WO southerners of note in letters, and of especial charm as writers in a school rapidly passing, have recently died: George W. Cable and James Lane Allen. Mr. Cable was born in Louisiana in 1844, Mr. Allen five years later in Kentucky. In Cable's pictures of plantation life, in his story of the French civilization absorbed in our south, there were a charm and an importance that are perhaps not fully appreciated now. His stories will undoubtedly form a definite part of the permanent American literature of local color. His novels were never so good as his sketches; but his sketches were fine indeed. James Lane Allen was a man of different stamp. His quiet style was excellent, his bursts of true sentiment, varying at times with sentimentality, achieved for him a wide popularity with "The Choir Invisible" and "The Kentucky Cardinal". A new collection of his short stories has appeared this season. Again, they may seem dated to many, but they represent a period of sweetness and repose in our literary development of which we may well be proud, and which we shall remember with kindliness and a measure of pride.

We were at luncheon recently with Louis Untermeyer and Floyd Dell. They talked violently throughout lunch to each other and we really could learn little of what they were saying. Old friends, it seems, renewing friendship after Mr. Untermeyer's year in Germany ah, well! they may be permitted this indulgence. We met, too (it was at an affair given for Sherwood Anderson), Stuart Pratt Sherman.

That modest, retiring individual wore a brown suit and a pleasant smile, and made clever little remarks rather bashfully. What a contrast to the bluff, hearty Mencken, with his Babbitt handshake and his clear blue eyes. Gertrude Atherton has been in town, correcting proofs of her new novel, "The Crystal Cup", before she sails for Europe. Ernest Boyd is so lively these days that one finds oneself wondering just when he sleeps; after all, perhaps he doesn't. He was much excited over the appearance of a little sheet called "Esthete, 1925", which appeared as a reply to his own effusion included in "Portraits: Real and Imaginary". The young æsthetes, or those who consider themselves such, have here libeled those whom they choose to call critics. At least one of those libeled certainly never has thought of himself as a critic; but there, there! They did an amusing job. So, also, the editors of "The New Yorker", although we suspect that succeeding numbers will vastly improve upon the initial effort. Getting out the first number of a magazine that attempts to be funny must be a chilling job. There are only a very few people in the world who know when a thing is universally funny, anyway. funny, anyway. No taste, except the taste for poetry, differs quite so much as that which distinguishes between one joke and another.

room in flowing red silk, red stockings, red shoes, with red bracelets, and a high red comb in the black, tightly drawn back, shining hair. Stefansson the explorer was there, quiet, with little talk of reindeer meat and the great but habitable North. He was about to start on a new lecture trip; in fact, he is in New York very little these days. Miss Hurst is at work on a new novel, a novel of which we could learn little at a formal dinner except that there is a nun in it. We wanted to hear of Russia. We mentioned briefly that a friend of ours just back from Germany had told us with horror of conditions there. Miss Hurst smiled. "Germany? Wait until you hear about Russia." We are waiting. Is the novel to be about Russia? Then America? Fannie Hurst will have a hard task to write another book so striking as "Lummox". She will never write another play, she says, and then smiles; and that smile always means that an author is conscious of an idle boast. A year ago Jesse Lynch Williams told us, proclaimed publicly in fact, that he had retired from playwriting to devote himself to short stories. Then, he wrote a short story that was so obviously a good play that many managers were interested. Someone to dramatize it? Months went by. Who with the Jesse Lynch Williams touch? At last the ideal dramatist was found. Who? Jesse Lynch Williams! Accuse him, this most urbane gentleman, of backsliding, and he smiles benignly. "Not going back to playwriting", he assures you. "Just dramatizing my short story!"

By the time this magazine is off the press the cold snap may possibly have vanished. Spring may be in the air

who knows, with seasons behaving in such unheard of manners? These

wild young seasons of ours! Just now, however, the cold is snapping and we open "Slants", a volume of poems by Clifford Gessler published in Hawaii, with something like jealousy. These are languorous and rather lovely verses, some of them, and the illustrations are 80-80. It is the poem on the title page that is making our turbulent soul bubble a trifle more. Shouldn't the Honolulu "Star-Bulletin" be ashamed of itself to send us on a cold morning anything written by its literary editor that reads like this:

The sixth annual O. Henry Memorial Dinner of the Society of Arts and Sciences was bigger and better than ever. On the dais, grouped about chairman Blanche Colton Williams, were such notables as the Honorable and exceedingly handsome - Richard Washburn Child, Will Irwin, editor Bridges of "Scribner's", Ernest Boyd, Allan Nevins of the New York "Sun", Russell Doubleday, Frances Gilchrist Wood, and Ellis Parker Butler, the cheery toastmaster. There were also the three prize winners: Inez Haynes Irwin, who won first award with "The Spring Flight" (McCall's); Chester Crowell, whose "Margaret Blake" (Century) came in second; and Frances Newman, to whom went a special prize for a brief short story, "Rachel and Her Children" (American Mercury). The dinner marked the publication of

"The O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1924". Ernest Boyd declared that, although he was unacquainted with the work of O. Henry, he was charmed to help celebrate the memory of an author noted for his intelligibility. He commented on the fact that while our young intellectual expatriates believe themselves to be Continental when they issue unintelligible reading matter, the cultured European will have nothing to do with such products but harks back to the work representative of an earlier, simpler America. Will Irwin also touched upon bygone days, when no writer respecting public morals would permit his hero to kiss the heroine before the engagement ring was safely upon her finger. Frances Newman, come from Atlanta to attend the festivities, disclosed the fact that "Rachel and Her Children" was not only her first story to be published, but the first story she ever wrote. Miss Newman lately engaged in the task of translating representative stories from Petronius to Paul Morand, for her volume on "The Short Story's Mutations". It was not until she reached de Maupassant that there arose within her the urge to write a tale herself. We commend this system of literary incubation to those fledglings whose stories, dashed off between meals (or perhaps drinks), make the editor's life a thing of weari

ness.

When Alfred Kreymborg started to write his autobiography, we thought immediately, "How exceedingly young he is to do such a thing." But he assured us yesterday that he was as old as the ages, forty one in fact. Kreymborg, of all the members of the modern group of writers, is probably the keenest and the gentlest. Wherever he goes over the country singing

his songs, reading his poems, giving his plays, he is liked, whether or not his work is completely understood. "Troubador", his book, not only gives a romantic and colorful account of his adventures, tramping and otherwise, but really presents a good picture of the rise and fall of various literary

SAPHLER

Alfred Kreymborg

currents in America over the period in which he has been writing. Kreymborg is ironic, really funny at times, always something of the elf, yet he never challenges with unpleasant sallies those whose opinions differ from his own. He has been very busy recently, getting his book ready for its appearance and working on the translation of a Florentine romance by Machiavelli. This, under the name of "Mandragola", has just been produced as the first offering of the Little Opera of America, an organization recently formed to foster an American "Opéra Comique". The music is by Ignatz Waghalter, the settings by Herman Rosse. Mr. Waghalter lately came to this country to rehearse and conduct

the American presentation. All this sounds like great fun, and Mr. Kreymborg is enjoying himself immensely. If you have never seen or read one of his puppet plays you should do so as soon as you can, for they have a quality of absurdity combined with wisdom that is most pleasing.

May O'Connell of Minneapolis writes us that the ladies of her town, at least, are very proud of the work which Mrs. Thomas G. Winter, former president of the General Federation of Women's Clubs, is doing this year. It seems that in addition to her work on "The Ladies' Home Journal", Mrs. Winter is writing for various magazines and newspaper syndicates. One of her pet ambitions, so says Miss O'Connell, is to advance the slogan "A Literate Nation by 1930". More power to Mrs. Winter, say we! A Minneapolis man, William J. McNally, author of "The Barb" and "When the Clouds Roll By", a play, is also creator of "Eileen", soon to be produced jointly by Woods and Brady in New York. Another St. Paul author springs up to take his place with Thomas Boyd and F. Scott Fitzgerald. He is James Gray of the editorial staff of the "Pioneer Press-Dispatch". Scribner's have accepted his novel, "The Penciled Frown". Of this, the author says:

The hero is a young man who might perhaps be called a second cousin, by general temperament, of Merton Gill, in "Merton of the Movies". He is a newspaper man, a critic, and he passes through the various stages of serious groping and grappling, like one may expect in a serious, sensitive, often pathetic makeup like his.

lish here as a matter of record, although it has already appeared in several other places, Mrs. Conrad's letter of protest and denial, addressed to the editor of the London "Times Literary Supplement":

SIR:

Will you please allow me to correct a few of the more fantastic statements regarding my husband, made in Ford Madox Hueffer's book which was reviewed in these columns a few weeks ago?

If Mr. Hueffer intends "A Personal Remembrance" as a tribute to the dead friend with whom he claims to have had such a close acquaintance, why does he endeavour on every page to show the vast difference between himself and his friend? His inferiority in intellect, character and ability! To those who knew Joseph Conrad personally these statements would assume their real value; and to those who had also the privilege of even slight acquaintance with Mr. Hueffer these few lines would be quite unnecessary. I deny most emphatically that Joseph Conrad ever poached on Mr. Hueffer's vast stock of plots and material in the fabrication of any of his stories. A concrete plot, or a detailed statement of fact, no matter how interesting, would never have been the least use to my husband. His books were, to my certain knowledge, based on a chance phrase discovered in some old book of memoirs, or a few sentences culled from a book of history or travel. These significant few words were then nursed in that master mind full of personal experiences and rich with imagination, to emerge, after a period of infinite care and real mental suffering, as a finished masterpiece. In the matter of "The Arrow of Gold" he often laughingly accused me of being the cause of the book. I came upon him one morning in despair, as he had nothing in his mind of which to write. I suggested that he should make use of an episode he had once related to me, referring to his life before we were married. My suggestion was adopted, and that book was the direct result.

During the years that Mr. Hueffer was most intimate with Joseph Conrad-between 1898-1909 Ford Madox Hueffer never spent more than three consecutive weeks under our roof, and when we returned the visit we always, with few ex ceptions, had rooms in a cottage close at hand. After 1909 the meetings between the two were very rare and not once of my husband's seeking. The author of "A Personal Remembrance" claims to have been Joseph Conrad's literary adviser, also his literary godfather! That claim, like

nearly everything else in that detestable book, is quite untrue. I have heard my husband say more than once that he found Mr. Hueffer a mental stimulus, but that was in the early days, days before even Ford Madox Hueffer became aware of the great dignity he claims that of being the greatest English stylist.

Yours sincerely,

JESSIE CONRAD.

We quote also Ralph Barton, the artist, who has corresponded with Mrs. Conrad on the subject and who, in addition to being the jolly cartoonist and illustrator, is also an appreciator of all good things literary. Barton says:

I cannot imagine that anyone on this side of the Atlantic could have taken Ford's book seriously, and certainly it will not have the slightest effect on Conrad's place among the great artists of all times, but I believe that there are a good many people who have heard of Mrs. Conrad's letter but have not seen it and who would be glad of a copy to clip and paste in the end papers of Ford's book.

Her statement that "a concrete plot" would have been of no use whatever to her husband gives a far clearer clue to Conrad's method of work than all of Ford's 256 pages of nonsense. Certainly Conrad did not deal in plots; he was no mere yarn spinner. Plots counted for as little in his work as subjects did in the work of Michael Angelo or of Beethoven. This woman understood his work and Ford did not.

We saw Hendrik Van Loon recently, on one of the rare occasions on which he has emerged from his Connecticut stronghold. For the benefit of those who cherish glimpses of an author's private life, we append an impression of Mr. and Mrs. Van Loon returning to their igloo after the aforementioned sojourn in town. Since it was drawn by no less a person than H. V. L. himself, its authenticity cannot be questioned. The author of "The Story of Mankind" has been hibernating this winter, in an endeavor to complete his long promised book on "Tolerance". Tolerance, as he sees it, is synonymous with good breeding; bigotry is a mani

festation of bad manners. Mr. Van Loon, a perfect exhibit of the Nordic type, scoffs at the doctrine of Nordic superiority. He believes that racial and religious ill will can be eradicated only through education - but what such a system of education is to be, is still something of a mystery. In between meditations upon tolerance - in three days, to be exact Mr. Van Loon lately tossed off "The Story of Wilbur the Hat". Said Wilbur, as depicted by its author in sketches

drawn with a match and brightly colored, is a green headpiece given to most amusing antics. Naturally we asked Mr. Van Loon whether the idea of a green hat was derived from Michael Arlen. It appears not; in fact, Mr. Van Loon professes to be unacquainted with the Armenian gentleman's work. That statement staggered us, for we had thought that by now Mr. Arlen was reposing beside "The Home Book of Verse" in every bookish household.

From Topeka, Kansas, W. S. Klugston sends us word of an educational experiment which is a variant of other book sermons being used with good effect throughout the country.

That the church can be a real aid to literature is being demonstrated by the Central Congregational church of Topeka, of which John Wells Rahill is pastor.

Under the direction of Miss Clara Johnston a Sunday evening reading club has been in operation for nearly two years, and it has become one of the literary centres of the Kansas capital, with some of the best known authors of the west appearing on the