Judge — November 13, 1920 — page 12: what you’re looking at

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

Drawn by Heaway Pacuee Thrills, Tarzan and Our Bobsy By Benyamtn De Cy Tall Talk from Doc. Silence ANT thrills? Real thrills that start from the central ice in yout good old coco and run around to all the in your corpus? Thrills that begin with a* ine and end by your putting on so much gooseflesh that you have change the size of your collar? Then select a cloud-juicy evening, retire to your “den” or boudoii turn out all the lights except the cat’s lamps and read “ John by Algernon Blackwood (E. P, Dutton & Co.), There are five psy chic stories in this book that are sc fascinating and creepy-crawly that you won't care a liverwurst whether you ever wake up. If you know the work of Algernon Blackwood (and if you do not, wise up on him), you know, of course, he is the greatest magician of scientific psychic stories writing today. He is a kind of Prospero who roils up the curtain of matter right before your baby stare and shows world which causes your solid fat to melt, thaw and resolve it- self into a sheer Niagara of perspiration. 1 started this book one evening in the subway at South Ferry. At six o'clock the next morning I was still in that car, [had gone over all the routes, into shuttles, under the rivers, back again, and paid about twelve fares. Just illustrates John Silence, who is a sort of Burbank or Darwin of ghosts, solves all problems of haunted houses just as old Rat Catcher Lou used to guarantee to rid your premises of cheese-snatchers. He also knows how to smooth out the psychic difficulties of your hump-backed cat that sees things behind your wallpaper, But John Silence makes you think, if you are used to that unusual habit. The stories are not just host-shockers, but real literature. The human touch? Maybe you are overdosed with it in the * Try the great ghost-touch of “John Silence’ and your emotions a little. “mov wobbl Tarzan's Back, Boyst RAND old days of Rider Haggard! The age of She ‘and Omslopogas! My memory melts, and I can see She, the lady salamander, who was born of fire and could sit right in oven while the flap-cakes were a-making. What became of Did she become quite human at last and gointo the trenches with the boys? She could sit in No Man's Land and knit socks and turn shells into apple dumplings. Omslopogas was another one of our old-time heroes. This African giant was so strong that he could tear an income-tax blank to tatters by looking at it. He balanced temples on his head and kept his beads in a lion's mouth. She and Omslopogas faded, and the world was empty for awhile. We had to get along with Bryan and Rasputin. But fiction-writers abhor a vacuum; and along came Tarzan in the nick of time. Tarzan was an Ape-Man, but he wouldn't stand for any monkey busin The seventh of the Tarzan series has just left the mad monkey house of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ brain (“Tarzan the Untamed”; A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago). Or is it a lion-house? Anyhow Mr. SERES Burroughs is keeping up the good work of keeping our imagination at fever heat Tarzan, in this his latest emotional souse, has pretty nearly all the animal kingdom with him; it is easier for him to do this than for an ordinary man to get the landlord, the iceman and the janitor on his working staff. Tarzan can talk to monkeys and lions, but I can never get our laundress to understand my wife’s orders when she goes out to delicatesse. I wish I had an imagination like this Edgar Rice Burroughs. I'd cut out this bloomin’ job, all nght, and walk arcund in my hydro-aero- plane, ballasted to the keel with pubiishers’ and “m * contracts. I'm going to read “Tarzan the Untamed” tomorrow night. From the pictures in it, I know it’s a cocktail of a book. Why Bobsy Chewed Money Orders ELL, I certainly ought to feel complimented! So few things come to a book reviewer (whom Bernard Shaw called the low- est form of animal intelligence on the planet) that when a famous publishing house like Brentano's rushes off to me hot from the press by motorcycle a copy of a book without covers and even without the advertised introductory letter by Col. House I feel like saying the other book reviewers, “Beat you to it, boys!” 1 went straight out and bought an extra pack of Dromedaries. The bock that came up the street without decent clothing on it to the explosions, dust and smooch of a motorcycle, that upset Bobsy, our new cat, so completely that she is hidden in last year’s mail in the sub-post office, across the street, feeding on money orders, was “The Peace Conference Day by Day,’ by Charles T. Thompson. It wasn't the psychological moment to put this over on me. The war is over; or, rather, it was over until the Poles and the Russians began a street corner fight down in Kiev. Besides, I was digging my Palm Beach out of the trunk in the basement and putting the moths away in camphor for use next winter when the invasion took place 1 laid the compliment aside, thanking my friend, Mr. Herold, head book booster at the aforesaid publishing house, for the mental bouquet and ‘phoned the boss of Judge whether I had to read it. “If you don’t read every line of it, the skids for yours!" came back by telephonoradiograph. So I ensconced and dug. And 1 will say if you are interested in what took place at that Peace Conference at Versailles you must have this book. Your grandchildren will be more interested in it than you may be, for it is an historical document of supreme value. ery thing is set down day by day, and I did not miss a day. On the days those statesmen didn’t meet I wondered what they did. If you want to get to the very gizzard of a man’s character find out what he does on his day off. This is the imaginative part of the book. You fill it in. Did the Big Four play croquet or “hit it up” down the Boul’ Mich? Who was the lady in green spats seen with Orlando, of Italy, on these days off? The book itself is a great matching of wits—so much so that a new war may start before Germany has a chance to recover from her victories.