W

HAT does a boy know about book values? If we let him follow his nose, as we grown folks do, won't he run to trash? Won't he spend his time devouring cheap timekillers? How will he know a good book when he sees it? Is it not our duty as parents and teachers to do most of his literary thinking for him? Is it not necessary for us first to set up some sort of ideals by which he can later judge the books that he reads?

Let's see.

What are the facts? Have we not for generations been doing this very thing to the best of our ability? And how has it worked? Have not our boys quietly set aside our super-standardsjust as we ourselves do for the most part-and gone on to do their own reading in their own way? And will they not always do this?

A gloomy outlook for idealists. But is it really?

I must confess that most of my gloom on this subject has vanished in recent years. And it is the boys themselves who have driven it away. Shortly after making the discovery that the general run of boys are never interested in the book that the teacher selects for intensive study, I made the equally important discovery that they are keenly interested in the books that they themselves are reading for pleasure, that they really like to talk about these books with anybody-even with the teacher-and that if you get enough boys talking you get some amazingly sane points of view expressed and adopted.

However, about a year ago, made timorous by the apparent ease with which my elementary literature classes were running themselves, I began to wonder how safe I was in leaving boys to make their own choices. Was I perhaps allowing them to come to great harm? So, after assuring them that no "marks" were dependent on their replies, I asked them to tell me what makes a book worth reading. In the course of half an hour we had collected a score or so of jumbled but frank and honest opinions, we had classified them topically, and we had arranged them in a semblance of order. I was so pleased with the result that I had some copies mimeographed for the use of incoming classes.

This year, before presenting the mimeographed copies to my nev class of twelve-year-olds, I put the prob lem up to them, with even greater care to eliminate myself from the discussion. At the end of the period, with the new set of conclusions on the board, I read aloud the conclusions reached by the preceding class. It set us gasping with

surprise. The new class had analyzed the problem, thought by thought, exactly as had the old. The major divisions and subdivisions were almost identical, though the phraseology was often refreshingly different. Without attempting a verbatim rendering of these twice-arrived-at conclusions, I want to offer them here in substance for the comfort of others as faint-hearted as myself.

The boys agreed and insisted that the sine qua non of a good book was its power to catch and hold the reader's interest. They felt that this might be accomplished in several ways: the subject-matter might be of great interest in itself; it might involve vigorous conflict in which was depicted strong and rapid action; it might introduce fascinating settings; or it might deal with characters themselves. thrilling. But they felt that a book which did thus capture the reader's interest and did no more must be classed simply as a good "time-killer."

The next element of importance from the point of view of the boys was that the book should have informational value. A boy ought to be able to learn something from it. This information might be about some interesting time in the history of the world, or about some interesting section of the world, or about some interesting group of people in the world, or about some aspect of wild nature, or about the wonders of modern science. There were many ways in which a book could be informative. If, in addition to holding the reader's interest, a book was also thus informative, it deserved to be lifted out of the mere "time-killer" class and rated as decidedly worth reading.

A quality that added still more to the value of a book, the boys felt, was the power to inspire a person reading it to

want to be better, or to do bigger or better things. This might make itself felt through character delineation or character development; it might show itself in the presentation of a moral issue decided convincingly in an uplifting way; or it might mean simply the stirring of the imagination to thrilling flights.

And

The last element of value, from the point of view of the twelve-year-old critics, was literary excellence. here they demanded, first of all, clear and simple English. Next to this came good balance of action and description. Finally, in a very fumbling way, came the feeling that there was something more, which they were willing to have described as "good choice of words" and "artistic descriptions." The boys wanted this element of "literary value" to be included in their analysis of what makes a book worth while. But they hinted broadly that they did not care half so much about it as they suspected that I, the teacher, cared. However, they felt that literary excellence, coming on top of power to interest the reader and the offering of information, was enough to lift a book into the class of which it could be said that "no boy should miss it."

Litterateurs could discuss this question of "what makes a book worth reading" more profoundly. They could differentiate between elements of charm more elaborately. They could satisfy themselves and other students of literature far better than these twelve-yearolds could do. But could they come much closer to presenting the point of view of the average, truly well-intentioned, but thoroughly human persons who do, and always will do, the bulk of the world's reading? And, after all, would the highly conceived analysis made by the litterateurs be any more wholesomely inspiring than that of these boys who had never thought of the problem before, but who simply had these elements of response deep seated in their immortal souls?

Do we need to fear for our boys?

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY CONFESSIONS OF AN OLD PRIEST. By S. D. McConnell, D.D., LL.D., D.C.L. The Macmillan Company, New York. $1.25.

Doubt is the prerogative of every thinking person. To deny any one the right to doubt is to deny him the right to think. But doubt should be the starting-point of thought, not its goal. The normal process is first to question, and then through the travail of thought to reach an answer.

Youth, therefore, is the normal period of skepticism. Each generation as it appears upon the scene has the right to call in question the answers of its predecessor and then to proceed to confirm

those old answers or find new ones. By the exercise of this right the thought of mankind has been enabled to progress.

The youthful skeptic is for this reason not to be laughed at or suppressed if he is honest in his search for answers to his doubts, but to be welcomed as a recruit in the army that through the ages is enlarging the domain of the mind.

If he is caught and bound when young and kept from the pursuit of truth by being kept from doubt, one of two things will happen: either he will never really contribute anything to the progress of thought, or else he will become a skeptic alte in life and, at the very

time when he ought to be nearing his goal, find himself at the starting-point.

This is what has happened to Dr. McConnell. Although always considered a Broad Churchman, he apparently had no serious doubts in his early years, or, if he had them, he kept them from shaking his confidence in the main things he had been taught to believe. Now, after fifty years of service as a minister of the Church, he finds himself to be where he ought to have been in his youth. He is just beginning to examine the ideas that all his life he has cherished, the doctrines he has for all these years preached. He has reversed the normal process. In his youth he had the confidence of age; now in his age he has the skepticism of youth.

The little book that he has written (it has only a hundred and twenty-four pages), "Confessions of an Old Priest," is therefore naturally one which most old people will not like. They will feel that it is an abnormal reversion to what they have outgrown; a desertion from the ranks of their generation to the ranks of the new generation that is questioning their conclusions and discrediting their experience.

But it is a book that cannot be ignored. Just because it is written out of the ripe experience of a long life it puts the questions of youth with a force that youth cannot command.

And it has all the defects of its qualities. Though Dr. McConnell has discarded the conclusions of the old literalism and the old dogmatism, he has discarded neither the dogmatism nor the literalism itself. His very doubts of the finality of the teaching of Jesus, for example, are based upon a literalistic interpretation of that teaching. His very method of controverting the dogmatism of theologians is by substituting a dogmatism of his own. For example, he takes Jesus' words, "Resist not evil," as a command to be obeyed literally. No wrong perpetrated against the most helpless under any circumstances, so Dr. McConnell would have us believe that Jesus taught, should ever be resisted. Similarly he asserts that the teaching of Jesus is contrary to the practice of thrift and industry. And in support of this interpretation he offers only his own assertion that this interpretation is correct. But, like all literalists and dogmatists, he selects what shall be literally interpreted and what shall not. For example, when he encounters the statement of Jesus that his disciples are to eat his flesh and drink his blood, Dr. McConnell decides that that cannot be made to accord with the tenor of Jesus' life. We believe it is equally counter to the tenor of Jesus' life to say that no evil should ever be resisted.

Dr. McConnell distinguishes between Christianity and the religion of Jesus. Instead of regarding Christianity as a corruption or adulteration of the religion of Jesus, however, he regards Christianity as the more elementary and the purer form of religion, to which the religion of Jesus has not been alto

gether successfully added. He distrusts almost everything of Hebrew origin, and holds the essence of the universal religion now termed Christianity to have been derived from the religion of the Mediterranean world as it existed years before Christ.

It is a book of doubt, of questioning, of skepticism. He reaches, it is true, a conclusion. He finds an answer in a ritualistic celebration of the doctrine of the Sacrament. To that answer, however, we think, he will carry few read

ers.

Those who wish to know what it is that men doubt to-day, who are willing to listen to the skepticism of youth expressed with the vigor and resourcefulness of maturity, will do well to read this book. But they will not find in it a goal; they will find only a startingpoint.

NELSON'S COMPLETE CONCORDANCE TO THE AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE. By M. C. Hazard, Ph.D. Thomas Nelson & Sons, New York. $5.

The making of a Bible concordance is a monumental undertaking. It requires industry, patience, and accuracy. When, therefore, a new concordance appears, the librarian and the Bible student wish to know what its special points of value are. The present work is a single volume of over twelve hundred pages. It has been prepared by Dr. M. C. Hazard, of the Congregational Publishing Society, who has given five years to the task. It is the first comof plete concordance the American Standard Version of the Bible. Its arrangement, with 16,000 headings and sub-headings, 300,000 references, and what are called alternative marginal readings, has been carefully planned and designed for practical service.

FICTION

DON RODRIGUEZ: CHRONICLES OF SHADOW VALLEY. By Lord Dunsany. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. $2.

It would be idle to expect an ordinary novel or an ordinary play from Lord Dunsany. And this, his first novel, is of the type that has not been written for many years, that could not be successfully written by any one who is not, like Dunsany, a poet, a myth-maker, a humorist, and a teller of tales. Here is a story modeled upon the romances of chivalry and the picaresque romance, with a strong infusion of magic and the supernatural, which so completely exploits and maintains its illusion as to make actual and real the imaginary world which circumscribes it. Undeniably and frankly a romanticist, Dunsany has the rare ability to make the mythical world of his fantasy as veritable and recognizable as the world of common experience beloved by the realist. "Don Rodriguez" shows his curious art at its best, a level which he has not achieved since the publication of his earliest tales of Pegana and the Yann. The Don himself, unlike Don Quixote, is successful in his quest for fortune and happiness; neither tragedy nor disillusion recompenses his revolt against the drab despotism of fact. Here, perhaps,

is the romanticist's defense against realism and pessimism-that man, greatly wishing, may accomplish much. But whether or not there is philosophy behind it, Dunsany's novel is a beautiful, imaginative, and humorous narrative that will delight the heart of any reader. STEP ON THE STAIR (THE). By Anna Katharine Green. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York. $2.

Mrs. Rohlfs (Anna Katharine Green) might almost be called the mother of the American detective story. Her "Leavenworth Case" appeared Over forty-five years ago, was a best seller in its time, and is still read. Since then she has published about thirty storiesall, we believe, tales of crime and mystery. For present-day taste her style is too diffuse and she alternates between sentiment and sadness; but she packs in plenty of thrills.

VALIANT DUST. By Katharine Fullerton Gerould. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.

$2.

Mrs. Gerould has fully established her place among the best of American shortstory writers, and those included in the present volume are finely representative of her work. They certainly are not cheerful in the choice of subjects, but the situations are so singular and the study of human passion is so searching that the reader's attention is firmly held and his admiration for the subtlety of the author in dealing with motive and character is aroused.

PAINTING PAINTINGS AND PASTELS by the Barbizon Masters, their Contemporaries the French Impressionists, and Modern French Painters, Forming the Private Collection of Mr. Meyer Goodfriend. Illustrated. New

American Art Galleries, New York. This is a handsomely illustrated catalogue of pictures recently sold in New York City. disThe paintings thus persed at moderate prices were mainly examples of the Barbizon school, including a dozen or more of Corot's less familiar works.

ESSAYS AND CRITICISM SIDELIGHTS ON AMERICAN LITERATURE By Fred Lewis Pattee. The Century Company, New York. $2. Professor Pattee's subjects range from Philip Freneau and Bryant to O. Henry, Mary Wilkins Freeman, and H. L. Mencken. The most interesting papers in the book deal with three writers for whose work Professor Pattee cherishes a profound antipathy; O. Henry, Jack London, and Mencken. There is likewise a sympathetic study of Mary Wilkins's earlier New England stories, and an incisive discussion of the decline of the New England tradition in our literature.

The studies of O. Henry and London are likely to arouse a certain amount of controversy, since the author's opinions are by no means orthodox. He regards the influence of O. Henry as pernicious in its effects upon the short story as now written in the United States. The characteristic qualities of O. Henry have, he claims, become the principles of a school of fiction which relies chiefly

on good craftsmanship, on brilliant effects and journalistic flashiness, but which neglects both thought and imagination. "Are we," he asks, "arriving at a period when all literary art is ephemeral, a shallow period without philosophy of life or moral background, a period where manner shall rule and not matter, and brilliancy is all in all ...?" Jack London he sees as essentially a romanticist, a prophet of "blood and vulgarity," the preacher of a materialistic social philosophy. He exempts from the oblivion which he foresees awaiting most of London's work only "The Call of the Wild" and some of the short stories. Mencken he sees as a Billy Sunday among critics, hardly a critic at all, but a journalistic Nietzsche.

TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION AT SEA WITH JOSEPH CONRAD. By Captain J. G. Sutherland. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. $5.

This is a handsomely printed and #illustrated book in an edition limited to 1,250 copies, with a brief foreword by Joseph Conrad; to collectors of Conrad material it will therefore have a special appeal. It deals with the several weeks of the first cruise of the first "Q" boat used by the British navy, on which cruise Conrad was sent as an official observer. The "Q" boats, or submarine decoys, were small sailing vessels disguised as neutral, but well equipped to send any German submarine to the bottom. Captain Sutherland's story of the first cruise of the H. M. S. Ready, a seventy-year-old craft hastily fitted out for an experimental voyage, disguised as a Norwegian brigantine carrying pit props, and rechristened "Freya" in Conrad's honor, has a very definite interest of the "now it can be told" variety. The voyage lasted several weeks during the late autumn of 1916, but the cruise in the North Sea failed to draw any lurking German U-boats into battle, and thus proved a disappointment to both Mr. Conrad and the author, who were anxious for action. There are vivid glimpses of life on board the "Q," and of the charming personality of Conrad. The chief interest of the story to the Conrad enthusiast is the account of the distinguished writer's seamanship, some fragmentary tales of his early exploits in the antipodes, and his views of the merchant marine, the British navy, and other similar topics.

EDUCATIONAL

LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY. G. P. Putnam's
Sons, New York. $2.25 per vol.

We have spoken more than once of this excellent series of famous works - of Greek and Latin authors in which the original text and the translation are printed on facing. pages. This series has now extended to one hundred and fifty volumes. This fact in itself shows that the series has a wider appeal than its nature might lead one to suppose. Evidently the number of those who are interested in classical masterpieces is not inconsiderable. Volumes of the series which have just reached us pre

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SPORT

SPORTING LIFE AND OTHER TRIFLES (THE). By Robert Lynd. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $2.

This is the kind of book which Mr. Heywood Broun might conceivably have written had he been born in England, educated at either Oxford or Cambridge, and become fond of cricket and racing instead of baseball. It follows that Americans who are familiar with Mr. Broun's writings on matters of sport will read Mr. Lynd's essays with an emotion of recognition of the attitude, but with a tantalizing feeling that the subject is strange. There is a great difference between an American and a British race-track, as between an Ameri can and a British crew race, and it is that difference which gives this book a flavor of piquancy for the American reader. Mr. Lynd is a keen and humorous observer of life at least of the superficialities of life, and these he makes interesting and amusing and whimsical. The procession of types that finds its way through his book-the horse experts, tipsters, track followers, boxing enthusiasts, and cricket fans-is done with considerable skill in differentiation.

POETRY

DOWN THE RIVER. By Roscoe Brink. Henry Holt & Co., New York. $1.90.

Un

Mr. Brink has attempted no less than to write a novel in free verse in "Down the River," and he has failed because there is no reason for free verse unless it is poetry. There is not a single line of poetry in "Down the River." doubted strength is there, a certain approximation of characterization and atmosphere and the skeleton of a tale that might have been worked into a modern novel by Sherwood Anderson. The protagonist of the tale is a sensitive woman seeking for beauty who travels the long road of disillusionment. There is no reason why a novel should not be written in free verse. Edgar Lee Masters did one in blank verse "Domesday Book." Nothing serious should be attempted in any kind of verse that is not intended to be poetry, and the only reason why a novel should be written in verse is because the novel itself is a poem. Mr. Brink was more interested apparently in writing a novel than he was in writing a poem, and the result is a specimen that is neither.

GATE OF CEDAR (A). By Katherine Morse. The Macmillan Company, New York. $1.25 The delicate apprehensions of poetic values evinced by Miss Morse in "A Gate of Cedar" are so pleasing that one can but be regretful that she has neither combed her work better nor applied herself more assiduously to it. There are haunting stanzas, surprisingly fine lines, and an indubitable realization of those moods that are so difficult to express in words. Certain poems stand out as very