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The Best Books of Short Stories of 1917: A Critical Summary · The Best Short Stories of 1917

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Section thirty two of the Best Short Stories of nineteen seventeen. This is a
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LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
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or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Read by Betty b.
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The Best Short Stories of nineteen seventeen by various The Best Books of Short Stories
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of nineteen seventeen. A critical analysis. Christmas Tales of Flanders, illustrated by
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Jean de Baucher, DoD Meat and Company. If you like Anderson's fairy tales,
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here is a book which comes as truly from the heart of a people.
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Many old folk legends are here set down just as they came from the
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lips of old people in Flanders, and as they have never grown old in
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that countryside, let us hope that they will take root equally well. Here.
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The volume is superbly illustrated with many pictures from the whimsical fancy of Jean
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de Bacher. These pictures are indescribable, but they will rejoice the heart of
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any child, old or young, From death to life by A. Apuchtin,
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translated by R. Frank and E. Houbers. R. Frank.
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This story, which so happily inaugurates a series of translations from Russian literature,
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is a poetic study in life after death, chronicling the experiences of a soul
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between death and rebirth. The translators have succeeded in reflecting successfully the fine,
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imaginative style of this prose poem, which deserves to be widely known. It
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sempts us to wish that other stories by Apuchtin may soon find an English translator.
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Tales of the Revolution by Michael Artzibashev translated by Percy Pinkerton B. W.
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Hubisch. The five tales by art Sebashev included in this volume all have
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the same quality, a bitter irony and moderant self analysis. The psychological revelation
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of the mind that has made the later phases of the present Russian Revolution possible
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is complete, and I know of no book that presents more clearly and truthfully
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the rudderless pessimism of these particular spiritual reactions. Such courageous dissection of the diseased
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mind has never been undertaken in American or English fiction, and though its realism
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is appalling, it is healthful in its naked frankness. The Friends by Stacy
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Ammonier the Century Company. When The Friends was published two years ago in the
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Century magazine, it was evident at once that an important news short story writer
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had arrived. The homely humanity of his characterization was but the evidence of a
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rich, imaginative talent that found self express in the more quiet ways of life.
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I said at the time that I believed The Friends to be one of
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the two best short stories of nineteen fifteen, and others felt it to be
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the best story of the year. Two The Friends have now been added in
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this volume two other stories of almost equal distinction, The Packet and In the
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Way of Business. While mister Ammonier has a certain didactic intention in these stories,
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he has kept it entirely subordinate to the artistry of his exposition. And
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it is the few characters which he has added to English fiction that we remember
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after his somewhat obvious moral has been conveyed. His short stories have the same
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flavor of belated Victorianism that one enjoys in the novels of William de Morgan,
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and he is equally noteworthy in his Chosen Field Irish Idols by Jane Barlow,
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DoD Mead and Company. This new edition of Irish Idols should introduce the admirable
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studies of Miss Barlow to a new audience that may not be familiar with what
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was a pioneer volume in its day. Published in eighteen ninety three, it
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almost marked the beginning of the Irish literary movement, and so many fine writers
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followed Miss Barlow that she has been most unfairly concealed by their shadows. Her
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studies of the lives and deaths, joys and sorrows of Connemara peasants are none
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the less real because they are the product of observation by one who did not
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live among them. They show, as Miss Barlow says, that there are
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plenty of things beside turf to be found in a bog. It is true
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that they represent a slight spirit of condescension, entirely absent from the work of
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Padric Colomb, for instance, But they approach far more closely to the heart
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of the Irish fishermen and farmers than the work of any other English type of
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mind. And although Miss Barlow is best known to day by her poetry,
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I have always felt that she conveyed more poetry into Irish idols than into any
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other of her books. The volume is a necessary and permanent addition to any
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small collection of modern Irish literature. Day and Night Stories by Algernon Blackwood,
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E. P. Dutton and Company. In these fifteen short stories, mister
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Blackwood has adequately maintained the quality of his best previous animistic work to those who
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found a new imaginative world in the Centaur in Pan's Garden. The old familiar
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magic still has power in many of these stories, almost completely in the touch
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of Pan and initiation. Hardly inferior to these stories for their passionate reality are
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The Other Wing, The Occupant of the Room, the Tryst, and Hsh.
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There is no story in this volume which would not have made the reputation
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of a new writer. And I can hardly find a better introduction than Day
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and Night Stories to the beauty of mister Blackwood's imaginative life. He serves the
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same ultra beauty in our day that John Keats served a century ago, and
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I cannot but believe that his magic will gain greater poignancy as generations pass.
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The Derelict by Phyllis Bottom The Century Company. This collection of Miss Botom's short
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stories, many of which have previously appeared in the Century magazine during the past
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two years, gives a more complete revelation of her talent than either of her
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novels. I suspect that the short story is her true literary medium, and
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certainly there are at least six of these eight short stories which I should be
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compelled to list with three stars in my annual role of honor in subject and
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mood. They range from tragedy to social comedy. Elsewhere in this volume I
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have discussed Ironstone, which seems to me the best of these stories. A
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subtle irony pervades them, but it is so definitely concealed that its insistence is
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never evident. Old Christmas and Other Kentucky Tales in Verse by William Aspenwall Bradley,
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the Houghton Mifflin Company. In this series of vignettes in Verse, mister
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Bradley has presented the Kentucky Mountaineer as imaginatively as Robert Frost has presented the farmer
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folk of New Hampshire in North of Boston and Mountain Interval. The racy humor
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of these narratives is thoroughly indigenous, and mister Bradley's work has a vivid,
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dramatic power which challenges successfully. A comparison with the stories of John Fox Junior.
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These poems proved mister Bradley's rightful claim to be the first adequate imaginative interpreter
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of the people who live in the Cumberland Mountains. The Fighting Men by Alden
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Brooks Charles Scribner's Sons. Of these six stories, four have been published in
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Collier's Weekly during the past two years, and elsewhere I have had occasion to
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comment upon their excellence. These narratives may be regarded as separate cantos of a
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war epic which is fairly comparable for its vividness of portrayal to Stephen Crane's masterpiece
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The Red Badge of Courage. Few writers other than these two have been able
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to portray the naked ugliness of warfare and the passions which warfare engenders with more
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brutal power. Time alone will tell whether these stories have a chance of permanence,
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but I am disposed to rank them with that other portrait of the mercilessness
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of war Under Fire by Ownri Barbouse. Limehouse Knights by Thomas Burke, Robert
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m mc bride and company. These colorful stories of life in London's Chinatown are
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in my humble belief, destined never to grow old. This volume is the
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most important volume of short stories by a new English writer to appear during nineteen
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seventeen, and is only surpassed by Daniel Corkery's volume A Monster Twilight. Such
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pattern prose in fiction has not been known since the days of Walter Pater,
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and mister Burke's sense of the almost intolerable beauty of ugly things has a persuasive
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fascination for the reader, who may have a strong prejudice against his subjects.
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Such horror, as mister Burke has imagined, is almost impossible to portray convincingly,
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yet the author has softened its darkness into patterns of gracious beauty and musical
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rhythmic speech. Ringconette and Court Radio by Miguel de Cervantes Savedra, translated from
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the Spanish by Mariano J. Laurente, with a preface by R. B.
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Cunninghame Graham the Four Seas Company. This is an excellent translation by a
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Spanish man of letters of what is perhaps the best exemplary novel by Cervantes.
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As mister Cunninghame Graham points out, in his delightful introduction, Ringconette and Courtadillo
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is perhaps the best sketch of Spanish low life that has come down to us.
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It is highly a moral despite its subtitle, and all the more delightful.
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Perhaps on that account, I hope that the translator may be persuaded if
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the volume goes into the second edition it so richly deserves to omit his very
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contentious preface, which can be of interest only to himself and to other people,
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then our delight in this volume would be complete. The duel McMillan,
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The House with the Mezzanine Scribner, The Lady with the Dog McMillan, the
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Party McMillan, and Rothschild's Fiddle, Bonnie and Liverite by Anton Tchehov to the
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Darling, which was the first volume, so far as I know of Chekhov,
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to be presented to the American public. Five new collections of Tchehov's tales
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have been added during the past year in excellent English renderings. Three of these
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volumes are translated by Constance Garnett, whose superb translations of Turgenief and Dostoevsky are
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well known to American readers because Chekhov ranks with Poe and de mont Poisson as
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one of the three supreme masters of the short story. It is a matter
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of signal importance that these translations should appear, and in them every mood of
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Russian life is reflected with subtle artistry and a passionate reality of creative vision.
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Chekhov is destined to exert greater and greater influence on the American short story as
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the translations of his work increase, and these five volumes prove him to be
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fully equal to Dostoyevsky in sustained and varied spiritual observation. These stories range through
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the entire gamut of human emotion, from sublime tragedy to the richest and most
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golden comedy. If I were to choose a single author of short stories from
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my library on a desert island, my choice would inevitably turn to these volumes,
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Those Times, and These by Irvin S. Cobb, George H.
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Durand Company. This is quite the best volume of short stories that mister Cobb
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has yet published since the Escape of Mister Trim, which was his first short
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story, was printed in the Saturday Evening Post seven years ago. Mister Cobb's
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life literary development has been rapid, if not sure, but he may now
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with this volume lay claim fairly to the mantle of Mark Twain for the rich
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humanity with which he has endowed his substance and the inivitable humor of his characterizations.
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In the Family Tree and Cinnamon Seed and Sandy Bottom, mister Cobb has
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added two stories of permanent value to American literature. And in Mister Felsburg Gets
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Even and There Was Light, mister Cobb's literary art is almost as well sustained.
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My only quarrel with him in this book is for the inclusion of a
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kiss for Kindness, where a fine short story possibility seems to have been entirely
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missed by the author, perhaps because, as he ingenuously confessed shortly afterward,
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he had just become an abandoned farmer running Free by James B. Connolly Charles
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Scribner's Sons. Of the two ten short stories included by mister Conley in this
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collection, four are among the best he has ever written. Breath O'dawn,
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The Sea Birds, The Medicine Ship, and One Wireless Knight, with the
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simplicity of speech which characterizes all of mister Conley's work. He relates his story
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for the story's sake because he is an irishman. He is an incorrigible romanticist,
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and I suspect that characterization interests him for the story's sake rather than for
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itself alone. But now that Richard Harding Davis is dead, I suppose that
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James B. Connolly may fairly take his place as our best born Yarner,
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with all A Yarner's privileges. T P. Neighbors by Grace Coolidge, The
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Four Seas Company. This quiet little book of narratives and Indian portraits by Miss
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Coolidge deserves more attention than it has yet received. And for its qualities of
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quiet pathos and d sympathetic insight into the Indian character, I associated as of
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equal value with Margaret Prescott Montague's Stories of Blind Children in West Virginia. A
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Munster Twilight by Daniel Corkory Frederick A. Stokes Company. I have never read
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a new volume of short stories with such a sense of discovery as I felt
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when these tales came to my hand. Because the volume appears to have attracted
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absolutely no attention as yet in this country. I wish to emphasize by firm
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belief that this is the most memorable volume of short stories published in English within
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the past five years. It makes us eager to read mister Corkory's new novel,
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The Threshold of Quiet, in order that we may see if such a
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glorious, imaginative sweep can be maintained in a novel, as the reader will
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find in any single short story of this volume. Here you will find the
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very heart of Ireland's spiritual adventure, revealed in folks speech of inevitable beauty.
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There is not a story in the book which does not disclose new aspects after
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repeated readings. A craftsmanship so fine and vigorous is seldom related with such artistic
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humility. A Monster Twilight proves that there are still great men in Ireland.
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Brought forward faith, hope, charity, progress and success by R. B.
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Cunninghame Graham, Frederick A. Stokes Company. It is an extraordinary fact
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that a short story writer so deservedly well known in England as mister Cunninghame Graham,
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whose sketches of life in many parts of the globe have been published at
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frequent intervals through the past decade, is yet entirely unknown in this country,
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to be sure, such has been the fate of W. H. Hudson
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a very recently. These six volumes certainly rank by virtue of the quality of
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their style and the imaginative reality of their substance with the best work of mister
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Hudson, and the parallel is the more complete because both writers have made the
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vanished life of the South American Plains real to the English mind. Mister Cunninghame
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Graham is one of the great travel writers, and ranks with Borrow and Ford,
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but he is more impartially interested in character than either Borrow or Ford,
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and has a far more vivid feeling for the spiritual values of landscape. It
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may be that these stories are for the few only, but I am loathed
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to believe it. The life of the Pampas and the life of the Moroccan
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Desert live in these pages with an actuality as great as the life of the
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American Plains lives in the work of Hamlin Garland. And there is an epic
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sweep in mister Cunninghame Graham's vision that I find in no other contemporary English writer.
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The Echo of Voices by Richard curl Alfred A. Knopf. It is
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very rarely that a disciple as faithful as mister Curle publishes a volume which his
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master would be proud to sign. But I think that the reader will detect
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in this book the authentic voice of Joseph Conrad. Mister Conrad's own personal enthusiasm
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for the book is an ingratiating introduction to the reader. But in these eight
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stories, mister curl can certainly afford to stand alone, preoccupied as he is
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with the mystery of human existence and the effective circumstance upon the character he portrays
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eight widely different human types, almost all of them with a certain pathetic futility
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of aspect, so surely and finally that they live before us. It is
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an interesting fact that the three best short story books in English of nineteen seventeen
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come from the other side of the water. Limehouse Nights, a Monster Twilight,
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and The Echo of Voices make this year so memorable in fiction that later
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years may well prove disappointing. The Eternal Husband and Other Stories and The Gambler
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and Other Stories by Fyodor Dostoyevsky the McMillan Company. These two new volumes contain
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the Complete English edition of Dostoyevsky, which is being translated by Constant Garnett.
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The renderings have the same qualities of idiomatic speech and subtly rendered nuance which is
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always to be found in this translator's work. And although both of these volumes
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represent the minor work of Dostoyevsky, his minor work is finer than our major
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work, and characterized by a passionate curiosity about the human soul and a deep
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insight into its mysteries. It is idle to our argue as to whether these
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narratives are short stories or brief novels. However we classify them, they are
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profound revelations of human relationship and place their author among the great masters of the
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world's literature. Nor is it pertinent to discuss their technique or lack of it.
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Their technique is sufficient for the author's purpose, and he has achieved his
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will nobly in a manner inevitable to him. Billy Topsail, MD. By
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Norman Duncan, Fleming H. Revell Company. In his posthumous volume, Norman
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Duncan has woven together a selection of his later short stories, in which further
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adventures of Doctor Luke of the Labrador Are chronicle. They represent the very best
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of his later work, and in them the stern physical conditions with which nature
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surrounds the life of man provide an admirably rendered background for the portrayal of character
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developed by circumstance. Norman Duncan can never have a successor, and in Billy
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Topsil MD, the reader will find him very nearly at his best. My
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People by Kara Doc Evans, Duffield and Company. My People is a record
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of the peasantry of West Wales, and these chronicles are set down with a
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biblical economy of speech that makes for a noteworthy literary style. I refuse to
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believe that they are a truthful portrait of the folk of whom mister Evans writes,
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but I believe that he has created a real, subjective world of his
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own that is thoroughly convincing. H. G. Wells has written eulogistically of
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the book and also the author's novel k Pelscion. I appreciate the qualities in
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the book that have won mister Wells's esteem, and the book is indeed memorable,
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but I believe that its excellence is an artificial excellence, and I commend
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it to the reader as a work of inc comparable artifice, rather than as
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a faithful reflection of life in Happy Valley by John Fox Junior, Charles Scribner's
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Sons. Of these ten new chronicles of the Kentucky Mountains gathered from the pages
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of Scribner's magazine during the past year, for the most part, his Last
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Christmas Gift is the most memorable, but all the stories are brief and vivid
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vignettes of the countryside which mister Fox knows so well, told with the utmost
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economy of speech and with a fine sense of atmospheric values. These stories are
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a happy illustration of the better regionalism that is characteristic of contemporary American fiction,
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and, like Almorandi, will prove valuable records to a later generation of a
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life that even now is rapidly passing away. The War Madam by Paul Geraldi
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Charles Scribner's Sons. The delicate fantasy of this little story only enhances the poignant
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tragedy that it discloses. Somehow, it suggests a comparison with Four Days by
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Hetty Hemenway, although it is told with greater deftness and a more subtle irony.
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In these pages, pulses the very heart of France, and it is
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compact of the spirit that has made France a mistress to die for. The
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translation is Admirable Collected Poems by Wilfred Wilson Gibson the mac Millan Company. In
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these noble studies of English social life among the laboring classes, mister Gibson has
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collected all of his stories in verse, which he wishes to retain in his
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collected works. He has already become an influence on the work of many of
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his contemporaries, and the qualities of incisive observation, warm humanity, and subtle
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art which characterize his best work are adequately disclosed in his poems. I am
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sure that the reader of short stories will find them as fascinating as any volume
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of prose published this year. And the sum of all these poems is an
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English comedie human which portrays every type of English labor in rich imaginative speech.
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The dramatic quality of these stories is achieved by virtue of a constant economy of
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selection and a nervous singing speech as authentic as that of Singe Almarandi by Armistead
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C. Gordon. Charles Scribner's sons. In this collection, mister Gordon,
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whose name is so happily associated with that of Thomas Nelson Page, has collected
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from the files of Scribner's magazine, the deft and insinuating chronicles of Negro life
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on a Virginia plantation, which have attracted so much favorable comment in recent years.
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This collection places mister Gordon in the same rank as the author of marse
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Chan as a li literary artist of the vanished South. These transcripts from the
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folk life of the people are told very quietly, in a persuasive style that
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reveals a rich poetic sense of human values. The mellow atmosphere of these stories
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is particularly noteworthy, and mister Gordon's instinctive sympathy with his subject has saved him
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from that spirit of condescension which has been the weakness of so much American folk
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writing in the past. Almah Randi will long remain a happy and honorable tradition
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in American literature. The Grim Thirteen, edited by Frederick Stewart, Greene,
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DoD Mead and Company, is a collection of thirteen stories of literary value which
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have been declined with enthusiastic praise by the editors of American magazines because of their
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grim quality or because they have an extremely unhappy ending. The collection was gathered
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as a test of the public in nas interest, in order to remove,
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if possible, what the editor believed to be a false editorial policy. It
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is interesting to examine these stories and to pretend that one is an editor.
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The experiment has been extremely successful and has produced at least one story by an
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American author, the Abigail Sheriff Memorial by Vincent O'Sullivan, and one story by
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an English author, Old Fags by Stacy Ammonier, which are permanent in their
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literary value. Four Days, the Story of a War Marriage by Hetty Hemenway,
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Little Brown and Company. Of this story I have spoken elsewhere in this
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volume. I shall only add here that it is one of the most significant
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spiritual studies in fiction that the war has produced, and that it is directly
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told in a style of sensitive beauty. A Diversity of Creatures by Rudyard Kipling,
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Double Day, Page and Company is the first collection of mister Kipling's short
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stories published in several years. I must confess frankly that there is but one
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story in the volume which seems to me a completely realized rendering of the substance
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which mister Kipling has chosen, and that is the incomparable satire on publicity entitled
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The Village that Voted The Earth was Flat. In this volume we will find
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many stories in many moods, and some of them are postscripts to earlier volumes
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of mister Kipling. I cannot believe that his war stories deserve as high praise
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as they have been accorded. This volume presents mister Kipling as the most consummate
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living master of technique in the English tongue, but his inspiration has failed him.
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Except for the single exception which I have chronicled. The volume is a
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memory rather than an actuality, and it has the pathos of a forgotten dream.
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The Bracelet of Garnets and Other Stories by Alexander Couprin, translated by Leo
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Pasvolski, with an introduction by William Lyon Phelps Charles Scribner's Sons. This collection
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of stories is based on the author's own selection for this purpose, and although
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the translation is not thoroughly idiomatic, the sheer poetry of Cuprn's imagination shines through
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the veil of an alien speech and captures the imagination of the reader. Couprn's
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pictorial sense is curiously similar to that of Wilbur Daniel Steele, and it is
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interesting to study the reactions of similar temperaments on widely different substances and backgrounds.
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Couprin achieves a chiseled finality of utterance which is as evident in his tragedy as
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in his comedy, and in some of these pieces, a fine allegorical beauty
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shines prismatically through a carefully economized brilliance of narrative. The Prussian Officer and Other
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stories by D. H. Lawrence B. W. Hubish, The twelve
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short stories collected in this volume are full of the same warm color that one
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always associates with mister Lawrence's best work, and the nervous, complaining beauty of
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his style makes him the English compere of Gabriel D. Nunzio. The warm,
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lush fragrance of many European countrysides pervades these stories, and a certain poignant,
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sensual disillusionment is insistently stressed by the characters who flit through the shadowy foreground.
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It is the definitely realized and concrete sense of landscape that mister Lawrence has
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achieved, which is his finest artistic attribute, and the sensitive response to light,
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which is so characteristic an element in his vision, bays all the pictures
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he presents in a rich glow, whose gradations of light and shadow respond finely
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to the emotion reactions of his characters. He is the most sophisticated of the
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contemporary English realists, and has the sense of poetry to a high degree which
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is conspicuously absent in the work of other English novelists. A designer of Downs
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and Other Tales by Gertrude Russell Lewis Pilgrim Press. I set this volume of
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allegories, beside Flame and the Shadow Eater by Henrietta Weaver, as one of
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the two best books of allegories published in nineteen seventeen. These seven little tales
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have a quiet, imaginative glow that is very appealing, and I find in
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them a folk quality that is almost Scandinavian in its naivete. The Terror a
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mystery by Arthur Matchin, Robert M McBride and Company. When this story was
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first published in The Century Magazine in nineteen seventeen under the title of the Coming
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of the Terror, it was at once hailed by discriminating readers as the best
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short story by an English writer published in an American magazine since The Friends by
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Stacy Omonier. It is now published in its complete form as originally written,
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and although it is as long as a short novel, it has an essential
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unity of incident, which justifies us in claiming it as a short story.
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I suppose that Algernon Blackwood is the only other English writer who has the same
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gift for making strange spiritual adventures completely real to the imagination, and the author
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of The Bowmen has surpassed even that fine story In this description of how mysterious
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terror overran England during the last years of the Great War, and how the
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mystery of its passing was finally revealed. The emotional tension of the reader is
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enhanced by the quiet, matter of fact air with which which the story is
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presented. The volume is one of the best five or six books of short
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stories which England has produced during the past year. The second odd number thirteen
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Tales by GUIs de Monpaisson, the translation by Charles Henry White, an introduction
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by William Dean, Howse Harper and Brothers. It is reported in some volume
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of French literary memoirs that Gui de Mopisson regarded the first series of the odd
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number as better than the original. Be this as it may, The thirteen
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stories which make up this volume are admirably rendered with the careful reflection of the
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slightest nuances. As mister Halle states in his introduction to the volume, the
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range of these stories is not very great. The effect they make is greater
32:51
than the range. But this selection has been admirably chosen with a view to
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making the range as wide as possible, and I can only hope that it
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will serve to influence some of our younger writers toward a greater descriptive and emotional
33:06
economy. The Girl and the Fawn by Eden Philpotts J. B. Lippencott
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Company. These eight idols of the Four Seasons are graceful Greek legends told with
33:17
a modern touch in poetic prose. They have a quality of quiet beauty which
33:22
will command them to many readers to whom the more realistic work of mister Philpotts
33:29
does not appeal, And the admirable illustrations by Frank Brangwyn are a felicitous accompaniment
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to the modulated prose of mister Philpotts, Barbedweier and other poems by edwin Ford
33:44
Piper The Midland Press, Moorhead, Minnesota. As Grant Showerman's A Country Chronicle
33:51
is an admirable rendering of the farm life of Wisconsin in the seventies. So
33:55
these poems are a fine imaginative record of the the pioneer life of Nebraska a
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little later. I believe this volume to contain quite as fine poetry as Robert
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Frost's North of Boston. Here you will meet many men and women struggling against
34:14
the loneliness of prairie life and winning spiritual as well as material conquests out of
34:20
nature. The greater part of this volume is composed of a series of narrative
34:24
poems entitled The Neighborhood. Their lack of literary sophistication is part of their charm,
34:31
and the calculated ruggedness of the author's style is a faithful reflection of his
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barren physical background. Best Russian Short Stories compiled and edited by Thomas Seltzer Bonnie
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and Liverit. This is the first anthology of Russian short stories which has yet
34:52
been published in English, and the selections are excellent. There is a wide
34:55
range of literary art represented in this volume, and the translations are extremely smooth
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and idiomatic, as is only fitting. The work of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky,
35:07
Turgenev and other Russians whose work is already well known to the American reader are
35:14
only represented lightly in the collection, and greater space is devoted to the stories
35:19
of Tchekhov and other writers less familiar to the American public. Nineteen stories are
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translated from the work of Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy,
35:31
Soltakov, Korolenko, Gharshan, Tchekhov, SALAGEB. Potepenko, Semyonov, Gorky,
35:39
andreyev Artzibashev, and Kuprin. And the volume is prefixed with an excellent
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critical introduction by the editor. A Country Child by Grant Showerman the Century Company.
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This is a sequel to Professor Showerman's earlier volume, A Country Chronicle.
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The book is an epic of what a little boy saw and felt and dreamed
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on a farm in Wisconsin forty years ago, told just as a little boy
36:10
would tell it. It will help you to remember how you went to the
36:14
circus and how you stayed up late on your birthday. You will also recall
36:19
the ball game, the day you didn't go home from school, and how
36:22
you went in swimming, and about that fight with Bill, and ever so
36:25
many other things which he thought that you had forgotten. I think all the
36:30
boys and girls that used to write to James Whitcomb Riley should send a birthday
36:35
letter this year to Grant Showerman, so that he will get it on the
36:38
ninth of January. Let's start a movement in Wisconsin to have a Showerman Day.
36:45
Flame and the Shadow Eater by Henrietta Weaver, Henry Holt and Company.
36:51
In these fifteen short allegorical tales, Henrietta Weaver has introduced with considerable skill much
36:58
Persian philosophy and presented it to the American reader so attractively that it is thoroughly
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persuasive, akin in a measure to certain similar stories by Jeanette Marx. They
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have the same prismatic quality of brilliance and in permanence. I do not believe
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that the reader who enjoys the poetry of the mind will find these allegories specially
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esoteric, but I may commend them frankly for their story value irrespective of the
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symbols which the author has chosen to attach to them. The Great Modern French
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Stories edited by Willard Huntington Wright, Bonnie and Liverwright, Married by August Strindberg
37:39
Bonnie and Liveright, and Visions by count ILYA. Tolstoy James B. Pond
37:45
have reached me too late for extended review. I list them here as three
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volumes of permanent literary value. End of section thirty two