JOHN DREW WHO APPEARS AT THE HOLLIS STREET THEATRE even though it be cast as a subordinate part. The friend in "A Fool There Was," had the hearts of the audience in spite of the general admiration of Mr. Hilliard's really wonderful acting of a disagreeable part. At the Tremont, Eva Tanguay, heralded as the "highest salaried comedienne in the world," brought back "The Follies," this time, "of 1909." It was full of song hits and effective sets, and is the gayest of the gay. The audience included "everybody," and everybody was pleased and said "the best yet." JANUARY ATTRACTIONS One of the strong January attractions will be Margaret Anglin at the Colonial in a new play of the dramatized novel class. "The Awakening of Helena Richie," as a novel, was read with general interest, and as a play has had a successful run at the Savoy Theatre. There is little doubt of its success in Boston. At the Hollis John Drew begins January 3rd an engagement in his greatest success, "Inconstant George," by the author of "Love Watches." This has been playing to large houses at the Empire Theatre, New York, and comes to Boston with the halo of success already achieved. Mr. Drew is one of our ablest actors, and always a prime favorite. The "Man from Home" opens at the Park Theatre on the same date. At the Boston Theatre "Bright Eyes" opens December 27th. BOKS FIRESIDE FICTION Here in New England at least Winter brings us a delightful fireside compulsion that not even the inheritance of a Puritan conscience can brand as an over-indulgence of the flesh. This gives us our easy-chair and our blazing hearth-but our fiction? Well, if conscience stiffens a little in the spine and takes on that expression which is supposed to characterize her here in New England, we are ready with our "Duty of Being Informed and Abreast of the Literature of the Day," with which reflection the moral spine relaxes and the eye softens. For a blessed interval we may dip ad libitum into the enticing pages. Perhaps it is H. G. Wells' "Ann Veronica," published by Harper and Brothers. This will be a good leader, for it justifies our defense, it is so very up-to-date, and deals with a problem that unsolvable problem the modern woman! Of course everybody knows that the modern woman is a great issue. Ann is young, quite young, and wants to really live. The prudish father and the conventional aunt are obstacles. Why will fathers be prudish and aunts conventional? We quote: "To think that is my father! Oh, He stood over me like a my dear! 637 cliff; the thought of him nearly turned me aside from everything we have done. He was the social order; he was law and wisdom. And they come here, and they look at our furniture to see if it is good, and they are not glad, it does not stir them, that at last, at last we can dare to have children." It is easy to smile at that; but do not smile too soon, for it is too often and too sadly true. Mr. Wells' book will be one of the "big" works of the day. Here is another Harper publication"Options," by O. Henry, which is announced as "practically an edition de luxe of O. Henry." A bubbling humor and a fresh and vigorous characterization that puts every linguistic resource under contribution are O. Henry qualities that insure readability. A story to tell does the rest. The book is like a good stage The comedy-a modern comedy that leans somewhat toward vaudeville. book will increase the regular O. Henry audience—and it ought. Cleverly and insistently egotistical, as a letter should be, are the "Letters of G. G.," which Henry Holt and Company bring out in a dainty little. volume that is just right for holiday purposes and very good fireside company. Turn the backlog ever so little that we may have fuller enjoyment of its accumulated glow and we will browse a little. "Don't talk to me about 'tears, idle tears!' Tears idle? Just listen here: If a child wants anything badly, what, from cradle up, does it do but cry for it? And doesn't it the better part of the time get it?" Feminine philosophy! "Does anyone but a Bohemian know the real pleasure of paying a bill?" But where, dear authoress, is the billpaying Bohemian to be found? New "Like Diogenes, I have my little lantern-and I'm ransacking York, not to find an honest man-I've found him, but what seems much more difficult, to spot out where are the happy people. Where do they hide themselves? Occasionally I see woman who looks fairly contentedcomfortable and fat; and sometimes a a man who has dined looks enormously entertained-but where are the people who are as happy as I am?"’ Because you are happy, G. G., we will both read your letters and pass them on. But here is something quite different: "The Ruinous Face," by Maurice Hewlett, after the antique in style and construction and Richard le Galliene modernity in spirit, and as to its material form, done into a decorative booklet with arabesque borders on each page and four photogravure reproductions of famous paintings. Of these various things, the affectation of the antique, the Galliene modernity, the illustrations and the borders, we like the last two. The book is published by Harper and Brothers. Thackeraynian in dimensions, and in sound and in other ways, such as the fullness of the stage and the social breadth of view, is William De Mor gan's "It Never Can Happen Again." The reading of it will last out more than one evening's hearth-glow. It is a story of English life, a story of today, a story with a plot and people and humor that smiles out everywhere. "Lizarann Coupland did not know what her father's employment was; but she knew that every morning she saw him to the corner of Bladen Street, put his left hand on the palin's of number three, and left him to shift for himself. She was on honor not to watch him down Bladen Street, and she had a keen sense of honor.” That is the opening sentence, and we will not intrude on the reader's enjoyment of what follows. But, by the way, what have the novelists of this season against fathers? But it is the fathers of pretty heroines that are shown up in all their heinousness, so that we need not complain. Our own are boys. And after all the father of a pretty young woman is a highly proper subject for anathema. "It Never Can Happen Again" is published by Henry Holt and Company. On another evening you will be sure to pick up Thomas Nelson Page's "John Marvel, Assistant," which Scribners have saved from the desuetude of serialization. It is a story of to-day, a story of people up North and down South, which is the same as saying that it is in Thomas Nelson Page's best vein, and that is always very good indeed. The curtain rises on struggle and tragedy and falls on contentment and peace. "The amassing of riches, not for use only, for display-vulgar beyond belief--the squandering of riches, not for good, but for evil, to gratify jaded appetites which never at their freshest craved anything but evil or folly, marks the lowest level of the shopkeeping intellect"-but you either have or will read the book. From the Scribner list, also, we will be sure to select "Forty Minutes Late," "Options," is a collection of the typical by F. Hopkinson Smith. This, like productions of an eminent short-story writer-nine stories, punctuated by eight illustrations,-unusually good ones. According to established publishing etiquette, the title of the initial story is the title of the book. Mr. Smith excells in the setting of his stories, or in making that setting vividly real. The art of which he is master is the art of the middle distance. He has a way of seeing good and lovable things, and presenting them with conscientious workmanship. We read without feeling either cheated or soiled. The fireside reader should save nine good evenings for these nine tales of to-day. Moffat, Yard and Company present "The Trimming of Goosie," by James Hooper. "Goosie," it appears is Mr. Charles-Norton Sims, the matter to be trimmed are his incorrigible wings and the trimming is done by the cooing Mrs. Charles-Norton Sims. Whether or not Goosie was worth the trimming, the process is lightly entertaining. We would label it, "To be read when very tired, or very much out of humor," and that is rather a useful kind of book to have around. BOSTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE to President Lowell of Harvard at the Editor NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE An important conference designed to follow up the work already accomplished by the Boston Chamber of Commerce for the still further improvement of the educational system. in Massachusetts is to be held on the 13th of January, when prominent business men who are members of the Chamber will meet a number of the leading college presidents of Massachusetts. The design is to bring into close sympathy and co-operation the man of affairs and the professional educator, with the object of adapting more specifically to the modern needs. of business the courses of study at our higher institutions of learning. The committee on education of the Boston Chamber of Commerce believes that an important movement already under way may be further aided by demonstrating the interest of business men in those institutions, and by stimulating an open-minded discussion of certain fundamental problems which have long caused anxiety to those men deeply interested in guaranteeing that the college graduate shall leave his alma mater as fully equipped as education can make him for the battle of life. It is not intended to commit those present to any binding action. By thus limiting the scope of the conference, and by insuring the privacy of the opinions to be expressed, it is hoped to bring out the freest possible exchange of views. This conference follows naturally upon the luncheon which was given time of his inauguration by the Chamber of Commerce at the Parker House on Friday, October 8. As was pointed out at the time that event was recognized as "an outward sign of the farreaching fact that the colleges and the man of business have in the last few years, quite changed their mutual point of view. It is not so very long since a famous professor of higher mathematics thanked God that his students could learn nothing from him which they might make of the slightest use; to-day the chief measure of the efficiency of a college is the preparedness of its graduates for immediate and effective living. On the other hand, Greeley's famous characterization of college men as 'horned cattle' is now as obsolete as are the business methods of his day." In a word, the college nowadays has come to realize that the merchant or the manufacturer can contribute to the usefulness of a college curriculum something even more valuable than money, namely, advice; and more and more nowadays is that advice not only sought and welcomed but taken. One of the first proofs of this new point of view close at hand is the Graduate School of Business at Cambridge. It It is expected that the informal discussion arranged for will occupy most of the day in executive session. will be followed by a dinner in the evening, open to all members of the Chamber of Commerce, at which several of the college presidents will deliver addresses upon matters closely related to education in Massachusetts. The delegates to be invited include: President A. Lawrence Lowell, Harvard University; Dr, Richard C. Maclaurin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; President L. B. R. Briggs, Radcliffe College; Rev. F. W. Hamilton, Tufts College; President Harry A. Garfield, Williams College; President George Harris, Amherst College; Dr. K. L. Butterfield, Amherst Agricultural College; President G. Stanley Hall, Clark University; Dr. E. A. Engler, Worcester Polytechnic Institute; Dr. L. Clarke Seelye, Smith College; Dr. Henry Lefavour, Simmons College; Rev. T. I. Gasson, S.J., Boston College; Dr. W. E. Huntington, Boston University; Rev. Thos. E. Murphy, S.J., Holy Cross College; Dr. Edmund C. Sanford, Clark College; Miss Mary E. Wooley, Mt. Holyoke College; and Miss Caroline Hazard, Wellesley College. BOSTON-1915 Editor NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE The "1915" Boston Exposition, which occupied the old Art Museum throughout November, and, at the expiration of the four weeks for which it was originally announced to continue, was extended two weeks longer, was a striking success in more ways than one. It made the most complete display that ever has been made of the many agencies involved in the active life of a big community; it set forth the problems of a great city graphically, as they never before were set forth; it attracted more than 200,000 people, of whom 50,000 at least were school children, to the study of serious questions in education, philanthropy, civics, health, and beautification, which it generally has been taken for granted şeemed so distant to the average man, woman and child as not to be entertaining or interesting to them; and, most unexpected of all, it made these same matters living and understand able to them, as results are already beginning to show. One purpose of the Exposition was to teach the meaning of the Boston 1915 movement. It was managed by Boston-1915, in behalf of some 200 exhibiting organizations. And it showed not only the value of a centralizing organization like Boston1915 in helping the great army of societies and associations at work on special lines to combine their forces, but, even more pointedly, the possibilities for accomplishing things for a city that lie in close, well-directed co-operation. Now that it is better known and understood, Boston-1915 is proceeding to broaden its form of organization. In place of the smaller board which directed the movement in its earlier days, there is in process of development a Directorate composed of delegates from the different groups-civic, educational, charitable, and so on-into which the 2000 organizations, big and little, of Boston naturally divide themselves. Thus every field of effort in the city's advancement will be directly represented, and the efficiency of all the active working organizations will be largely increased, both in what they do in combination, and in what they do as individual bodies. BURLINGTON Editor NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE Dear Sir:-One of the most interesting industries of our city are the plant and products of the Lumiere Company, manufacturers and experimenters in all lines of advanced photography. Their factory is near the lake, a location selected after looking our country over for the best conditions for their business. Recently they have achieved most attractive results in colored photography. In this, their usual quiet season, their plant is used to its fullest extent, and there is prospect of enlargement in the near future. Prof. Larsen has lately organized a superior symphony orchestra of over thirty members. Their first concert gave entire satisfaction to all, and their proficiency was a general surprise. Yours truly, JOSEPH DANA BARTLEY. |
