ON LOVE. By Marie-Henri Beyle (de Stendhal). Boni & Liveright, New York. $2.50.

We are told that in America the work of Stendhal "has affected men like James Huneker and others to a point where they could only discuss him in terms of ecstasy." Still others can restrain their feelings. But every one will admit that Stendhal is an outstanding figure in the French literature of the first half of the last century. In a sense he was a forerunner of the naturalistic school. That he had solid qualities is shown by the fact that his vogue increased and continued despite early lack of popularity-for instance, the present novel (Stendhal said it was his best) sold only seventeen copies in eleven years. The publishers have done a real service to students of literature in bringing out this complete edition of Stendhal's works.

"BUT YESTERDAY-" By Maud Diver. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York. $2.50.

It is a new idea for a dead statesman to haunt his relatives-not as a common spook or ghost, but as an iron will, recognized by the hauntees as truly his-in order to prevent them from writing his biography. He had his reasons, and on them rests the plot of the story, which (apart from the spook motif and apart also from a rather excessive musical motif) is romantic and holds the reader's attention well. Few modern novelists have dealt satisfactorily with the realm between the other world and this. Algernon Black

wood's tales have few rivals.

BEADS OF SILENCE. By Lilian Bamburg. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. $2. There is a strange series of apparently disconnected murders each of which has to do with an Indian necklace, for a stone from it is found in the mouth of every victim. The reader is duly and thoroughly puzzled, but must admit that the complicated solution fits together, "belie.e it or not."

BERNARD QUESNAY. By André Maurois. D. $2. Appleton & Co., New York.

This book is disappointing. From the author of "Ariel," we expected better things. But the dénouement proves that heredity does descend, despite the Behaviorist theory. The young ex-soldier Bernard at twenty-seven will, we feel, never be a cog in his grandfather's mill. He is in his first youth, he has a sweetheart, he is interested in the workers and their problems with the philanthropic spirit of the very young. Then a gradual metamorphosis takes place! And it is his brother, after all-his brother the plodderwho makes the sweeping gesture of liberation, who determines to live; for life to him is most truly embodied in his wife, Françoise.

The industrial side of the picture is fairly well done, the rivalry between the wo houses of Pascal and Quesnay amusng. But the point is that we are not stirred by it. Even the account of the strike is insignificant. Beauty-such poignant beauty as there is-appears in the letcer from Simone to Bernard, in the scene

at the opera between Françoise and her husband, in the few intimate talks between Bernard and his sister-in-law. The author goes more successfully to the deeps of the two women present. His analysis of his hero is not profound. Bernard remains a superficial character from start to finish, and his story leaves us cold.

WHEN IS ALWAYS? By Coningsby Dawson. The Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, New York. $2.

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Who admires Coningsby Dawson's novels? Few men, we should be willing to bet. This is like the rest of them-a tale of a young man who quivers, and cringes, and dodges, and suffers under the snares and temptations of love, and is really as harmless as a new-born babe. There is always the imputation that he is about to do or at least to feel something devilishly naughty, while in reality he never does a thing but shuffle and run away. All his women are forced to take him captive, and to pursue him, and to capture him again; and why they think him worth the trouble is the unsolved puzzle about this young gentleman. What he seems to need is a good hard jolt from time to time, administered by some regular man.

Has the reader ever noticed the alternative popularity of the she-man with a certain class of fiction readers? Next to being clubbed over the head at the mouth of a cave, there is nothing better than leading a male puppy at the end of an apron-string. ROWFOREST. By Anthony Pryde. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York. $2.

So practiced a writer as Mr. Pryde need not have resorted to melodrama to make his story readable, although one of his young ladies is so impossible that the best thing to do with her was to burn her alive in the heavily mortgaged Manor House. In its purport "Rowforest" is a gentle lament over the passing of the English landed ruling class and the appearance in their place of blatant vulgarians dripping with war profits. The old guard dies (out) but never surrenders, he seems to say. Despite faults, the book reads easily and is likely to prove popular.

CAPTAINS IN CONFLICT. By Robert R. Updegraff. With a Foreword by A. W. Shaw. The A. W. Shaw Company, Chicago. $2. A brisk attempt at putting big business into a novel, with creditable results, even though it centers about cutthroat competition in the manufacture of stoves. The result is naturally rather metallic. THE TAVERN KNIGHT. By Raphael Sabatini. Houghton, Mifflin Company, Boston. $2. With engaging frankness the author in a prefatory note relates that two years ago he reluctantly consented to the publication in America of some of his earlier novels; that he had hoped "the exhumation of immature work" was over, and that two others would "rest in the graves to which I had consigned them." But "The Tavern Knight" is to be in the "movies," so here it is. "Cheer up," the author seems to say, "there is only one other of that lot still unpublished in America." "The Tavern Knight" is not a bad tale, at that. Mr.

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Essays and Criticism

Sherman. $2.50.

Stuart By MAIN STREAM. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. This volume contains the best of the later essays which the late Stuart Sherman wrote for "Books," the newspaper review They reveal an of which he was editor. increasing tendency to deal sympathetically with the new literary product, even that part of it which least appealed to his While he was a college personal taste. professor, he remained a doughty and rather bitter champion of the older standards and fashions of writing. By the time "Critical Woodcuts" appeared he had discovered that the critic's first duty "is not to exploit his own predilections; it is rather to understand the entire 'conspiracy' of forces involved in the taste of his day. What is 'important' now and never may be so again has a charm for him which he would think it a kind of baseness and disloyalty not to admit and record."

But this critic never lost or disowned his personal preconceptions and "ulterior purposes." In the opening paper of "The Main Stream," called "Disinterested? No!" he argues that the new æsthetic theory of criticism, as advanced by Mr. Spingarn and others, is worse than the old moralistic criticism. "Frankly, this criticism without preconceptions and ulterior purposes apIt is pears to me impossible and unreal. criticism devoid of its raison d'être. . . . As a matter of fact, we value our critics in and the the soundness proportion to abundance of their preconceptions and in proportion to the adequacy of their ulterior purposes."

In theme these papers range from Carl Sandburg to Thomas Jefferson, and from Nicholas Murray Butler to Montaigne, and they well mark the powers of one who, if not a great critic, was often brilliant and

Houghton

DANTE. By John Jay Chapman. $2.50. Mifflin Company, Boston. This interesting brief study of Dante is refreshingly free from the obeisant awe of his genius which prevents many Dante worshipers from admitting flaws in his Mr. work or defects in his character. Chapman, while recognizing the nobility of the poet's "immortal courage," finds him also as many plain ordinary readers have timidly suspected before-somewhat ignobly bad-tempered, and is not afraid to say so. But he is no gloating belittler of the great; he is an admiring reader and translator of Dante, and much of the book

RELATIONS WITH THE UNITED STATES. By Henry Clay Evans, Professor of History in the University of Florida. The Duke University Press, Dur$2.50. ham, N. C.

save

Humor

By Magdalen KingI THINK I REMEMBER. $2. Hall. D. Appleton & Co., New York. Miss King-Hall presents in "The Random Recollections of Sir Wickham Woolicomb An Ordinary Snob and Gentleman" (which is the subtitle of her new book), an amusing successor to "The Diary of a Young Lady of Fashion," although one by no means the equal of that joyous literary prank. Even the most undiscerning of her readers who accepted that engaging young person, Miss Cleone Knox of the "Diary." as a historic personage, will not be as pleasantly bamboozled again by the pompously asinine Sir Wickham, who is obviously too perfect a specimen of his type to be true. "I Think I Remember" (italics the author's) is frank burlesque, and good bur lesque, of those all-too-plentiful recent volumes of reminiscences, mostly trivial or inane, which depend for their success upon a free sprinkling of titles, the dragging in of an occasional great name, a general attitude of being always in the know and in the swim, and the responsive snobbery Sir Wickham and curiosity of the public.

is a Victorian, of course. But, though he is funny, a little of him goes a long way. Miss King-Hall is less happy in his por trayal than when she allows her playful

W

a

Literature and Swill

HEN a minister takes up his abode in new parish, there are various ways in which it is possible for him to become acquainted with his prospective parishioners. One way is to listen to every bit of gossip and scandal which finds its way to the parsonage back door, to lend a willing ear to the tale-bearers and the busybodies, and out of these materials to construct a mental image of his flock. But a different way is to reserve judgment, to become acquainted with each family and with each individual, to note with care what each man or woman seems to be trying to do, to observe what service, public or private, each is rendering to the community, and to give each full credit for his best intentions. With these materials a man would construct quite a different mental image of his people.

The former seems to be the method employed by certain popular novelists in their attempted portrayal of the Protestant clergy. The total net impression which one gleans from this class of "literature" is that the clergy are all either hypocritical knaves or silly fools. The story is told in a Western town of a couple of darky garbage-collectors who met one day as they made their rounds.

"Dem new folks up in de big house suttinly is mighty fine folks," remarked one. "How do you know? Dey frien's ob yourn?"

"No; but dey hab de swellest swill!"

Some of our modern novelists are little other than purveyors of "swell swill." They gather up all the worst they can find about the members of a given profession, combine it in one striking character, and let their readers infer that the figure they have drawn is representative of the group. Perhaps all that they portray has somewhere, some time, been true of somebody. But it is not a true or representative picture of the average man who is devoting his life sincerely to public service in any of the great altruistic professional groups.

The worst aspect of such dastardly and unfair attack is that there is absolutely no defense against it. Such writers are on a par with the "hit and run" motorist who crushes out the life of a child and speeds on his way uncaring. They are little more than literary garbage-collectors. Sometimes a garbage-cart passes the door, and the reek from its contents floats into the house, polluting the summer breeze. endure it as best we may, but we do not enjoy it, and we are not benefited by it. Marietta, Ohio. D. E. ADAMS.

Floods and Taxation

We

tion in the Mississippi Valley.

We have here in the lower Skagit Valley a similar situation, although we have not had a disastrous summer freshet since 1894, but we have had several bad winter freshets since that time, upsetting business and causing lots of damage to roads, bridges, and some land with buildings. In the district where I live, containing about 6,000 acres, the landowners have spent around eighty dollars per acre for dikes and drainage in the course of forty years. They are at present taxing themselves around five dollars per acre a year for the same protection. This has been done without any aid from the Government. The land here is very fertile, but at that not much better than the Mississippi bottom land. Sometimes the districts had to issue warrants drawing eight per cent for years in order to pay for the work.

Instead of helping the landowners here in this protection work, as along the Mississippi, the Government has taxed the If landowners for these improvements. the Government is going to help protect the land from overflow in one part of the country, it would not be more than just to do the same for all parts of the country where overflow is liable to occur.

As the Mississippi Valley is the big bread-basket of the country, I believe the Government should stand the expense of a thorough survey of all the land along its course subjected to overflow. It should plan for immense storage reservoirs wherever possible. Where erosion is bad reforestation should be undertaken. Wherever possible, the old channel should be straightened and spillways built. In protecting the bends of the river brush mats should be built away out in the stream and then sunk with rocks. Out here we have found that such protection work is more efficient than concrete, and the cost is much less.

After the survey has been completed all the land along the Mississippi and its tributaries should be formed into a special taxing district. The Government should then issue guaranteed bonds for a long period of years, which would eventually be paid by the benefited landowners. In the end they would find that all this protection work would cost them much less than the landowners in the district where I am living have already paid for such protection work. JOHN S. FINSTAD.

Conway, Washington.

A Cotton Grower States the Case as He Sees It

I

THANK you for the very interesting letters you have published on the agricultural situation.

Ignorance of the city people of the true condition is causing an injustice and will cause class warfare. In the letter you published by Mr. Elbert, of New York, he says, "The relief farmers want must be higher prices," and then he says, "The law of supply and demand must make the price." The farmers want the law of supply and demand to operate over a longer period, so as to stabilize the price of farm products. The weather largely controls the amount of a crop for a one-year period. It takes about a ten-year period to get a fair average, and the farmer wants the law of supply and demand to operate over such a period instead of the present one-year period.

In the past six years the cotton crop in this country has varied from less than eight million bales to eighteen million bales, and I have sold cotton for forty cents per pound and for five cents per pound during these six years. The average price on the New York Cotton Exchange during that period for middling short cotton has been over twenty-five cents per pound. I would have been perfectly satisfied to have averaged that price for my cotton and would have made money over the period by raising it, but have lost heavily on prices I have received. My yield per acre was twice the average yield for the cotton belt, and my cotton was long-staple cotton. As I plant this crop I won't know until after my money and labor are spent whether I will get five cents or forty cents per pound for it. All depends on the weather and acreage. Both are now unknown. It is just a gamble, and I have to take the chance under our present system. In my opinion, one price would be just about as disastrous as the other. I want a steady price. If I knew about what price I would receive, I would know whether to plant or

not. We need the money so desperately, we have to plant a big acreage, as this year it may be our turn to have fine weather conditions locally and bad over the balance of the cotton belt, in which event we would have a big crop and big price. In 1923, when we had a high price, I had almost a failure, so the high price didn't do me much good. Texas had their largest crop of record, and made so much money that they have been cotton crazy ever since, and we have had to suffer from their increased acreage. The high price upset their farming system.

Another thing about supply and demand, from the farmer's standpoint, is that many times demand would absorb the supply at a reasonable price above the farmer's cost, but can't do it at the high prices charged consumers. The present marketing system is too expensive and inefficient. The price of cotton may be thirty cents per pound or fifteen cents per pound and yet the retail price of dry goods remains almost the same. We may be getting ten cents for watermelons that retail in the city for fifty cents. If the supply gets too large, and the price is reduced ten cents, the farmer stands the full cut. If the cut is fifteen cents, he loses all his price and loses five cents additional. The railroads, brokers, commission men, retailers, and all other links in the marketing chain must have their profits. If the railroads aren't making five and three-fourths per cent profit after paying exorbitant salaries and wages, they can go into a Federal court and raise their rates so as to earn that profit, whether their rates are confiscatory or not.

I have always believed in the protective tariff principle (I used to swallow all the "bull" about how the tariff helped the farmer), but I have done a lot of thinking the past two years. I can't see where it is to my interest to produce cotton upon which there is no tariff, and which is my main crop, in competition with the cheapest labor in the world, have Liverpool set the price on my cotton, and then have to pay a tariff to get my own cotton back in finished products in order to protect the spinner and his labor against cheap foreign labor. I am just as much entitled to an export bounty as they are to the advantages of an import duty. One is no more unsound economically than the other. The tariff and many other laws interfere with the law of supply and demand. The law of the survival of the fittest is a more fundamental law than that of supply and demand, but barbaric nations are the only people who let that law run wild. The law of gravitation is a good law, but there are times when its effects must be offset by artificial means.

There are three things I think the farmer needs to meet the changed conditions of to-day: First, a bargaining power. I have hoped co-operative marketing would solve that problem. Now I am convinced it will not unless it is made compulsory or to the decided interests of all producers to join. Now the producer who stays out gets the benefits without the cost or inconvenience. We might just as well base taxpaying on voluntary action. A taxpayer should be willing to pay according to his benefits, but we know he will not until forced by law to do so. Second, a stable price. It would take much of the gambling out of farming and be as beneficial to the consumer as the producer. Third, a man in the White House with the courage and vision of Theodore Roosevelt, who cannot be so coddled and taffied by special interests that he forgets to deal fairly with the unorganized farmers, but who can blaze the way to lead them out of the wil derness into which they have been plunged by a highly organized industrial system with special favors, and by a changed living condition. A. W. CAMPBELL

Scott, Arkansas.