I

N William J. Locke's latest book, "The Tale of Triona," Alexis Triona wins fame through the publication of a volume which is, in fundamentals, a plagiarism. The lie is discovered by his adoring wife, Olivia; Triona, in shame, hides himself away for a year, is finally reconciled to his wife, and comes back to society with a confession of the part he played in the creation of the book.

Writing to the "Times," he tells how, finding the notes on the dead body of an espionage agent in Russia, he came to take the story as his own and wrote it as such, adopting the romantic name of Alexis Triona in place of the somewhat prosaic one of John Briggs.

Despite the fact that his own brilliance made the book, Briggs's part has of course been an ignominious one; but he is prepared, backed up by his wife, to make matters clear to the public and stand free of his guilt for all time. He expects all sorts of uproars from the publication of his letter of confession. Mr. Locke is wonderfully kind! This is what he says:

But as they had planned so did it
not turn out. Rowington gave news
that Onslow and Wedderburn had
dropped the question. Why revive
dead controversy? But Triona and
Olivia insisted. The letter on the
origin of "Through Blood and Snow,"
signed "John Briggs," appeared in the
"Times." A few references to 1t ap-
peared in the next weekly "Press."
But that was all. No one was inter-
"Through Blood and Snow"
ested.
was forgotten. The events of 1917 in
Russia were ancient history.

What did the reading world care what
Alexis Triona's real name was or how
he obtained the material for his brill-
iant book?

I repeat, Mr. Locke is wonderfully kind. Would that many more people were built the same way. Just what would have happened under the circumstances in real life is something like the following.

Scene: The news-room of half the newspapers in the city.

Time: Morning.

A lynx-eyed city editor sits in his chair reading. Suddenly he starts, pounces forward. There is quick play of right hand and a pair of scissors, and the sheet lies mutilated before him.

"Scott! Whalen!" he barks, and from nowhere appear two keen-faced young men, who stand attentively before the Great One.

"Seen Alexis Triona's letter in the "Times' smorning?" he asks, looking piercingly at them.

"No," they both answer.

"No, you wouldn't! What d'you do on

the way to the office? Sleep? Well, anyway, you know the chap I mean?" "Sure," from both.

"Right; get onto this. Read that letter."

They read it together, while the other returns to his paper.

"Gee!

This is good!" bursts from

both young men. "Glad you realize it," the C. E. says, without looking up. "Now get right on it. Find out what's back of it. You, Scott, get at Triona himself and his wife. Funny business this about being away for a whole year. See what, it

means.

There's a story somewhere." He glances up. "Might be another woman in it, you know. See. Get at the servants. Whalen, you get after this publisher fellow, Rowington. How much did he know when he published the book? Has he been keeping it dark? Is it a conspiracy between the two, and is this "Times' dope just a free ad? You know what I want. Right, first edition, mind. Shoot!"

Scott and Whalen rush out of the

room.

...

The city editor picks up the telephone. "Harry? Say, Harry, we're running a page feature on this Alexis Triona stunt. See his letter in the "Times'? You did, eh? Thought you would. . . . Well, Harry, I want you to fix me up with two or three pictures. You know the stuff. Triona and his wife. . . . Have they got any kids? H'm! Pity! Tell you what, rake up some of these Russian starvation pictures, will you? All right; let me know. 'By!"

The city editor of half the papers in the city then jumps to his feet and barges through the door of the Sunday Magazine Section, disturbing the peace and quiet that reign therein.

"Say, Jim," he cracks out, and the spiders up in the corners look down in amazement at the disturbance. "What did we say about Triona's book 'Through Blood and Snow' when it was published last year? Hunt it up, will you? get me a copy of the book as well. want some quotations from it."

Five minutes later he is glancing over the review.

"H'm," he mutters disconsolately, "this won't do! 'Wonderful . . . thrilling . . . the mark of truth is stamped on every page. It is only too clear that the author has lived through the agonizing experiences he so vividly describes. . . . Something more than a book. . . . Jim, what d'you mean by it? Spoiling the story-like this! I wanted to say that at the time of publication the 'Daily Squeal' had been the only newspaper in the country to point out that the story should be taken with a pinch of salt. We can't do that now."

He thinks for a moment.

"Tell you what! Find out what the sales of the book have been, will you? And (if you can) just what Triona has brought in from his little deception."

The man of books is moved to protest. "But, I say, old chap," he ventures, "don't you see this fellow Triona is doing a pretty big thing with this confession? Why treat the story this way?" "Which way is that?"

"Well, it seems pretty obvious, doesn't it?"

“That's my affair. Don't the people I want the news?"

"Well, God in heaven," cries the other, "hasn't the fellow given it them in his letter?"

The city editor (of half the newspapers in the city) becomes immersed in documents.

Scene: The office of the manager of half the photographic agencies and film news bureaus in the city.

The manager sits in his chair reading the morning paper. Suddenly he starts, pounces forward, and peers into the news sheet as if in recognition of a longlost friend. Throwing down the paper, he raises grateful eyes to heaven, and as his hand reaches for the telephone he murmurs, wonderingly, "For the love of Pete!"

"Say, Eddy," he bawls down the tube, "have you seen the letter in the Times' 'smorning from that guy Alexis Triona? You have, eh? Some story, boy! How many men have we got out on it? Eh? Good for you! Let's see the results when you get 'em."

The manager then puts down the telephone reverently, leans back in his chair and twiddles his thumbs. Closing his eyes, he whistles softly to himself the "Song of Love."

Scene: The office of the manager of half the film-producing companies in the city.

The manager sits in his comfortable chair reading. From his table a bevy of beautiful Women smile dazzlingly towards him, but he ignores the photographs, his attention having been drawn to something of more than ordinary interest in the news. Leaning forward, he pushes one of the row of white buttons in his table.

A minute later the door is opened noiselessly and a tall, well-groomed man enters the room.

"Ah, Ward," booms the man at the table, "I suppose you have done something in the matter of this Triona confession?"

"We have," answers the newcomer. "We are negotiating now for the film rights of the book "Through Blood and Snow.' As you know, we have tried in vain to get in touch with Triona during

the past year. But now I have Smith out on the job, and have already prepared the ground by a series of wires and phone calls. It appears, however, that Triona is besieged this morning."

"Naturally, naturally," comes testily from the Mighty One, "but it was up to you to get in first. Let me know what progress you make."

Ward silently withdraws, and the manager, frowning, leans back in his chair and mutters: "Too bad, too bad! These fellows of mine want waking up badly."

Many scenes of a similar nature are being enacted all over the city, but we spare you them, and leap ahead.

The scene is the interior of all the elevated trains, surface cars, and subway carriages of the city. The time is early evening on the same day.

Packed masses of humanity are swaying and rolling with the lurch of motion. With eagerness they con the flaring headlines of the newspapers which, in some mysterious way, they have contrived to bring safely and untorn through the crowds.

Snatches of conversation can be heard above the roar and rattle of steel. Even the heavy breathing does not entirely drown the voices.

Courtesy of Scott & Fowles

PAINTING ARTHUR RACKHAM: A LIST OF BOOKS ILLUSTRATED BY HIM. Compiled by FredWith erick Coykendall. an Introductory Note by Martin Birnbaum. Privately printed, 1922.

Collectors and bibliophiles as well as illustrators will be interested in this beautifully printed little brochure, the product of the printing house of W. E. Rudge, of Mount Vernon, New York, and designed, we understand, by Mr. Bruce Rogers. Mr. Birnbaum's introduction presents an enthusiastic yet discriminating appreciation of Mr. Rackham's work,.. which, as every one knows, has made many good books better during a score of years or more. Perhaps Rackham's children are his most characteristic as well as his most popular creations; though Milton's "Comus" has very recently been illustrated by him, while in an earlier period he was attracted by Washington Irving's books. A recent exhibition of Rackham's work at the Scott

and Fowles galleries in New York City has presented his original drawings for the first time to the public, and makes the issuing of this appreciation especially appropriate. We reproduce above one of the characteristic drawings from "Mother Goose" as shown in this exhibition.

JULIAN ALDEN WEIR. By Duncan Phillips and Others. Illustrated. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. $15.

This handsome book contains thirtyodd full-page plates showing in monotone the best of Weir's work. With the appreciations by Duncan Phillips, Royal Cortissoz, Childe Hassam, J. B. Millet, and others, it constitutes a worthy memorial of one of the most distinguished of American painters.

EDUCATION

PHYSICAL STANDARDS FOR BOYS AND
GIRLS. By Charles K. Taylor, The Acad-
emy Press, Orange, New Jersey. $2.
Mr. C. K. Taylor's Outlook articles on

physical standards for boys and girls evoked a wider response than perhaps any other articles which appeared last year in this journal. A statement of the principles behind his standards and the method of their application, together with complete tables for the measurement of boys and girls, is now available in book form. This compact and authoritative volume should be in the hands of every one interested in the physical welfare and development of children.

POETRY

ENCHANTED YEARS (THE). Edited by Professors John C. Metcalf and James S. Wilson. Harcourt, Brace & Co., New York. $1.50.

Although a few of the poems contributed to "The Enchanted Years" have already appeared in periodicals and volumes, the majority of them are printed here for the first time. When it is pointed out that among the contributors to this volume are Lord Dunsany, D. H. Lawrence, H. D., Vachel Lindsay, Edwin Arlington Robinson, John Drinkwater, Ralph Hodgson, Thomas Hardy, Arthur Symons, and Walter de la Mare, to enumerate a few of the eighty poets present, it may readily be seen that the anthology is not without importance as an addition to the season's poetry. The writers whose work appears in this book contributed their efforts as a centennial offering to the University of Virginia,

REAT rivers like the Yukon and the Mackenzie, moving forever toward a distant goal, enthrall the imagination with a sense of irresistible power and perpetual motion that never comes to him who travels on still water. Old-timers who ran the Athabasca or the Slave River rapids in their canoes deplore the passing of the ancient order; for, if the change reduced the personal risk, it also did away with the tingle and the thrill of battle amid the rocks in the foaming torrent to bring the scow or the York boat through. That bristling adventure counted for more than a man's pay. If there was peril, there was also the true romance, with "the bright eyes of danger." The passenger learned to place his trust in Providence, his own paddle, and his tight-lipped pilot and not to rock the boat. The miracle was that so many frail cockle-shells came through unscathed. The wary river pioneers did not despise the dangers; familiarity never bred contempt. But they read the river as a scholar reads a book. They interpreted by a flash of intuition the meaning of every white ripple, every darkling patch or shifting color or revolving eddy. They seemed to possess an uncanny faculty for the divination of that which lay beneath the surfaces. They had cool judgment and unshaken nerve.

1 Other sketches of the Mackenzle River country by Mr. Waldo will appear in subsequent

issues.

and because this is so a number of the poems are concerned with the University itself, with Virginia, and with Edgar Allan Poe. However, most of the poems are on general subjects, and the reader may discover such delightful efforts as "Egypt," by H. D.; "I Know All This When Gypsy Fiddles Cry," by Vachel Lindsay: "Saul," by George Sterling; and "Afterthoughts," by Edwin Arlington Robinson.

SELECTED POEMS. By Laurence Binyon. The Macmillan Company, New York. $2. Mr. Laurence Binyon is an admirable example of what assiduous application in almost any art by an intelligent and sensitive man will do. When he first started writing verse, he wrote probably the worst poetry that any man of his prominence had ever perpetrated in England. But time went on and Mr. Binyon's work grew better, until it reached that authentic plane which placed him among the lesser contemporary figures in English poetry. He has now reached that proud eminence which entitles him to a volume of "Selected Poems." Some of the work included is mediocre, much of it is charming though not especially important, and a few pieces possess that distinguished ring of finality which proclaims the achieved poem.

He is essentially a conservative in verse, employing time-honored meters, writing about Tristram and Iseult, Sirmione, and "The Death of Adam." His phrasing is clear and vibrant, albeit it

RUNNING WATER'

BY FULLERTON WALDO "There was I lying in the bottom of the boat," said a canoe passenger of the Athabasca Rapids, "and Colonel Cornwall sat there in the stern steering with his paddle, never once showing the faintest trace of concern. I saw the blue sky and the clouds shooting by like steam blowing off. There was a roaring in my ears-we struck a rock, and caromed off again; we scudded out of a twisting, boiling chute into a placid reach, and I thanked my stars we had come to the end of the passage. And then I learned that it was only the beginning, and the merest ripple to what was to come. From a whirlpool where we spun like a helpless insect we were thrown against two rocks, the water rushing under the boat as we hung there. We had to get out and unload the canoe, then hoist it round the obstacle and let it down into a foaming pool. Colonel Cornwall grinned and said it was fun. I was gladder than Pollyanna when it was over."

The reckoning comes when the men who passed down the swift-flowing stream so lightly must ascend it. Great Bear River has a course of ninety miles between Great Bear Lake and the Mackenzie at Norman. The distance is descended by canoe in a day. When Inspector La Nauze, of the Mounted Police, went up in quest of Eskimo murderers in 1915, he needed thirteen days. He had to take with him a scow laden

is but seldom that the truly distinguished phrase flashes before the reader. He is frequently delicate in his apprehensions of beauty. Here is an example of his lyric note at its best:

MORN LIKE A THOUSAND SHINING SPEARS Morn like a thousand shining spears Terrible in the East appears.

O hide me, leaves of lovely gloom, Where the young Dreams like lilies bloom!

What is this music that I lose
Now, in a world of fading clues?
What wonders from beyond the seas
And wild Arabian fragrancies?

In vain I turn me back to where
Stars made a palace of the air.
In vain I hide my face away
From the too bright invading Day.

That which is come requires of me
My utter truth and mystery.
Return, you dreams, return to Night:
My lover is the armèd Light.

TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION
WHITE HEART OF MOJAVE (THE). By Edna
Brash Perkins. Illustrated. Boni & Live-
right, New York. $3.

Two women who loved adventure and beauty and the wild outdoors went to Death Valley, and one of them has made a good book about the trip to and in that desolate region, full of the atmosphere of the real desert. The account of the difficulties that beset the travelers in reaching their goal is entertaining and at times humorous, and the descriptions of desert scenery are unusually good.

with provisions. This means the wearisome process known as "tracking," by which the river-men must haul the vessel along the bank with tow ropes. All the old-timers can tell a generation fond of desk work and afraid of blistering its hands the wide difference between gliding down-stream and "bucking the current." It is still a formidable feat to descend in a canoe the river Mackenzie, explored in 1789. To-day the canoeist, returning, can put his boat aboard a steamer; but Mackenzie, uncomplaining, worked his passage with his spruce paddle all the way back to Chipewyan, on Lake Athabasca. To paddle your own canoe had meaning then.

Within fifty miles of Hay River, a hamlet at the southwest corner of Great Slave Lake, are the Alexandra Falls, on the stream that bears the same name as the settlement. The upper falls are eighty-five feet high, and a mile down the river are the lower falls, fifty-five feet high, a total drop of one hundred and forty feet. Twelve miles from the lake are rapids. Yet before it enters the lake the stream is moving so slowly that it seems stagnant. It is as brown as coffee, and an iridescent scum with a displeasing aroma forms upon it On either hand the banks exhibit vegetation of an almost tropic luxuriance. The traveler might imagine himself on a waterway of Amazonia, amid this lush growth of long grasses, willows, alders,

nd spruces, so abundant and thickset hat in their rank, green opulence they eem nearer the hothouse tropics than he Arctic Circle. The air teems with nsect life, and one half expects to find he corrugated snouts of alligators preaking the oily surface like waterjogged driftwood here and there. Only the lily-pads are lacking to complete the picture of a sluggish stream of the Temperate or even the Torrid Zone. The people of the settlement forbear to drink the rusty water. They repair instead to the lake into which it so deliberately empties. The lake is green and clean, with a tang of the saline and the marine, and emerging from the river to its sailless broad expanse is like going from a moldy cellar to the windy - freedom of a housetop. But the strange thing is that the very water which has I so recently been furiously raging like the heathen of the psalm is now so placid. The falls, fairly comparable in form and beauty with Niagara, and the boisterous rapids below them have created a vehement turbulence of which nothing appears a short distance farther on. fury was spent in sound and commotion, like the white heat of anger of a "husky" dog. The water of life has become the water of death-a Lethe or a Styx.

The

Salva

No wonder the mortal term of man is à compared with the course of a river. The parallel is obvious. Mere force and violence at the beginning may offer an imposing spectacle, but when the driving energy gives out and the seething current of abounding vitality conforms to the channel of routine and acquiesces in low levels, forgetful of high origins, man's life is no more a quickening force, a motive power, a servant of God like sunlight or fire, wind or frost. tion, for man or river, is in maintenance of motion. For a man the motion may be that of intellectual processes as well as physical. He need not brandish his arms to appear to be doing something. But his mind, at least, must work. This is what Thoreau means, when he says, "A man sits as many risks as he runs." The danger to a solitary dweller in the North is that, with so much time on his hands and boundless space about him, he will not save his mind by means of the strenuous exertion it requires. He need not fear so much for the upkeep of his body. It has much to do to assure its warmth and nourishment. He will have the physical exercise of cutting wood, or minding trap lines, or fishing through, the ice. The danger is that the soul may "dwindle, peak, and pine" for sustenance in the barren snowbound lands; that it will hibernate and sit in darkness the long night through; that the sun of summer will not dissipate the chill and rouse the soul from its enduring torpor.

The mind and the river cannot afford to stand still. The mind must go on from strength to strength till finite life is merged with infinite love, even as the river, unhasting and unresting, cleaving a mountain, traversing a plain, finding a way and brooking no denial, goes on and on until it meets the sea.

Expansion

A million new subscribers

were linked to the Bell System during the past two years putting into operation a million new routes of talk, and a corresponding increase in all intervening facilities such as switchboards, cable and long distance lines.

No other country is so well equipped as the United States for telephone communication. Yet, because of this because the telephone is so useful-the demand for service keeps growing greater.

demand in the United States is greater than the growth of population. It is an intensive growth. An increasing percentage of the population is seeking telephone service.

The Bell System is providing for more investment, further technical achievement, more wires, switchboards and stations and more subscribers. The American people require the best service. The best service means the most comprehensive service, not only for

the necessities of to-day, but

The growth of telephone for the necessities of the future.

TELEGRAPH CO

COMPANIES

BELL SYSTEM"

AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH COMPANY

AND ASSOCIATED COMPANIES

One Policy, One System, Universal Service, and all directed toward Better Service