The sun., 1919-10-12

GLENN HUNTER eooc HELEN HHNES@
M CLARENCE" TIE TARkiNGTOk%
PLAY ROW RUNNING
BY ARTHUR B. MAURICE.

\ TEWTON BOOTH TARKING-
M TON is the most striking and
forceful personality in Ameri-
can letters since the days of Mark
Twain. That is not the expression of
an opinion, but the statement of a fact.
Moreover, unlike Mr.. Clemens, Booth
Harrington owes nothing of his vogue
to the personal contact which comes
from assiduous cultivation of the lee
ture platform or to such devices for
harmless exploitation as the famous
Mark Twain white suit. Most of the
few million Americans who think of
him with certain sense of proprietor
ship base the sentiment on nothing
more than their intimacy with Penrod
Schofeld, or William Sylranus Barter,
or BibbS of The Turmoil" or, to go
back TO the earlier days, Joe Louden
OF The Conquest of Canaan" or John
HGrkleSs, the Gentleman from Indiana.
Inc Few thousand who do know him
are inclined TO think of the man first
and the invented characters afterward,
for in 'Tark" they recognize some of
the attributes of every one of those
characters, and in addition a person
atty that is unlike any other person
ality In the world.
When the World Was Young.
II Is not merely that he is a great
man to-day, in the ripeness of his
achievement. He always was some
ming Of great man. He was a great
man even in the bitterest years of his
me- when, figuratively like his own
1ohn HAIRLESS, he was sitting on a
rail- fence in Indiana, and the manu-
scripts sent out were coming back &C
eompanied by the conventional rejec-
uoh slips, and a good many of these
persons of his native Indianapolis who
osd seen him grow UP from boyhood
were happily deploring the unfulfll-
ment of his promise, and expressing
'he nope that he would see a light
ana stop fussing with literature and
turn 10 something within his powers
ne mad been great man at Phillips
| N'A-N NO pa anu CAPlOlls
lhere, his essays in oratory and au-
Worship his work as illustrator of the
elass year book. are still remembered
u AZ PURDUE he was again a great man
sha then he went to Princeton, and
mere speedily laid the foundations OF
anew greatness which still persists In
we senlie "reminiscences of every other
20 man, who invariably begins the
story: How one day he and Tark."
four or five years ago, in the pages
the Princeton Alumni Weekly
Jesse Lynch Williams wrote from his
memories Of "Tark" when the world
was young. To Princeton Booth Tark.
Iston went as a Fresh-Junior, &
young man who was slightly oldel
man most of his classmates. who was
sVnhething OF Man of the World, who
,D' seen life, and whose dash mani
'es'cd itself in his feet, on which he
sore shoes with fancy cloth uppers
=" uat little world which the invader
~~'d Mr. Williams was then some
AAK OF a parsonage. There were
ra'h responsibilities upon his shout
esis and manifold calls upon his valu.
W.. sU.e time So 1t was with just LITTLE
ns,"se OF WEAKNESS that he regarded
s brothers. letter asking him to looh
wv Tor the young man who was com.
sas s out Of the West. Like most of the
u"o"s one was enjoined to "look up,
N's one was likely to prove a bore. 81
~ reply though dutiful, was without
,.I,'nusiasm. 1t elected the reprovinl
hngton." ' w "
N sne FIRST time that the grave younl
spUr'ahl Senior saw the Responsible.
mat was thrust upon him the Re.