Evening star., 1933-09-10
10y SARAH @. BOWERMAN
Il Timely Volume ON Cuba and Her Troubles.
Womeu Look Upon Ameriea-Ne7v
Fiction fmAutumu.

Macmillan Co.
A MEXICAN history has for the most part
been masculine both in its making and its
writing Only in recent years have women
taken a hand in the facts and the records.
But from the beg inning of the seventeenth
century a few exceptional women have had
their opinions about the history being made by
the men and have expressed them when there
was opportunity Mrs Beard has collected
and arranged some of these writings of Amer-
can women in such way to make fairly
continuous narrative. She states her purpose
as Ito illustrate, if in fragmentary way. the
share of women in the development of Ameri-
can society-their activity their thought about
their labor and their thought about the history
they have helped to make or have observed in
the making" Her sou,-j are letters. journals,
books magazine articles. In her photography
are represented some well-knoWn names, Of
pioneer women of the past and present day
writers on historical economic and sociological
subjects. Among the former are, of course,
Abigail Adams and Mercy Warren, sister OF
James Otis. both notable letter writers, and
Eliza Lucas Pinckney, letter writer and keeper
of journal in her Carolina home in the mid
die of the eighteenth century. For the period
of pioneering in the West, Mrs. Beard quotes
from Harriet Connor Browns Grandmother
Browns Hundred Years" Anna Howard Shaw's
The Story of Pioneer and NarcisSa Whit
whose opinions drawn upon for the period
of the feminist movement Lucretia Mott,
Lucy Stone Julia Ward Howe. Elizabeth Cady
Stanton ('History of Woman Suffrage), Har-
riot Stanton Blatch. Alice Stone Blackwell and
Carrie Chapman Gait Among the women
quoted in connection with present economic and
sociological problems are Edith Abbott, Jane
Adams. Josephine Goldmark Florence Kelley,
Annie Nathan Meyer and Mrs. John Marie
Van Worst
The participation oft IN leadership, of women
in the anti-slavery and temperance movements
is. very suitably. given much space As repre-
sentative Of the point of view Of the Southern
woman during the pre-Civil War period q letter
of Julia Gardiner Tyler wife of ex-President
John Tyler is quoted 1t written in 1853
to the Duchess of Sutherland and other ladies
of England who had just sent address to
the women Of America calling for their nation
wide action to end slavery" Mrs Tyler though
Northern by birth, waxed very indignant over
the interference of English women in the social
problems of the South. called attention
to the fact that England had encouraged the
slave trade in the Colonies and suggested that
the English ladies turn their attention to
philanthropy in their oWn country where the
need was great. Other Southern women eX
pressed themselves on the pro-slavery side and
Mrs Beard quotes them as well as Northern
anti-slavery writer's, such Lydia Maria Child,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The writings OF
Clara Barton and the Life of Clara Barton by
Percy H. Epler. show the relief work done by
women in the Civil War. Mr.. Epler says: She
(Clara Barton) could never be kept from the
firing line" An interesting extract telling of
life in New York in the post-Civil War period
is from "Recollections Grave and Gay "a de-
lightful account. by the way of the authors
personal life during and after the Civil War;,
by Constance Cary Harrison Mrs Burton Har-
rison). Mrs. Beard has co-ordnated her ma
terial we'll and her own comments show the same
serious fairness and balance of judgment which
are to be found in her other writings
"Womens Work in Municipalities" On Under
standing Women, and the chapters written by
her in The Rise of American Civilization. of
which she is co-author with her husband, DR..
Charles A. Beard.
NIGHT OVER FITCHS POND. By Cora Jar
rett. Boston Houghton Mifflin Co.
A STRANGE, gloomy, elusive tale is this of
u the backwoods CT the East. beginning at
the tragic end and moving backward, with
sudden breaks and reversals and the following
of hidden by-paths in the association of six
persons. In the heavy darkness of Monday
night before the late moon had risen over
Fitchs Pond. there were two circles of yellow
light in the living rooms of two little cottages,
the only ones on the shores of the pond. 1t
was midnight, and by one kerosene lamp sat
Rolf Deming, professor in small upstate New
York college: by an exact duplicate of his
kerosene lamp, in the other cottage, sat Walter
Drake librarian in another small college watch
ing by the cot on which lay the body Of his dead
friend julius Nettleton. Before his drowning
on the day before when his canoe upset in the
deepest part of the pond. Julius had been in
structor in chemistry in the college where
Walter was librarian. Now, Walter gazed
at the thin, "high-nosed PROFESSIONAL face"
nearly, but not quite noble in death, he could
almost forget the fussy, neurotic egotist and
tyrant julius had been. From his seat in the
circle of lamplight and he walks restlessly