The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-10-12


 about literary people and events in Mo bile. We learned lot, which we wish we had space to pass. on, about the work of M E. Henry -Ruffin, Frances R. Durham, Hilton Howell Jones, and Kate Ayers Robert Miss Lyon, unlike Bernard, Shaw, is somewhat perturbed by the turn of contemporary writing once she has published some stories of old Mobile which she has done, she says, T am sure 1 shall never again perpetrates a short story, for 1 simply could not, t0 save my immortal soul, write even page featuring q cabaret, Iipsticks. and the inwardness of auto mobiles"
 "A source book for the fiction writer" is the way the recent publica- ton of the Texas Folklore society inpresses us. ~The book is called ',Lesenss of Texas and is ellited for the society by J. Frank Dobie. Legends of buried Treasure, of the supernatural, of lovers, pirates, mysterious prairie steeJs, Indiana, flowers-al these succeed each other rapidly. When every state makes equal effort to preserve her inheritance Of legendry one must perforce be Opti-
 
 future. "I must confess" says Mir. Dobie, ia great hope that some man or woman who understands will seize upon these legends and use them as Irving used the legends of the Hudson and the Catskills, as Whittier used the legends of New England" Piratical in hbit and disposition Ourself, we must admit that the Lafitte stories proved llast attractive to us
 In .."Goin' on Fourteen" (DOran) Irwin Cobb turns what is for him, we believe, new trick-a story of ado !escent boyhood. The story it is hard ly novel since it makes no pretense tu plot--is the chronicle of one years events in the life of John c. Calhoun Custer Junior ("Juney'' to the gang), beginning with castor oil incident and progressing through episodes of a cats running amuck with can on her head. boy fight, circus day, hunt for buried treasure; a runaway adventure, and q smallpox sign hung on an enemy preach CTS house on the evening the clergyman. was all prepared to receive surprise marty" and shower from the members If his church. The culminatiOn comes in :Juney's" first suit of long pants with vest an every thing"
 Coin on Fourteen belongs to that period when youngsters were wearing Lord FontlerOy suits whenever fond niofhers were able to make them do so, rJuney's" mother wasn't). The events came about in Kentucky town in those days, Cobb says, when "a rubber tired buggy was the last word in ve- hicular refinement; and it was felt that civilization which also had provided the telephone, the mustache cup and silver dollars set in the floor Uf the Palmer house barber shop could dc little, if anything, more for love of beauty and the progress of mankind or this surfeited planet Leisurely, pleas ant, the story makes good reading though one will probably miss the rOl | licking humOr so many readers have learned to associate with Cobb5s name Coin Fourteen" is a chonicle of a boyhood less romatic than Tom Sawyer's and. for that reason, probably more natural.
 Charles Wharton Stork continues tc 1 make Contemporary Verse" one of tht IIaost readable of the adverse publica tions. The October issue is helped on its merry way by four southern poets 2 series of nine sonnest by Clement Wood q Ballad of The Gypsy" by Virginia Lyme Tunstall and ''TO, Autumn" by Mary Siuton Leitch, two poets of tn, Norfolk group. and Leaves" by Grace II. Ruthenburg of Louisville.
 We are indebted to Archibald Rut ledge for copy of his last volume o verse, ''South of Richmond" We should of course. have read it some month, ago The book is as full of what is gen orally considered Southern atmosphere as anything we have seen in loni time, but somehow or other we think Mir. Rutledge's poetry more dida0tic,