However, writing had become for her an almost impossible struggle, not so much against disease as toward conviction that some work of an inward purification had to be accomplished before she could advance, before she could be worthy to express the complete truth which in her imagination she apprehended. "The Canary", her last complete story, was done in July, 1922. That autumn she abandoned writing and went into retirement at the Gurdjieff Institute ("Seekers After Truth"), Fontainebleau, where she was taken with a sudden hemorrhage on the night of January 9, 1923. In the communal cemetery of Avon, near Fontainebleau, Katherine Mansfield's burial place may be located by a tomb inscribed with her favorite lines from Shakespeare, which were spoken by Hotspur in "King Henry IV”—“But I tell you my lord fool, out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety." The four books published in the States since her passing are: "Bliss", "The Garden Party", "The Doves' Nest", and "The Little Girl". THE HOUND IN LEASH By Lawrence Lee a hound despite all chains That leash his limbs from speed; And the smell of fox, like growing pains, The free hound goes where keen winds run; The hound in leash lies still. One hunts a course that's sometimes done, But one speeds past the farthest hill. The free hound gets the raw, rich meat, A leashed hound knows that hungry feet When free hounds take the fox of red Their souls are satisfied; But leashed hounds hunt a fox far sped Through fields where huntsmen never ride. The leashed hound runs till morning grey THE BOOKMAN'S GUIDE TO FICTION THE BOOKMAN will present each month tabloid reviews of a selected list of recent fiction. This section will include also the books most in demand according to the current reports in "Books of the Month", complied by the R. R. Bowker Company, The Baker and Taylor Company's "Retail Bookseller", and THE BOOKMAN'S Monthly Score". Such books as the editor specially recommends are marked with a star. THE POLYGLOTS William Gerhardi Duffield. A worthy successor to "Futility". Good writing here. (See page 694.) * SOUNDINGS A. Hamilton Gibbs Little, Brown. A girl finds love stronger than mind a fictional observation of passion that is arresting. THE RECKLESS LADY - Philip Gibbs Doran. A mother and daughter work out their highly interesting problem from Monte Carlo to Grand Rapids. * BARREN GROUND - Ellen Glasgow Doubleday, Page. Surrounding the life story of a woman with beautiful description and detailed characterizations, Miss Glasgow has achieved something like a masterpiece. DAY OF ATONEMENT - Louis Golding Knopf. As a novel this is interesting and often thrilling but as a tract it does not ring true. buffalo, Mr. Grey equals the success of his wild horse romances. СНОІСЕ- Charles Guernon - Lippincott. A meandering and rather incoherent account of the conflict between passion and art in the life of a singer. NOT UNDER THE LAW Grace Livingston Hill Lippincott. Trials overcome and love triumphant make a woman's story that should please many women. DESTINY Rupert Hughes Harper. What would otherwise be a well balanced novel with many poetic touches is stained by unnecessary vulgarities. THE OLD WOMAN OF THE MOVIES Vicente Blasco Ibáñez - Dutton. Rich in landscape and character, these tales depict episodes from the human comedy in exotic times and places. THE GEORGE AND THE CROWN - Sheila Kaye-Smith Dutton. A book that contrasts the beauties of nature, wild and tame, on the earth's surface and in men's hearts. Worthy to stand with the best that its author has produced. THE EDITOR RECOMMENDS BOOKS THAT MAY HAVE ESCAPED YOU 1. "Young Mrs. Cruse" by Viola Meynell. Exquisite short stories and sketches worthy to rank with Katherine Mansfield's. 2. "The Prelude to Adventure" by Hugh Walpole. One of the loveliest books ever written by this famous Englishman. 3. "Sonnets of a Portrait Painter' by Arthur Davison Ficke. Poems that should be in the library of every lover. 4. "Joseph Pulitzer: His Life and Letters" by Don C. Seitz. An excellent biography and also a good interpretation of American journalism. 5. "The Genius of America" by Stuart Pratt Sherman. This fine critic's clearest expression of his critical views. Speculative Travelers ILAIRE BELLOC is now genial and now dogmatic. He is more likely to be genial when speaking of sailboats than when touching on philos white men to legislate for forty-nine black men, or, to put it more strongly, fifty-one black men to legislate for forty-nine white? Who does not know that in such a case only organised force could decide? A gentler travel book, or rather book of nature essays, is William Beebe's "Jungle Days" (Putnam). This collection is, I think, as good as any of the earlier ones and a better book by far than the elaborate "Galápagos: World's End". Here, with his arimals and his jungle plants, his philosophizings and his eccentricities, we have this emotional scientist at his best. Perhaps it is not ethical in the eyes of publishers to review the format of a book; but I must say that, although the general appearance of this volume is lovely, to illustrate it with photographic plates was little short of criminal. Mr. Beebe makes his jungle a magic place. He gives his animals personality. He tells us of a grandmother frog or a wistful monkey, tells of them with insight and poetry; yet the photographic reproduction reminds us of ophy; but he is constantly stimulating nothing but the biological laboratory in the new rambling discourses from a sea trip, "The Cruise of the Nona" (Houghton Mifflin). It is a surprising and a valuable book. In the midst of its pages one comes upon such bits as this: By what right shall fifty-one men out of a hundred, who have no particular taste for the drinking of tea, who, upon the whole, dislike it, but not earnestly, forbid the other forty-nine to drink tea, when those fortynine feel tea-drinking to be a very necessity of their lives? For what reason shall fiftyone men - of whom perhaps only one knows anything upon the subject-outvote forty-nine of whom perhaps five know something of the subject? decide (for instance) upon the annexation of an Asian_islet? How can you trust fifty-one or the zoo. Mr. Beebe himself standing upon a giant fallen tree is a terrific comedown from the tree of the pages, or indeed from the Mr. Beebe we might have imagined. Perhaps it isn't Mr. Beebe on the tree-I can't quite make out. Anyhow, it was a terrible blunder to illustrate this magical and very beautiful book. Its successor, "The Polyglots" (Duffield), makes fascinating reading if you do not object to the impudence, perversity, and rattleheaded quality of its story telling and its characterizations. It is a muddlebrained combination of Henry James and Sinclair Lewis, with a dash of D. H. Lawrence, just for fun. However, in spite of all these qualifications, I recommend it heartily, for with its Japanese, Belgian, Russian, English, and other personages it provides plenty of amusement as well as irritation. In my list of novelists whose characterizations it displays I have neglected to mention Mr. Dickens - and that is the best of it. Uncle Lucy comes straight from the covers of "Pickwick", and there are various ladies and gentlemen as delightful. On page 71 Gerhardi writes this perfect review of his own book: Meanwhile, the situation as regards the sheepskin coats was still uncertain. Vague and perplexing. Dubious and undetermined. Confused and unsettled. Oracular, ambiguous, equivocal. Bewildering, precarious, embarrassing and controvertible, mysterious and undefinable, inscrutable and unaccountable, impenetrable, hesitant apparently insoluble. Incredible! Incomprehensible! My orders were to ascertain their whereabouts and to arrange for their despatch by rail to - I didn't quite remember where. This I tried to arrange. "But where are the coats?" the railway authorities questioned. Alas, this more than I knew. For the sheepskin coats, as I said, could not be traced. was Again, on page 365, in response to an aunt's query as to the hero's own novel - "Is there a lot of action in it?" Gerhardi makes him reply: "Oh, lots and lots! Gun play in every chapter. Fireworks! People chasing each other round and round and round till they drop from exhaustion." The other novel I recommend is clearer of intent. It is filled with color and action more clearly founded. It reminds me, now of Conrad, now of Maugham, and yet preserves a distinct quality of its own. This is "Seibert of the Island" (Doran) by Gordon Young, an American writer known better in England than here. Young writes with sweep and power. His characters are vividly and simply drawn. Seibert is a villainous figure of a man, working out his ambition on a Polynesian island, where natives and whites alike fear him. The love story is a complicated one, and the whole story is filled with emotional excitement. In a long time I have read no book I so thoroughly enjoyed. Spring Poets not without Force F only there were some way of con vincing Americans that they ought to buy a volume of poetry now and then! They read poetry, they talk of it, yet they allow book after book of beauty and rare attainment to be published and fail, leaving author and publisher in a state of mind from which recovery is necessary before the next effort is made. Like many other things, it isn't right; but I suppose there is small use preaching about it. Here are four poets worthy of consideration among the first: Hervey Allen, Don Marquis, Ridgely Torrence, and Archibald MacLeish. The most striking book is Mr. Allen's. He has called it "Earth Moods" (Harper), and says in his preface it is "for the most part an attempt to phrase poetically some of the modern conceptions of life". His phrases leap one after another in his effort to give an impression of the swift flow of life through the ages, with whirling heavenly bodies and frozen worlds. He is successful, too, and if the reader can meet him with imagination, there is a terrifying |