Life — August 24, 1916 — page 41: what you’re looking at

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

The Latest Books ‘OR divers to go down fathoms deep and drag oozy chests from sunken ships and spill clinking gold on dry decks in the sun—ah! that’s the life! Is there anyone present who hasn't always thought so? Well, a thing no whit less thrill- ing—the discovery, thirty years deep in undeserved oblivion, of so-clinking and golden a tale as “ The Purple Land” (Dut- ton, $1.50), by W. H. Hudson, aad the bringing out of an American edition of it—has just happened right here in New York, and lovers of salvaged treasure are advised to have a look at it. “The Purple Land” is Uruguay; the time of the story, the 1860's; its subject, the adventures of a young Eng- lishman looking for employment in the hinterland of Monte- video; its magic, the distilling of the very elixir of romance from what looks like the most realistic of journals. The re- discovery of W. H. Hudson, whose “Green Mansions” ap- peared earlier in the year, is already one of the nice happen- ings of 1916. “The Purple Land” clinches it. OWEVER, there is romance and romance. Most people do not think they are getting it unless he marries the girl, And some demand, in addition, at least three narrow squeaks: one with Death, one with a Female Temptrice, and one with the capital V'd Villain whose thumb-mark must, later, be given to the police. And it is for these Shylocky persons who want to be well pounded by romance that Francis Wil- liam Sullivan has written “Star of the North” (Putnam, $1.35). This is a tale of adventure in the present-day hinter- land of northern Canada, where a movie company doing a multiple-recl thriller of the wilderness no sooner discovers a Hudson's Bay Company's factor’s unkissed daughter than , lusts, rivalries, jealous wives, heroic deeds and final felicity flare up out of the situation like balls from a roman candle. F, BENSON'S “ David Blaize"” (Doran, $1.35) is the e story of an English schoolboy’s life at a private, anc later at a public, school, and is written in the quiet and mat- ter-of-fact style of direct narration that the author reserves for his most personally felt and least pot-boily tales. In American fiction, the schoolboy hero invariably starts in by being a “limb” and ends up by being a leader. But David holds, throughout, the middleground of schoolboy character and accomplishment ; gaining, as he does gain, our liking, and hold- ing, as he does, our interest, by the genuine and typical charm of his fine boy-ness. LIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL, critic, traveloguist, biog- rapher of Whistler and wife of Joseph Pennell the etcher, has published a volume of reminiscences called “ Nights" (Lip- pincott, $3.00) which is full of interesting thumb-nail sketches and comment upon writers and artists and other well-known people who, during the past thirty years, have shared the after- work hours of the Pennells’ evenings with them. Rome and Venice in the late eighties (when the Pennells were tricycling about Europe doing magazine commissions) and London and Paris in the nineties (when W. E. Henley and his friends and Whistler were among the frequenters of the Pennells’ quar- ters) form the backgrounds of the book. The sketch of Hen- ley is of especial interest. NYONE who watches life closely enough to write such fiction as Dorothy Canfield’s “Hillsboro People” and “The Bent Twig” is pretty certain to be worth listening to when offering observations on practical living, as Mrs. Dorothy Canfield Fisher does in a volume contributed to the Childhood and Youth Series called “Self-Reliance” (Bobbs-Merrill, $1.00). This deals in a systematic and practical manner with the successive problems, from babyhood to adolescence, and varying according to the family income, of developing initia- tive, self-reliance and responsibility in city children; and offers the only practical suggestions yet made for teaching self- help to steam-heated, butler-fed, duplex-apartment kids. J.B. Kerfoot. ‘The responsible 5 families of America have White Rack water on their tables A NEW IDEA IN BINDERS Until now LIFE has never been able to supply its readers with an entirely satisfactory binder for the convenient and safe prese vation of the copies of the journal, The new invention expands or contracts at will, and makes a convenient volume to handle as well as being very simple in operation, It is handsomely made, the outside being black Art Buckram with cover design in gilt, and is made to hold a full year’s copies of LIFE. Sent free to any address in the United States on reccipt of $1.50 LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY 17 West Thirty-first Street New York City