MARGARET TOD RITTER of Colorado

Springs, Colorado, has long been successful in publishing her verses in the magazines. Now Macmillan's are bringing out a collection of them. WILLIAM MCFEE, the novelist, has been lecturing often this winter, and writes us from his home in Westport, Connecticut, that he enjoys it. A new and much enlarged edition of his "An Engineer's Notebook" (Doubleday, Page) is being published this season. ELLIS PARKER BUTLER, although the author of twenty four published books and director and vice president of the Flushing National Bank, cheerfully admits that he is most widely known as the author of "Pigs Is Pigs". He was born at Muscatine, Iowa, fifty five years ago and has lived at Flushing, Long Island, some eighteen years. He is a prolific producer of short stories and magazine articles, is a past president of the Authors' League of America was one of the founders tary of the Authors' Fund. tion", Mr. Butler writes us, "is to make the Authors' League the Rotary Club of writers and to be recognized as the Babbitt of American literature."

- of which he and is now secre"My great ambi

DR. JOSEPH COLLINS, after a strenuous season in which he wrote articles for many of the leading magazines, has gone south for a rest and some golf playing on a well known island. His "Taking the Literary Pulse" (Doran) has been widely discussed during the past year. ELFRIDA DE RENNE BARROW, of Savannah, Georgia, wife of a prominent doctor there, is not only a poet but is interested in a bookstore, the Little Shop. She has been known to a certain public for her verses in "Poetry" and elsewhere. JOHN ERSKINE of Columbia University still gives some of the most largely attended English courses at that college, yet finds time to write delightfully in verse and prose. AR

NOLD PATRICK postcards us that he has never enjoyed interviewing anyone so much as the best sellers, this in spite of the fact that he has spent many hours, without too tangible results, with a score of moving picture stars. JANE BARBARA ALEXANDER is otherwise known as Mrs. Cyril Hume. She was a literary person before her husband, although both had published things, at Vassar and at Yale respectively. Miss Alexander placed her first poem before the appearance of her husband's "Wife of the Centaur". EVA v.B. HANSL is a young matron of Summit, New Jersey, who has been successful as a speaker on subjects connected with child study.

LETTA EULALIA THOMAS is a resident of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Some of her poems have been set to music, and she is well known locally as a charming poet and a remarkable woman. ROBERT BENCHLEY is indulging in a vaudeville tour, and may at almost any moment be announced in your town. We have seldom published a sketch which has caused so much comment as his parody of Michael Arlen, and we are glad to announce that the dramatic critic of "Life" will continue to do his parodies for us, and later on perhaps a few more serious essays. ARTHUR CORNING WHITE, an instructor in English at Dartmouth, has contributed papers to many of the reviews, particularly, of late, to "The Forum". RUTH MANNINGSANDERS, whose work has appeared in most of the leading English periodicals, has also published several volumes of verse in London, the last being "The Twelve Saints". GERALD H. CARSON has in large measure ceased contributing to the magazines, in order to work on a book which he calls, tentatively, "American Heretics". GRANT OVERTON reports, in lieu of news of himself:

About some gossip; Melville Davisson Post is staying at the Piping Rock Club at Locust Valley.

He is up from West Virginia to go on one of their hunts with the Meadow Brook hunters. I haven't seen him yet. Courtney Ryley Cooper is also in town and will probably be here for a couple of months. Larry Barretto has gone from Paris to Biarritz and writes that in spite of having a perfectly splendid time he has been able to do some work too. Little, Brown are just publishing his second novel "To Babylon".

LOUIS BROMFIELD has now finished his dramatization of "The Green Bay Tree", and is also reaching the completion of his novel. Mr. Bromfield, apparently, is one of the six most active men in the world. ISABEL PATERSON, of the staff of "Books", writes in pensive mood:

At present I am engaged on a stupenjus romance of no, I will hold that back until next occasion. But I insist on mentioning that my last romance was entitled "The Singing Season".

ALAN RINEHART, second son of the novelist, after a trip as a roving marine, of which he has written numerous articles and several short stories, has settled down to write a novel, and to contribute daytimes to the fortunes of George H. Doran Company. LEROY JEFFERS of the New York Public Library is a lecturer and mountaineer, spending his vacations with pack train and sleeping bag in little known scenic regions. His recently published book, "The Call of the Mountains" (Dodd, Mead), describes the unusual scenery of the United States and Canada. For the past two seasons Mr. Jeffers has traveled extensively in search of tropical mountain scenery in Mexico, Central America, and the West Indies; but each year he also adds to his acquaintance with the mountains of California. With John Muir he is enthusiastic over their peculiar charm, and has done much to make them more widely known. As secretary of the Bureau of Associated Mountaineering Clubs of North America, numbering sixty organizations, he is working for the creation, development, and protection of national parks and forests; and as librarian of the American

Alpine Club he has gathered what is probably the most remarkable collection of mountain views in the country.

HERBERT S. GORMAN has turned from poetry to prose, and his novel, "Gold by Gold" (Boni, Liveright), has recently been

published. It is said to be the story of a young literary man in New York City. ERNEST GRUENING is a journalist who has spent considerable time in Mexico in recent years, in political and social study of the country. Last fall he traveled from the United States to Mexico in the company of President-Elect Plutarco Elias Calles. "Apart from the obvious fact that Mexico is our neighbor", he writes, "and there would seem to be a sort of moral duty for our two countries to get to know and to understand each other, Mexico is seat and centre of the Amerind culture in this hemisphere.

It is

The

the keystone in the arch of Pan-Americanism. Once Americans and Mexicans really appreciate each other's vastly different and in many ways complementary qualities, a tremendous step toward international understanding will have been taken." second volume of the symposium "These United States" (Boni, Liveright), edited by Mr. Gruening, has just been published. HERVEY ALLEN, whose new volume of poems "Earth Moods is ready, is now at work on a prose book which offers great possibilities. Perhaps Allen will always be remembered best as the author of "The Blindman", a fine ballad of the late war, in which he served. He recently addressed the Poe Society in Baltimore on the occasion of "The Raven's" 116th anniversary. During the course of the address the speaker mentioned the fact that Poe once lived on Milk Street while in Baltimore. After the ceremonies an old man, solicitous for the honor of his home town, came up and remarked that while Poe had lived on Milk Street, in his day there were plenty of saloons there.

ALEXANDER I. NAZAROFF studied law in Russia, lived and traveled all over Europe, was foreign editor of a daily in Odessa, sided with the anti-Bolshevist movement during the Revolution, fled from Russia in 1919, was vice director of General Denikin's and General Wrangel's Press Bureau in Constantinople, and landed in this country in 1921. At the present time he is a regular contributor to "The Literary Digest", and writes also for the "New York Times Book Review", "The International Book P、eview", and other periodicals.