gan wrote an excellent account of some of his literary methods, part of which may also be here repeated: ... "When my husband started on one of his novels, he did so without making any definite plot. He created his characters and then waited for them to act and evolve their own plot. In this way the puppets in the show became real, living personalities to him, and he waited, as he expressed it, 'to see what they would do next.' . . . As the story was always read to me while in progress, I, too, got to believe in the reality of the characters, and found myself thinking of them as real, live people, and I have frequently asked him, when he came down to lunch or had finished writing for the day, such a question, as, for instance, 'Well, have they quarreled yet?' and he would reply, as the case might be, 'No, I don't know if they will come to a quarrel; after all, I must wait and see what they will do.' However, toward the end of the book, when an intelligible winding up of the story became imperative, the plot was taken up and carefully considered, all the straggling threads gathered together and finally decided upon, though latitude was always allowed for details to shape themselves after their own fashion." R. D. TOWNSEND. THE NEW BOOKS BOOKS FOR YOUNG FOLKS FAIRY TALES FROM FRANCE. Adapted by William Trowbridge Larned. Illustrated. The P. F. Volland Company, New York. OLD FRENCH FAIRY TALES. By Comtesse de Segur. Illustrated. The Penn Publishing Company, Philadelphia. Here are two volumes of French fairy tales. One is a little book; the other is a big book. But both are exquisite in paper, print, and illustration. In the little book we find "Cinderella," "The Sleeping Beauty," and other well-known tales, told in a way not to suggest fear or cause fright. In the other book there are less well known legends; the book comprises "Blondine," "Good Little Henry," "Princess Rosette," "The Little Gray Mouse," and "Ourson." The language is well adapted to youngest readers and hearers. FOR THE GAME'S SAKE. By Lawrence Perry. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. A volume of commonplace stories for boys written according to the time-worn formula. Why a sport writer of Mr. Perry's reputation should be guilty of such an inaccuracy as to write, “It was seven-thirty precisely and one bell was striking from each of the yachts," we do not know. This is not the only error of a similar nature in this volume. FICTION HOUSE IN DORMER FOREST (THE). By Mrs. Mary Webb. The George H. Doran Company, New York. In this house on the forest's edge live the Darkes. The forest stands for freedom, nature, and beauty; the dull, commonplace house facing it stands for restraint and convention. Thus the novel 's symbolic; it is also idyllic. The re actions of the Darkes to house and for- BIOGRAPHY LIFE AND WORK OF SIR WILLIAM VAN HORNE (THE). By Walter Vaughan. Illustrated. The Century Company, New York. There is romance in the railway world. As proof, note this well-written life of the boy telegrapher in Illinois who reported the Lincoln-Douglas debates, who rose in the Chicago and Alton system from train despatcher, telegraph superintendent, transportation superintendent, to the general superintendence of the Kansas City, St. Louis, and Western, to the presidency of the South Minnesota, and, finally, with all the expert knowledge thus acquired, who built the Canadian Pacific Railway; and he remained in Canada to play a great part in the national life of that country. Then he constructed the Cuban Railway, and for the first time the island's rich interior was opened to trade, transportation, and prosperity. He had now become an empire builder. Shortly before his death he said: "When I think of all I could do, I should like to live five hundred years." The grim fight he waged in his earlier years against poverty and the driving, dynamic force of his later acts are revealed in what he said some time ago: Our whole civilization is the out- By a curious coincidence the first President of the Canadian Pacific found out that his greatest rival in the railway world was the man who had warmly recommended him as the best person to build that road, namely, James J. Hill. The Canadian by birth and American by adoption was the rival of the American by birth and Canadian by adoption. MEMOIRS OF THE EMPRESS EUGENIE. Comte Fleury. 2 vols. D. Appleton & Co., New York, EMPRESS EUGENIE IN EXILE. By Agnes Carey. Illustrated. The Century Company, New York. By Here are two accounts-one French, one English-of a singularly picturesque woman, the Empress Eugénie. She died recently, ninety-four years old. In recounting her life Count Fleury has much to say about the connection of the French Court with the three great wars which happened during her reign: the Crimean, the Italo-Austrian, and the War of 1870 between Germany and France; indeed, he devotes his second volume to these matters, leaving to the first the more personal side. In that first volume we find many an illuminating glimpse into the lives of the members of the French Court-Princess Mathilde, for instance. Because of the Empress's well-known aversion to publicity, the author's statements may not in general be directly 4 May "inspired," though his sub-title ("Compiled from Statements, Private Documents, and Personal Letters of the Empress") would indicate the contrary. Be this as it may, his material came from intimate Court sources. The account is also valuable in its comprehensiveness. In comparison, "Empress Eugénie in Exile" offers a glimpse of less than a year of the Empress's life. The author was a member of her household and saw her subject at close range. The information in this volume is more definitely at first hand than that in Count Fleury's; the Empress's personality is revealed more vividly and more appealingly than in the larger work. MUSIC, PAINTING, AND OTHER ARTS FAN BOOK (THE). By MacIver Percival. Illustrated. The Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York. The art of fan-making, especially as developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is here described with the enthusiasm of a devoted collector of fans. A vast amount of information is given, accompanied with many illustrations of notable fans. HISTORY AND METHODS OF ANCIENT AND MODERN PAINTING. By James Ward. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. This volume is the third of a fourvolume work on "The History and Methods of Ancient and Modern Painting." It deals with Italian painting in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, including the work of the great masters of the Florentine school and of the early Venetian painters. The text is discriminating and the pictures are unusually well chosen and reproduced. TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION MAYFAIR TO MOSCOW: CLARE SHERIDAN'S DIARY. Boni & Liveright, New York. Mrs. Sheridan is a vivacious writer. She is of English and American descent. She is a sculptor and, as she says, in Moscow portrait work, not politics, was her concern. But she saw many outstanding figures in the queer Bolshevik menagerie-Lenine and Trotsky, both of whom she "sculped," and others. She tells how they looked, acted, and talked. Like most diaries, this is scrappy, but it has sharp descriptive passages. TOPEE AND TURBAN. By Lieut.-Col. H. A. Newell. The John Lane Company, New York. A faithful, detailed account of motor trips in various parts of India, with a humorous slant that is often entertaining and with plenty of the author's snapshots. EDUCATIONAL KINDERGARTEN CHILDREN'S HOUR (THE). Vol. I-STORIES FOR LITTLE CHILDREN; Vcl. II-CHILDREN'S OCCUPATIONS; Vol. III-TALKS TO CHILDREN; Vol. IVTALKS TO MOTHERS. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. These volumes are well compiled, combined, and arranged. Much of the material is original and the selected matter is admirably adapted for the general purpose. That purpose is clearly explained by the titles of the volumes. The complete set of books should be of value in home and public library. President Harding Urges Road Maintenance. He says "I KNOW of nothing more shocking than the millions of public funds wasted in improved highways, wasted because there is no policy of maintenance. The neglect is not universal, but it is very near it. There is nothing the Congress can do more effectively to end this shocking waste than condition all Federal Aid on provisions for maintenance. Highways, no matter how generous the outlay for construction, cannot be maintained without patrol and constant repairs." EXTRACT FROM FIRST MESSAGE FRESH WOUNDS A letter from Ras Priest, which we printed with a few words of comment in our issue of April 13, has stimulated some of our readers to make some comments of their own. Ras Priest, who told us he had named his only boy Lyman, recommended to the editors of The Outlook the prayer of the Psalmist Create in me a clean heart, O God: And renew a right spirit within me; averring that The Outlook was spiritually dead and didn't know it, that for partisan reasons the editors had "become the yokefellows and the flaming evangels of the most reactionary and sinister group in our politics," and had "stood by and held the garments of those who stoned to death the prophet." While these faithful wounds are fresh we print the three letters of comment which follow. - THE EDITORS. I T would be strange if your mail did I not contain remonstrances against the undue strictures cast upon The Outlook by Ras Priest in his letter, appearing in the issue of April 13, wherein he somewhat illogically concludes that The Outlook is "spiritually dead." Yet that letter has encouraged me to offer a word on the subject which I had not the temerity, perhaps, to offer in competition for your Constructive Criticism Prize. Mr. Priest's premises, in my humble opinion, are principally founded on fact, and, albeit with more or less unseemly overstatement and rancor, he has described tersely the general impression I have gained of The Outlook's attitude toward Woodrow Wilson. I have long liked to think of Charles W. Eliot, Lyman Abbott, and Woodrow Wilson as the three most potent moral teachers and leaders of our time, Dr. Eliot's field having been primarily the youth and universities of the country; Dr. Abbott's, The Outlook readers and his numerous audiences; and Woodrow Wilson's, the citizenry of the civilized world. Now of course great minds honestly differ on economic, political, financial, industrial, social, theological, and like questions. Being a lawyer, I understand how jurists honestly differ on points of law. It is often hard to know the right and wrong of a question of policy, or expediency, or diplomacy. But on a question of ethics-a moral issue-the line of demarcation between right and wrong should not be so difficult of definition, and we like to feel that when the performance of a moral obligation is in issue we may know upon which side to find most right-minded men arrayed. And the question of our joining the League of Nations involved the acknowledgment and discharge of moral obligations, and hence presented an issue essentially moral. (If this be not conceded, I can best cite an article by Dr. Eliot in the "Atlantic Monthly" for October or November, 1920.) The state of extraordinary moral exaltation to which during the war we were elevated-and in the creation of which Dr. Abbott and Dr. Eliot, as well as Woodrow Wilson, played no small re part-was insidiously assailed and eventually degraded to what now sembles an obsession of National selfinterest. Responsibility for this cannot, in my judgment, be wholly avoided by the materialistic or anti-idealistic element of the Senate. Quite naturally, we looked to our great moral teachers and leaders to champion the ideals upon which our exalted moral condition was founded, to strive to maintain that state, and accordingly to be governed first and foremost by the moral consideration in taking their stand on the League issue. Dr. Eliot did so. He forsook his political party and, I feel sure, a large part of his constituency, and vigorously defended those ideals, recognizing the moral aspect of the League issue and insisting upon the fulfillment of our moral obligation before considering matters of apparent National self-interest or diplomacy. Woodrow Wilson did so. Although subjected to incalculable pressure, he refused to look away from the moral aspect of the situation, and, while he made mistakes-blunders, if you willand was unfortunately tactless in dealing with the Senate, he exhausted his body and almost his mind (but not his spirit) in striving to prevent our country from shirking a moral duty. Dr. Abbott did not do so. Somewhat to my surprise, he did not see the moral aspect of the question as the others saw it. And, to my dismay, his organ apparently chose "to disfigure itself with partisanship rather than to transfigure itself with patriotism," to use the happy (rather, unhappy) phrase of Leila Sellers, whose letter you reproduced in The Outlook of March 30. For this I am not so presumptuous as to heckle Dr. Abbott or The Outlook. And please do not feel slighted if I do not hold you accountable for the defeat of the League of Nations. It merely happens to strike me as more or less inconsistent for America's most highminded editor and most moral lay periodical to have espoused the cause of expediency, diplomacy, practicability, patriotism, safety, Americanism-call it what you will-when a fundamentally moral question confronted them. If I seem unduly to prolong discussion of a question no longer mooted, permit me to suggest that the League issue is not dead, and cannot die until the the European Powers discard League or America, upon some footing, becomes a member thereof. Yes, I am a Democrat. I became one because of Woodrow Wilson. T a long period of years, according to the Mortality Statistics of the United States government. For instance, according to latest available figures Seattle's death rate was 8.6 per 1,000, Spokane's 9.5, Los Angeles' 12.9, Cincinnati's 14.2, St. Paul's 14.3, Philadelphia's 14.5, Boston's 14.9, San Francisco's 15.1, Baltimore's 15.5, Washington's 15.6, New Orleans' 19.7, and Trenton's 20.1. Your expectancy of life will be materially increased by living in Seattle. Seattle is in a class by itself in respect to the low rate of infant mortality, 55 per 1000. In other words, the infant born in Seattle has approximately 95 chances out of 100 of surviving and several times more chances of attaining adult life than the baby born in the East or the Middle West. It will also be a sturdier and stronger person. Seattle is a paradise for children-infantile complaints are practically unknown. Seattle's health record is due to an entire absence of extremes of heat and cold, of cyclones, hurricanes, earthquakes and severe electrical storms-a climate soothing to nervous troubles and that invites one out of doors the year round, an abundance of pure water, an altogether exceptional milk supply, perfect drainage and a scenic environment whose beauty and sublimity tend to lift one above the petty trials of life. The climate gives a 20 per cent. margin in manufacturing costs due to increased efficiency of labor, a fact well demonstrated in competition. Seattle is the center of the richest area on the continent in basic resources -timber, agriculture, horticulture, dairying, mining, coal, fisheries, etc.—is by far the nearest Pacific Coast port to the Orient and the chief railroad center on the Pacific Coast. Seattle's harbor is classed by shipping men as the best in the world and her docks and cargo handling equipment are superior to anything on the coast. Seattle is a wonder city-grown from 4,000 to 350,000 during the writer's business life. The big opportunities are still ahead. Whether you simply want to enjoy life and live long, or have an industry to establish or a branch to locate, send for Seattle's inspiring story, "Seattle, the Seaport of Success." Imagine your child in danger Picture this ruffian in your yard. Could your wife protect the little ones, and herself? Keep an Iver Johnson Revolver in your home. No danger of accidents. Jolts, jars, thumps, or bumps cannot discharge it. You can even "Hammer the Hammer." Piano-wire heat-treated springs keep this revolver ready for instant use. Quick, sure, accurate. All calibres. Hammer and hammerless models, Regular, Perfect Rubber, and Western Walnut grips. If your dealer hasn't in stock the particular model you want, write us. IVER JOHNSON'S ARMS & CYCLE WORKS 193 River Street, Fitchburg, Mass. 1871-1921 FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY Iver Johnson TrussBridge Bicycles are world-famed for easy riding, strength, and durability. Models and prices to suit everyone. To Summer Resort Proprietors The Outlook will devote five spring and early summer SALT AND BALM FOR FRESH WOUNDS-Continued tiresome and the visits would have been discontinued long ago. My aged father, a retired clergyman, lived with us before his death, and how he did disagree with The Outlook's theology! At the last he could read only with the aid of a magnifying-glass the size of a saucer; but he never missed a number. It was on these points of disagreement that he loved to dwell, to study, to "sputter," and to grow. Evidently Ras Priest is discontinuing The Outlook just when it is beginning to be most valuable to him. My subscription renewed herewith. C. E. PURDY. Minneapolis, Minnesota. III ECAUSE of the undeserved attack in Bthe letter from Ras Priest printed in your magazine of April 13, I hasten to show my appreciation of your "spiritually dead" magazine by renewing my subscription for another year. I could not afford it before, but this article has changed my mind and I hasten to the aid of my friends, at the same time gratifying myself. I am a subscriber of years' standing, and each number, after reading, is sent to a son in Schenectady, who enjoys it as much as I. I Chaumont, New York. MELODRAMA R. J. HAVE just read your editorial "A Mammoth Movie, but a Tawdry Melodrama." You say, "In such pictures virtue always triumphs and the villain 'gets his." Does not all religion teach us to believe that that is true in real life? Does not history prove it? May we not believe our Bible when it says, "Never have I seen the righteous forsaken," "The way of the transgressor is hard"? Are we not told in many places that the transgressor (villain) does "get his" and of the good (virtuous) man that "all his paths are peace"? Please help us out on what to believe. Who wants "art," anyway, when he goes to a movie? Generally it is like issues to special advertising of summer resorts, tours this. We have had a hard, grinding day. and travel. These will be the issues of and and The issue of May 25 will be the special annual travel resort number containing articles on vacation subjects illustrations especially selected. The corresponding issue of 1920 carried 198 advertisements of hotels and resorts. WRITE US EARLY AND WE WILL BE GLAD TO GIVE YOU COPY SUGGESTIONS Department of Classified Advertising If at home, drudgery; if at the office, wearing monotonous tasks; in school, nerve exhausting work, teaching the "young idea." Just at this time in the twenty-four hours we hate every one of those young ideas. In the morning we shall love them all again. But now. "What to do?" "What to do?" A movie! Come on, girls; come on, boys. Not the movie, but a movie. Finally, we are there, in a pretty, quiet place, dim light for our tired eyes, soft, pleasant music. Is the music itself "art"? We don't know, we don't care, we don't listen; we only know it is there and that it is restful. Then the "show" begins. If only, in some way, the ads could be eliminated! Let us agree that the story itself is "cheap melodrama." (We are a woman, and so we come back to the original The Outlook Company, 381 Fourth Avenue, New York City argument that life itself is melodrama, going on all about us.) Yes, we agree about the story and we know we can't |