Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub
[graphic]

A New World for the Old!

The Religious Faith
of an Evolutionist

YMAN ABBOTT was an Evolutionist.

L

He was also a teacher of Christianity.

In a book written for such days as these, to meet

the very questions that are now haunting men's minds, he has made clear that the acceptance of Evolution can not only be reconciled to the Christian faith, but can bring to it that which will make it the more convincing and vital. In Evolution Lyman Abbott found a new reason for the faith that was in him.

Scarcely once from the beginning of this book to the end does he mention the word Evolution. Yet throughout it is clearly the Evolutionist who is speaking to you.

After condensing into this book the experiences of a lifetime, Dr. Abbott epitomizes the message of its pages as follows:

Christianity means to me:

A new spirit of love, service, and sacrifice in humanity. A new and ever-developing life in art, literature, music, philosophy, government, industry, worship.

A relief from the heavy burden of remorse for past errors, blunders, and sins.

An ever-growing aspiration for the future and an everincreasing power toward achievement.

Faith in ourselves and in our fellow-men; in our infinite possibilities because in our infinite inheritance.

Faith in the great enterprise in which God's loyal children are engaged, that of making a new world out of this old world, a faith which failure does not discourage nor death destroy.

Faith in a Leader who both sets us our task and shares it with us; the longer we follow him and work with him, the more worthy to be loved, trusted, and followed does he seem to us to be.

Faith in a companionable God whom we cannot understand, still less define, but with whom we can be acquainted, as a little child is acquainted with his mysterious mother.

Faith in our present possession of a deathless life of the spirit, which we share with the Father of our spirits and our divinely appreciated leader.

[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors]

What Christianity Means To Me

By Lyman Abbott

Your copy is ready. It is handsomely bound in cloth with gold stamping and is printed on heavy book paper in clear, readable type. It contains 194 pages. The price is $1.50. But it is not necessary for you to remit at this time. Simply send the coupon or mail a post-card and this inspiring book will be shipped promptly. Upon receipt of the book simply deposit $1.50 with the postman plus a few cents to cover mailing expenses. If for any reason you are not satisfied, return the book at our expense and your money will be refunded in full, and without question.

The Outlook Company, Book Division

120 East 16th Street, New York

Edited by EDMUND PEARSON

"For to Be'old this World So Wide"

Books of Travel Reviewed by Earle WalBRIDGE

IX of the congeries of books under

[ocr errors]

review again raise the eternal question of professional versus amateur accomplishment. Who writes the better book of travel, the novelist experimenting in a new form or the seasoned routinist methodically conquering one world after another? The three novelists represented are now or originally were British. Not so long ago every major British novelist had written at least one school story. Of recent years it has seemed a point of honor for each to produce a mystery novel or a volume of detective stories. It may be that books of travel are next on the docket.

One at least knows what to expect from the professional travelers. Colonel Powell is the traveler de luxe, armed with official credentials and letters of introduction, and complete material equipment. If he should determine to visit the mountains of the moon, make sure that you will eventually find him posing on Mount Tycho, with Mrs. Powell, for a photograph by the indefatigable Rexford W. Barton, with as imperturbable an air as we find him in his latest book under the mango tree where Stanley met Livingstone. Mr. Franck, however, still prefers to walk ordinarily by his wild lone. He took his family with him to China, but spent only half his time with them.

We think we know what to expect from the novelists: Canon Hannay will be watchful for odd characters and amusing incidents; Miss Benson will display her impish humor shot through with an occasional shaft of mysticism. Mr. McFee, we hope against hope, will get through with the fewest possible references to Joseph Conrad. In every case we get what we are looking for.

Frances Trollope still has her spiritual sisters. Miss Stella Benson' sometimes reminds us of Max Beerbohm's Duke of Dorset, who "was not one of those Englishmen who fling, or care to hear flung, cheap sneers at America. Whenever any one in his presence said that America was not large in area, he would firmly maintain that it was." Miss Benson, who has crossed the continent in a Ford, is convinced that it is. "He held, too, in his

The Little World. By Stella Benson. The Macmillan Company, New York. $2.50.

enlightened way, that Americans have a perfect right to exist." One is not so sure that Miss Benson thinks so. Her

dislikes are impartial, at least; the imaginary party of "trippers" which is slaughtered with savage gusto in the opening chapter comes from Piccadilly as well as from the "bald yellow cities" of Illinois. She seems happier in India and Indo-China. The whole book is an expression of an original temperament and a somewhat wry but delightful humor, and her own drawings reveal an unexpected and striking talent.

"Opportunity cunningly concealed as a sort of duty" to become chaplain to the British community in Budapest, with a parish extending over the whole country, took "G. A. Birmingham" to Hungary. His more secular experiences are recorded in his book. On the hills of Buda and below in Pest he found a people still somewhat crushed and cowed, bearing the scars "entomological and moral" of the recent Bolshevik régime, and resentful over their lost provinces. In the chapter of that name Canon Hannay elucidates the present whereabouts of Transylvania, Croatia, Fiume, and the Carpathians predicating that "there must be reasons for everything that happens, outside of lunatic asylums, that happens, outside of lunatic asylums, but it is sometimes very hard to find out what they are." Everything that he has to say in this book is interesting, and most of it amusing, especially when he is on the subjects of food and music. A Tzigani band is good for incidental music in a Theatre Guild production, but one gathers that it tends to become too much of a good thing on its native heath.

Mr. McFee brings in his King

Charles's head no later than the second chapter, saying quite coolly, "The reader may complain that this is not fair. He has contracted to visit New Granada, not the shadowy Costaguana of Joseph Conrad's 'Nostromo.' rad's 'Nostromo.'" Well, this reader did complain. He also exercised his immemorial right of skipping the chapter. But he read every word in the book' otherwise. The Colombia depicted is a country seen through the eyes of a ro

2 A Wayfarer in Hungary. By George A. Birmingham (Canon Hannay). E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. $4.

Sunlight in New Granada. By William McFee. Doubleday, Page & Co., Garden City, New York. $3.50.

mantic novelist, who has "striven to breathe life, not only into the figures that

pass over the pages, but into the landscape, the great river, the vast white stillness of the distant snow peaks, the breathless heat and filth of the river town, the bleak mediævalism of the high plateaux." The flight by airplane to Bogota reads like a page from the early and unearthly H. G. Wells.

So much for the Amerigo Vespuccis; now for the authentic Columbuses! Colonel Powell again displays his flair for arresting titles. "The Map that is Half Unrolled" is the second of a trilogy of African travel which began with "Beyond the Utmost Purple Rim" and will conclude somewhat prosaically with "In Barbary." The jacket is adorned with a cannibal of spirituel aspect, whom we meet again among Mr. Barton's invariably excellent photographs. One such epicure assured the author that the toes and palms of the hands are considered the greatest delicacies. The odd and interesting gravitates naturally towards this explorer, although he does not believe everything he hears. He is an honest critic who never hesitates to speak his mind. He believes, for instance, that the Belgian Government is too lenient with natives in the Congo, and that it Great Britain ever surrenders its manwill be a calamity for Tanganyika if

date.

Mr. Franck's book on southern China' is one of his best. It is a really amazing performance to write a book extending to more than a quarter of a million words and remain consistently entertaining and informing. What he calls his "abominable luck" kept him from adventures with wandering bandits. In spite of "the filth, the incessant noise, the sometimes deadening heat," he was primarily interested in the life of the masses, and ate,

slept, and traveled with them. But occasionally the overpowering fecundity of China appalled him. "Only number counts, and its enormity at times frightens just as the uniformity makes one downcast. All these temples, all these houses, all these crowds endlessly reborn; at the turn of the street it is the

The Map that is Half Unrolled; Equatorial Africa from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic. By E. Alexander Powell. With Many Illustrations from Photographs by Rexford W. Barton and the Author. The Century Company, New York. $3.50.

5

Roving Through Southern China. By Harry A. Franck. Illustrated with 171 Unusual Photographs by the Author, with a Map Showing His Route. The Century

Company, New York. $5.

same street that recommences; one has the unbearable impression of eternally wandering through the same infernal corridors, as in a nightmare, of refalling eternally into the same labyrinths, in which grimace the same mysterious faces."

6

There remains a book by another inveterate traveler who is his own photographer, an ambitious picture book "designed especially for travellers," say the publishers, "but of marked interest. and value for home and school libraries." We should put it the other way about. Mr. Johnson's "What to See in America" seems an excellent book for a school library. The illustrations from photographs are small but clear, inclining to

lakes and waterfalls; the text is selected to make the best use of the scanty space allotted it.

Another book of travel illustrated, like Miss Benson's, by the author, is Mr.

Tristram Coffin's "Book of Crowns and Cottages,' which is described on the jacket, with the curt reticence of university presses, as a "volume of sketches depicting life at Oxford and in Devon, Wales, and other historically picturesque parts of England." Mr. Coffin is the typical impassioned American at Oxford. He conveys his enthusiasm very well, on the whole, and tells us many intimate details about his friends and his family. Perhaps a longer stay at Oxford would have cleared his style of some alternate patches of muddiness and lushness. "Only the little shop-girl, whose hat is like an ugly mushroom, cannot keep back the tears that have welled up suddenly in her wistful eyes; in the midst of her

tawdry finery two tears like large dewdrops roll down." Really, Mr. Coffin!

But much can be forgiven the draughts

man of "Cottage, Combe Martin, North Devon" and "South Stack Lighthouse, Holyhead."

Colonel Hawkes in his thumb-nail sketches of London new and old is as compact as Mr. Coffin is diffuse. But then he has evidently lived in London all his life, if not longer; has explored all its streets, sniffed all its smells, and listened to all its denizens. He has something for every taste. The bits that especially appealed to mine are "The Usher," in the section on "The Temple and the Courts," and "The Pantry Club," in "Belgravia and Mayfair." A visit to this club convinced Colonel Hawkes that "the

What to See in America. By Clifton Johnson. With Five Hundred Illustrations. The Macmillan Company, New York. $2.50. 'Book of Crowns and Cottages. By R. P. Tristram Coffin. The Yale University Press, New Haven. $2.50.

The London Comedy: Interludes in Town. By C. P. Hawkes. The Medici Society, London and Boston. 7s. 6d.

Better Housing—

Better Citizenship

Sound 6% Investments

[blocks in formation]

But best of all, the operations of the City Housing Corporation are on a sound investment basis. The Corporation has

DIRECTORS
Alexander M. Bing
President

Dr. Felix Adler
John G. Agar
Leo S. Bing
William Sloane Coffin
Thomas C. Desmond
Douglas L. Elliman
Prof. Richard T. Ely
Frank Lord

V. Everit Macy
John Martin

Mrs. Joseph M. Proskauer
Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt
Robert E. Simon

City Housing Corporation was organized to build better homes and communities for people of moderate incomes. The cost of a home at Sunnyside, Long Island City, flooded with sunshine and air-350 have already been built-is less than the rental of many dark rooms in the city.

paid 6% dividends since the very beginning, and will have a surplus of over $100,000 by the beginning of 1926.

The Corporation is capitalized at $5,000,000. Already over $1,000,000 worth of stock has been bought and paid for. The balance in shares with par value of $100 is now being offered for sale. For complete information write City Housing Corporation, 587 Fifth Avenue, New York, or send in the coupon below.

[blocks in formation]

In writing to the above advertiser, please mention The Outlook

[blocks in formation]

Pantry Club constitutes an impregnable bastion of our social reputation, and that it is only by the precept and example of its butlers that Society will be saved from relapse into an ill-mannered and immoral chaos."

"There is in every man. of British blood traces of primitive man, even if such traces are latent and not developed by opportunity," says Mr. A. Bryan Williams. "They create an overpowering desire to hunt and kill"-and, one may add, to explore difficult countries and investigate the habits of curious peoples. Mr. Williams's own modest and forthright book, "Game Trails in British Columbia," is the result of thirtyseven years of experience as sportsman, guide, and game warden. He has hunted everything-mountain sheep, mountain goats, grizzlies, moose, caribou, wapiti, cougars, and wolves-and done a little fishing, including spinning for steelheads. A well-made volume adds to the pleasure of reading Mr. Williams's adventures, which yield in fascination only to his illustrations.

One opens "Among Papuan Head Hunters," by E. Baxter Riley,10 with a slight feeling of satiety induced by the spectacle of the usual array of naked savages. Although the book will probably prove a useful source book for the anthropologist, since Mr. Riley has compiled it from first-hand observation. among the natives of New Guinea, an awkward and too methodical style makes it rough going for the casual reader. A map and a succinct index are furnished, in addition to the illustrations from photographs and line drawings.

"People of the Steppes" " is something else again. It is not, as some one has facetiously suggested, a book about Charleston dancers, although Mr. Fox did see a ballet in Moscow. In the summer of 1922 he was one of a "little band of Anglo-Saxon oddities islanded in a small town upon the far southeastern plain of Russia . . . engaged in giving relief to the stricken peasants of the district." He was very soon despatched to Turkestan to buy a thousand horses. With ready adaptability, he lived for

Game Trails in British Columbia; Big Game and Other Sport in the Wilds of British Columbia. By A. Bryan Williams, B.A. $5.

10

Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.

Among Papuan Head Hunters: An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Old Fly River Head Hunters, with a Description of the Secrets of the Initiation Ceremonies Divulged by Those Who Have Passed Through all the Different Orders of the Craft, by One Who Has Spent Many Years in Their Midst. By E. Baxter Riley, F.R.A.I. With 50 Illustrations and Map. The J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia. $5.

11 People of the Steppes. By Ralph Fox. Illustrated. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. $2.50.

[merged small][merged small][graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][merged small][graphic][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][merged small]

In writing to the above advertisers, please mention The Outlook

[graphic]
[blocks in formation]

and Margaret Cole. The Macmillan Company, New York. $2.

A detective story. In the main it follows the well-known formulæ of its type, but has sufficient originality of detail to pique one's curiosity. The master mind in this case is Inspector Wilson, of Scotland Yard. Hugh Restington, an American millionaire, disappeared one night from his private suite in London's smartest hotel. His Russian secretary, Rosenbaum, left the hotel early the fol lowing morning with a very heavy trunk, in which it was surmised Restington's dead or unconscious body was hidden, for blood stains were found on bed-sheets and walls. Obviously, Rosenbaum was the assassin. However, when suspicion rests on a character in the first fifty pages one may safely rely on his innocence. The motive of the murder was conjectured to be the desire of a powerful Bolshevist faction to prevent Resting. ton from carrying out his plans to work a huge gold-mining concession granted him by Lenine. Lord Ealing had depended on the Restington concession to bolster up the tottering fortunes of the Anglo-Asiatic Commercial Corporation. But his desire to apprehend the assassin was tempered by fear lest his arrest might bring about the publication of a letter compromising his financial honor. Stock-jobbing and the sharp practice indulged in by kings of finance are dwelt upon with genial cynicism. A tale no more improbable than the conventions permit, and well told.

Essays and Criticism

LETTERS TO A LADY IN THE COUNTRY. Edited by Stuart P. Sherman. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $2.

For some time past a series of singularly dull letters, which in skilled hands might have been made extremely interesting, has been running its course through the columns of the literary supplement of the New York "Tribune" and is now printed in book form with an Introduction by the editor of that supplement. The correspondence is between one "Paul," a Kentucky youth who has moved to New York, and a "Caroline" who remains in the Southland and is the wife of the owner of a very large farm. A letter-writer is always at his worst when he writes about his own emotions, and in his letters Paul gives us an objectlesson in what that worst can be. His

Safeguarding the lanes of speech

[blocks in formation]

The New York-Chicago telephone cable has been completed and is now in service. A triumph of American telephone engineering, the new cable is the result of years of research and cost $25,000,000 to construct. Its first reach extended along the Atlantic seaboard, then steadily westward until this last long section to Chicago was put into service.

To the public, this cable means dependable service irrespective of weather conditions. It is now not likely that sleet storms, which at times interfere with the open wire type of construction with 40 to 50 wires on a pole, will again cut off the rest of the nation from New York or from the nation's capital as did the heavy sleet storm on the day of President Taft's inauguration.

The new cable means speedier service, as it provides numerous additional telephone circuits and will carry a multitude of telephone and telegraph messages. It would take ten lines of poles, each heavily loaded with wires, to carry the circuits contained in this most modern artery of speech.

This cable, important as it is, is only one of the Bell System projects that make up its national program for better telephone service to the subscriber. It is another illustration of the System's intention to provide the public with speedier and even more dependable service.

TELEGRAPH

COMPANIES

AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH COMPANY AND ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

BELL SYSTEM

One Policy, One System, Universal Service

WHEN your mind turns to travel, to hotels, to new
property, to the unusual gift or home luxury-then
let your eyes turn to The Outlook's Classified Advertising
Section. There are helpful suggestions of all sorts grouped
for
your convenience.

And if you've something to advertise, it will be quite as convenient and really resultful.

Ask us anything about it-rates, specifications, etc.

Classified Advertising Section, The Outlook, 120 East 16th St., New Yor

In writing to the above advertisers, please mention The Outlook

« PredošláPokračovať »