The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, May 29, 1904, Page 5

THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. SHE GATHERS Literary Gems in Japan. 4 Temples,” com- om the works of s P by fame; her part ts way, too, iph in aste in the culling, ging of the gems gems—he who damned to lose the darkness of pass the oppor- ntage by this woman's the curtain back to at poetic Japan. iters whose words have been d are those who have r subject sympathetically; eve gone to the spot to search e soul of Japan, and seem to love glimpses of the elusive thing as occidentals can grasp. So the nature of the book is appreciation. g these writers is Lafcadio Hearn, who is fairly lacquered with the love of Japan, making it the land of his sdoption and becoming citizen—as Jap- anese &5 he could be perhaps without donning a yellow skin. It is with ar- éent eloquence he endeavors to make comprehend his chosen country. of the best of his is where he tells us of the holy island of Enoshima, the Deity of Beauty, Devotion, Love, the Goddess of Elogquence, and also f the Sea—"the eternal poets ghty syllables no man can of course, Hearn de- whose n scribes w poetic glow Fugi-San and some of the temples. Another enthusiastic writer is Sir Edwin Arnold, who, being & Japanese by marriage, so speak, naturally Joves the Island Empire and describes it in caressing wo s. His chapter on Fugi-Ban, the marvelous sacred moun- tain, is & prose y Xo less loving, po less eloguept are the pearly compo- sitions of Pierre Loti—he who writes as if possessed of the mind and .mood of a lotus-eating god, and can on the occasjion of his giving us glimpses of things &s he sees them be careless of 2ll that's ug d lull us with dream- wh; 1s most fair. here Pierre Loti's work he readers who like to ments In & land of s one of the directest there is to go via Vi- ume contains chapters varied and 1 y enough to cover all the main «cts about Japan and all that is v t s done by master hands. BEth- ry, religion, manners, arts, chapter on modern Japan, all for beauty and compell- re the accounts of “Places ts.” ¢ mystic and pretty things t to a temple in Yo- i from outer to inner nd again from these, led priest, p ny guarding at last to the innermost sanc- and r, and there where the god was expected only a mirror is seen. You are not told the mirror's meaning; cach must interpret for himself. It is upposed that some of the secret of it e guessed from the doctrine that ¢ who seeks the Buddha can only find him by looking into his own heart. In the brief account of the religions of Japan the most notable thing noticed is toleration. Shintoism and Buddhism @o not antagonize but accept each other, and the people merge them in ary They rejoice in a birth onies and bury their rites; and Jap and unfanatic, walts will- v religion which can it is better than the striking things tudy of the ! ok is this toler- the apparent splendid ion which the nature Japan the building thereon of the Even Shintoism. in a recoznition’ that very vague, nan person- n of its their devotione. with Sh cerern One of stian ideals. tract is ror which con- national belongs this hat the ladies li = Greater tal men know It is manners and cust carrying from house what is called “the ¥ in tubs of water. Each housewife in turn orders a slice cut off the honora live fish, and then the unfortun able live is chucked back in the tub to keep h remainder fresh until another house- wife wants another slice, We wonder, upon hearing this, what kind of cruel soldiers these unmerciful mothe would breed. Surely it would be t rible for the Cossack to be caught in the clutches of the sons of such mothers and they happened to take a notion to deal with them as if they were no better than honorable live fish. All in all, it is an interesting hour the book gives in telling of this em- pire of beauty and its artistic natured people, this land of silk and chrysan- themums and cherry blossoms, sacred mountains and temples built on high of silk c sy in peace and steel courage in war, this New t that seems so naturally fitted to some day comprehend arid adopt Christian ideals and, if they ever do, to do them daring- ly and well. (Dodd, Mead & Co., lustrated; price $1.50.) —— PHILLIPS HAS Triumph in ‘“The Cost.” New York; il- AVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS, whose rise as a novelist has been accomplished with the rapidity characteristic of the present day swing of fiction and fiction makers, has put the capstone on his recently erected pedestal with his latest story, “The Cost.” Have there been any doubts of his powers up to now they must assur- edly waver before the direct assault of this remarkablv compelling novel. A story such as “The Cost” raises itself head and shoulders above the zone of commonalty and stands out pre-emi- nent among the fruits of a year's wide writing. Phillips is a writer of affairs. His “Master Rogue” and “Golden Fleece” showed the broad, hurried current of modern life; the muddied, cloudy cur- rent is his province. In his last story he has gone down deeper into this turgid flood, followed it to its sources. Not only does he trace the flow from its inception down through the tortuous channels of present day circumstance and opportunity, but he makes an analysis, almost chemical in its com- pleteness, of the mud and the siit which darkens and solls the surface of the stream. Money, what it does for its possessor; power, what an influence for good and for evil it swings; the vanity of society, what a hollowness and a mockery its tinsel enfolds—these are the materials out of which Phillips molds “The Cost.” The materials. are not new; they bhave been.used time and time again by other hands. “The Honorable Peter Sterling,” “The Octo- pus” and “The Pit,” “The Thirteenth District,” Gertrude Atherton's latest; “Rulers of Kings”—all of these stories of recent years have been builded on the same themes, yet Phillips has evolved something new and vitally alive from this well handled lumber, 7 trace the develppment & for strength of cnarac- zlut of power in his eh: llips opens his with the of the two men and the woman who are to figure in the iniense of the John Du- . Ann Arbc - recaution of Pauline’s par- ding her away to college, the s are secretly married and ibarks on a business career the high ideals of a wholesome life of Pauline, vet at there cnters the influence of an awkward gawk of ident, Hamp- en Scarborough, a man come to col- lege with the nurpese of learning all there'is to learn that he mav fight > world with his knowledge. While Pauline is secretly bound to the ambi- tious John Dumont, she is more and more drawn under the spell of Scar- borough of rough-hewn, crude stréngth ents in John th al Phillips shifts the scenes. Her mar- riage acknowiedged, Pauline foliows her husband’s fortunes to New York, and there comes the unmaskirg. The brute in John Dumont first shows the gleam of its eyes; Pauline’s marriage bonds are allowed to stay only that the great god Appearances may be ap- peased. With the accretion of every dollar comes to John Dumont the lust of awealth, and with that, power. To the dizzr heights of a trust king, = financial arbiter, he soars, forgetting wife, honor, charity, everything in the vellow ‘dazzle. With each step in the rise of Dumont Phillips. traces the ad- vance of Hampden Scarborough in the right. A leader of men, ancorator of power, a man charged with tremendous ideals, Scarborough finds himself the leader in the fight against Dumont's despotism. Quite another Peter Ster- ling is he. How the ‘tremendous forces of John Dumont totter to a fall, only to be built up again into an engine of vengeance, how his life becomes honeycombed with areed, charged with sin and bitter with frightful strivings; how Hampden Scar- borough comes into the fruition of his life’s ideals; how Pauline finds the sweet that the world sometimes reveals —these are the tissues of a narrative of striking vividness and dynamic force. 5 (Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapo- lis; illustrated; price $1.50.) THE ROMANCE of Roguery in “‘Picaroons’’ OULD the clever collaborators, Gelett Burgess and Will Irwin, only have sustained to the end the dash and the verve that mark the opening chapters of “The Picaroons” they would have achieved more suc- cess than even the generous meed due them. For the scheme of their book is novel, its atmosphere some- thing never yet produced with quite the same touch and the tales they have to tell are in themselves gems of short stories. With a happy con- ceit about which to thread their stories and a couple of rattling good ones placed at the start, the two writers seem in a falr way to keep up the merry pace they set until “The Forty Pantellas” and “The Story of the Re- turned Klondiker” begin to show strain and “The Story of the Retired Car Conductor” falls very flat. Had it only been that the delightful vagaries of Coffee John and Big Bertha or the rare adventures of the Harvard fresh- man with the bananas could have been equaled throughout the book, the two local writers would have made an W) B ) I} ), epic of San Francisco's underworld indeed, The joint authors are very alert to the fact-that our city has a field fof the picaresque wider, more fertile, more Cistinetive than any city in the land. r book reflects admirably the lileg the town known only to the blueconts and police “reporters. The water the gambling holes” of Chinatown, the “hop joints” and sail- ors’ boarding-houses—a terrk in- cognita for most folk, are made to dis- play their secrets of tragedy and comedy under the searchlight of Burgess' and Irwin's odd humor. Many of their stories are not stranger in fiction than in their bona fide oc- currer for some old-timers will tell you the story of Big Bertha and the tale of the newspaper syndicate of rank outsiders is old in the annals of local newspaperdom. p Would you catch the charm of the world that lies east of Kearny street and north of Market, the world of the vgrafters,” the “bume/” the picar- esque, read “The Picaroons.” The dull pages you can skip. Fortunately, there are not many such. (McClure, Phiilips & Co., York; price $150.) AR S A CRITICISM Upon Abbey’s Frieze. New DWIN A. ABBEY'S frieze decora- tion in the new Boston Public Li- brary, which has for its theme the legend of the Holy Grail, is, with Sargent’'s compadnion study, “The Sources of Religion,” in the same build- ing, the most perfect example of mod- ern mural decoration. These two re- markably artistic series of allegorical panels, the one with its incarpate mys- ticizm ' of veiled prophet and ecstatic psalmist, the other incorporating the ideal of man's spiritual existence, have an importance in the world of art that cannot be overestimated. Their being signalizes a high triumph for our Amer- fcan school. That we may the better appreciate the worth of one of these friezes, Abbey's “Holy Grail Legend,” Sylvester Baxter, an authority upon art criticism, tive and descriptive monograph, under the title “Edwin A. Abbey's Conception of the Holy Grail.” An interesting fact concerning Ab- bey's scheme for the delineation of the grail cycle, which Baxter gives promi- nence at the outset of his book, is that the artist's decision concerning the sub- ject of his frieze came quite unexpect- ¢dly. Intending to create a serles of panels whose scheme should be the gources of modern literature, just as Sargent had deplcted the sources of modern religion, Abbey began to make researches preparatory to working out his conception when the all-pervading influence of the grail legend in early literature caught his immediate atten- tion. The possibilities of this fleld, of- fering itself as it did practically as vir- gin ground to the artist and capable of the highest esthetic interpretation, caught Abbey's decision at once, and he proceeded to put into color and line what Walter Map, Sir Thomas Malory, Chrestien de Troyes and all that noble company of ancient bards had done into story. Baxter devotes a well written analy- sis to the esthetic significance and ex- alted poetic concept of the grail theme. He believes that the search for the mystic cup is representative of the high spirit of enlightenment and religious faith that has characterized both the spiritual and the sensual uplift of man- kind. This legend, so persistent, so fundamental to all our early literature, embodies the sum total of the desires AITCHIL has written an interpreta- and achievements of the higher life. “The Quest of the Holy Grail,” says Baxter, “signifies the quest for spir- ftual enlightenment as pursued through life by the righteous soul of man—the grail. as we have seen, being the symbol for illumination of the soul through the wisdom that comes with the right use of knowledge. ~ Hence nothing could be more appropriate, nothing could set a loftien standard for them that thirst for learning than this sacred legend set forth in this place. By the very nature of man this quest must underlie every activity that makes for the growth of the human soul,” The remainder of Baxter's work is devoted to an interpretation of the artistic work, a description of the various panels in detail and an anal- ysis of Abbey's art. Very strongly does Baxter commend Abbey’'s hand- ling of his motif, especially the re- straint he has exercised in keeping down the spirit of his progressive scenes until the climactic episodes in the story of the grail allow the artist full swing. Special notice does Bax- ter call to Abbey's faithfulness to the facts of archaelogy and history in the matter of his costumes, his architec- tural backerounds and the spirit of the scenes he depicts. This little interpretation and appre- ciation of Baxter's is illuminating and scholarly beyond the ordinary meas- ure of art critiques. It develops, the hidden excellence of Abbey's frieze and gives a comprehenslve view of the whole which must make for a more perfect understanding on the part of all readers who are furtunate enough to view the erigiral. (Curtis & Cameron, $1.50.) Boston; price ——— WHITE WRITES Thrilling Tale of North. TEWART EDWARD WHITE, the writer who has made the forests and barrén grounds of the great north real to us, now comes forward with another novel laid in the heart of the country that is so throbbing with life to him. “Th2 Stlent Places.” which ran in Outing serially, under the title “The Trall of the Jingoss,” and is now in book covers, is a story that thrills the blocd and twangs the nerves like ncthing that has been written about the Land of Silence since young Jack Lon- don first showed his touseled head over the horizon of fiction. White's latest story narrates the in- cidents attending" a great man hunt through the wilderness of Canada and out into the white desolation of the Barren Lands. A bad Indian, Jingoss, who has jumped his credit with the Hudson Bay Company’s trading post ut Conjuror's . House, is followed through trackless wilds and snowy des- erts by two indomitable backwoodsmen for the space of four seasons and at lest brought to cover, when both the quarry and the trailers are nigh dead from the rigors of cold and starvation. The chase leads over river, rapid and lake, through forest silence, across the dead white dome of a frozen north- land. Day by day, month by month, there is the unceasing battling with the grim forces of nature—a struggle that assumes’ the proportions of the herolc under the skillful pen of White. Strong, remarkably intense, is this nar- rative of almost superhuman struggle. The early part of White's story, wherein is pictured the stretches of green woods and shimmering waters, has all the rare freshness of the wood- land that makes the author’'s other storfes of the trail so redolent of the large free spirit of the great wilder- ness. Following the two woodsmen, Sam Bolton and Dick Herron, up wind- ing water courses, over portages and through piney thickets, the reader catches the sound of the white water and scents the musky odor of the spruce needles with a startling vivid- ness. Then when the trail of Jingoss leads into the heart of winter's fastness there is pictured a grim and terrible panor- ama of desolation and of the naked, primordial play of nature's forces, bru- tally overwhelming. White's narrative rises here to a tragic pitch, which fol- lows beat for beat the terrific swing of the winter cruelty that strikes its way into the reader’s very marrow. The . strange love story which threads its way through the tale offers itself as a good ensample of the au- thor's restraint In the handling of something that might prove a fatal weakness. Indian girls who have a love for white men have been features of stories before—usually the excuse for a deal of sickly sentimentality; White's girl, May-May-Gwan, is as true a redskin as Dick Herron is the hard-skinned woodsman, and she does not offer her heart with tender words of rippling sweetness at every turn of the road, as a Hiawatha of Charles Majors' creation, say, would in- evitably do. Much of the strength in “The Silent Places” lies in the sharply contrasted natures of the two woodsmen. In Sam Bolton White has drawn a character of such rich and mellow fullness, so mature a gentleness, that he is at once a candidate for our affections. The spirit of the woods to have tempered him to a fine perfection as the juice of the oak staves sweetens old spirits. So unlike this gentle, old woods man is young Herron, impetu- ous, boorishly strong, unthinking, until his heart is fined by the tragedy that ‘comes to him under the snowpall of the barren lands. These two men are ¢ licately sketched out from the background of the .story. Again, “The Silent Places” is rare reading. It is away off the beaten path of fiction, something powerful and vividly real. (McClure, Phillips & Co., New York; illustrated; price $1 50 TR P RO STRAY LEAVES for Vagrant Bookworms. 8 a good indication of what San Franciscans are reading we pub- lish the list of twelve books that have been most in demand at the local branch of the Booklovers’ Library dur- ing the month past: “Slr Mortimer,” Johnston; “The Vi- king's Skull,” Carli “Adventures of Elizabeth in Rugen'; “My Friend Pros- ro,”” Harland; “Cap’'n Erl,” Lincoln; he Rainbow Chasers,” Whitson: “A Daughter of the States,” Pemberton; “Rulers of Kings,” Atherton; “A Woman's Will,” Warner; “Order No. 11,” Stanley; *“Denis Den: Hornung; “In the Bishép's Carriage,” Michelson. W. E. Norris ture’s Comedian,” to be published this month by D. Ap- pleton & Co., is an interest- ing study in egotism, its hero being a great actor, a gentleman and a man of the world. His ambitions, his mo- tives, his successes and his failures are skillfully drawn. Harold Dunville sug- gests a composite of several well known matinee idols, but he is portrayed with so distinct a personality that we won- der if the man has not really lived amons us. 3 “The Ballads of Bourbonnals,” by ‘Wallace Bruce Amsbary, with plctures by Will Vawter, has just been pub- lished by The Bobbs-Merrill Company. The poems deal with a settlement al- mest unknown to the country at large. In 1835 certain venturesome French traders from lower Canada came into the fertile valley of the Kankakee, in Nliinois. They bought land of the red men for a mere song, and induced a number of their countrymen to settle with them. To-day the colony numbers about seven thousand. Bourbonnals is the typical town of the settlement, with rot a single resident of English de- scent. The ballads were written by Mr. Amsbary in the hope of preserving the dialect of the Illinois French-Canadian. In addition to the quaintness of the dialect the volume has considerable hu- mor of a whimsical sort. The Baker & Taylor Company an- nounces the completion of arrange- ments for English editions of two re- cent books, “The Strife of the Sea,” by T. Jenkins Hains, which has attracted very wide attention both in this coun- try and abroad, and “My Mamie Rose,”” Owen Kildare's story of his rise from the Bowery. “The Strife of the Sea' seems to appeal very strongly to English publishers as the sort of work which the English publie will ap- preciate, but what seems curfous in this relation is that the story of a man’s rise from the Bowéry struck the English publisher as unlikely to appeal to his public, because it was so Ameri- can. If the popular English books, which deal with special phases of Lon- don life, were failures in this country, there would be a small chance for Eng- lish works. However, the start of “My Mamie Rose” in America is most prom- ising, being now in its fifth thousand. William Dean Howells, the dean of American novelists and critics, has gone abroad for the spring months. Perhaps his most endearing trait—and he has many—is the generosity of his praise for the rising generation of flc- tion writers. To an English interview- er he said recently: “Chicago is becoming the center of an active school of novelists. I think very highly of Edith Wyatt, who has a fine sense of style, but knows litera- ture too well to be literary. Then there is Edith Wharton and poor Frank Nor- ris—to the mysticai side of whose na- ture no one has ever done justice—and Brand Whitlock, who has written the best American political novel that has ever been done, “The 13th District.” The publishers, Doubleday, Page & Co,, have received a letter from the French Minister of Public Instruction stating that he has subscribed for a certain number of copies of the French translation of Booker T. Washington's autobiography “Up From Slavery.” This is an honor that the French Min- istry of Public Instruction bestows only on books considered as having a great educational value for the children of the public schools and the readers of popular libraries. The action of the Department of Public Instruction is in keeping with the unanimous praise that his work received from the French reading public and the critics. Philip Verrill Mighels, whose story, “Bruvver Jim's Baby,” represents a new and genuine success in American fletion, was born in Carson City, Ne- vada, in 1869. His father founded and .edited the Carson Appeal. Like so many other literary men, young Migh- els was educated for the legal profes- a2 “rrmoL o~ Rom IAE rrgnce GRAIART PBLLLS PSS TR oo XA sion, and went so far as to practice a short time. But the fatal step had already been taken—he had published a story In the Sacramento Bee at the age of 18: a storv about a little boy and girl, for which he received no pay. He abandoned the law, went to San Francisco and earned a limited living as a sketch artist and then as a re- porter. Finding this unsatisfactory, he went to New York and edited three trade journals for a year. Then, “dead broke and friendless,” as he himself says, he started out to work for him- self. The first individual work he eve got paid for was a “Carrier's Addres: in verse, for which a syndicate paia him $75. Then he wrote advertising verses, and in fact anything that came to hand, and finally struck into story writing, and, as the saying is, “found himself.” Mr. Mighels is of New Eng- 9and ancestry and is a nephew of Pro- fessor Addison E. Verrill of Yale. He has recently contributed a number of unusual stories to Harper’'s Magazine. Charles Wagner, whose volume of wise and kindly advice to the members of the family, “By the Fireside,” has Just been brought out by McClure- Phillips, has decided to visit America, where he has so many friends, in Octo- ber or November. He will deliver ser- mons and-lectures, speeches to children and young men’s clubs, and will make addresses in the universities. “Side by side with my lectures,” he says, “I in- tend to carry on a discreet propaganda for my work here in Paris. This work is the center of my activity, and con- sists essentially in the dQiffusion of the great principles of the gospel under a simple and logical form appropriate to the mind and the needs of the time. I hope to find in the United States sym- pathy for this work, to which I have given my efforts all my life.” ‘Winston Churchill's new novel, “The Crossing,” was published by The Mac- millan Company on May 25. This novel narrates the crossing of the Cumberland Mountains, first by the American ploneers and then by the tide of American emigration, In the years between 1778 and 1792. The love story is even more romantic than in Mr. Churchill's former novels, and the book is especially distinguished by its wealth of the romance of adventure. In his mew novel, “The Queen's Quiar,” Maurice Howlett has under- taken to tell the whole story of Mary of Scotland as she herself knew it; to paint her as she appeared to herself and to others, to depict her heart, her love, her power, her errors, her pain, her sway througlr all the six years’ tragedy of her life in Scotland. This is sald to be one of the great books of the year in its power, its literary qual- ity and its skill New Books Received. THE SINGULAR MISS SMITH— Florence M. Kingsley; The Macmillan Company, New York; {illustrated; price $1 25. AT THE BIG HOUSE—Anne Vir- ginia Culbertson; The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis; {llustrated. DOROTHEA—Maarten Maartens; D. Appleton & Co., New York; price $1 50. MODERN ARMS AND A FEUDAL THRONE—T. Milner Harrison; R. F. Fenno & Co., New York; illustrated; price $1 50. A DICTIONARY OF ETIQUETTEH —W. C. Green; Brentano's, New York; price $1 25. CONFESSIONS OF A RAILROAD MAN—S. R. I Community, New York; price $1. TRUSTS VERSUS PUBLIC WEL-~ FARE—H. C. Richie; R. F. Fenno & Co., New York; price 50 cents. THE BETTER NEW YORK—Dr. ‘W. H. Tolman and Charles Hemstreet; The Baker & Taylor Company, New York; illustrated. WHAT JESUS IS DOING—J, F. Shorey; Alfred Holness, London. HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES—Henry W. Elson; The Mac- millan Company, New York; price $1 75. JAPAN DESCRIBED BY GREAT WRITERS—Esther Singleton; Dodd, Mead & Co., New York; illustrated; price $1 50. OUTLINES OF UNIVERSAL HIS- TORY—George P. Fisher; American Book Company, New York; with maps; price $2 40. CHRISTMAS STORIES, by Dickens —Hdited by Jane Gordon; American Book Company, New York; price 50 cents. SAMUEL SMILES' SELF HELP— Edited by Ralph L. Bower; American Book Company, New York; price 60 cents. LIVES AND STORIES—Grace H. Kupfer; American Book Company, New York; price 45 cents. STORIES FROM LIFE—Orison S. Warden; American Book Company, New York; price 45 cents. FORMS OF ENGLISH—Charles F. Johnson; American Book Company, New York: price $1. DIE MEISTERSINGER—Edited by W. W. Bigelow; American Book Com~ pany, New York; price 70 cents. EL SI DE LAS NINAS—Edited by Geddes and Josselyn; American Book Company, New York; price 50 cents. EURIPIDES’ IPHIGENIA—Edited by W. N. Bates; American Book Com- pany, New York; price $1 25. ELEMENTARY ALGEBRA—J. H. Tanner; American Book Company, New York; price $1. ELEMENTS OF ALGEBRA— George W. Hull; American Book Company, New York; price 50 cents. ROLFE'S SHAKESPEARE, revised edition, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Midsum- mer Night's Dream: American Book Company, New York; price, each, 56 cents. CARLYLE'S ESSAY ON BURNS— Gateway Series; American Book Com-~ pany, New York; price 35 cents. BURKE ON CONCILIATION—Gate~ way Series; American Book Company, New York; price 35 cents. ELIOT'S SILAS WARNER-—Gate- way Series; American Book Company, New York; price 40 cents.