Chapter C: N. and A. M. WILLIAMSON’S The Lady From the Air and their The (3)

The four lines, and, indeed, the twelve remaining lines of this one of Robert Browning’s shorter poems illustrate very well the man’s superlative faculty of drama. With a little of our Edwin Arlington Robinson, he mixed a little of our Eugene O’Neill; and, on occasion, expressed himself with point and passion. Such was his simplicity that he appeared (it is now laughable to remember) rather especially unintelligible. Not far distant yet are the days when we banded together to understand him. But the number of Browning Clubs now surviving must be very few. How curious that we never thought to try to understand the man himself! How queer that we didn’t concentrate, as he would have concentrated in a similar instance, upon the thirteen years that unlock his life; but we didn’t. We generalised about him concerning whom, of all men of his day, it was least safe to generalise. It has remained for Frances M. Sim in her _Robert Browning, The Poet and the Man: 1833-1846_ to do the thing that has so needed doing. She has very wisely avoided the form of the full biography and equally the form, which would be sterile in this instance, of a full-length critique. Her book is at once a freely-handled and intensive study of the years that lay between the publication of Browning’s first poem, “Pauline,” and his marriage with Elizabeth Barrett. She starts with “Pauline,” accompanies him to Russia and with him brings back “Paracelsus,” goes with him to Italy and recreates “Sordello.” Then, with almost no preliminaries, we are into the love affair. When that has been lived again to its fruition, we are in possession of “the poet and the man” in the only possible fashion apart from the body of his work. Frances M. Sim has given us a valuable and interesting study, and simply by obeying the wisdom in Arthur Waugh’s words: “Browning’s marriage, in short, was the last stage in his artistic education”--words that open a fascinating path of speculative insights into the lives of how many of the world’s artists!

Contrast, if you will, the temperamental difference between such a man as Robert Browning, who had his early and well-nigh fatal intoxication from reading the poetry of Shelley, and a fellow like Joseph Farington, the painter, whose death occurred when Browning was a lad of nine. No literary discovery in years has made half the sensation of the finding of _The Farington Diary_, and quite rightly, for what could be compared to the disclosure of a contemporary account in which Boswell, Burke, Goldsmith, Horace Walpole, the Thrales, Garrick, Mrs. Siddons, Nelson, Howe, Mirabeau, Marat, Napoleon, Hoppner, Turner, Pitt, Warren Hastings, Lady Hamilton and Robert Burns were intimately noted? And yet Farington, ruler of the Royal Academy though a most indifferent artist, came into touch with all these personages and was apparently never for one moment carried off his feet. I think it is quite true, as Robert Cortes Holliday suggests in a review of _The Farington Diary_ (The Bookman, June, 1923) that Farington saw only the surface of that great age, that he was devoid of humour and lacked the malice which a diarist should feel. He was sane, not to say stupid; but as a conscientious accumulator of facts I can think of no one who is his equal. Amid riches and grandeur, intriguery and wars and revolutions, surrounded by a glittering society in which one knew not which to worship, genius or scintillance, Joseph Farington scrupulously set down all the diseases of people he knew, all the dishes served at a dinner, how much everything cost and the money that everyone made, inherited, bequeathed or borrowed. It was only accidentally, that matters touched with human interest flowed from the point of his pen; but in a fairly long lifetime the number of such leakages runs high, and the result, despite every exasperation and handicap, is to make a book of very great and most indubitable value. The first volume of _The Farington Diary_, covering the years 1793-1802, is the most complete portrait album we have of its time; the remaining volumes, which, it is understood, go on to Farington’s death in 1821, should not be less valuable.

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Great times, in producing great men, produce great books as well. In the lifetime of Walter H. Page, publisher, business man and American Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, the number of persons who had any comprehension of his greatness was singularly small. Those who had the fine fortune to be associated with him in the day’s work knew, of course, the stature of the man; but it was scarcely possible to impress their knowledge on others. When Mr. Page at last became conspicuous in the public service it was at a post where his work and the character enforcing it were necessarily almost completely obscured. An American Ambassador at the Court of St. James’s at the present time may conceivably bring himself into a good deal of notice; it is not impossible to be done and the opportunities for doing it legitimately are not infrequent; but Mr. Page was never one for that sort of thing, and I doubt whether, even if the war had not hidden him in its drifting mists as he steered the ship, he would have come in all his lifetime to our not always intelligently directed attention. There are some men, and among them our greatest, whom death alone fully discloses. Such was Walter H. Page, and in the magnificent biography wrought by Burton J. Hendrick, _The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page_, the subject is handled with a justness and a careful proportioning for which praise should not be stinted, and has not been. Unquestionably this is one of the great American books in the biographical field; this life and these letters have something so vital that one hunts a ready comparison in vain. At times they seem to paint the man with rich colour and a splendid handling of light; at other times they carve and sculpture him in some detail of a rare personality; but the figure fails before the ruddiness, the mobile vigour and the unresting intellect which the book sets forth. In a day when the state of America is rather often canvassed and most often with pessimistic conclusions, it is significant that _The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page_, a fairly expensive work in two volumes, has sold half a hundred thousand copies and now, a year after its publication, continues to lead in sales of non-fiction.

It is but one, of course, of a number of great books yielded by the times we have lived in. _The Irish Guards in the Great War_, by Rudyard Kipling, is surely another. Mr. Kipling has not always been regarded as a sympathetic and understanding friend of Irishmen. His son, John Kipling, was an officer of the Irish Guards and, as such, gave his life. The choice of Mr. Kipling as the historian of the regiment was one which only the resultant chronicle would justify; but to my mind there is no possible question that the work justifies and more than justifies. The reviewer for the London Times puts the matter pithily when he says: “The true gold of Mr. Kipling is to be found unalloyed in this memorial.” The temptation to embitteredness, the impulse to “handle” and fashion his material or to give it stylistic treatment and the natural inclination to fix the point of view have all been quietly laid aside; and we have a book of continuous vividness that results from the inner perspective to which Mr. Kipling rigidly holds his account. He constantly uses the sentences on the lips of his Irishmen and we are seldom conscious of a narrator--then only when some Kiplingesque epithet or phrase carries us above the trench and, as it were, above the battle. The London Times reviewer speaks of the “wealth of detail, varied, terrible, and sometimes grotesque, as in the best Gothic” in the presentation of which Kipling manages to preserve a clean simplicity of outline and a unity or totality of effect; but this is merely a way of saying that the book is epically written. Mere largeness of subject has nowadays a way of being taken for “epic” treatment, although the word should properly be confined to a treatment in which a great mass of detail is not allowed to obscure the simplicity of the whole. But I do not think anyone can fail in appreciation of _The Irish Guards_, and to any who may be tempted to forgo the reading of the history let me quote these closing words: “Of all these things nothing but the memory would remain. And, as they moved--little more than a company strong--in the wake of their seniors, one saw, here and there among the wounded in civil kit, young men with eyes that did not match their age, shaken beyond speech or tears by the splendour and the grief of that memory.”

The final distinction of Mr. Kipling’s book is, to be sure, that it is the work of a man who knows how to write. This distinction it shares with the fewest possible number of contemporary histories, but _The World Crisis_, by Winston Churchill, must be admitted within the slender group. Perhaps we had rather forgotten Winston Churchill, the young journalist in Africa during the Boer War (and the hero, incidentally, of one of the greatest prisoner escapes to be found in all history). There may also be some heredity in Winston Churchill’s literary gift, as in his other brilliant personal endowments. But that’s no matter. As a former British Home Secretary, First Lord of the Admiralty, 1911-15, and Minister of Munitions in 1917--above all, perhaps, as the man chiefly held responsible for the Gallipoli venture--Mr. Churchill’s account would be of the very first interest and importance were he never so unskilful among words. But _The World Crisis_ makes apparent what some of us had suspected before, that among leading statesmen there has rarely been one whose ability to defend his course and make other courses appear small has equalled Winston Churchill’s. The sense of scale amid vastness in sums of money, tonnage of ships and lives of men that Mr. Churchill possesses is laid by some commentators to his American blood. “He savours hugeness like a dainty; and when he writes of carnage or battle he dips his pen in blood,” says Filson Young, adding, “But he never for a moment loses his grip of the subject, or his sense of ever-marching destiny; and he never fails to thrill the reader with the sense of the human tragedy lurking in its every step.” Mr. Young thinks _The World Crisis_ places its author “in the very first rank of British historians; and I think it places him in very nearly the first rank of British statesmen.” The two most famous living British statesmen, Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Asquith, flank Mr. Churchill’s book with what went before and what may come after. The Right Honourable Herbert Henry Asquith’s _The Genesis of the War_ contains, of course, many noteworthy pen portraits; no doubt these will make the most immediate appeal to readers; yet his disclosures regarding the British War Book, begun in 1910 and his exposition of “the purposes and methods of British policy” in the pre-war years are the book’s greatest justification and its strongest historical importance. Mr. Lloyd George, characteristically, is far less concerned about the past than about the future. In _Where Are We Going?_ he moves alertly over troubled ground of European affairs, discussing the League of Nations, Russian republicanism, Socialism, national armaments, the Irish Treaty, the position of France, England’s war debt, prohibition, the disclosure of war secrets, “the next war” and many other topics. His preface is particularly interesting.

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Naturally, the climax of interest is reached when we can say: “This man has written of himself.” G. Stanley Hall’s _Life and Confessions of a Psychologist_ is an autobiography of which one feels a keen anxiety lest the many whom it can reward may somehow miss reading it. “I am far older than my years”--he is seventy-seven--“for I have laid aside more of the illusions and transcended more of the limitations with which I started than most.” These simple and striking words define his attitude. The truly popular result of a work that has been undertaken and carried through in such a spirit ought to be emphasised. Dr. Hall is the author of important treatises on _Adolescence_ and _Senescence_, exhaustive in character and highly technical in their bearing; but I have yet to read anything of his which was not to a very large extent “popularly written” as well as scientifically valuable. Certainly his _Life and Confessions of a Psychologist_ deserves the wider audience. It begins on a New England farm with some chapters that reflect with ampleness and feeling and charm the life of New England in the 1850s; it continues through the various stages of an unusually rounded education; in its record of teaching and college executiveship the book constitutes a sort of history of the American college in the last half-century, and this is enlarged and given the value of ripened conclusions by a longer chapter near the close of the book. There is also a tremendous chapter covering “Process in Psychology” and practically constituting a history of the science in Dr. Hall’s long lifetime--one might almost say since psychology was recognised as a science at all. But these points, while they demonstrate easily enough that the book is one no teacher or psychologist can afford to omit attending, do not make the case for the book as a sample of autobiography or as a work of popular interest. Then let some of the contents make it! Here is the report of an American who has known Mark Hopkins, Charles Eliot Norton, Henry Ward Beecher, George Bancroft, Treitschke, Wundt, Helmholtz, William James, Lord Kelvin, Jowett, Pasteur and many others; an American who can write of his boyhood with something of the charm of W. H. Hudson and much the same feeling for nature; who can write with frankness of the _vita sexualis_ in the New England of Emerson; who can--we fall back upon it--write!

A fellow-scientist of Dr. Hall’s though in quite another field has also written his autobiography, and the extraordinary circumstances of Michael Idvorsky Pupin’s life will be enough to attract popular attention to his _From Immigrant to Inventor_. Forty-eight years ago a Serbian boy who hadn’t a cent and who couldn’t speak a word of English landed in New York. Since 1901 this immigrant has been professor of electro-mechanics at Columbia University; he is the inventor of the Pupin coil, which, by reducing the necessary diameter of copper wire, has saved millions of dollars, and he also invented the device for tuning which many people use daily on radio sets. Michael Pupin was born at Idvor, Banat, Hungary, in a little community of Serbs rewarded for their services against the Turks by the gift of some land and political rights. In assessing his performance it must be borne in mind that he had the handicap of an utterly alien race and culture and speech to overcome in a far greater degree than Jacob A. Riis, who was Danish, or Edward Bok, who came from Holland. Pupin’s autobiography is of manifold interest; for one thing, he seems completely in sympathy with an American tradition which so many immigrants have never been able whole-heartedly to accept; for another, he traces the developments of electrical science by the bright thread of his interest and participation in them, and he does actually succeed in making some very difficult scientific achievements quite simple and beautifully plain.

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Very different, if possible more magical, has been the career of the Russian glovemaker whose adopted surname is now known everywhere that motion pictures are exhibited--Samuel Goldwyn. It is only about nine years since he paid ten cents to see a two-reel picture in depressing surroundings on Broadway, and came home to tell his brother-in-law, Jesse Lasky, that a fortune could be made in five-reel pictures! Samuel Goldwyn’s book, _Behind the Screen_, showing on every page the fine journalistic skill of his collaborator, Corinne Lowe, is less an autobiography than a personal record of the people of the screen. Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Garden, Pauline Frederick, Geraldine Farrar and plenty of others are here described with an intimacy and a frankness and a general wit and good humour that it isn’t easy to imagine will be soon surpassed. The popular appeal of such a series of “closeups” should be as limitless as the movie audience, but the book will serve a less immediate and more important purpose to the reader whose interest, not fervidly personal, goes into the general subject of the films--how they came about, what and why they are, what may come of them. I do not mean that Mr. Goldwyn concerns himself directly with any of these questions, for he scarcely touches them; and yet I think that the indirect light he throws may be more finally enlightening than anything else that has come out of Hollywood--certainly more so than would be likely to be got by any outsider who might go there in a direct search. But let that pass. The book, as a book, is irresistible reading.

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The boundaries between history, biography, autobiography, memoirs and the best journalism are often uncertain and are better so. It does not matter except to formal minds whether an interest begins with a person or an event, or in what direction it proceeds; for the mind, like the body, has its own system of nutrition, and within pretty broad limits should be allowed its own dietary. The suggestions below are additional to those books already discussed and the classifications need not be taken as anything more than a general convenience:

Historical.

ADMIRAL SIMS’S _The Victory at Sea_ (World War).

BRAND WHITLOCK’S _Belgium_ (World War).

RAY STANNARD BAKER’S _Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement_.

_Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story_ (World War).

_Memories of a Turkish Statesman_, 1913-1919, by DJEMAL PASHA. A very spirited account, well-written; almost unique as a book from the Turkish side. Interesting in its contradictions of Morgenthau.

_An Ambassador’s Memoirs_, by MAURICE PALEOLOGUE. By the last French Ambassador to Russia. Volume I. covers July 3, 1914-June 2, 1915; Volume II. continues to August 18, 1916.

LAURANCE LYON’S _The Pomp of Power_ and his _When There Is No Peace_, both published anonymously. The author is in close touch with French policy.

_Old Diplomacy and New: 1876-1922: From Salisbury to Lloyd George_, by A. L. KENNEDY.

_The Drama of Sinn Fein_, by SHAW DESMOND. A new and pretty complete history.

_The Life of Sir William Harcourt_, by A. G. GARDINER. Harcourt was born before Victoria ascended the throne and he outlived her; Mr. Gardiner brings unusual talents to what becomes less a biography of one man than a portrayal of an era.

_Memoirs of the Empress Eugenie_, by COMTE FLEURY. Here likewise the historical interest is as strong as the biographical.

_Lady Palmerston and Her Times_, by MABELL, COUNTESS OF AIRLIE. Of value for its picture of the period from George III. to the middle of the Nineteenth Century.

PAUL VAN DYKE’S _Catherine de Medici_, in two volumes, now in its third printing, is distinguished by lucidity, an avoidance of easy ornament and floridity, and by great literary charm.

More Purely Personal.

_The Letters of Lord and Lady Wolseley_, edited by SIR GEORGE ARTHUR. The intimacies of a great soldier and his brilliant wife, with many glimpses of British society from 1870 to 1911.

_Margot Asquith: An Autobiography._ Volumes III. and IV., although dealing with British war politics, are chiefly personal in interest.

_Memories of Later Years_, by OSCAR BROWNING. By a much-travelled Englishman, a friend of Queen Mary, Lord Curzon and Lloyd George, now past eighty. He deals principally with persons and events since 1897. Arthur Bartlett Maurice, reviewing the book in the New York Herald, speaks of the book as “a narrative which gives the flavor of Europe of yesterday, of a world that is gone.” The volume is a mine of anecdotes of the great.

_Post Mortem_, by C. MACLAURIN, M.D., somewhat resembles Dr. Joseph Collins’s _The Doctor Looks at Literature_--only in this case historical figures are the persons dissected. Henry VIII., the historian Gibbon, Joan of Arc, and Samuel Pepys are some of the subjects.

_A Nineteenth Century Romance_, by MAJOR C. H. DUDLEY WARD. A love story in two generations based on authentic letters and beginning in the days of Napoleon the Great with the love letters of Dora Best to George Brett and continuing with the love affair of their son who, in 1897, became Viscount Esher.

_Lady Rose Weigall_, by RACHEL WEIGALL. Lady Rose was the favourite niece of the great Duke of Wellington. Her long life (1834-1921) brought her in contact with Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn, Rubenstein, Jenny Lind, Bismarck, Browning, Disraeli, Lord Palmerston, Dickens, the Empress Eugenie and many royalties. Not the least interesting things are her letters exchanged with Germany during the World War.

_“Indiscretions” of Lady Susan_, by LADY SUSAN TOWNLEY. Entertaining and well-edged gossip by the wife of a diplomat who was stationed in many countries.

_The Literary Spotlight_, with an introduction by JOHN FARRAR. Personal portraits of contemporary American writers, first published in The Bookman, and anonymous to permit greater candour. Louis Untermeyer, Mary Johnston, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Floyd Dell, Sinclair Lewis, Owen Johnson, Edna Ferber, Amy Lowell and others are included.

Unusual Biographies and Autobiographies.

_Thomas Nelson Page: A Memoir of a Virginia Gentleman_, by ROSWELL PAGE.

_All in a Lifetime_, by HENRY MORGENTHAU.

_My Life and Work_, by HENRY FORD in collaboration with SAMUEL CROWTHER.

_My Boyhood_, by JOHN BURROUGHS.

_Lord Northcliffe: a Memoir_, by MAX PEMBERTON.

_Fourteen Years a Sailor_, by JOHN KENLON. The Chief of the New York Fire Department in a naïve and pleasing account of his Irish boyhood.

_The Life of an American Sailor: Admiral William Hemsley Emory_, from his letters and memoirs edited by ADMIRAL ALBERT GLEAVES.

_Mr. Lloyd George_, by E. T. RAYMOND.

_The Americanization of Edward Bok_, by EDWARD W. BOK. One of the most widely read of American autobiographies and still in strong demand.

_A Man From Maine_, by EDWARD W. BOK. A biography of Cyrus H. K. Curtis, head of the Curtis Publishing Company of Philadelphia.

_From McKinley to Harding: Personal Recollections of Our Presidents_, by H. H. KOHLSAAT. The political interest is strong.

_The Print of My Remembrance_, by AUGUSTUS THOMAS. For all who are interested in the theatre and its people.

WALTER DAMROSCH’S _My Musical Life_ begins with a childhood in Germany and aside from its autobiographical interest constitutes to some extent a history of orchestral music in America.

_My Memories of Eighty Years_, by CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW. About evenly personal and political in interest.

_Letters of James Gibbons Huneker_, edited by JOSEPHINE HUNEKER, and MR. HUNEKER’S _Steeplejack_ (autobiographical). The record of one of our most brilliant critics, versatile in all the arts.

_John H. Patterson: The Pioneer in Industrial Welfare_, by SAMUEL CROWTHER. Of a similar interest with HENRY FORD’S _My Life and Work_.

_The Editorials of Henry Watterson_, edited by ARTHUR KROCK. They complete his own account of himself in “_Marse Henry_.” The political interest is naturally the main thing and is exceedingly vivid (1868-1921).

_The Life of Lord Rosebery_, by E. T. RAYMOND. Analytical biography.

_C. K. S., An Autobiography_, by CLEMENT K. SHORTER. The author is a veteran English critic and writer.

_The Life of William Schwenk Gilbert_, by SIDNEY DARK. Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan, “The Mikado,” “H. M. S. Pinafore,” etc.

FRANK SWINNERTON’S _George Gissing: A Critical Study_, and his _Robert Louis Stevenson: A Critical Study_. The interest is literary rather than biographical.

_Tennyson: A Modern Portrait_, by HUGH I’ANSON FAUSSET. Both literary and biographical in its interest. Richard Le Gallienne, in the New York Times, says: “The manner of this portrait is very attractive. Biography and criticism are artfully and suggestively blended, and the influence of Tennyson’s environment throughout his life on the development of his character and his poetry is vividly and for the most part convincingly illuminated.”

_The Life of William Hazlitt_, by P. P. HOWE. The only biography we have of a remarkable literary figure.

_Victor Hugo: His Work and Love_, by ANDREW C. P. HAGGARD. A new account. The romantic element in Hugo’s life is emphasised, although not unduly.

_Embassies I Have Known_, by WALBURGA, LADY

PAGET. The English, German and Austrian Courts in the last half-century.

Two Books About English Seats.

_Knole and the Sackvilles_, by V. SACKVILLE-WEST. See Chapter 6.

_Earlham_, by PERCY LUBBOCK.

_9. Alice in Authorland and Penrod’s Five-Foot Shelf_

Alice in Authorland.

Stuff and nonsense!” said Alice, to the White Queen, flinging the book on the floor.

“Exactly,” the White Queen replied.

“Haven’t you anything a self-respecting person can read?” Alice inquired.

“A self-respecting person,” answered the White Queen, “would not ask such a silly question. She would accompany me into Authorland and make the acquaintance of the people there and learn to find her way about. Instead,” added the White Queen, cuttingly, “instead of bothering me. I am very busy.”

“Well, if you’re very busy, you won’t want to take me with you and introduce me to all those people,” Alice observed, a trifle sulkily.

“Of course I will!” The White Queen spoke with annoyance but also with cheerfulness, for she prided herself on seldom being one-sided. “I am never too busy to loiter. And let me tell you that when _you_ become too busy to loiter you will find everyone else too lazy to live with--and then what will you do?”

Alice admitted she didn’t know. The White Queen was in a great hurry because, as she said, once in Authorland it would only be possible to make haste slowly. They looked up the timetable and found any number of editions just leaving. As they were entering a compartment the guard came along, crying: “Here! You can’t go in there! That’s reserved for fairies”--but a very pleasant-looking woman who was already seated inside stuck out her head and said: “Oh, do let the little girl come in. Besides, she’s with the White Queen, who may ride anywhere.” So the guard let them in, with a good deal of grumbling, slammed the door and blew his whistle and they were off. The pleasant-faced woman smiled at Alice, and Alice took courage to ask:

“Are you a fairy, then?”

“No, my dear, but I write about them. It’s more fun than being one, really. My name is Rose Fyleman and I live part of the time in London and part of it in Fairy Hills--that’s the nice residence section of Authorland, you know.”

“What are your books, please?” Alice asked, primly.

“Oh, there’s _Rose Fyleman’s Fairy Book_, and _The Fairy Flute_, and _The Fairy Green_ and _Fairies and Chimneys_--all poems--and _The Rainbow Cat_, whom I knew very well and admired no end. He used to walk about the Child’s Garden of Verse--that’s the little village green with flower-beds in Fairy Hills.”

Rose Fyleman lent Alice some of her books to read on the train. The White Queen slept in a corner, but finally sprang up, crying: “We’re here, we’re here!”

“But the train isn’t stopping,” protested Alice. Rose Fyleman and the White Queen laughed. “Silly,” said the White Queen, “it isn’t a train, it’s an edition, and editions never stop in Authorland. You just jump off anywhere.” And with that she jumped. So did Rose Fyleman, pausing to say: “You won’t mind it. Landing in a heap of books is such fun.” Alice finally summoned her courage and jumped, too. A man six feet tall and over caught her nicely and set her down right side up. Then he very politely introduced himself. He was Frederick Arnold Kummer, he said, and it was his business to catch girls and boys and set them down right side up. “With care,” he added.

Alice thanked him and took the two books he handed her, _The First Days of Man_ and another called _The First Days of Knowledge_. “You won’t need these here,” he explained, “but you’ll find them very useful and probably interesting and maybe exciting when you go back.”

There was no trace of the White Queen, so Alice went down the road, picking her way among the books planted everywhere, until a white-haired and smiling old lady sent out her boy, Nils, to show her the way about. Nils said the white-haired woman was Selma Lagerlöf, and she had written for him two sets of wonderful adventures. He had been a rather bad boy and Selma Lagerlöf had turned him into an elf and later had sent him through animal land. “I’ll give you the books,” said Nils, picking out a couple that stood between two book ends at corners of the road. “Here they are--_The Wonderful Adventures of Nils_ and _The Further Adventures of Nils_.”

Alice thought she should like to go back and talk with Selma Lagerlöf, whose smile had seemed mysterious and wonderful, but Nils was bent on showing her the animals. Of these there were quantities, and Nils knew them all, it appeared, and their owners.

“That there’s Brer Rabbit,” he was beginning, when Alice interrupted to say, “You can’t say ‘that there.’” “Yes, I can,” he retorted, “I’ve just said it.” Alice saw he was hopeless, like all boys, and paid no further attention to his grammar, while Nils discussed the creatures, both wild and tame, all about. Some grazed peacefully, some were frisking and playing, and a few gyred and gimbled in the wabe like the slithy toves Alice had heard her friend, Mr. Lewis Carroll, tell about. Brer Rabbit didn’t in the least resemble the White Rabbit, being brown in colour and having no vest pocket with a watch and chain. Uncle Remus and Uncle Remus’s friend, Joel Chandler Harris, kept tabs on Brer Rabbit. Forrestine C. Hooker was feeding lumps of sugar to the Comanche pony named Star that she has written about in _Star: The Story of an Indian Pony_, and Prince Jan, the St. Bernard of her other book, stood gravely by her. Ernest Thompson Seton, looking more wild than his wildest animals, was racing about, trying to keep track of his grey squirrel, Bannertail, of Krag and Randy and Johnny Bear and Chink, of Lobo, Rag and Vixen, and especially of the Sandhill Stag. “It’s the hardest work,” he assured Alice, stopping for a moment to subdue his hair and wipe his forehead, “to observe all their habits. I simply couldn’t ever do it if I didn’t have wide margins in my books and make a little drawing whenever I noted a new habit. Bad habits in the lefthand margins, good habits in the righthand margins.” “But,” said Alice, wonderingly, “the drawings all look alike to me.” “You might as well say all animals look alike to you,” said Mr. Seton, impatiently. “But they don’t know good and bad, though; all they know is habits. Now, if children only had habits they would be as interesting as animals.” “I’m sure I don’t know,” answered Alice, doubtfully.

Nils had disappeared and the White Queen was nowhere in sight, either. “It’s a strange place,” thought Alice. “It is, indeed,” said a man who was busy painting magnificent pictures in most glowing colours. “It’s strange because no one ever stays long enough to bore you.” “Oh, is that it?” Alice answered. But she was really much impressed. She looked at the gorgeous paintings, each signed “N. C. Wyeth” and each outdoing the one before. She thought with secret ecstasy: “I’m only going to have books with his pictures in them.” Mr. Wyeth, who seemed to understand her thought, said out loud: “You’ll find others--Kay Nielsen and Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac and Noel Pocock.” Alice said, “Yes, no doubt,” but in her own mind she decided it must be because he was as modest as he was wonderful.

“Do you like boys’ stories?” asked a boy much older than Nils, who had come up suddenly. “Of course!” Alice responded. She looked at him more closely. “Why you must be the boy in _High Benton_, aren’t you?” He grinned. “I guess I am. I was only going to say, if you like boys’ stories--and all the girls I know do--my friend, William Heyliger, has written a new one, _The Spirit of the Leader_. It’s stuff like _High Benton_, a high school story. Great!” Alice was about to ask him for the book when all the editions began running past so rapidly that she became dizzy and screamed and shut her eyes. When she opened them a moment later, Authorland had vanished and she was back at her starting place and the White Queen was asking with sharpness:

“Have you been all this time deciding on something to read? You have to read, you know, in order to grow up; and at this rate you’ll never grow up at all!”

Penrod’s Five-Foot Shelf.

Feeling the need of solitude, Penrod Schofield moved slowly toward the barn. As he walked he kicked desultorily at such objects, animate and inanimate, as obtruded themselves in his path--the round top of the water cutoff in the lawn, on which he had broken the blades of the lawn mower last Saturday; a bag of clothes pins reposing harmlessly on its side, and the white cat, Sherlock Holmes. “Ole cat!” Sherlock, untarnished by the hostile toe, trotted off complacently. Creatures like Penrod were little in the life of one who had been victor over the hound of the neighbouring Baskervilles.

Choosing Entrance Two, the youth ascended to Apartment B-3 of the barn, a second-story location offering an outside window with no bath but with proper seclusion. Here on a conscientiously measured shelf of his own manufacture was the beginning of the Penrod Schofield Library. The shelf, constructed in his leisure hours, was exactly five feet in length, a noted educator having assured Penrod and others, through the medium of many full-page advertisements, that the books on a five-foot shelf could furnish the equivalent of a college education. With a passion for exactitude, and in pursuance of a further condition, Penrod was devoting to the books on his five-foot shelf a requisite fifteen minutes a day.

“Five feet divided by fifteen minutes a day makes--makes----.” The youth struggled for a while with this intricate problem in arithmetic, at length muttering: “I know. Y’ count the pages, and then divide by fifteen; no, by the number of pages y’ c’n read in fifteen minutes;--no, that ain’t right either, is it?” There was no answer; there would be none if he looked in the back of one of the books, either; and for a while Penrod had a doubt whether, on looking in the back of the noted educator’s head, any answer would be found there. He did not understand how the educator could possibly be right, nohow, for of course the first and indispensable item for any book shelf was the complete works of G. A. Henty. He ran his eye along these:

_Bravest of the Brave; or, With Peterborough in Spain_

_By Sheer Pluck: A Tale of the Ashanti War_

_With Clive in India; or, The Beginnings of an Empire_

Few, but still a beginning. A catalogue recently procured assured him that there were at least thirty-five more that he should possess. Allowing an inch per volume, which he had found necessary, fully three feet of the five must be reserved for the author of _By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic_ and other classical studies in the historical field. Still, the two feet remaining gave probable space for a coupla dozen lesser masterpieces. He examined the volumes already in place:

_Treasure Island_, by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

It had sixteen full-page pictures in colour, lining papers and a coloured title page by Wyeth, and was quite satisfactory.

_The Boy Scouts’ Year Book: 1923_

Penrod had belonged to a troop which had busted up and there was no use joining another as he expected to begin smoking shortly, anyway. However, this book was useful, containing stories and talks on sports and tales of true adventure and Dan Beard’s camping stuff and “Boys Who Have Made Good” and a bunch of funny stories and--best of all--all about radio.

_For the Good of the Team_, by RALPH HENRY BARBOUR

This was a brand-new, regular hot story about Stuart Harven captaining the football team at Manning School and his roommate, Neal Orr, and other fellows. Penrod regarded it as a slick story and nobody was going to borrow it from him for a darn good long while because it was brand-new and a hot story.

_Lochinvar Luck_, by ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE

One of those he-men, you said it, this Albert Payson Terhune and two-fisted and all, and writes the grandest dog stories a fellow ever gets hold of, no Black Beauty here-nice-doggie story but a corkin’ story about how Jamie Mackellar, a plucky little truck driver, mortgages his truck to own a fine th’rough-bred collie and the kennel owner who is a crook stings him bad; but the measly pup runs away and lives wild and grows a wonderful bone and coat; and then Jamie captures him back and takes him to the show and what Jamie and the dog do to that crook kennel owner is some cautionary warning to all crooks.

_Fourteen Years a Sailor_, by JOHN KENLON

This here’s a good sea story, especially when they get shipwrecked on the desolate Crozet Islands and make a wonderful escape, hard to believe but it musta been so, because Kenlon he comes to New York later and sees a fire panic in a theatre and that turns him to be a fireman. Now he’s Chief of the New York City Fire Department, can you beat it? What wouldn’t I give to ride to a four-alarm fire with him, going like mad!

_Kim_, by RUDYARD KIPLING

Things in this story of _Kim_ I don’t just get hold of, but it’s a great story all right and I’ve read it twice and I bet I read it some more. Got to get the _Jungle Books_ and _Captains Courageous_ to put alongside it. Certainly Kipling’s the real thing, most especially on India.

_The Boy’s Book of Inventions_, by RAY STANNARD BAKER

Well, of course. A fellow’d have to have that, and the on’y thing was to get hold of the other, _The Boy’s Second Book of Inventions_ it was called, to go with it. Couldn’t have too many books like that which besides being useful, and the kind you c’n always get your folks to give you for presents, was interesting, like most of the books they give hardly ever are.

Penrod reflected. No use to worry. He had room for ’most twenty more books, anyway, allowing for Henty; and when he had read some of these enough he could give one away now and then. Or maybe start a circulating library, a cent a week, which would leave room on the shelves and bring in money for new books.... From the distance came a voice: “Penrod!” His mother was calling, and as it unquestionably was a call to supper, perhaps he had better respond. He moved away. “Gosh, my fifteen minutes was gone an’ I never read anything. Takes fifteen darn minutes a day deciding what to read. Maybe she’s got strawberry shortcake I c’d eat five feet of that no trouble at all!”

Books for Alices and Penrods.

It has become the fashion to try to classify books for boys and girls by ages, but as children’s mental ages, tastes, interests and other details vary not less widely than adults’, it is much more discreet to arrange the “juveniles,” so-called, by general characters. Books not explicitly named above are included in the following very limited and rather carefully chosen groups:

All About Animals.

MARGERY WILLIAM’S _The Velveteen Rabbit_, with colour pictures by William Nicholson. Unusual pictures drawn on stone by the artist.

MARSHALL SAUNDERS’S _Bonnie Prince Fetlar_ and her _The Wandering Dog_

ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE’S _Buff: A Collie_ and his _Further Adventures of Lad_

WILLIAM T. HORNADAY’S _The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals_

ERNEST THOMPSON SETON’S _Bannertail: The Story of a Grey Squirrel_, his _Wild Animals I Have Known_, his _Lives of the Hunted_--all illustrated by the author.

JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS’S _Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings_, with 112 illustrations by A. B. Frost. Mostly about animals. It is important to have Mr. Frost’s pictures.

RUDYARD KIPLING’S _The Jungle Book_ and _The Second Jungle Book_ have been mentioned; likewise FORRESTINE HOOKER’S _Star_ and her _Prince Jan: St. Bernard_. _The Elephant’s Child_, _the Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo_, and _How the Alphabet Was Made_ are Kipling selections now published as separate small books

For quite little boys and girls there are the MAY BYRON books: _The Little Black Bear_, _The Little Brown Rooster_, _The Little Yellow Duckling_, and _The Little Tan Terrier_; and also books by JOHN BRECK, as follows:

_Mostly About Nibble the Bunny_
_Nibble Rabbit Makes More Friends_
_The Sins of Silvertip the Fox_
_Tad Coon’s Tricks_
_The Wavy Tailed Warrior_
_Tad Coon’s Great Adventure_
_The Bad Little Owls_
_The Jay Bird Who Went Tame_

Introducing Fairies.

All the books named above by ROSE FYLEMAN, including _The Rainbow Cat_

_Fairy Tales_ by the BROTHERS GRIMM, illustrated by Noel Pocock

_The Twelve Dancing Princesses and Other Tales for Children_, retold by SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH and illustrated by Kay Nielsen

The Fairy Ring Series: Andersen’s Fairy Tales illustrated by Dugald Stewart Walker--_Thumbelisa and Other Stories_, _The Mermaid and Other Stories_, and _The Garden of Paradise and Other Stories_

KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN’S and NORA A. SMITH’S _The Fairy Ring, with Children’s Bookplate_, and their _Magic Casements: A Second Fairy Book_

The Most Wonderful Pictures.

The series of classics illustrated in colour by N. C. Wyeth includes:

_The Scottish Chiefs_, by JANE PORTER, edited by KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN and NORA A. SMITH

_Westward Ho!_ by CHARLES KINGSLEY

T_he Last of the Mohicans_, by J. FENIMORE COOPER

_The Boy’s King Arthur_, by SIDNEY LANIER

_The Black Arrow_, by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

_Kidnapped_, by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

_Treasure Island_, by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

_The Mysterious Island_, by JULES VERNE

_Poems of American Patriotism_, chosen by BRANDER MATTHEWS

Among the books illustrated by Howard Pyle are:

_The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, of Great Renown in Nottinghamshire_

_The Story of King Arthur and His Knights_

_The Story of the Champions of the Round Table_

_The Story of Sir Launcelot and His Companions_

_The Story of the Grail and the Passing of Arthur_

The two books illustrated by Kay Nielsen are:

_The Twelve Dancing Princesses and Other Tales for Children_ retold by SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH

_East of the Sun and West of the Moon: Old Tales from the North_

Here are two books illustrated by Maxfield Parrish:

_The Arabian Nights_, edited by KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN and NORA A. SMITH

_Poems of Childhood_, by EUGENE FIELD

Some other books with especially fine illustrations in colour are:

_A Child’s Garden of Verses_, by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith

_The Wind in the Willows_, by KENNETH GRAHAME, illustrated by Nancy Barnhart

LOUIS DODGE’S _The Sandman’s Forest_ and his _The Sandman’s Mountain_, both illustrated by Paul Bransom

MARY MAPES DODGE’S _Hans Brinker, or, The Silver Skates_, illustrated by George Wharton Edwards

FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT’S _Little Lord Fauntleroy_, with illustrations by Reginald B. Birch

MAUDE RADFORD WARREN’S and EVE DAVENPORT’S _Tales Told by the Gander_ and their _Adventures in the Old Woman’s Shoe_, both illustrated by C. A. Federer

_The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha_, edited by J. B. TREND and illustrated by Jean de Bosschere

_Robinson Crusoe_, by DANIEL DEFOE, illustrated by Noel Pocock

_Stories from Hans Andersen_, illustrated by Edmund Dulac

_Stories from the Arabian Nights_, retold by LAURENCE HOUSMAN, with pictures by Edmund Dulac

_The Sleeping Beauty and Other Fairy Tales from the Old French_, retold by SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH, illustrated by Edmund Dulac

HAWTHORNE’S _A Wonder Book_, illustrated by Arthur Rackham

ÆSOP’S _Fables_, illustrated by Arthur Rackham

_A Fairy Book_, illustrated by Arthur Rackham

The Outdoor Life.

WARREN H. MILLER’S _Camping Out_, his _The Boy’s Book of Hunting and Fishing_, and his _Canoeing, Sailing and Motorboating_

_The Boy Scouts’ Year Book_ for 1923 or earlier years, as each annual contains outdoor information of permanent interest

_The Boy Scouts’ Book of Campfire Stories_, and the _Boy Scouts’ Book of Stories_, both edited by FRANKLIN K. MATHIEWS

EDWARD CAVE’S _Boy Scout’s Hike Book_ and his _The Boy’s Camp Book_

ERNEST THOMPSON SETON’S _The Book of Woodcraft_, his _Sign Talk_, his _Woodcraft Manual for Boys_, and his _Woodcraft Manual for Girls_

JEANNETTE MARKS’S _Vacation Camping for Girls_

DAN BEARD’S _Shelters, Shacks and Shanties_, his _Boat-Building and Boating: A Handy Book for Beginners_, his _The Field and Forest Handy Book_, his _The Jack of All Trades_, his _The Outdoor Handy Book_, and his _The American Boy’s Handy Book_

LINA and ADELIA B. BEARD’S _Recreations for Girls_ and their _The American Girl’s Handy Book_

Fiction.

JOSEPH A. ALTSHELER’S stories. Altsheler wrote seven romances (_The Last Rebel_, etc.), eight books in The Young Trailers Series, beginning with _The Young Trailers_; three books in The Texan Series (_The Texas Star_, etc.) and three miscellaneous Indian stories (_The Last of the Chiefs_, _The Quest of the Four_ and _Apache Gold_) as well as two of The Great West Series, _The Great Sioux Trail_ and _The Lost Hunters_. He wrote three stories dealing with the World War, but his French and Indian War Series (six books beginning with _The Hunters of the Hills_) and his Civil War Series (eight books, beginning with _The Guns of Bull Run_) are old favourites

RALPH HENRY BARBOUR. School stories. Besides fifteen not in any series and the Yardley Hall stories (eight, beginning with _Forward Pass_) five series of three books each--Hilton, Erskine, the “Big Four,” Purple Pennant and Grafton

WILLIAM HEYLIGER. The author of _High Benton_ and _High Benton, Worker_. There are three books in the Fairview Series, five in the St. Mary’s Series, six in the Lansing Series, besides the extremely popular books about Don Strong in the Boy Scout Series--_Don Strong of the Wolf Patrol_, _Don Strong, Patrol Leader_, and _Don Strong, American_

FRANK T. BULLEN’S _The Cruise of the Cachalot_, a classic for boys

RALPH D. PAINE’S _A Cadet of the Black Star Line_, his _The Fugitive Freshman_, his _The Head Coach_, his _College Years_, his _Campus Days_, his _Sandy Sawyer, Sophomore_, his _The Stroke Oar_, and his _Sons of Eli_

LAWRENCE PERRY’S _For the Game’s Sake_, his _The Big Game_, and his _The Fullback_ (Fair Play Series)

DAN BEARD’S _The Black Wolf Pack_

FRANK B. LINDERMAN’S _Lige Mounts: Free Trapper_

FRANCIS LYNDE’S _The Golden Spider_

LEO E. MILLER’S _Adrift on the Amazon_, his _In the Tiger’s Lair_, his _The Hidden People_ and his _The Black Phantom_

ARTHUR STANWOOD PIER’S _The Boys of Saint Timothy’s_

JULES VERNE’S _Around the World in Eighty Days_, his _A Journey to the Centre of the Earth_, his _From the Earth to the Moon_, and his _Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea_

RICHARD HARDING DAVIS’S _The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys_

JESSE LYNCH WILLIAMS’S _The Adventures of a Freshman_, his _Princeton Stories_, and his _The Day Dreamer_ (“The Stolen Story,” a newspaper classic)

FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER’S Young Journalists Round the World Series--_Plotting in Pirate Seas_, _Hunting Hidden Treasure in the Andes_, _Heroes of the Ruins_, _A Toreador of Spain_, _The Magic-Makers of Morocco_

STEWART EDWARD WHITE’S _The Adventures of Bobby Orde_

RUSSELL DOUBLEDAY’S _Cattle Ranch to College_, and his _A Gunner Aboard the “Yankee”_

O. HENRY’S _The Ransom of Red Chief_ and _Other O. Henry Stories for Boys_

RALPH STOCK’S _The Cruise of the Dream Ship_. The hobo seafaring adventures of a boy. A fine book, not nearly well enough known

LEWIS E. THEISS’S _A Champion of the Foothills_

CAROLINE DALE SNEDEKER’S _The Perilous Seat_. The story of a young Greek girl who saved her country

JOSLYN GRAY’S _Elsie Marley_, her _Rosemary Greenaway_, and her newest tale, _The Old Mary Metcalf Place_. Other Joslyn Gray stories are _Bouncing Bet_, _The January Girl_, _Rusty Miller_, and _Kathleen’s Probation_

MARGARET W. EGGLESTON’S _Fireside Stories for Girls in Their Teens_

E. F. BENSON’S _David Blaize_ and his _David Blaize and the Blue Door_

ISLA MAY MULLINS’S _Captain Pluck_ (founded on fact)

MARION AMES TAGGART’S _The Annes_, her _Captain Sylvia_, her _The Daughters of the Little Grey House_ (_The Little Grey House_ should be read first) and her _“Who Is Sylvia?”_ (a sequel to _Captain Sylvia_)

Mainly Historical.

FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER’S Romance-History of America Series--_In the Days Before Columbus_, _The Quest of the Western World_, and _The Coming of the Peoples_, each illustrated by C. A. Federer

NOAH BROOKS’S _First Across the Continent_. The story of the Lewis and Clark expedition

CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY’S _In the Wasp’s Nest_ (War of 1812) and _On the Old Kearsage_ (Civil War)

SIDNEY DARK’S _The Child’s Book of England_ and his _The Child’s Book of France_

BASIL MATHEWS’S _The Quest of Liberty: The Adventures of the “Mayflower” Pilgrims_

H. E. MARSHALL’S _This Country of Ours: The Story of the United States_

EVERETT T. TOMLINSON’S _Young People’s History of the American Revolution_, his _Places Young Americans Want to Know_, his _Fighters Young Americans Want to Know_, his _The Story of General Pershing_, his _Scouting on the Border_, his _Mysterious Rifleman_

Young Heroes of Our Navy, a series comprising ROSSITER JOHNSON’S _The Hero of Manila_, J. BARNES’S _Commodore Bainbridge_, his _With the Flag in the Channel_, his _Midshipman Farragut_, and his _The Hero of Erie_ (Commodore Perry); and MOLLY ELLIOTT SEAWELL’S _Decatur and Somers_, her _Paul Jones_, and her _Little Jarvis, the Heroic Midshipman_

_Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children_, edited by JOSEPH BUCKLIN BISHOP

RICHARD HARDING DAVIS’S _Real Soldiers of Fortune_ and his _With Both Armies in South Africa_

A. HYATT VERRILL’S _The Real Story of the Pirate_, and his _The Real Story of the Whaler_

STEWART EDWARD WHITE’S _Daniel Boone: Wilderness Scout_

BERNARD MARSHALL’S _The Torch Bearers_, a new novel of the time of Oliver Cromwell

RUSSELL DOUBLEDAY’S _Stories of Inventors_

Inventions, Games, Plays, and the Fascinations of Science.

A. FREDERICK COLLINS’S _The Book of the Microscope_, his _The Book of Wireless Telegraph and Telephone_, his _The Book of Stars_, _The Book of Magic_, _The Book of Electricity_, _The Home Handy Book_, _How to Fly_, _The Amateur Mechanic_

FRANK M. RICH’S _The Jolly Tinker_. How to make all sorts of things out of the simplest materials, how to mend shoes, repair books, make a cardboard loom, etc.

RAY STANNARD BAKER’S _The Boy’s Book of Inventions_ and his _The Boy’s Second Book of Inventions_ have already been mentioned

GILBERT T. PEARSON’S _The Bird Study Book_

FRANK M. CHAPMAN’S _Bird Life_, his _Our Winter Birds_, his _What Bird Is That?_ and his _Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America_

_Birds Worth Knowing_, by NELTJE BLANCHAN; _Butterflies Worth Knowing_, by CLARENCE M. WEED; _Flowers Worth Knowing_ (NELTJE BLANCHAN adapted by ASA DON DICKINSON); and _Trees Worth Knowing_, by JULIA ELLEN ROGERS

Game books by EDNA GEISTER--_It Is To Laugh_, her _Let’s Play_, and her _Fun Book_

_The Magic Sea Shell and Other Plays for Children_, by JOHN FARRAR

_Three to Make Ready_, by LOUISE AYRES GARNETT. Plays

_Ten Minutes by the Clock_, by ALICE C. D. RILEY. Plays

S. LYLE CUMMINS’S _Plays for Children_

Three Books for Parents.

FLORENCE V. BARRY’S _A Century of Children’s Books_

ANNIE CARROLL MOORE’S _New Roads to Childhood_, and her _Roads to Childhood: Views and Reviews of Children’s Books_. By the supervisor of work with children in the New York Public Library.

_10. The Man Called Ralph Connor_

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