Evening star., 1937-09-25

day, informal but none the less con-
sciously elegant and literary" He
has a lively, though dignified sense OF
humor, and foibles Of his countrymen
call 1t forth often enough to make
his book genuinely entertaining. Man
ners and customs Of America, 10 years
past, from our rudest frontier towns
to our then centers of culture, are
held up to us here in the mirror OF the
mind of an intelligent and truthful
patriot. The work is commended un-
reservedly.
THESE FOOLISH THINGS. BY
Michael Sadleir. New York: G. P.
Putnam's Sons.
HIS Is q tolerable romantic novel,
one OF those things in which q
smooth reminiscent style of writing
Is used to give sad glamour to
little love story. 1t succeeds in the
endeavor we'll enough. 1T should make
good light reading for those who
prefer the love story for that variety
Of entertainment.
Briefly, it tells OF how a man and
woman met in Paris and, out Of the
wreck OF earlier attachments, dis
covered true passion. The woman
has scruples about an affair when she
is not free and attempts to run away.
The young man overtakes her Just as
she Is about to sail for home (Amer-
ica) and persuades her to go with him
a Of E1-o,
weeks she succeeds in downing her
conscience and they are happy. Then,
since book must end, she tells him
that their love is too perfect to be
real and leaves-this time for good
The disconsolate young man relves
his life in retrospect after her de-
parture, and that is the story.
You have, of course, read it all be-
fore, but this will by no means be the
last publishing of it either. So it is as
we'll to say that this rendition is
tolerahle and that it should make
good light reading for those who prefer
the love story for that variety of
entertainment.
MAN IN THE MAKING. BY DR..
Thomas Graves. G. P. Putnams
Sons.
AN ARKANSAS druggist-lawyer
and telegraph operator on the
side-expounds some of the cosmic
philosophy of an Arkansas country
drug store.
DR.. Graves, we are informed, suf-
fered nervous breakdown in 1881.
Presumably this little book is one of
the results. THE real purpose" we
are informed. lis to try to prove that
man did not descend from the ape
nor from any other branch of the
lower animal kingdom be-
ments in his makeup has always
been different from any other animal
Of his time
He leans heavily on the great science
Of phrenology in his demonstration
that the rest of the world is wrong.
The little volume is naive reflection
Of the mental processes of many
rural village. T. Ri.
THE reviewer has just returned from
a week in the country and finds
that something more than 100 books
have accumulated in her brief alb
sence. Now that. obviously, is too
many. She could only dip around
among them. picking out for hasty
notice those which, for some reason,
lend themselves to quick appraisal
Here are some three or four:
We have, first off, volume of short
stories by Fannie Hurst 1t is called
I'VE Are Ten" and is published by
Harper e. Brothers. There are cri-
tics, to be sure, who assert that Miss
Hurst has had moments when she
was not Hurstian, but wrote some
thing closely resembling literature
The present reviewer somehow has
never seen Miss Hurst in one of those
moods, and so to her this latest COL
lection of Hurst short stories seems
just like any other collection of Hurst
stories. II you like Hurst stories, there
fore, you should get these. For, look
you, they are Hurst stories. Miss
Fannie Hurst wrote them. The re-
viewer hopes that she is being clear.
Next in the shelves is q novel by
Edgar Lee Masters. 1t is called 1.-The
Tide Of Time" and deals with the
Civil War, as have 80 many books
this year. Mr.. Masters, however, has
taken community and treated of the
effect of the war on it as whole, and
so his book is distinguished from
those which have used the war as the
background for personal romances or
as an influence on single lives. The
work is very long, detailed and
crowded with characters. The re-
viewer found it worth having for its
solid workmanship, but somewhat
pedestrian in style-a characteristic
which seems to plague Mr. Masters
when he turns to prose. The socio-
loeital novel is very apt to be dull,
but this is good average of the type
Farrar g. Rinehart is the publisher.
Another interesting book just out is
"The Goncourt Journals" translated
by Lewis Galantiere. That this is
one of the remarkable journals of lit
erary history-the private opinions of
the two brothers who exercised so
great an influence on the letters of
their time, and who are today so
nearly forgotten by every one except
literary historians. In its substance
the journal is historical resume of
the years between 1850 and 1870 by
the pens of shrewd and wittily mali
cious contemporaries. The publisher
is Doubleday, Doran & Co.
And the last book which the re-
viewer found time to examine is Hugh
Walpole's new novel, John Cornelius"
published by Doubleday Doran. The
reviewer fears that her reaction to
this famous flctioneer is very much
the same as the one she receives from
Miss Hurst. That is-a Walpole novel
seems to her just Walpole novel. If
it is tfue, as was loudly whispered at