Life — April 11, 1918 — page 26: what you’re looking at

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

CHARLES EVANS HUCHES HIS gentleman was born with Castor and Pollux rampant with the Little Bear, Aquila tugging at his chains and Mars rising in the express clevator of the cast. Should avoid large animals, such as Cali- fornia clephants and_ presidential bees, and confine himself to driving income taxis. Will succeed as a jockey at Sheepshead, barber's as- sistant or cocktail mixer for an Arabian caravan. Looks well in pink silk tights, ornamented with Supreme Court chiffon cut cn train and caught up at the side with ruffles of old point and shredded wheat. ROBERT LA FOLLETTE HIS gentleman was born in the third mansion of the full moon, with periscopes ascendant, Cancer and Scorpio singing hymns of hate and Capricorn giving the double cross to Virgo. He has a sweitzer- case mind attaining to great velocity in the arid regions of the northwest, dachshund hair, rising precipitously over a Hohenzollern forehead, and a disposition like a Heligoland. Will soon go on a long journey, — from which’ he is not likely to return. Will do his best work on a lonely island, entirely surrounded by sauerkraut. The Latest Books O* nice thing about the ground hog is that you know, as the saying is, “where to find him.” He isn't a camou- flaginous beast like the chameleon, nor a practical joker like the Irishman’s flea. When he says he'll be back in six weeks, you can lay your plans accordingly. And if we sometimes for- yet this, it is our own fault, Along back in February, when May Sinclair's “ The Tree of Heaven” poked its nose above xround, we all drew a long breath and hoped that the rigors of a record-breaking literary winter were over and done with And then, when nothing happened for weeks and weeks, we sort of settled back into our winter garments of repentance nd forgot alll promised spring fires. O we of little faith! For, just see out the dependable old ground hog and bis who's here: ILLIAM McFEE, whose first novel, “ Casuals of the Sea,” which appeared in the fall of 1916, set both the critics and the reading public thinking, because of the strange fact that “TIE E : Life’s Horoscopes Looks well in a military tea gown made of poison ivy and barbed wire, and will succeed as an editorial writer on a Hearst paper, a bomb carrier in an ammunition factory or garbage administrator in a Turkish vilayet. NEWTON D. BAKER HIS gentleman was born with Capricornus or the Goat in full eclipse with the Milky Way, Gemini three thousand miles in the air, Mars rosy and Taurus throwing fits in the second house. He has a ma- chine-gun complexion, sanguine tem- perament, looks well in pneumonia kilts dotted with smart alecs or horse blankets trimmed with pacifist pleats, and should never go out on a dark night without broomsticks rampant. Will succeed as a salesman for a hot-air factory or assistant to college janitor or plumber's helper; or in the undertaking business. With Mercury triumphant and Cassiopeia’s Chair rocked in the cradle of the deep will do well to avoid brigadier gen- crals and senators. In conjunction with tatvie vibrations he can acquire a total vocabulary of four hundred words a minute, Fahrenheit, without displacement or perihelion. but should beware of khakis rising in the east. ToL. M OU don’t mean to say, sah, that Colonel Carter of Kentucky has joined the ranks of Prohibition. “Yes, sah, I saw him, sah, only the other day, taking his whiskey with water.” it pleased both of them—nothing so staggers either a specialist or a layman as to find their independent diagnoses agreeing: has published a second novel, “ Aliens” (Doubleday, Page, $1.50), which promises, for all its differences of mood and method, to repeat the miracle. In “ Casuals” a husbandman of buman values—a man who had sowed the grain of experi- ence and reaped the harvest of understanding—offered us a bulging sheaf of his garnered crop. So great was his store, so generous was his impulse, and so carclessly or inexpertly was the shock bound and fastened, that we were almost as much astonished that it held together as rejoiced by the rich- ness of its content. In “Aliens” a comparatively meager measure of this same husbandman’s grain, thrashed, winnowed, graded and polished, is presented to us in one of the most original, skilfully contrived and technically successful “ pack ages” of modern fiction, A paragraph is no place to discuss the combined verve and subtlety of the tale. But the excite- ment of swift sweep and poised suspense is there for readers who run, while for the less headlong there is the delightful color play of “human folly" turned facet by facet to the light. And for all of us there is the wonder as to what, if comicbook