The Century Magazine in its relation

The June

CENTURY

IN
N its fifty years of life The CENTURY has helped powerfully to create

and support American culture. We are deeply and humbly proud of our past. But we mean to be equally proud of a significant future. Culture has come out of her closet. It can no longer be defined in terms of art and literature alone. Today, a man cannot be cultivated who does not understand the significance of political, economic, sociological movements. So we are out for a CENTURY which is quick with all the living impulses of today, whose pages are full of the subjects that are in men's minds. We mean that the greater CENTURY shall be not only all that it has ever been to the lover of art and literature but, moreover, the best resource of men and women who are living fully in their own wonderful period of the world's history. We are going to make it more and more their kind of magazine; it is going to have more and finer articles and features which are vividly of today. We shall reach out to the sources; go to those men of our times whose vision is clear, whose special knowledge is interesting, whose position gives the a valuable viewpoint -- and inspire them to expressions of their thought. We shall admit men of many minds, as we believe our readers are not those who can be injured by exposure to thought.

Below are some of the contents of the June number:

By RABINDRANATH TAGORE: THE POET'S RELIGION

An intriguing paper on the poet's quest of the beauty and the

unity of life. By H. L. MENCKEN: JAMES HUNEKER

Mr. Mencken, in a paper of staccato brilliancy and provocative content, gives a satisfying picture of this “play boy of the seven arts"

in whose death the world of criticism lost an important figure. By CONRAD AIKEN: FOUR POEMS

These four poems of Conrad Aiken's, each of considerable length,

constitute the first of a number of such groups by poets of distinction. By HARRY A. FRANCK: RIO DE JANEIRO AND THE CARIACOS

An article full of Mr. Franck's zest for the true picture and his keen valuation of facts.

(See next page)

a

WENT to Kennuit to be quiet Harbor would be full of "summerites," through the summer vacation. dreadful young people in white flan

. I was tired after my first year nels, singing their jazz ballads. as associate professor, and I No, at thought of my spacious, leafy

had to finish my "Life of Ben freedom I wriggled with luxury and Jonson.” Certainly the last thing I settled down to an absorbed period desired was that dying man in the hot when night and day glided into one room and the pile of scrawled booklets. ecstasy of dreaming study. Naturally,

I boarded with Mrs. Nickerson in then, I was angry when I heard a pucka cottage of silver-gray shingles under ery voice outside in the tiny hallway: silver-gray poplars, heard only the "Well, if he's a professor, I got to harsh fiddling of locusts and the dis

see him." tant rage of the surf, looked out on a A knock. I affected to ignore it. yard of bright wild grass and a jolly It was irritatingly repeated until I windmill weather-vane, and made roared, "Well, well, well?” I am nornotes about Ben Jonson. I was as mally, I trust, a gentle person, but I secluded and happy as old Thoreau desired to give them the impression of raising beans and feeling superior at annoyance. Walden.

Mrs. Nickerson billowed in, squeakMy fiancee,-Quinta Gates, sister ing: of Professor Gates, and lovelier than “Mis' White from Lobster Pot Neck ever in the delicate culture she had at- wants to see you." tained at thirty-seven,-Quinta urged Past her wriggled a pinch-faced, me to join them at Fleet Harbor. It humorless-looking woman. She glared is agreeable to be with Quinta. While at Mrs. Nickerson, thrust her out, and I cannot say that we are stirred to shut the door. I could hear Mrs. such absurd manifestations as kissing Nickerson protesting, "Well, upon my and hand-holding,--why any sensible word!" person should care to hold a damp I believe I rose and did the usual female hand is beyond me,-we do

civilities. I remember this woman, find each other inspiriting. But Fleet Miss or Mrs. White, immediately askCopyright, 1921, by THE CENTURY Co. All rights reserved.

1

ness:

ing me, with extraordinary earnest- barrassed awe was diluted, and I al

most laughed as I wondered: "Are you a professor?"

"What is this story-book errand? “I teach English.”

Ho, for the buried treasure! I 'll fit up “You write books?”

a fleet, out of the six hundred dollars I I pointed to a box of manuscript. have in the savings-bank, and find the

“Then, please, you got to help us. pirates' skellingtons. 'Important paByron Sanders is dying. He says he's pers!' I 'll comfort the poor dying got to see a learned man to give him gentleman, and be back in time for some important papers.” Doubtless another page before supper. The harI betrayed hesitation, for I can re- bor is enchanting. I really must have member her voice rising in creepy a sail this summer or go swimming." ululation: “Please! He 's dying- My liveliness, uneasy at best in the that good old man that never hurt presence of that frightened, fleeing wonobody!"

man, wavered when we had dipped I fluttered about the room to find down through a cranberry-bog and enmy cap. I fretted that her silly phrase tered a still, hot woods of dying pines. of “important papers” sounded like a They were dying, I tell you, as that old melodrama, with maps of buried treas- man in there was dying. The leaves ure, or with long-lost proofs that the were of a dry color of brick dust; they chore boy is really the kidnapped son had fallen in heaps that crunched of royalty. But these unconscious beneath my feet; the trunks were defenses against the compulsion ex- lean and black, with an irritation of pressed in her face, with its taut and branches; and all the dim alleys were terrified oval of open mouth, were in choking with a dusty odor of decay. vain. She mooned at me, she impa- It was hot and hushed, and my throat tiently waited. I dabbled at my collar tickled, my limbs dragged in a hopeless and lapels with my fingers, instead of languor. decently brushing off the stains of Through ugly trunks and red needles smoking and scribbling. I came we came to a restrained dooryard and stumbling and breathless after her. an ancient, irregular house, a dark

She walked rapidly, unspeaking, in- house, very sullen. No one had tense, and I followed six inches behind, laughed there these many years. The bespelled by her red-and-black ging- windows were draped. The low porch ham waist and her chip of a brown hat. between the main structure and a sagWe slipped among the gray houses of ging ell was drifted with the pine the town, stumped into country stilly needles. My companion's tread was and shimmering with late afternoon. startling and indecent on the flapping By a trail among long salty grasses planks. She held open the door. I we passed an inlet where sandpipers hesitated. I was not annoyed now; sprinted and horseshoe-crabs bobbed I was afraid, and I knew not of what I on the crisping ripples. We crossed a

was afraid. moorland to a glorious point of blow- Prickly with unknown disquietude, ing grasses and sharp salt odor, with I entered. We traversed a hall choked the waves of the harbor flickering be with relics of the old shipping days of yond. In that resolute place my em- Kennuit: a whale's vertebra, a crib