Life — January 10, 1924 — page 26: what you’re looking at

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

a little difficult for me to get down to this department this morn- ing, since I spent most of last evening over volumes venerable for their an- tiquity which are being assembled by one of our rising young collectors. After turning worm-eaten pages slowly to discover where the Latin of the Italian monks left off and that of the German began, and seeing that the origina letter in which Louis com- plimented the Marquise de Pompadour on her book of engravings did not become detached from the bound collection which it accom- panicd—well, after such a literary experience, the fig- ure-flanked information from the Cosmopolitan Book people that Peter B. Kyne's newest story is knocking the public cold can be received with a certain calmness. AND. vet when it comes to the long and unoccu- pied winter evening against which good reading matter is a comfortable insurance, one live contemporary vol- ume on the library table is worth two muscum folios in Mr. Folger’s or Mr. Hunt- ington’s vaults. So it is a pleasure to recommend Rose Macaulay’s “Told by an Idiot” (Collins, London), which is so much of a tres that I should like to have I criers proclaim it and all steeples ring,” giving Mi Millay credit for the quoted assist. It takes an English family over a period ex- tending from 1879 to the present ind the part about the Nineties, with its casual references to some of our most exciting traditions, is delightful. Vicky's com- ing home from church, for instance, with the news that Mr. Pater and Mr. Wilde SR RaRHGRER Lite e_and Letters had both been there, and Mrs, Garden's characterizing-the Ethical Society Mag- azine by Robert Browning's having published a poem in it, “that one about a man who strangled a girl he was fond of with her own hair on a wet evening.” Mr. Garden's pursuit of a satisfactory creed is also diverting, and if a more The Night i Giarilept HEARD not the conductor's call That fatal night, as homeward crept The train: of Morpheus the thrall I lay beneath a leaden pall And soundly overslept I slept and waked and, sleepy-eyed, Gazed through the pane at naught except A black presentiment outside, A foreign formlessness which cried. “Up! Up! You've overslept.”” I up-ed as ne‘er I'd up-ed before And like a nimble chamois leapt From seat to aisle, from aisle to door, From door to platform, where | saw How far I'd overslept “Tis little more that need be told I sought that night a hostel kept By one who in those days of old Sold rum to me who felt the cold Or heat, or overslept. But oh, the horror of the morn, When, home returned, my tale inept I stammered ‘neath the scorching scom Of her to whom my vows were swom: She had not overslept George S. Chappell amusing scene than that of the Queen's Jubilee parade has been written during the past year, I've missed it. “Dangerous Ages.” Miss Macaulay is our most enter- taining apostle of straight thinking, and she battled against cant with a gleam- in both “Potterism” and fystery at Ge- neva” gave her admirers a terrible scare, but she has more than made up for it with “Told by an Idiot.” Three cheers for its Greek Chorus, Miss Rome Garden, the devastating young wom- an whom the author coura- geously developed into the most attractive old maid in fiction! PEN ALL NIGHT” is not exactly what an English teacher at Farming- ton would pass out as a prize to the young woman who had written the best essay on the Cavalier poets, but it starts Paul Morand well on his way to recogni- tion as a brilliant French exponent of the modern school, and will prove en- tirely satisfactory to that portion of the public which likes a little style and so- phistication served with its realism. It relates six erot- ic episodes, staged variously in Catalonia, Constantinople, Rome, Paris and Vienna, in a manner which will please many and shock none, al- though it must be set down here as an astonishing piece of news that the edition pub- lished in this country by Thomas Seltzer does not in- clude the Scandinavian. For some. reason or other, pos- sibly from weariness at be- ing haled into court, Mr. Seltzer saw fit to leave out “The Baltic Night,” so readers with the all-or- (Continued on page 31) comicbooks.com