Evening star., 1934-11-24

love to browse around before they
buy. Perhaps sometimes this priv
ilege Is abused, but In the main it
works toward greater sales and more
satisfied customers.
Such browser will think that pub
Usher was mistaken who placed a
bookmark in his recent issues, the
card inserted after the first few pages,
so that the victim would come upon
it by surprise, and read thereon an
admonition that perhaps he should
buy the book, rather than stand there
reading it. Without doubt the gen.
tleman who got this bright idea
thought he was pretty clever, but we
will wager that he did not care for
books himself, nor have any particular
respect for those who do, else he would
not have insulted that best Of all
book buyers, the man or woman who
loves to handle books, to look them
over, to stay with each volume long
enough to decide whether he cares to
place 1t in his own library at home,
along with his book comrades Of many
years.
Now that is very heavy respon-
sibility, placed upon a human being
to decide upon the merits of book
AS he stands with Portraits and
PRAYERS" held In the left hand. very
carefully, so that he will not injure
it in any way, he reads few lines
"Can this be writing?" he asks him.
self. Surely it is unlike any writing
he ever saw, except the pleasantries
he sometimes thumps out on his own
typewriter, just in order to keep his
hand in. For instance: "Yes. that
is what I would like to know and
what ought to know and what
will know and what I shall know
There can be no doubt that that is
what I would like to know and what
I ought to know and what will know
and what I shall know" He wouldn't
offer that up to the world as COM
pleted thought, or perhaps as thought
at all. but actually it means something
to him, a determined attempt, in
frightfully complex world, to know
more every day than he knew the
day before. Maybe that is Miss Stein {
attitude.
4 4 y Il
Our browser, most honorable title
puts down Stein and takes up Millay
All! beautiful poems, in the great
line of our Shakespeare, our Tenny-
son, our Swinburne, to name but
three.
Melody, deftly phrased; thought
put into songs that somehow haunt
the memory. Is not that poetry. as
most of us would have it, and as Miss
Millay gives it to US?
These poems are canoes.
These poems are worthy OF the
tradition.
What are these things of Miss Stein
worth? There is something haunt
ing there, too, although in a different
way!
We pick up her book again, and by
chance turn to the page on which
are a few lines labeled "1rma." We
do not know whether it is a poem, OF
prose poem, or what, and 1t sounds
rather peculiar-and yet does it not
give a rather good idea of some care
free child, probably in shorts, stand
ing on her head out Of sheer ex-
uberance?
Maybe that is not what Miss Stein
intended, but it is the best we can
do with it, and, after all, there Is an
idea there although the readers in
depreciation may not be the authors
intention at all.
Well, it takes all sorts of books tc
make a publishing season, and they
are all in the shops, waiting for those
who love them enough to want tc
take them home. Booklovers every
where and always will believe that
there is no more happy mercantile
adventure than this.