THE DANCING GIRL OF SHAMAKHA.

By the

Count de Gobineau. Translated by Helen
Morgenthau Fox. Harcourt, Brace & Co.,
New York. $2.50.

The works of Arthur, Comte de Gobineau, were a minor weakness of the engaging villain of one of last season's best detective stories, "The Voice from the Dark." If this recommendation is not enough, it may be added that the versatile Count, besides being an authority on scientific farming, was a traveler and a diplomat, and for some time a rival of the elder Dumas at the business of writing stories of adventure.

In the past few months the artistic conscience of editors, or the lapsing of copyrights, have caused several of his stories to appear here and in England. They are worth noticing. His beautiful dancers, magicians, princes, thieving soldiers, and beggars are delightful; for the rest, the stories are realistic in detail, for the Count had a clear eye and a long memory, humorous, and exciting. Further, a person who signs him or herself Mak preserves the memory of Aubrey Beardsley with five very decorative black-and-white drawings, and the translator does not let us remember her dictionary work for a moment. It is easy to read.

THE PIPER'S FEE. By Samuel Hopkins Adams. Boni & Liveright, New York. $2. Whatever discrepancies and samenesses this story may possess, Dorothea Selover holds attention from first to last-through the scenes of her strangely individual and elflike childhood to those where for Evelyn Ruyland's good she sacrifices herself. The Ruyland clan weigh heavily upon Dorrie's destiny-first by accident, and then by design. The Phoenix dance hall is a natural enough incident in her life, but Fritz Gillis, the byplay of the story, is too cheap-the discard of the pack. There are love stories, many and many of them, that have this same theme, and all no doubt end with the same radiant happiness.

But the later chapters lack reality and cannot hold a candle to those on Grandpa and the Statement made out by him that was Dorrie's early code. The meat of the author's tale lies in the question of the individual child's education being an education for truth, honor, and clear-sightedness. "Grandpa,' the educator, though a shadow, is the humorous and philosophical element, the real creation of the book, and a very different part of speech from the Ruyland men, who are only sticks.

PRECIOUS BANE. By Mary Webb. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. $2.

The scene of Mary Webb's novel is a Shropshire farm a hundred years ago, and the tale is put into the mouth of Prue, the daughter of the house. She is a gentle and lovely girl, her beauty marred by a "hareshotten" lip-a blemish which enables her hard and avaricious brother, when he comes into his inheritance, to swear her to service and obedience during the long grinding toil his ambitions require, that she may at the end have money for a cure. Strange, primitive customs and beliefs, sometimes merely quaint, sometimes terrible, are essentially a part of the story; there is tragedy, there is romance, there is happiness hard won, and always there is the farm and the lovely English countryside. The style, with its little touch of dialect, its frequent odd rustic words and old-fashioned phrases, and its occasional passages of unforced poetic grace, is appealing and agreeable. Equally remote from the usual courtly novel of a past historic period and the over-cloddish up-todate back-to-the-soil variety, this story of

the old-time Sarns of Sarn is interesting and out of the common run.

RICHARD

Biography

HARDING

DAVIS: A BIBLIOGRAPHY. Being a Record of His Literary Life, of His Achievements as a Correspondent in Six Wars, and His Efforts in Behalf of the Allies in the Great War. By Henry Cole Quinby. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. $7. Richard Harding Davis seems a quaint figure to many writers of reviews to-day. He was athletic; he lived outdoors; he was whole-heartedly in favor of what he thought the right side in a number of wars; he wrote simple, rather naïve stories of adventure and love, which often ended in conventional marriage. They had the further reproach of being "clean" stories. Finally, and quite without respect to one of the popular literary poses of to-day, he was Pro-America, Pro-France, and ProEngland in the late war, instead of being Pro-Teuton, or Pro-Almost Anything Queer and Unpopular.

Whether or not it will be greatly demanded by book collectors, Mr. Quinby has made one of those bibliographies which is almost of the nature of creative work. It is not merely a compilation. It records, with many interesting illustrations, Davis's college writings, his separately printed works (in two lists, alphabetical and chronological), his uniform editions, his plays, translations, moving pictures-all, in fact, of his adventurous literary career. It gives references to criticisms of his works and a list of the characters in his fiction. Mr. Quinby has made one of those rare and fascinating books: a work of reference which contains a great deal of good reading.

MEMOIRS OF HALIDE EDIB. The Century Company, New York. $4.

This autobiography is an absorbing story of a woman's life, from childhood to a rich maturity. Her intellectual attainments, far above the average in any case, are particularly noteworthy, since the harem cannot be generally conducive to free thinking. Halidé Edib emerged from an unhappy childhood to become one of the foremost educators and emancipators of Turkish womanhood. Born of a famous and politically powerful family, she was brought up like an English child, and attended the American College for girls at Constantinople. The impressions of her childhood are wistful, and tinged with a sadness that is an indictment of polygamy.

Marriage and motherhood occupy but do not satisfy this remarkable woman. Passionately interested in political and educational reforms, and herself an able organizer, Halidé Edib has had more than one finger in the pie of Turkish politics. Her experiences during the tyrannical reign of Abdul Hamid and the story of her flight into Egypt during the revolutions of 1908-09, are excellent accounts of those bloody periods in Turkish history. Halidé Edib has done and is doing more for the women of Turkey than any one person of her day, or possibly of any day, and her book is full of interesting side-lights on the customs of her country.

ruined when the Bolsheviks came to power; and as to the second, though certain concessions to capitalism have been found necessary, the movement is predominantly toward Socialism. The latest official figures of production and trade are given in some detail in support of his thesis. Nothing, according to the author, but a great renascence of the productive forces of capitalism in Europe can retard the success of the Russian experiment. Such

a renascence, he admits, would be disastrous. But he dismisses the possibility as a bad dream. Capitalism is being undermined by its own inherent processes, whereas Russia needs only to utilize, with an accelerated speed, all the resources of its own economic system with those of the outside world. This she is doing, he says, and the outlook is hopeful. Other persons, of course, can use Mr. Trotsky's figures to make a vastly different showing.

By

ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS, 1861-1865. Brougham Villiers and W. H. Chesson. T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd., London.

This book deals with the incidents of friction between Great Britain and the United States arising out of the American Civil War, with the several currents of British feeling regarding that conflict and its participants, and, vice versa, with the feeling in the North and that in the South toward Great Britain in that connection; and it discusses the causes and effects of these matters.

The main object of the chief author, Mr. Villiers (Mr. Chesson contributes only the concluding chapter, which is wretched stuff), is to exhibit in clear light the proNorth feeling of the British masses during our Civil War. Mr. Villiers does this well enough, though not brilliantly. There is nothing in human annals more deserving of a brilliant eulogy than the magnanimous and unselfish attitude of the British masses toward the American civil conflict.

In this little book Dr. Canby, editor of the "Saturday Review of Literature" and Professor of English at Yale, deals with "the relation between ideas and the expression thereof.' It is not intended solely for writers, professional and amateur. Indeed, the man whose interests are divorced from literature but who is called upon to deliver a speech or whose business requires proficiency in letter writing will find it a useful investment. The author has not attempted a discussion on technique, but rather to elucidate the general principles of the art of writing. Perhaps the most interesting of the eleven chapters is entitled "Disabilities and Diseases," in which are defined various maladies and their remedies as prescribed by Dr. Canby. Beauty rash, faulty brakes, rickets, dry as dust, are some of his characteristic terms for these illnesses. WHAT HAVE YOU GOT TO GIVE? By Angelo Patri. Doubleday, Page & Co., Garden City, New York. $2.

Besides being a teacher, Angelo Patri is a poet with a rich fund of humor and a delightful fancy that perches on your shoulder when you least expect it. In this collection of short sketches on life and its ways, essentially simple and homely, but utterly individual, the reader will find

many high lights, many reflections, deep The quiet places, banners and heights. great game of life, too serious to be played seriously, has been made an art, for Mr. Patri knows how to play it in the most quizzical way imaginable. There should be As a Read the "Tryst." more of him. small, lively boy would throw a ball, he tosses his challenge: "I want to meet you when you are riding atop all your troubles, unheeding, uncaring, your back and your arms and your legs and your brain swinging free and your hand running true to the task. I want to see you turning out the I want to meet best job of your life. you in your great moment when you are greatly daring and soaring high, blithely leading a losing cause. meet you there."

...

Travel

I would

THROUGH THE MOON DOOR. By Dorothy Gra$5. ham. J. H. Sears & Co., Inc., New York. Dorothy Graham has looked through the moon door of her little house in Peking, and with the eye of a colorist has painted China in terms that glow again and again. The book is a rambling description of pleasant months spent in and around the Celestial City. If the many pulchritudinous palaces and sunsets grow a trifle monotonous, the story of her adventures in househunting, where one must pay the landlord four months' rent in advance, are amusing; her comments on servants, shopping, and the various strange customs of the country are shrewd and humorous.

Before the moon door pass a fantastic procession of beggars, flower-venders, Lama priests chanting for the dead, itinerant barbers, and a traveling mouse circus with performers wise beyond their Western cousins. There is much of interest about the festivals and religions of these people "who live as if they have an eternity at their disposal." In the shadow of splendid temples and "palaces of mellowed beauty, with gardens haunted by music of lacquered lutes," lurk filth, a leering greed, and a display of cupidity that spells decay. Out of it may rise a phoenix. The book is generously and beautifully illustrated with photographs taken by the author.

THINGS SEEN IN PARIS. By Clive Holland. $1.50. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York.

This is a compact pocket volume that will greatly aid the tourist in seeing things in and about the French capital. It is well written and illustrated. Much general information is included.

LOST AFRICAN DIGGING FOR Count Byron Kuhn de Prorok. nam's Sons, New York. $5.

The Putnams, with their constant interest in science and exploration, are presenting a narrative of Count de Prorok unearthing the great gods of Carthage as a companion piece to William Beebe's deepsea fishing exploits. Any comparison between the gods and the little fishes will probably leave Mr. Beebe the winner, but this book is not to be disregarded on that account. It is worth reading, and it tells in a sprawling conversational manner just what the Count and his French and American associates have been doing for the past three years to keep Cato and M. Tullius Cicero rapidly revolving in their coffins.

Count de Prorok has the advantage of being the best-looking explorer since the late

Ernest Shackleton. His expedition has encountered one difficulty rarely met with by explorers, and that is a real estate boom. Carthage is, as Æneas discovered, a pleasant place to stay in, and unromantic realtors have run a tram line out from Tunis, and they are buying up possible sites for Dido's palace in all directions, marking out Eneas Avenue and Scipio Street and wait patiently for the

African commuters to begin nesting. This makes excavating, not only difficult, but expensive. The book is profusely illustrated with views of the expedition and its members in Punic regions, and their furMention ther explorations in the Sahara. should be made of Professor Washington, of the University of Michigan, whose snowy whiskers give just the proper scholarly touch to the irreproachable ties and gleaming helmet of Count de Prorok.

THE

Religion

ENGLISH SPEAKING PEOPLES: Why
They Fail in Their Mission to the World. By
Bishop Wilbur P. Thirkield. The Abingdon
50c.
Press, New York.

This is a compression of Bishop Thirkield's address made at the recent Methodist Conference in Buffalo. He feels that England and the United States are both too material, and are not doing what they should to Christianize, preferring to capitalize and imperialize.

MY RELIGION. D. Appleton & Co., New York. $1.50.

This small volume of confessions of religious faith, or lack of it, by contemporary British novelists-and a playwright!-together with the comments and arguments of the Bishop of London and other clergymen, is perhaps unduly dominated by the first speaker, Arnold Bennett. The other confessants are Hugh Walpole, Rebecca West, J. D. Beresford, Israel Zangwill, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, E. Phillips Oppenheim, Compton Mackenzie, H. De Vere Stacpoole, and Henry Arthur Jones. Compton Mackenzie is a Roman Catholic, Israel Zangwill a Jew, and everybody The knows Conan Doyle's Spiritualism. other writers, in working themselves out of a conventional Protestant position as they have done, speak with sincerity, if not wholly by a clear chart. They retain ideals and longings, further, of duty, for God and immortality which entitle them to a more complete theology than that to which they have yet been able to think themselves through. Even Arnold Bennett, enjoying himself thoroughly as the enfant terrible of the occasion, has ideals not unakin to Christianity's. Yet about him particularly

the thought strikes us that had he not possessed a better "carry through" for a novel than he professes for his faith he would hardly have been invited to confess!

govern fluctuations in height; one thing is sure the ocean is never at rest; and this restlessness and its effects Mr. Marmer pictures in many parts of the globe. He makes much of "tidal friction" and lays the blame on the moon, which is held responsiThe book is ble for so much besides. copiously illustrated with intelligent diagrams.

THE WHALERS OF AKUTAN. By Knut B. Birkland. The Yale University Press, New Haven. $3. Akutan is an island in the Aleuts. The story is one of an effort to transfer the Norwegian method of whale fishing to the It is a tale of region of Bering Strait. disappointment and hard work, amid much danger, written with a dim pathos and patient sense of struggle. Also, it tells something about whales, little and big.

Harper &

FLORIDA. By Kenneth L. Roberts. $2.50. Brothers, New York. Kenneth L. Roberts is well known to readers of the "Saturday Evening Post." He is the author of many of those informative articles garnished with press photos and flavored with captions that serve to keep Mary Roberts Rinehart out of Campbell's Soup. On this occasion he has done the proper thing by the Florida Real Estate Boom, and that is the main trouble with the book. A year ago, six months ago, the world was going to Florida to eat hot dogs, buy lots, and look at the millionaires, and any amount of rot was eagerly swallowed by a hypnotized public. But now the first casualties are returning. back from Florida," the Ford tourists and bus addicts are crying, "Hinc illæ lacrymæ!"

"Just

Roberts wastes no time on inessentials. For him Florida began in 1923, and her saints and heroes are realtors and developers. In his book are many pictures of desolate sandy roads bordered by sugar pines and bearing one mule, juxtaposed to pictures of the same spot, or nearly, now boasting cement paving, a stucco-and-tile business block, 83 Fords, and an ice-cream butcher; thus showing improvement. The rest is much the same potpourri of opportunity and oranges and $ and Spanish art and $ and subdivision, climate, population, $, celery, pineapples, Princess CantacuzeneSperansky, and fruit that the realtors send you each week. Not quite; Mr. Roberts's literary style is a blend of wise-cracking and smoking-car 100 per cent Americanism in which few realtors indulge.

RELIGION AND THE RISE OF CAPITALISM By R. H. Tawney. Harcourt, Brace & Co., New York. $3.50.

For once a jacket blurb is too modest. The brief explanatory paragraph on the front cover of this book gives hardly an indication of the solid worth of the contents. Mr. Tawney, who is best known in America as the author of "The Acquisitive Society," has again shown his rare scholarship and his analytical acumen in a study of social phenomena. This time his concern is with the relation of religious opinion to the socio-economic order. England, that classic economic ground, is the field, and the period treated is that roughly from 1536 to 1700-which marked the transition from mediæval to modern theories regarding the social organization and the right to property. The older conception of society, sponsored by the Church and elaborated by the schoolmen, was that of a family; individual property was justified on grounds of experience and expediency, but its use was held to be limited

at every turn by the rights of the community and the obligations of charity. The Reformation itself wrought no immediate change in this general concept; the prelates of the new faith followed the old in warning their flocks against the sordidness of wealth-getting, in denouncing inclosures, extortion and usury, and in counseling fair dealing in all transactions. But the old economic order was dissolving, and the growth of manufactures and the expansion of trade were soon reflected in the altered opinion of the expounders of religion. Puritanism arose, an expression of religious Al individualism. The early Puritans were mostly middle-class men; they were tradesmen, guildsmen, manufacturers, in the towns and cities; yeoman in the country. Their interests led them toward breaking the shackles of the old economic order; their religious individualism led them in

sensibly to an individualist morality, and this to a disparagement of the significance of the social fabric as compared with personal character. Puritanism idealized the very energies which were to prove so successful in business; and it was but natural that Puritan theology should come to draw a sharp line between economic and ethical interests. Religion was one field, the workaday world another. "In emphasizing that God's Kingdom is not of this world," says the author, "Puritanism did not always escape the suggestion that this world is no part of God's Kingdom." The individual might set his own ethical standards in the competitive strife, so long as he kept a pure spirit and labored for the greater glory of God. Though Puritanism made for political democracy, it made strongly against concern for social welfare; and it served to bring about that abstention of

the Church from the social field which now, after two hundred and fifty years, seems in a fair way of being remedied. Such, briefly and most inadequately put, is the thesis. The reader who wants to know more will find in the book a learned and profound interpretation of a most significant period.

Miscellaneous

A FAGGOT OF TORCHES: Texts That Made History. By F. W. Boreham. The Abingdon Press, New York. $1.75.

Mr. Boreham, who writes from Australia, has built around the strong words of Pascal, John Woolman, Thomas Carlyle, William E. Gladstone, John Hampden, Richard Baxter, George Fox, Samuel Johnson, and men of like caliber a brisk volume in which precept and example keep each other entertaining and elevated company.

These figures were worked out from the enrollment records in the Army and Navy during the war, under the assumption that the distribution of names would be the same throughout the United States.

In New York City the family name of Cohen is second to Smith, with the German name Schwartz ranking fifth. In Cincinnati Meyer gets third place, and in Boston the first five are Smith, Sullivan, Brown, Johnson, and Murphy.

Uncle Silas Peck, of Cos Cob, offers to bet fifty cents that them Adirondack 'skeeters will have a hard time gettin' a square meal off'n Cal Coolidge.

Ray: "Why do they have most all radio broadcasting stations on top of tall buildings?"

Bray: "So nobody can throw bricks at the performers!"

Recent statistics show that three and a half million people in this country are emAnd ployed in the automobile industry. this total does not include traffic policemen and undertakers.

Chancellor Herbert R. Harper, of the University of Denver, is responsible for this: During the World War a doughboy whose gun had been shattered by an exploding shell became panic-stricken and started running towards the rear. After he had gone some ten miles at a record pace an officer commanded him to halt.

"Here, don't you know that there's a big battle going on up at the front?" said the officer. "What do you mean by running away like this when you should be up there doing your bit?"

"Y-y-yes, I-I-I know there's a big battle on up there," stuttered the breathless and trembling doughboy.

"Then what are you doing away back here?" demanded the officer.

"I-I-I'm just spreading the news, sir," said the infantryman.

"Spreading the news!" scoffed the officer.

By the Way

"Well, I think you are a coward, and I'm going to have you court-martialed and shot at sunrise to-morrow.

"By the way," he added, "do you know who I am?"

"N-n-no," said the doughboy; "I don't know what you are, sir."

"Well, I'm your general," said the officer. "Great guns! Am I that far back?" exclaimed the doughboy, and fainted from exhaustion.

From "Everybody's Magazine:"

It was a sleepy village and its fire brigade was anything but up to date. One night a fire was announced by the violent ringing of the alarm bell, and the brigade arrived at the scene of action to find the burning building a mass of smoke. No flames were visible from the outside. The captain made a careful survey. "We better leave it alone and let it burn up a bit," he said, "then we'll be able to see what we are doing."

Eula C. Hill, of Atlanta, Georgia, writes: "Something is always taking the joy out of motoring. When your brakes are in good shape, they often cause you to get your rear fenders bent up."

Daughter-"I hate George, and I'm sending back his ring to him. What should I put on the box?"

Mother-"Glass, handle with care."

An inquiry of a score of New York City book-shops reveals the fact that the popularity of mystery yarns has been succeeded by the summer urge for love stories.

"Seven fellows were standing under one umbrella, and not one of them got wet. How come?" was the question put to a group of us.

We all had silly answers, and the questioner's answer was just as absurd, but it got a laugh from us, and may from you.

"Stop," he told us; "you are spoiling a good joke. The answer is that it wasn't raining."

Among the prisoners arraigned before the court was an Irishman.

"Are you guilty or not guilty?" asked the judge in a stern voice.

"Faith, an' that's your honor's business."

A circular sent out from a poultry market at Yonkers, New York, reads as follows:

Ask your doctor from which will you receive most nutrition-from poultry that has been killed from three to six months and packed on ice for the same length of time or from the farmer that is killed after you order it.

Recent statistics show that American women spend five million dollars a day for cosmetics. Think of the waste when so much of it comes off on men's coats!

From the Boston "Evening Transcript:" Maud: "Did you hear what your friend Edith said about you?" Marie: "No. I was in the other group talking about her."

She: "A penny for your thoughts." Late Caller: "I was thinking of going." Father, at the head of the stairs: "Give him a dollar, Gertrude; it's worth it."

There was a slight difference of opinion. He acknowledged his mistake quite generously by saying: "You are right, and I am wrong, as you generally are."

"So nice of you to put it like that," she said, sweetly. But then she began to think about it.

From the Washington "Dirge:" Dumb: "Do you know that seventeen thousand two hundred and eighty-two elephants were used to make billiard balls last year?"

Dumber: "My, oh, my! Isn't it wonderful that such big beasts can be taught such exacting work?"

Mother (after answering countless questions): "Curiosity killed a cat once, Winnie."

Winnie: "But what did the cat want to know, mummy?"

"In introducing you to my friend, the lecturer, I want to say that he is not as stupid as he looks," remarked the would-be humorous chairman.

"That," said the lecturer without a smile, "is just the difference between the chairman and myself."

A fashionably dressed lady was remonstrating with her little boy as they left the department store: "You should never point, my son. It is very rude."

"But what are you going to do, mother, when you don't know the name of the thing?"

"Why just let the clerk show you everything in the case until he comes to the right one."

From the Dublin "Freeman's Journal:" Wife: "Did you notice the chinchilla coat of the woman sitting in front of us at church this morning?"

Husband: "Er-no. Afraid I was dozing most of the time."

Wife: "Um! A lot of good the service did you!"