Evening star., 1923-05-12
The Library Table
BY THE BOOKLOVER

out formal education--a person more
over belonging to the servant class
is given in The Adventure of Liv-
ing" by John st. Loe Strachey, edi-
tor Of the London Spectator. Mrs
Leaker had first been q nurse, then
cook, then housekeeper, before she
became the autocrat of the household
of Mr.. Strachey's father, as general
manager and head nurse. She was a
unique character. Mr.. Strachey says
OF her:
Mrs. Leaker was brought up in a
poor household in an age when illit-
eracy, alas. seemed the natural fate
OF the poor. But you could no more
have kept education from her than
you could have kept food from a hun
CRY ioness. She was determined to
get it somehow. and get it she did
She taught herself to read before she had
reached womanhood. and taught her
self by pure force Of her will, adapt
ing, curiously enough, what would
now be described as the Montessori
method. She opened books and read
them somehow or other TIL she un-
derstood the meaning of the words"
y
This wonderful woman once she
had learned to read did not stop at
the elementary or the second rate in
literature. She was a great lover of
Milton, and knew Shakespeake SO
thoroughly that when any member Of
passage he would go TO Leaker rather
. -, H.
She read the Strachey children to
sleep with scenes from "Othello' and
Macbeth" She was familiar with
the longer poems Of Wadsworth, as
well as his lyrics. and appreciated
his philosophy Of life. Coleridge.
Southey. Crabbe. Gray, Dr.. Johnson,
Byron Tennyson and Browning were
among her favorites. Swinburne she
did not care for, as he reminded her,
she said, of IAN overheated conserva-
tory. too full of highly scented flow
ers to be pleasant" In commenting
on her influence over him, Mr.. Strachey
says:
III my friends find me, as fear
they. sometimes do. too fond of
making quotations, they must blame
threw quotations from the English
classics around her in a kind of hall
storm"
A love idyIl Of high and low, Vic
toria. knut Hamsun's latest novel
10 be translated. is very different
from the prose epics, Hunger" and
The Growth of the Soil" II is an
old tale retold. the love OF high
born girl for A Iow-born boy, with an
ending of the most delicate pathos.
Victoria. the lovely spoiled child of
Il. a Y1yr hns clA
meets Johannes, the miller's son, who
is fourteen. They meet again later,
as tall. exquisite young lads and sue
cessful young poet. but there Is
another suitor for Victoria and the
social gulf is too wide for Johannes
; to cross. Fate settles the matter
as a tragedy. The style of this story
is so simple and delicate that 1t seems
TO have little relation to the style OF
Hamsun's more rugged novels.
, Vivid pictures Of the political and
social life OF Washington in the 1s38s
viii be found in The Party Battles
of the Jackson Period by Claude
!G Bowers. The extraordlnary men
OF that period. says the author, are
usually presented 10 US as steel en-
cravings. hung high on the wall in a
dim light. i. That they lived in
houses. danced. gambled and drank.
fiattered and firted. gossiped and lied
in a Washington of unpaved streets
and sticky, black mud, made their way
to night conferences through dark,
treaGherous thoroughfares and played
| brilliant parts in d bedraggled, viii
lageIike capital is not apt to occur
70 one" The author strives in this
book TO make the reader realize that
they We're flesh and blood, and mere
| men TO their cotemporaries.. not al
ways heroic or even adHira BILE,
! life they lived in a capital peculiarly
crude and filled with grotesQue in
congruities" Perhaps the chapters
! that will be found most interesting
10 WaShingtonians are those on The
| Washington of the Thirties," Mrs.
! Eaton peggy ONeaD Demolishes the
Cabinet" and Kitchen Cabinet Por
! traits" particularly the parts on
! Amos Kendall. who later became
! Postmaster General and the founder
| Green.
| An anonymous war book OF 1915,
| called The Burning Spear" was a
! satire Of a single minded English
! man. who took very seriously the ut
! terances of newspapers and states
| men regarding war and peace and
, tried TO put what he read into actual
/ practice. Like his seventeenth CEN
| tury prototype. this modern Don
/ QuiXote got into numerous insuper-
able difficulties, An American edl-
! lished with John Ga!sworthy's name
| on the title page.
Ill SC oil nf
| trees and flowers. Lately he has been
! incensed at the sight of automobiles
! loaded with branches of dogwood. He
{ also recently saw people breaking
off blossom laden branches Of the
! Japanese cherry trees in Potomac
! Park-the vandals, He would like to
! suggest that there be put up on the
! roads around Washington some such
| signs as the late Enos Mills, the
| father of the Rocky Mountain Park,
had planted along the splendid roads
| of Colorado. They bore such legends as
/ these:
What do YOU want with an armful
of wild flowers" You can help keep
this region a beautiful wild garden
spare the wild flowers" "Thoughtless
people are destroying the flowers by
pulling them up by the roots or pick
| ing too many of them. Neither the
| roots nor the leafy stalks should be
Z; taken, and flowers, If taken, should be
I cut, not pulled" Those who pull
! flowers up by the roots or gather
them by handfuls will be condemned
! by all worthy people,
| u j: X
! The most recent of the many studies
! of Edgar Allan Poe is by a physi-
! cian-Dr. John w. Robertson-and is
entitled Edgar A. Poe: a Psychopath
| 10 Studyv Dr Rohertson'S thesis ia