it with much interest. The Scotsman, for instance, styles the book “a plain and photographic account of what ob- servant and sympathetic American eyes saw in a leisurely sojourn In Scotland. He does what he sets him- self to do very well. He tells in an easy, unstudied way what he sees and hears. The sketches are touched with sufficient nicety and accuracy to make them interesting.” Hamlin Garland, author of per,” tells an interesting story of how he got his first inspiration to write fiction. He had left Wisconsin for a time, and was sitting in a little attic room in Boston, wondering about his future, when he heard a man unload- ing a cartload of coal in the street below. The sound made by the coal as It was released from the man's shovel—a sort of ringing scrape— seemed exactly llke the sound made by shoveling corn into a cornerib. It brought back to the homesick young man a vivid picture of his home, the farm and the life he had left. The inspiration for a story came to him, and he wrote a tale that was pub- lished in the New American Maga- zine of New York, then edited by Willlam Wyckoff. This was in 18835, and the story was afterward incor- porated in Mr. Garland’s “Boy Life on the Prairie,” and reproduced in his lecture on “Life on the Prairie.” At the beginning of an enthusiastic review of Mr. James Bryce's “Studies in Contemporary Biography” in the Atlantic Monthly, Mrs. Harriet Wat- ers Preston say “In one of his re- cently collected ‘Studies in Contem- porary Blography,” the Right Honor- able James Bryce remarks of that eminent scholar, the late Lord Acton, that ‘his mastery of the so-called hu- man subjects was unequaled’; and now that Lord Acton !s no more, the same thing might fairly be said of Mr. Bryce himself.” Mrs. reston goes on to say that “the twenty odd char- er studies brought together in the new volume afford fresh evidence of Mr. Bryce’s breadth and acumen as well as of his unusually wide ac- quaintance among the leading minds “Hes- of the day. The most admirable feat- ure of these twenty-one studies is their impartiality of appreciation. It is a list of shining names.” “Might have been written by Guy de Maupassant,” remarks the Chicago Evening Post of Robert Herrick's “Their Child.” It is not a rollicking tale, like Wister's “Philosophy 4,” this issue in the series of “Little Novels by Favorite Authors,” but a study in heredity, h a certain flavor of Bal- zac. The plot turns upon a five-year- old boy who suddenly reveals the wick- edness of his grandsire—a flerce old Berserker in the mad rages—and ypon the temptation that comes to his parents to drown their sorrows—he in drink, she in the company of her girl- hood’s sweetheart. New Books Received KING ARTHUR AND KNIGHTS, Howard Pyle; Scribner’s Sons, New York; price $2 0. THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR, David Starr Jordan; Paul Elder & Co., San Franeisco; price $1 50. THE HOLLADAY CASE, Burton E. STEVENSON; Henry Holt & Co., New York; price $1 25. WHEN I WAS CZAR, Arthur March- mount; Frederick W. Stokes & Co., New York; illustrated: price $1 50. THE DEVIL'S LETTERS TO MARY MACLANE, anonymous; The Inter- :luto Book Company, Chicage; price 50. THE STORY OF THE ATLANTIC CABLE, Charles Bright; D. Appleton & Co., New York; {llustrated; price $1. OUT OF A FLEUR-DE-LIS, Claude H. Wetmore: W. A. Wilde Company; {llustrated; price $1 50. GETTING A LIVING, George L. Bolen; The Macmillan Company, New York; price 32 00. FAMOUS MEN OF THE OLD TES- TAMENT, Morton Bryan Wharton; E. B. Treat & Co., New York; price $1 50. BADSWORTH ON BRIDGE, Bads- worth; G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York. A TWELVEMONTH OF HAR- MONY, Frederick M. de Witt, San Franeisco; price 35 cents. CRICKET'S CHIRPINGS, Alice Kingsbury Cooley; San Fraacisce. CALIFORNIA BLUE BOOK FOR 1903, complled and published by C. ¥. Curry, Secretary of State. HIS Charle {llustrated; A ROMANCE OF THE LIONS oF THE LORD ., THE OLD WEST N £ + o+ TXIE B8y HARRY LEON WILSON AUTHOR OF ‘' THE SPENDERS™ THE BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE: ““The Lions of the Lord’ is an im- mensely impressive story, Without affectation, without strain, without cari- cature, it affords a picture of the flight into the wilderness, and of the men who converted that fiight into a purposeful and ultimately triumphant conquest, which has not hitherto been equalled.” THE BOSTON TRANSCRIPT: * Heretofore no novel has dealt so vi- tally with the history, the scenes, and the characters of Mormonism, and no pred- ecessor has so clearly struck the keynote of its comedy as well as its fearsome tragedy.. Joel Rae, the hew, is one that may not soon be forgotten.” ST. LOUIS REPUBLIC: “The reader who begins ‘The Lions of the Lord” will cerminly finish it. There's a tragedy at the close, the in- exorable tragedy of Joel Rae’s life, but there’s also one of the prettiest of love- . story happy endings, In which a dashing cowboy plays Young Lochinvar in & way to make you want to jump up wnd whoop hurrahs for him. The plot is admirably constructed, and there is real vinlity in the people.” PHILA. PUBLIC LEDGER: “Certainly much has been written re- garding the Mormons, but no writer has before turned out a book which so clev- erly combines historical record with well-written fiction.” Postpaid, $1.50 LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY, BOSTON