Shandygaff

in reminding us of the poems, let us thank him warmly for his essay. Let us thank him for impressing upon us

et betwee

ll the Su

come on a

home is

sky the line

e and s

ng could I

oken thi

I shall b

t towards

here be to

ill be m

and carefully

of the Su

e stars from

ly plough

he God of the

oul shall

become a

r I grow

a house wit

r me from

ll the Sussex

tory of S

my house in

walk of

at were boys w

and drin

AL OF

arn to pray, le

GE HE

in 1911, could hardly have suspected that the second engineer would write a novel and put him in it; or that that same novel would one day lift him out of

ld me) tears to his eyes. Excellent, simple-hearted Tommy! How little did you think, when you signed on to help the Fernfield carry coal from Glasgow to Alexandria, that the lon

ar interfered with their lessons. Bread and treacle for breakfast, black beans for lunch, a fine thick stew and plenty more bread for supper-that and the Dutch school where he stood near the top of his class are what Tommy remembers best of his boyhood. His grandmother took in washing, and had a ha

in the evenings. He chose English because most of the sailors he met talked English, and his great ambition was to b

the sailors, to earn a little cash to help his grandmother. One afternoon in the spring of 1909 h

ed, "they want a mess-room

ritish tramp out of Glasgow, bound for Hamburg and Vladivostok.

d a mess-room steward right a

s. (Bless us, the boy

roars with

all!" h

he was just the boy f

ut on a pair of long pants and come ba

abbed a pair of his trousers. Thus fortified, he hastened back to the Quee

boy at a pound a month. Even as cabin boy he was no instant success. He used to forget to empty the chief's slop-pail, and the water woul

lish seamen, and they christened him "

sual of the seas. His first voyage as A.B. was on the Fernfield in 1911, and there he met a certain Scotch engineer. This engineer had a habit of being interested

mmy would have found in the other bunks; but here, before his wondering gaze, were Macaulay, Gibbon, Gorki, Conrad, Dickens, Zola, Shakespeare, Montaigne, Chaucer, Sha

twenty years old he was rambling about New York just before sailing for Liverpool on the steam yacht Alvina. He was one of a strictly neutral crew (the United States was s

in the window a picture of the Scotch engineer-his best friend, the only man in the world who had ever been like a father to him.

the bookseller, who had read the book. He told the bookseller that he had known the author, and that for years they had served together on the same vessels at sea. He told h

the characters in the sto

t? Pleased beyond measure, in his soft Dutch accent liberally flavoured with cockney he told the bookseller how Mr. McFee had befriended him, had urged him to go on studying navigation so that he might become an officer; and that though they had not met for several years he still receives letters from his f

time I saw him that one of the characters in the story was in New York. I wrote to Tommy asking him to come to see

ng suspected that her errand was not wholly neutral. Rumour had it that she was on her way to the Azores, there to take o

uals of the Sea." His chum Tommy had told him about his adventure, and he, too, was there to buy one. (Not every day does one meet one's friends walking in a 500-page novel!) By the never-to-be-su

n the Staten Island ferry, on my

show. Of what avail a meeting of the Authors' League when one can know the sights, sounds, and smells of West or South Street? I used to lug volumes of Joseph Conrad down to the West-Street piers to give them to captains and first mates of liners, and get them to talk about the ways of the sea. That was how

of ships! There on every hand go the gallant shapes of vessels-the James L. Morgan, dour little tug, shoving two barges; Themistocles, at anchor, with the blue and white Greek colours painted on her rusty flank; the Comanche outward bound for Galveston (I t

followed his gesture, and saw her-a long, slim white hull, a cream-coloured funnel with a graceful rake; the Stars and Stripes fresh painted in two places on her shining side. I hailed a motor boat to take me out. The boatman wanted three dollars, and I offered one.

ht"-surrounded by ships and the men who sail them-I might almost have been a hardy newspaper man! But Long Island commuters are nurtu

he wireless, and the "second." The first officer was too heavy with liquor to notice the arrival of a stranger

she has her own wireless telegraph and telephone, refrigerating apparatus, and everything to make the owner and his guests comfortable. But her beautiful furnishings were tumbled this way and that in p

m all the ships (both sail and steam) on which he has served; a picture of his mother, who died when he was six; and of his sister Greta-a very pretty girl-who is also mentioned in Casuals of t

ters to this Dutch sailor-boy as "sensible," but that i

craft upon th

who strike the

phantoms, near

udderless, with

Save your money; put it in the bank; read books; go to see the museums, libraries, and art galleries; get to know some

nces that govern the lives of the humble. In Tommy's honest, gentle face, and in the talk of his shipmates when we sat down to dinner together, I saw a microcosm of the strange barren life of the sea where men fl

r crew, and for a short space had a glimpse of the lives and thoughts of the simple, childlike men who live on ships. I realized f

e was set to work oiling the dynamos, and at ten dollars a week he had a fine chance to work his way up. Indeed, he enrolled in a Scranton correspondence course on steam engineering and

e badge of honour: his friend the engineer has put him in a book! And there, in one of

LAST

im from taking his pipe every evening before he went to bed. He sat in his armchair, his back gently bending, his knees a little apart, his eyes placidly inclined toward th

GH H

your bath, breakfast must be spread in a chamber of eastern exposure; let there be hominy and cream, and if possible, brown sugar. There follow scrambled eggs, shirred to a lemon-yellow, with toast sliced in triangles, fresh, unsalted butter, and Scotch bitter marmalade. Let there be without fail a platter of hot bacon, curly, juicy, fried to the debatable point where softness is overlaid with the faintest crepitation of crackle, of crispyness. If hot Virg

ure in the bowl; press it lovingly down with the cushion of the thumb; see that the draught is free-and then for your s?ckerhets t?ndstickor! A day so begun is well begun, and sin will flee your precinct. Shog, vile care! The smoke is coo

ut tendrils of speculation, leaps to welcome problems for thought, burrows tingling into the unknowable. As the smoke drifts and shreds about your neb, your mind is surcharged with that imponderable energy of thought, which cannot be seen or measured, yet is the most potent for

forced retirement of Sing Sing less irksome to forgers, second-story men, and fire bugs. Samuel Butler, who had little enough truck with churchmen, was once invited to stay a week-end by the Bishop of London. Distrusting the entertaining qualities of bishops, and rightly, his first

s called "The Social History of Smoking," by G.L. Apperson. Alas, a friend of mine, John Marshall (he lives somewhere in Montreal or Quebec), borrowed it from me, and obsti

callous to the true delicacy of the flavour. For that reason it is best not to smoke during office hours. This may be a hard saying to some, but a proper respect for the art impels it. Not even the highest ecclesi

schedule I

eakfast:

cheon:

dinner:

er and bed:

rettes as occasi

fumes automatically. The choicest aromatic blends are mere fuel. Your eyes see, but your brain responds not. The vital juices, generous currents, or whatever they are that animate the intelligence, are down below hatches fighting furiously to annex and drill into submission the alien and distracting mass of food that you have taken on board. They are like stevedores, stowing the cargo for portability. A little later, however, when this excellent work is accomplished, the bosun may trill his whist

he five wits. For those who are in pain, sorrow, or grievous perplexity it operates as a sovereign consoler, a balm and balsam to the harassed spirit; it calms the fretfu

d mystery of smoking. That is to say, the last pipe of all before the so

hysiology. Chlorophyl becoming xanthophyl, says botany. These stir me not. I define life as a process of the Will-to-Smoke:

nt, then drops away abruptly at the recuperation interval. This is merely a teutonic and pedantic mode of saying that the best pipe of all is the last one smoked at night. It is the penul

e General Catalogue of the Oxford University Press: a work so excellently full of learning; printed and bound with such eminence of skill; so noble a repository or Thesaurus of the accumulated treasures of human learning, that it sets the mind in a glow of wonder. This is the choicest garland for the brain fatigued with the insignificant and trifling tricks by which we earn our daily bread. There is no recreation so lovely as that afforded by books rich in wisdom a

he thousand brain-murdering interruptions are over. The gentle sibilance of air drawn through the glowing nest

ntleman. Wherunto is annexed a Description of the order of a Maine Battaile or Pitched Field, eight severall wayes, with the Art of Limming and other Additions newly Enl

t

ends pleasure. Printed from the edition of 1581, wi

ed years later. The compiler of the catalogue says here with modest and pardonable pride "strongly bound in exceptionally tough paper and more than once described by

e near-by steeple, but my pipe and

e incident in Forraine Attempts of the English Nation. 1598. The e

, 1340" (which means, as I figure it, the "Backbite of Conscience"), or "Origenis Hexaplorum quae supersunt sive Veterum Interpretum Graecorum in totum Vetus Testamentum Fragmenta, edidit F. Field. 1865. Two volumes ￡6 6s. net" or "Shuckford's Sacred and Profane History of the

ly when I sold to a magazine a very worthy and excellent poem entitled "My Pipe," mentioning the brands I delight to honour, the editor made me substit

a "commercial product." Let us call on

ungry man's food, a sad man's cordial, a wakeful man's sleep, and a chilly man's fire, sir; while for stanching o

llow; gently and kindly lay the pipe in the candlestick, and blow out the flame. The window is open wide: the night rushes

LIGHT TH

Blackwell had made a resolution not to start the furnace until Thank

chief gets a team of his mothers-in-law to tow him to the office. But wherever you find him, the commuter is a tough and tempered soul, inured to

ll had laid in fifteen tons of black diamonds. And hoping that would be enough, t

m the West Indies, a brown maiden still unspoiled by the sophistries of the employment agencies. She could boil an egg without cracking

e evenings were growing. But across the table came one of those glances familiar to indiscreet husbands. Passion distorted, vibrant with rebuk

es. He talked of other matters, and accepted thankfully what Belinda broug

, and he and Mrs. Blackwell talked in discreet tones

but complain about the cold. She comes from Barbados, where the thermometer never goes below sixty. She said she couldn't sleep last night, her room was so cold

he deep, calculating wisdom of women was

s somewhat soften

er day you mentioned the thermometer, and the next morning I found Belinda looking at it. If you must say

f the admiration common to the

y. Watch me from now on. Mental suggestion

he unseasonable hot weather. I think we'd better have a window open." To Mrs. Blackwell's dismay, he raised one of the dining-room windows, admitting a pungent frostiness of October evening. But s

at each other wistfully, for the ruddy evening blaze was their chief delight. Mr. Blackwell manfully took off his coat and waistcoat and sat in his shirtsleeves until Belinda had

ckwell countered by ordering iced tea. They both sneezed vigorously during the m

ealed when Mrs. Blackwell explained that Mr. and Mrs. Chester, next door, had promised to carry on a similar psychological campaign. Belinda and Mrs. Chester's cook, Tulip-jo

Blackwell heard no more complaints of the cold, but sometimes she and her husband could hear uneasy creakings upstairs late at night. "I wonder if Barbados rea

lackwell drowsily. He wore his Palm Beach suit every night fo

ember. Both the men loudly clamoured for permission to remove their coats, and sat with blanched and chattering jaws. Mr. Blackwell made a feeble pretence at mopping his brow, but when the dessert proved to be ice-cream his nerve forsook him. "N-no, Belinda," he said. "It's too warm for ice-cream to-nigh

kwell came home from business

," he said,

t thing I've met in twenty years' practice. Here it is the 17th of November, and c

FRI

other by our given nam

that perhaps it will not be out of place if I tell y

eanness of our writing men. We have no Chestertons, no Bellocs. I look to Don Marquis, to H.L. Mencken, to Heywood Broun, to Clayton Hamilt

but it would be impossible for him not to write with beauty and distinction far above his theme. His style is a perfect echo of his person, me

is great word with care) in my friend is that his zeal for beauty and for truth is great enough to outweigh utterly the paltry considerations of expedien

on. I see in him personified the rising generation of literary critics, who have a hard row to hoe in a deliterated democracy. By some unknowable mira

selves out of this dilemma. But he cannot do so, because more than comfort, more than clothes and shoe leather, more than wife or fireside, he must preserve the critic's self-respect. "I cannot write a publicit

on; in absent-minded simplicity he has issued forth upon the highway only half-clad, and been haled back to his boudoir by indignant bluecoats; but in all matters where absolute devotio

spectacle panes, his incessant devotion to cigarettes and domestic lager, his whimsical talk on to

d ease, here is a man whose ideal is to write essays in resounding Engl

nt to catch him in a weak spot, try him on B

o were boys wh

and drin

us hope tha

OF SA

ot of tea, plenty of tobacco, and a few chapters of Jane Austen. And if the adorable Miss Austen is not to hand, my sec

the conch shell from the Pacific and the souvenirs of the Crystal Palace. Mr. Southey, in his thirty years' laureateship, made the fame of several young versifiers, and deemed that in introducing poor White's remains to the polite world he was laying the first lucifer to a bonfire that

backwash of romanticism. They are so thoroughly unhealthy, so morbid, so pallid with moonlight, so indentured by the ayenbite of inwit, that it is hard to believe that Henry's father was a butcher and should presumably have reared him on plenty of sound beefsteak and blood gravy. If only Miss Julia Lathrop or Dr. Anna Howard Shaw could have been Henry's mother, he might have lived to write poems on the abolition of slavery in America. But as a matter o

per, and could with difficulty be drawn from his books, even at mealtimes. At the age of seven he wrote a story of a Swiss emigrant and gave it to the servant, being too

elve hours a day in the office and then an hour more in the evening was put upon Latin and Greek. Even such recreation hours as the miserable youth found were dismally employed in declining nouns and conjugating verbs. In a little garret at the top of the house he began to collect his books; even his supper of bread and milk was carried up to him there, for he refused to eat with his family for fear o

enter into this resolution in consequence of a vitiated taste acquired by reading romances." He is human enough to add, however, that "after long and fatiguing researches in 'Blackstone' or 'Co

ngness to write at length and upon serious and "instructive" topics. Alas, the ill-starred young man had a mania for self-improvement. If our great-grandparents were all like that what an age it had been for the Scranton correspondence courses! "What is requisite to make one's correspondence valuable?" asks Henry. "I answer, sound sense." (The italics are his own.) "You have better natural abilities than many youth," he tells his light-

r. He was also admitted a member of a famous literary society then existing in Nottingham, and although the youngest of the sodality he promptly announced that he proposed to deliver them a lecture. With mingled cur

stress, The Eve of Death, and Sonnet Addressed by a Female Lunatic to a Lady, had been warmly welcomed by the politest magazines of the time. To wish to publish them in more permanent form was natural; but the unfortunate young man conceived the thought that the venture m

ity. The first two details to be attended to were the printing of what were modestly termed Proposals-i.e., advertisements of the projected volume, calling for pledges of subscription-and, still more important, securing the permission of some prominent person to accept a dedication of the book. The jolly old days of literary patronage were then in the sere and saffron, but it was sti

always are under such circumstances. Henry was convinced that at least 350 copies would be sold in Nottingha

e acquaintance: and mind, I neither solicit nor draw the conversation to the subject

fermenting Henry learned that all parcels sent to the duchess, unless marked with a password known only to her particular correspondents, were thrown into a closet by her porter to be reclaimed at convenience, or not at all. "I am ruined," cried Henry in agony; and the worthy Neville paid several unsuccessful visits to Devonshire House in the attempt to retrieve the manuscript. Finally, after waiting four hours in the servants' hall, he succeeded. Even then undaunted, this long-suffering older brother made one more try in the poe

title Henry gave the b

enseroso gushes to the surface of poor Henry's song every few lines; precious twigs and shreds of Milton flow merrily down the current of his thought. And yet smile as we may, every now and then friend Henry puts something over. One of his poems is a curious foretaste of what Keats was doing ten years later. Every now and then one pauses to think that this lad, once his youthful vap

all the copies. After writing earnest and very polite letters to all the reviewers he dispatched copies to the leading periodicals, and sat down in the sure hope of rapid fame. How bitter was his chagrin when the Monthly Review for February, 1804, came out with a rathe

y see gross and callous malignity and conspiracy in the criticism. His theology, his health, his peace of mind, were all overthrown. As a matter of fact, however (as Southey remarks), it was the very brusqueness of this review that laid the foundation of his reputation. The circumstance aroused Southey's interest in the young man's effort

nerous holiday to recruit; but his old habits of excessive study seized him again. He had, for the time, given up hope of being able to attend the university, and accordingly thought it all the more necessary to do well at the law. Night after night he would read till two or three in the morning, lie down fully dressed on his bed, and rise again to work at five or six. His mother, who was living with him in his retreat, used to go upstairs to put out his candle and see that he went to bed; but Henry, so docile in other matters, in this was un

ONSU

ently, on thy

ay thine hand.

iring lamp,

to slumber w

rue what holy

angelic oft f

ose good men wh

rial music r

sad in dyin

olemn warning

my weeping fr

t upon my j

aintly on the

ent head, and

nt, and near his well-beloved Clifton Woods. On the banks of the stream he would sit for hours in a maze of dreams, or wande

s, who were very sorry to lose him, and took up quarters with a clergyman in Lincolnshire (Winteringham) under whom he pursued his studies for a year, to prepare himself thoroughly for college. His letters during this period are mostly of a religious tinge, enlivened only by a misha

ghs. His letters give us a pleasant picture of his quiet rambles through the town, his solitary cups of tea as he sat by the fire, and his disappointment in not being able to hear his lecturers on account of his deafness. Most entertaining to any one at all familiar with the life of the Oxford and Cambri

strained him to enter for a scholarship examination in December, and when the unfortunate fellow pleaded physical inability, they dosed him with "stro

him from incessant study. Even on his rambles he was always at work memorizing Greek plays, mathematical theorems, or what not. In a memorandum found in his desk his life was thus planned: "Rise at half-past five. D

ical tutor, gratis, to work with him, mathematics being considered his weakness. As his only chance of health lay in complete rest during the holiday, this plan of spending the summer in study was simply a death sentence. In

ttle vein of pleasantry, but not for long. Probably the light-hearted undergraduates about him found him a very prosy, shabby, and mournful young man, but if one may judge by the

enius, to the

ade devote no

no precarious

piety his v

volence, if

ling heart del

ghest efforts

ble, elegan

sympathy's hea

nius, pay the

IV

l things, holy, profane, clean, obscene,

eviathan,

orld's Series. It is unthinkable to us that there should be men of mature years who do not know the relative batting averages of the Red Sox and the Pirates. The intellectual and strolling male of from thirty-five

the shores of his native land to escape the barrage of the bonbo

ing behind a screenage of muffins and crumpets and hip baths. And thither fled one of the

ord College, our hero passed to Harvard, and thence by a swifter decline to Oxford. Literature and liberalism became his pursuits; on the one hand, he found himself engrossed in the task of proving to the British electorate that England need not

achelor, equipped with gladstone bag, shaving kit, evening clothes and tweeds; passing from country house to London club, from Oxford common room to Sussex gardens, the solemn pageantry of the cultivated classes now and then bu

courge. Menaced by serious intellectual disorders unless he were to give vent to these disturbing levities, Mr. Smith began to set them down under the title of "Trivia," and now at length we are enriched by the spectacle of this iridescent and puckish little book, which presents as it wer

le refined sadness, by an aura of shyness which amounts to a spiritual virginity. He comes to us trailing clouds of glory from the heaven of pure and unfettered speculation w

ese butterfly wings of fancy, these pointed sparklers of wit. A purge, by Zeus, a purge for the wicked! Irony so demure, so quaint, so far away; pathos so void of regret, merriment so delicate that one dare not laugh for fear of dispelling the charm-all this is "Trivia." Where are M

scare us away. "These pieces of moral prose have been written, dear Reader, by a Carnivorous Mammal, belonging to that subor

Age. I wish I were a deep Thinker, or a great Ventriloquist." Like us he has only a ghost, a thin, unreal phantom in a world of bank cashiers and duchesses and prosperous merchants and other Real Persons. Like us he fights a losing battle against the platitudes and moral generalizations that hem us round. "I can hardly post a letter," he laments, "wi

thought robing a radiant, dancing spirit. Through the shimmering veil of words we catch, now and then, a flashing glimpse of the Immortal Whimsy within, shy, sudden, and de

Prince Albert ads-these mean nothing to him. He will never compile an anthology of New York theatrical notices: "The play that makes the dimples to catch the tears." Careful and adroit propaganda, begun twenty years ago by the Department of State, might have won him back, but now it is imp

his international tourney to the fact that his tennis shoes (shall we say his "sneakers?") came to grief and he had to play the crucial games in stocking feet. But though Major Putnam and his young ally won the set of patters (let us use the Wykehamist word), the Major allowed the other side to gain a far more serious

EF

the intentions of the book; allusions to the unexpected difficulties encountered during composition; neatly phrased gratitude to eminent friends who have given gracious assistance; and a touching allusion to the Critic on the Hearth who has done the indexing

g out of his house at dusk, after the hard day's work, to read his newspaper on the doorstep. Or it may

nd yet I am convinced it is one of the subtlest pleasures. I have planned several books, not yet

HE LETTERS OF

and a thunder at the door. I knew his voice, and hurried to open. Poor, dear fellow, he was just back from tennis; I never saw him look so glorious. Tall and thin-he was always very thin, see p. 219 and passim-with

again?"

augh-I can hear it still. His

zzard, what do you think? I've wo

miring things. It was a cruel instant for me. I, too, in my plodding way, had sent in an essay for the prize, but without telling him. Must I confess it? I

d in his bantering way, "y

myself

le; how sad the nickname sounds now-"you to

d he remained there. But I followed his career with the closest attention. Every newspaper cutting, every magazine article in which his name was mentioned, went into my scrapbook. And almost every week for twenty years he wrote to me-those long, radiant letters, so full of verve and élan and ringing, ru

ave been born a Norseman!" he wrote once. "Oh, for the deep Scandinavian scourge of pain, the inbrooding, marrowy soul-ache of Ibsen! That is the fertiliz

ld knows ho

O AN HIST

ix vo

uninterrupted toil, enlivened only by those small bickerings over minuti? so dear to all scrupulous w

My old friend, Professor Spondee, of Halle, though deservedly eminent in his chosen lot, is particularly open to criticism on this ground. I cannot emphasize too gravely the importance of preli

ofessor Fish, of Yale, that justly renowned seat of learning, when lecturing in New Ha

rians of to-day are, I fear, imbued with that most dangerous tincture of historical ca

ut. For instance, Lamartine (who is supported in toto by M. Rougegorge) asserts that the elections took place on Easter Sunday, April 27, 1848. Whereas, I am able to demonstrate, by reference to the astronomical tables at Kew Observatory, that in 1848 Easter Day fell upon April 23. M. Rougegorge's assertion that L

orld. The mere list of names would be like Southey's "Cataract of Lodore," and would be but an ungracious mode of returning thanks. I cannot, however, forbear to m

ray in the service of the index. To her, and to my little ones, whose merry laughter has so often

TO A BOO

s. I have chosen from my published works those poems which seemed to me most faithfully to express my artistic message; an

see her in the cities and everywhere, set down to menial taskwork. She were better in exile, on Ibsen's sand dunes or Maeterlinck's bee farm. But in America the times are very evil. Prodigious convulsion of production, the grinding of mighty forces, the noise and rushings of wi

book my task is done. Vachel and

otto,

O THE SEC

iving here. Also the "Prayer for Warm Weather," by Vachel Lindsay, is included, at his express request. The success o

O THE THI

"The Ode to a Seamew," the "Fracas on an Ice Floe," and the sequence of triolimericks are all new. If I have been able to convey anything of the brac

ed, therefore I may perhaps say here that he is hard at wo

hat I am encouraged to hope that the publisher'

SK

eech leaves much to be desired and calls for apology, but in perversity and profusion the trellis growth of Mr. Conrad's memories, here blossoming before the delighted reader's eyes, runs like some ardent trumpet vine or Virginia creeper, spreading hither and thither, redoubling on itself, branching unexpectedly upon spandrel and espalier, a

etc. For my own part, let me be frank. I do not think I ever heard of Mr. Conrad before December 2, 1911. On that date, which was one day short of the seventeenth anniversary of Stevenson's death, a small club of earnest young men was giving a dinner to Sir Sidney Colvin at the Randolph Hotel in Oxford. Sir Sidney told us many anecdotes of R.L.S., and when the evening was far spent I remember that someone asked him whethe

There was a very violent westerly gale at the time-a famous shove, Captain Conrad would call it-and I remember that the barometer went lower than had ever been recorded before on the western ocean. The piano in the saloon carried away, and frolicked down the aisl

see the face of Mr. Conrad, then it is happy to recall that in "A Personal Record" one comes as close as typography permits to a fireside chat with the Skipper himself. He tells us that he has never been very well acquainted with the art of conversation, but remembering Marlowe, we set this down as polite modesty only. Here in the "Personal Record" is Marlowe ipse, pipe in mouth, and in retrospective mo

rvice." He has carried over to the world of desk and pen the rigorous tradition of the sea. He says that he has been attributed an unemotional, grim acceptance of facts, a hardness of heart. To which he answers that he must tell as he sees, and that the attempt to move others to the extremities of emotion means the surrendering one's self to exaggeration, allowing one's self to be ca

a legend of his youth, Mr. Conrad devotes his most affectionate and tender power of whimsical reminiscence; and in truth his sketches of family history make the tragedies of Poland clearer to me than several volumes of historical comment. In his prose of that superbly rich simplicity of texture-it is a commonplace that it seems always like some notable translation from the French-he looks back across the plains of Ukraine, and takes us with him so unquestionably that even the servant who drives him to his uncle's house becomes a figure in our own daily lives. And to our delicious surprise we find that the whole of two long chapters constitutes merely his musings in half an hour while he is waiting for dinner at his uncle's house. With

such is the kind of calculus that makes "A Personal Record" unique among textbooks of the soul. It is as impossible to describe as any dear friend. Setting out only with the intention to "present faithfully the feelings and sensations connected with the writing of my first book and with my first contact with the sea," Mr. Conrad set dow

the heart of every lover of literary truth. Who of his heroes is so fascinating to us as he himself? How imperiously, by his own noble example, he reca

D OF FI

Rock of Age

D FITZ

as my privilege in the case of John Loder, a man whose life was all sturdy simplicity and generous friendship. He shines in no merely reflected light, but in his own native nobility. I think there are a few lovers of England and of books who will be glad not to forget his unobtrusive services to literature. If only John Loder had kept a journal it would be one of the

gray church tower and a great windmill are conspicuous landmarks. Broad barges and shabby schooners, with ruddy and amber sails, lie at anchor or drop down the river with the tide, bearing the simple

to Alexander's Bank. They were from no less a man than Charles Lamb. Also I have always thought it very much to Woodbridge's credit that a certain Woodbridgian named Pulham was a fellow-clerk of Lamb's at the East India House. Perhaps Mr. Pulham introduced Lamb and Barton to each other. And as birthplace and home of Edward FitzGerald, Woodbridge drew such visitors as Carlyle and Tennyson, who came to seek out the immortal recluse. In the years following FitzGerald's death many a student of books, some all the way from America, found his wa

o recall that James Harper, the grandfather of the four brothers who founded the great publishing house of Harper and Brothers a century ago, was an Ipswich man, born there in 1740. You will bike to Bury St. Edmunds (where Fitz went to school and our beloved William McFee also!) and Aldeburgh, and Dunwich, to hear the chimes of the sea-drowned abbey ringing under the waves. If you are a Stevensonian, you will hunt out Cockfield Rectory, near Sudbury, where R.L.S. first met Sidney Colvin in 1872. (Colvin himself came from Bealings, only two miles from Woodbridge.) You may ride to Dunmow in Essex, to see the country of Mr. Britling; and to Wigborough, near Colchester, the haunt of Mr. McFee's painter-cousin in "Aliens." You will hire a sailboat at Lime Kiln Quay or the Jetty and bide a moving air and a going tide to drop down to Bawdsey ferry to hunt shark's teeth and amber among the shing

the provinces began to deal with London merchants, the little town's prosperity suffered a sad decline. Many of the old Woodbridge shops, of several generations' standing, have had to yield to local branches of the great London "stores." In John Loder's boyhood the book business was at its best. Woodbridgians were great readers, and such prodigal customers as FitzGerald did much to keep the ledgers healthy. John left school at thirteen or so, to learn the trade, and be

he visitor's half-hour tribute to old mortality. My grandmother was buried there, one snowy day in January, 1912, and I remember

ly commemorated by Mr. Mosher in his preface to "In Praise of Old Gardens"-and heard dear old John Loder tell stories of h

bout thine ow

others' la

know'st, 'tis

s life, but

able to trace the piece. He had been in Paris before the troubles of '48. I believe he served some sort of bookselling apprenticeship on Paternoster Row; at any rate, he used to be in touch with the London book trade as a young man, and made the acquaintance of Bernar

Shorter, Dewitt Miller, Edward Clodd, Leon Vincent-such men as these wrote or came to John Loder when they wanted special news about FitzGerald. FitzGerald had given him a great many curios and personal treasures: Mr. Loder never offered these for sale at any price (anything connected with FitzGerald was sacred to him) but if any one happened along who seemed able to appreciate them he would give them away with delight. He gave to me FitzGerald's old musical scrapbook, which he had treasured for over thirty years. This scrapbook, in perfect condition, contains very beautiful engravings, prints, and drawings of the famous composers, musicians, and operatic stars

D

Groome, which Mr. Mosher published in 1902. It tells a great deal about Woodbridge, and is annotated by John Loder. Mr. Mosher w

t's nothing! It'll help to keep you out of mischief. Much better to give 'em away before it's too la

some of those trips down the Deben on the Scandal or the Meum and Tuum (the Mum and Tum as Posh, Fitz's sailing master, called her). He played a prominent part in the life of the town, became a Justice of the Peace, and sat regularly on the bench until he was nearly ninety. As he entered upon the years of old age,

treasure. He used to sit in his shirtsleeves, very close to the fire, with his shoe laces untied. In summer he would toddle about in his shaggy blue suit, with a tweed cap over one ear, his grizzled beard and moustache well stained by much smoking, his eyes as bright and his tongue as brisk as ever. Every warm morning would see him down on the river wall; stumping over Market Hill and down Church Street with his stout oak stick, hailing every child he met on the pavemen

urdy until nearly ninety-he went in bathing in the surf at Felixstowe on his eighty-sixth birthday. Perh

s talk, smiling away to himself and wrinkling up his forehead, which can only be distinguished from his smooth bald pate by its charming corrugation of parallel furrows. He took me into his den while he rummaged through his books to find some which would be acceptable to me-'May as well give 'em away before it's too late, ye know'-and then he settled back in his easy chair to puff at a pipe. I must note down one of his phrases which tickled me-he has such a knack for the proverbial and the epigrammatic. 'He's cut his cloth, he can wear his breeches,' he said of a certain scapegrace. He chuc

thinking that it would be hard to do him justice when the time comes to write his. May he have a swift and painless end such as his genial spirit deserves, and not linger on into a twilight life with failing senses. When his mem

RE IN M

age of calm for our hustling, feverish life, that I thou

. Great activity and worry is needless-it is poison to the soul. Learn to reflect, and to brood upon eternal beauty. It is the mystic who finds all that is most precious in life. The flowers of meditation blos

of the window. I lay until eight o'clock, communing with infinite peace. I began to see that Professor Tago

ll, and made me tak

e you that mystics do not do so. I determined to grow a beard. I l

eternal calm, I fear. When I explained that I was at home reading "Gitanjali," his la

t I felt full of gladness in my new way of life, full of brotherhood for all the world. "I love you," I said to th

ndred papers. The stenographer was at the telephone, try

s & Company

ian herrings we were to have yes

the '

will arrive. The matter is purely ephemera

ang

' Journal, a telegram from the Uptown Fish Morgue, new tires needed for one of the delivery trucks-how could I jeopardize my faculty of meditation by worrying over these trifles? I leaned back in my chair and devoted myself to meditation. After all

unded. That meant that t

ing. In the long perspective of eternity, was his soul any more majestic than mine? In this luminous new vision

chair, full of

convinced me of the truth of Tagore's saying that great act

he matter with you to-day? Dennis just

rwrought. Great activity is a strych

e stairway from the office to the street is long and dusty; but I recalled what Professor Tagore had said about vicissitudes being the true reve

rying waiters and impatient people. I found a vacant seat in a corner and sat d

able as the others do is beneath the dignity of a philosopher. I began to dream of endless vistas of mystical

ized into my consciousness. Full o

th one of your rolls and one of your butter-balls? In the great brotherhood of humanity, all that is mine is yo

. "Here's an attic for rent!" he cried

street, walking slowly and withdrawn into the quiet of my soul, three people trod upon my heels and a taxi nearly gave me a passport to eternity. I reflected that men were perhaps not yet ready for

natch my ticket before they could get theirs. I leaped into the car at the head of a flying wedge of sinful, unmystical men, who knew nothing of infinite beauty and peace. As the door closed I pushed a decrepit clergym

ORD LA

at the window watching the flappers opposite play hockey. One of them had a scarlet tam-o'-shanter and gl

nts' ball together. She and the courtly President were always the star couple. I can see her doing the Sir Roger de Coverley. But the virgin zone was loosed long ago, and she has expanded with the British Empire. Not rotund, but rather imposingly cubic. Our hallway is a very narrow one, and when you come to visit us of an evening, after red-cheeked Emily has gone off to better tilting grounds, it is a

thought we were watching the leaves twi

I loves to see the leaves 'avin' a frolic.

ppers play hockey, Mrs. Beesley. One of them is a most fa

her gentlemen," she said. "Always awatchin' and awaitin' for the young ladies. Mr. Bye that used to be 'ere was just the same, an' h

at the poet says, Mrs.

st be scor

truly ser

to sparkle now that she saw herself fairly embarked upon a promising conversation. She

" (That is her quaint way of saying that she thinks me the leading spirit of the three who dig with her.) "How about a little jug

ir of all the ages," so I deprecated the suggestion.

oo peppery. That goes well with the cider. Dr. Warren came 'ere to dinner once, an' he had a Welsh rabbit and never forgot it. 'E allus used to say when 'e saw me, ''Ow

be very nice," I said, and

in time for dinner?" asked Mrs. Beesley. "I kn

d him a teleg

hing 'appened this morning," she said. "Em'ly and I were making Mr. Loomis's bed. But we didn't find 'is clothes

aid. (You know we 'ad a gent'man 'ere once that paw

er what the three balls on

I says. It means it's two to

. Beesley rolled away chuckling. And I returne

ber,

COCK

h the gnomon on the literary sundial is likely to cast some shadow one will not willingly forget. Thus I mark 1916 as the year that introduced me to William McFee's "Casuals of the Sea" and Butler's "Way of All Flesh"; 1915 most of us remember as Rupert Brooke

little known over here, for his first book, "Songs of Childhood," was published in England in 1902. Besides, poetry he has written novels and essays, all shot through with a phosphorescent

y are among our contributors to the songs of gramarye: but one has only to open "The Congo" side by side with "Peacock Pie" to see how the seductions of ragtime and the clashing crockery of the Poetry Society's dinners are coarsening the fibres of Mr. Lindsay's marvellous talent as compared with the dainty horns of elfin that echo in Mr. de

his glasses in the trolley car, and is found wandering blithely in Central Park while the Women's Athenaeum of the Tenderloin is waiting four hundred strong for him to lecture. But Mr. de la Mare is the more modern fi

child you set out with has been magicked into a changeling. The wee folk have been at work and bewitched the pudding-the pie rather. The fire dies on the hearth, the candle channels in its socket, but still you read on. Some of the poems bring you the cauld grue of Thrawn Janet. When at last you g

emory unawares and plays high jinks with you forever after. Who can read "Off the Ground" and not strum the dainty jig over and over in his

jolly

bet a

e the oth

he gr

their

pped rig

t and n

ch his

Two-

way t

too

ot to

m the e

ay sh

the

oss the

he sch

nees w

s a-fl

ncing w

out of breath in the

ificed and ordered rhythms; that knowing not a spondee from a tribrach they vapour about prosody, of which they know nothing, and imagine to be new what antedates the Upanishads. The haunting beauty of Mr. de la Mare's delicate art springs from an ear of superlative tenderness and sophistication. The dainti

bout much of the book: it peers behind the curtains of twilight and sees strange things. In its love of children, its inspired simplici

ITTLE

ddie bough

ring my

with a lo

iling gow

mpany of

t of maid

lock round t

house-war

the guests

ill as sti

he dark i

bird: and

oy. Annealed as we are, I think it will discompose the most callous. It is

ur universities and endured the grotesque plaudits of dowagers and professors who doubtless pretended to have read his work. Although he is forty-four, and has been publishing for nearly sixteen years, he has e

ERARY P

ebag nine volumes of sermons in manuscript, "as well worth a hundred pounds as a shilling was worth twelve pence." Offering one of these as a pledge, Parson Adams besought Mr. Tow-Wouse, the innkeeper, to

d over these matters) puts it, the business of

ript which happens not to meet the fancy of the editors must perforce lie idle in your drawer though it sparkle with the brilliants of wit, and five or ten years hence collectors may l

early days. There were times when they would have sold their epics, their novels, their essays, for the price of a square meal. Think of the booty that would accumulate in the shop of a literary paw

account books and wrapping paper. How readily he would have sold them for a few shillings. Or Edgar Poe in the despairing days of his wife's illness. Or R.L.S. in the fits of depr

tores which sell "books that should never have been written to the customers who should never have been born." Our pawnbroker must guard himself against buying this kind of stuff. He will be besieged with it. Very likely Mr. Le Gall

ered the Third Avenue saloons when he might have been fêted by the Authors' League had he lived a few years longer. Some day, I hope, the full story of that tragic life may be told, and t

rves not, nor wants, their hypocritical help. The book was too true to life to please the bourgeois and yet not ribald enough to tickle the prurient. I had a vile pornographic publisher after me the other day; he said if I

did get a job for two days as a deckhand on an Erie ferryboat, but they found out I did not belong to the union. I had two dollars in my pocket-a fortune-but while I was dozing on a doorstep on Hudson Street,

s some day (that isn't conceit, I know it), but at this moment, July 17, 1908, I couldn't raise 50 cents on it. If there were a literary mount of piety

airs, bless his pimping old heart. And I've had a real breakfast: boiled red cabbage, stewed beef (condemned by the inspector), rye

oney, you damned philanthropist.... Connor ain't the real name, so there. When I

s poems "Pavements, and Other Verses" was boug

terary agent thi

NG IN M

becomes its own reward when such an orange moon is dropping down the sky. Even Peg (our most volatile Irish terrier) was plainly awed by the blaze of pale light, and hopped gingerly down the rimy back steps. But the cat

needs a little grooming, that the cheery thump of rising pressure may warm the radiators upstairs. Then the big agate kettle must be set over the blue gas flame, for hot water is needed both for shaving and cocoa. Our light breakfast takes only a moment to prepare. By the time

wsy head. The day in question was early February when snow lay white and powdery on the ground, and the 6 o'clock train from Marathon had to be caught. There is an express for Philadelphi

gold over the rim of night-would be just to that exquisite growth of colour in the eastern sky. The violet star faded to forget-me-not and then to silver and at last closed his weary eye; the

the pillow until I was in the train. The Nut Brown Maid was still nested in

and waxing day. The air was very chill-only just above zero-and the smoking car seemed very cold and dismal. I huddled my overcoat about me and tried to smoke and read the paper. But in t

already attuned to the thrill of that glorious place. Perhaps it can never have the fascination for me that the old dingy London terminals have-King's Cross, Paddington, or Saint Pancras, with their delicious English bookstalls and those porters in corduroy-but the Pennsylvania is a wonderful place after all, a marble palace o

coloured gentlemen are serving hot cakes and coffee to stray travellers, and the shops along the Arcade are being swept and garnished. As I passed through on my way to the Philadelphia train I was amused by a wicker basket full of Scotch terrier puppies-five or six of them tumbling over

m the tunnel on the other side of the long ridge (which is a degenerate spur from the Palisades farther north) a crescent of sun was just fringing

CAN HOUSE

ave strayed into the American House of Lords. Unworthily I sit among our sovereign legislators, a trifle ill at ease mayhap. In the day coach I am at home with m

men are Lords. In two facing rows, averted from the landscape, condemned to an uneasy scrutiny of their mutual prosperity, they sit in leather chairs. They curve roundly from neck to groin. They are shaven to the raw, so

silver gourd that rests by my left foot. Straight the white-jacketed mulatto sucks them up with a vacuum cleaner and a deprecating air. I pass to the brass veranda at the end of the car for a bracing chang

. My scarf is still the dear old shabby one in which I was married (I bought it at Rogers Peet's, and I shall never forget it) and when I look up

happy. Is it only the swing of the car that nauseates me? At any rate, I want to

ber,

WOLD

wo-mile spin with the gust astern, just to loosen the muscles and sweep the morning's books and tobacco from the brain-and then turn and at it! It is like swimming against a great crystal river. Cap off, head up-no crouching over the handle-bars like the Saturday afte

and wide we scatter. The Prince to Germany-the dons to Devon-the reading parties to quiet country inns here and there. Some blithe spirits of my acquaintance are in those glorious d

"pensive citadel" up on the hill, where the postman's wife cares for me and worries because I do not eat more than two normal men. There is a low-ceilinged sitting room with a blazing fire. From one corner a winding stair climbs to the bedroom above. There are pipes and tobacco, pens and a pot of ink. There are books-all historical volume

s; there are scores of rabbits disappearing with a flirt of white hindquarters into their wayside burrows; in Chedworth Woods there are pheasants, gold and blue and scarlet, almost as tame as barnyard fowls; everywhere there are skylarks throbbing in the upper blue-and these are all your company. Now and then a great yellow farm-wagon and a few farmers in corduroys-but no one

t above the sea. And from there it is eight miles homeward, mostly downhill, with a broad blue horizon to meet the eye. Back to the tiny cottage looking out onto

r, mud and sleet and stormy sunsets. But a fortnight from now, however cold, it will be what we hopefully call the Summer Term

, Apri

OU

ith tumbling amongst the stars?" Henry Van Dyke has sung of "The heavenly hills of Holland," but in a somewhat treble pipe; R.L

ntain creek down through that matchless passway. Over the hills which tumble steeply on either side soared the vast Andes of the clouds, hanging palpable in the sapphire of a summer sky. What height on height of craggy softness on those silver steeps! What rounded bosomy curves of gol

ir own beauty, they pass in dissolving shapes-now scudding on that waveless azure sea; now drifting with scant steerage way. If one could lie upon their opal summits what depths and what abysses would meet the eye! What glowing chasms to catch the ardour of the sun, what chill and empty hollows of creaming mist, dropping in pale and awful spirals. Floating flat like ice floes beneath the greenish moon, or beetling up in prodigious ledges

the rain, chaliced beakers of golden flame, lightnings instant and unbearable as the face of God-dissolving into a crystal

drawn our eyes was crowning some invisible airy summit far above us. As the sun dipped it grew gray, soft, and pallid. And then one last banner of ro

f pale blue lightning. And while we watched, with hearts almost painfully sated by beauty, through some leak the precious fire ran out; a great stalk of pure and unspeakable brightness fled pas

new form did it greet th

EAL

me and dutifully read manuscripts (I am the obscure creature known as a "publisher's re

upon the bustle of women on the main floor. Best of all, one may stroll along the ornate gallery to one side where all sorts and conditions of ladies wait for other ladies who have promised to meet them at one o'clock. They divide their time between examining the mahogany victrolae and deciding what kind of sundae they will have for lunch. A very genteel old gentleman with white hair and a long morning coat and an air of perpetual irritation is in charge of this social gallery. He wears the queer, soft, flat

jargon o

lishers

here was a block at 42nd St

dely, the word connotes anything that produces that desirable result, such as bunches of violets, lavender peddlers, te

ds sweep their

y were w

th now for

pence in

es very well as

irty cents, I am sorry to say, but this is readily compensated by the Grump buying Sweet Caporals instead of something Turkish. A packet of c

ipas

tha

one or c

has become a ritual. Oh, excellent savor of the Moretti basement! Compounded of warmth, a pungent pourri of smells, and the jangle of thick china, how diverting it is

it be only an azoic extract of intense potato, dimly tinct with sargasso and m

tude and longitude more earnestly than Titania and I argue our possible courses. Generally, however, she leav

Blackwell's Island and plotted on the map as East River Park. I had heard of this as a picturesque and old-fashioned territory, comparatively free from footpads and lying near

man's

o you thin

goblime

tle gobli

hen (she says) I wear my hat t

dingy saloons, animal shops, tinsmiths, and painless dentists, past the old dismantled Manhattan hospital. The taste of spring was in the air: one of the dentists was having his sign

tion at 34th Street and Second Avenue. A cutting wind blew from the East River, only tw

he east, now a peep of church spires and skyscrapers on the west, and the dingy imitation lace curtains of the third-story windows flashing by like a recurring pattern-it is a voyage of romance! Did you ever stand at the front door of an Elevated train, watching the track stretch far

ward the river. The neighbourhood was noisy, quarrelsome, and dirty. After a long, bitter March the thaw had come at last: the street was viscous with slime, the melting

The houses grew neat and respectable. A little side street branching off to the left (not recorded by Mercator) revealed some quaint cottages with gables and shuttered windo

r knockers. In front of them was the lumpy little park, cut up into irregular hills, where children were flying kites. And beyond that, an embankment and the river in a dim wet mist. There was Blackwell's Island, and a saili

ttersea in Whistler's mistiest days. A ferryboat, crossing to Astoria, hooted musically through the haze. Tugs, puffing up past Blackwell's Island into the

to this delicious spot, gradually draw our friends around us, and make East End Avenue the Cheyne Walk of New York-we m

for the reason

the region w

have never been able to learn. I think she can tell by the shape of the houses, or the lush quality of the foliage, or the fact

rly amusing, or quaint, or pictur

w begin to pucker. "Do you feel as though it is going to be unhealthy?" I ask anxiously. If she does, there is nothing f

s at the bottom of my mind. Sadly I looked upon the old Carl Schurz mansion on the hill, and we departed for the airy plateaus of Central

a tugboat captain

IONS OF

nuses if I did not smoke until I was twenty? By the time I was eight years old I had constructed a pipe of an acorn and a straw, and had experimented with excelsior as fuel. From that time I passed through the well-known stages of dried bean-pod ciga

that cost me a moment's unease-but stay, there was a cunning mixture devised by some comrades at college that

re these have spoken so greatly, the feeble voice may well shrink. But that is the joy of true worship: ranks and hierarchies are lost, all are brother

one had said a hundred words-had they not smoked together? Or Piscator and Viator, as they trudged together to "prevent the sunrise" on Amwell Hill-did not the reek of their tobacco trail most bluely on the sweet morning air? Or old Fitz, walking on the Deben wall at Woodbridge, on his way to go sailing with Posh down to Bawdsey Ferry-what mixture did he fill and light? Something recommended b

E

ph Conrad's "A Personal Record." The author

b, and clay: they have their purpose in the inscrutable order of things, like crossing sweepers and presidents of women's clubs; but when Damon and Pythias meet to talk things over, well-caked briars are in order. Cigars are all right in fiction: for Prince Florizel and Colonel

efrom three or four mouthfuls of smoke. This afforded opportunity for a gracious exchange of compliments. "Will it please you to impart your whiff?" was the accepted phrase. And then, having savored his mixture, you would have said: "In truth, a

es that are bittersweet beyond the compass of halting words. Never again perhaps will we throw care over the hedge and stride with Mifflin down the Banbury Road, filling the air with laughter and the fumes of Murray's Mellow. But even deeper is the tribute we pay to the sour old elbow of briar, the dented, black

up and puff with him. My mouth has been sore and baked a hundred times after an evening with Elia. The rogue simply can't help talking about tobac

ury my head in my coat. People see me in the street, vainly seeking shelter. It is a weakness, though not a shameful one. But set

s Inn at Lichfield. We weren't really thirsty, but we drank cider there in honour of Dr. Johnson, sitting in his chair and beneath his bust. Then there were those pipes we used to smoke a

oubled by visions of the devil, a preacher

ch bad

FEBR

re ad.), the most fragrant gas tanks in the Department of the East, the greatest number of cinders per eye of any arondissement served by the R-- railway, and the most bitterly afflict

for one

ed, addressed envelope I will give you the name of our village, and instructions for avoiding it. It is bounded

tlements, donjons, loopholes, machine-gun emplacements, caltrops, portcullises, glacis, and all the other travaux de fantaisie that make life worth living for retired manufacturers. The general effect is emetic in the extreme. H

with vervain and bergamot. The countryside is as lovely as Devonshire, equipped with sky, trees, rolling terrain, stewed terrapin, golf meads, nut sundaes, be

come to blow off steam. It would be worth ten thousand dollars to Beatrice Herford to ambush herself behind

omanoff, asking the abolition of knouting of women in Siberia. And now N. Romanoff himself is gone to Siberia, and there is no knouti

y I, after returning from

here, but she is within a day's j

onnection of pollinosis and culture has been firmly grasped by the public mind, the complaint will perhaps come to be looked upon like gout, as a sign of breeding. It will be assumed by those who have it not.... As civilization and culture advance, other diseases analogous to the one under consideration may be developed from oversensitiveness to sound, colour, or form, and the man of the twenty-first or twenty-second century may be a being of pure intellect whose organization of

llectual stature. Upon the literary vehicles of expression habitually employed by Rudyard Kipling, Amy Lowell, Edgar Lee Masters, and Hilaire Belloc I have wafted a pinch of ragwe

always d

e better poetr

ever season

bank, to keep as

from

his brother cre

as writin

hands

into a hayfie

d myself

he church was fu

k it must

ragweed all r

Mr. Masters deserves great credit for

y leap from his eye, distil from his lean and waving hand. Good God, not since Rabelais and Lawrence Sterne, miscalled Reverend, has one human being been so beclotted, bedazzled, and bedrunken with syllables. I adore him for it, but equally I tremble. Glowing, radiant, transcendent vocables swim and dissolve in the porches of his brain, teasing him with visions far more deeply confused than ever Mr. Wordsworth's were. The meanest toothbrush that bristles (he has confessed it himself) can fill him with thoughts that do often lie too deep for publishers. Perhaps the orotund soul-wamblings of Coleridge are

hay fever would lead me by prismatic omissions and plunging ellipses of thought to the vaster spirals and eddies of all-viewing Mind. So does Mr. Lee proceed, weaving a new economics and a new bosom for advertisiarchs in the mer

d in one whisk of Time his mind has shot up to the conceptions of Eternity, Transportation, and Nourishment: his cortex coruscates and suppurates with abstract thought; words assail him in hordes, and in a flash he is down among them, overborne and fighting for his life. Mr. Lee finds that millionaires are bound down and tethered and stifled by their limou

has lost control of his nose. His mucous membrane acts like a packet of Roman candles, and who is he to say it nay? And our vill

wind-jetting and spouting like plumbing after a freeze-up-'tis beyond me. I fancy that if Mr. Lee were in bed, and the sheets were untucked at his feet, he could spin himself so iridescent and dove-throated and opaline a philosoph

t you think with what you think you think,

PE

ONS FOR

mmended that it be introduced to students before their minds have become hardened, clotted, and skeptical. The author does not hold him

uggested topics will be found val

ces of sincerity and serious

or Mr. Kenneth Stockton to live on? Explain

yumist"? Give one

Don Marquis's

rs lib

steak an

his trousers (E

Republic

tes Holliday, and fo

fumigated, and why? 7. Who

d the author spend o

Dulcet, and wha

iam McFee live in

arold Bell Wright most use

d what makes it so fascinat

e Gin

urdme

ifying Z

did Mr. Simm

and azure-pedalled preci

oscuri of Seamen,

ible men smoke? Describe the ide

. Blackwell lig

rs who are stout enough to b

ning meal ascend the stair in vain." Expla

imal Kingdom does Mr. Pears

Explain, and give the context. Who was

nd why did he leave his clo

ry Society dinners do

awnbroker be on his guard aga

are "our prosperous carnivora"? Why do they

estrone? Name t

er's readers," and wh

preacher's advi

hy Mr. Gerald Stanley Le

o grasp Drs. Oppenheimer

ald Stanley Lee, comment

azzled, and bedrun

st toothbrush

ell becom

CORONA