New-York tribune., 1909-10-09
BOOKS AND AUTHORS.
Current Talk of Things Present and
to Come.

10 [ Omc.
Nine Modjeska's experiences as a dramatic
artist in many countries are recounted in the
memoirs which she completed only a short time
before she seized by her last illness She
knew many of the most interesting personages
of her time and her "reminiscences should be
worth reading. They are to be published in the
pages Of The Century"
Mr. H. Whitney, the friend of the two
plorers Cook and Peary has undertaken TO
write for The Outlook Magazine" an account Of
his relations with them and description of the
runting expedition in the North which brought
him into those relations He is said to have
passed through some thrilling adventures when
In pursuit of bears musk oxen and seal. The
first paper of the series is to appear in the De
cember number of the magazine.
The "reminiscences OF old Lady Cardigan lately
published in London, have reused a tempest OF
wrath and started innumerable quarrels This
dame of eighty-odd has rehearsed most of the
unpublished scandals of her era and people
asking we are told. rs Lady Cardigan right in
slandering the dead?" A third edition of her
book is already in hand. and it is the chief topic
in London society 1t may be added that she
has not even spared herself in her rectals. and
one newspaper at least compares her with
Pepys
We are in receipt of the somewhat startling
news that there is to be published soon the au-
photography f-Shakespeare, 1t is not shaped
however. in conventional fashion Mr. Frank
Harris, who Is, in measure. a recognized au-
thority on matters connected with the poet, be-
lieves that the Plays are not so impersonal as
they are commonly supposed to be, and that he
has discovered in them what the title Of his
forthcoming book describes. THE Man Shake
speare and His Tragic Life story" Play by play
the London Globe" says. Mr.. Harris has
constructed the finest spirit that has yet been
born among men, telling us in his preface that
this tragedy of tragedies. In which Lear is
only one scene-this rise to intensest life and
widest vision and fall through abysms Of de-
spair and madness to exhaustion and death
can be followed experience by experience. from
Stratford 70 London and its thirty years Of
passionate living. and then from London to viii
lage Stratford again, and the eternal shroud-
ing silence l remember being not a little
struck by an article which Mr. Harris wrote in
Vanity Fair on what he declared to be Shake
speares own account lin The Comedy of Err
rors) of his first arrival in London"
A novelette, by Mr.. Maurice Hewlett is an
nounced for publication by the Harpers: and
about the time they will bring out a new
book by Mark Twain.
There is an exceedingly interesting passage on
the dangers to be encountered i'm hunting
elephants in Captain c. II. Stigand's just pub
lished book The Game of British East
Africa" II appears that they are not so great
as might be imagined that the proportion of
narrow shaves'' is larger in lion hunting.
AN elephant" says the author lis not destined
10y nature for the capture and killing of little
pygmy creature like man. When he gets angry
he rushes for the object of his rage with the in
tention Of doing him some sort of damage. If
he tramples him tusk through him.
or catches him up with his trunk and throws
him against tree. the chances are that there
will not be much left of the hunter. Owing
however to his own ronderous body and the
smalmess of his adversary in proportion and
also because of his defective eyesight he as
often not makes bad shot for his victim
either with trunk or tusk or, again. he may lose
the wind and pass by apparently without seeing
him" There are many stories concerning the
extreme wisdom and ingenuity of the huge
beast; but Captain Stisand does not suppose
that when he gets angry he has any very clear
idea OF what he intends to do:
After relieving his rage by one or two vigorous
some earth the lurking fear of mankind al the
back Of his mind redsserts itself, and whether or
no he has inished his victim he clears of Many
sportsman has lived to tell the tale some
great elephant having stood him he lay on
the ground, and Of its making bad shots for him
with its tusks. Some have been caught up and
thrown into sof, bushes, others have had elephants
passing iisht over lein and nave yet escaped un-
hurt, when but one second OF pressure beneath
one OF the four feet would have meant instant
death Other sportsmen have been less lucky:
az these some have been torn limb from limb:
many have been speared through the lungs or
head by tusk or crushed to death by the weight
of the animal and, again, many more have been
trunk
brains dashed out against trees their arms or
legs broken.
Shakespeare appears in the list OF holiday
picture books Mr. l-ugh Thomson has left the
Irm garden alleys of his beloved eighteenth
century and has ventured into the wildwood of
las You Like It," For Omars 'Rubaiyat" Mr.
Edmund DnIac has made a serlns oe ill,..tr.