The New York herald., 1920-12-26
ABOUT AUTH RS

guiltily reminded of Booth, who once read the
encyclopedia from beginning to end.
/ don't know how that young man could
have walked about the streets much with
the Tapping girl and read as he did. anyway.
In recently printed confession he admits
even in his very early youth devouring
of Oliver Optic Henry James, Daudet (prob-
ably Sappho). Howells, Beadles Dime Novels
and Beadles Half Dime Novels GuiZot's His
tory of France the usual monthly, grave In
spection of the St. Nicholas magazine and,
when there was no dancing class to go to,
the encyclopedia He remembers that he
liked the Beadle classics about as much as
the Guizot statistics and this we find en-
couraging. not only because like the
Beadles of life even if don't the Guizots,
but that in some teasing way this eclecticism
of reading is Booth Harrington himself, the
formdability of his intellect pleasantly tenn
pered by very human qualities that emanate
directly from cardiac virtues
Does Harrington Do Penance VicariousIy
As He Views Youth With Mature Eyes?
And yeti pause long time for / am not
going to be able to say this and please every
body-he is like some of his baser charac-
ters in his books, rather, l should say he
WAS like some of them in spite of what
he is now. II there ever has been writer
who can crawl outside of his own shell
and view his youth from afar it is this
l.. L
pretty hard on himself hard on his clothes,
and shoes and banjo He hangs them on his
meanest cubs, he does not give them to the
dear. ragged fellows of his brain. He boots
at them: he takes away their money. They
lose the pretty girl. 1t Is as though, with his
present sense of values, he would whim-
scally wash himself clean of all the young
snobbsh days in our town by this sort of
literary exposure.
Mr.. Harrington, II he cares to bother about
it, will say that I am wrong the whole
Harrington family will be bewildered and
indignant; such of those who knew him
best when he drew, and sang, and read ency-
clop@dias will not have the smallest idea
what I am talking about (Which is as 1t
should be- but dare to contend that in one
character, at least, he has done penance.
An author draws upon life for his types
only as a composer would use the scale for
his succession of notes. I know that-it has
always been my contention. 1t is in Mr..
Harrington alone that 1 detect the unload
ing Of mean concepts of Importance upon
a luckless character as a purging of the
spirit.
Indiana Magic in Washington Square
Puts Out Greenwich Village Lights
This may be put down as an impertinence
but 1t is conviction not to be treated con-
temptuously for the reason that II is a con-
viction. 1t places me in the same approved
position In lie as the conscientious objector
AT least we are in earnest. You may know
how much 1 am in earnest when / say that
1 cannot read some of Tarkingtons books
on Hoosier life without an old miasma of
unrest settling down upon me. Washington
square, my habitat, loses it's cosmopolitan
cheeriness. The swift run of French phrases
the calculations of the Italians are smoth-
cred by an effluvia OF Hoosier dialect
Cant you help it?" a fellow student once
said to when first came East Help
what" asked. "The wav Won talk md