New-York tribune., 1920-02-16
Books

~We have received from D. Appleton
& Co. Foreign Exchange" by A. c..
Whitaker, and on the jacket we read:
This volume sets forth clearly the
principles Of foreign exchange, illus
trating them amply by means of prac-
tical examples
However, we have not yet come
across any practical example quite as
vivid as that furnished by a financial
friend, who tells US that if an American
will take a dollar to Germany and have
it changed into marks he will be able to
buy 233 glasses Of beer.
We found, as we said the other day,
the terrible and long delayed confession
of the heroine in Cleveland Moffett's
Possessed" little disappointing
Again and again Penelope would init
mate that she had something of most
awful nature to disclose, and she would
begin, zone night on Fall River steam
boat" - But each time, until a late
chapter in the book, something hap
pened to interrupt her. Then for the
fifth and last time she began, cone sui
try night on a Fall River steamboat"
We began to wonder whether we
should tell Mr.. Sumner about it or let
him find out for himself, but when she
finished we were thoroughly disap-
pointed, and Mr.. Sumner won't get any
thrill out Of it either
Mr.. Moffett is very much worried
about the double standard. "Men," he
writes, twill abandon sex excesses, as
they have abandoned drinking excesses,
gradually through education"
1t should be four-year course, we
think, with perhaps a little post-grad-
uate study. The degree, naturally,
would be B. c., Bachelor of Celibacy.
If the architect of your correspond
ent's library" writes R. H. B., "has
been as sympathetic as those of several
new libraries Of my acquaintance, there
will be an informal row of chairs, deep
ly upholstered, before the hospitabe
hearth of the reading room. On either
wall Hanking the fireplace there will be
certain shelves which, by the nature of
man and the art of the builder, will be
the most frequented of the building.
The choice of books for these shelves.
then, Is an affair to be approached in
reverence and humility, and with a very
true standard Of literary value. These,
for many, will be the first to be read.
and by them will the other volumes be
judged. They would be chosen, if mine
were the responsibility, from the works
OF those authors who use words most
nicely. Francis Bacon, Walter Pater.
Rudyard Kipling and W. H. Hudson
most certainly meet this qualification.
Bacon and Pater are delicate and Judi
cial, Kipling intuitively vigorous in his
Anglo-Saxon phrasing, and Hudson,
perhaps beyond all others, happy in his
choice OF words. Language, for him. is |
the fawless crystal through which we
see his thoughts and feel (for he has
made the substance non-insulatlng) his
emotions. Galsworthy states it rather
pedantically: ITO use words so true and
simple that they oppose no obstacle to
the flow Of thought from mind to mind.
and yet by juxtaposition of word sounds
set up in the recipient continuing emo
tlon or grati6cation--this is the essence
OF style; and Hudson's writing has pre-
eminently this double quality A great
many Of US turned to Hudson with the
JOY with which we read Flaubert and
De Maupassant. He has with them, and
much less studiedly, chosen the 'mots
'ustes' OF our modern English.
From this class of reading the H.
n1ary frequentyrs could proceed, with a
ctaucal spirit dnconsciously refined, to