The Savannah morning news., 1904-03-13

Moonlight" Those who have read
it say it is entertaining, and Mr.. Beard
hopes the public will agree in this
judgment, because he wants to sell a
lot of copies.
He hopes, also, that the book will be
! able to convince its readers that his
belief in the doctrine of the single tax
| is correct, the volume being written
! especially for that purpose. Judging
| from surface indications, the public at
! large is still far from agreeing with
him on this proposition, but everyone
who knows him agrees in the prOpo-
sition that he is, personally, a
mighty good fellow.
Beard likes to draw pictures better
than anything else on earth except to
study animals and insects. Every
summer he deserts his accustomed
haunts in New York, takes his wife
and baby with him, and goes up to the
wilds of Sullivan county in Pennsyl-
vania, where he has log house. This
house stands in the middle of fair
sized tract of woodland thickly popu-
lated with all the sorts of wild animals
that still persist in the wooded regions
of the Middle States. Squirrels, wood
chucks, foxes, WeaSels, yes, and skunks
run about in the woods. There are
owls, and jay birds, robins and blue
birds, and many other varieties of
birds in the air. Frogs and fishes and
turtles abound in the ponds and
streams. With all these various crea-
lures, Dan Beard has the faculty of
making remarkably close friendships.
He never kills a living creature, but
he captures a great many of them. He
makes their captivity as pleasant as
captivity possibly can be made to a
wild creature, and during it's cpntin-
uance he studies their nature, studies
their likes and their dislikes. He poses
them and sketches them. He photo
graphs them, he pets them, and more
than once he has been able to tame
them so thoroughly that when the
doors of their cages are left open they
refuse to leave.
All this gives him the most whole
some pleasure, and at the same time
furnishes him with material for a large
proportion of the work by which he
is best known. But his new book, un-
like all his previous volumes, is writ
ten in narrative form, and it is possi-
ble that he will take to novel writing
straight by and by.
It need hardly be said that books
on Russia and Japan are much in de-
IildIlu. Old1eHCG u. bIOWHGil . DOOh,
I'm the Heart of Japan" came out just
in time to catch the demand at. its
flood tide.
Mr.. Brownell will probably write
another book on Japan when the war
is over, for he is now in Yokohama
waiting an opportunity to get to the
front as the correspondent for one
of the big London daily newspapers.
Contrary to the general impression,
IN, epit Of ic ha
respondent of a British daily, Brow
nell is not an Englishman, but am
American of the Americans, and has
passed most of his life in this country.
He got the information upon which
"The Heart of Japan" is built in Japan
itself. Soon after his graduation from
one of the big Eastern colleges-Har-
ward, / think-he was engaged by the
Japanese government to teach Eng
lish in the government schools, and
devoted eight years of his life to this
occupation. Naturally, he learned the
Japanese tongue, for there were
months at a time during which he saw
10 English-speaking people whatever,
excepting those to whom he had
taught the language. He went further
than to learn to speak Japanese-he
learned to live Japanese, and at times
wore the Japanese costume. Thus he
got nearer the real heart of Japan
that is, the home life of the best
Japanese people-than most persons
do who write books about that very
interesting country.
He expected to remain in Japan the
rest of his life, but there came time
when the Japanese government de-
cided that the Japanese people had
learned enough of Western lore and
absorbed enough of Western civiliza-
ton to get along without further for
eign help, and decided to order for
eigners out of Japan.
Brownell thought that possibly he
might be exempt, but the thought was
not realized by the facts, and he had
to leave the Chrysanthemum empire
with all the rest.
His method of teaching the English
| language was ingenious in the eX-
treme. He made photographs of the
lips in the positions assumed in form
| ing the different sounds in the Ian
guage. These he placed upon the
walls of his school-room and when he
wished to teach the pupils to make
| any given sound he made the sound
himself, and pointed at the large draw
! ing at the same time. The success at
| tanned by his method was remarkable
and is still in use in the Japanese
schools.