New-York tribune., 1921-11-20

! lorie Barstow Greenbe. Published by
podd, Mead & Co. Price, $3.50
Ut is not given to every girl who
starts off we'll chaperoned on q
trip to China and Japan to find a
lover and plight her troth on top of
fuJiyama, else the steamship lines of
the Pacific might reasonably expect to
increase their dividends with the next
quarter. However that may be, the
romance Of Marjorie Barstow lends
zest to Marjorie Barstow Greenbie's
fascinating book of travel and adven-
ture, 'In the Eyes of the East"
There is a gay nonchalance with
which the author first steps out from
under the wing of the bishop and the
bishops lady to the deck Of a house
boat in the Ming River that would, if
the preface had not already done so,
prepare the reader for almost any
thing out of the ordinary, from hus-
band to a shipwreck. The Ming was
reputed to be full of pirates, but a
village in the interior promised more
than the mission which was The bishops
goal, and with an airy promise to meet
the party at Hingwha, eighty miles
away, Miss Barstow set off
Her white skin and yellow hair made
her an object Of curiosity to the
Chinese women in particular, who
could not decide how old she was and
who pitied her audibi]y because she
4
had no husband. Japan was to settle
both matters definitely, the one
through the ubiquitous japanese de-
tcctives, who demanded to know her
age on every occasion, and the other,
as aforementioned. on Fujiyama, but
for the time being Miss Barstow "lost
face" completely.
The story of that dawn on Tujiyama
must be left to the author, but in con-
it was war time and cable connec-
tions between Japan and America were
cut off-to await cable from home.
From that point On the unexpected
happened. in rapid succession, and for
months she Travelled alone to Burma
to India, to Ceylon, through The Suez,
to Spain and finally to Boston, where
the record ends in the fashion ap-
proved by truth and fiction.
Throughout the spirited and ex-
tremely we'll written narrative the
characters which the author meets
stand out vividly against the varied
Oriental background. There is the
squat, brown, little "Miss Lulu more
Chinese than English despite her un-
mixed ancestry, who kept half matri
archial surveillance over remote noun
tain hamlets in southern China. There
is Princess Der Ling, former first lady
in waiting to the Empress Dowager; a
Chinese feminist, an outlaw bride, who
had picked up American ideas of free
dom while an indemnity scholar in this
country; the bushwhacker from South
Africa, who proposed" but waited six
days before mentioning little obsta-
Gle to connubial bliss in the shape Of
wife and six children already acquired;
the homesick Englishmen of all sorts,
the half caste Circe aboard ship and
others far too numerous to mention.
In India Miss Barstow visited Tagorc
and found him less a mystic than a
scholar and poet, and sets it down as
her belief that he was wronged on his
trip to America by the emphasis laid
on his esoteric wisdom. Aside from
Tagore the author meets no one of
international note, but the charm of
the book lies in that very fact. 1t is
her observations of the typical indi-
viduals who 60 back and forth upon
the borderline where the two great civ
ilizations of the world are now coming
together"-it is in these that the inter
est is held and the imagination stim-
ulated.