Continued from Preceding Page

hears another, less fateful, more fitful
strain of music. From the moment of
their first real talk, I have associated
with our most terrible and earth-shaking
critic a word which he often uses in his
writing, though few remember it: "It is
'charm.' Like a lost flower, 'charm' is
carried away on the flood of his inven-
tives."

This word picture of Willa Cather is
especially descriptive. "How Willa
Cather hates cheapness! She may not
have had a richer, creative endowment
than many others. But she had more
certainty of aim. More power of self-
protection, more insight into the ultimate
fruits of easy opportunity and popularity.
More character, if one is to speak truly—
and if character means certain old-
fashioned virtues like faith, grit, de-
termination and unremitting labor."

How much the author has put in this
one short paragraph, speaking of the
honors that have been accorded Alice
Hamilton. "Yet it is as if honors and at-
tainments meant nothing to her in them-
selves, nothing as objectives. How light-
ly she holds them—how differently from
the way men—and feminists—hold hon-
ors! They have not been Alice Hamil-
ton's life, only by-products of her life.
An Irish heart, impatient and humane, a
cool, definite mind seeking primarily
knowledge, not conflict or domination:
these were her endowment. Slowly the
two matured, slowly they joined forces
and out of piercing conviction sought,
crusader-like to share their knowledge
and make their wisdom prevail."

Robert Frost's mind and spirit are
spoken of as those of a "Greek disguised
as a Yankee Sage," of his life and work—
"The claim one makes of him of first-
rateness—he will make few claims for
himself—rests in part on his sureness and
continuity of poetic development. In life
he has turned from one task to another,
but in verse he has stuck with plenty to the
clarification of his own tone of voice, his
own form and matter."

I met Miss Sergeant for this interview
just after she had talked at the Ritz
Carlton. There were about four hundred
other guests of the Atlantic Monthly
Book Shop who had come to hear what
this native daughter would tell them.

In New York she lives just off Beeck-
man Place, near the East River. "I can-
not see the river from my apartment,"
she said. "but I know that it is near by.
It is a long climb to the top floor, but
quite worth it when I arrive, I am so
alone, so removed from the noise and dis-
tractions of the city. The old house is
quiet and withdrawn. In the rear is a
garden with trees, grass and flowers. The
back yards look like those of London."

The long, high-ceilinged living room, with
its old-fashioned marble fireplace, of this
old-time New York home, reclaimed from
the past, is a delightful setting for those
heirlooms that have come down through
the years to Miss Sergeant from New
England ancestors. The mahogany table,
Chippendale sofa, old secretary, chairs,
brown and rose chintz curtains, all give
an old-time charm and atmosphere to the
room. In contrast to these relics of old
New England, there are the Spanish
saint, the sheaf of red, yellow and blue
Indian corn, Indian feathers and pottery
from the Southwest, introduced by Miss
Sergeant.

How much of life of other times and
other places is suggested by the objects
in that room! Forbears migrating from
Massachusetts to Maine, from Maine to
Minnesota, from Minnesota to California,
her own journeying into the far South-
west, living in the midst of the mystic
life of the Pueblo Indians, hearing again
their drums, seeing again their ceremo-
ties and dances, and so on.

Elizabeth Sheley Sergeant

The urge for self expression in past generations of her family have culminated and found an outlet in the pen of Elizabeth Sheley Sergeant. From family letters and documents dating as far back as 1774, as a base, she has written her novel, "Short As Any Dream." Although she has used her family for her characters, her book is in no way a biography. In telling me of this she said: "I cannot call my book a real story of my grandparents or my great-grandparents, although I have used them in the book and made the story to grow up around them. In each and every case I felt that I myself was entering deeply into their lives and living it as they had done. I seem to have something in me that makes me a part of what I am writing at the moment."

"In my book," she continued, "I have tried to show the contrast of the past with the present. I tried to find the key to the past as it seemed to people who lived in it. To me the change that comes to the world every ten years is very vivid."

"The big thing is the sense of the stream of life of a family going on and on."

"Although we may be able to see our mistakes," went on Miss Sergeant, "as we live from day to day, we cannot see ahead how one false step, one wrong decision, may make a tragedy of our whole life. In reading a book it is easy to see how different a life might have been had the person not made the wrong turn, said after done the one little wrong thing, but life does not open up before one like the pages of a book."

New England to the backbone through

ancestry—with upbringing and traditions, Miss Sergeant as a young girl felt that she must get away from it all and have a different mental outlook. She was born in Winchester, Massachusetts. When she was a little girl of twelve her family came to Boston to live and she attended Miss Winsor's school. When she was ready for college she selected Bryn Mawr in preference to a New England college. "Although I loved New England, I felt that I wanted to get away from it and into a new environment," she told me. "I wanted new viewpoints. My ancestry had always been a wall surrounding me, and I wanted to be able to stand at a distance and see it from a new angle."

After graduating from college Miss Sergeant continued the widening of her mental outlook in Europe. During her stay of two years she spent much time in France, Sicily and Italy. Upon her return to the United States she entered into social service work first in Boston, later in New York. She began writing when she was in school. Because of a keen interest in the individual, most of her writings have been about persons she has known. "I love people," she said. "All kinds of people."

While in France she obtained the material for her first book, "French Perspectives," published in 1916. It is a collection of stories of everyday life of the French Bourgeois, the characters being actual persons with whom the author came in contact. In 1917 she went to France as a correspondent for The New Republic. Shortly after her arrival

the United States entered the war and the author remained in France to the end, writing her stories from the wealth of material at hand. "Not front page stuff," she said.

Among the wildly thrilling, breath-taking happenings of those months, one stands out in its horror. "A month before the Armistice," said Miss Sergeant, "It was wounded. Together with a group of journalists and a guide, I visited one of the battlefields. The guide had told us that we must not pick up anything from the ground, as this particular battlefield for some reason had not been cleared up. One of the women of the party ignored the warning, picking up an object that attracted her attention. She was told to put it back on the ground—gently. It was an unexploded hand grenade! Before reaching the ground it exploded, blowing the woman to bits. The guide who was rear by lost one of his arms. I was standing not far from the woman who had picked up the grenade, and was badly wounded in my ankles. The next seven months were spent in a hospital filled with wounded soldiers. The fact that I am not lame today is due to the most efficient treatment I received from a splen did army surgeon."

She related this terrible experience as calmly as she had discussed her New England ancestry. Shortly after she left the hospital she wrote "Shadow Shapes," a journal of a wounded woman.

Upon her return to her native land Miss Sergeant went to New Mexico with Gertrude Ely, who had been head of a Y. M. C. A. hut at the front. "We liked it so

In 1927. In speaking of it she said: "I did not give it the right kind of name, attract the public. Most people believe it to be a book of travel. It is, however, a book of fourteen well known Americans, all friends of mine. Among them are Amy Lowell, William A. White, Eugene O'Neill, Pauline L. Willa Cather, Oliver Wendell Holmes." "They are all fighters, Americans in conflict with something—with the age, with evil or with ignorance—with them as if they are artists. Below that comes the fire which gives them their life force and makes them significant as a disaffected New Englander."

How descriptive of the woman is passage from Miss Sergeant's word trait of Amy Lowell:

"Then that forthright, buccaneer maleness of hers, that eighteenth century gusto for meeting and defeating others in talk, the fœcund interest in books and scholarship and the craft letters, that hardy curiosity about 'M. Women and Ghosts,' came into rights, and made an evening at her home memorable and rich among literary human adventures."

And of Elinor Wylie, who has died. "Elinor Wylie walks with the first elastic tread of one who knows she has a blooded charger in the stable of his mind (he is shod in silver) to ride after at will. Sometimes the animal chafes at the bit, tosses foam to the stars. But once astride him, she is master of him and mastering, their blood runs fast and furious, as they together leap unsuitorious obstacles with an extraordinary skill and virtuosity."

In portraying Oliver Wendell Holmes, she wrote: "Here is a Yankee, strayed from Olympus. Olympians are reput atable in the universe; they know truth in flashes of fire, and reveal its immortal essence in cryptic phrase." And again, "The Justice is listening to a complex argument—listening till his mind, hovering and intent, like the wasp that paralyzes the caterpillar, has driven straight to its heart."

Thus she writes of Mencken, who does not wish to be thought of as a "slayer." "Even when Mencken is 'slaying,' it is I think, to the great roll of the Eroica. In his daily friendly intercourse, on

*Continued on Following Page*

Elizabeth Sheley Sergeant

THE urge for self expression in past generations of her family have culminated and found an outlet in the pen of Elizabeth Sheley Sergeant. From family letters and documents dating as far back as 1774, as a base, she has written her novel, "Short As Any Dream." Although she has used her family for her characters, the book is in no way a biography. In telling me of this she said: "I cannot call my book a real story of my grandparents or my great-grandparents, although I have used them in the book and made the story to grow up around them. In each and every case I felt that I myself was entering deeply into their lives and living it as they had done. I seem to have something in me that makes me a part of what I am writing at the moment."

"Although we may be able to see our mistakes," went on Miss Sergeant, "as we live from day to day, we cannot see ahead how one false step, one wrong decision, may make a tragedy of our whole life. In reading a book it is easy to see how different a life might have been had the person not made the wrong turn, said her done the one little wrong thing, but life does not open up before one like the pages of a book."

Among the wildly thrilling, breath-taking happenings of those months, one stands out in its horror. "A month before the Armistice," said Miss Sergeant, "I was wounded. Together with a group of journalists and a guide, I visited one of the battlefields. The guide had told us that we must not pick up anything from the ground, as this particular battlefield for some reason had not been cleared up. One of the women of the party ignored the warning, picking up an object that attracted her attention. She was told to put it back on the ground—gently. It was an unexploded hand grenade. Before reaching the ground it exploded, blowing the woman to bits. The guide who was rear by lost one of his arms. I was standing not far from the woman who had picked up the grenade, and was badly wounded in my ankles. The next seven months were spent in a hospital filled with wounded soldiers. The fact that I am not lame today is due to the most efficient treatment I received from a splen-did army surgeon."

much and became interested in indians," said Miss Sergeant, "that bought a tiny house in the Tesuque ley near Sangre de Cristo. It was simple, and had only three rooms. following year when we returned to little house we made it over and furnished it in keeping with the Southwest." was her inspiration for "The Journal Mud House," a magazine story.

"It is my belief," said Miss Sergeant, "that the Pueblo Indians are the most interesting of all North American Indians. Miss Ely and I made friends with them and got to know them well. I wanted to help them and did succeed in starting several Indian societies for their betterment."

"Fire Under the Andes" was published in 1927. In speaking of it she said: "I did not give it the right kind of name, but attract the public. Most people believe it to be a book of travel. It is, however, a good word portrait of fourteen well known Americans, all friends of mine. Among them are Amy Lowell, William A. White, Eugene O'Neill, Pauline I. Willa Cather, Oliver Wendell Holmes, "They are all fighters, Americans in conflict with something—with the age, with evil or with ignorance—with themselves if they are artists. Below that comes the fire which gives them their force and makes them significant of a disaffected New Englander."

How descriptive of the woman is passage from Miss Sergeant's word "a" to trait of Amy Lowell:

"Then that forthright, buccaneer's maleness of hers, that eighteenth century gusto for meeting and defeating others in talk, the found interest in books and scholarship and the craft letters, that hardy curiosity about 'My Women and Ghosts,' came into rights, and made an evening at her home memorable and rich among literary human adventures."

And of Elinor Wylie, who has died. "Elinor Wylie walks with the elastic tread of one who knows she has a blooded charger in the stable of his mind (he is shod in silver) to ride after it will. Sometimes the animal chafes at the bit, tosses foam to the stars. But once astride him, she is master of him and mastering, their blood runs fast and furious, as they together leap unsurmountable obstacles with an extraordinary skill and virtuosity."

In portraying Oliver Wendell Holmes she wrote: "Here is a Yankee, strayed from Olympus. Olympians are reput