to spend his life writing. Gambling is more likely to yield a steady income. It is an absurd career and a foolish foolhardy business. No man has a right to take it up who can avoid doing so."

Of course these remarks, which Mr. Page undoubtedly uttered in humorous deprecation of his own literary efforts, have given umbrage to many an editor. The New York Tribune says: "It is perhaps as good a tribute as any to the sense of humor possessed by the majority of his countrymen that Dr. Page's propensities in this direction do not more seriously interfere with his usefulness as Ambassador." And the New York Times, by no means the severest of Mr. Page's critics, says: "The scrivening fraternity are than likely to tell the Ambassador that he needn't look far to find somebody to whom literature has been generous as well as kind, and, as for 'barnyard gumption,' he will be told that while that is undoubtedly a fine thing and a useful possession in its place-which is in the barnyard-there are other places and other wisdoms that many besides himself prefer."

T

more

Mr. Owen Johnson's Unnatural History. HE salamander is a fabulous lizard living in fire. The heroine of Mr. Owen Johnson's "The Salamander" (Bobbs-Merrill) lives in fire, and the critics say that she is a fabulous animal. The historian of Mr. Dink Stover's momentous career at Lawrenceville and Yale has attempted social satire; has attempted, as he says, to show "that a young girl without physical temptation may be urged by mental curiosity to see life through whatever windows, that she may feel the same impetuous frenzy of mood as her brother, the same impulse.to sample each new excitement. . that she may arrogate to herself the right to examine everything, question everything, peep into everything-tentatively to project herself into every possibility, and after a few years of this frenzy of excited curiosity can suddenly be translated into a formal and discreet mode of life.". So the Salamander, Dore Baxter, comes from the country to live in a New York hall bedroom, and to "project herself into every possibility." These possibilities are chiefly amatory. She remains technically virtuous but she makes a living by captivating various distinguished citizens of the metropolis. The wealthy voluptuary, Sassoon, the distinguished Judge Massingale, the famous journalist, Harrigan Blood, and the aristocratic spendthrift, Garry Lindaberry-all these pay tribute to the beauty and audacity of the irresistible Salamander. She accepts their gifts of dinners, flowers, candy, books and money, lures them on, deceives them, then marries and lives happily ever after. The book has been the subject of much comment, and its name has been given to feminine garments of every de

LOVE IN THE FIVE TOWNS

scription supposed in some way to suggest the alleged charm of its heroine. The critics, however, fail to find Dore charming; they fail to find her even possible. Mr. Lucian Cary, the literary editor of the Chicago Evening Post, protests, in that excellent journal, against giving a girl of twenty-two the powers of a Ninon de Lenclos in her prime with the morals of a husband-hunting Victorian miss. "N. D.," in her "Books of the Week" article in the New York Globe, finds "The Salamander" "only a highly-colored and

THE HISTORIAN OF THE FIVE TOWNS Mr. Bennett is a realist, but in his new novel he celebrates marital fidelity.

sentimentalized tale with a Robert W. Chambers' moral," and adds: "The Chambers' way, as everybody knows, is to make vice attractive and virtue dull and then in loud and moralistic tones advise the dull."

T

Arnold Bennett on the Side of the Angels.

HE novelists are reforming.. Those erstwhile astonishers of the bourgeoisie, Elinor Glynn and Frank Danby, have given us in "Your Affectionate Grandmother" (Appleton) and "Full Swing" (Lippincott) stories that are not only harmless but-actually!-edifying. And the versatile Mr. Arnold Bennett has thrown to the winds that treasured property of British realists, the unhappy ending. His rather melodramatically named novel "The Price of Love" (Harper and Brothers) is a study of the pure and enduring passion of Rachel Fores for her husband. Louis Fores is a ne'er-do-well of the Five Towns. Rachel thinks him a splendid hero when she marries him, but gradually discovers his weakness, selfishness and dishonesty. Neverthe

47

less she does not desert him for his picturesquely strong cousin Julian. She says: "He's mine, and I wouldn't have him altered for the world. I don't want him perfect. If anything goes wrong, well, let it go wrong! I'm his wife. I'm his!" "The Price of Love" is the wholesomest and cheerfulest of Mr. Bennett's stories of the Five Towns and according to the New York Times Review of Books it is superior to his other novels in plot, dialog and character-drawing. The reviewer concludes a highly favorable study of "The Price of Love" with the words:

"The Arnold Bennett 'boom' is overand this is good for the world and better for Mr. Bennett. Now no longer does he need to be ostentatiously, militantly a 'realist,' to consider literary movements and creeds. He does not, indeed, see life steadily, but he sees it more nearly as a whole than before, that is, he sees an ordered plan, a logical sequence of cause and effect, something more satisfactory than that deceptive spectacle the 'crosssection.' His art has lost none of its distinction, but it has mellowed; to-day he makes no startling photographs of humanity, but sympathetic interpretations."

B

The Financier Gets Out of Jail.

UT altho Mr. Bennett has for

saken the ways of the orthodox realist, Mr. Theodore Dreiser, whose work he praised highly during a visit to America, still is a pessimist and an eager student of the most unpleasant details of life. His new novel "The Titan" (John Lane) is the second part of his "Trilogy of Desire" and tells the story of the life of Frank Algerton Cowperwood after his release from the penitentiary to which, it will be remembered, he was sent in the concluding chapters of "The Financier."

BIG BUSINESS IS THIS NOVELIST'S FAVORITE THEME

Critics say that the hero of Mr. Dreiser's new novel was suggested by the late Charles

T. Yerkes.

Cowperwood comes out of prison to use his great forces in a campaign, more or less of revenge, against the world. The scene of his captivity is Chicago in the years immediately following the great fire. Cowperwood does battle with business men and politicians and always wins; he makes love to many women, married and unmarried, and always wins. So he piles up a tremendous fortune and a tremendous stock of amatory experience. The book is in intent thoroly, almost ostentatiously, masculine, and therefore feminine opinions of it are of special interest. Miss Hildegarde Hawthorne reviewed it at length in the New York Times Review of Books. She does not find Cowperwood particularly titanesque nor does she find the narrative as a whole either convincing or interesting. She praises Mr. Dreiser's study of the gradual degeneration of Aileen, Cowperwood's unhappy wife, but adds:

"Here is no vision of a mighty phase of the American spirit, mingled of good and evil, welding and breaking. Here is instead a lot of little people doing a lot of little things, often interesting, occasionally amusing, at times dull and distasteful. If one asserts, but this is life,' it is fair to retort, 'a commonplace view of life, lacking dignity and perspective, more like a crowd in the street seen from a window than the intimate understanding and experience of a human being at grips with circumstances and existence.'

Page and Company). But Penrod Schofield is interpreted with such sympathy and skill that the reader is irresistibly reminded of Mark Twain. We first meet him, a reticent, imaginative boy of eleven, sitting in his sanctum sanctorum, a great box of sawdust in the barn, writing by the light of an old lantern hung from a nail on the inside of the box. We see him organizing a show, playing a broken-down accordion, enjoying the companionship of his excellent dog, Duke, making love to the supercilious and amber-curled Marjorie Jones and showing his resentment at being called a little gentleman by starting a miniature riot with welldirected handfuls of tar. We see him also as the Child Sir Lancelot in a Children's Pageant of the Table Round and we understand his indignation at being forced to wear his sister's silk stockings and a portion of his father's red flannel underclothes disguised with strips of silver braid along the seams. Penrod's emotions in this costume give Mr. Tarkington a chance to make some shrewd and entertaining observations upon the psychology of clothes. He writes:

"A human male whose dress has been

damaged or reveals some vital lack suffers from a hideous and shameful loneliness which makes every second absolutely unbearable until he is again as others of his sex and species; and there is no act or sin whatever too desperate for him in his struggle to attain that condition. Also there is absolutely no embarrassment possible to a woman which is comparable to that of a man under corresponding circumstances; and in this a boy is a man."

There is plenty of good psychology in "Penrod" and, what is better, there is plenty of amusing reading. The Chicago Evening Post calls the book "truly delightful." "Penrod" is as good a book, in its way, as "Monsieur Beaucaire" and it is a refreshing contrast to that depressing document "The Flirt."

Τ

A Newspaper Man Confesses.

HE best job on earth is that of the city editor of a New York daily. So says Charles Edward Russell in "These Shifting Scenes" (George H. Doran Company). And Mr. Russell ought to know, for he has spent twenty-five years in the newspaper business, and was city editor for part of that time. In the pages of this book he gives the world the "inside story" of many events of great public interest; discloses some secrets of Republican and Democratic national conventions, and narrates his surprising adventures in pursuit of information. The account of his journey to Johnstown at the time of its famous flood is particularly thrilling. The Boston Evening Transcript is annoyed by Mr. Russell's King Charles's head of So

HE HAD THE BEST JOB ON EARTH Charles Edward Russell shows in his reminiscences that years of service have not taken away his enthusiasm for the newspaper business. cialism but admits the interest of his chronicle. There are many amusing anecdotes scattered through Mr. Russell's rather serious reminiscences. One of these deals with the attempt of a managing editor named Goodman to signalize the Pigott disclosures which defeated the case that the London Times and the English Tories had worked up against Parnell. Mr. Russell writes:

"On the night when Parnell's vindication became overwhelming and complete, Mr. Goodman . . . issued an order that every article and every item in the whole paper, big or little, should end with the exclamation, 'A Great Day for Ireland!' It was tempting fate to do such a thing and of course the inevitable happened. One Hennessey, the janitor of a public building in Brooklyn, playing on the top floor with his children, fell over the railing of the air-well and was killed. Great Day for Ireland!' Grim old Recorder Smythe had before him a notorious burglar called O'Shaughnessy and sentenced him to sixty-five years in Sing Sing. 'A Great Day for Ireland!' William Mulrooney, a well-known philanthropist of the East Side, choked to death on a chicken-bone. 'A Great Day for Ireland!'"

'A

The editor-in-chief, Colonel John A. Cockerill, saw the proofs in time to prevent a riot and extra compositors were called in to take out the offending lines. Mr. Russell has not, of course, told all that he could tell about the way in which news is handled by those who deal in it but he has told enough to give the reader a new idea of the making of a newspaper.

A

NNA KARENINA is empty stuff. It is tedious and vulgar. What Philistine dared to make such criticisms of a masterpiece of realistic fiction? Why, one Count Lyoff Tolstoy, who had rather intimate knowledge of the novel in question. He expressed these opinions while he was at work on the book, and after it was completed, according to the reminiscences contributed by his son, Count Ilya Tolstoy, to The Century Magazine, he said much harder things about it.

Count Ilya's unconventional reminiscences of his illustrious father show that the wife of the great Russian novelist was an industrious and longsuffering person. Some English and American Tolstoyans are wont to consider their idol a sort of domestic martyr who, dressed in a peasant's garb, did a peasant's hard toil while his family lived in luxurious ease. It is true that he wore the dress of a I peasant, but if there was a martyr in = the family it was his wife.

WROTE NOVELS

duties was spent at her writing table off the zala. She spent whole evenings revising his manuscripts and frequently sat up late at night after every one else had gone to bed.

Tolstoy's handwriting, we learn, was very illegible and he had the habitwhich his son calls "terrible"-of writing in whole sentences between the lines, or in the corners of the page, or sometimes right across it. When anything was beyond the Countess's powers to interpret, she would take it to her husband's study and ask him what it meant. He would take the manuscript in his hand and ask, with some annoyance, his son says, "What on earth is the difficulty?" and would begin to read it aloud. When he came to the difficult place he would mumble and hesitate and sometimes had the greatest difficulty in making out, or, rather, in guessing, what he had written. Often, we are told, his wife discovered and corrected gross grammatical errors.

Here is a picture of domesticity that should warn women of the peril of marrying philosophical anarchists:

"When 'Anna Karénina' began to come out in the 'Russky Vyéstnik,' long galleyproofs were posted to my father, and he looked them through and corrected them.

"At first the margins would be marked with the ordinary typographical signs, letters omitted, marks of punctuation, etc.; then individual words would be changed, and then whole sentences, till in the end the proof-sheet would be reduced to a mass of patches quite black in places, and it was quite impossible to send it back as it stood, because no one but my mother could make head or tail of the tangle of conventional signs, transpositions, and era

sures.

"My mother would sit up all night copying the whole thing out afresh.

"In the morning there would lie the pages on her table, neatly piled together, covered all over with her fine, clear handwriting, and everything ready so that when 'Lyovótchka' got up he could send the proof-sheets off by post.

"My father carried them off to his study to have 'just one last look,' and by the evening it would be just as bad again, the whole thing having been rewritten and messed up.

'Sonya, my dear, I am very sorry, but I've spoiled all your work again; I promise I won't do it any more,' he would say, showing her the passages he had inked over with a guilty air. 'We'll send them off to-morrow without fail.' But this to-morrow was often put off day by day for weeks or months together.

""There's just one bit I want to look through again,' my father would say; but he would get carried away and recast the whole thing afresh.

"There were even occasions when, after posting the proofs, he would remember some particular words next day, and cor

49

rect them by telegraph. Several times, in consequence of these rewritings, the printing of the novel in the 'Russky Vyéstnik' was interrupted, and sometimes it did not come out for months together."

And yet, after all this labor, "Anna Karenina" was not satisfactory to its author. "What difficulty is there in writing about how an officer fell in love with a married woman?" he said. "There's no difficulty in it, and above all, no good in it." And his son adds: "I am quite convinced that if my father could have done so, he long ago would have destroyed the novel, which he never liked and always wanted to destroy."

But the Countess Tolstoy was more than a hard-working amanuensis; she

Courtesy of the Century Company

IN HIS PEASANT GARB Count Tolstoy, however, had not the peasant's meekness.

was

also a housewife of the type that New England somewhat arrogantly claims for its own and she took excellent care of her six children and that seventh child, her husband. Her son cherishes her memory and gives an attractive picture of the energetic, affectionate Russian woman, directing the cook, making clothing, educating her boys and girls, revising manuscript, generally with a baby at her breast. Tolstoy was not an easy husband to Count Ilya tells one feed, it seems. story that is especially significant. There was jelly for dessert one day, and the author of "War and Peace" was not pleased. "All jelly is good for," he said in humorous indignation, "is to glue paper boxes." So the children ran off to get some paper and their father made it into boxes with the aid of the despised jelly. We are not surprised to learn that "Mama was angry."

W

ALT Whitman in his latter years was a fine old gentleman. This statement may annoy many of his most enthusiastic admirers, but its truth is proved beyond a doubt by the third volume of Horace Traubel's enormous work "With Walt Whitman in Camden," recently published by Mitchell Kennerley. Whitman is in no way definitely characterized by Mr. Traubel, but the exhaustive record of his doings and sayings during the daily visits of his friend reveal him with astonishing clearness. And he appears, in the huge volume now under consideration, not as the aged priest of a strange philosophy, nor as an enemy or a savior of society, but simply as a fine old gentleman, informed, patriotic, friendly and humorous.

Critics of the first two volumes of

this work have called it "the most truthful biography in the language." No one can read the third volume without acknowledging the justice of this comment. Mr. Traubel-to judge him by the columns of his magazine The Conservator-is by no means patriotic, yet he has not hesitated to give in full Whitman's numerous expressions of love for "these States." Nor has he; in deference to the doctrinaire radicals who are so loud in their praise of Whitman, left out the poet's criticisms of certain phases of the revolutionary movement, nor his enthusiastic appreciation of such "reactionary" authors as James Fenimore Cooper and Sir Walter Scott. Mr. Traubel has been absolutely honest with his subject. He has written down, without reservation, it seems, an account of everything that Whitman did and said in his presence.

This volume covers the period from November 1, 1888, to January 20, 1889. It is not a book to be read through consecutively from cover to cover, but it lends itself admirably to occasional reading. Nearly every page has its interesting remark or its illuminating incident.

Even during Whitman's lifetime, we learn, anarchists, socialists and other radicals tried to read him into their groups. A young Englishman named Pease, an ardent socialist, was particularly insistent in his efforts to get the rather weary old poet to commit himself definitely to his creed. "I don't so much object to socialism," said Whitman, "as to being talked to about it."

The extravagant praise which he received from some of his admirers annoyed him. Mr. Traubel met Michael J. Ryan, President of the Irish-American Club, on the train and learned from

him of a eulogistic review in some ultra-advanced English periodical, in which Whitman was compared to Christ. Whitman, when Traubel told him of it, said: "Yes, I have had such slaps, but I assure you I do not appreciate them: some of the wild fellows think they must say such things." "They are too previous," he added humorously, "too previous, to say the least."

In a conversation with Traubel con

cerning Queen Victoria's sympathy with the Union forces during the Civil War, he showed an attitude toward the

established rulers of the world that undoubtedly surprised his friend. Mr.

Traubel's account follows:

"I for one feel strongly grateful to Victoria for the good outcome of that struggle the war dangers, horrors, finally the preservation of our nationality:

she saved us then.' Afterwards saying

WALT WHITMAN DRESSED FOR A WALK The photographer gave his subject an inappropriately formal setting.

again: 'Victoria and Albert! Victoria and Albert!' He had 'often thought to put this on record, at least for his own. satisfaction.' It seemed like his duty 'to write something: to put myself square time come with the higher obligations all must in to acknowledge.' I asked quizzically, 'If you wrote such a thing, what would Tucker and O'Connor do?' He laughed heartily: 'I don't know: but that would not deter me: and at any rate, O'Connor is fully conscious of the truth of what I say: we often talked it over at the time.' Now it had become 'commonplace' to anyone who chose to know it'our public men-the better type of our public men-all know what it signifies: especially is it conceded by those who have been part of the inner circle in

Washington. When Julius Chambers, out of the rare kindness he somehow developed for me, first appealed to me to send them scraps of thought for The Herald -I think it was the period when Cleveland was being so sharply taken to task for having sent a present to the Pope on his Jubilee I wrote a few lines in effect of this purport: I for one must go on record approving the President's action: more than that, I contended, rather than having done too much the President has done too little: my own impulse would have been to send, send to the Pope: to send likewise to the Queenthought of those serious years so much to England's Queen-from whose foreof good came to us. I never sympathized with always resented-the common American criticisms of the Queen.""

The term "eugenics" had not been invented in Whitman's time, but he knew and opposed some of the ideals which the advocates of eugenics have taken for their own. He spoke of the "horrible falsity" of the Malthusian doctrine and said that he had never been inclined to a moment's acceptance of it. "No social theories complaining of overpopulation are to me tenable," he said. "Whatever the reason for poverty may be, it's not that."

There are many references to the late Richard Watson Gilder, whom Whitman frequently spoke of by his middle name. On one occasion he said: "Some of the hard and fast penny-a-liners affect to despise Gilder: they are a poor lot! most all of them: Gilder has written some poems which will live out the lives of most of the second-class songs of his day: genuine, fine, pretty big stuff: some of it almost free. I sometime incline to believe that Watson wants to be free but don't care to. At any rate, he has my admiration for some things he has done-yes, admiration and my personal love surely, always, always."

It is interesting to learn that he could not read Tolstoy's "Confession." Apparently his favorite novelist was Sir Walter Scott, who is mentioned many times in this volume. In spite of the illness that confined him to his room and frequently to his bed, he was usually happy, enjoying books and of his magazines, the conversation friends, and his daily treat of wine. He could take a hostile criticism with good grace, and, according to Mr. Traubel, "exploded in quiet chuckles" after he recalled Carlyle's remark about him to Moncure D. Conway: "He's the fellow who thinks he must be a big man because he lives in a big country."

But some of the attacks upon him, naturally, he remembered with indignation. Here is a significant story, which