The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-03-17
The Standard Dictionary.

he would choose as his companions in life
long Imprisonment, replied: Shakespeare
and the Bible. Had he lived NOWADAYS he
would have added another-and that other
would have been The Standard Diction-
ary. For. this great work is so full of
matter, SO comprehensive in its scope, so
rich in detail, so accurate and concise, and
so excellent in its arrangement and
methods, that for decades of years it would
constantly provide an active mind with
fresh and interesting matter for thought
The second volume, Just issued main
tains the high standard of the first in lexi-
geographic work, and offers but little mark
for broad minded critic. The appendix
in sixteen divisions at the end is wonder
full illustration of research and scholarship,
adds value to the dictionary proper, and
makes it as near perfection for reference as
mans work can be. There the reader will
find scientific language key, an explana-
ton of the principles of a scientific
alphabet proper names in bibliog-
raphy, biography, fiction, history, my
thology, an exhaustive glossary of for
eign words and phrases used in English
speech and literature, brief. statements of
principles that decide correctness of usage,
statements and discussions of faulty
diction, all the disputed spellings and pro-
nunciations, all the authorizations and con-
\,
merce the trades or the prcfessions-in
fact, everything nearly for an explanation
of which men have been wont to look to
dictionaries of hundred kinds will be
found classified, condensed and accurate
in this one book.
1t is the dictionary of dictionaries It's
system of "Being " its scheme of nature
of science, of literature and of art are mar
velous in their completeness and compre-
hensiveness, and present to the scholar in
brief form and in one view the whole of
his learning while by their orderly ar
rangement and clear definition they flood
with light the mind OF the student and
inquirer.
For most people, however, the Judgment
of the value OF The Standard Dictionary
will be based on its definitions. That GER
tainly for the average reader is the test of
dictionary, and in this lies one of the
strongest features of The Standard. In
detiniJive statement - the all-important
factor of definition-nearly all the earlier
dictionaries are weak. Explanations by
the use of synonyms, useful indeed as
help to understanding the word or descrip
tions that only offer the general meaning,
are given. But clear-cut, accurate defini-
tons, made, as the old philosophers say,
by genus and difference, are few and far
between. ANY student of philosophy will
understand at once the superiority of such
definitions, and The Standard Dictionary
is rich in that kind of work. A comparison
of its definitions with those of the Century,
Webster or Worcester will readily prove
the truth of the foregoing.
Tested by its spelling and pronunciation,
English as well as foreign, the dictionary
has no rival 1t is neither too conserva-
tive nor too advanced in the former and
| it just hits the happy mean of the Guilt
waited man and societyin the latter. New
York: Funk & Wagnalls. e. d. Bronson
q Co., agents for California.
"a Thousand Dollars a Day.
This is the title of new book on
economics a volume of bright stories
written by Miss Adeline Knapp and pub
Iished by the Arena Company of Boston.
There may be other women who could
do the work that Miss Knapp has done in
this little book, but we know of no other
woman who has done it, Miss Knapp's
scintillating touch, her flashes of wit, her
keen sense of the incongruous, make us
forget that the subject of economics was
ever anything but delightful. She not only
does this, but she writes with an earnest
ness that convinces us of her sincerity, and
with a logic that makes us see the rooted
injustice of the present industrial order.
In the first sketch, from which the book
takes its name, the author suggests a
Labor is the only adequate return for labor
we are told, and no man must accept a ser
vice that he is not willing to pay in kind
This little story shows the intrinsic useless
ness of money-shows that the one IN
dispensable thing is labor.
But it is when she puts her deep lessons
in allegory that Miss Knapp is the most
attractive. This she has done in ''The
Sick Man" ''The Discontinued Machine"
and 1.-THE Earth Slept" ''The'Sick Man."
a delightful fable, pictures patient whose
physicians decide that TRANSMISSION of good
healthy blood is the only thing that can
save him. The sick man is our diseased
social system. One of the stranger red
blood corpuscles on his journey through
the new land (the sick mans body) takes
notes on all the curious things he sees and
finally decides that the trouble with the
system of government is the monopoly of
the liver, the most important BODY in the
community and composed of the richest
corpuscles. The liver attracts to itself all
the richest particles and so causes anemia
in the system.
The Discontinued Machine is an orig
inal setting for Ricardo's "Iron Law OF
Wages" This law declares that the work
mems wage depends on one thing: the
bare amount necessary to feed and clothe
the worker and to let him rear
child or two to take his place
when he drops exhausted in the harness
Wages vibrate along this hunger-line, never
more than fraction above it or below it.
According to this Law of Wages" the
laborer is never really paid anything for
himself. He is, SO to speak, only kept in
fuel and oil, as is any other machine
1.-THE Earth Slept" is strong note of
hope at the end. The author looks into
the past and sees the earth pushed on
ward, age after age, by the power behind
evolution. One statoblast in the primal
darkness has dim forecast of the coming
light, but the others cry, ''How foolishl'
But ages pass and the light appears. Then
one ameboid cell cries to the rest II feel a
strange impulse within me-a stirring as
of power Il believe that some day we
shall have the power to move" Non
senselo shout the Others. But ages pass
and the cells move. Now men have APP
peared on the planet, and here and there
one is saying to his fellows, II feel the
stirring of a strange impulse within
me-the dawning of great truth. We
are brothers. Our lives are knit up in one
another. Fraternity and not competition
is to be the handspring of our racial iife''
Here the reader will draw his own conclu-
sion.
We have all heard of the ''hard tines