Chapter 82

20–19236

The narrative, the author claims, is of his own experience. It tells of the voyage of a sailing schooner from San Francisco to the Fiji Islands, of the superstitious sailors’ taking alarm at the alighting on the ship of the “flying bo’sun,” the bird of bad omen, the subsequent death of the captain, his haunting of the cabin and spiritualistic rappings. On the return voyage the Hindoo stowaway has a mysterious illness and is left in a state of coma on the captain’s bed while a terrific hurricane is raging. During a critical moment, when all seems lost, the frail little Hindoo is suddenly seen in charge of the wheel giving commands in the captain’s voice with the captain’s ghost standing beside him. With the ship safe and calm restored the Hindoo is found just coming to life on the captain’s bed. He disclaims all knowledge of commanding a ship but is still shaken by the memory of the hideous dream he has had.

“The feeling persists that, with the exception of the spiritual phenomenon, the whole dramatic voyage actually occurred.” S. M. R.

“As a story of the sea it ranks with the best of Jack London or Morgan Robertson, and as a story of the uncanny it is comparable with ‘Dracula’ and ‘The master of Ballantrae.’”

“In spite of the undoubted accuracy of Mr Mason’s idiom, however, the discriminating layman is likely to find less of the authentic or communicable essence of the sea in ‘The flying b’sun’ than in the spiritual reaction of Masefield, Conrad, Tomlinson and McFee.”

MASON, AUGUSTUS LYNCH.Guiding principles for American voters. *$2 Bobbs 320

20–18679

“Mr Mason aims this ‘handbook of Americanism’ chiefly at the newly enfranchised women and at the young men about to cast their first vote. He analyzes the make-up of the government and argues for what he aptly calls a ‘re-dedication to those principles which have made America great’—i.e., a conservative application of the underlying ideas of the Constitution. He objects to radical methods of taxation, to too much government ownership, governmental price fixing, etc., and he sees ‘Socialism’ as a menace.”—N Y Evening Post

“His arguments are cogently presented and supported by carefully examined data: an excellent brief for the preservation of a conservative republic rather than a radical democracy.”

“Its purpose is to popularize an argument, and it has no other value.”

MASON, WILLIAM LESLEY.How to become an office stenographer. (Just how ser.) il $1.50 Pitman 652

20–26543

“A handy book intended for the untrained shorthand student who is ambitious to secure a good position without previous experience.” (Title page) The book is adapted for use as a text in business schools and in high school commercial departments. There are thirteen chapters, entitled: Your attention, please! “Safety first”; What business men expect of a stenographer; Preparedness; Your “busy” day; Taking the business letter; Transcribing the business letter; Typing the business letter; Typing business forms; The use and care of the typewriter; Words: their use and abuse; Filing letters; Time-saving office appliances. There are two appendixes giving postal regulations and information regarding the civil service.

MASSENET, JULES ÈMILE FRÉDÉRIC.My recollections. il *$3 Small

19–15403

“An autobiography telling the story of this modern French musical leader’s career, and especially of his many works. [It is] translated, by express desire of the author, by his friend H. Villiers Barnett. Illustrated.”—Brooklyn

“Will be enjoyed by the average reader as well as the opera-goer and student of music.”

Reviewed by H: T. Finck

“A charming autobiography.”

“His narrative, like his music, reveals facility, grace, and charm, and is alternately gay and sentimental to the point of pathos. One is not very much wiser after reading the book, but one closes it with a certain regret at parting from such amiable company.” Henrietta Straus

Reviewed by Lawrence Gilman

MASSEY, MRS BEATRICE (LARNED).It might have been worse. *$1.75 (6½c) Wagner, Harr 917.3

20–4452

An account of a motor trip from coast to coast taken in the summer of 1919, with notes on roads, hotels, and other matters of interest to travelers. Contents: The start; New York to Pittsburgh; Ohio and detours; On to Chicago; Through the dairy country; Clothes, luggage, and the car; The Twin cities and ten thousand lakes; Millions of grasshoppers; The Bad lands; The dust of Montana; A wonderland; Westward ho! Nevada and the desert; The end of the road.

MASSINGHAM, HAROLD JOHN.Letters to X. *$2.50 Dutton 824

20–26887

“In ‘Letters to X,’ H. J. Massingham discourses on a great many phases of modern life and literature. There is hardly a modern English author of any consequence who does not come under the appraisement of his pen.”—Springf’d Republican

“The book contains many excellences of detail, and reaches at times and maintains for a while a level notably above its average. Perspective is perhaps Mr Massingham’s outstanding quality.” F. W. S.

“Familiar, rambling essays of a book lover that will please the ‘gentle reader’ with like leanings, particularly if he be fond of the Elizabethans and Carolines. Their exclusive bookishness will make them seem cold and remote to others.”

Reviewed by S. P. Sherman

“These are essays of rare quality in which the essayist is writing continuously of the alliance between literature and life.” E. F. E.

“Mr Massingham’s essays are delivered ex-cathedra and in a style both heavy and dense. He is a lover of dust covered books, but he seems widely read rather than discriminating, and though he ranges all the way from Richard de Bury’s ‘Philobiblon’ to John Gould Fletcher, he hardly does much to illuminate the names which he mentions. He declares many enthusiasms but lacks the gift of differentiation.”

“It is a pity that Mr Massingham has chosen to hide this wise, witty, companionably learned and most comforting book under the bushel of a title which not only gives no hint of its quality, but is actually dry and forbidding. Of the value of good literature, of the qualities which constitute it and of the laws of its making, he says some of the wisest, most pertinent, things written in a long day.” R: Le Gallienne

“The word which fits his style exactly is one of the best adjectives in our language which the language is guilty of criminal negligence in permitting itself gradually to lose—the word ‘lusty.’ If it were dead instead of merely decaying, it might be recalled to life by the easy, careless, rushing vigor of Mr Massingham’s undaunted prose.”

“Mr Massingham’s attacks on his own age, sharp, dipped in bitterness, aimed with truth though they are, do not really touch the monster. Bad though the age may be, he is too impatient and petulant with it; and he is divided in his desires.”

“Treating his work as art, susceptible to form, even in the rather strained sense of that word which he adopts, we find it deficient in that very quality, and especially in that element of form, tranquillity, upon which he so insists.”

MASSINGHAM, HAROLD JOHN, ed. Treasury of seventeenth century English verse, from the death of Shakespeare to the Restoration (1616–1660). (Golden treasury ser.) il *$1.50 Macmillan 821.08

(Eng ed 20–10754)

“Mr Massingham has marked out as his claim the most characteristic part of the century in time, and has not excluded any kind except the dramatic. Most of his selections are naturally lyrical, but by no means all; and he has thus been able to find room for at least specimen fruits from the half-wilderness gardens of ‘Pharonnida’ and ‘Cupid and Psyche.’ He has also cast his gathering net unusually wide, and his readers will make acquaintance with authors who will pretty certainly be new to them, such as Thomas Fettiplace and Robert Gomersal. In giving uniform modern spelling throughout Mr Massingham may invite censure from some purists, but certainly not in this place. Whatever may be the case earlier, the printers’ spelling of the mid-seventeenth century is, as he justly says, ‘only externally archaic.’ Half its differences from present use are not uniform and are evidently haphazard. One may not perhaps approve quite so heartily his practice of excluding some beautiful things as ‘too well known.’ The authors are alphabetically arranged.”—Ath

Reviewed by G: Saintsbury

“A fresh, provocative, beautiful little book. Palgrave’s volume was not a bit better gauged for Palgrave’s time than Mr Massingham’s is for ours. The purest twentieth-century principles are in operation here. Mr Massingham’s notes are lively to the end, though often they are cleverly irrelevant and gloriously slap-dash. It is as if Mr Saintsbury were twenty again.”

“The completeness of the book makes it an excellent compendium for any one studying that era, although it is to be feared that many a general reader will be frightfully bored by the stiff artificiality that marks many of the poems, especially after they get past the Elizabethan era.” H. S. Gorman

“The poems, as a whole, are excellently chosen, and the enthusiasm of the introduction makes pleasant reading. The notes, with their short biographical summaries, are especially valuable. But it needs a certain type of mind to appreciate seventeenth century literature, and if all readers are not stirred to the same joy in it as Mr Massingham, it is not his fault, but that of the period.”

“Mr Massingham’s introduction is a delightful essay written in a style that has caught something of the curious felicity of the poets in whose work he has steeped himself.”

“He claims, and with justice, that the ordinary reader will find here a whole body of poetry with which he has never before had the chance of making acquaintance. This is a service for which the student of English poetry will be heartily grateful to Mr Massingham. But if he be a lover as well as student he will probably find it hard to keep down some irritation at an anthologist who sets out with the resolve to give him as few as possible of the poems which he is known to like.”

MASTERS, EDGAR LEE.Domesday book. *$4.50 Macmillan 811

20–19678

In this volume Mr Masters has told a long story in verse. The body of Elenor Murray is found by the river near Starved Rock in Illinois and the coroner, William Merival, sets out to assemble the evidence, the material evidence from the man who finds the body, the doctor who performs the autopsy and the spiritual evidence from those who had known the girl from her birth or her parents before her. The effect of these testimonies brought together is to throw light on the many-sided character of one human being when all secrets are laid bare and to show how one life, however humble or pitiful, affects countless other lives, its influence radiating like ripples in a pool when a stone is dropped.

“If Masters can rid himself of his oracular airs and the bad Browning-Shakespeare patois with which he wearies his staunchest admirers, there are few limits to his possible achievements. ‘Domesday book’ is too diffuse and prosy to be a masterpiece of poetic fiction, but it contains the seeds and strength—and the hope—of one.” L: Untermeyer

“The great American poem of the war has come in the ‘Domesday book’ and come from the hand of the poet who laid the foundation in the synoptic Americanism of the ‘Spoon river anthology.’ The latter was a great work; ‘Domesday book’ is greater.... ‘Domesday book’ is a great national topic of America’s soul symbolized in the character of Elenor Murray.” W: S. Braithwaite

“The trouble with ‘Domesday book’ is chiefly that it thins this raw material out until it becomes hopelessly prosaic. The realism of ‘Spoon river’ had the virtue of selection and of epigram. In his latest work, Mr Masters has become extensive without any corresponding enlargement of the imagination and the power behind his broader canvas.” O. M. Sayler

“The total effect is often crude and heavy, now pretentious, now hopelessly flat; and yet beneath these uncompleted surfaces are the sinews of enormous power, a greedy gusto for life, a wide imaginative experience, an abundance of the veritable stuff of existence—all this, and yet not an authentic masterpiece. ‘Spoon river anthology’ still has no rival from the hand of its creator.” C. V. D.

“For all its largeness of intention, all its vitality and forcefulness, ‘Domesday book’ is not, to my mind, finally articulated. It seems to me unfinished. I do not mean that the poem is not brought to a conclusion. It is concluded, and, I believe, appropriately concluded. But it has parts that should have been cut away or have been more wrought over.” Padraic Colum

“It could have been produced nowhere but in America and nowhere so justly as in the Middle West. The epigrammatic compactness of ‘Spoon river anthology’ is lacking in it, but it takes on a huge strength that the former book lacked.” H. S. Gorman

“If there be any one who does not clearly realize that life is infinitely complex, that it is in the last analysis practically impossible to assign responsibility for evil, that much good may be where convention sees only evil ... if there be any one who is not convinced of these things already or cannot learn them from his own observations and the daily papers, he may derive great benefit from reading Mr Masters’ book. But those to whom these things are commonplaces will perhaps not care to wade through the poem.”

“The Edgar Lee Masters, whose ‘Spoon river anthology’ blazed a new trail thru American literature, returns with ‘Domesday book.’ Perhaps he is less sardonic now, but the vision of ‘Domesday book’ is broader and it is, happily, gently suffused with a very human tolerance and forgiveness.” G: D. Proctor

“The first part is very interesting, and the whole book is readable. Its essence is prosaic, though a back door is left open through which poetry can let herself in in a neighborly fashion, if she chooses. Her visits are infrequent.” O. W. Firkins

MASTERS, EDGAR LEE.Mitch Miller. il *$3.50 Macmillan

20–17009

Mitch Miller’s story is told by his friend Skeeters Kirby. It is a story of boys and a boy’s town written for adults. Mitch has read “Tom Sawyer” and Tom is to him a living personality. The two boys hunt for buried treasure and try to repeat all of Tom’s exploits. They dig for treasure in Old Salem where Lincoln lived, and an old man who knew Lincoln talks to them of a different kind of treasure. They run away intending to visit Tom Sawyer but are brought back home. Later their fathers take them on a journey to Hannibal, Missouri, where they meet life’s first disillusionment. Mitch is something of a dreamer and a poet. He is killed stealing rides on the cars, and in the epilogue, written thirty years after, the author can say that he is now glad that his chum did not live to face the shattered idealism of the present day.

“The best boy’s story in our generation of American authors has been written by Mr Masters in ‘Mitch Miller.’” W: S. Braithwaite

“Those who have neatly ticketed Mr Edgar Lee Masters as a cynic will be obliged after reading ‘Mitch Miller,’ to change their label—if they must have labels. There is, to be sure, a sub-acid quality in the epilogue. But the mood of the book is one of dedication rather than of challenge. Its tone is sunny and fresh and sweet; its beauty quiet and unobtrusive. ‘Mitch Miller’ comes close to being a masterpiece with its breadth of interpretation, and the fineness and singleness of its mood. It is complete, even to the tragedy at the end.” C. M. R.

“The narrative is tangled in a snarl of moods. Its movement is often thick, its wings gummed and heavy. Only in flashes does the powerful imagination of Mr Masters shake itself free and burn with the high, hot light which so often glows in the ‘Anthology.’ There are touches of admirable comedy and strong strokes of character and some racy prose; but as a whole ‘Mitch Miller’ falls regrettably between the clear energy which might have made it popular and the profound significance which might have made it great.” C. V. D.

“If fidelity to nature were the whole of art, Mitch Miller would be a perfect book, or almost perfect.... The defect in the author’s method comes out in the end of the book.... Is there nothing in American life significant and interesting enough to make it worth while for a boy like Mitch to grow up? Perhaps there is not; but if that is true, it is an artistic problem to be faced, not evaded through a petulant dismantling of a stage well set.” Alvin Johnson

“Mr Masters’s novel is put down with mingled feelings. It has many faults, but it has quite as many virtues. There is so much to the book that it leaps into the mind to advise the author to write novels henceforth and forevermore and let poetry rest.”

“The book is unusual and captivating.”

“We are in the habit of looking to Mr Masters for clear-cut character drawing and for sympathetic, if sometimes ironic, understanding of the motives of men but we have often felt regretfully, that he seemed to be too much interested in the morbid side of human nature. ‘Mitch Miller’ comes as a grateful answer to that doubt.” Marguerite Fellows

Reviewed by E. L. Pearson

MASTERS, EDGAR LEE.Starved Rock. *$1.75 Macmillan 811

19–17050

For descriptive note see Annual for 1919.

“Perhaps the poet’s first worthy successor of ‘Spoon River’; but while displaying something of its sardonic spirit the present collection is of far wider range.”

“He is at his ripest and surest in such mordant and merciless analyses as Lord Byron to Doctor Polidori, The barber of Sepo. They’d never know me now, Oh you Sabbatarians! and that profound disquisition on Poe, Washington hospital. And the man who wrote Sagamore Hill, that incomparable portrait of Theodore Roosevelt; who wrote Chicago and I shall go down into this land, manifests an intimate understanding of the American heart at its noblest.” H: A. Lappin

“In ‘Starved Rock’ there is little music but much food for thought.”

“It is beginning to be apparent that Mr Masters neither can nor needs to depart from his original tone and method. He cannot do so profitably and there is no need, since the vein which served them seems inexhaustible. There are not lacking here the old familiar notes of sour, practical tragedy, of hoarse, heroic scepticism, of good, round, pagan, Chicago fleshliness. But [the reader] is sorry for a certain strenuous complacency which has been growing in Mr Masters over a considerable period and which is particularly objectionable in the present volume.”

“Unfortunately, Mr Masters frequently fails to sing because he fails to simplify. He is a thinker, first of all, and the thinker is naturally more discursive than the singer. And now a word for the best of the book. It is a poem about Roosevelt, called At Sagamore Hill. Here is a poem which has in it truth, dignity, vision, vitality.” Marguerite Wilkinson

“In ‘Starved Rock,’ the reader will not starve, though he will scarcely feast. There are the usual monologues, of which only two are slimy. There are bulky and hazy philosophies, cosmicisms, idealisms, feeble sedatives for bitter griefs. There is an excellent bit of journalism, self-described in the title, Sagamore Hill. There are landscapes of an alluring but unsatisfying picturesqueness. There are instances of that lyric pliancy and invitation which surprise the ear among the ruder notes of Mr Masters, and there are rare moments of true inspiration.” O. W. Firkins

“Mr Masters is the same versatile narrator who builds poems of facts rather than of fancies, and who presents carefully analyzed characters and situations in a cold, direct and fearless way. He is still at his best as an analyst or narrator, and he is still unsatisfactory and unconvincing when he wanders from matter-of-fact or satirical verse.”

MATHEWS, BASIL JOSEPH.Argonauts of faith: the adventures of the “Mayflower” Pilgrims. il *$1.50 Doran 974.4

20–10629

In this book for boys and girls, with a foreword by Viscount Bryce, there is a prologue comparing the embarking of the Pilgrims on their quest for liberty to the ancient Argonauts’ quest of the Golden fleece. The epilogue suggests that the Pilgrim fathers had their counterparts in the heroes of “Pilgrim’s progress,” and that they laid the keel for a new Argo—the ship of state of a new commonwealth. The stories told are: On the great north road: The stormy passage; The land of threatening waters; The house with the green door; The ship of adventure; The adventures of scouting; A clearing in the waste; Builders in the waste; Greatheart, Mr Standfast, and Valiant-for-truth. There are a chronology, an index, illustrations and maps.

“The story is so well told that it is a pity not to have had it accurate in details.”

“Follows history with admirable care, presents an excellent atmosphere, and tells an absorbing story.” W. H. Dyer

“Of all the books relating to the Pilgrims, ‘The argonauts of faith’ by Basil Mathews has the best dramatic form and the most suggestive content for the story-teller, teacher, or librarian.” A. C. Moore

“It is a very readable account and the impression it leaves is an accurate one.”

Reviewed by Hildegarde Hawthorne

“Basil Mathews has written an old story in an interesting way.”

MATHEWS, BASIL JOSEPH, ed. Essays on vocation. *$1.75 Oxford 174

“The purpose is to inculcate the importance of vocation as distinguished from mere profession or making one’s living, and the spirit of the book is ethical and idealistic. One of the essays, Vocation in art, by H. Walford Davies, is an inspiring piece of literature. The other essays are: Vocation and the ministry, by Edward Shillito; Vocation in law, by Sir E. Pollock; Vocation in the home, by Emily E. Whimster; Commerce as a vocation, by W. H. Somervell; Vocation in industry, by A. Ramage; Vocation in education, by J. Lewis Paton; The career of an elementary school teacher, by Fanny Street; and Sir William Osler’s Vocation in medicine and nursing.”—Ath

“As one might expect, a book of essays on vocation edited by Mr Basil Mathews, with contributions by such people as Mr Edward Shillito, Mr Lewis Paton and Sir William Osler could hardly be anything but good. But a good book on vocation is not good enough. It should possess, especially at such a time as this, a certain prophetic quality. It ought to be constraining, irresistible. But this is just what Mr Mathews’s book is not.” R: Roberts

MATURIN, EDITH (CECIL-PORCH) (MRS FRED MATURIN).Rachel comforted. *$2.50 Dodd 134

20–16938

The authenticity and truthfulness of these “conversations of a mother in the dark with her child in the light” (Sub-title) are vouched for in a preface by W. T. Stead and a note by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The conversations between the author and her dead son were carried on by means of a planchette over a period of years and the mother asserts that she retired from the world and gave up herself, her health and her life to them and that the one essential condition for such communications are a perfect love on both sides. The object of the book is to comfort other bereaved parents.

MAUGHAM, REGINALD CHARLES FULKE.Republic of Liberia. il *$6.50 Scribner 916.6

20–26544

“The author, Mr Maugham, knows much of Africa, has written on Africa, and, when he completed in 1918 the pages which are now published, he had had for some years personal experience of life in Liberia as British consul-general at Monrovia. He deals with Liberia from all aspects, with its geography, history, administration and institutions, its climate, races, birds and beasts, plants and trees. The words and the music of the Liberian national anthem are supplied, and a very clear account by a practised pen is made more attractive by a number of excellent illustrations and an adequate map.”—The Times [London] Lit Sup

“His study of Liberia tries on the one hand to say pleasant things concerning Liberia, and on the other hand to show British merchants that now and here is their chance to exploit a rich land.” W. E. B. DuBois

“All through the book Mr Maugham gives evidence of genuine sympathy and understanding for the Liberians and their problems.”

“An excellent account of Liberia.”

“This is a timely, interesting and valuable work, giving a fairly complete description of the Negro republic. It is written in a kindlier tone than has sometimes been employed by other writers on the country.” I. C. Hannah

“Of this republic the present book tells us all that is to be told, and tells it well. Owing to difficulties and delay in publication, the book is a little complicated by two prefaces, and the editing or revision has not been immaculate. But, taken as a whole, it is a most interesting and informing book.”

MAUGHAM, WILLIAM SOMERSET.Land of the Blessed Virgin. il *$2.50 (5c) Knopf 914.6

A20–1263

In this book the author gives his recollections of Andalusia in a series of sketches—the land ablaze with sunshine, opulent with luminous soft color, with cities bathed in light, desolate wastes of sand, dwarf palms and the flower of the broom. The character of the country he finds typified in the paintings of Murillo and the colors of his palette—“rich, hot, and deep”—the typical colors of Andalusia. Some of the sketches are: The churches of Ronda; Medinat Az-Zahrā; The mosque; Cordova; Seville; The Alcazar; Women of Andalusia; The dance; A feast day; Before the bull-fight; Corrida de Toros; Granada; The Alhambra; The song.

“Its objective descriptions are full of rich and vivid color, its travellers’ tales are intimate and charming and its records of the impressions made upon the mind of the author, though not without touches of affectation, are so individual as to be far more interesting than most chronicles.”

“If the reader of ‘The land of the blessed virgin’ is not anxious to visit Andalusia after reading these pages he is impervious to the picturesqueness of the scene and to the rare qualities of Mr Maugham’s style.” E. F. E.

MAUGHAM, WILLIAM SOMERSET.Mrs Craddock. *$1.90 (2½c) Doran

20–26573

This is one of Mr Maugham’s earlier stories now first brought out in America. It is a story with one central interest, one woman’s passionate love for a man, its change to hate and gradual cooling to indifference. Bertha Ley, of Court Leys, falls rapturously in love with a handsome young tenant farmer on her estate and marries him in the face of his lukewarm response and the disapproval of everyone else. She is mistress of her own fortune and has but one relative, a keen-minded acerbic aunt who believes in standing aside and letting others follow their own courses. Bertha gives everything into Edward’s hands and Edward proves a model English squire. But as he rises in county estimation, Bertha’s love for him wanes and her abject devotion gives place to distaste. She leaves him, has a brief love affair with a quite different type of man, and comes home again to settle into a state of apathy and indifference from which his death, under the very circumstances she had once imagined with such poignant pain, does not rouse her.

“An unusual character study.”

“The merits of ‘Mrs Craddock’ as a story are no less than its high qualities as a character study, and it should have been offered to American readers long ago.” E. F. E.

“It has some subtlety, but moves rather heavily and joylessly.”

MAULE, MARY KATHERINE (FINIGAN) (MRS JOHN P. MAULE).Prairie-schooner princess. il *$1.75 (2c) Lothrop

20–15508

A story of the crossing of the plains and the settlement of Nebraska. The Peniman family, Quakers from Ohio, are going west in a prairie schooner when fate throws little Nina Carroll into their hands. Her father has been killed by an Indian arrow but there is reason to believe that it was a white man not an Indian who was responsible. Valuable papers relating to the little girl are stolen and nothing can be learned of her family connections. She is adopted by the Penimans, altho they know that she has enemies who for some reason wish to gain possession of her. Because of their Quaker principles they treat the Indians with kindness and justice and at several crises in the story they are rewarded by the timely aid of their Indian friends. The children grow up, the boys take part in the Civil war, the mystery in Nina’s story is cleared away and Nina and Joe Peniman and two other pairs of young people set up new homes in the prairie state.

“This story of the West has all the atmosphere of the region it describes—that is to say, it is flat, monotonous, and dry.”

MAUROIS, ANDRÉ.Silence of Colonel Bramble. *$1.25 (3½c) Lane

20–4463

This light-hearted war book is an interpretation of English, Irish and Scotch character from the point of view of a witty Frenchman. During the war the author acted as interpreter with a Scotch division, a position occupied by Aurelle in his story. It is composed largely of a series of mess-room conversations in which the different characters are allowed to reveal themselves. The translation is by Thurfrida Wake, with translations of Aurelle’s occasional verses by Wilfrid Jackson. The originals of these verses are given in an appendix.

“The humour of the story is somewhat less enjoyable in the translation than in the original; but the reader is still able to appreciate the incisive delineation of the gallant officer who fills the title-rôle.”

“The volume is interesting for its portrayal of the way a Frenchman sees the English race.”

“Those who have been the guests of British officers at the various staff and brigade headquarters will recognize every scene and every character in the pages of this book. It is distinctly a man’s book—a trifle risqué at times from a Puritanic point of view, but always witty and artistically delicate.” F: T. Hill

“‘The silence of Colonel Bramble’ is the wittiest book of comment on warfare and our national prejudices that we have yet seen. The rendering now published is well done on the whole, but it cannot equal the original.”

“No more sympathetic, and at the same time penetrating, appreciation of British character has appeared than this modest collection of sketches, which, by the way, include passages of unexpected tenderness and restrained power.”

MAXSON, CHARLES HARTSHORN.Great awakening in the middle colonies. *$1.25 Univ. of Chicago press 277

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