The New York herald., 1921-08-07

| IMPRESSIONS AND COMMENTS.
Second Series. 1914-1920. BY Have
lock Ellis. Houghton Miffiin Com
.pany.
A MONG the colder philosophic and
! ~ scientific treatises on modern
social themes. it warns the
heart to come upon a book that seems
to come out of experience rather than
speculation. Mrs. Ellis wrote of the
future as one who lived in it. with the
poetic truth of a Dante. She informs
her prophecies and makes of the hope
| of social progress a realized paradise.
| Though it be invisible to-day, such
faith must bring it into being to-mor-
| row.
For the new world, when it comes,
will be a true birth. renascence,
quickened in the hearts of living and
loving men and women. 1t cannot
be called inconceivable, for it is al
ready conceived and the sceptic can
no more reason it away than he can
reason the life out of a grain of wheat.
Marguerite Tracy thus describes tie
book in an Introductory note:
Written originally as essays and
lectures, and without the authors final
revisions, these papers have the in
formality and colloquialism of the
spoken rather than the written word,
and are left with much of the spon-
taneous character of the spoken expo
sition on their heads. Presenting Eer
as they do at widely different periods
of her intensely active and practical
| life, they form a singularly valuable
manual for any thinking man or
woman of less experience, less stimu-
lating environment, or less intuitive
faculty for probing to the quick of
things"
The picture of Mrs. Ellis, from three
hands, in the Introductory pages alone
would justify the book. Marguerite
Tracy says that before she had met
her size followed the trail of her lee
ture tour across America. And the
women who had heard the voice of
\ this prophet of a new day were left
in the mood of the Disciples, who said:
Did not our hearts burn within us?"
| In a sense, this English woman gave
her life to bring such light as size had
to America, for the exhaustion result
ing from the trip is said to have has
tened her death in 1916. But she
poured an intensity through her fifty
five years that gave them a measure
| less value.
The fifteen chapters are divided un-
der the two heads: Love and Mar
riage; and The New Civilization.
There is no use trying to give a rea-
soned outline of the contents. for they
/ are suggestive rather than systematic.
One may be reminded of Carpenters
book, Loves Coming of Age" or of
Ellen Keys writings. But the tone is
individual. Here are a few character
istic sentences:
when sitting by the side of Judge
Tory in the Chicago Court of Domestic
Relations and listening to the silly or
tragic episodes which divide married
people, lovers and parents, 1 noted
that not one case would have come
before the Judge during the morning
I sat in court if economic freedom for
woman had been her civic right"
Perhaps the best way to arrive at
solution is to try to form an esti-
mate as to the real value of woman in
the community, not only as sex be-
ing but as a human being. !.
Her misfortune hitherto has lain in
the fact that her maternal powers have
been the chief reason for her depend
ance. The future civilization will
probably reverse this attitude"
Happiness is a definite art and not
an accident. for ii is beyond accident
even beyond analysis. IT is an art of
the inner life. a result of wise cultiva-
ton. 1t is sometimes bought at a
great price, but the payment is well
worth while It is often pain forged
into peace and the personal merged
into the universal"
Their friends declared that Mr. and
Mrs. Ellis approached the ideal COM
radeshp that deserves the name of
happy marriage" Certainly a read
ing of these two books near together
leaves an effect of harmony in the
mind--"not like to like but like in
difference" They are both the ex-
preston of beings thoroughly alive,
unconquerably resisting the tendency
to harden, to conventionaliZe.
Ellis is a scientist but he has not
permitted a study of external fact to
lessen his keen delight in beauty in
the spiritual realities, in the creative
or artistic aspect Of life. He writes
of music. painting, literature. Here
is a note on a change in the attitude
toward books that comes with years:
TT often strikes me how different
reading is when one has garnered in
the greater part of life's experiences
from what II was when one was still
at the seedtime of life. When one
Is very young, to read is as it were to
pour continuous stream Of water on
a parched and virginia. plain. The soil
seems to have an endless capacity to
drink up the stream. sometimes with
prolonged perpetual rapture, some
times with impartial calm indifference.
endlessly. unpausingly, with never a
disturbing echo.
But when one is no longer young.
to read is a very different matter. The
parched plain has become luxuriant
forest, with lakes and streams in the