The New York herald., 1921-12-04
The Whispering Gallery

L of certain literary trend, are
somewhat in the position Of man
who has the privilege, if it may be
called that, of witnessing his own
funeral.
Never before in the history of the
world have famous men been given
such an opportunity of sitting up
with the corpse Of their own great
ness, be it real or imagined. 1t is
not so long since that it was con-
sidered indelicate to print intimate
observations of men during their life
time, whatever might be said of them
orally.
That taboo has about as much
vogue to-day as the petticoat. Per-
sonally, we have notion that when
statesman engages new secretary
nowadays he says to himself: II
suppose this fellow will be getting
out a book in a few months, What
l Know About His Nibs' or Under
the Premier's Skim"
The public sees the great, and they
see themselves, mirrored, close upped,
revealed and interpreted. The pub
lie appetite for these revelations ap-
pears to be Unsuitable. It's a healthy
trend, and a normal appetite, but we
wonder what old Attila the Hun
would think about it, or even the
good Queen Victoria!
When we looked over the book an
nouncements and saw listed there
the fifth volume of Edward Chan.
ning's History of the United States"
we smothered yell of triumph. Here
was book about which we could
enlighten our readers without SO
much as a glance at the chapter
headings.
For when we were junior at Har-
ward it was our privilege, and
pleasant one, to sit twice week in
the big lecture room at Sever Hall
and listen to stout little gentleman
with the brightest eyes ever placed
in human head while he discoursed
forcibly and often explosively on the
rum traffic in the early days of Mas
sachusetts.
1t may be to our discredit, but
about all we can remember of the
lectures that dealt with Colonial his
tory up to the Revolution, in the way
of concrete knowledge, is the fact
that some Of the best Massachusetts
families founded their fortunes on
rum. Prof. Claiming is partly to
blame for that. He used to roar the
word rum like buccaneer, and we
can vouch for the fact that he used
1.-THE word, that is-repeatedly.
1t was his particular Joy to blast
away at the conventional dogmas Of
school book history. He assured us
solemnly that Washington never took
command of the Continental army
under the Washington elm in Cam
bridge. Nor did he hesitate to in
form us that not all the ploughs were
left standing in the fields when the
call to arms came in 1175, as some Of
the histories would have us believe.
He didn't use the word Stacker, but
that was only because 1t hadn't been
coined then.
And so we can say this much about
the fifth volume of Prof. Channing's
history, which covers, by the way, the
period 1S15-1S4S-that II Is the work
Of a man who looks his facts over
carefully before he swallows them,
and is not deceived because they have
passed unchallenged as truth by
those who have written before him.
Our recollections of Prof. Chan
ning's class moved us to dig into an
old box of papers, in which we dis
covered several erudite essays on
early American history. AS we read
them over we were much impressed
with the manner in which they mar
shalled historical evidence with their
casual references to men and meas
ures that we could have sworn we
had never heard Of, and their sage
discerrment of the mistakes made by
the fathers of the Republic.
We could not Immediately believe
that the name signed to these essays
was our own, but there 1t was. The
matter they contained was just as
new to us as 1t was when we wrote
them for History 10. We fell into a
dark meditation on the fruits of col
lege learning.
The publication in book form of
Don Marquis's Noah an Jonah an
Cap'n John Smith" has its draw
backs-for Don Marquis. We should
N ~ I;Iya IN az a "a hara hoxv MANI, Alma