JOHN MUIR'S BOYHOOD

T

HERE is great reason for rejoicing that John Muir chose to give us, in a volume by itself, "The Story of My Boyhood and Youth" (Houghton), instead of making it the introductory part of the complete autobiography he is planning. Whether in fiction or biography, books are rare which truly bring the grown reader's mind close to the heart and life and way of thinking of a boy. One recalls Mr. Howells's "A Boy's Town," Mr. Vachell's "The Hill," Mr. Charles D. Stewart's "Partners of Providence," and a few other books; but uncommon indeed is such a faculty as John Muir here shows for remembering not only facts. but moods and aspirations. He always has been intensely interested in people as well as external nature, in the farm as well as in science; he had as a boy that desire to know, that eagerness of imagination and persistence in seeking new things, that have made him as a man go so far and see so much with the understanding eye and tell what he has seen with so vivid a touch. When he changed, as he says, the University of Wisconsin for the University of the Wilderness, after four years of studying those things he wanted to know about, regardless of regular courses, he "wandered away on a glorious botanical and geological excursion which has lasted nearly fifty years and is not yet completed, always happy and free, poor or rich, without thought of a diploma or of making a name, urged on and on through endless, inspiring, Godful beauty." So, with all his youth, his thought was free and his spirit that of joy and hope. His grimly orthodox Scotch father tried to impress him with the terrors of literal hellfire into which bad boys would be cast as we are casting branches into this brush fire," but infinitely hotter; but, says Mr. Muir, "those terrible fire lessons quickly faded away into the blithe wilderness air; for no fire can be hotter than the heavenly fire of faith and hope that burns in every healthy boy's heart."

There is humor abundant in the chapter on "Boyhood in Scotland," with its recollections of the rule of the rod at school and home, the austere Sundays, the school-boy fights, and the first forbidden but irrepressi

ble excursions into the out-of-doors; some indignation at the narrowness of that life might have been natural, but that is not John Muir's way.

Those "auld lang syne " days were ended when one night the father announced: "Bairns, ye need not learn your lessons the nicht, for we're gan to America the morn." To the Wisconsin wilderness went the family by sailing-ship, coach, and ox-train. There John found delight in true farm life, in the new country, in the unknown animals and flowers, and, above all, in the fact that Wisconsin was a veritable" Paradise of Birds," so that he (and his reader) finds it well worth while to devote an entire chapter under that title to his pleasure in bird observation; here evidently he first trained his eye and mind to keen power in seeing and noting. Another equally readable chapter tells of the hunting. of small game then possible for the boys. In short, everything about us was so novel and wonderful that we could hardly believe our senses except when hungry or while father was thrashing us." Even his hard work as a plow-boy, when only twelve years old, did not slacken his universal interest; and his recollections of what he saw of people and things make up a graphic picture of Wisconsin life half a century or more ago.

Soon his love for books sprung up as irresistibly as had his love for nature. His father forbade his reading nights, so he set to work to train himself to awaken early. He records his joy at finding, the first morning, that he was out of bed at one o'clock : Five hours to myself! I can hardly think of any other event in my life, any discovery I ever made, that gave birth to joy so transportingly glorious as the possession of those five frosty hours." His awakening to literature was as individual and original as everything else about him. He tells us :

I remember as a great and sudden discovery that the poetry of the Bible, Shakespeare, and Milton was a source of inspiring, exhilarating, uplifting pleasure; and I became anxious to know all the poets, and saved up small sums to buy as many of their books as possible. Within three or four years I was the proud possessor of parts of Shakespeare's, Milton's, Cowper's, Henry Kirke White's, Campbell's, and Akenside's works, and quite a number of others seldom read nowadays. I think it was in my Afteenth year that I began to relish good literature with enthusiasm, and smack my lips over

favorite lines, but there was desperately little time for reading, even in the winter eveningsonly a few stolen minutes now and then.

Comparatively few people know that John Muir was an inventor as well as a naturalist; in his early days he made some rather remarkable contrivances-for instance, a clock and lever that would tilt a bed on end at a selected time as a hint for a sleepy person, a thermometer so delicate that it would indicate the heat or cold of a hand brought near it, a clock that would start fires, and a machine for taking the bones out of fish.

In the Vanguard. By Katrina Trask. The Macmillan Company, New York. $1.25.

An effective, dramatic presentation of the horrors of war. We cannot agree with the conclusion of the hero that war is always wicked, but it is well for us to realize how terrible a necessity it is when it is a necessity.

Twenty Years of Life Messages from an Historic Boston Pulpit. By Thomas Van Ness. American Unitarian Association, Boston. $1. A volume of brief, practical sermons dealing, not with problems of scholastic theology, but with problems of moral and spiritual life-readable and worth the reading, both by laymen and by ministers.

Truth About the Titanic (The). By Archibald Gracie. Mitchell Kennerley, New York. $1.25. Few readers of The Outlook will fail to recall Colonel Gracie's personal narrative of the scenes witnessed by him when the Titanic foundered. A more convincing and moving narrative was never written. Colonel Gracie has recently passed away; and it is understood that his death was hastened by the hardships and suffering he endured in the great disaster. This volume contains not only his personal description of the disaster, but summaries of the evidence given before the various commissions that investigated the matter, and other records and stories. It cannot fail to interest a very large number of people.

The Daffodil Fields. By John Masefield. The Macmillan Company, New York. $1.50.

A recent article in The Outlook commented at some length upon Masefield's "Everlasting Mercy" and his "Story of the Round-House." His latest volume has all the rugged strength, the astonishing rapidity of movement, of those earlier works, and at the same time shows a marked advance in power of expression and a decided growth in poetic feeling. In this long narrative poem, as in "Dauber," Masefield is occasionally merely crude when he wishes to be virile, but the desert stretches in his imagi nation are fast being brought under subjection. The story of the "Daffodil Fields" is the old familiar triangle-a variation on the theme of

His experiences in the field of invention, if not important, at least indicated an ingenious and active brain; his neighbors called him a genius; his machines were welcomed at the State Fair; but what was best of all was that he enjoyed himself tremendously in the making of them, and talks about it here with humorous retrospection.

Blitheness and simple sweetness, human sympathy for the world and all in it-bird and beast and man-make this book delightful. It is unassuming, sincere, and entertaining.

Enoch Arden; but Mr. Masefield has treated the subject with an individuality that silences any criticism that might be raised upon that

score.

Turkish Woman's European Impressions (A). By Zeyneb Haynoum. The J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia. $1.75.

Zeyneb Hanoum is said to have been the heroine of Pierre Loti's "Les Désenchantées." This lady has now written a book in which she tells us about the life of the harem in Turkey, and relates her experiences after leaving it. In the Occident as in the Orient she seems both discontented and disenchanted. Hence, though the book is readable, the reader may become impatient. He may even think that the volume might have been condensed with profit. Muse in Exile (The). By William Watson. The John Lane Company, New York. $1.25. There is little magic either of meter or matter in this latest volume of William Watson's. It is a long road he has traveled from his unforgetable sonnets to the unforgivable verses that make up so large a part of this book. Why a poet of Mr. Watson's standing should devote a whole page to such a quatrain as the following it is difficult to comprehend:

that Gissing had better taste and a finer sense of delicacy than his ill-advised biographer. History of Ohio (The). By Emilius O. Randall and Daniel J. Ryan. In 5 vols. The Century History Company, New York.

In their handsomely printed "History of Ohio " Mr. Randall and Mr. Ryan have published a really monumental work. Yet it may very well invite even the casual reader, especially if he be an Ohioan by birth or environment. In these volumes he is fairly sure to find something, at least on the historical side, to challenge his interest and attention.

Principles of Prussian Administration.

By

Herman Gerlach James, Ph.D. The Macmillan Company, New York. $1.50.

As Dr. James says, the realm of administrative action of a government falls into five principal branches: foreign affairs, military affairs, the judicial system, finances, and internal affairs. The present volume deals with the last named, and is an adequate description of the internal administration of Prussia. For centuries Prussia has been developing its present system, and the system has served as a model for nearly all of the States in the German Empire. This is a timely publication; for we live in an age when there is a general desire for greater governmental administrative activity. The author's style is in general clear; occasionally, however, the text might have been slightly condensed with profit.

Among Famous Books. By John Kelman, D.D.

The George H. Doran Company, New York. $1.50. In this volume of essays, ranging in time from the Gods of Greece to Gilbert K. Chesterton, and in subject from Samuel Pepys to Francis Thompson, Mr. Kelman has attempted to define and illustrate the age-old issue between Paganism and Idealism. More ponderously, but more exactly perhaps, the volume might well have been entitled "Dualism and Literature." Most appropriately, the book concludes with an excellent discussion and a sympathetic appreciation of the "Hound of Heaven." It has been more than interesting to watch the gradual process by which this great poem has grown into our racial consciousness. The end of this growth is not yet.

A Muslim Sir Galahad. By Henry Otis Dwight. The Fleming H. Revell Company, New York. $1. Dr. Henry Otis Dwight's more than thirty years as a missionary at Constantinople have given him abundant opportunity to become acquainted with life in that city. His latest book depicts that life, not only describing the habits of a heterogeneous population, but in especial dealing with their thoughts and motives, their social and religious ideas. The present volume is not, like Dr. Dwight's "Constantinople," a book purely of description of peoples, customs, and problems, but is a story. It has to do with one Selim's quest for a satisfying religion, and is of

special interest because it throws additional light on the present-day conditions of Mohammedanism in the Turkish Empire.

Life and Letters of William Cobbett (The). By Lewis Melville, The John Lane Company, New York. Two volumes. $10.

This beautifully printed and elaborately collated biography is for the specialist rather than for the general reader. Like so many essays in biography and autobiography, it is so crowded with details which are of no importance except possibly to the genealogist that the reader cannot “see the woods for the trees." As a matter of fact, Cobbett's peasant origin gives his life peculiar interest to the student of the sources of democracy, and his life in Philadelphia as a bookseller and publisher, during which he championed, sometimes obnoxiously, the cause of the British or Tory party in the United States, lends some peculiar interest to his career to the American reader. Leslie Stephen or John Morley or A. C. Benson might have made an interesting one-volume story of Cobbett's life, but biographers of this type are not com

mon.

France from Within. By Claire de Pratz. The George H. Doran Company, New York. $3. Miss de Pratz's intensive study ought to be read especially by those who do not know French home life. While the book deals with other phases of "France from Within," with education, for instance, it is very informative regarding French women, particularly the Paris shop-girls. One will be disappointed, however, if he looks for some elucidation of the problem of working women's wages and their morals. Occasionally the book seems trivial, and in one instance, to us Anglo-Saxons, unmoral. Despite this, it is well worth reading. In general, it is very feminine. As the author points out, the finest qualities of the French are fundamentally feminine. Unfortunately, the volume lacks an index.

Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (The). By W. F. Monypenny. Vols. I, II. The Macmillan Company, New York. $3 per volume. The story of Lord Beaconsfield's rise to literary and political distinction is told in the first two volumes of Mr. Monypenny's "official" biography with a fullness and vividness that deepens one's regret for the fact that, owing to its author's untimely death, the work must be completed by another hand. Particularly noteworthy is the skill with which Mr. Monypenny has selected from the mass of correspondence at his disposal letters which reveal with unexpected clearness the characteristics that account for Disraeli's steady progression to high place and power-his abounding self-confidence, the intensity and brilliancy of his imaginative powers, the keenness of his intellect, his audacity, and the strange mixture of idealism and opportunism that served him so well in his period of

political foundation-laying. The story of his social triumphs-the more remarkable in view of his Semitic origin-necessarily claims not a little of his biographer's attention, as also does the story of his early ventures in literature, the discussion of which reveals Mr. Monypenny as an able and discriminating literary critic. But it is evident that his chief concern is, as it should be, with Disraeli the budding politician. Writing from a distinctly Tory point of view, hence with little sympathy for the statesman Sir Robert Peel, with whom Disraeli "broke" on the Protectionist issue, Mr. Monypenny nevertheless succeeds, as a rule, in subordinating partisan feelings to the spirit of historic justice, and the impression left on the mind by a perusal of his analysis of the events leading up to the displacement of Peel and the elevation of Disraeli is one of admiration for a difficult task well performed. Altogether, indeed, his two volumes constitute ore of the most important additions to biographical literature that has appeared in recent years.

Drift of Romanticism (The). By Paul Elmer More. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. $1.25. Mr. More, unlike some of his fellow-essayists who have rethreshed that perennial topic, seems actually to have a definite conception of what Romanticism is, and how it has affected the literature, science, and philosophy of the last century. His attitude toward the whole movement can be best conveyed by a brief quotation from his chapter on Huxley. Romanticism, according to Mr. More, confuses "the rebellion of the lower elements of our nature with the control that comes from above nature." In other words, we have thought that we were obeying conscience when we were merely obeying desire. Mr. More goes on to say:

In the romantic literature that unfolds from Blake there is much that is simply true, much that is beautiful and magnificent, and there are moments that express the divine awe that belongs to the sudden inflooding of the veritable other-world. . . But the historic romanticism of the nineteenth century, when it strikes its central note, whether it be the morbid egotism of a Beckford, or the religious defalcation of a Newman, or the æstheticism of a Pater, or the dregs of naturalistic pantheism seen in a Fiona Macleod, or the impotent revolt from humanitarian sympathy of a Nietzsche-this romanticism is in its essence a denial of classical dualism and an illusory substitution of the mere limitless expansion of our impulsive nature for that true infinite within the heart of man which is not of nature, and whose voice is heard as the inner check, restraining, centralizing, and forming.

Fatigue and Efficiency. By Josephine GoldFark. Charities Publication Committee, New York. $2.

No student of the great movement in this country for social justice, for government enforcement of sanitary and hygienic conditions of labor, and for moral reform by economic legislation, can afford to ignore this book. It is one of the most valuable contributions which have yet been made to the comparatively new science

of social economics. It is published under the auspices of the Russell Sage Foundation, and its author, Miss Goldmark, has been for a long time one of the executive committee of the Consumers' League. "That tired feeling "which has so often been made the subject of goodnatured raillery by newspaper jokers and cartoonists has been found by modern research to be the direct product either of obscure and baffling disease-as in the case of the hookwormor of unconscious or semi-conscious muscular and nervous strain. Miss Goldmark begins by considering the nature of fatigue. Fatigue is, in plain language, a symptom of a certain kind of poisoning. "A tired person is literally and actually a poisoned person-poisoned by his own waste products." This was discovered less than twenty-five years ago by Mosso, an Italian scientist:

He demonstrated that the blood becomes charged with these chemical wastes produced in the muscles, and carries them to all parts of the body. He proved this by injecting the blood of a dog fatigued by long-continued running into the vessels of a second dog from which an equivalent amount of blood had been drawn. Upon this, the second dog showed the usual signs of fatigue.

The next step in Miss Goldmark's argument is to show that women, from the nature of their organic and physiological structure, are less resistant to fatigue than men. It is, therefore, essential that there should be different laws for the regulation of the labor of women and of men. Scientific experiments have proved that monotony, as well as muscular overstrain, can produce fatigue poisoning. The noise of machinery may also have a toxic effect. Carefully prepared and studied statistics show that industrial fatigue is productive of accidents-that is to say, the accident rate is highest in those hours of the day when the fatigue of the laborer is the greatest. Miss Goldmark further considers the new kinds of overstrain which have displayed themselves in the new kinds of modern industry, and in her study of the conditions of women factory workers she shows that a high rate of infant mortality and a low birth rate invariably accompany overstrain in factory work. Miss Goldmark is not merely content with presenting the scientific and physiological aspects of the question, but gives a summary of what has been done and what has been omitted, in meeting the evils of overstrain, by labor and social legislation. This important volume, of which we can here give our readers only a glimpse, is not one of mere general statements based upon the inductive method; it is a book of scientific research fortified by facts and figures, and yet so direct and human in its application that it will appeal to the non-scientific reader as well as to the scientific expert. It is written without passion or partisanship, and must, we think, make a deep nd permanent impression upon every citizen and every legislator who reads it.

MR. MABIE'S RECEPTION IN JAPAN

Those who for years have appreciated the artistic and literary excellence of Hamilton W. Mabie's influence in the pages of The Outlook, as well as the numerous readers of his books, cannot but be interested in his present experiences in Japan, where he has met with a reception the cordiality of which, it is safe to say, has not been exceeded by that extended hitherto to any foreign visitor. To know of Dr. Mabie's welcome among all classes of the Japanese, and of those aspects of his trip about which he himself is not likely to say much, will assist readers of The Outlook in justly estimating the significance of the series of articles he is now contributing to its pages in reference to Japan and the Far East. It is not in Dr. Mabie to say much about himself; and yet, apart from his unusual personality and character, as well as his ability, this visit to the Land of the Rising Sun would lose much of its meaning and influence. When he was selected as exchange professor to deliver in Japanese universities a course of lectures on American institutions, in return for the lectures given in the United States last year by Dr. Nitobe, it was felt by many that, though the choice was an ideal one, Dr. Mabie would nevertheless labor under a greater disadvantage than Dr. Nitobe in having to face an audience that knew much more about America than Americans knew about Japan. But Dr. Mabie, being a typical example of what Emerson described as the American scholar, soon rose to the occasion with remarkable achievement, for he determined to appeal to the Japanese mind by a presentation of that aspect of American civilization about which it knows least, and yet about which it should know most, if the two nations are to pursue the paths of peace in mutual cooperation. The lecturer framed a course of thought designed to bring before Japan the genius of American life and institutions in a manner never attempted hitherto; and though this must invariably be an extremely difficult task, involving as it does an exposition of American freedom and American individualism that to the Japanese mind must appear to border perilously on "dangerous thoughts," yet the essential genius of republican civilization has been laid before the nation in a manner and spirit so tactful, sympathetic, and graceful that every Japanese has recognized in it the truth spoken in love. Indeed, it is not too much to say that among the many friendly deeds that America has done for Japan, the despatch of Dr. Mabie on this mission of illumination must be ranked as one of the most important and farreaching, especially in the direction of international amity and mutual understanding.

To the educated Japanese Dr. Mabie has

proved something more than a great scholar, a great teacher, and a great prophet: he has been the only real master of style in literature and language that the thousands of Japanese students of English have ever had the opportunity of hearing; and it may not be too much to hope that his visit will do something to create the same taste for English as a literature that young Japan already cultivates for English as a language. Then English will become to Japan not only a means of communication with a great race, but a means of moral and.spiritual inspiration uniting the East and the West in one common life. The æsthetically divine qualities of English literature, were Japan to employ teachers capable of revealing and interpreting them, would doubtless be deeply appreciated and assimilated by a highly artistic people like the Japanese; while the resultant influence on the nation's own literature would be profoundly wholesome both in content and form.

At Dr. Mabie's lectures space proved insufficient to accommodate all those who wished to be present, no academic lecture hall being large enough. In centers where the lectures continued successively from day to day, the audience was larger at the last lecture than at the beginning. Probably no foreign lecturer has had a similar experience in Japan. The spirit of hospitality extended by all classes, from the ordinary officials up even to the Imperial Court, has been almost unprecedented. Thus Dr. Mabie has been enabled to see and understand every side of Japanese civilization, as well as to see something of the great natural beauty of the country and the unique genius of its people. In Korea, too, he had an equally warm reception, and learned much of what Japan is trying to do for a people rising out of centuries of misgovernment and just beginning to appreciate the benefits of modern civilization. No doubt Dr. Mabie's impressions and experiences both in Korea and Japan will be fully recounted in the articles he will contribute to The Outlook. The point to keep in mind is that his work in Japan has been well done, this being the opinion of all the leading foreigners and Japanese in the Far East, and that America can have no regrets in having despatched him to tell in Japan the wonderful story of her history and civilization. J. INGRAM BRYAN.

Tokyo, Japan.

MATHEMATICALLY INACCURATE The inclosed clipping is taken from one of the leading articles in a recent issue of The Outlook: "The vote of the three-quarters was divided nearly equally between Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Wilson; the vote of the one-quarter was given to Mr. Taft." It scarcely appears fair, in an article evidently carefully prepared,