Evening star., 1936-12-19

probably landed near the corner Of
Battery place and Greenwich.
From then on the welcoming COM
mittees have been buster and buster.
Mr. Glider finds their efforts anus
ing, and presents them gently and
urbanely as such to his readers. He
tells no connected story; he does not
even divide his work in conventional
chapters. He deals, instead, in items.
There are items of Indian massacres
by the Dutch. playfully performed
while the Governor stood by laughing.
There are items of Samuel Pepys in
forming his Royal Master, in line of
duty as Secretary of the Admiralty,
that the English had beat these same
Dutch. There are items of pirates and
the founding of the Bowling Green
and the pulling down of King George
Ills gilded lead statue. There are
items of John Jay and John Marshall,
of Noah Webster and Maj. LEnfant.
Christopher COLES gave entertain
ments of electrical experiments for
two shillings; the Common Council
protested against the practice of dust
ing and beating carpets on the Bat
terry. Castle Garden was founded.
Daniel Webster made speeches. The
Great Western crossed the seas. Walt
Whitman. Jenny Lind and Barnum
| were abroad in the land. The Ma
tons Gateway" became a phrase.
Whitehall Building arose. And Trudy
Ederle arrived. 1t is highly humor-
Gus development.
The book treats it as such. 1t is
a good salty work and can be rec
commended.
ST HELENA. BY Octave Aubry
Translated from the French by
Arthur Livingston Philadelphia;
j. B. Lippincott Co.
SINGLE-MINDED admirers of Ma
poleon will hardly be pleased by
| this book 1t is written, to be sure, IN
a spirit OF veneration. But venera-
ton, like any other form Of human
expression, needs detachment in ex-
preston. Set down too devoutly, there
is danger that it may become comic.
M. Aubry has fallen into that danger
! here.
He is attempting to give a matter
of-fact depletion of the existence Of
| the former hero on ST. Helena. He
deserves great credit for the research
/ he has done. and for his portrayal of
the men and women who surrounded
Napoleon in exile. But against this
painstaking work he has set up what
] M
poleon, and that through his very
effort to make the man who embar-
rassed God plausible.
He shows a Napoleon who, know
ing that reality had ended for him.
set himself bitterly to maintain the
formal shadow. He shows a Napo-
leon who seriously occupied himself
in insisting on his right to be treated
as a sovereign, by the jailers into
whose hands he had deliberately fed
But instead of showing us this disin-
tegration as a pitiahle thing, he shows
it as one who wonders at greatness.
Needless to say, he is not convincing.
The book presents a constant dlscrep-
ancy between what its author believes
he is telling and what he actually
conveys This is true, at least, of the
portrayal of Napoleon.
| AS to the rest, it is an informative
work on the motives which bind men
to greater men, and among these mo-
tives classic admiration seems to have
very little place. Napoleon was ac
companied by more than a hundred
people into exile; it would seem that
! the dominating reasons for their ac-
compartment of him were that they
| had hopelessly lost favor in Europe or
that they were impoverished and ex-
pected rewards in cash from the En-
peror for their faithfulneSs. Place
hundred people, with such motives. on
a desert island and you can imagine
what you will get. Group them about
a fallen megalomaniac and you have
the st. Helena which M. Aubry por-
trays here.
The book is depressing reading but,
apart from M. Aubry's incurable wor-
ship for its central character, it seems
to be an accurate and respectworthy
piece of research.
ADAMS PROFESSION AND ITS
CONQUEST BY EVE. BY Julian
R. Meade New York: Longmans
Green a. Co.
JULIAN MEADE is Virginian who
has written a civilized book about |
Virginia. As if that we're not ac- |
complishment enough, he has here |
done delightful work on one of the |
most worn subjects in the world. and
one which is most beloved of gentle
amateur essayists. That is, garden
ing. 1t is a triumph that he has
pulled it off without Consciousness.
He writes of his own garden and
those of his neighbors, down in Dan
vile. They are all amateurish in
their gardening, all enthusiasts, and
all devoted to some pet theory or
honby on which they are perfectly
and gently unreasonable. The result,
as Mr. Meade presents it, is a nest of
mild lunatics, gardening whether or
no And, as he writes with skill, these
amiable characters 60 to make up
thoroughly pleasant book.
BIOGRAPHY OF A FAMILY. BY
Milton Waldman. Boston: Hough-
ton Miffin Co.
THE gifted descendants of the
worlds famous pawnbrokers here
furnish once again material for a
book. 1t would seem that there was
very little left to write about the
Medici, but Mr.. Waldman Is ingenious.
He takes dramatic approach. seizing
on Catherine to bear the burden of his
imagination, making her o devoted
mother above all else. attributing her
manifold atrocities to the pure spirit |
of protective maternity, the wish to
keep her children prosperous and
happy 1t would seem q trifie simple
if it were not carried OF by an ade-
quate manner, but 1t is that--an ex-
plosive, EXPLANATORY manner that per-
suades the reader against his own
~