size in page and volume and, also, in scope of interest. This is sponsored by the National Health Council and published for them by Funk and Wagnalls. With such an origin it seems superfluous to say that each volume is authentic. Not only is each one written by a person whose scientific standing is unquestioned but it is further edited or prefaced by another who acts, as it were, as a check upon the first. Truly the battle against the ignorance of parents is in full force!

Of "Things I Shouldn't Tell" (Lippincott), by the author of "Uncensored Recollections", there is little to say and a great deal to quote. For it reveals the private life of public persons, the life based on the actual physical and emotional nature of man which even one whose business it is to uphold morality must live after the day's work of upholding morality is done.

The essay, even more than poetry, is the dragon of every high school teacher's life. It is not that essays are difficult for the adolescent mind; it is that they are so often dull. To combat the apathy that greets the essay, educators have invented various schemes, and perhaps the most promising is the selection, when the student is ripe for it, of essays from the writings of our own contemporaries. John Avent's "Book of Modern Essays", in Boni and Liveright's Modern Library for High Schools, is admirably compiled from such writers as E. V. Lucas, Henry Seidel Canby, Richard Le Gallienne, and Hendrik Van Loon, as well as tried and tested standbys like William James, Agnes Repplier, Samuel Crothers, and Woodrow Wilson. The selections are informal, brief, and each is introduced by a terse biographical note about the author. There are appended the usual

questions and discussion, as well as a valuable list of modern essays and books of essays. On the whole the book represents a good job of editing. It does what it sets out to do, namely, to incite the student's curiosity to a broader mental outlook and to give him some idea of the range of thought and fancy that an essay may encompass.

To the ranks of famous fugitives who have written the story of their escapes we must now add the name of Leon Trotzky. When he wrote the diary entitled "My Flight from Siberia" (American Library Service) it probably never occurred to him that he might evoke comparison with such genial rogues as Cellini and Casanova. That was probably because Trotzky had no great difficulty in eluding his captors. His real adventure consisted in a wild journey across the Urals, by reindeer sleigh, in the dead of winter. crazy trip behind a drunken driver reminded him of Jules Verne's "Around the World in Eighty Days". It brought him through a desolate country, sparsely populated by tribes to whom Russian civilization had brought only vodka and some foul language. All in all, there are more bloodcurdling adventures to be found every Sunday in the magazine section of the New York "American", despite which Leon Trotzky's tale is more diverting.

This

collection of letters passed between M. de Morny, M. de Flahault, his father, and the prince president himself during the years preceding and following the coup d'état. With them Philip Guedalla presents an introduction, and another study follows by Lord Kerry, Flahault's greatgrandson, from whose family archives they come. They begin when tremendous events were in embryo and end with the prince president as Napoleon III, emperor of the French. And what a picture it is! Assemblies in London's west end, political salons in Paris, the gossip of ministerial conferences, and the endless intriguing of Orleanist, Bonapartist, and Republican. Mr. Guedalla remarks that these letters have a high technical value. Be that as it may, the reader who likes the romance of reality can read this record of imperial ambitions as history, certainly, but also as a part of the great human comedy.

Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University, has collected twenty two of his recent addresses into a volume entitled "The Faith of a Liberal" (Scribner). Looking back to an age of Liberalism that is wellnigh past in America, he holds the year 1890 "to have marked the turning point for the worse" in national life as well as in morals and in education, and adds that "at the moment Liberalism is in eclipse". The kind of Liberal whose faith is here stated is a sort of Jeffersonian Democrat, favoring individual initiative, states' rights, private property, capitalism, a laissez faire policy of government, and no prohibition - one who will die for liberty but believes that equality is death. His antithesis is not the Conservative but the Radical, whether this Radical be an extreme Communist or a fanatical Puritan. In short, Dr. Butler stands for "traditional

Americanism", and, because America is working away from tradition, there is here felt a note of anxiety that disturbs the otherwise tranquil dignity of the orator's rolling generalizations.

There can be no doubt that modern physics has opened up a new and extraordinary universe to our gaze. There can be no doubt, likewise, that the marvels of that universe have not on the whole been made sufficiently clear to the general reader. It is in realiza

tion of this fact that Sir Oliver Lodge has written his lucid and informative volume on "Atoms and Rays" (Doran). While an understanding of the latter part of the book presupposes a moderate knowledge of mathematics, the first half of the volume may be intelligible to one entirely without mathematical training. The author treats simply and interestingly of the nature of atoms and electrons, energy and matter, electricity and the ether; and the book is to be recommended to the student who desires an accurate, authentic, comprehensive, and comprehensible account of the revelations of modern physics.

The ordinary thinking housewife and homewoman, as well as the student of social science, will welcome a new edition of Anna Garlin Spencer's "Woman's Share in Social Culture" (Lippincott). Many women, even in this age of feminine enfranchisement, have remained in the dark- women filled with energy and a burning desire to contribute their share to the proper progress of their own country and the world at large, yet not knowing what is their niche, and fearful of taking any step lest it be a false one. To them and to the students Mrs. Spencer is a benefactor, for, having set forth in her original work the history, the potentialities,

and the meaning of woman in the world, she has now added an extensive and brilliant chapter that tells how the war has affected both womanhood and man's view of womanhood. It is an intensely interesting study of woman's work for peace, and a valuable contribution to the uplift of all mankind · by which is meant womankind, too!

Some of the opinions of Maurice Baring on books, authors, and the stage - opinions often expressed in British. periodicals are collected in "Punch. and Judy" (Doubleday, Page) to form an undisturbing volume for casual reading. There is little here to quarrel with, and as little to get excited about. Rather it is the intelligent conversation of a mature English gentleman conversation that ambles quietly along in a polite, restrained monologue.

James S. Van Teslaar is the editor of "An Outline of Psychoanalysis" (Boni, Liveright). Mr. Van Teslaar tells us that "in multiplicity of counsel there is confusion". Upon this occasion he is surprisingly accurate. The book is a compilation of articles and lectures by Freud, Stekel, Jung, Brill, and others. The counsel is confusing. If Mr. Van Teslaar has endeavored to present, clearly, the findings of these men, we regret his choice of material. It does not do them justice. If he desires to present the subject of psychoanalysis as a whole, we object. The book is not difficult reading after one has mastered the terminology, but it suffers from "poriomania" (circular wandering). Is it a suppressed desire for literary effusion which prompts the editor to write, "Primordial cravings that persist are racial vestiges of the mind", or, "When painful experiences are pushed out of memory they are really only pushed further in; they disappear from con

scious memory only to lie dormant and to influence the subject unconsciously throwing up emotional bubbles in most unexpected places", or, "Sleep is a state during which it is possible for the unconscious within us to find a sort of vicarious expression"? Charitably, we shall assume that it is, and that's that.

After reading "The Letters of Olive Schreiner" (Little, Brown) one turns instinctively to "The Life of Olive Schreiner", written by her husband, S. C. Cronwright-Schreiner, and then to "The Story of an African Farm", her first book and that which brought her recognition in English literary circles late in the last century. The sequence, however, should be reversed: to read the "Letters" first is like going to an opera and hurrying home to read the libretto. Olive Schreiner was dominated by an imperative impulse to express herself to others, and found the letter the most convenient and satisfactory medium for so doing. Letter writing constituted for her a mild form of physical exercise and provided the mental and spiritual relief which her strong nature demanded. It is not strange then that between the years 1876 and 1920 she acquitted herself of more than six thousand letters, and that this judicious selection made by her husband should give a picture of the woman far truer than anything which she herself wrote for publication. Miss Schreiner met her husband in 1892, eight years after her extraordinary friendship with Havelock Ellis had begun. Although she was supremely happy in her marriage, this friendship endured until the time of her death, and the majority of the letters contained in the volume are those which were written to Ellis. For long periods she wrote to him daily, some days two or three times, discussing politics, love,

death, the woman question, labor, and other subjects of vital concern to both of them. Suffering from organic disease and a mental condition bordering at times on melancholia, she was accustomed to describe her sensations at great length, and it is unfortunate that her husband, in preparing these letters for publication, did not delete many of these passages along with other intimate sections which are withheld. They are all similar in tone, and the constant repetition and reiteration of the same facts is tiresome in the extreme. this one exception the reader hesitates to skip even a few lines. In practically every letter Olive Schreiner has something to say, and she says it with such conviction that one is neither surprised that she styled herself a "freethinker" nor doubts that she fully justified the implications of the term.

With

Under the title "Songs and Laughter" (Harper) three bright orange jacketed volumes of Arthur Guiterman's light verse are now boxed together in a uniform edition. They are "The Laughing Muse", "The Mirthful Lyre", and "The Light Guitar". Of these the last named, and the latest to be written, is perhaps the best all round book of light verse of the three. It ranges from the riotous cavortings of burlesque to a gently humorous, gently satirical attitude reminiscent of Lovelace and Herrick. Some of the shorter pieces are tinged with a fine, if somewhat deprecatory, spirit of melancholy - such gentle sadness as only the wearer of cap and bells can elicit. They are perhaps not typical of the consistently witty and facile talent that shapes most of Mr. Guiterman's verse, but they show a poetic richness that bears out the theory that writers of light verse as truly measure the temper of the times as their more serious colleagues. It

requires, certainly, a fine measure of restraint and understanding to regard the world's follies and to laugh at them with the pure laughter of the mind and the heart, untainted by malice.

Grubbing through dusty newspaper files to resurrect the hackwork of an artist is too often a work of supererogation for which there is, quite rightly, no reward in heaven. But Albert Mordell has reversed the rule in compiling "An American Miscellany" (Dodd, Mead). These two volumes of Lafcadio Hearn's forgotten articles can easily stand comparison with his later work. The editor has followed Hearn's restless journalistic trail through the columns of Cincinnati and New Orleans newspapers of the Seventies and early Eighties in itself no despicable chore, considering the dismal journalese of those days. No lover of Hearn will doubt the authenticity of these papers nor accuse the editor of misdirected energy in reprinting them. Mr. Mordell states that Hearn's Japanese books repeat his earlier method, and this is unquestionably true. The wonder is, however, that in the exhausting toil of a newspaper man he was able to turn out from week to week such beautifully finished writing, such sensuous Arctic landscape and tropical seascape, and such hideous excursions into the macabre. Through all these selections there runs the thread of his strange erudition and bizarre research. He writes of such matters as serpent worship, Greek courtezans, Renaissance poisoners, Creole philology, Gustave Doré's illustrations, and Baudelaire's translations from Poe.

Charles J. Finger would have us believe that "Bushrangers" (McBride) is largely historical, and we are willing

to concede to his wishes in so far as the bald facts are concerned. But there are things more indicative than facts: Mr. Finger has taken these sordid details merely to guide him to the heart of the bushrangers, so that he may become one of them. And we are perfectly willing to whisper to Mr. Finger that we like his tales about as well as anything we have seen since the golden days of "Treasure Island", for he has given us some romantic moments with his rough, ragged gallants.

One way to learn about the United States is to study the reports of the Census Bureau and another way is to read "These United States" (Boni, Liveright). The first method is amusing enough, but the average person seems to have no taste for that sort of thing; so he will read Ernest Gruening's two volume compilation and snicker or grow angry over the chapter on his own state, according to his temperament. In Volume II, now published, there are twenty two states and four territories described. Somehow these chapters seems less superficially clever than those of the first volume. Not that they lack brilliance. Yet despite all their scintillating analysis they make it evident that Ohio and California are far more difficult to differentiate than Normandy and Gascony, than Bavaria and Hanover. That difficulty is a fortunate one, however, for it has produced some thoughtful writing as well as sparkling comparisons. It would have been splendid idea to illustrate these two volumes with pictures of the state capitols - but Mr. Gruening might have felt that this architectural commentary was too derisive.

a

On seeing "Great Detective Stories" (Dial) anyone skeptical of their great

ness has only to turn to the table of contents and notice the writers included. Four of the five are Voltaire, Balzac, Dumas, and Poe. The fifth, by comparison almost unknown, is Vidocq; but the passage chosen from his memoirs is very likely, for the seasoned reader of detective stories, the most welcome thing in the book. The other selections, save for Balzac's "Devil's Disciple", are old hat. At the same time, those who have not read them will find them excellent. Attractively put together, this volume is the first of three which, following a chronological plan, will end with Stevenson.

Certainly few people can be so well equipped to interpret the enigmatic personality of Lenin as his former lieutenant, coadjutor, and sometimes opponent, Leon Trotzky. But not very much that is newly enlightening emerges from Trotzky's book of reminiscences and sketches they are no more entitled "Lenin” (Minton, Balch), though it is an interesting volume which will doubtless be of value to the future historian. Trotzky himself disclaims any idea of making a biography or an exposition of Lenin's "views or methods of action". The book consists of recollections of his first meeting with Lenin, in London in 1903, during the "formative period" of Bolshevism, and of phases of the "decisive year" of the Revolution, from the autumn of 1917 to that of 1918. Added to these are several incidental papers, republished from periodicals. Trotzky does give some illuminating flashlights of the man: none more so than the incident of his introduction of Trotzky to "their" Westminster Abbey, of which the author explains: "The 'their' meant not the English, but the enemy", a meaning which was