Judge — September 11, 1920 — page 14: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ae Drown by Hemay Patwen Hanging Out the Week’s Literary Wash By Benjamin De Casseres Gilbert Sasses England HERE'S a queer kind of a male author run- ning around on Mephisto’s footstool. He is apacifist. He dedicates his books to women. He calls all men fools. And maybe he kind of wishes he had been born a petticoat. Boy, page old Doc Freud. In the preface to Gilbert Cannan’s “Windmills” (B. W. Huebsch) I find that the author regrets that he did not dedicate his book to “the first woman to take her seat in the worst club in London, the House of Com- mons.” I wonder whether this is part of the fine satire of Mr. Cannan’s book? Those English satirists are so bally subtle! The fables in this book were on the Index during. the war. Fatland—England—is charmingly satirized. War is ridiculed out of court—an old game that always makes Mars grin; the German mind is laughed away—but why? I am not so sure the Boche didn’t win the war. Ask Lloyd George his sub-rosa opinion. Of course we are all disillusioned about a great many things, like Mr. Cannan; but it’s curious to notice how seriously these English humorists take life. Cheer up, Mr. Cannan—there are thousands of wars yet to come, and you and I and Lady Astor are less than atoms in the grand old roulette wheel of Papa Brahma! While waiting, give us back our beer, say I (Hear! Hear!). Old Crook, Go West! wily does everybody who has gone wrong in the East (in Dover, Del., for instance) go West in order to let the dead past bury its dead and Begin Life Anew? Doesn't anybody out West (in Portland, Ore., for instance) ever slip up or fall down and come East to begin afresh, all newly whitewashed? Then, too, why shouldn’t an Easterner who has gone wrong sometimes visit Canada, due north, or Jamaica, due south, or step over to the Azores to hide his Terrible Mistake? Horace Greeley said, “Young man, go West.” He didn’t say “Old Crook, go West.” Yet they all do it— everybody, in fiction and in life, Buries His Grief in the Far West. Personally, if I ever Commit a Mortal 4 Error I shall hie me to the Kentucky mountains, wnere the still moonshine runs deep. In “Wine o’ the Winds,” by Keene Abbott (Double- day, Page & Co.), Dr. North is an Easterner. He is guilty of a Terrible Error. What it is, I couldn’t figure out; but he probably filled more frumenti prescriptions than the law allowed. Anyhow, he did the usual thing —bolted for the West, where he began bootlegging again by drinking the wine o’ the winds. Of ccurse the prai- ries, the campfires and the cold winters de him a lot of good. He soon gets back his health and comes to the top at last, with his Terrible Mistake all shined up to look like a statue of Experience. There is plenty of love and some rough-neck brawls in the book. The final destiny of Dr. North lies be- tween Goldwyn and the Metro. Our Ninth Ward Pagan HE first hobo of which we have any knowledge was a poet. His name was Homer. He peddled the doleful story of the demi-gods from tavern to tavern for his bit of liverwurst and beer. Down through the ages the great hobo-poets stream until we come to the last of the race—Harry Kemp and Vachel Lindsay. The former has just put his Odyssey into a book, “Chanteys and Ballads” (Bren ). Tales of the salt seas, shipwrecks, the drunks in the fo'castle, the galley slave of old, the restless heave and wash of far waters, the sagas of tramps told around campfires, bits from jail, the great swing of the wind on the prairies and the boom of rain on Harry’s whiskers The book is autobiographical. There isn’t anything strenuous that hasn't happened to Harry in his young life. And he has put it all in this book. Harry is not a John Masefield or a Rudyard Kipling or a Francois Villon, you understand; but he is that unique person in letters—himself. “Tell them, O Sky-born, when I die With high Romance to «wife That I went out as I had lic Drunk sith the joy of life! ‘d, So Harry chants, and so Harry is—gorgeous New York pagan! Ccomicbooks.com