Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

he has the advantage of writing on soldiers and war from the inside and not as a spectator; but when he imitates Mr. Kipling in his patriotism and not in his dialect only, he descends to such bathos as the conclusion of "The Sea-Nation":

For us the seven seas in one:

For landlocked hordes oblivion. Even Davidson, in his posthumous book of "Fleet Street," must needs end his varied and unequal struggle after poetry with an Imperialist ode that is of a piece with any Jingo's swaggering doggerel:

Sea-room, land-room, ours, appointed

ours,

Conscious of our calling and the first among the Powers!

Our boasted Ocean Sovereignty, again and yet again!

The Nation.

Our Counsel, and our Conduct, and our Armaments and Men!

One of our leading wits has lately compared the Imperialist to the cuckoo, because, among other obvious reasons, he always sings the same note. That note has now become a danger and degradation to our country, besides being an intolerable bore. But we all know of the cuckoo that, as the time approaches when, according to the country-people's saying, "in Augúst Go he must," his note begins to fail and he can only get through one-half of it. May we not hope that the sound of failure and querulous disappointment in "The City of Brass" is a sign that the poetic August is also coming and the Imperialist monotony will at last cease dinning in our

ears?

BOOKS AND AUTHORS

Professor George Herbert Palmer's address on "Self-Cultivation in English," originally delivered at commencement at the University of Michigan, is published by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. in a cheap and convenient form which adapts it for use as a kind of tract for the dissemination of sound and sensible ideas on this highly important subject.

A "prize mystery story" is the definition affixed to the title of Miss Stella M. During's novel, "Love's Privilege," and a note on the cover informs the reader that of 35,000 readers only 106 correctly guessed the solution of the mystery, indubitable evidence of the author's skill. The story is, however, something better than a tale of murder by some unknown person or persons, for it presents three remarkably

well studied types of feminine character. The villain is unmanly beyond credibility, but he soon disappears from the story and the other two men are fine fellows if not especially remarkable as detectives. J. B. Lippincott Co.

The second volume of Friedlander's "Roman Life and Manners Under the Early Empire," translated by Messrs. J. H. Freese and L. A. Magnus, covers new matter in the seventh and enlarged edition of the original. Its subjects are the spectacles, the amphitheatre, the theatre, Roman luxury, the arts, the artists and music. The scope of the work includes information, making it possible to compare the ancient Romans under the Empire with other nations and with the Romans of other days, and there is a great quantity of detail.

The Index, like the author's excursus and notes, is postponed until the fourth volume, but even as it stands the work is valuable to students of Roman history, and indispensable to the growing number of students who rebel against the drudgery of using the lexicon and biographical dictionary. E. P. Dutton & Co.

Mr. Winthrop Packard's "Wild Pastures" is a sheaf of eleven papers written apparently for no other purpose than to keep the No-eyes family in the state of humiliation to which they were long ago reduced by the good Anna Laetitia. Mr. Packard manages not only to see but to hear fascinating things in the most unpretentious places; and he goes forth in pursuit of elusive odors of flower, leaf and leaf bud and finds their source although he plunge thoro' brake, thoro' briar, as in the ancient catch. He is SO agreeably sensitive to delicate gradations of color that his pages furnish a pleasant contrast to the perfer-vid glow of some similar works and leave one with a hope of some day enjoying experiences similar to his. The No-eyes person will indeed be abashed by his achievements, but the humble seeker after the vision will find him most encouraging. Twelve delightful pictures by Mr. Charles Copeland illustrate the sketches, and it is a quaint instance of the whimsicality of the book that the most interesting picture represents the skunk "who doesn't know where he is going, and isn't even on his way." The furtive, sinister aimlessness of the creature as he gazes straight at nothing is a thing to remember. Small, Maynard & Co.

The moral of much of the latest fiction is that anybody may be anybody, and the reader must go softly, making no rash decision as to the shape which the creature before him may next assume, but eyeing it carefully to catch

the first sign of its next transformation. This ensures attention to the author, but lately two or three writers have gone further and have presented heroes who are two persons at once, like "the jollies, Her Majesty's jollies," and one of them is the chief character in Mr. Anthony Partridge's "The Kingdom of Earth." The "Kingdom" is like Belgium rather than any other land, but the hero is hardly to be supposed to be a portrait, inasmuch as he is both Crown Prince of Bergeland, and the mainspring of the conspiracy against its reigning house. He is made fairly credible and his adventures are not too wild to be accepted, and the heroine also may be accepted, in these days when Russian ladies of title deliberately plunge into infamy, calling their behavior work performed in behalf of liberty. This heroine stops short of degradation and murder, although she foolishly permits herself to join in a conspiracy, and the thread of her adventures and those of the Crown Prince become entangled so effectually that one is rather surprised to find both of them alive in the very satisfactory last chapter. "The Kingdom of Earth" is a very agreeable romance. Little, Brown & Co.

Do the same vampires, harpies, sirens, parasites, robbers of sorts lie in wait for every son of a rich father, especially if he be left an orphan? One must so believe or reject the theory of Mr. George Randolph Chester's very clever "The Making of Bobby Burnit," and the gay good nature with which the tale is related makes the thought of such rejection very unpleasing, Bobby's father not only constructed an exceedingly shrewd will, but he entrusted one of his business subordinates with a series of letters, each to be given to his son when the contingency described upon its gray envelope should arise, and although Bobby's career for the next

four years was anything but commonplace, letters exactly adapted to the occasion regularly appeared. One after another, various scoundrels, weaklings, and fools attempted to guide him, and one after another each taught him the lesson that no other species could teach, and little by little he changed from an honest, trustful simpleton into an honest, sagacious leader, and when this apparent impossibility was effected, the last of the series of letters was found to begin, "I know you'ld do it, dear boy." The doing is the story, and all innocent folk not too wise to learn from fiction may learn something from Bobby's failures, but instruction is not the end for which a novel is constructed, and "The Making of Bobby Burnit" excellently fulfils its actual end, amusement. Bobby is a delightful acquaintance and young women who read of him will echo Desdemona's wish when Othello was autobiographical. Bobbs-Merrill Co.

The Spiritualist acceptance and utilization of the work done by the Society for Psychical Research is one of the most amusing performances of the century to all persons not belonging to the society, for it is exactly in line with the tactics which they have pursued from the beginning. That such a book as Mr. Fremont Rider's "Are the Dead Alive?" should have a title page and preface insinuating that the S. P. R. is in some way responsible for it is not strange, and that its title should attract many credulous readers too wise to accept the New Testament evidence still standing after nineteen centuries of test and attack was to be expected. The contents include fragments from a large number of serious works of serious investigators arranged in a confusing fashion and mingled with other fragments conspicuous for bad logic. The title page, said to be "One of the most Remarkable Pictures of Levitation Ever Published," and described as

showing the medium floating in the air, looks in its half tone reproduction like a picture of a gentleman standing on a step ladder but half concealed in a cabinet behind him, and partly supporting himself by resting his left hand on the knee of one member of the circle and his right hand on the arm of another member. It would need no ghost to supply the very slight agility necessary for such "floating." Any able-bodied hanger of wall paper, any upholsterer, any householder wont to put up stovepipes, any housemaid accustomed to wash windows could perform far more wonderful feats with no help from the dead-alive or otherwise. B. W. Dodge & Co.

Women

When one examines the stories told of type-writing women by their sisterone wonders whence a girl gathers courage to enter the business, and when one meets the strong, clever, excellent women who follow it one wonders how the novelists dare to write of them as belonging to the class which men fancy that they may insult. That they should, almost from the moment when the type-writing machine became a necessary piece of office furniture, have been virtually informed that they must not expect respectful treatment gave a startling evidence of the lowering of the standard of manly decency caused by immigration from countries in which no girl remains alone with a man for an hour and retains her good reputation. That they nevertheless followed their calling, and both demanded and obtained proper treatment showed that both the native and the immigrant girls were determined that the native theories of decency should not be abrogated, and their general success in carrying their point is equally creditable to their tact and their resolution, but, in spite of both, there are still men and women stupidly prejudiced against the type writer,

One of these women is Miss Elizabeth Dejeans, and the men in her story of "The Winning Chance" treat the typewriting heroine as if she were necessarily a light woman. The author makes her, in order to save her mother's life, accept a home and support from her married employer, and then presents a respectable young man perfectly acquainted with her story as anxious to marry her. Neither morality nor art is served by such a tale, and in its most sentimental passages a wicked impulse to laugh obtrudes itself. It is not possible to weep over the woes of a married man when a girl tells him that she loves another. Why should she not? J. B. Lippincott Co.

In spite of all that has been written and printed about Turkey during the years which have passed since the Crimean war, the popular conception of the Turk is a blended Othello and Nana Sahib with a dash of Haroun al Raschid. The popular fancy figures this pleasing creature as surrounded by an Ashanti Emperor's allowance of wives, and wearing a very large turban, or, as ferociously butchering innocent Christians and tossing babies on pikes, obtained the Djinns only know where in the present state of European armories. Now and then, a consul or an ambassador, and at rarer intervals, a missionary, ventures to correct a line or two in this portrait, but nobody minded such officiousness until the Young Turks flamed into action, and now there is a demand for knowledge; and those who seek may find some in "Haremlik," Mrs. Kenneth Brown's book of stories about Turkish wives and husbands. It by no means takes the place of formal handbooks or his. tories, but it supplements and vivifies them with its pictures of home-life, its reports of home-talk, and it should at once and forever dissipate the belief that well-educated, well-bred Turks are

Moors, Rajputs, or Arabs. The author, a member of a Greek family resident in Constantinople for centuries, and holding high office there, was reared in the society of Turkish girls and boys, and after leaving the country for a few years returned to renew her acquaintance with old friends of both sexes and to refresh her recollections as to customs and habits of thought. She found that there really is a small group of noisy, discontented women, under the presidency of a leader who has divorced two husbands, and eager, as Mrs. Brown unkindly phrases it, to talk "tomfoolery about their souls," but she found all other women, first, second, third, or fourth wives, or slaves, or petted daughters, contented, with the exception of the very few who were jealous. Also, she discovered that instead of being struck dumb by Christian and occidental views of marriage, and other social usages, they were ready to dispose of them by ridicule; and were convinced that truth and happiness were the possession of the Mussulmans and especially of the Turks. This was the state of mind of women acquainted with the language and light literature of three, four, or five Christian nations and also with the poetry of Turkey. They were about as conscious of needing enlightenment from foreigners as a group of married graduates of Vassar and Radcliffe. This is equivalent, inasmuch as Turkish boys are reared by their mothers, to saying that the Young Turks are about as much disposed to accept the guidance of foreigners as the Kaiser was immediately after his accession, or as George Washington was after more than seven years of ruling a republic. Mrs. Brown is always interesting, but the student of national traits, and the observer of European politics will find her worth actual study. The harem life is the source of the Turk's feelings and sentiment. Houghton Mifflin Co.

SEVENTH SERIES
VOLUME XLIV.

No. 3396 August 7, 1909.

FROM BEGINNING

FOL. CLXII.

CONTENTS

1. The Poetry of George Meredith. By John Bailey.

FORTNIGHTLY

REVIEW 323

II.

The Eisteddfod in London. By Ernest Rhys

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

.

VIII.

IX.

CONTEMPORARY REVIEW 333

.

[ocr errors]

TIMES 337

Hardy-on-the-Hill Book II. Chapters IV and V. By M. F. Francis
(Mrs. Francis Blundell). (To be continued.)
The Extinction of the Upper Classes. By W. C. D. Whetham,
F. R. S., and Mrs. Whetham NINETEENTH CENTURY AND AFTER 346
The Lady of the Manor. By Katharine Tynan

.

CORNHILL MAGAZINE 355 ENGLISH REVIEW 361 BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE

Mirahuano. By R. B. Cunninghame Graham
The Imperial Press Conference.
The Prisoner. By John Galsworthy
The Quarrel.

366

NATION 372

X.

XI.

The Bright Side of Bad Weather.
Dedication.

[blocks in formation]
[merged small][ocr errors]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

FOR SIX DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, THE LIVING AGE will be punctually for warded for a year, free of postage, to any part of the United States.

50 cents per annum.

To Canada the postage is

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office or express money order if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, express

and money orders should be made payable to the order of THE LIVING AGE CO.

Single Copies of THE LIVING AGE, 15 cents.

« AnkstesnisTęsti »