The Washington herald., 1907-12-29


on the subject, How to Build Up Our
Merchant Marine in the Foreign Trade
Four hundred essays were submitted TO
Judge r. w. Taylor. of the United States
district court for examination. Mr.
Johnston's essay recommended mail sub
sides only. the additional cost of which
could he met by an increase in tonnage
taxes, row ridiculously low. His plan
involves no expenditure OF money direct
ly from the public treasury The winners
Of second. third. and fourth prizes were
W p. Munger, Nashville, Tenn: J. G..
HOnnold, Minneapolis, Mimi, and l. NJ.
Erskine. Brunswick, Me. respectively.
According to the London Book Month
ly, the six best selling books in England
during the last month were: From the
Niger to the Nile, Passages from the
Past by the Duke of Argyle" Letters of
DR.. John Brown Through the Magic
Door''-chats about the books which have
most interested him-by Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle; The Broken Road" by
Mason. and Ancestors" by Gertrude
Atherton.
Anecdotes Of John Greenleaf Whittier,
the hundredth anniversary Of whose
birth is being widely celebrated this
week. are the ordeE Of the day. Here
is one contributed by Miss Caroline Tick
nor, who writes charmingly Of the
author of ''Snowbound' I'm the Decem-
Der 2lst issue of Harper's Weekly. Whit
tier came to New York some eighty
years ago for a brief sojourn. and his
opinion of the metropolis Of that day was
voiced in a characteristic letter written
TO a friend shortly after his return to
Haverhill. MY health" he wrote has
suffered from my residence in New York.
a place which. with all Difference to thy
self, l must consider unfit for Christian
or heather ever to dwell in In 1893
when twenty-six years old, he wrote
naively TO his friend, Mrs. SigOurney:
Il have found that my political reputa-
ton is more influential than my poeticaI
SO I try to make myself man OF the
world-and the public are deceived: but /
am not" Fancy Whittier in the role OF
man OF the world"
It is Of some interest that the first
book drawings OF Fanny Y. Cory. the
gifted illustrator of babies. and the first
collected verses OF Charles Battell
Loomis appeared jointly The volume.
which was entitled Just Rhymes" ap-
peared eight years ago. Since that time
Miss Cory has attracted attention with
her effective portraits of little people in
Harper's Magazine and Harper's Bazar,
especially in the case Of Josephine
Daskam Bacon's Memoirs of a Baby.
and Mr.. LOomis, with both verse and
prose, has come into international repute
as humOrist. In a fOrewOrd TO Just
Rhymes, Mr.. Loomis wrote character
istically: In presenting this book to
you, dear reader. feel that preface is
necessary. IL for no other reason than
70 make the volume bigger. Many OF
these verses you may have seen before;
many OF them many editors saw before
the right editor saw them, and II l say
that many Of them l would not willingly
let die, j do not bind you TO echo my
wish. Whatever you may think OF them.
l know that you will have good word
for the pictures OF Miss Cory which. in
themselves, furnished an excellent reason
for the republication OF the rhymes"
Thomas A Edison paid a very pretty
compliment to Mark Twain at a recent
dinner of the Engineers Club to Andrew
Carnegie Using his pIace-card as
memorandum page. end writing with
lead pencil In the small round letters
characteristic Of his hand Mr.. Edison
inscribed a sentiment that in point OF
American feeling toward the humorist
reads almost like a national epigram. He
handed the card Idly over to his neigh
Dor, Mr.. L. A. Martin. II read: AN
American loves his family. II he has any
love. left over for some other person he
generally selects Mark Twain"
There was once a book collector who
solemnly warned a friend against ever
lending a book. and who. to enforce mis-
moral, led him to a well-stocked book
shelf in his own house. saying: Look
at those shelves. Every book on them
was lent TO me-"
New editions Of two books that have
long been beloved Of all those who de-
light in studying the environment and
the personality Of their favorite authors.
are brought out by J. B. LippIncott
Company Philadelphia. in Theodore +.
Wolfe's "A Literary Pilgrimage and
Literary Shrines." The former takes
the reader on pleasant pilgrimages
through the homes and haunts and
scenes OF Dickens. Burns, George Eliot,
the BronteS, Lord Byron. and n score OF
other English authors while the latter
Is devoted 10 the scenes IN which lived
the American authors OF the Concord
and Boston group, or which they por-
trayed in their books. The two volumes
are printed and bound In uniform style.
and are both illustrated
Even in Russia it does not often hap
n oh &c
book and not against the author or pub
fishers thereof. Yet a case OF this kind
was brought before the Warsaw courts
the other day. The charge was laid
against a work by a certain Gustave
Baumfeld as being of a nature '1ikely 10
arouse its readers 10 revolutionary ac-
tons The dock was empty. and evil
dence was given by the police who had
coniscated the book. The verdict was
pronounced against the book, and
amounted TO an order that II should be
burned. The explanation OF this pecul-
lar incident is that the book in question
was discovered by the police while still
in the printers hands, and that, as il had
not yet been published. neither the author
nor the publisher was held responsible
for its revolutionary tendencies. All the
blame was laid on the book, OF which
every sheet has been destroyed
From new documents F. Marion Craw-
ford gives in the Century history of
the Cenci family. which will interest all
readers Of Shelley's play. We cannot fol-
low the details of the story here. Suf-
fee IL TO say that Francesca Cenci. the
father, was a man of notoriously evil
character. He was cruel also. and at
her trial Beatrice deposed that during
the last months OF his life, when she was
a woman Of Twenty-Five he frequently