Evening star., 1934-05-27
0Y SARAH BOWERMAN
The Secretary Of fLabm5 Ne7O Book, 'People
at Work' Chinese History and
Culture --latest Fiction.

years shared honorS with publishers and the
press. Books innumerable have been offered
the intelligent and unintelligent public. Al
most anything has found some readers and be-
levers. Even the best of the books on China
have been confined to some one phase, usually
the events of the past few years. since serious
Japanese aggression. DIR. Latourette says that
he intends this work to give the present genera
ton what The Middle Kingdom" by Samuel.
Wells Williams Oast revision, 1889, gave
parents and grandparents.
THE ELDER HENRY JAMES. BY Austin
Warren. New York: The Macmillan Co
TO BE the father Of two such distinguished
! sons as William James, psychologist and
Henry James, novelist, is perhaps enough Of
life work for any man. Mr.. Warren believes,
however, that the elder Henry James was dis
tinguished in his own right, both as personality
and as thinker" and he has been studying him
through his writings for more than 10 years.
He here attempts to trace his philosophical
development against the background of that
exciting period, the 20 or 30 years i'm
mediately preceding the Civil War. He finds
his personality battling and, it must be con-
feSsed, fails to carry conviction of the impor-
tance of his ideas. Albany. N. Y, was the
James family home where the founder of the
family in America, Of Irish descent settled in
1893. Tobacco and salt were the basis Of the
James family fortune, which had grown to
considerable size by the time when the elder
Henry James was born Had the family been
poor his abilities would probably have been
turned into more practical and materialistic
channels. AS 1t was. he had leisure to be a
dilettante.
After his course at Union College his father
wished him to study law, but he made only a
brief attempt in that field before turning to
theology and entering Princeton Theological
Seminary. He found the place given over to
"smug professionalism" and producing Phari-
seeism instead of spirituality" and left to
search for further education and philosophic
truth In Europe. His experimental personality
and his attitude toward established educational
systems are markedly suggestive Of those Of
Henry Adams, also q man Of sufficient wealth
and leisure to be able to dip lightly into many
things without permanent anchorage. He was
an independent thinker and Stunned organiza-
tions. He believed in Swedenborgianism, but
with his own interpretations. He was Social
ist and follower, to certain extent. OF
Fourier, but objected to the group methods Of
the Fourierists. He was thorough individual
ist and developed philosophy Of his own
which blended religion and socialism. 1t is to
be suspected that II any school Of his followers
had grown up, he would have changed his
philosophy. Mr.. warrens final estimate is
that "his vision Of Society as the Redeemed
form of Man takes its place with those Ameri-
can apocalypses which stimulate the imagina-
tion and stir the faith" His Judgment that
the books of the elder Henry James are worthy
of comparison with the works of Melville, Whit
man, Carlyle and Emerson has found little
confirmation in the years that have elapsed.
ALICE JAMES. Her Brothers. Her Journal.
Edited, with an Introduction, by Anna
Robson Burr. New York Dodd, Mead & Co.
IN THE published letters of both William
! and Henry James frequent reference is made
to the invalid sister, whose keen James mind
was unsubdued by illness and whose strong
family affection caused her to follow with eager
interest all the work of her brothers. They
returned her devotion and priced her companion
ship, her gay spirit wit, and caustic comments
On life and people even when such were directed
at them. Her last years were spent with Henry
James in England, where she recorded in her
journal her comparisons of Victorian England
with Victorian New England, the scene of her
earlier life. Her health at first improved with
the change of residence and she was able to
enjoy a pleasant but restricted social life.
Henry James wrote at the time: Her vigour
of mind decision of character ETC., wax daily
and her conversation is brilliant and semillant."
Personal affection never warped her judgment
and she often shocked Henry-not William
by seeing things he would not see, by saying
things he would never say" She was too much
the daughter of her philosopher father, the
elder Henry James, to be afraid to follow her
own thoughts wherever they might lead.
Mrs. Burr opens her biographical sketch Of
Alice James with the arrival at Concord Mass,
by stagecoach in 1859. of the elder Henry James
of Albany, N. Y, with his two younger boys,
whom he was about to place in school spon-
sored by Ralph Waldo Emerson. These two
boys became Civil War veterans and business
men in the Northwest and after the deaths of
the father and mother the tie between them
and the other three not strong that
which always bound william and Henry and