The New York herald., 1922-05-21

4
fort in life. One feels everything
in the world so sympathetically
ridiculous; one can't be angry
when one looks at penguin.
Certainly nobody ever began an
essay on happier premise than Mr..
Eaton begins his ON Penguin Per-
sons" Other essays and sketches
there are in this latest of his books;
two dozen others, in fact, and all
well put, chuckling with proper
| penSivenesS, aromatic and cordial.
But it is in his first of them that
Mr.. Eaton tells perhaps the most
and tells it best. A Penguin Person
is, it seems, possessed of comfort
able, personal righteousness that
! transcends wit, sublimates drollery
and canonizes him as something
more than "the life of the party"
BY his Penguinity shall ye know him
and love him. Also laugh at him.
Your laughter is his Penguinal value.
Mr.. Eaton points out that Penguin
Persons are the saviors of times of
stress and nervousness. Good nat
ured, light headed copy readers are
the salt of city desks, he says. And,
no doubt, of coal mines, canal zones
and first line trenches. The sad re-
| joinder is this: that foremen, over
seers and officers usually belong, by
| virtue of their salaries and shoulder
bars, to solemner branch of the
animal kingdom which wouldn't
know Penguin Person from pars-
nip. A Penguin Person may be
loved and back slapped by many
but he'll never be a bank president.
Having at any rate Established a
delightful sort Of literary Penguin
acity, Mr.. Eaton goes on to discuss,
| in these essays of fifteen years writ
| ing, a multitude of things poetic,
dramatic, reminiscent, romantic, with
woods and gardens crossed by city
streets and middle age sprigged with
the philosophy of mumblety peg.
When he speaks of the theater, as
he does in more than one compart-
ment, he exercises the authority of
an expert and critic; when he sings
of the one fingered method-he sings
with an ardor that whimsicality
can't cool. When he goes at verse
and versifiers it is as both a writer
and a reader, carpenter and GUS
| toner
He breaks. for instance, one long
American poet, Frederick Goddard
Tuckerman-the Robert Frost Of
1864, he characterizes him. He dis
cusses New Poetry and the Linger-
ing Line" and you'll agree with him,
willy nilly, whether or not you grant
that reciting is the test of verse. He
ory gem book to all the nice little
quotations (mostly from Longfellow,
be assured) that made his youth
moral and miserable.
Sometimes. as in the urban pic
lures of a panorama that he calls
1.-The Twilight VEIL" or as in the
sappy springtimes he describes from
a New England garden and Ten
nessee hollow, Mr.. Eaton's prose is a
rich treat, banquet grand. Some
times, in observations like 1.-The Bub-
bic, Reputation" it is crisp and
cracking salad:
who was Lord Raglan?" he asks,
cor was he lord? He is a kind of
overcoat sleeve now. Who was Mr..
Macintosh? Was it Lord Brougham,
too? Gasoline has extinguished his
Immortality. Gladstone has become
bag, Gainsborough is a hat. The
beautiful Madame Pompadour, be-
loved of kings, is a kind OF hair cut
now. The Mikado of Japan is a joke,
set to music, heavenly music, to be
sure, but with its tongue in its
angelic cheek.
The miscellany is quite all as nim-
BILE minded as that. 1t ends, as all
good meals should, with Pepper
mints." You have been sitting at
table in New York, the Cumberland
Plateau, Twin Fires and many other