The Brooklyn Daily Eagle from Brooklyn, New York • Page 3

3 F. SCOTT FITZGERALD NEWS OF BOOKS AND AUTHORS THE BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE. NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MARCH 1922. F. SCOTT FITZGERALD "Open Covenants" An Idle Dream PERSONALLY CONDUCTED By JOHN V.

A. WEAVER I his daily raisins, for he is a man of iron, and the sweet anil toothsome heroine, are just another pair of "those creatures." Johanna, on the other hand, wicked, hard-swearing, warm-lipped and sloe-eyed. In spire of all her 4 I'd st. naughtiness she actually picks Martin up, although it is on a desert island will arouse a slinking liking for the bold young bagguge in any man. A soft 1110011, like, a soft answer, tnrneth away wrath.

Johanna sils in the moonlight once or twice, in between blowing men's brains out. Martin's iron cots a A VOVXG BRITISH SATIKISTS FIRST NOVEL. We are not quite sure whether Aldous Huxley is the English Donald Ogden By II. V. KAI.TENBORV.

Can secret diplomacy be eliminated Every right thinking Democrat will answer the question with an emphatic "Of course." Arid yet. and yet! Wnodrow Wilson wont to Tails supported by a world-wide public opinion favoring "Open covenants openly arrived at" and surrendered. Tlio British Government is In some re Stewart, or whether Stewart 13 the American Aldous Huxley. However, seeing that Huxley'n book of laughable and vitriolic short stories, "Limbo," ap pearcd almost three years ago, while Mr. Stewart did not begin his career of brilliant satire until something over a year back, perhaps the latter might poS' bit red hot in consequence, but is al- sibly be a incorrect description.

We don't think Stewart has been influenced unduly by Huxley; their styles are not at all similar. It is merely a similarity of outlook that we point out. Both of them are principally concerned with accurate, penetrating and extremely funny jeering at popular universal recognition of that right all others, in a spirit of confidence and swurlty engendered by the absence of intrigue and secret ambitions. Cnless diplomacy looks forward to I his and helps to bring It about. It will remain ensnnred In the old prac.

tlces which ever lead only to barren results. "The popular psychology cultivated under the narrow aims of nationalism has exhausted itself international matters In dislike and hatred of everything alien and of all that lien beyond the national pale. Such a state, of mind is ver ready to act the bull to any rod rag of newspaper sensationalism. So, the Insido managers of. diplomatic affairs may still say with some Justification: 'open discussion would too much excite the publio Altogether Dr.

Iteinsch doesn't se any immediate triumph for the pro-, ponents of open diplomacy. He wa a diplomat himself, representing the United States as our minister Jo China during the war when that country was a center of diplomatic intrigue. He knows the "gunie" and those who play It. His arguments against secret di institutions and uttitudinizlngs, concentrating, particularly upon Intellectual pos-lurings. Mr.

Stewart has, so far, confined himself to parody; he has made fun of authors, as in his "Parody Outline of History," and in his "Contemporary spects the most democratic In the world. Yet John Dillon told the House of Commons In 1911: "Foreign office policy Itas become progressively more secret every year." The Washington Conference is the first big International meeting which was attended by a fair measure ol publicity. But the precedent was not followed at Cannes and probably will not be at Genoa. Raymom I'oincare, who became Premier of 'France in signalized his accession by reverting to the old-fashioned method of secret exchanges among diplomats. No.

it isn't so easy to break the tradition of 50 centuries. That Is why Paul 8. Kelnsch's book on "Secret Diplomacy" Harcourt Brace Co.) bears as its sub-title the question: "How far can It be eliminat ways sareiy milled tiy a volley of Billingsgate from the naughty jade, just ns she seems to swoon on his stalwart bosom. It is lucky she is (lend herself before the book ends. Otherwise the heroine would be S.

O. L. In passing one might, say that the book is written in the usual graceful and liquid diction that Mr. I-'arnol knows best how to use. That he still persists in coating his heroine with a covering of honey meringue and his hero with moral virtues steel-girt may bo excused by the fact that not having lived in days of old when lady buccaneers were bold, no one may now say him nay.

Certainly times have changed and the world has sunk to a lower level, or something like that. Of course, the main purpose of the book "Is to finish off the yarn started in "Black Biirtlemy's Treasure." An author of Mr. Karnol's sensibilities could not be so unkind as to leave our hero marooned forever on a desert Isle. And oil author of the voeun of plomacy nre cogent and appealing. Th ed?" And what does Dr.

Iteinsch con-I mere fart that it Is a historic sw elude? I.et him speak for himself vlval of despotism and the chief stock in trade of those who nrrnare and Mr. Farnol would ho a darn fool if he ado two books grow did. So he has 1 Alfreds," now running in the Bookman, and of various absurd institutions, In his Vanity Fair and Life sketches. But, except for a story satirizing Big Business, in the Smart Set, he has not yet produced anything which was original In impulse which was not-a take-off, that is, upon something else. Huxley, on the other hand, had at least two stories in Limbo which were original, i.

not parodies, and his volume of poems, "Leda," which contained considerable beauty, was not confessedly imitative, although any critical eye could see marked influences of such dissimilar Inspirers as Keats and T. S. Eliot. This latest book is a strange mixture of first-hand Huxley and parody. We couldn't find a great deal of plot to it, but it kept us interested from first to last.

There's no doubt about it, Huxley is brilliant. Perhaps a bit "smarty" at times, but not too much so. "Crome Yellow" (Doran) The omission of the is accounted for by the fact that a pun is involved, "Crome" being the scene of the story concerns a house-party. A young poet and aesthete, named Denis we never found out his last name goes to Crome for his holidays. There he comes into contact with various persons who bore him, torture him and make him even sicker of life than he was before.

The people all have trick names. His hostess Is a Mrs. Wimbush, who believes in astrology. Her husband is Henry Wimbush, "who had a face like the pale, gray bowler hat which he always wore, winter and summer unaging, calm, serenely without expression." Mary Bracegirdle, and Anne (no last name given), are post-flappers, doll-like and stupid. Mr.

Scogan, a 'determined skeptic, is "in appearance like one of those extinct bird-lizards of thd Tertiary." There is Gombauld, an excellent young painter, who affects a Byronic appearance; and there is Mr. Barbecue-Smith, who writes where there was room for but one. The later Is better than the earlier "The abolition of secret diplomacy is not a matter of agreeing to have no more secrets. It is a matter of arousing among the public so powerful a determination to know, so strong ti sentiment of the value of truth, such a penetrating spirit or inquiry, that the secrets will fade away ns they always do when the importance of a situation is really understood by a large number ol people. "Complete freedom of local self-determination can lest only upon a make war should prejudice the world against, it.

The Socialist declares his brand of Internationalism will kill ilfc But the Communists said the same, thing and when they got control in Russia the secret police' at home and diplomatic Intrigue abroad became worse than they had been under the Czar. So In spile of Dr. Reinsch's book the question still remains: Can secret diplomacy be eliminated Noted Young Author of "The Beautiful and Damnad" (Scribner'i), With His Wife. neither will be classed as a Farnol masterpiece, "Martin I'onisbv's Vengeance" will satisfy that innate craving for' romantic literature that the human race will always have, no matter how sophisticated It may become. ears than the ones we were accustomed to.

We have no doubt Mr. Talloy heard the ones he has given, but he must have heard others. Wo wonder why, when he was transcribing the version of "Baa, Baa Black Sheep," so slavishly following the regular English version, he omitted the one universal in the South, which we heard a number of times: "Baa, baa, black sheep, Where's your li'l Iamb? A Close-Up of the Working Woman By ROSEMARY LYONS. To make palatable a phase of one of Hie most astringent subjects in the Way down in the valley; The bees and the butterflies a-pickin' out its eyes. And the pore li'l thing cryin' 'Mam-niy! Mam-ray! Mam-niy'!" Well, Mr.

Talloy has done a fine job, but we wish it. were better. There seems to us to be a leetle too much Talley and not quite enough original to most of the songs and rhymes. thought and work inspired by the studies and teachings of her professor husband, the late Carleton Parker. During her occupation at jobs In a candy factory, a brass foundry, laundry, a blenchery, a dress factory and a New York hotel kitchen, sir; lives the life of the factory girl In world, and to serve it without sucri (Icing one bit of its seriousness or was a mind of unusual quality for his surroundings.

It became even mora; powerful. Then it weakened. What, was tolerated on account of his infirmity ho took to he fearful gestures. Protected by his weakness he was a dragon among shrimps. Those struck at did not strike back.

Imagined It was his strength: actually It was his weakness. A mind that worked us subjectively as hard as his did wears out. He commits murder and Intimates his guilt. He ham- strings unimuls on dark nights. He gets to be mean simply for the Psy- idiopathic gratification it affords him.

Then, naturally, he heads straight for. the lunatic asylum. The book is what has been quaint Iv described as Russian, but it will not fail of interest. Tt is an Old Mission, type of story, skilfully assembled for all that, assembled. all its phases, totally disguising her own personality from her co-workers and employers, often even forgetting rendering It frivolous and insipid tu the process of cooking it into a delightful rarity, is worse than trying to hitch a Ford to a star.

Industrialism may be one of the most pessimistic and throat-parchiiig questions of the soul-inspiring novels. Many other characters come into the tale, but they are trick characters. Denis and the rest do all the idiotic things, say all the Idiotic speeches, and think all the Idiotic "deep thoughts" typical of a house-party; Denis makes love to both the girls, and reveals himself as an ineffectual fool. The whole story is simply a fine satire on almost every phenomenon of present-day British thought, custom and character. It Is acid, it is screamingly funny in places, and it is disagreeable In the extreme.

After we had finished it we stood up, kicked oursclf hard several times, and then went out in search of something else to kick. "Crome Yellow" makes you see yourself as a complete fool, in the midst of a world populated with other fools. or strangling her own identity to conceal it from herself. She learns to John Dos Passos, author of "Three Soldiers," has just returned from five months in the Near East. He left Constantinople about the time his book was published and toured through Georgia and Syria, painting and writing.

He is half-way through another nvel. During his trip hs received no news of the outside world and knew nothing of the stir his fine work had made until he arrived at Beirut, about a month ago. see the individual joys and sorrows of the so-called class of working women, and through it trios to impress her reader with the Idea thai it is Individual, this great problem that learned psycho-economists have tried to make general. What she finds out she tells In an extremely Individual and entertaining fashion, peppered with plenty of "My Oawd, girls, stop talking and get to work!" and a series of more or less humorous quirks in the weighty Better Than "This Side of Paradise" A re-reading of H. L.

Mencken's Defense of Women" (Knopf), which has just been printed in a new and slightly different edition, convinces us that Mr. Mencken knows just about as much about the other sex as any man does. Which is infinitesimally more than nothing. However, he puts his speculations in a most amusing and interesting way and the book makes excellent reading. Some time ago we came to the conclusion that there is one familiar saw which sums up the whole question: "Any generalization is correct in regard to scheme of industrialism characteris When "This Side of Paradise" appeared, we wrote the.

first review it ever received, under the scarehoad, tically enough written In the spontaneity of the American language. There are no startling new facts or women; and each individual woman will be an exception to the generalization discoveries disclosed In the hook. It does not claim to revolutionize anything; it is just a patchwork of point day. but Cornelia Strutton rarker haa so served it in her "Working With lie Working Woman" (Harper oi on unusual record of the experience of a college woman parading as a notch in the lower cogs of th industrial wheel. In the entertaining account of her experiences In six industrial institutions Mrs.

Parker has digressed from the. habit of her predecessors who, in most cases, have attempted to 'solve the whole problem of the industrial world by placing their poses Just over the threshold of a workshop, sniffing the busy air, and exclaiming, "Dear me, how foul!" thereupon hastening away to write treatises on the unthinkable, conditions of the working class. Perhaps no college woman or student of economics has been able to submerge herself so totally into the life of the working girl ns did Mrs. Parker when, with (lie aid of jude earrings, a. faded green tarn, bntlercii spats, a huge wad of Blackjack, a suitable vocabulary and an unprejudiced and receptive mind, she gossiped with standing in line for a Job at a brass factory.

In "Working With t)i Working Worn which Is a sequel to the record of an unusual love, marriage and career portrayed in "An American Idyll" the biography of her husband, Mrs. Parker carries on thoi Speaking of Mencken, "The American Credo" (Knopf), that collection of ed human interest stories. Not until the end of the volume does Mrs. native Boobiana which he and Nathan have been running, for months in the Parker reveal some of the deeper SAGE ROMANCE. To those who enjoy a swiftly-moving, exciting tale of the West of the wild and wooly days "The Settling of the Sage," by Hal G.

Evarts (Little, Brown Co.) will make a strong appeal. Evarts knows whereof he writes. Ho is a student of human nature and a lover of the open spaces and has th ability to transfer that knowledge ex-" rellcntly into the written, word. Evarts does not overdraw his char- actors. They are not only probable but actually seem to have existed." They are real people, and his descrlp tlon of their life and surroundings leaves little lo bo desired in light, at-) tractive fiction.

i Cal Harris was a character of the transition days when the old open West of the free ranges changed to the. West, of squatters and growing villa ires. Then he entered the country nf the Throe Bar ranch, the first sign that mot his eyes was, "Squatter, don't let the sun set on you." He stayed. not only stayed but he started some- 1 thing by introducing squatter's rights and fenced-off grazing land. He had a lively time dolntr It, but he succeeded and Evart's story of his 1 fight for his rights and for the in- economic phases of her observation Smart Set, and which was available In book form some time ago, has been re published in an augmented edition.

Bead it and weep. when she lends her reader to see- perhaps for the first time the inherent simplicity of the. often abused STEPHEN McKENNA'S LATEST. subiect of the "working class." Rhodes and Kennelt Harris, and many another; but indirectly his example has encouraged innuniberable beginners to throw off the traces, and set out upon an attempt at something entirely new and different. When we were reading "The Beautiful and Damned" (Scribners) In the "Metropolitan," our faith in the future of Fitzgerald whs somewhat shaken.

The story didn't seem to hang together, it seemed sensational in incident, and its cleverness appeared strained. But now that we have, read it as a whole, in book form, we see that it is a huge stride forward. And while we are far from satisfied that Fitzgerald has done- as welV as ho might, we are convinced that, when he finally finds himself say 10 years from now he is going to be one. of the really great figures in our native literature. For lie is rapidly approaching that compromise between freshness and form which is necessary if the American novel is to have life and at the same time art.

He has a keen imagination, a vivid method of caressing himself, and "pep." Even when he is most "disillusioned" he cannot keep Personal experiences sans egotism, research work without the self-con "A New Star 011 the Horizon." The star is still In the ascendant, but not yet has it found its true position. "Flappers an.l Philosopher showed that F. Scott Fitzgerald, the brilliant young man who looks so much like one of his own characters, could write short stories with nimble plots and flashing sometimes flashy dialogue, incident and characterization. Other short pieces appeared, some of them revealing unmistakable haste; there was grumbling among the fogies at Fitagcuxild's attitude on 'life and letters. Undoubtedly this was only a meteor, which was already burning Itself out.

He shocked many, he enraged not a few. And so on. There were signs of incorrigible smart-aleckism. But we had our own view. Here was a boy, in the mid-twenties, who had seen his first book hit the hundred-thousand mark, who had found sciousness of the professional Investigator and meddler constitute Mrs.

"The Secret Victory" (Doran), by the author of the excellent "Sonia," is a novel illustrating the contention that a woman never falls out of love with her first lover. The setting is contemporary London- society. The hero Is a playwright, whose earlier history has "evidently been told in "Lady Lilith" and "The Education of Eric Lane." This book Is well-written, not especially exciting, but Parker second book. If there is a way to simmer the paramount sub iect of industrialism down to tins fundamentals of the individual human good reading. heart Mrs.

Parker has done It and well in her book. terosts of the girl with whom he fell In love will keep you awake better Dostoyevsky's Life By His Daughter Fanny Butcher, the Tabloid Book reviewer of the Chicago Tribune, pulls a good" one this week. She says: "A new organization which is called 'the American Viewpoint Society" has been made part of the publishing business of Bonl Liveright, with Donald F. Stewart, author of 'A Parody Outline of as Its head," etc. Wc can imagine Donald Ogden Stewart's face as he reads that.

than three eups of black coffee. Ro- mance is delightfully woven Into thn plot. It never becomes mawkish, sentimental or too dramatic. II. C.

ROWLAND'S "THE MAGNET." According to the paper cover, thore was a demand for the reprinting of "The Magnet," by Henry C. Rowland (Dodd, Mead If there was, then here It is. The demand may have it, for all we care. N. J.

himself a 70-day's wondir. Could he be blamed, reuJIv, If so much quick success went, to his head? When we consider the maundering propensities of some of the elder, "established" authors, we wtfider that Fitzgerald remained within any bounds. He has beei to post-war American letters what Victor Hugo was to his time: and "This Side of Paradise" is the "Ernani" of today. It was the manifesto of the "younger generation," and whether or not you like it, per se, you have hal time now to see its effect upon the junior writers of this country. It broke the way for ANOTHER SCANDINAVIAN NOVEL.

Gunnar Gunnarson's "Guest the One-Eyed" (Knopf) is an Icelandic study. The characters arc all peculiar, violent, gloomy, almost pathological. Very primitive, at the same time. There are dark deeds and curiously elementary villainies and much soul-searching in this book. And there are numerous bursts of exquisite writing.

We don't know exactly what to make of it. It is uneven. If you like typical Scandinavian novels, you will like this. a loosening of the stodgy technique enthusiasm out; even when he is most "cynical" there is an irrepressible glow of vitality; even when he is most sophisticated thprt Is an undlmmed naivete underneath. The story itself is, we suppose, a reductio ad absurrium of the "younger generation" thesis; that is, it shows what might happen if two of these sophisticated you.ig people, "liberated" from precedent, having cut themselves adrift.

and tossing about on the sea of disillusionment, should get married. Gloria is a spoi'ed. exquisitely beautiful, ex-flapper. She is the product of "lines," judicious potting, and the years of playlng-around which come nowadays to girls between 14 and 23. The apotheosis of egotism.

Anthony has loafed along through college, and has emerged with a fairly good smattering of culture, a smooth exterior, and an almost total lack of illusions. He is good for nothing practical, because he has been brought up in the expectation that he will Vie the sole heir to some 30 millions of dollars. Given these two members of "society." and the world the way it is today and you have a crash. How the crash came about makes a novel to read hich is dutv and a privilege that vou owe to yourself. JOHN V.

A. WEAVER. By LI LA imi'GIEHE. A new biography of Fyodor Dostoy-evsky by his duughter, Almeo (Dostoievsky) has lately come from the Yale University Press. It was intended that the book should be one of the contributions to a centenary celebration of his birth, which was being prepared in Russia for October, 1921.

Then came tho Revolution. The centenary and Dostoyevsky are submerged in the deluge, and the biography must find another beginning out of the hard necessities of its author, now an emigre in Switzerland. It was destined not even to be written in Russian, for it is understood that this is the same biography which Mile. Dostoyevsky first set down in French, had translated into German and published in Munich and Zurich in 1 920, reviews of which appeared in France in that year. In thinking of the book, we should remember Dostoyevsky's history.

It is probable that the author has been at a great disadvantage in undertaking it so far from all sources of Information; no doubt her notes and mute-rials of the sort are with the Bolshe evsky's energy, integrity and high moral standard. She very naively forgets that the. rest of the Dostoycvskysi whom she detests and consigns to everlasting limbo, are also Klavo-Norman. The Dostoyevsky family came from Lithuania by way of where the Normans had conquered and laid the foundation for its hereditary nobility, and It was to this class that they belonged. She is very tender on the point that it was customary among Dostoyevsky's detractors to think of him as plebeian, and speaks of It later In connection with Tolstoi.

There Is a long chapter on Tur-geniev, of whom she speaks bitterly. The old quarrel Is told again, but the reasons given for their differences are rather superficial. Dostoyevsky did dislike what he called the pretensions of Turgeniev, but the difference was more fundamental than that. It was a difference in temperament and character. Turgeniev was sophisticated, Intellectual and atheistic; Dostoyevsky, simple, intuitive and mystic.

It was only from the point of view of the artist that they were able to agree at all and to "carry on" his political ideas. It is very curious in this connection to see how prophetic Dostoyevsky was "This week a New York department store," says the Harper publicity sheet, "advertised extensively a 'new, attractive Zane Grey which is a taupe gray, and is described in sartorial lingo as 'a delightful' shade." This will probably go big with working girls. Our idea of a Zane Grey would be something resembling a London fog. We can see some sense in an urbane, polished Alexander Black, or even a snappy, mysterious Anna Katherlne Green. But a Zane Grey which had been carefully built up by adherents of the "well-made" story: and while his technique is far from ideal, something is working out of it, a compromise which will perhaps be very great art, eventually.

But what the first book principally did was to Introduce new material; It made this wild, keen, enthusiastic younger generation self-conscious; it encouraged them to self-expi essioi, to open revolt against the platitudes and polly-annalysls of precedent. In a literary way, Fitzgerald's Influence is so great that it cannot lie estimated. In some cases the influence can be traced directly vide Steve Benet, and such long-established authors as Harrison John Mascfleld's two plays," "Esther" and "Berenice," are available in book form, published by Macmillan. They are both adaptations from the" classic I'Yench tragedies of Racine, and "Berenice" Is an almost direct translation. They are suitable for presentation by amateurs In search of poetic drama.

who long ago seized the rest of While John V. A. Weaver Did Not Seem Frightfully Keen for "OH SUSANNA" By Meade Minnigerode Other critics like it immensely. For instance, Heywood Broun Pay in The World: "It In a picatant and an aqrftaOlr ylwc of May Lambcrison Becker, In Thr. lot rcewnmenda it "For a man uhmn tHspoxitlon An-ft IWn wrtrk-ti hu thr inflnmza; for a vounfi fr'iMv drramlitfj of thu ra for an old om who tike to rvntl ahvut Sno York vhtn ftnte Ntrert uvtnu for a m.tlriiettynt periun looking far a rrtfyif vod The Herald says: "It dora ffood ihrrc It In rffecthrly alhf.

It unit flavor i.i real, and it tin a fine twing and- mrrrp. A real contribution to American l.tvratun So there you are Don't miss this exhilarating adventure story of the old American clipper ship days. At Bookstores, $2. Putnam's her property; but it seems to us that the fault lies more in tho treatment than in the content of it. There are Beading "Negro Folk-Rhymes" (Macmillan), a collection made by Thomas W.

Talley of Fisk University, we were struck by the difference between his Torsions of lullabies and songs and the ones we remember from our childhood. facts to interest us, but the writer THE LION'S CAGE lacks all power of the artist to illumine them to re-create for us, with vital in his understanding of the Russian situation. That abyss between the people and the Intelligentsia, which he said would never be brldued, remains today. He opposed the political Ideas of the Intellectuals of his time, which had came Into Russia by way of Europe, because they were not Indigenous to Russian soil and could not pos-! sibly be by the consent of the gov- erned. That abyss between government and the governed was never i We had a Mammy, and we like the way she phrased some of these songs much better.

ity and conviction, the portrait of her It seems to us as if It might be possible, by the way, that Mr. Talley has father and the world in which he moved. Even the Petraehevsky affair, with its comic tragedy and its mock death, has not stirred her imagination, and the memories of her childhood bring us no more magic than that her father liked sweets, sat up all night and was more extravagant than her mother. Instead, we have recountings of petty family quarrels, stories of the jealousy and Injustice of friends, from all of which Dostoyesvky emerges blameless, so that tho book alternates between the worship of her father and the settling of old scores with his enemies. Then there is that "idee, fixe" about race heredity.

It is made to account for the reactions of every character under analysis. Tolstoi was of German descent; ergo, his beliefs. Tur-geniev, Mongolian; therefore. Jealous. Pushkin, African, and passionate.

Dostoyevsky wus Slavonic, with little Russian or Oriental in the mixture. She. is very proud of this Slavo-Nor-man strain, attributing to it Dostoy than It is today. The most Interesting pages in the bonk are those In which the author discusses tho future of Russia and its inevitable linking-up with Asia. She says these are Russia's kinsmen these Orientals and their fates are hound together.

Europe Is finished and European ideas. The future Is with Russia and Asia, and they should lit allowed to work out their own problems in their own way without Interference from outside. The Bvzantine state of culture in which the masses, villi their simplicity and mysticism ptill linger, has no sympathy with the anti-Christ, anti-nationalism of the intellectuals. Some other way must be found which will be an expression of their genius and their faith. It is all verv interesting and perhaps prophetic.

Thre are to us the most Interesting pages in the book. Hendrik Willcm Van Loon, author of "Ancient Man" and "The Story of Mankind," looks the part of a "learned doctor" one with a sense of humor, if you can conceive the possibility of such a thing. He is large not fat, but very argeand he walks with an impressive swagger. His face is round and unmistakably Hollander. When he speaks it Is with a perfect comedy-Dutch accent.

Even when he is discussing the most serious matters there is a distinct air of Weber and Fields about him. Not that it is burlesque in the least, you understand, but there is a permeating comedy feeling. As a matter of fact, ho is humorous a great deal of the time, and it is genuine humor, which makes him most delightful, vis-a-vis. If it were not for that disposition to smile at even the most painful conditions, Hendrik would undoubtedly have gone quite mad out in Yellow Springs, Ohi6, where he has been teaching history in Antioch College. Ho hasn't said anything outright, mind you, but from various anecdotes I gather that Yellow Springs is the quintessence of Main Street.

He will escape from the sticks and go to Baltimore in the fall, where he will write for the Sun. His style is lucid, simple, and yet always individual; he knows what he is writing about, and he always achieves "authenticity in a tone of brilliant informality." He illustrates his own writings, in color and in black-and-white, using whatever implement is at hand; if he has no paint or pen or pencils, he is expert with a match-stick or a toothpick. I guess his age at 37. A very wise, erudite gentleman with a keen wit; a scholar and a was, mature In judgment, youthful in enthusiasm. J.

V. A. W. Five BIG Novels often taken well-known English rhymes," Mother Goose and what not, and rewritten them into negro dialect. Some of them are so very familiar.

He hasn't Improved them much; the dialect in many cases seems deliberately forced. On the whole, the book is of considerable value. Fully two-thirds of it seems to us absolutely authentic, and we are glad to see these rhymes collected. But here's an example of what arouses ouf suspicion. You all must have heard a song, current around the '90s, which went: "I went to the animal fair, The birds and the beasts were there; The old raccoon, by the light of the moon, W7as combing his auburn hair," etc.

Talley's version is stretched to some four stanzas, and all the lilt has been removed from it. His begins: "Has you ever hearn tell about de Animal Fair? Dem birds and Beasts Was all down 'dere. Dat jay-bird a-settin' down on his wing! Has you ever hearn tell about any sitch a thing As whut 'us down at dat Animal Fair?" Isn't that awful? He also ruins another classic our rocking-days by rendering it "De cherries dey're red; de cherries dey're ripe. And de baby it want one. De cherries dey're hard; de cherries dey're sour.

And de baby cain't git none," etc. How different from the natural swing and soothing music of the way Aunt Betty used to croon it: which you niut not tdIm SHEILA KAYE-SMITH'S JOANNA GODDEN "The moat vivid, original, rent pcrsor that venn Pver put into a book." V. P. It AW SOS in The iitubr, tiixlh Edition A Study of Gloomy Psychology Yo-Ho and a Bottle of Perfume! CHARLES G. NORRIS'S BRASS A Novel of Marriage The powor of this novel's unsparing truth Is making It tremendously effective.

Fortieth KilMim. EDWARD LUCAS WHITE'S AND1VIUS HEDULIO Une of the Ag book ilea Its reports tu-o iuilri which men who like a trnnd story niv simply 'Vattnur Thii la one of them. Seventh E-IOiou. ROBERT KEABLE'S SIMON CALLED PETER I.ifr mils tt: 'A good book that deserved to widely rad." Thirteenth Edition, BRETT YOUNG'S THE BLACK DIAMOND Thr Tr bunr tif: "l'w pnssap-es In fiction Miirras's In brtllancy of conception thoat tht civ flame fttisf atned lire to the closing chapter! of 'The Black Diamond." Kach At All Bookntore. If not, they can had from the publishers.

E. P. Dutton Co, 681 5ta N. T. works.

Black thick smoke blows down and around and through it. With htm lives his deaf-mute brother, Gregory, and their wives, Hannah and Nan. Between the brothers there is no communication: they might have lived thousands of miles apart for all the words that pass between them. Yet they know each other. They seem to possess an extraordinary means of understanding eacii other.

So close does it bring them, in fact, that their wives, frail, worn, haggard creatures, know or understand neither. It is uncanny; the whole house Is gruesome. No writer who is principally a craftsman could fix the setting more effectively. Greater stuff is left for craftsmen whose imaginations are not timid, or incapable, as Miss Sackville-West's is. Dene himself is a character of broader dimensions.

It Is easily con By Nl'NNALLY JOHNSON. Miss V. SuckviUe-West's "The Dragon in Shallow Waters" (O. P. Putnam's Sons) is evidence of a striking willingness to labor on a story to the end that it may be a product of which she need not be ashamed, or which, when she achieves whatever Koal she aspires to, she need not regret.

The appalling figure of Silas Dene set against a background of sodden scenery and vague people is likely to linger a. long time in a reader's memory. It is an impressive" book. Primarily the story is a study. Dene at no time is a real flesh-and-blood character.

He is something from a bad dream. Afflicted in the most horrible way, probably, that the author can imagine lie is, and has been since birth, blind he is part of a carefully calculated expedition into doom. He lives in an isolated house "Cherries are red, cherries are ripe, Baby, he wants one. Cherries are ripe, cherries are ripe, Baby cain't have none. Cherries are too sour to use.

Babies are too young to choose. But bye-and-bye, baked in a pie. Baby shall have some." "Nigger, nigger, never die, black face and shiny eye" has been stretched beyond our. recognition; "Ast your mother for fifty cents to see the elephant Jump the fence; jump so high he reached the sky and never come down to the Fo'th of July," which is the way we always heard It, has been enlarged to epic proportions. We could giv a.

dozen or more examples of versions less pleasing to our pistol, held in her shapely hand. Or a something to be strangled into nothingness, swinging from the yard-arm. Or, perhaps, to be cut off by a bit of dope dissolved in a mug of Elizabethan ale. Of course, she falls in love with Martin. And the reader falls in love with her.

Whatever warning might have been wropped up in the book goes entirely astray. But, then, more likely Mr. Farnol put Johanna, the swashbuckling female buccaneer, into his book to make it sell oftoner. If that is so, he has accomplished his mission. Frankly, the lady pirate is a bit of all ripht.

Martin, who doulittess cuts By WILLIAM CIRRIE. Disturbed by the increasing admiration for tho he-woman in whatever mind the Twentieth Century has left, Jeffrey Farnol appears to have determined to set a horrible example of what may be, sometime. In "Martin Conisby's Vengeance" (Little, Brown Co.) he treats the world to the picture of a lady pirate. Dear, oh dear, but sho is violent. Dead men's bones are so many cobblestones for her pretty little tootsies.

The breath of life in him who crosses her Is a mere something to bo snuffed out with a shot from a great horse ceivable, the corroding of. his mind in the loiitf, damp shadow of a soap- under the depression of blindness. It.