Evening star., 1936-05-23
BY Mary.Carfer Roberts.
LEGISLATIVE PROBLEMS. BY Rob-
ert Luce. Boston: Houghton Mif-


fin Co.
yITH this fourth and last
M volume, Robert Luce, for
" " mer member of Congress
from Massachusetts,, COM
pletes his 000,000-word work on
legislation. The four volumes repre-
sent % years work. the publisher in
forms us.
The completed group will be known
as The Science of Legislation" The
separate volumes are entitled "Legis-
lative Procedure" Legislative Assem-
blies," Legislative Principles" and,
of course, Legislative Problems" The
authors political career has not been
limited to his Is years in Congress.
He has also been for 9 years in the
Massachusetts State Legislature and
has served as Lieutenant Governor
of that State. His experience in public
life has been broad and varied.
His present work treats of such
current problems in legislation as
delegation of power, administrative
legislation, the relation between the
ton of executive and legislative pow
ers, the cabinet system, the budget.
1t is clearly and anslytically written
and, while it will probably have more
spontaneous interest for the man in
public life, 1t can still be read with
profit by the private citizen. 1t offers
excellent grounding for the formation
S1f nj
THE WEATHER IN THE STREETS.
BY Rosamond Lehman. New
York: Reynal & Hitchcock.
IN HER latest novel Miss Lehman
asks once more what it profits
mankind to live. and once more deliv-
ers a dusty answer to what must be
regarded as her rhetorical question.
For her book is an essay in despair,
and it is not possible to think, after
reading the first pages, that her stac-
cato wailing will alter its character
OF meaning.
Friendship is feigning, loving is
folly" said William Shakespeare duly
In his day, and, probably not consider
ing the sentiment as particularly orig
inal, topped it off by rhyming it with
the first convenient word, and let it go
at that. Miss Lehman has taken
more than 400 pages of agonizingly
fne-polished prose to introduce us to
the identical piece of knowledge. For
the prose one can have no sentiment
but respect. 1t is sometimes difficult,
but it is always alive, and frequently
brilliant. No one writes that way eX-
Cept from a love of writing, and an
understanding of it. Miss Lehman
continues 20 rank as an artist from
the point of view of technique.
AS for the old theme of her book,
1t receives a treatment at her hands
that leaves one with divided feeling.
Her heroine (the Olivia Curtis of In
vitation to the Waltz') is the seeker
for illusion whose quest comes to so
dingy an end She is married now,
but her marriage has been disap-
pointment She is separated from
her husband and working to support
herself in London. She meets Rollo
Spencer once again; Rollo, too, is
married-unhappily They console one
smother.
There are moments of eXaltation
which Miss Lehman describes poign-
antly. There are tortured periods of
suspense when she writhes on the rack
with her unhappy heroine. And it all
comes to nothing. The exaltation was
false; the lovers are betrayed, not by
themselves, but by life 1t is not
possible, means Miss Lehman from
her typewriter, 1t is not possible to be
god and mortal too. There are heights
that we may not scale and breakfast
must always be eaten the next morn
Ing.
Well, it is all true. Most of us who
call ourselves intelligent will subscribe
to her pessimism. Yet one wishes that
her lament, in its great length, had
been a trifle less specialized. Disap-
pointment in love may well symbolic
all disillusion, since it is the common
est denominator of our pains. Yet
when it is described with such a pas
sionate preoccupation or detail, with
such cloSeneSs to specific sorrow, the
reader is likely to lose any perspective
on the subject and to feel that he is
listening to the condolences ofa friend
indiscreetly Willing away a rainy
afternoon.
y Only at times does Miss Lehman do
this. In her denouement she rises to
fine peak of accomplishment, when she
has her Olivia, fully aware of her low
ers shallowness, still realize that she
may return to him. For by this time
Olivia knows that his detection is hu-
man, not individual, and she asks her.
self by implication, What else is
There to 0o?" The gold has been spent
by then; there is no calling it back, no
starting afresh. Life has got her
and she ceases to be important. She
has passed into the mill.
In making this desperately clear,
Miss Lehman has saved her novel
from a too great particularly which,
through all its central portions, seems
about to swamp it. For in those por-
tlons she does work in redundant de-
tall The over -emotionaliZed mind of
her heroine becomes bit too familiar.
The readers sympathy for her is likely
to become tinged with irritation.
SO one says that the treatment leaves
one with divided feelings. At times it
Is almost static with self-pity. Again
1t moves forward with a brilliant
sweep. On the whole the book has
integrity. And the reader can skip the
muggy parts "a word suggested by the
authors own vocabulary without
missing thing.
DRAMATIS PERSONAL. BY William
Butler Yeats. New York: The Mac
milan Co.
THE first essay in this collection is
the one which gives the volume its
name. 1t is photographed and
covers six years of the authors life
from 1896 to 1902. Yeats was at that
time in his thirties.
The other essays are "Estrange-
ment," THE Death of Synge" and