Life — May 25, 1911 — page 24: what you’re looking at

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

““EAlRSE T'S new ; uzenhead the Great” (Scribner, $1.50), cont train of ad- ventures from the life of a swashbuckling English soldier of fortune of the fifteenth century, whose magnificent egotism makes him at once the master of circumstance, the dupe of rogues and the victim of his own defective qualities. The stories are picturesque; the text is rich to fruitiness with that clixir of medievalism that Mr. Hewlett is wont to distill from what passes for the past, and the whole forms a restatement of a Falstaffian type of character that, in English at least, would seem to be a work of supererogation. At any rate the type, and that especially in this, its medieval manifestation, so utterly familiar to us that to read Mr. Hewlett’s book (which itself is a return to his earlier style) is in a double sense to revive old associations rather than to lay the foundation fot new ones, It is hoped, however, that this statement will not he understood as in any sense denying the appeal that this volume is likely to make to many readers, but rather as in dicative of those to whom its twofold return upon the past will be welcome. DISTINCTLY new note has been introduced into the cold and formal literature of arctic exploration by George Borup in “ A Tenderfoot with Peary” (Stokes, $2.10) The author was the youngest member of the last polar ex- pedition. He was a Yale athlete, a “kid,” an enthusiast, a sport and a hustler. The affair presented itself to him as the dventure. He approached it with huge appe he has written abou: it with complete Yerbal sans-géne and an utter absence of self-consciousness. There are, one imag few readers who have not at some time visited the arctic in imagination under the painstaxing guidance of one or other of its grim and indomitable explorers; seen it, as it were, professionally, as an enemy to be conquered, a problem to be solved, and a region whose fascination lay in its terribleness. Here we sce it through the cyes of one who combines the fresh-sightedness of the onlooker with the enthusiasm of a neophite, as a human spectacle to be enjoyed and as a Homeric testing ground for herocs, Some traveler has said that what impressed him most about Russia was the apparent case with which even very little children spoke Russian. Mr. Borup writes undergraduate English with the same native facility. His book is a saga done in ragtime. T will be remembered that Macaulay (who was better versed in English history than in natural history) wrote of “ boys who, unaware, Ranging the wood to start a hare, Come to the mouth of some dark lair Where, growling low, a fierce old bear Lies amid bones and blood.” It is the somewhat laughable duty of this paragraph to de- scribe a contrary experience; to tell about going out in high hopes and full expectation of meeting a bear, and about find- ing a cotton-tail; in short, about reading Mr. Daniel Froh- man’s “ Memories of a Manager " (Doubleday-Page, $1.00 net). For one takes up the book with a fecling that, quite irre- spective of what one may think about the contemporary con- dition of the stage in America, or about Mr. Frohman’s share of the responsibility for its development, one will find enter- tainment of sorts in being admitted behind the scenes of his experiences during the last quarter century, and will, more- over, discover a personality lurking between the lines, And one lays the book down with the somewhat blank realization that, after all, one’s adventures have consisted in encountering many names about whose owners one would have liked to hear something, and that the anticipated personality has resolved itself into a few familiar platitudes about the dogmas of the dra I morance were safe as well as blissful, no one with any regard for his peace of mind would open the excellent but disturbing hand-book recently issued under the title of “ In- heritance Taxes for Investors ” (Boston News Bureau, $1.00). This volume is a model of clearness and conciseness, and in addition to chapters of general explanation, tables of com- parison and lists of leading corporations, with the States where they are incorporated, it gives for each of the thirty cight States imposing inheritance taxes a brief review of the history of this class of legislation, a summary of the existi law and notes on the important constructive rulings of the local courts. The volume’s revelations are sufficiently startling to make the owner of anything taxable feel like a piece of liver in a trout pond. But it is a valuable reference book. J.B. Kerfoot. CONFIDENTIAL BOOK GUIDE The Ashes of @ God, by F. W. Bain. Another of this author's exuisite adaptations of’ Hindoo mythology A Tenderfoot with Peary, by George WH), See above. MIS FIRST AFFAIR comicbooks.com