the far end of Superior-seed for the "Garden." The scientific economic eye may also plainly discern many other evidences of industrial fertility in these pictures. They show eleven trunk lines moving freight on 400 industrial sidings over 1,500 miles of urban and suburban tracks. These steel tentacles of trade permeate a mosaicked water-front formed by Lake Erie, the Niagara and Buffalo Rivers, the Erie Barge Canal, and many lesser inland waterways. Even an unscientific eye can see and understand the enormous interrelation of transportation by water and by land. Next to the ownership of Niagara Buffalo is proudest of its terminal facilities.

It ought not to be, and it is not, hard to sell "Industry" with a big "I" on Buffalo. With only these airplane demonstrations on view, the city gives itself away. In the five-year period terminating with 1914 475 industries from less scientific neighborhoods caught the economic infection, pulled up stakes, and trekked to Buffalo. In these days when the voices of the cities ascend to heaven in one long glorified curb market, bidding against one another for industries, for conventions, for tourists, for people,

and for publicity, the mute fact of this great industrial trek to Buffalo catches the bewildered attention of the innocent bystander. There must be something in it. Take the specific case of the Dunlop Company for an example of the whole process.

The Dunlop Corporation, an AngloAmerican capitalization, makes the indispensable tires on which civilization rolls to "success." With eight plants already working and growing in as many different parts of the world, a Dunlop general staff of engineers, architects, and chemists were sent out to make a comparative survey of twenty-three cities from the Atlantic seaboard to the Middle West in order to determine upon the most advantageous site for another plant greater than all the others. Their comparative evaluations were made on a predetermined percentage basis, and, on these presumably highly scientific-economic grounds, not one of the twentythree cities could make the grade! (Sounds as of twenty-three chambers of commerce muttering in their beards.)

Now it so happened that Niagara Falls drew these Anglo-American investigators, wearied with their fruitless

quest, within earshot of the Buffalo toros reales. Niagara has always had a fatal fascination for Englishmen even before the classic days when Miss Porter's father "owned 'em." Whereupon the conjectures, the figurings, and the journeys of the Dunlop staff of explorers incontinently ended. Buffalo was awarded a mark of 97 per cent, three-hundredths short of economico-scientific perfectionthis is a matter of actual record-and the Dunlop Tire and Rubber Company proceeded forthwith to plant $40,000,000 of new money in "the Garden Spot of Industry."

Buffalo goes industriously about the cultivation of its garden spot. Many more things than industries are planted there and bring forth fruit in their season. Conventions, for instance. Conventions are not perennials, like industries, but they are a very hardy annual and yield enormous returns to intensive cultivation. All cities have well-fertilized convention plots in their economic gardens, and Buffalo is only remarkable in the extent and thoroughness of this branch of its horticulture. It makes forty conventions grow where only a dozen grew before, a proof of the fer

tility of the soil as well as the scientific anthropoculture of the gardeners. Many honest ingredients contribute to the fertility of the soil. To begin with, there is the weather, which is "just right in Buffalo." Other cities are built on the shores of Lake Erie-Toledo, Cleveland, Dunkirk, Sandusky, Ashtabula-but Buffalo, it would seem, draws most of the value of the lake's beneficent effect upon climate. A pile of clippings produced in evidence, covering a period of several years and cut from widely scattered newspapers of supposedly local pride in comparative temperatures and salubriousness, more than prove the ex parte brags appearing regularly in "Fingy" Conners's Buffalo "Courier" and Norman Mack's "Times." It must be so. Then there are the Porter Falls and the antiseptic Home of Shredded Wheat; here is Mr. Statler's automatic hotel and a number of other hospitable hostelries only less sterilized; and there, just on the other side of several bridges, is broadminded Canada. As the airplane pictures sell "Industry," so does the mere neighborhood and its hospitality sell "Convention."

Ten years ago Buffalo in the open market was getting only fifteen conventions annually. Now more than two hundred populous bodies convene there every year. The non-convening citizen has no conception of the value of this business to the successful bidder. Buffalo has gone seriously into the business, has more than held its own in a Nationwide competition, and is very frank about the advantages accruing from its investment of time and money and

brains in the cultivation of conveners. Take a few specific instances: When the Canners' Convention was held at Buffalo in January, 1924, a check was kept on the cigar-stand in the Hotel Statler, which showed that in a single day Convention visitors, who could be easily identified by their badges, bought within $30 of $1,000 worth of cigars at that one stand. That same night a similar check showed that "600 taxicab loads of identified Convention people were carried away from the hotel." During the January week the Canners spent in Buffalo one of the local manufacturing concerns, which had an exhibit shrewdly installed at Convention Headquarters, booked enough orders to keep their plant going for three months thereafter, and that meant several hundred employees kept on the pay-roll during an off season who might otherwise have been out of a job.

Such advantages are familiar to convention managers, but many other interests in the city come to realize on the quarter of a million dollars' worth of free advertising that the city gets from its well-managed hospitality and its natural advantages. Just as the makers of a well-known car advertise, "Ask the Man who owns One," so might the convention growers advertise confidently, "Ask the Man who's been here."

There was in fact, there is a citizen of Buffalo who is a gardener on his own account without profit. His specialty is human relations, a rare species of garden truck that prospers only with self-sacrificing care. Airplane pictures miss it hidden in the great outcroppings of "In

dustry." Those who scientifically tend the fertile economic garden spots are apt

to pass it by. Convention growers find no market for it because it cannot be sold.

Well, this good citizen of the world, who lives most of his time in Buffalo, this man with the great ugly face of Savonarola-almost grotesque until the spirit of his profession irradiates its expression-spent the better part of a day in making an unconvening visitor to Buffalo feel intelligently at home in this corner of the garden that is the world.

Past the windows of his car slid a moving picture without captions: Detail of downtown streets and squares and huddle of life; detail of muscle-bound traffic between shining walls of highpiled prosperity; detail of arcaded Delaware Avenue, where McKinley died and Roosevelt took over the United States; detail of the sullen open sea of Erie with a red sun slipping down into it and lighthouses on the gray breakwaters beginning their twinkling overtures; detail of afternoon golf clubs with animated figures busily at play.

And by and by, in the darkness, he came to the never-resting Falls, that Miss Porter's father used to own, industriously eroding their way back to Buffalo at the rate of five feet a year. Day and night these last twenty-five thousand years, to show what industry (with a small "i") will do, they have worn away nine miles of their rocky brink. Over on the Canadian side the battery of high-power projectors had gone into action with a glare like that of forty thousand undimmed motor lamps coming up the road. The spot-light shifted to the falling river, and, by the cunning of an unseen property manager, the Falls were yanked out from their veils of mist and transformed into prodigies of pink and green, magenta and yellow. Steadfastly developing her two million of productive horse-powers for Ontario and western New York, Our Lady of Niagara, in lipstick, powder, and rouge, grimaced and did her turn in the Big Time.

Something went wrong with the electric current over in Victoria Park. A fuse burned out or the property manager had a stroke. Maybe the big time was up. The projectors winked back, and Niagara, fading into the merciful mystery of night, gleamed again in her own silver splendor as she has these twentyfive thousand years.

"Buffalo owns 'em," quoted the unconvening guest.

"No," said Savonarola, quietly, as he leaned forward to turn the key on the magneto switch; "no, Miss Porter was right. Our Father owns 'em."

J

AMES HUNEKER, of the flashing pen, once wrote a life of Liszt, on which he lavished time and thought and care and travel. He went out on the trail of the great pianist, following him on the highways and byways, from Hungary to England, France, and Italy. He had style and knowledge and musicianship to assist him in his task. Yet his book, when it appeared, fell rather flat.

And now another writer has ventured on a biography of the Abbé, whom he Ideals with less as a musician than as a lover. This method may, to many, seem irreverent. Yet it is warranted by the facts of Liszt's career, and not nearly as disrespectful as it might be if, besides wearing the gown as a minor and casual member of the priesthood, Liszt had been wedded to the Church in deadly earnest. Moreover, notwithstanding all his frailties, Liszt compares favorably on the whole with some other abbés known to art and fame; for example, a certain Prévost, who gave us an insight into his own scandalous experiences in his story of the Chevalier des Grieux of "Manon Lescaut," and who paid so tragically, they say, for his frivolities by being tortured, when alive, on a dissecting table.

I have not read the very latest life of Liszt,' nor shall I do so. For I am not interested now in his dead loves and courtships, or, for that matter, in his music with exceptions. But no one who had once set eyes on him and consorted with him in the flesh could be indifferent to his wondrous personality. After many years during which his music may have bored me, I still remember how, in my salad days, I had the privilege one night of meeting the Abbé face to face for a few hours in England.

He had grown old, and soon after he passed on. Long before that he had no doubt put aside the snares and vanities of love, wearied of his fame, and come to think lightly of a majority of his compositions. He must have learned by then to discriminate between gold and pinchbeck, to know the hollowness of most intrigues and amours, and to bow down to the more true and lofty genius of such rivals as Berlioz and Wagner. Age had dignified and mellowed him. He

had become almost a legend. But he was still a great and admirable pianist and a figure quite unique in his own world.

In his honor, one of his London publishers had invited every musical celebrity within reach to a reception at his suburban home-a handsome house on the road to Sydenham, hard by the Crystal Palace, which to-day is, as it was, a curious monument of glass and iron, redeemed from its extraordinary ugliness by many memories of marvelous ugliness by many memories of marvelous music festivals.

The night was dark, and Liszt had just arrived, I think, from France. For some reason, I had been delayed in town and feared I might miss the function. But I was not too late.

As the door opened, and I passed from a dark garden into a hall brilliantly lighted and crowded with guests, I had the good fortune to behold a sight which I have never forgotten.

Before me was a wide and stately staircase, at the foot of which I saw a group of gayly dressed women, with bowed heads, holding nosegays in their hands to offer Liszt. At the top of the stairs, resting his right hand on a balustrade and slightly stooping, as he halted on his way to look down on his votaries, was a majestic veteran. A man well in the seventies, tall, and clad in a black robe. His hair, which flowed in straight masses over his neck, was snowy white. His nose was large and curved. His complexion, marred by time and seamed with wrinkles, was of a dead gray. Years of love, years of dreams, years of acquaintance with the deeps and shoals of life, had set their mark upon a fascinating face. His lips were stirred by a mild smile, half kindly, half ironic, tired but pleased. He would have been equally at ease seated on the Papal throne or in a lady's boudoir. He had the urbanity of a diplomat and the picturesqueness of a model. As you watched him, you could find traces of the charm which had linked him with so many of the sex by whom he had been idolized. Yet, in the usual way, somehow Rome, the Eternal, had set her stamp on his broad brow, his face, his manner-a, stamp of subtility and intellectual refinement, not devoid even of a touch, at least, of austerity.

To Liszt, you felt, such tributes as had been prepared for him were natural. That night. though, as if all present

PH

realized that they were enjoying a las glimpse of him, the deference and for mality of his welcome were exceptional As he moved slowly down the stairs and accepted the flowers extended to him, his movements seemed processional. might, indeed, have been a saintly pre ate receiving homage from the faithful Women and flowers and Liszt-they al harmonized. It is with flowers and wo men rather than with music that in my mind I shall always associate the great Abbé.

C

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3

The host and hostess led Liszt cere moniously through a large music-room h thronged with composers, pianists, singa ers, performers on stringed instruments organists, critics, and mere music lovers to a seat near a grand piano. He did no play-no one would have dared to sug gest his playing after a long journey. HT sat in state, hearing compliments like SC monarch, exchanging set phrases with him admirers, and occasionally smiling at these women who pressed round him. Amongst the guests were Arthur Sullivan, Profes of sor Randegger, and many opera stars. S

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Then came a rather distressing anti-de climax. For two hours and more, pianisth after pianist seated himself at the pian m and played Liszt to Liszt. And as the t night wore on his face became more sad ti

Fiction

DEMIGODS. By John Biggs, Jr. Charles Scrib ner's Sons, New York. $2.

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There are two of these demigods, father ca and son. The first is John Gault, a sturdy fanatic, founder of a semi-crazy church and leader of a desperately painful trek to a site chosen, he believes, by God. He is a finely conceived character. The son is not. His talk is turgid, his actions irresponsible: he is an unbelievable compound of sensual- ST ism, business genius, brutality, and igno

rance.

lis

FAN: THE STORY OF A YOUNG GIRL'S LIFE
By W. H. Hudson. E. P. Dutton & Co., New Us
York. $2.50.
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This was first published some thirty a years ago under the author-pseudonym w Henry Harford. It is obviously one of Sa those unsuccessful efforts to live by writing which Hudson spoke of so bitterly in his Co latter years. It is interesting chiefly as a study in Hudson's early style.

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THE PAINTED STALLION. By Hal G. Evans. Little, Brown & Co., Boston. $1.75. A wild mustang is the titular hero, but im the young fellow Reese runs him hard for Do first place. Adventure and romance, jeal- De ousy and a happy love ending, make this a St right good Texan yarn. an

COMES THE BLIND FURY. By Raymond Escholler. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York. The simple and fitting title of M. Escholier's impressive novel "La Nuit" has been replaced in the translation by a scrap of Milton chipped from the fuller couplet

quoted on the fly-leaf, after the popular th

fashion of "If Winter Comes." It is a St pity; for the slow, relentless closing in of

Ca

he shadows around a young girl who eners upon the scene a bright and winning hild is M. Escholier's theme. Henriette is he orphan daughter of a country doctor's nly son by a low woman. A little girl of en, she comes from her convent school to ive with her grandparents, whose relucant affection for her is poisoned by bitteress and dread. Her youth repressed, retricted, and denied its natural outlets and Opportunities, the evil passions latent in er nature attain a dreadful secret growth ind the child, who with understanding help and guidance might have conquered her perilous inheritance, becomes in truth the lebased creature of their utmost fears. Spiritually and physically darkness enfolds her; she loses the sight of her eyes, the vision of her soul, her innocence, her happiness, her charm, her hope, and vanishes it last into the night of her kind.

All the characters of the little provincial circle in which the tragedy develops are learly and strongly drawn. The book ings true, and leaves the reader, as it should, pitying profoundly alike the miserible sinner and the tragically uncomprehending, rigid, virtuous one, but never for moment melted to that maudlin sympathy which swamps a sense of human values.

This is not a dog story, but one of Mr. Terhune's lovable gold-red collies holds a prominent place among the dramatis personce. The scene of the tale is within thirty miles of New York City in that New Jersey section where Blue-Eyed Niggers and Jackson Whites still, the author tells us, shame modern civilization by their depths of degradation. There is a real treasure, left by Hessian soldiers after the Battle of Springfield, and in the possession of a descendant with the Hessian blue eyes and the Negro skin. But the seekers who find the treasure get a surprise. What it is must not be told, but one may say that it involves a peculiar and clever bit of invention.

HOME TALENT. By Louise Closser Hale. Henry Holt & Co., New York. $2.

Mrs. Hale is an accomplished person both on and off the stage. This is a retrospective novel, written with her customary force and cleverness. The stage-struck can read it with profit, and those who like a lively, human tale will find it more than entertaining. There is much of herself in the volume.

SWINBURNE.

Biography

By Harold Nicolson. The Mac$1.25. millan Company, New York. This item in the New Series, of the "English Men of Letters" follows the policy usual in the series of laying stress on criticism rather than biographical detail. It is a study of the poet Swinburne-about whom "as man," indeed, there is less to say than about most men of letters. The substance of Mr. Nicolson's judgment is contained in his opening chapter, "The Approach to Swinburne." He acknowledges Swinburne's faults and limitations, that "narcotic effect of his melody" of which the ear so fatally wearies; the vagueness of his imagery; and especially "the absence in his poetry of any wide basis of common experience." Swinburne once wrote to E. C. Stedman: "Knowing as you do the dates and sequences of my published books, you know every event of my life." He was a poet of revolt, and a man almost voluptuously ready to submit his will to any determined fellow-creature; hence his long years of careful coddling by the excellent Watts-Dunton. Nevertheless, believes Mr. Nicolson, his genius is undeniable, and there is hope that "the present distaste for Swinburne is due to altogether accidental causes, such as his technique, and that

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