raphy as follows: "Men are human, and they delight to find recreation and edification in the little troubles and follies of other people. At the same time, they are moved to laugh at themselves, and that is an extra pleasure, for it makes us appear to ourselves cleverer and shrewder than we are."

MAX AND MORITZ

To his fundamental pessimism, doubtless, another trait of Busch's work is due. No one has so often violated the Aristotelian precept that the ugly, if it is to be humorous, must not be frightful, and that even the ugly object itself should not be dealt with in a cruel manner. Busch, as Paul Lindau points out, is a lover of frightful calamities, and in his pages they are made to fall alike upon the just and the unjust: the good school-teacher is terribly burned by the powder which Max and Moritz put in his pipe; a little later the two bad boys themselves are ground to pieces in a mill; pious Helen is burned to death; holy Franz brained by a champagne bottle in the hands of a drunken butler; Hans Huckebein, the raven, ends his unfortunate but eventful existence by accidentally hanging himself while in a state of "beastly" intoxication; and so on through a catalogue of horrors too extended for repetition. And yet Busch succeeds despite Aristotle, for we laugh through his catastrophic pages just as we did in childhood at the atrocities of Mr. Punch.

Whatever elements of Hogarth or the Dutch school may be found in them, Busch's drawings are sui generis. In his best work a marvellous simplicity is manifest. As Ernst Heilbronn says: "The line alone speaks, and this line became always simpler and always more eloquent." "The portraits of Balduin Bäh

lamm, the interrupted poet, and of the painter Klecksel are cases in point. No one realises more closely than Busch, Max Liebermann's famous mot, Zeichnen ist fortlassen, or, to put it less epigrammatically in English, "The art of drawing is the art of leaving things out.'

Particularly happy also is Busch's pencil in depicting motion. His page is often crowded with people engaged in doing the most idiotic things in the most confused way; everything seems thrown together in an entirely accidental and careless manner, yet the whole rests upon a perfect technique. Each of his characters is a distinct and unmistakable personality, which, considering the number of his works, is evidence of an enormous fertility. Moreover, Busch exhibits the most masterly power of following his heroes and heroines through every change of age and circumstance, and yet leaving upon the reader the impression of their continuing identity. His pious Helen grows up from pert young girlhood to flirtatious young maidenhood, then to scheming old maidenhood, rather passé wifehood and decidedly unprepossessing widowhood, ending with the most bedraggled penitential pose one can imagine. And yet throughout it all the transitions are so gradual and so convincing that one becomes fully conscious of them only in the retrospect.

Describing his methods of work, Busch said: "First the pictures were there, and then I made for each picture its verse." One of his admirers has very truly pointed out that in reality the pictures are the text and the verses are the illustrations. Indeed, it is possible to follow many of the stories simply by looking at the drawings in order, but it would be a great mistake to do so. For Busch's lines have a peculiar, droll, old-fashioned turn which supplies exactly what is needed to make his pictures irresistible. His sentences are wonderfully pregnant and of almost telegraphic brevity, the perfect counterpart in words, as Heilbronn notes, of the simple line which proves so effective in Busch's drawings.

Some of the devices used in the rhyming commentary recur frequently enough to deserve special mention. Thus Busch assumes with great delight the attitude of

the prosy teacher, fond parent, or other knowing person laying down in the most. solemn manner ridiculous counsels of perfection to young persons presumably needing such advice. Thus in the foreword of Max und Moritz:

Alas, how oft one hears or reads
Of naughty children and their deeds!
For instance these two boys you see
Named Max and Maurice, who with glee
Made fun in secret of each word
Of good advice they ever heard.
'Tis sad to say they often went

To greater lengths on mischief bent.

Nor men, nor beasts from tricks were spared
Which these bad boys each day prepared.
The farmers round about they tortured
By stealing fruit from field and orchard-
Green apples, peaches, plums and cherries,
Fat melons, cantaloupes, and berries.
Such things, of course, are easier done
And seems besides much better fun
Than sitting quiet in the school,
Or conning o'er the Golden Rule.

Oh, naughty, naughty Max and Maurice!
Your lives should hold a lesson for us.
The wretched end to which you came
May serve some others to reclaim.
And hence your course from bad to worse
Is here set down in sketch and verse.

Another favourite device with Busch is the assignment for the most commonplace fact of a great number of perfectly obvious reasons enunciated in the most careful and learned manner. When Cousin Franz in the Fromme Helene decides to perform his morning ablutions, we are told that he does it:

For, first, to bathe is customary,
And, second, 'tis refreshing, very;
Then, thirdly, it removes the dirt,
While, fourthly, it can do no hurt.
Fifthly, it adds much to one's beauty,
And, lastly, it's a person's duty.

Each line of the above, it should be

added, is illustrated by snap-shot sketches of Franz at his toilette.

If bathos be the opposite of the sublime in poetry or art, Busch is none the less sublime in his bathos. A perfect specimen may be found in Mar und Moritz. Widow Bolte's four chickens have met a violent death as the result of one of the bad boys' tricks. Rushing from her door, the widow perceives their dead bodies hanging from a limb.

What tears can soothe my woe, she wailed,
My fondest, deepest hopes have failed.
The sweetest dream e'er known to me
Is hanging on this apple tree.

Busch's verses are also noteworthy for the humorous use of run-over lines, false rhymes, and the most astounding adaptations of foreign terms to German uses. He has, moreover, a remarkable collection of onomatopoetic words for all possible occasions, each perfect in its place, but almost impossible in translation. Deeper than all these devices, however, is the indefinable but thoroughly infectious drollery underlying everything touched by Busch's pencil or pen. There is in him precisely that quality which has made the humour of Abraham Lincoln immortal in spite of the fact that it was delivered orally and seldom recorded in the martyred President's own words. Thus Busch in his romance, Eduard's Traum, compares the process of creating a work of art with the process of making sauerkraut: "A work of art, I dare say, must be cooked at the fire of nature, then put away in the cupboard of memory, then thrice warmed in the golden pot of phantasy, then served by dainty hands, and finally it must be thankfully enjoyed with a good appetite." Can any greater tribute be paid Wilhelm Busch than by the recognition that so his works of art were prepared and so by millions of his countrymen and others they are "thankfully enjoyed with a good appetite"?

Robert C. Brooks.

ENERALLY, in published accounts of the Bohemian Club of San Francisco, so much prominence has been given to its spectacular Midsummer Jinks in the red woods that the literary aspect of the club has been neglected. It is true, however, that the literary and artistic aspirations which brought the club into existence more than a third of a century ago have ever since dominated the purposes of the club as set forth in the first article of its constitution: "This organisation... is instituted for the association of gentlemen connected professionally with literature, art, music, the drama, and also those who, by reason of their love or appreciation of these objects, may be deemed eligible." Under the provision of "those also" the club has admitted during its long life a membership which has reached the constitutional limit-seven hundred and fifty, not including several classes other than regular members-and is subjected to pressure by a long waiting list. Its material prosperity has grown with its numerical strength, yet its Bohemian spirit has not pined under the blight of worldly opulence, as has often been predicted would be the unhappy case. Although the present home of the club, its third, is as large, including a bridgeannexed theatre, as any but one or two of the great clubs of New York, a new house is about to be built on a site lately acquired, at a cost, for land, house and furnishing, of probably half a million. A peculiar piece of information to report about a "Bohemian" club, yet not discouraging in view of the fact that with worldly prosperity has come no diminution of literary and artistic activities.

The twenty charter members of the club signed the constitution on March 9. 1872, and a week later took possession of

their first home. Among them was an actor, a painter, a lawyer, a vineyardist and a dozen writers. This is mentioned because for many years the composition of the club reflected, more or less accurately, just about such a company; in later years the proportion of others "deemed eligible" has grown, yet at the same time the army and navy memberships, and recruits from the faculties of two large neighbouring universities, have added strength to the ranks of professionals.

Aside from the familiar means of cultivating a literary and artistic atmosphere for the club life, this is further done by an elaboration of the club's traditional feature, its high and low jinks. In the early days these were month-end meetings for the discussion of art and literature; but with the growth of membership they became occasions for the display of original literary and art productions. The scheme, as it now works, is this: the Jinks Committee appoints a "Sire," who selects a subject and commands a number of members to write papers thereon, another to illustrate the subject by a painting, and another to interpret it with music, vocal and instrumental. Sires are keen in the hunt for new material, so that, outside of the ranks of professional writers, there is often discovered one who can express entertaining views in literary formsometimes to his own great surprise. The cartoon is given to a professional to paint, but the music, while generally under the direction of a professional member, is played by an orchestra composed largely of amateurs, and the chorus, drilled by a professional member, is sung by amateurs. This form of entertainment, carried on for a third of a century, has developed a goodly lot of talent; and that it is not goodly only in the estimation of partial club critics is proved by the number of dramatic and musical sketches written for the club and afterwards sold for stage