This little book on “food for tired nerves and weary bodies” aims “to aid in the prevention of brain fatigue, body weariness and nervous exhaustion.” (Foreword) Dr Howard does not “deal with or refer to real diseases of the brain and nerves—organic troubles, [but tries] to point out the many little symptoms showing the necessity of brain rest and nerve nourishment.” (Foreword) There is a chapter on “How to prevent nervousness in children.”
HOWE, FREDERIC CLEMSON.High cost of living.*$1.50 Scribner 338.5 17-29210
“Early in the book, the reader is introduced to the outstanding facts bearing on the present problem—the rapid increase in the price of food, its stationary or decreasing gross production, the discouragement of farmers, the rural exodus, and the alarming relative increase in tenant-farming under conditions making for exhaustion of the soil, under-production and class division of society. ... The present emergency turns out to be no more than an accentuation under the stress of war of conditions brought about by causes which have long been operative in peace times. ... Some of Mr Howe’s recommendations are for organized collection and storage of farm produce under the control of state departments of markets and collective marketing; terminal markets owned by state or city, with adequate cold storage and refrigerator provision and public auctioneering under state control; local public abattoirs, municipalization of milk distribution or public milk-receiving stations delivering to local depots for retail sale over the counter, etc. ... All this is in addition to more fundamental changes which he advocates to free the access to land, such as land taxation, direction of immigrants, opening up of new farming areas, suppression of trading in futures and extension of rural credits.”—Survey
“Most valuable and timely work.” Archibald Henderson
“Mr Howe has made one of the most important contributions to the subject ever offered. With his usual comprehensiveness he discusses with clearness and force every important phase of the situation.”
“The student and serious reader will find this book a mine of valuable information representing progressive legislation.”
“Goes to the very root causes of the food crises. One does not need to be a student of economics to understand Mr Howe’s book.”
HOWE, LUCIEN.Universal military education and service; the Swiss system for the United States. 2d ed il*$1.25 (5c) Putnam 355.07
The first edition, issued in 1916, had chapters on: Why any preparation? What preparation is adequate? How shall we prepare? The Swiss and Australian systems; Military education already begun; Supposed disadvantages of universal military education; Advantages of universal military education to the nation; Advantages of universal military education to the individual; Military education—not training—of advantage to girls; But what if—? Conclusion. In the second edition brought out in 1917, there are no changes in the text. An appendix is added, bringing the book up to date.
“Whether one agrees with his opinions or not there is no gainsaying the fact that Mr Howe has expressed them with brevity, clearness and vigor.”
“Dr Lucien Howe has some definite notions on preparedness and expresses them with emphasis and directness.”
HOWE, MRS SONIA ELIZABETH, ed. False Dmitri; a Russian romance and tragedy, described by British eyewitnesses, 1604-1612. il*$2.25 947 A17-978
“An extremely interesting collection of reprints from contemporary reports bearing on the social and political revolution which convulsed Russia from 1598 to 1613, i.e. from the extinction of the old dynasty founded by Ivan Kalitá (1328-1341) till the election of that of the Románovs. In this period Dmitri or Demetrius, who claimed to be the son of Ivan the Terrible by his fifth wife, and actually reigned as tsar from 1605 to 1606 and was a most enlightened ruler, played a principal part. The book really forms a sort of appendix to the authoress’s ‘A thousand years of Russian history.’”—Eng Hist R
“It is largely from narratives written by British residents in Moscow in the early years of the seventeenth century that her material is derived. These narratives are reproduced. While their archaic forms and methods of literary construction are somewhat taxing upon the patience of the modern reader, they do not fail to hold attention or to stir the reader’s emotions.” H. S. K.
“The collection has been ably arranged and edited, and contains some interesting contemporary portraits (incidentally, those of Boris Godunóv and Vasíli Shúiski are known to be purely fictitious) and illustrations, and forms a valuable addition to the growing number of books on Russian history.” N. F.
“Absorbingly interesting, a valuable book for the student.”
HOWE, MRS SONIA ELIZABETH.Some Russian heroes, saints and sinners; legendary and historical. il*$2.50 Lippincott 947 17-15658
“‘Some Russian heroes, saints, and sinners’ supplies an interim study between legend and history. It would find its place between Mr Wilson’s song cycles and Mrs Howe’s earlier and more prosaic volume ‘A thousand years of Russian history.’ In our own life and literature the stories of Arthur and the Graal and Lancelot and Merlin, so little known to Russian readers, are of a legendary kind similar to the stories of Ilya Muromets and Sviatogor, which we are now beginning to know. ... Thus Mrs Howe gives Dmitri Donskoi, Alexander Nevski, Oleg the Wise, and other famous Russian characters and stories.”—The Times [London] Lit Sup
“Bibliography (6p.).”
“The illustrations are rarely interesting. The quaint initial and tail pieces are from ancient Russian MSS. The plates are copies of famous historical paintings.”
“Mrs Howe’s easy style makes her history eminently readable, while detracting naught from the scholarship evident in every sketch. A lover of Russia’s past, she makes no attempt to condone the evils and excesses of Russia’s sinners, nor to exaggerate the saintliness of her spiritual leaders. This balance of scholarship and restraint makes the book a genuine contribution to the growing mass of books on Russia. She is especially happy in her studies of Ivan the Terrible, the Boyaryinia Morozov and the False Dimitri.”
“She has the gift of painting her characters with vividness, almost as if she had known them face to face.”
“Mrs Howe, a Russian woman married to an Englishman and resident now in England, has already given us two valuable books about her native land. ‘Some Russian heroes, saints and sinners’ is a study of permanent types in Russian character. The pictures of heroes, sinners, and saints are chronologically arranged.”
“Very readable book.”
“The illustrative work being Russian is full of the Russian spirit, and helps immensely.”
HOXIE, ROBERT FRANKLIN.Trade unionism in the United States; with an introd. by E. H. Downey.*$2.50 (3½c) Appleton 331.87 17-29740
A book on trade unions that “fills a gap long since recognized in the treatment of labor problems. It does for America what Webb’s ‘Industrial democracy’ does for England, and more, for it excels all treatises in its masterly analysis of the psychology of wage-earners, as seen in the policies and methods of unions. Furthermore, Hoxie’s classification of unions for the first time brings out scientifically the great difference in unions, permits one to see the very complex character of the labor problems and warns against those sweeping generalizations that pretend to offer simple solutions. This leads the author to build up a truly constructive method of dealing with all labor problems according to the actual conditions.” (J: R. Commons)
“As the first student of trade unionism who perceived that, besides varying in type as to organization or structure, labor groups have functional differences through which a clearer understanding of the phenomenon might be secured, the late Prof. Hoxie occupies a unique position in his particular ‘guild.’ A close study of the application of the theory inevitably clears thinking and results in a saner attitude toward the problem.”
“It seems clear that Professor Hoxie had not yet found time to think out trade-union method in terms of his leading principle. It remains to be seen whether the conception will bear fruit in other hands. Apart from this novel fundamental idea, the book is interesting and suggestive. The glimpses of Professor Hoxie’s method as a teacher are peculiarly attractive and will deepen the sense of loss suffered through his early death.”
“It will be long before we have a better book to supersede it. For the qualities that distinguish Hoxie’s work are exceedingly rare in scholarship. Where other scholars strive earnestly to deal in certitudes, it was Hoxie’s zeal to preserve an open mind. His devotion to openmindedness is infectious.” Alvin Johnson
“The value of a sympathetic attitude on the part of the investigator of an institution is seldom seen to greater advantage than in this important work, which will be indispensable to the student of labor conditions in America.”
“Even though he did not live to see his studies brought out in book form, the work unquestionably stands out as one of the most complete treatises on trade unionism in this country.”
HUARD, FRANCES (WILSON) (MME CHARLES HUARD).My home in the field of mercy. il*$1.35 (2½c) Doran 940.91 17-29627
Mme Huard here continues the story told in “My home on the field of honour” by describing the transformation of the Château de Villiers into “Annex No. 7,” a hospital for French wounded. After “ten days of shoveling out and burying the filth” that had been her “most cherished possessions,” she was cheered by the arrival of Mme Guix, the nurse, the sergeant-infirmierand his four assistants. Then the sick and wounded began to come in. We are told “how they were taken care of, healed, amused, humored, and set to work according to their capacity”; (N Y Times) how the number of beds was increased from 45 to 120, and typhoid patients, some in the worst stages of the disease, were taken in, and how Mme Huard made the trip to Soissons, then under fire, to get tobacco for her patients from Mme Macherez, who risked her life for Soissons when the Germans entered it. The episode of ten-year-old Elvire, “mad with a terrible remembered experience and shrieking at the sight of a man in uniform,” stands out unforgettably, as does also the picture of Mme Huard, driving off to Paris to have her appendix removed, cheered on by her helpers “all standing on the steps waving a fond adieu, and for want of something more appropriate shrieking ‘Vive la France!’”
“The book is rather carelessly written but interesting and dramatic.”
“Her book is a wonderful record.”
“A book that is breathlessly interesting, full of fun in spite of all the danger and the tragedy, lightened with the most delicious pen pictures of the French poilu in all sorts of situations. ... It is a book worth having written and deeply worth the reading. The illustrations by Charles Huard are exquisite drawings, vignettes of battle scenes, characters in the story, visions of France as she looks today.”
“Mme Huard does not dwell on unpleasant details. With an American sense of humor—for she is the daughter of Francis Wilson, thecomedian—and with also a touch of dramatic sense, she lightens her book with the quaint sayings and doings of the people around her.”
HUBBARD, GILBERT ERNEST.From the gulf to Ararat; an expedition through Mesopotamia and Kurdistan. il*$3.50 Dutton 915 (Eng ed 17-9114)
For descriptive note see Annual for 1916.
“The author has incidentally furnished us with a careful description of those regions in Mesopotamia and Persia that have been fought over by the British, Russian, Turkish, and German armies.” W. G. Tinckom-Fernandez
HUDSON, CHARLES BENJAMIN.Royal outlaw.*$1.50 (1½c) Dutton 17-17619
This is the story of the early life of David, beginning with his flight from Saul, who tries to take David’s life, picturing his career as an outlaw, and ending with his coronation as king of Israel. The author has filled out the biblical outlines with incidents of his own imagination. “David is portrayed as a young man of quick temper and lightning decision, and as an extremely resourceful military commander.” (Springf’d Republican)
“Delightfully human book ... portrays an interesting period in Hebrew history with accuracy and sympathy. It is a nice combination of Bible facts and the author’s fancy, a spirited tale of adventure and romance charmingly written.”
“Unfortunately, the author appears to have felt that to accomplish his purpose he must eliminate from the incomparable romance its inner significance. The hand with which he has removed the veil of symbolism was curiously maladroit and lacking in ordinary veneration for a literary masterpiece.”
“A perfectly corking story, without a single moral or sign of a moral about it. It is human, and not only credible, but almost convincing. David is a hero after the heart of men and women. ... It will make a thrilling film.” L: A. Walker
“As for adventures and perils and hairbreadth escapes and all manner of fighting, it would be hard to find more of them in any single novel that has been written in many a day. ... Humor enlivens the pages.”
“A very interesting tale told with spirit and in close adherence to biblical facts. But the principal service it performs is to present David as a man with human passions as well as a writer of poetry.”
HUDSON, WILLIAM HENRY.Crystal age;with an introd. by Clifford Smyth.*$1.50 Dutton A17-174
“The crystal age” was published in the eighties. An edition was brought out in America in 1907 and was reviewed in the Digest at that time. The present revival of interest in W. H. Hudson has called for a reprint. “In ‘A crystal age,’ the author visits and describes for us a no man’s land. It may be England, it may be South America, it may be any other country on the face of the globe. Its people and incidents may be of the past, the present or the future. As he himself describes his story, he has written in it ‘a dream and picture of the human race in its forest period.’ ... Although the country and the people of ‘A crystal age’ are obviously of mythical origin, they are visualized none the less vividly by Mr Hudson. We see them as they are, and their manners and customs are explicitly described. Over and around them all, however, is thrown a romantic glamour that is wholly Mr Hudson’s own.” (Boston Transcript)
“After reading one of Hudson’s books one feels toward him a personal debt so great that one can discharge some small part of it only by handing on to others the news of what he is and does.” F. F. Kelly
“It is of course easily discernible whence Mr Hudson drew his scheme for the social order of this strange gathering of men and women. A student of nature, he saw in the life of the bee a theme for the creation of a human community after their fashion, and he has therefore made ‘A crystal age’ a perfect analogy between the two. If we read it with that knowledge in view, we have a perfect scientific study; if we read it simply as a story, we have a narrative complete in substance and beautiful in form.” E. F. E.
“Hudson gives us ‘literary opium’ in its most delightful form, in words so musical that at times one almost forgets the sense.”
“In the majority of Mr Hudson’s books—always excepting ‘Green mansions’—the naturalist seems more to the fore than the artist. Here the latter controls the former’s abundant wealth. Nature certainly serves as a well-known and well-loved background. ... Yet the striking thing is rather the artistic and dramatic unity of the volume: the unity of the story, which moves on, picking up anticipations, opening new vistas, down to its poignant close; and the consistency of the character development as seen in the invading Englishman, who quietly acquires a soul as the action progresses.”
“W. H. Hudson is one of the very great writers of English.”
“Has too little story, and is too leisurely and too visionary for most novel readers, but both the subject and the fine style of its writing will endear it to some, especially those who liked ‘Green mansions.’”
HUDSON, WILLIAM HENRY.Idle days in Patagonia.il*$1.50 (2½c) Dutton 918.2 A17-394
The author went out to Patagonia to make a study of its bird life. An accident shortly after his arrival rendered him quite helpless for a time and limited the field of his researches. But out of the idle days which resulted from his change of plans grew these sketches, perhaps more intimate because of their narrower range. He writes of Life in Patagonia; Snow, and the quality of whiteness; Bird music in South America; Sight in savages, etc. The book was published some years ago by D. Appleton and company, but has been out of print.
“Its charm, as in everything Mr Hudson writes, is varied, and it appeals to the reader through his understanding of nature, through his reflections upon the lives of men and beasts as he encounters them, through his many interpolated anecdotes, through his visualization of everything he sees, and through the grace of a remarkable and unpretentious English style. Its manner is no less attractive than its substance.” E. F. E.
Reviewed by Clement Wood
“Full of exquisite prose-poetry, of careful observation, of keen, live interest in all the life of those ‘idle’ days.”
“The total effect of the book is something the same as if John Burroughs and Joseph Conrad had collaborated—and in a field almost of Conrad’s choice.”
“The chapter which especially caught my attention in the ‘Idle days in Patagonia,’ as it probably has that of most readers of the book, was the thirteenth.” Arthur Colton
HUESTON, ETHEL.Sunny slopes.il*$1.40 (2½c) Bobbs 17-22006
Excepting Connie, the daughters of the parsonage are now all married, and in this volume Connie finds her way through her literary ventures to a cowboy husband. Connie was always the “different” one of the family. But Connie’s affairs are only incidental to the main thread of the story which is concerned with gay little Carol, now the wife of a Presbyterian minister and his mainstay while he fights tuberculosis in New Mexico and Colorado. “It is in New Mexico that they see the ‘sunny slopes’ of the mesas and learn to fight the battle for cheerfulness, to keep in the sunshine and avoid the shadows.” (N Y Times)
“Simple, a trifle sentimental and will be popular.”
“In spite of the story’s sad trend, it is the reverse of gloomy.”
HUGHES, JAMES LAUGHLIN.Training the children.*60c Barnes 173 17-10692
Seven brief chapters on the training of children thru self activity. Thruout, the author contrasts this new idea of training with the old idea of coercion and repression. He writes of: The child’s achieving tendencies; Training through doing; Negative and positive training; Coercion; The child’s need of freedom; The “bad” boy; Some common mistakes of the old training. The author was for many years chief inspector of schools in Toronto. He is author also of “Mistakes in teaching,” “Teaching to read,” etc.
“Here in a tiny volume, entirely within the means of any one, so far as cash or time value to be expended is concerned, we find just such a clear exposition of the eternal principles of education and the relative values of free activity and development contrasted with ‘the negative and coercive ideal’ of old times, as we long to inject into the consciousness of that great majority of adults who, as Dr Hughes aptly says, no longer defend harsh methods of disciplining children, but still retain their faith in the old ideal.” J. L. Hunt
HUGHES, RUPERT.In a little town.il*$1.35 (1c) Harper 17-8348
The author’s earlier books have been novels of city life. This is a book of small town stories. The author, however, staunchly protests against the idea that there is any essential difference between a big town and a small one. “A village is simply a quiet street in the big city of the world. Quaint, sweet happenings take place in the avenues most thronged, and desperate events come about in sleepy lanes. People are people, chance is chance.” The scene of the stories is close to the Mississippi. The titles are: Don’t you care! Pop; Baby talk; The mouth of the gift horse; The old folks at home; And this is marriage; The man that might have been; The happiest man in Ioway; Prayers; Pain; The beauty and the fool; The ghostly counselors; Daughters of Shiloh; “A” as in “father.”
“Clever, often amusing, and often keen.”
“It is only that Mr Hughes is at times banal and even cheap in his style, and he is surely inexcusably flippant; it is that we must resent the lack of distinction in writing where the matter cries aloud for sincerity and dignity. The collection is much too good not to be very much better. As it stands, it is always thoroughly readable, and often extremely diverting.”
“The promise is not fulfilled. The stories contain excellent material, hastily handled. These cheerful, ordinary, humanly vulgar folk fail to arouse interest because their creator writes of them but not for them. They are crude snapshots rather than artistic photographs. ‘And this is marriage’ strikes the highest note.”
“The effect is of artifice, of ‘well-made’ plots and character in the sense of the stage rather than of the art which interprets. In short, they are of the magazine formula, and of little account on other grounds.”
“Mr Hughes’s collection of fourteen short stories all have their scenes laid in imaginary small towns in the region round about the city of Keokuk, Iowa, a region familiar to his youth.”
“Almost without exception the stories are diverting in high degree.”
“Not very cheerful on the whole, but well done.”
HUGHES, RUPERT.We can’t have everything.il*$1.50 (1c) Harper 17-22299
Kedzie Thropp came from a little Missouri town to visit New York with her parents. She ran away from them and began her career by getting a job in a candy-store. Later, she tried Greek dancing and the movies. Her first marriage venture was with Tommie Gilfoyle, an advertising man, her second with Jim Dyckman, one of the richest men in New York society, and her third with the Marquess of Strathdene. Kedzie, the social climber, greedy for all the material good that life can give, is contrasted with Charity Coe Cheever, a woman of assured position in society, who was also divorced and re-married.
“Kedzie is the one person in the story in whom we more or less believe. As for the others, the more strokes the artist puts into their portraits, the less clearly we see them. ... The truth is, Mr Hughes has again, in the thin disguise of a story-teller, taken the floor to have his say about something. ... The book is an argument in favour of tolerably easy divorce, with a laboriously arranged exhibit of what decent people may suffer under the present laws of New York state. If the believer could only have embodied his belief in his story! Unluckily, it is only too clear that his idea and not his people interests him.” H. W. Boynton
Reviewed by H. W. Boynton
“In the end the reader isn’t sure just who is married. The whole, in its sly sex-suggestiveness and apparent frankness about ostensibly vital problems, is quite characteristic of Rupert Hughes.”
“The book has a story to tell, but the narrator appears to be in at least two minds as to what it is all about. Under these conditions there can be no story pure and simple. At best it is a piece of satirical comedy in an elaborate New York setting; we recognize the scene, we marvel at the effectiveness of the lighting and authenticity of the costumes. Unluckily,we also recognize the plot and personæ, less as ‘from the life’ than as from the stockroom of recent fiction.”
“Kedzie is a Rupert Hughes version of a vampire, very beautiful, very modern, very resourceful and capable in adapting herself to surroundings and blooming out afresh with each new possibility of progress. The story comes down to the present and takes in the recent welcome of New York to the French mission.”
“Rupert Hughes requires 637 closely printed pages to find the way to happiness for Jim Dyckman and Charity Coe. It could have been found by a shorter route and without sacrificing a single essential of the story. ... The author’s flow of satirical, and often flippant, humor, is more diverting than his exposé of odoriferous social morals, though, needless to say, this is done with Mr Hughes’s grasp of character and sense of atmosphere.”
HUGINS, ROLAND.Possible peace; a forecast of world politics after the great war.*$1.25 (3½c) Century 327 16-23057
For descriptive note see Annual for 1916.
“A judicial and admirably dispassionate survey of the unfolding of recent European history, culminating in the war, with discussion of its significance for us and its possible influence upon our future.” F. F. Kelly
“The author develops his theses with candor and intelligence. The book is not exactly inspiriting, but it is wholesome reading in an epoch in which partisan interpretations and pragmatic conclusions make up the bulk of the literature on international affairs.”
“His volume is one of the sanest that the war has produced and deserves to rank for its calm, judicial temper, its loyalty to truth, and its illuminative thought with G. Lowes Dickinson’s ‘European anarchy’ and Fried’s ‘Restoration of Europe,’ while not even Romain Rolland’s ‘Above the battle,’ although more passionate in its longing and more inspired in its utterance, is more earnestly and single-heartedly desirous of the ending of the war and the establishment of a more enlightened understanding of one another among the peoples of the earth. So clear and fair and free from all prejudice is Mr Hugins’s marshaling of the facts of recent history and so strictly just his interpretation that his book, along with that by Mr Dickinson—for the two admirably supplement each other—ought to be put on the supplementary reading courses of modern history classics in universities and colleges.”
HULL, ARTHUR EAGLEFIELD.[2]Great Russian tone-poet, Scriabin. (Library of music and musicians.) il*$1.25 Dutton 17-11131
“Dr Eaglefield Hull devotes his book chiefly to an analysis of Scriabin’s works, both for the pianoforte and for orchestra. The pianoforte works comprise preludes, études, nocturnes, etc., a concerto and ten sonatas; the orchestral three symphonies, the ‘Poem of ecstasy’ and ‘Prometheus.’ There is a brief biography, preceded by the inevitable exposition of the musical awakening in Russia. ... The mystery of Scriabin’s new scales and new chords is expounded. ... In appendices are lists of his works, each with a brief descriptive paragraph. There is a list of Russian and other names.”—N Y Times
“The author’s style is often confused, and troublesome to the reader. The thought in a book is the test; and this volume comes off well in that respect.”
“Whether one reads to damn or praise, the value of Dr Hull’s commentary must be recognized.” Russell Ramsey
“Dr Hull’s comments are intelligent, granting the point of view; and his book should be valuable to the followers of the new and to any who wish to know the new.”
“We are more grateful for the matter than for the manner of this book.”
HUMPHREY, SETH KING.Mankind.*$1.50 (4c) Scribner 575.6 17-24251
A treatise on racial values and the racial prospect. It presents the subject untechnically in its broad social aspect with a view to awakening in the lay reader an appreciation of the fundamental part played in human affairs by inborn racial quality. He examines racial tendencies as factors in human progress, views the race values of the countries at war, shows the necessity of a eugenic system at work in the world that shall effectively cut off the increase of downright human unfitness and forecasts an era when hereditary defects among enlightened peoples are wiped out as a preparatory period to one that shall legitimately insure adequate perpetuation of only superior inheritances.
“An interesting study, vigorous in expression and noteworthy for the laudable independence of the thinking.” Archibald Henderson
“This book overlooks entirely the economic interpretation of history, the influence of social heredity in calling out the potentialities which for all we know may lie dormant in every individual. The writer’s opinion of woman is influenced by his conception of her value as a means of transmitting a valuable trait down the family line. Other chapters on The nations at war, The immigration problem and The negro all show themselves tinged by dogmatism and the same narrow point of view.” A. E. Watson
HUMPHREY, ZEPHINE (MRS WALLACE WEIR FAHNESTOCK).Grail fire.*$1.50 (2c) Dutton 17-8347
The story of a young man’s search for religious peace of mind. Francis Merwin is the son of a man who is an agnostic and a woman who is a strict Puritan. His mother’s narrow Protestantism seems to him barren and meaningless, and yet he demands something that his father, beauty-loving pagan that he is, cannot give him. In Eleanor Ramsey he finds a companion who sympathizes with him. Together they study the doctrines of the Roman Catholic church, finding themselves repelled by its hard and fast dogmas, altho emotionally it seems to offer what they seek. Finally they discover the Catholic branch of the Episcopal church and in it find the answer to all their doubts and questions. Francis, altho his mother and father are both hurt by his choice, studies for the ministry. Eleanor remains true to him, even tho it seems for a time that his priestly ideals will demand the renunciation of personal happiness.
“‘Grail fire’ barely convinces. ... Those with tendencies towards mysticism will find the novel attractive. The average reader will be somewhat repelled because of its lack of vitality. Without question it is both carefully written and sincere in feeling.”
“The author must be totally devoid of all sense of humor, for her description of Father Merwin’s first mass with his sweetheart acolyte, and his motley congregation of Jews, Italians and Irish is ludicrous in the extreme.”
“A very charming, if somewhat illogical book. ... Although ‘Grail fire’ may be a bit tooidealistic for the average mortal, we predict that all the sixteen-year-olds in the land will find it absolutely true to life.”
“Despite its theological thesis she has written a novel of vital human interest, which even a casual reader will hardly lay aside until the end is reached.”
HUMPHREYS, ELIZA M. J. (GOLLAN) (MRS W. DESMOND HUMPHREYS) (RITA, pseud.).Rubbish heap.*$1.40 (1c) Putnam 17-13182
A half French nephew who comes to disturb the Victorian propriety and solitude of two maiden aunts, and a little Irish waif brought home by a sea captain to be a companion to his wife, are characters in this story. Christopher, whose artistic tastes and temperament are so puzzling to Miss Augusta and Miss Jane, discovers little Mara and paints her against the background of the curio shop that is her home. The attic of this shop, with its heaped up treasure, proves the means of solving the mystery of the little girl, and shows that between her and Christopher there exists a strange relationship.
“A fairly pretty story tho not very convincing.”
“An ingenious little story and well written, although the coincidences are too numerous to be altogether credible.”
HUMPHREYS, FRANCIS LANDON.Life and times of David Humphreys, 1752-1818. 2v il*$7.50 Putnam 17-8099
A biography that takes us back to the American revolution. David Humphreys, soldier, statesman, poet and manufacturer, was termed by one of his contemporaries the “belov’d of Washington.” “It may safely be said,” says the author, “that as it is impossible to write the life of Humphreys without including a large part of the life of Washington, so it is almost as impossible to write fully of the career of Washington without presenting, in large measure at least, the life of Humphreys.” The biography is based in part on the Humphreys and Washington correspondence, now in the manuscript department of the Library of Congress. As a manufacturer Humphreys has a present-day interest as founder of the woolen industry in this country.
“An extremely detailed biography; not a brilliant book, but a work which will be useful for reference. The illustrations and the index deserve a word of commendation.”
“A casual reader with endless time will find in them much of miscellaneous interest, and the scholar may make use of them by means of the excellent index. Except for one or two slips that may be chargeable to the printer the work seems accurate and scholarly.”
“There is, in this varied and useful career, much that is typical of the lives men led in our heroic age. Perhaps for that reason the biographer has yielded to the temptation to be at times, out of the wealth of his material, a little superfluous in his account of well-known events. In spite of the attempt of the biographer to make him out a hero, Humphreys is most interesting as a representative man who deserved either a shorter or a more vivid biography than has fallen to his lot.”
“Although he has made considerable use of Colonel Humphreys’s correspondence with Washington which is preserved in the Library of Congress, the author has been somewhat sparing in direct quotation therefrom. Whenever he has done so it is very readable, especially the long reports to President Washington from Spain and Portugal.”
“This biography is singularly opportune, and should find many readers on this side of the Atlantic.”
“The book is well produced and illustrated, and is a useful contribution to American history, particularly that of the period from the close of the Revolution to the adoption of the present constitution. It is, however, too long; its contents could easily and better have been compressed into a single volume. Some of the text is much the same as can be found in an ordinary book of history, and many of Col. Humphreys’s letters have but faint interest for the reading public of to-day.”
“A biography so constructed inevitably falls between the two stools of biography proper and what the French call ‘Mémoires pour servir.’ ‘It is to be noted,’ says the biographer, ‘that very little of Humphreys’s correspondence is published in these two volumes.’ And yet there is too much. His private correspondence is excellent—full of shrewd observation, terse description, and keen political insight. But his public correspondence belongs to a different category, that of history, not of biography.”
“Here is a subject for a valuable and interesting biography, and in its preparation there is evidence of persistent scholarship. The records are closely read. The background of historical events, doubtless, is drawn with fidelity to fact. And yet this biography is not interesting.” C: S. Brooks
HUNEKER, JAMES GIBBONS.Unicorns.*$1.75 (2c) Scribner 814 17-25117
These thirty essays, copyrighted from 1906 to 1917, deal with Edward MacDowell, Remy de Gourmont, Artzibashef, Henry James, George Sand, Cézanne, Brahms, Huysmans, W. H. Mallock, James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Chopin, George Moore, and Richard Wagner; also with such subjects as Style and rhythm in English prose; A synthesis of the seven arts; Pillow-land; Cross-currents in modern French literature; Violinists now and yesteryear; Prayers for the living, etc. The title essay, In praise of unicorns, takes the unicorn as “the symbol of fantasy and intellectual freedom.”
“It is all in the same manner, obligingly informative and genially casual. It has the compactness of pemmican. It is guaranteed by the authority of great names, and shows an agile intellect dovetailing epigrams. Mr Huneker has never escaped from the blight of cleverness that characterized the nineties. ... His great merit is that he has banished solemnity and cant; he talks about books because he loves them, and there isn’t an ounce of pedantry in his whole nature.” G: B. Donlin
“Would it be unkind to intimate that he is writing, or at least publishing, in 1917 and not in 1897, and that the world has grown, for terrible reasons, rather weary of trifling with morality?”
“After all that he has done for us, it seems a little ungrateful to be bored with ‘Unicorns.’ Mr Huneker remains a brilliant journalist, instead of developing into an American critic who would respond to the large currents and counter-currents with an individual competence of appreciation.” R. B.
“Mr Huneker is always brilliant. He is always worth reading. But this collection of essays is more personal than anything else that he has done, and we are not sure that it is not more charming.”
“Mr Huneker is amiable, effervescent, always companionable, and in his disdainful talk about ‘conventional morality’ and the like shows none of the hauteur of the modern intellectual egoist who usually uses such phrases. For a time he was our most implacable ‘modern,’ but that distinction, no longer undivided, has passed to a less worthy and less likeable crew.”
HUNGERFORD, EDWARD.Railroad problem.il $1.50 (2c) McClurg 385 17-10892
The railroad is characterized by the author as “the great sick man of the American business family.” He says, “Just at this time, owing to the extraordinary and abnormal prosperity that has come to the United States, largely because of the great war in Europe, he [the railroad] has rallied temporarily. But his illness continues, far too deep-seated to be thrown off in a moment. And the recent extraordinary legislation passed by Congress has done nothing to alleviate the condition of the sufferer. On the contrary, it has been a great aggravation.” In the author’s opinion great opportunities for development lie before the railroad system of the United States, and his purpose, after discussing the present situation and its causes, is to point out the course that it must follow if it is to continue as a privately owned institution. The problems of labor are given five chapters. Other chapters discuss: The railroad and national defense; The necessity of the railroad; Regulation. In part the material of the book has appeared in Collier’s, Every Week and the Saturday Evening Post.