The New York herald., 1921-02-13

(" ACH generation, acting on the prin-
r. ciple that self preservation is natures
- first law, gets rid of as many books
as possible left by the preceding generation.
It doesn't intend. If it can help itself. to be
swamped by a lot Of literary excess baggage.
But each generation also has been
brought up by the preceding one and until
it forgets that there ever We're such things
as swaddling clothes is apt to venerate one
or more of it's fathers literary gods it
may keep this veneration until it is itself
succeeded and 1t may at the first opportu-
nifty throw down these gods Is the latter
act to be called profane or an engaging ex-
hibition of Independent judgment?
Tennyson, Browning Dickens, Thackeray
Hawthorne, Arnold, Emerson, Thoreau are
among our elder gods a generation still
active and still advisory placed their busts
in hall of fame. Are they secure in their
niche or has the iconoclastic present gener-
alton hurled them into the Lethe that al
ways flows -perilously near any hall of
fame?
Publisher Says SCOTS Works
Would Find No Market To-day
IF Scott were alive and should offer pub
Usher the manuscript of '"The Dwarf" The
Antiquary," RED Gauntlet" or any of his
similar novels, 1t would be rejected without
mercy. "Ivanhoe" might get by, but not
before the author had rewritten 1t to make
more prominent the love interest. Yes,
feel confident that most publishers would
insist on Ivanhoe's marriage to Rebecca
before they could see a possible profit in
the book.
scott isn't read by the young generation
chiefly because he is prolix and circuitous
His manner is utterly out dated. The fact
that a nouredu richie is apt to buy set of
for ihrar
The foregoing statement by a publisher
was made confidently. In the list of authors
whom everybody pretends to know and no.
body reads he placed the names of Jane
Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Georges Sand,
Bulwer-Lytton, George Eliot and almost all
the famous Victorian prose writer's Thack-
cray and Dickens. said he are known to
the last generation born In the nineteenth
century chiefly by excerpts from their
works.
"Thackeray!" exclaimed young woman
at an evening affair when the novelist's
name was mentioned why should read
him? He knew his monde Perhaps he
never could imagine mine"
SO as these names once so universally
honored hardly figure now except in a course
of rhetoric It is wise for the man who wants
to keep up to ask who has succeeded them.
Instead OF Emerson, Bergson or Freud or
Ouspensky; instead of Dickens o. Henry
in Tennyson's niche Carl sandberg
Who reads Thoreau. man of one book, but
a book nobody but Thoreau could have writ
ten? Who prefers the cryptic Emerson to
the diluted Mrs. Eddy? Who reads Mark
Twain?
Even Huck Finn Is Losing
His Power of Fascination
His publishers say that everybody reads
Mark Twain, and as his books are in nearly
every household library indications of pub
lie taste fail In his case. A stimulus was
given to this author by the success OF
play made from one of his books, say the
Librarians in charge of circulation rooms.
but mainly he is falling into neglect.
The question was taken to the children's
room. How about Huck Finn and Tom Saw
yer, don't the boys revel in their adven-
tures7
mot TO the extent folks imagine" said an
attendant. Boys do like these stories, but
not as they care for others that contain adj
ventures of a less realistic sort. The favor
ite books bows of to-dav haven't an IN