places he has travelled over this earth's surface and all the honors he has received, we would consume lines of type which if placed end to end would stretch-well, a considerable distance.

You whose idea of taxidermy is the stuffed owl on the mantlepiece, look long at the remarkable photographs in WilKnocking liam T. Hornaday's "Masterthe Stuffing pieces of American Bird TaxiOut of dermy." The interest in animals Taxidermy and birds (usually in three letters) stirred up by the cross-word puzzle has perhaps introduced Dr. Hornaday to people who otherwise would never have known him through his writing. But most of the 110 million have seen his work. Who ever came to New York and didn't visit the Zoo? Dr. Hornaday is director of the New York Zoological Park (to give it its official title).

The philosophy of Lee Russell's title ranks alongside that other one, "Live and Let Live." Mr. Russell is a teacher in the State Normal School at Worcester, Massachusetts. Being the father of five children, as well as a teacher, his philosophizings are warranted and welcome. Not that philosophers must necessarily be fathers or practical teachers, but in an intimate essay such as this, the benefit of such experience on the part of the author is valuable to readers who are faced with similar problems.

Monroe Douglas Robinson is the son of Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, the poet. He was in France during the war and gathered the material which he presents in this, his first published work, from a recent residence there.

Jesse Rainsford Sprague, author of "What Price Organization?" confesses to being a reformed joiner. Born on a farm Confessions in New York State, he saw Amerof a Joiner ica first and then went into business in Viginia. Later he moved

to San Antonio. Four years ago he sold his business to devote all his time to writing. Says he: "While in business, was a member of the Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary Club, the Retail Merchants' Association, and did the precise things described in the article" (and indicated, we might add, in the drawing in the heading of this department).

Caroline Camp appeared in these columns in July. We might describe her two articles as "the antique germ at the moment of taking --and some months after." Miss Camp feeds antiques to folks who summer and tour in the

Berkshires. Her headquarters are Canaan, Conn.

Colonel John Malcolm Mitchell's titles and qualifications-some of them—are stated at the beginning of his exceedingly interesting article on the "Libraries of America." It

might not be amiss here to cite his favorite recreations as cricket, golf, and bridge, and his book, "Petronius, Leader of Fashion," as the most recent of his many publications.

Gerald Chittenden instructs American youth at St. Paul's School, Concord, N. H. Walter Gilkyson recently went abroad to seek French and Span- The Storyish atmosphere for his new novel Tellers "The Lost Adventure." Mr. Gilkyson's story in this number grows out of his experience in the practice of law. He is a member of the firm of Johnson, Gilkyson & Freeman of Philadelphia.

Louis Dodge lives at present in the beautiful old town of St. Genevieve, Missouri, and some of these days we'll publish his own story of that town.

"I am a bachelor," he admitted in a recent interview, "and so confirmed a one, and so restricted to a bookish point of view, that when I meet a lady and wish to ask about her parents I have to be on my guard lest I ask, 'How are your publishers?'"

Mary Edgar Comstock is a young poet of Montrose, Pa. Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews is best known as a short-story writer. Her most recent work published in book form is "Pontifex Maximus." Her poem in this number is a tribute to a great naval feat and to "Clark of the Oregon."

William Lyon Phelps is apologetic over slamming the slammers of Dickens in his department this month, by which he inadvertently tosses a brick at our department next door. However, the compiler doesn't mind in the least. He thrives on having people disagree with him.

Royal Cortissoz is doing a great work in bringing famous painters down off their pedestals and making real human beings of them.

His essay on Raphael this month is most entertaining and informative.

Mr. Noyes's article, held until the last minute in order to include recent developments, comes in after this department has been safely put to bed. Read it and see what an interesting commentary on the world of business and finance it is.

If we are going to stir up the customers, it is necessary to protect the editor from assault and battery and to save him as much mental anguish as possible. As the situation now exists, he is regularly accused of holding our heretical opinions, of making our mistakes, of exhibiting foibles and weaknesses which belong to us alone.

This should not be. Actually he points out occasionally that in our enthusiasm we have left a sentence hanging in the air, whereupon we supply the necessary verb upon which it can come down to earth; or he suggests that another phrase might do less to obscure the issue. Beyond that, he gives us free rope. If we hang ourselves, it's our own funeral. Therefore, we shall hereafter sign this department "The Observer."

MAKING PEACE INTERESTING

A mother of three children, stirred by the articles on peace in the July number, describes what she is doing to make peace interesting to her children. Her experiment will interest a great number of our readers.

DEAR EDITOR: Dr. Coe's and Mr. La Farge's article on war in your July issue are more than usually interesting. Being fifteen years older than Mr. La Farge, and the mother of three children who are fourteen, seventeen, and nineteen years younger than he, I can see some things that he can'tas yet! The fact that my husband would probably not fight in any future war by no means dulls my interest in the necessity for making peace so desirable that war will become impossible when Mr. La Farge has children he will quickly get my view-point. Because I already have it, I am willing to believe that leaders of public opinion who are 15-20 years older than I are just as interested in peace as I or as Mr. La Farge. With him, and with Dr. Coe, I agree that present leaders' methods of getting peace are wrong.

I wish some one would write an article for SCRIBNER'S with the title "Making Peace Dynamic," and that the substance of that article should be educational methods, not with college students, nor even with prep school students, but with really young children, where the thing ought to start. There is a possibility that twenty years hence, my ten-year-old boy will be helping to mould public opinion. It is therefore my duty to put before him such ideals that he will be fit for that work. In our family we are working along two main lines in our efforts to secure peace in the future.

First: We are using the splendid histories of civilization (Hillyer's and Van Loon's) which have not long been available, to show the children the development of mankind from individual, savage life to highly organized group life in civilization. These histories are not mere chronicles of one war after another-the mental development of races is the leading theme. In discussion, I emphasize, of course, the contribution of each race, and what our present life owes to our

remote ancestors, and then call attention to the fact that was interrupted much accomplishment; that often, for example 1 the Peloponnesian wars, war permanently stopped further c velopment of a people. (I know, of course, the theory the malaria ended Greek culture, but with the intercity wars a known facts, why blame malaria?)

Our second line of effort is to make peace interesting dynamic-exciting-worth preserving. Ten-year-old be want war, and war stories because they are exciting. III can show my children that polar exploration is at leas equally exciting and not at all disgusting, that digging fr remains of prehistoric man is equally interesting and not at all degenerating, that finding a new planetoid is equally & namic and a whole lot more permanent, then I can turn ther abounding energy into such lines, at the same time shows them that those lines can be pursued only during peace.

I may not succeed-my methods may be all wrong, or i they're right, my family alone can't reform the world. Ba at least I have methods, and am not leaving everything t chance and to school histories.

Can't some one who is training children write an artd giving us her methods and additional material for use? HELEN MONTAGUE MILLER Sharon, Mass.

Mrs. Miller's task, we venture, is no easy one But her work with her own children is infinitely mo valuable than any number of hours spent listening t lectures and participating in discussions with people who think the same way you do.

The Fellowship of Youth for Peace has the follow ing comment to make:

The two articles contained in your July issue on Youth an Peace by Dr. Coe and Mr. La Farge are admirable indem This organization, having its birth at the student vol teer convention at Indianapolis, is composed of some fr thousand young men and women who are taking the challenge of war seriously and who are devoting themselves with f enthusiasm and devotion characteristic of youth, to the ts of winning a warless world in this generation: and this s be accomplished through federating youth movements arech the world into a World-Wide-League-of-Youth. The Ye of America is just beginning to wake up to the seriousnes 4 life. It has already begun to realize the many problem which the older generation is handing down to the your American youth, following the pace set by the liberal Ge man, French, English, and Chinese youth movements determined to eliminate the most obvious and severest: of the present system-war and the war system.

The awakening is commendable, but we hope tha the world won't be dotted by young messiahs read to set the world right with words in forensic freer rolling. This voting the whole of American you” against war sounds encouraging, but not what call a conservative estimate.

ANOTHER EXAGGERATED DEMISE Another of John Hays Hammond's "strong men of the Wild West" has turned up.

MY DEAR MR. HAMMOND: Your article in the March issue of Scribner's MAGAZINE revives old memories. That carries ne back over quite a span of years.

The incident related as having occurred at Dawson seems -o be an oft-told tale. Many times I have wondered as to its origin, but where it became current or why is one of the myseries I am unable to explain.

But I never have been in Dawson and I never expect to be in that part of the frozen North, and the incident never occurred in my life, at Dawson or anywhere.

I never have carried a gun only upon occasion and that was while on duty as an officer of the law, and I am not ashamed of anything I ever did.

Notoriety has been the bane of my life. I detest it, and I never have put forth any effort to check the tales that have been published in recent years, of the exploits in which my rothers and I are supposed to have been the principal paricipants. Not one of them is correct.

My experiences as an officer of the law are incidents of history but the modern writer does not seem willing to let it go at that. The general impression seems to prevail that I am dead. That is a far-away event, I hope. My health is good and life is full. I hardly feel like shuffling off for anOther score of years.

I can readily appreciate that your information of the Dawson incident is one of the versions that has been handed down until it has become an accepted fact. There is no doubt in my mind that you have repeated this with the best of goodwill, but you can readily see that it does not place me in a very good light. I know that you would not want to do me an injustice, and I am going to ask that you will write to SCRIBNER'S with the request that a correction be published. I am sure you will want to do this.

FOR THE TIRED BUSINESS MAN One of our contributors writes from aboard ship: I greatly appreciated your July number. It was delightful to escape from these dull surroundings into the pleasant circle of SCRIBNER'S.

Prof. G. W. Johnson's article struck me as particularly keen and courageous, as well as brilliantly written. He diagnoses the evil, but he has no solution. The South cannot enact a single race discrimination law without keeping the negro disfranchised, and that necessity will keep the whole South solid. The alternative would be to apply the Constitution-but that implies lifting "the last taboo" and Johnson is not ready for that. I thought I had made it quite clear that I did not advocate miscegenation. I believe the overwhelming majority of the whites would prefer to marry within their own race. But we are involved in inextricable difficulties, if we refuse fair treatment to the small minority of nixed marriages. It compels us to make democracy a farce. E. M. East offers an argument against race purity as an xclusive ideal: "Mother Nature wants great variabil

ty among her children in order to evolve better strains." Who knows? We may standardize, a few centuries hence, on a Jap-Negro-Caucasian hybrid. Genetics is a science in he making. When it is full-grown it may revolutionize the world. And it won't destroy romance either.

I must confess that I had never read a number of SCRIBNER'S or any other magazine-from cover to cover before. Like all book worms, I have no time for reading. In the in

terminable leisure of this trip, SCRIBNER'S was a great boon, and I enjoyed every bit, from "Heredity" to "The Financial Situation." It made me realize concretely what I knew but vaguely before-what an artistic job yours was, serving a well-balanced meal, substantial and not too heavy, properly spiced but not too pungent. A Tired Business Man might limit his reading to SCRIBNER'S and not be starved. I am free to hurl those bouquets at your head, as the days of my active collaboration are probably over for a long season. And now my nine-day spell of peace under the Dutch flag is over, and I am bracing myself to meet a very energetic family-and Paris! ALBERT GUERARD.

FREE SPEECH

The following letter to Judge Winston regarding his article "How Free Is Free Speech?" in the June number, holds particular interest, for its author is Mrs. Marcus Garvey, wife of the negro leader who was to take his people back to Africa.

DEAR SIR: Having read your article which appeared in the June issue of SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE I feel compelled to write and thank you for bringing before the public a matter that few men of your connection would have handled. Persons who suffer from high-handed justice become a menace to society, because they nurse a secret grievance in their hearts, and avenge themselves at any time.

A. JACQUES GARVEY.

WE RAISE THE DICKENSIANS The accomplished literary critic of the Hartford Courant remonstrates with us gently.

DEAR EDITOR: I was immensely interested in Miss Marquette's Dickens letter in the July "What You Think About It," and also in your editorial comment thereupon. I am, and have been nearly all my life my devotion increasing and deepening, as does one's feeling for Shakespeare, with the mounting years-an ardent Dickensian; quite as ardent as Miss Marquette, and possibly, through difference of temperament, a shade more discriminating and estimating. To me it is amazing that a man holding, as you do, the position of editor of an admirable and popular literary magazine, should feel toward Dickens as you do. You balked at "David Copperfield," and you were never able to finish any Dickens novel except "Great Expectations" and "A Tale of Two Cities"! Incredible, if we hadn't your own word for it. To me Dickens is the most transcendent literary genius since Shakespeare; I am not touching on his technical achievements or deficiencies, or going into critical detail of any sort, I am speaking of him merely as a huge and God-sent force, a genius of the first rank. It is pleasant to note, in the work of nearly all contemporary English authors, even such supermoderns as Mr. Osbert Sitwell, a perfect familiarity with Dickens.

Your lack of appreciation of Dickens is but little more surprising to me than Miss Marquette's undervaluing of Anthony Trollope; Miss Marquette is fortunate in being a fellow townswoman of a lady who is perhaps the wisest, wittiest, and keenest-brained of American critics-the delightful Agnes Repplier-and Miss Repplier most decidedly "takes Anthony Trollope seriously"-"those virile, varied, and animated novels" she calls his splendid series of tales in which the political, social, and professional life of mid-Victorian England passes before us in a great living panorama.

In my estimation Trollope was a superb novelist; not a genius; we all use that supreme term far too loosely, I think. Yet it is a temptation to do so, for we lack a third word to strike in between genius and talent, and denote that fine gift which appears to reach above talent and to lie below genius. Every day I grow more thankful that my taste in books is catholic; while Dickens is, to me, supreme, I rank Thomas Hardy second to him in genius, among British novelists; I enjoy Fielding, revel in Miss Austen . . . I do hope you may be willing to print this letter, for I feel sure there must be others beside myself who are not only devoted Dickensians, but loyal Trollopians as well.

ELIZABETH NICHOLS CASE.

252 Sisson Avenue, Hartford, Conn.

And so does another correspondent writing from Lake Placid.

DEAR EDITOR: When I came here for my vacation, I brought my July SCRIBNER'S with me, of course.

As is my custom, I read "As I Like It" first, then I started at the first page to go through to the last.

When I reached "Dickens Defended," by my neighboring townswoman, Miss Marquette, I wanted to applaud and say "Amen" to every word she said. As I read your comment, I could not help thinking of what our good friend, the old Quaker lady, said: "Everybody's queer but thee and me and I sometimes think even thou art a little queer." If you have only finished two of Dickens's novels of your "own free will" truly thou seemest a little queer. I have read and reread 'David Copperfield" numberless times and no book can give me greater pleasure for pure recreation.

What sense of humor must the person have who fails to enjoy the "Pickwick Papers"?

Even granting many characters are caricatures, their very names, like Uriah Heep, mean a volume when used as descriptive of our associates. In these days of condensed knowledge why slight this excellent source of descriptive material?

Dickens and Thackeray may be gods of a past age but Dickens will still be a god of many in this age and ages to come when even the revival of the Trollope tradition will be lost in antiquity.

"To him who knoweth to do good and doeth it not, it is a sin," and I refuse to sin by refraining from expressing my opinion, worthless as it may seem to you, in defense of my beloved novelist, Charles Dickens.

Media, Pa.

HELEN M. FERREE.

UPLIFTERS PREVENT HER VOTING We've heard both the old parties condemned as reactionary, but this is the first time we have seen them rated for their socialism.

DEAR EDITOR: Mrs. Katherine Fullerton Gerould states in your May number that she does not like to vote. Perhaps not any two women will give the same reasons for disliking to vote. My reason is that all this voting seems useless, since both the old parties have indorsed most of the ideas of socialism. I'm willing to study the party platforms and choose the one which offers the best service to the nation. But I am not willing to vote for that party if its leaders are too cowardly to stand or fall by a good platform.

If I must vote for socialism I want to do it with my eyes open. I want to put my (X) in the circle above the party marked plainly Socialistic Ticket. I do not want to deceive myself by voting for a conservative platform adulterated by socialistic measures put therein by so-called welfare workers. The Socialists are keener planners than the managers of the old parties seem to know, for the Socialists work through the sentiment of Club Women and other uplift organizations to gain those ends which would be otherwise defeated. And so I feel this voting is all a gamble. The voter has no way of knowing which is which with the parties; each of them indorses the same socialistic "welfare" planks which tend to erase all the good of the original platforms.

825 E. State St., Boise, Idaho.

MRS. E. R. HANFORD.

VIVE UNCLE TOM

DEAR EDITOR: A somewhat belated reading of the June SCRIBNER'S last night disclosed to me for the first time the correspondence you have had concerning Uncle Tom's Cabin shows. It seems surprising that a man who would undertake to write the history of the so-called "Tom" shows would state baldly that these shows are extinct, the last one having died years ago.

I reside in the village of Naples, five miles from here. Not only do we have every season one or more "Tom" shows, but they are of both varieties-tent and town hall. You say that Mark Sullivan wants data concerning any existing shows. We are so accustomed to these shows that I never even thought to identify the entrepreneurs, but I think the most ambitious of them is conducted by a man named Stetson, who is by no means a newcomer in the field.

Not only do we have the "Tom" shows regularly, but in

Naples they draw the largest audiences of any theatrial tractions that come to the village. It is astonishing hot populace turn out en masse to these performances, haven't any doubt that this pronounced taste for Ma Stowe's opus will make them a permanent institution in years to come. ROSCOE PEACOCK

North Cohocton, New York.

Others have sent us handbills of floating theatr> on the Ohio River. Mr. Davis wasn't quite so "ball as our correspondents imply. He merely spoke with regret of Uncle Tom's death, not stating when at where that took place.

TEXAS TOUCHED

A native Texan writes about Texas and M Plumb.

DEAR EDITOR: "Each should in his home abide, therefo is the world so wide." These lines came to me after read Laura Kirkwood Plumb's account of her experience with Texas Twister. All that she describes is as foreign to a thing I have ever seen or experienced as I presume it is! you, and I am a native Texan of mature years-who h never even considered entering a "storm-cave," as calls it.

It seems to me that Elizabeth Nail Carstairs, whose st "The Rich Man's Son," was published in the Novemb SCRIBNER'S, is far better qualified to attempt a description the "great open spaces" and of conditions generally preva ing in ranch life than the Kansas contributor, since Mrs Ca stairs is the daughter of a successful ranchman, and I gathr from her writing that Mrs. Plumb is the wife of an unsuces ful ranchman. Mrs. Carstairs has the added advantage being a "native Texan."

Mrs. Plumb would do well indeed in "putting over" be description if she could in any way compare with the descr tive ability of the Texan who wrote "Fix Bayonets!" for June SCRIBNER'S.

As for Texas-the subject of this controversy-it is s vast and possessed of such innumerable resources and sa contrasts in people as well as in localities that a "rati Texan" would indeed hesitate to describe the people and the rural districts in as few words as Mrs. Plumb uses in her ver positive description of all native Texans and rural district

As for the cyclone do not quite as great calamities ever take people in the midst of pleasant surroundings?-st the recent earthquakes and disturbances which are alike pensations of Providence, over which we have no control JO WILSON MILLER GRAVES Honey Grove, Texas.

No, we do not see how tire people of Texas care blamed for having a cyclone. And certainly Ma Plumb set out to describe the cyclone and not Tex neither its architecture nor its people. Likewise thought we saw a certain humorous cast to her 2 ticle, which our Texas readers seem to have misse

Stephen P. Mizwa, assistant professor of e nomics at Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa, a Casimir Gonski, of Milwaukee, have taken a sim attitude with regard to Emerson Low's story "Th Man Who Had Been Away." They resent what th term aspersions of ignorance and depravity on Polish people.

We appreciate their criticism and their poir* view, actuated as it is by patriotism. Some of Irish readers did likewise with some of Shaw De mond's stories published some time ago. But we he lieve that they take the matter entirely too serio A short story is not designed to be a sociologcgeographic, and economic treatise, nor are the acters in a story intended to typify an entire peop THE OBSERVER