Evening star., 1935-09-22

ton Of litter Of new kittens in the
barn, one used at intervals to be given
dreadful tome of unconquerable
thickness taken down from the play
room shelves, and told to enjoy ones
self with the nice story"
1t was nice, beyond Quibble. The
covers Of that volume were an alarmed
dyspeptic blue, the pictures were un-
interesting and in the printed matter
Good was forever riding in triumph,
with Evil led in permanent captive
bonds to grace its chariot wheels. One
cannot remember, offhand. the num-
Der of pages, but the volume was
thick one and nowhere in 1t did Evil
get so much as look-in. 1t was a
set-up for Good from the word go.
At least one unregenerate child,
after completing such literary stint,
went into the neighboring pasture and
shouted aloud all the swear words
of her vocabulary. Feeling that even
that was not sufficient, she then
climbed to the top of a prehist0 r
mound which she had taken as her
chapel of meditation, and said firmly,
in a loud voice, There, Mister Bar
low!"
For the book. as you have probably
guessed, was that appalling childhood
classic" "Sandford and Merton" +"
Mister Barlow was its leading char
acter.
The COWS which composed the un-
regenerate child's audience switched
their tails and topped their ears and
went on chewing. Things seemed bet
ter after that and she descended from
her Olympus to search hopefully for
additional kitten families in the hay.
Mister Barlow seemed, for the time
being at least, to be exercised.
But now, out of the dust of library
shelves, come poking once again the
whiskers of that reverend gentleman
who devoted his life to stacking, so
unsportingly, the cards for Good.
"Sandford and Merton" 1t would ap-
pear, did not Just grow, as other hor-
rid fungi grow. 1t was written
acknowledgements thought of it,
somebody actually wanted to do it.
Alas, somebody did.
That person of unaccountable tastes
was one Thomas Day, wealthy Eng
lish gentleman, an oxford scholar,
who longed from his early youth to
do something for humanity. As so
often happens with persons infected
with such longings, Thomas desire
somewhat outran his performance. He
wrote Stamford and Merton" He
created Mister Barlow. That was the
sum of his accomplishments for hu-
manity.
In a small but completely amusing
biography. Sir Samuel Scott recountS
today the adventures of this eight
teenth century paragon. 1t is an
amazing book, believable only on the
evidence of "Sandford and Merton"
itself. Were it not for that classic one
would not think that any full-grown
man could have adopted, so whole
heartedly, the ideal OF priggishness
for his life's pattern.
Here is a grand chance for current
adults who had no prehistoric mound
to retire to in their harassed youth
to get even. If you read THE Ex-
emplary Mr.. Day" you can forgive
Mister Barlow a great deal. In the
light of his creators eccentricities he
becomes understandable. All such
adults ought really to be grateful to
Sir Samuel Scott He has evened an
old score that was much in need OF
evening.
SINGING IN THE WILDERNESS: A
Salute to John James Audubon.
BY Donald Culross Peattie. New
York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
WHILE this book purports to be a
w history of the life of the great
painter of birds, John James Audubon,
it is, more essentially, a piece of self
expression on the part Of the author,
an expression of his discomfort with
mechanistic era and of his concep-
tion Of America as 1t was in the
vanished day of the carrier pigeon
and the buffalo-an America which
might still be with us, as he feels, If
we had not so wantonly destroyed and
senselessly laid waste.
Audubon, the author plainly feels,
was kind Of personification of the
nature-spirit of that time. He was a
man who could live in the woods.
he was perfect In the woodsman's S
technique, but he did not use his
skill to crafty q killers lust. Con-
trarily, he used It to interpret and
preserve the beauty Of our virgin con-
tinent.
But what Auduhoa typified Is gone.