The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1904-02-07
About Books
and
Their Authors

Helen Keller's book on Optimism" is
to be translated into Japanese.
Booth Harrington. the author of
THE Two Vanrevels" and THE Gen
tleman from Indiana" is writing Sc
ries of political stories partly suggest
ed by his recent experiences as a can
didate for the Legislature of his state.
Gov. Pennypacker of Pennsylvania
is the author of a preface written for
fac simile of The Chronicles of Ma
than Ben Saddi," a collection of colo
NAL satires on the University of Penn
sylvania. The chronicles are written
in Biblical phrase and are in imitation
of some English writings which appear
ed in 1740. The book for which Gov.
| Pennypa cker has written a preface will
be published at the expense of the Phil
obiblon club. a Philadelphia organiza-
ton for the study of rare books and
manuscripts.
The Creevey Papers seem to be di-
viding the interest of serious readers in
England with Morley's Gladstone, and
Messrs. Dutton and Company tell us
the orders for the book over here have
astonished them. Yet until last fall
nobody ever heard of Creevey or
thought about him. Now, il you will
take pains to keep at the elbow of some
gentleman of fair parts who has no
money or office, but is generally in
vited to dinner parties and receptions,
your name and some of your witty SAL
lies may hundred years from now,
when this gentleman's diary is ex-
humed, be fairly on the road to i'm
mortality.
The World Almanac has come to be
regarded as a standard reference book,
embodying such data as busy men
land others) are likely to require at a
moments notice. 1t is, in short, a
condensed encyclopedia that is contin-
ually undergoing revision to bring it
up to date 1t is little short of Won
derful that so much useful, crisp in
formation could be crowded into such
small and handy space and sold for
| so low a price. The 1904 edition, be-
sides covering the field of the world
and doing it well, contains an official
ly compiled guide to the st. Louis Ex-
position. Single copies are sold at 25
cents, by mail S5 cents. The Press Pub
fishing Company, Pulitzer building,
New York.
The prospect of war in the Far East
has stirred up the publishers nightly
and he is a backward publisher who
has not something Oriental or Slav-
oman to offer his reading public In
the midst of it all, by the way, it is
worthy of remark that the Japanese
are receiving far more attention than
their friends, the enemy, of Russia.
There are, to be sure, two or three IA
nous Russian authors whose works
are being brought forward, but at the
same time there is a perfect deluge of
Japanese literature. Is it because we
Americans sympathize with the little
brown people, or do we like their deli
cate, artistic temperament better than
the coarse ruggedness of the Russians?
In the march of the allies upon Pc
kin in 1900, the Japanese repeatedly
proved their ability to outmarch our
troops by so per cent. H. Irving Han
cock, in a book on Japanese Physical
Training" &c. p. Putnam's Sons),
ascribes the little Jap's" superior en-
durance to the "jiu-j itsu," which. lit
orally interpreted, means muscle
breaking, or momentary paralysis
caused by pressing the thumb or fin
gers against certain nerves and mus
cles." In Japan every soldier, sailor
and policeman is compelled to take a
| government course IN Jlu-JlLSu. In re-
gard to the superiority of the Japanese
method of physical training, Mr. Han
cock says
IF a six-foot American boxer were
to don gloves and enter into combat
with a Japanese descendant of the
samurai several inches shorter and of
much less weight, and if each were to
| fight according to his own tactics, there
| could be but one result. If each were
skilled in his own kind of work, the
understood" Japanese would be the
| victor"
! Since Mark Twain has been in Italy
! he has had more leisure than he could
| find in this country, and the reading
public profit by it as well as he, for he
is taking advantage of his freedom
from interruption to finish a novel
which he laid aside some years ago,
while it was still in its early stages.
| The sparer moments, which the novel
has not claimed, have been coined into
! a short story for an early number of
Harper's. Mr.. Clemens short stories
are somewhat mitigated, we are told,
before they are intrusted to print, from
their first sulphurous, whte-hot fury.
lie writes them with Vesuvius for an
| inkwell and fork of lightning for a
pen, and then hands them over to Mrs.
| Clemens, as he says, ito edit the hell
| fire out of them" The editor, having
preserved all the graces of Satan in
THE CHRISTIAN churches at Con-