it, and allowing him to work out his own solutions. Varina, Vanessa and Stella, the strange trio of women who loved the misanthropic Dean, aren't robbed of any of their secrets in this book; but they do emerge as quite plausible human beings. Published by The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

THE BIG WOP FROM PEORIA Much of the best American fiction is American only by virtue of a birth certificate pronouncing the author to have been born in the United States. There is no particular objection to this; a good piece of writing in the English tradition is certainly preferable to an unconvincing native epic.

But when an American writer does come along with a living presentation of his own particular world, this writer for one is inclined to cheer. A good American novel in which none of the characters are novelists, poets, playwrights or painters! And or painters! And one that doesn't pigeon-hole itself as an epic of the soil or the sea, of Americanization or anything else! Ramon Guthrie has done it, in "Parachute," and if anybody calls this book an epic of the air, Mr. Guthrie ought to be given a special license to shoot him.

"Parachute" is the story of Tony Rickey, "The Big Wop From Peoria," who shot down a German blimp, scandalized the town of Berkenmeer, struck up a strange friendship with a fading New England aristocrat, and went his bullying and blustering way in a beautiful apotheosis of disgrace. From first to last, Tony is as hard as a double-heated rivet, and as real as a tack on a chair. His Yankee friend Harvey Sayles,

loyal to unattainable gods while he deals out terrifying cynicisms, is an equally memorable character.

"Parachute" is a philosophical novel, quite as definitely as "The Bridge of San Luis Rey." The philosophy is that of Sinclair Lewis, and-though they may seem strange book-fellows-of Josiah Royce. It is the philosophy of loyalty-loyalty to friendship, to aspirations, and to hatreds.

Guthrie, like Lewis, is a good hater. He hates war, self-satisfied respectability, ready-made ideals andwomen. The gallery of feminine characters in "Parachute" is as unattractive as the "Before Taking" part of a patent medicine advertisement. First, there is Mrs. Gortion, the beautiful Russian wife of one of the nabobs of the town of Berkenmeer; she has the courage to flaunt her love-affair with Tony in the faces of the town, and has the same basic egotistical kind of integrity that Tony has-yet when Tony wearies of her and sends her back to her forgiving husband in the end, it is she, and not he, who is made to appear the traitor. Second, there is Betty Parkinghouse, a member of the "giggling, wholesome bevy of doughnut-eating virgins"; the story of her quest for a husband is an etching in double-distilled acid. The third lady, that competent Red Cross nurse, Adrienne Halleck, is a monster made entirely of inhibitions.

Though not an imitator of any one, Guthrie is by way of being a disciple of Lewis. Like Lewis, he writes in an idealistic strain of the friendship between men, and cynically of the love between men and women. .. What chance has a

lady got, when a good woman is a fool, and a bad one is a faithless bit of fluff?

But whatever philosophy there is in "Parachute" is quite implicit in the story; a story that is brutal, a bit mystical, and electrically charged with thought. Published by Harcourt, Brace and Company.

READING RUMORS

An astonishing event that we haven't seen chronicled anywhere is the retaining of four writers by an American industrial Croesus, with instructions to distribute themselves in four different parts of the globe, and for each one to submit, four times a year, a private report on the general status of his own particular segment of the world. Short of the mythical job of ticket-taker on a round-the-world cruise, it sounds to us like the world's grandest and softest situation. Each of the four, the story goes, is under a three-year contract, at a very comforting salary. And yet they say that the age of great literary patrons is over!

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In just about nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, a novel that is published by the author is so issued because it is a very gawky child, loveable only to its parent. The thousandth case is "Deluge," by S. Fowler Wright, an overwhelmingly vivid piece of imaginative writing. The best indication of Wright's peculiar quality that one can give is to say that where other prophetic writers insert rows of dots, thereby inviting the reader to do the work, he gives clear and plausible pictures.

"Deluge" was published by the

author in England not because it had been rejected by the London publishers-none of them had a chance to see it but because a literary agent whom Mr. Wright consulted advised him that no publisher would take it without radical changes. It would appear that by this professional opinion the agent did himself out of his ten per cent commission on a rather substantial

sum.

The Reading Roomer had lunch with Mr. Wright in London not long ago, and found him a quiet and modest man, opinionated without being dogmatic, and animatedly interested in everything from politics to poetry. He has an amazing amount of lore about contemporary American verse, and he has done an excellent translation of Dante's "Inferno."

Some of Mr. Wright's political and social opinions, which he states in a genial, dispassionate manner that belies their vehemence, are rather Butlerian in their daring scope. In this connection, it will be remembered that Samuel Butler too was his own publisher; but there the comparison ends. This man Wright is nobody's disciple, nor does he seem to care about making disciples.

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The writing group that flourished in Chicago in the earlier days of Sherwood Anderson, Floyd Dell and Edgar Lee Masters is quite broken up. Which reminds me of the American about to go on a literary pilgrimage to Ireland. "Where does one find the Dublin literary group?" he inquired. The answer came quickly and authoritatively: "In London."

My dear Editor,

THE CENTURY has been my meat and diet for so many years that I could not afford to miss a single copy. I have regretted the leaving of Mr. Tooker and Mr. Frank and Mr. Van Doren, but the new régime keeps up the quality and gives us the finest that is found in the American magazine.

Need Lyle Saxon discontinue his Big River stories merely because of the publishing of his volume? I hope not. There is a branch of my family that was an integral part of the old preCivil War river trade and the love of that sluggish muddy old stream still abides constant in my heart. With every good wish for the future success of THE CENTURY,

It is truly wildly exotic, care-free, and carelessly colorful trying to hide the tainted, dead, brown left-overs of a once pure, green summer. Just as the woman who doesn't appreciate the pureness of the finer things, lets that beauty fade and after realizing her loss tries to cover it up with gaiety and color. Oklahoma autumn, especially, has the melancholy spirit that the woman would feel with her regret and remorse.

I admire J. S. Worcester's manner of telling in a direct way what she considers the Truth. Christ did the same thing and in a righteously indignant manner which took courage, for he was speaking to men who did not want the Truth. But did not Christ also see more than vulgarness in the woman who touched the hem of his garment? She was another child of his Father's and not to be despised.

If nature is God's broadest material handiwork and so beautifully comparable to life in all its phases, is there not too a place for the woman that Christ did not scorn?

I enjoyed greatly the article by Eugenia Wallace, entitled, "A Business Woman Considers the Church." The article indicates an unusually fair and discriminating attitude of mind on this problem and is, all in all, a thoughtful and thoughtstirring contribution.

I have seen the church for a number of years from a variety of angles. I have watched the developments in organized religion with extreme interest. In general I have felt that the magazine writers who write on this topic do so from the outside and are often sadly unequipped, so far as correct information is concerned. Miss Wallace is rather an exception to that rule.

I believe she has touched upon one of the greatest sources of weakness in the modern church when she suggests, in other words, that in a world in which success comes through specialization the modern minister is often a mere "jack of all trades" and versatility the test of ministerial success. Many ministers dread the "one-man” church-the church dominated by some one wealthy and influential person. I believe another variety of "one-man" church is even more to be dreadedand that is the type where the one man is the minister.

Like most contributors to the discussion of this general problem, Miss Wallace finds much of the difficulty to lie in the inability of the minister to meet the intellectual demands of his age. This has become almost a commonplace of criticism. Yet I doubt if a careful analysis of the situation would show that it is wholly fair criticism and whether if it is fair, it is especially significant.

There are many educated and intelligent people in the modern world. Knowledge, as a whole, is immensely larger, in all probability, than it was a century ago. Yet with all the increase in education, there is very little evidence to indicate any wide

spread increase in general intelligence. The evidences seem rather to suggest that we live in a period of general intellectual decline.

The congregations who sat under Jonathan Edwards's ministry heard sermons that very few people to-day could read without a headache-let alone understand. Yet it appears that those people both understood and enjoyed those discourses. Moreover those past generations were eager for all the culture that was available and they seemed to possess a fine capacity for assimilating it.

In spite of the small group of the intelligentsia whom the church cannot supply with mental food, the indications are that the average sermon is more apt to "go over the heads" of the average congregation, than to be below its capacity.

Certainly in a world in which the average man church-goer is in bed, or reading the comic supplement, or the account of the latest fistic encounter, or trimming his hedge, or attending the movies while his neighbors are in church, one can scarcely treat as very serious the complaint that folks stay away because of mental under-nourishment. The church has made many mistakes, has many weaknesses. It badly needs overhauling. As one bringing spiritual food to man it is frequently very inefficient. But I feel that, on the general evidence, it can properly demand acquittal when the charge is its failure to keep pace with a supposedly enlightened age, many of whose surest facts will be the fictions of to-morrow.

Mount Vernon, New York.

My dear Editor,

Sincerely,
K. KINSTON

I have just finished reading "The Open Road" by George Witten, and wish to express my keen appreciation of that story, and hope that you will publish another of his stories at the earliest possible date.

I think this one of the best, if not the best, of short stories, I have read in a long while. Indeed I think it ranks with Mark Twain's "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn" stories and also with Booth Tarkington's "Penrod" stories.

Thanking you for this remarkable opportunity of reading such splendid stories, I remain, respectfully,

Heppner, Oregon.

JON CONDER, JR.

WE THANK THEE, JEW!

Centuries ago God chose the Jewish Race to be the schoolmasters of the world in religious affairs.

That they failed so woefully does not alter the fact that He undoubtedly selected the people best fitted for that particular task-we surely dare not assume that the Almighty plays favorites and loves one race more than another. For the fact, then, that the Jews brought forth to us our Messiah, we thank thee, Jew! For the fact that the Jews of the first century gave their lives in numbers to bring to us the truth about this same Jesus, we thank thee, Jew! For the great lessons of life in the Jewish scriptures, for the development of the idea of brotherhood as it can be traced in its slow growth in the Old Testament, for all that is fine and inspirational in Jewish writing, life and history, we thank thee, Jew! In giving us Jesus the Jews did not trick the world with an everlasting joke, as Ravage seems to think, but they gave us our highest hope, our deepest joy, our fulfilment of life. For which, sincerely, we thank thee, Jew!

But in the flowering of the life of Jesus, in His message, in His death and resurrection we do not see Jesus the Jew, but Jesus the Savior of all mankind, and that the Jews chose to reject Him is their own affair but our pity.

The spirit between Jew and Gentile will never be improved by such articles as that Ravage wrote in the January CENTURY. Because the Jews killed Jesus there has been thrown upon them a light so startling that in it their every misdeed become magnified and earns more blame than a similar offense by a Gentile. The injustice of this will never be improved by resentment, but only by more of the spirit of Christ which, unfortunately the Jews cannot possess. Indeed many who claim the name of Christian do not show in their treatment of others the gentle spirit of the Master.

Marcus Eli Ravage gloats over the power of the Jews in "imposing" Jesus upon the world. For that blessed imposition, we thank thee, Jew!

When we accept Him we accept all people for friendly dealing and for all injustice, for all the muddling, blundering and prejudice in spiritual affairs, we who accept Jesus register our profound

I could not say, until last year, that I was a constant reader of THE CENTURY. Before that time I had, perhaps, every third or fourth copy.

I am writing to congratulate you upon the rapid strides THE CENTURY has made in its understanding of what the thinking public wants and needs. This month I especially enjoyed the illuminating articles on Nicaragua and the quaint, though sometimes convincing flights of imagination in "Commissary to the Gentiles."

And I rejoiced to see another Asy Mulberry story. Asy is a philosopher in a class by himself. Although his geographical horizon has been limited his experience has not and I have an idea he could satisfactorily answer the lady's question at the end of "Uneasy Virtue."

Thank you for a splendid magazine.
Sincerely yours,

(Mrs.) CLARA E. ARMSTRONG

Berkeley, California.

My dear Editor,

I read Frederic J. Lawrence's article on "The Right to Happiness" twice; once aloud to Mr. Stauffer who picked up the magazine and reread parts of it, which was a high compliment, for he is scientific in a rather concentrated way—and yesterday I reread it myself. You see I am doubly grateful because my son's mind is keenly alive and eager, and the school has sharpened those wits on efficient whetstones. I realize that like Milton's Beelzebub he will be cast out from that heaven of service unless I can sell him the idea that he must become a man "who has found the center of his existence, a man who can be at rest in action, keenly alive but never disturbed. . . he has found that happiness partaketh of the nature of common sense. Such a person is by way of being a true philanthropist, for by putting himself in order he has taken the first step toward helping to create order in the world around him."

Wiggin wrote of Children's Rights as the right to be well disciplined, etc. We no longer speak of Woman's Rights in a militant voice, for we humbly realize that it means responsibility; and so through such articles as this we shall sometime learn not to think of the Right to Happiness with the intention of seizing it. I am glad this article was written with optimism. Because it is a transition age, a gaseous chaos, it cannot become "custom" and "code." Our children have found that the God their grandfathers were content to worship was part clay-and worse He was more full of vengeance than our standards permit for a good man. What wonder He brings them little comfort (with its old Latin meaning). I am glad you reminded those who have gone on devious detours that they have the Beatitudes.

Some twenty years ago when Parisian traffic was not organized, I remember arriving at one of those little islands of safety in the middle of the street with a sense of breathless gratitude, only to realize that to get anywhere I had to go on. I think Mr. Lawrence has brought out a very subtle point for this generation when the traffic of society is not yet organized along the road to Perfection. In fact the engineers aren't yet sure where to lay the road, or of what it should be built, and yet we have to go on. I wish Mr. Lawrence could embody the idea in a movie film so that the masses could get it, and go singing on their way, conscious of the power within.

I have another wish, that in answer to the deluge of articles assuring happiness "through liberation of the sex ethics," Mr. Lawrence would write an article on-What of the Child? All the articles I have read evade him, or leave him out of the picture entirely.