Т was President, a hundred pairs of skis IT is a simple chapter in the life of came into camp for the soldiers and the rangers. "I never saw him afterwards," said McBride, "but nobody ever came in from Washington through whom the President didn't send his greetings to 'Mac.'' Fiction Roosevelt. McBride knew, and everybody knew who met him, that a great human being had passed that way; and it is the recollection of those days in 1903 which the old guide now thinks most about in his lonely life away back in the Yellowstone country, with only his The Book Table THE BODY IN THE SHAFT. By R. F. Foster. The Siebel Publishing Corporation, New York. $2. A well-thought-out detective story. The gruesome title need not disturb the most nervous reader, for one cares no more about this corpus delicti than if it were a bag of cement. The reporterdetective is a wonder at deduction, not so miraculous as the famous Sherlock, but closer in reasoning power. The author scorns to detrack his readers by false clues, yet he constructs a mystery unguessable until he chooses to explain it. THE PORTRAIT OF A MAN WITH RED HAIR. "The man's hair was en brosse, standing straight on end as Loge's used to do in the old pre-war Bayreuth 'Ring.' It was, like Loge's, a flaming red, short, harsh, instantly arresting. . . . For the rest this interesting figure had a body round, short and fat like a ball. Over his protruding stomach stretched a white waistcoat with three little plain black buttons. The color of his face had an unnatural pallor, something like the clown in Pagliacci, or again like one of Benda's masks. The eyebrows were so faint as to be scarcely visible. The mouth in the white of the face was a thin hard red scratch." This is the portrait of Crispin, the man with red hair, in Hugh Walpole's latest fantasy, for it isn't a novel. It is a thrilling macabre story of suppressed horror, ghostly towers, torture, and escape through the fog. There is no psychological meaning nor elaborate allegory in the thing, as Walpole himself is only too quick to admit in his Introduction. The only literary stunt in the entire book, albeit that is a magnificent one, lies in the description of Crispin himself. Hugh Walpole seems to have been much impressed with America on his recent visit. The hero is an art-loving American from Oregon, and if you will but re-read the opening paragraph you Edited by EDMUND PEARSON must agree that Crispin, the "Man With It is a notable tour de force, for never SHELTER. By Charles F. Marsh. D. Appleton A sound and sincere novel. The story Biography ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER AND FEN- The life of Mrs. Jack Gardner and the who kept half a dozen fluttering young æsthetes in attendance, will be forgotten and the great lover of art will be remembered. A benefactor of her country; something of a genius, and, like many geniuses, rather impossible as a neighbor. A RECOLLECTIONS OF THOMAS R. MARSHALL: The autobiography of a remarkable, almost a unique man, the late VicePresident. A politician with a sense of humor! A party man who can say that he once thought that "to be a Democrat was to be an honest man, and to be a Republican was to be a crook." Mr. Marshall also writes: "Of all hypocritical lovers of peace, the pacifist belongs in the thirty-third degree." Mr. Marshall's was a strange and wholesome figure; he acknowledged, after the war began, that he was ashamed he had ever been neutral. His chief never reached JOHN S. SARGENT: HIS LIFE AND WORK. "That the story of his life is to be read in his works, is a truism," writes William H. Downes in his life of Sargent, a handsome volume with forty-one illustrations of the artist's paintings. And of the 313 pages of the book, we find 106 given to Sargent's life and 207 to a list of his works with notes. The output left behind him numbered 950, outside of the murals in the Boston Public Library and the Art Museum, the latter-the last big commission he filled-heroic in design, but delicately done and exquisitely colored. Original, brilliant, and audacious, his first exhibited paintings in London so violated well-worn formulas that oldtimers pronounced him a coxcomb. As a portraitist he was uneven-en rapport with one, out of touch with another. Contrasting opinions made him out "a monster of cynicism," a "paragon of kindliness;" he "read the souls of his sitters," he was "superficial;" he "probed their weaknesses," he was "chiefly con KERMATH BOAT ENGINES The best all around marine motor in the market. That is what the best and foremost boat fans think of the Kermath. Boat builders will tell you of Kermath's dependability-its economy-its ability to always get there and back without fuss, trouble or annoyance. All Kermath motors are built to the most Write today for complete cerned with externals." In painting his These engaging Poetry MAY DAYS. An Anthology of Verse from Masses- the “The Book Lovers' Corner" some of the bitingest are from poets who FOREIGN LANGUAGES FRENCH SPANISend for catalogue, stat RENCH. ITALIAN, SPANISH, GERMAN BOOKS. ing language desired. SCHOENHOF'S, 387 Washington St., Boston, Mass. prudently absented themselves from the What really bitter verses about The Outlook for mer and Alan Seeger, might have written. if they had not been busy otherwise! And how severe upon their battalion commanders other writers might be if they were not hampered-as few of the "Masses" poets were-by a sense of humor. Political opinions permeate this volume; the kind of political opinion which sheds tears for youth killed in battle, but has never a tear for the old poor stodgy typesetters blown up by the bomb in the Los Angeles "Times" building. They were slaughtered for the "benefit" of Labor-and the murder of innocent men under these circumstances was never cause for sorrow in the "Masses" or the "Liberator." There is much wide, tolerant, Christian love for other nations (except our recent allies, the French and English, of course) in this anthology, but this is counteracted -lest the book should be sloppily sentimental-by plenty of sound, vigorous hatred for Americans. Travel and Description PARIS ON PARADE. By Robert Forrest Wilson. Paris, more than any other city, has always the air of being on parade, as if justly proud of her own beauty, and Mr. Wilson has caught the spirit of the city in more ways than one. Probably some of the most pleasurable research work in the world was done in preparing to write the chapter "An Apératif on the Terrace." It describes the Parisian café, which is mother, father, and sister if need be, to its customers. It is amusing to find among drinks that dazzle even in retrospect one called "grog Américain," the Frenchman's favorite guard against the inroads of a chilly winter. Why it is called "grog Américain" no man can say, since it is a drink never known in the United States, but every French bottle of it displays the Stars and Stripes on its label. Paris would not be familiar without some mention of the art of painting the lilies, and an absorbing part of the book is about clothes, cosmetics, perfumes, and other tricks of a charming trade. In this city of specialized trades there is the man who knows better than any other man how to mount stained lizard skin upon ivory for umbrella handles, and the man who carves the best dogs' heads out of boxwood. These craftsmen and others like them keep the secrets of their trade in the family, refusing to hire outsiders, and, despite a complete lack of advertising, the pathway to their doors is a well-beaten one. Naturally, Mr. Wilson has a chapter on "the bookshop crowd," and his insight In writing to the above advertisers, please mention The Outlook into the literary foibles of some of the young Intellectuals is highly amusing. They are "different even if they have to drop their capital letters." Many things have passed in the last two decades, but the Apache, beloved of fiction and forever hunted by the Brigade Speciale, is still very much alive. The swift revenge of "Petit Louis" is a fascinating story that ends in a well-spilled pool of blood. The charm of the book is doubled by the characteristic and beautiful paintings of the city by A. G. Warshawsky, which are reproduced as illustrations. Mr. Warshawsky, familiarly known as "Buck" in the pages, is a talented American painter living in Paris whose work is widely known and often seen in exhibitions in this country. Economics THE TRAGEDY OF WASTE: By Stuart Chase. The Macmillan Company, New York. $2.50. Dispassionately, with just the right amount of statistical citation, Mr. Chase develops his thesis, which, roughly stated, is that in current production in this country half the available manpower and half the raw materials used go to waste. He sees man-power wasted in three ways the production of nonessentials, idleness, and bad technical methods. His standard for measuring waste is based on a functional conception of industry, a conception of industry as devoted primarily to supplying human wants, profits being a by-product. Of course, under the present economic scheme of things, goods are practically regarded as by-products of the process of making profits; and no doubt the majority are convinced that, human nature being what it is, that scheme of things must continue to the millennium. But, whatever the truth of that matter, all candid readers will concede that the functional conception affords an excellent basis for a discussion of wastes, and that Mr. Chase has conducted the discussion with masterly skill, with humor, and with elegance. It is indeed a tragedy; probably Mr. Chase has not exaggerated the shadows. Recalling man's record of stupidity, folly, predaceousness, and laziness, he is too honest to offer much reassurance. "Illusions we may have," says he, "but they are pierced with the stark arrows of the repeated helplessness of mankind before its destiny." Essays and Criticism AMERICAN HUSBANDS AND OTHER ALTERNATIVES. By Alexander Black. The BobbsMerrill Company, Indianapolis. $3. Life and letters, but chiefly life in some of its lighter aspects, discussed easily and agreeably in fifteen brief Motorists need no bright headlights here. See the uniform brilliance in this night-time view-a beaming moon every hundred yards is focused on the road. Beaming Moons essays, diversified by occasional interest- THE ARTS OF CHEATING, SWINDLING, AND This reprints, with an essay by the EXPERIMENTS. By Norman Douglas. $2.50. Robert The book contains essays on Poe and THE WRITING OF FICTION. By Edith Whar- Would that all our budding tale- In writing to the above advertisers, please mention The The Outlook for So also, when we come to workmanship, Mrs. Wharton believes the first duty of the artist is to select and to control his materials. She therefore finds neither novelty nor merit in the "stream of consciousness" trick of our young novelists, who represent the normal mind as a mere mess of haphazard sensations and reactions never by any chance lapsing into thought. All the great artists, she says, have believed that "in the least in its decisive moments, on fairly world of normal men life is conducted, at coherent and selective lines." Therefore they have expressed "the stammerings and murmurings of the half-conscious mind whenever-and only when-such a state of mental flux fitted into the whole picture of the person portrayed." Of the novelist's further discourse on the sources and beginnings of the modern novel, on its peculiar qualities, its technical aspects, and on the short story as a distinct form this word of comment can give no fair impression. The book offers much valuable information and suggestion for all serious students and readers of modern fiction. History and Politics TOLERANCE. By Hendrik Willem Van Loon. This is a disappointing book, and the more so because it contains sufficient evidence that if Mr. Van Loon had taken more time and pains and had consulted the groundlings less and his august theme more he could have given us a very fine piece of work. What an opportunity missed! For could anything be more pat to the need of the age than an adequate discussion of tolerance? But such an achievement would require years of patient, delicate labor, and there's a kind of contagious madness in the air which drives your writer to produce at least one book a fortnight. As Mr. Van Loon has been badly "taken," we ought not to expect much. It is, then, cause of wonder and admiration that this book should be "worth while," and it is that decidedly. Mr. Van Loon sketches the struggle between Tolerance and Intolerance from the first recorded appearance of Tolerance in the world until this our blessed day when Intolerance, completely recovered of his hard knocks from a succession of paladins of Tolerance, seems by way of administering the coup de grâce to the insolent intruder. For this is Mr. Van Loon's strong point; he is tolerant toward intolerance, humorously recognizing that in primitive stages of society intolerance is necessary to self-preservation. It is only in highly developed and harmoniously balanced societies that Outlook |