1400. One only regrets that, with such easy fluency, more actual facts happened to be omitted.

Robert Lynd has that species of mild mannered, middle class, middleof-the-road English humanity which makes for modest charm in the hands of the intelligent essayist who leans toward conformity rather than intolerance. In his new volume, "The Peal of Bells" (Appleton), his pointed pleasantries are pleasant enough without being too pointed, proving that you can escape obviousness without necessarily bristling with prejudice and eccentricity. His essays are well within the English tradition. Suave rather than sprightly, his humor and fancy play about the well known truths with a gentle lambent glow that saves him from extinction without quite flashing into distinction.

"Best Books, and the Very Best" according to Heywood Broun, the curse of billboards, our changing civilization, southern factory towns, Roosevelt's manly virtues, Walter Lippmann's (New York "World") politics, Van Wyck Brooks's highbrows and lowbrows, how they do it at Eton according to A. C. Benson, at Western Reserve according to President Emeritus Thwing, and in Columbia's Dramatic Museum according to Brander Matthews-these are some of the things a young boy as well as a young girl ought to know. All these things, as well as a dash of Charles Dudley Warner, Colonel Higginson, and the author of "A Man Without a Country", have been dumped into this second series of "Forum Papers" (Duffield), edited for high school use by Charles Robert Gaston, Ph.D. And if all this makes another safe and sane anthology for high school juniors and seniors, "Fresh

man Readings" (Houghton Mifflin), compiled by Roger Sherman Loomis, lecturer in English at Columbia University, makes still another, "still more so". Autobiography, exposition, character sketches, narratives, "definitions", essays, editorials, and a Seligman-Scott Nearing debate touch almost everything everything save verse and playwriting that can legitimately shoulder into a freshman English year. Most personal touch of all here, however, to make this anthology practical, is its inclusion of such more or less unorthodox fellows of yesterday as Hazlitt and Huxley; and Max Eastman, Sinclair Lewis, John Dos Passos, Shaw, Mencken, Santayana, Henry Adams, James Harvey Robinson, Bertrand Russell, and Scott Nearing of today. But, not strangely, this book, dedicated dedicated to Frank A. Patterson and Donald Lemen Clark, presents generally pretty "safe" selections from these individualistic gentlemen. Many of these voluminous selections seem not to be the best ones but the worst ones. To cap the climax, Columbia's old Columbia's old trick of parading "colleagues and friends" from Pulitzer - purgatory — obtrudes.

to

"Edward Everett, Orator and Statesman" by Paul Revere Frothingham (Houghton Mifflin) is a biography that gives back a lost reality to one of the most picturesque figures of early American history. Everett's long and richly varied career, largely political but partly literary, partly editorial, partly academic, is perhaps not so well remembered today as the man's attainments merit; but none of the blame is Dr. Frothingham's if Everett is not resurrected into popularity, for the biographer has performed a thoroughgoing as well as an interesting piece of work.

HE outstanding literary event of THE the past few months in Paris was

the convention of the P. E. N. Clubs, which I mentioned briefly in my last notes. The P. E. N. is an international association of Poets and Playwrights, Essayists and Editors, and Novelists. Founded several years ago in London by Mrs. Dawson Scott, it now numbers some three thousand members living in twenty two different countries.

The gathering at Paris was a distinguished one, the speakers at the banquet including, in addition to John Galsworthy, president of the English centre, Paul Valéry and Georges Duhamel, who spoke in the name of the Cercle Littéraire International (the French branch of the P. E. N.), Gertrude Atherton from America, Pirandello from Italy, Heinrich Mann from Germany, Alexandre Kuprin from Russia, Johann Bojer from Scandinavia, and Miguel de Unamuno from Spain. Besides Mrs. Atherton, there were present other well known American authors: Alice Hegan Rice and Cale Young Rice, Gelett Burgess, Lula Vollmer, W. E. Woodward, the official delegate from the American P. E. N. Club, Henry K. Marks, whose novel "Undertow" has proved so successful in French, Martin Flavin the playwright, and Pierre Loving.

During the executive sessions various important matters connected with

the international activities of the club were discussed. It was agreed that the next meeting should be held in Berlin during May, 1926. It was interesting to note during the discussions the way in which the various delegates, while maintaining their national point of view, were willing to accept suggestions, to make concessions, and to work in harmony for the common good. Among the countries which took active part in the different discussions were Belgium, Germany, England, Italy, Roumania, Austria, Poland, Mexico, the United States, Spain, and Holland.

Throughout the convention the presence and enthusiasm of John Galsworthy contributed largely to its success. Although Mr. Galsworthy was far from well (he had been in bed for a week with influenza before leaving England and fell a victim to typhoid fever early in June), his idealism animated and stimulated the delegates. The social side of the meeting was tactfully and successfully managed by Benjamin Crémieux, secretary of the French Cercle Littéraire International.

Teachers and parents frequently find it difficult to choose suitable reading matter in French for Anglo-Saxon boys and girls of the high school age. I feel justified in predicting that young people will enjoy a new series of volumes entitled "Nobles Vies: Grandes

Euvres" which the Librairie Plon has begun to publish. Written especially for young people by such well known authors as Henry Bordeaux, René Bazin, Paul Appell, Mary Duclaux, Paul Hazard, and Georges Goyau, these books describe in a simple yet vivid way the lives and aspirations of such men as Guynemer the airman, J. H. Fabre the naturalist, Charles de Foucault, the explorer of the Sahara, Victor Hugo, and other famous personalities.

The heroic side of prominent men and women, especially if they are our contemporaries, interests us less as a rule than their "human, all too human" characteristics. Two volumes, "Le Gazetier Indiscret" and "Le Théâtre Indiscret", provide an interesting peep behind the scenes of the Parisian literary and dramatic world, catch authors, publishers, producers, and actresses off their guard, and report a number of the most piquant anecdotes which have formed a part of the chronique scandaleuse during the past twelve months. Though the public abroad is not likely to know all the people whose saying and doings the authors have chronicled so maliciously, the foreign reader can still appreciate the wit and sparkle of their repartee. Enough figures of international reputation like Cécile Sorel, Paul Morand, Jean Cocteau, Anatole France, Pirandello, Madame Simone, and Léon Bakst are mentioned to satisfy the most inveterate lion hunter.

color but one of those unfortunate scribes who, for a mere pittance, supply their more celebrated colleagues with material which the latter publish over their own signatures. It might be added that this reprehensible system is by no means confined to the banks of the Seine. The enterprising "Journal Littéraire" came out with several articles on the subject, going so far as to give names and figures. Naturally these exposures aroused a burst of denials and protests. Two of the authors particularly incriminated were Willy, whose famous "Claudine" series is now generally admitted to be the work of Madame Colette, and Félicien Champsaur, whose name has been affixed to any number of "shilling shockers" which sell in thousands of copies all over the world.

The employment of a nègre is in no sense limited to professional novelists. In fact, it is still more common among celebrities who, having achieved notoriety in some walk of life in which a literary training is not necessary, consent, either for the added glory or more tangible returns, to inform the public how they become famous or tell some "inside" stories about their profession. One of the best known French nègres, the humorist Curnonsky, admitted recently that he had been employed both by a well known comic actor to write a novel of stage life and by a member of the d'Orléans family to describe his exploits in big game hunting in Africa. Curnonsky added: "Not a single critic recognized how much alike the two books were!"

Something of a storm in Paris publishing circles has recently been provoked by what may be called "The Revolt of the Nègres". In Parisian slang a nègre is not a gentleman of

Lovers of Paris everywhere will rejoice in the album of illustrations accompanied by explicative text which Marcel Poète has just issued as the second part of his monumental work

"Une Vie de Cité: Paris de sa Naissance à Nos Jours". The first volume of this magnum opus appeared about a year ago and was received with enthusiastic praise from critics both in France and abroad. As director of the important Institut d'Histoire et de Géographie de la Ville de Paris, Marcel Poéte has had exceptional opportunities for collecting unusual and little known material. He has made good use of these facilities. But he is not only an historian, satisfied with retracing the story of the city's development from pre-Roman times down to our own day. He is also an artist and knows how to sustain the reader's interest. Just as in the earlier work Poète did not confine himself to dry municipal records but enlivened his pages with a wealth of anecdote drawn from the popular literature of the time, the street songs, satiric pamphlets, and even fiction, so in the present volume he gives us much more than a mere collection of photographs of various historical remains. On the contrary, a great number of the six hundred illustrations in this attractively produced work are taken from illuminated manuscripts, old engravings, caricatures of the eighteenth century, fashion plates, and the drawings of Gavarni and Daumier. The life of the Parisian of bygone days is thus vividly reproduced. The text which comments on the pictures and links them together is simple, entertaining, and authoritative.

Marcelle Tirel's book, "The Last Years of Rodin", bears the stamp of truth. In spite of the considerable literature which has sprung up round the majestic figure of the greatest of modern sculptors, this curious study of his private life sheds new light on his extremely complex personality. Mar

celle Tirel was Rodin's secretary and typist. In this outspoken book she has given us an intimate glimpse of the last eleven years of his life. Mme. Tirel reveals candidly but not unsympathetically the pettinesses, vanities, amours, extravagances and follies of the Master. She describes Rodin's lifelong attachment to Marie-Rose Beuret, whom he met as a young man and whom he married few months before his death. It is the kind of romance only to be associated with genius. The book has had the inevitable succès de scandale in Paris and is now published in England by A. M. Philpot, Ltd.

Henri Béraud, author of "The Sorrows of a Fat Man", is substantial enough in girth and agile enough with his pen to deserve the designation of the G. K. Chesterton of France.

In this amusing book he tilts indulgently at the physical disabilities of fat men. "Le Martyre de l'Obèse" — to give the book its original title - and his historical novel "Le Vitriol de Lune" were awarded the Prix Goncourt. Béraud is acknowledged to be one of the most able and vigorous journalists in France. The cloven hoof of the born journalist is discernible in the dedication page of "The Sorrows of a Fat Man", which contains a list of the most celebrated fat Frenchmen of our time, including Joffre, Herriot, Lucien Guitry, Pierre Benoit, and Robert Dieudonné. To them, says Béraud, "I dedicate this book which the thin will take as a work of humor".

A new novel by Alphonse de Châteaubriant is a literary event. His new work, "La Brière", is a sombre tragedy of the soil. La Brière is a district at