The Washington herald. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1906-1939, 1907-01-06

read books were Dudley's with Mask
and Nit" and Johnson's ''The Birch Tree
Fairy Book"
One wonders if it is true that literary
taste has deteri0rated In recent years.
Many Of the critics seem to think so,
among them u. :. Street. the Well-known
English writer. lie seems TO think tha.
in the glory of the Victorian era in lit
erature popular taste was Of much
higher quality than now. and. remarhns
that il was a high level OF literary appre-
citation that made Tennys0n and Ihack-
cray 50 quickly acclaimed, he declares
that if there be great men working among
US nowadays they certainly do not receive
a popular welcome. II does seem true
that a higher level of Intelligence than
now seems to exist was needed to make
such writers as Ruskn, Carlyle. anu
Browning the popular men they were and
the writer's OF to-day whose books are
popular make their appeals ON much
slighter and less worthy grounds MI
Street wonders whether this state OF az
fairs argues a general intellectual decline
i'm England and he says that Judging
from the newspapers and the general con
versati0n of society there is strangely Ut
tie interest i'm any abstract or intellec-
tuaI subject whatever lie says.
fear that the writers for whom the new public
has produced a demand have captured large part
of the old public too and that a man Who puts
any pressure on his readers power Of thought writes
Tor the few.
1t seems d great pity that the Apocry-
phal Gospels in which an account is given
of the early years of the child Jesus have
not. because they have been rejected as
uncanonicaI by orthodox tradition, had "a
wider circulation. The idea they give OF
the boy Jesus is an altogether human
one. with yet "a touch Of divinity above
The humanism. The three principal ones
are the Arabian Gospel of Childhood,
the Gospel Of Thomas" and the agnes
tic Pseudo Matthew" Il is evident that
to these Luke went for part of his Cos
pei. and he is the evangelist who has
given US the only accepted narrative OF
the childhood. The ApocryphaI Gospels
tell Of the sports and games Of the chill
dRn of Nazlreth-games of the same
sort which Nazarene children indulge m
to-day. One Of them is the game Of
Good and Bad Shepherds "a game
which may well have Influenced Jesus
when. grieved III the incredulity Of the
Jews. he ukened them to the street
children playing this game. who, wearied
after prolonged play, lolter about the
public places. wrangling and pulling one
another about without knowing what
they DO want Some Of these Gospels
nicture Jesus as the leader Of these
games in Nazareth, and some Of them
picture him i'm His fathers workshop,
Frrr D.. lFH-T.Ha %. & ~
his father when the latter Wds in straits
as to materials OF means of construction.
Sometimes they say he used To play tTu-
ant. and one of the Gospels tells Of the
child Jesus who steals away to "a tannery
from which the proPrietors are absent
and. taking a lot Of vari-colOred stufts,
he filings them in vat Of indigo. He Is
caught by a workman and is rOundly
scolded. but the tTUaHt goes over 10 the
vat and extracts each piece OF goods
more rich and glowing in its original hues
than before the bath. To this day this
legend is devoutly credited in Persia,
where the dyers still honor Jesus as their
peculiar patron and name their shops
after him.
Another very beautiful legenG tells how
one day Jesus in His play upsets little
girl who has been making white pigeons
out of clay, and three of the clay birds
are broken. The girl at first Is angry
at his clumsiness. and then bursts out
CRYING at her loss. whereupon the child
Jesus. taking the broken pieces Of the
clay pigeons. touches them, and 10, they
turn into beautiful live. white doves, and
fin away into the heavens.
DR.. 3. Putnam Weale, man who has
Travelled and lived long in the far East,
and who has written the best book on the
far Eastern situation that has yet been
written. entitled The Reshaping Of the
Far East" IN which he predicted the war
between Japan and Russia. has written
another volume entitled The Truce of
the Far East which is announced for
early publication by the Macmillan Com
pany. In it Mr. Wcale has analysed very
thoroughly conditions in Japan and China
since the war, and he expresses the opin-
ion that it viii not be many months be-
fore Japan is engaged in war with some
other power. lie does not state what
power. but the implication is that it is
the United States He declares that Japan
is borrowing enormous sums of money,
points out her unusual war preparations.
and after careful investigation decides
that the unusual activity on the part OF
the Mikado's empire can only mean some
such preparation for war, as was evil
denced prior 20 the recent difficulty. He
also SAYS and gives good reason for
belief. that the Korean question is bound
90 break out and involve other nations
very soon
over the grave Of I.afcadio Hearn, the
,,s-fg
was a lecturer in the Tokyo University.
has recently been erected a monument by
his japanese friends and admirers. Be
fore his death. Mr.. Hearn had become, as
far as possible, an adopted japanese. He
had embraced the religions Of Buddha and
OF Shintoisn. and when ne died mis- fune-
raj was conducted with the usual Shinto
ceremony. His grave is in Shiba Park.
Tokyo. and the inscription on the monu-
mcnt which has recently been erected to
him, written in Chinese characters. is.
when translated literally, as follows:
/ Believing man similar to undefiled flow
ers blooming like rising cloud who
dweils in mansion Of right enlighten-
ment' OF course, this tumble of inflated
words does not mean much to Americans.
but in Chinese it may mean anything
Gertrude Athertou. the California au-
thor, has recently been interviewed by
the London Times as to authorship in
America. and she declares that American
authors to-day get % per cent royalty
on their books, and that few books are
accepted unless they promise 10 so be
yond a circulation Of $1,000 tt must be
that Miss Atherton is trying to uphold
the traditions Of her craft. for it is only
the rare exception in the case Of novels
that reach the 50,o00 mark. In modern