Life — June 8, 1911 — page 32: what you’re looking at

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

Shattered Ideals LITERARY item going the rounds of the press tells us that Mr. Gilbert Chesterton lives in the suburbs of London with a lot of children, and after detailing somewhat minutely his daily life, informs us that his copy is prepared in a great rush, usually about an hour before the messenger will call for it, and in the midst of the utmost confusion These personal details somchow give us a distinct sense of loss in Mr. Chesterton, not because of their specific char acter, but because any intimacy with a literary man seems to drag him down to the cheap level of the commonplace. With Mr. Chesterton, the writing of literature is nothing more than the playing of any game; if, for example, he was able for, say an hour a day, to keep three balls continuously in the air, the result would be the same. And this leads us to commiserate the publicity to which rs are brought in the present day Everything is known about them—their nourishment, their clothes, their habits, their manners and their methods of work. When we read what they have written, therefore, we are able immediately to call up a picture of the man be- hind the pen. We sce him fussing with his wife, munch.ng gum drops, lying on the floor, with his knees in the air, or doing the set of things with which he has been scheduled in the public prints. The mystery has all gone out of authorship, leaving it dull and cold to the gaze. We can no longer enthuse over the higher forms of literary art, when we know that its ex- ponents are ordinary m th whom, after we have read how they pass their time, we would hesitate to associate permanently T. L. M. Post-Pliocene Book Notices HE. Paleozoic Publishing Company announce among their spring productions the latest novel of A. Anthropoid Crusher, in one volume. This work, in half calf and half reindeer concrete, is ably illustrated with five etchings in Poet: THE VERSES WHICH YOU ARE PERUSING ARE THE PRECIOUS CHILDREN OF MY BRAIN. Editor: Pook LITTLE ORPHANS. solid rock, and a frontispicce‘in Parian marble by the hy- draulic process. It is large 1000 mo, and weighs two tons net. It may be bought on the instalment plan in hundred pound lots. The Granolithic Company, Inc., reports large advance or- ders for “African Game Sports,” by Theodolite Dentatus, now in its fourth quarrying. There are two editions, a pocket edition in limp cement and a de luxe edition in hand sp rottenstone. Shipment will be made promptly and the pub- lishers agree to deliver three-hundred-weight a day until the entire volume is supplied. The economic essays of Andrew Carnivorous may now be bought at all booksellers in plain red brick, with explanatory n tes in blue slate. A souvenir bookmark in the shape of a galvanized iron crowbar will be included with each retail order. Second-hand copies of Clamshelley's poems, in half gran- ite, slightly chipped, are on sale at the local gravel pit. The prisoners at the county jail are at present cracking stones for a new edition of short stories shortly to be issued hy Chisel. Quarrier & Co. This book is to be in three-quar- ter sandstone, with a carborundum cover, and a colored il- lustration by Lionbreaker on a specially constructed sub- stratum of rose quartz. Harold EF. Porter, Books Most in Demand Duriag the Week Ending June 8, 1911 Returns from Various Cities BOSTON cittcaco Marcus Aurelius Wind and W Epictetus Lady of the Lake Browning's Poems Open Country Kant on Pure Reason Molly’s Fourth Husband Emerson’s Essays Songs of the Open Ibsen's Dramas PITTSBURG NEW YORK The City of Dreadful Night Telephone Directory The Smoke Eaters Who's Who The Grafters The World Almanac An Affair of Dishonor Bradstreet’s The Spoilers Almanach de Gotha The Great Divide Dun’s Commercial Reports The Sootable Caild PHILADELPHIA INDIANAPOLIS East Lynne Who's Hoosier Children of the Abbey Alice of Old Ten Cents Thaddeus of Warsaw Beverly of Graustark Scottish Chiefs Graustark of Beverly St. Elmo Poems Here to Hum Edna Browning The Cows of a Thousand Handles KANSAS CITY Pigs Is Pigs The Prairie The Call of the Wild How to Know the Wild Flowers Packard id by th 2 direc