mothers. Doubtless there are those who would enjoy the story. There are even a few depraved souls who abuse aged parents. But if the world in general should thus regard motherhood, it would be the last leap away from all that is decent.

My own dear little mother has always been my chum. We are much together. She and my father take numerous motor trips with my husband and me, and we four have joyous holiday times together. And this heartless story has worried my little mother, as it will worry most mothers. Isn't life full enough, already, of trouble without adding pain by a publication of this kind? I long for a cowboy to express what I feel!

KATHRYN D. STEWART.

Montclair, N. J.

My dear SCRIBNER'S: Why "Mrs. Denton Gets Off" in May? There is nothing attractive in the motif, nothing striking in the telling. IS SCRIBNER's ready to exploit a little kittenish precocity even at the expense of old and precious traditions? Maybe it looks upon the tradition complex as paleozoic. Maybe its static is the jazz of the cabaret.

I am glad my mother went away before such pitiful drivel had been given a hearing in the magazine world. If the author ever had a mother -which seems doubtful-many of us hope she is locked away snug and safe in an Institution for Superfluous Parents.

See how we young apples swim!

JOHN HESTON WILLEY.

BURT AND POETIC LICENSE

Minneapolis, Minn. Dear Editor: I always enjoy Struthers Burt. Nothing finer has come my way than his "Diary of a Dude Wrangler." Reading it was like sailing over gentle swells or shutting off the gas and coasting down a smooth roadway. Perhaps it is because I am of, and know, the West.

And I was charmed with his "Threnody" in SCRIBNER'S for June, the first of his poems I had read. I cannot, however, accept the Editor's dictum that "he never makes use of poetic license." What, if not poetic license, is rhyming "bushes" with "thrushes"? Would it have violated his tonal technique or marred the meaning if the lines had read:

"And in the green recesses of the brush

The waterfall is echoed by the thrush."

My Century defines a bush as a "thicket of small trees," and brush as "a thicket; a clump of shrubs or trees."

who make a practice of writing to columnists or celebrities is evident, for many of them confess that this is their first offense. They like his frank and personal way of expressing himself, and his fresh and unbiassed point of view. Many of them disagree with things he says.

FROM A NONAGENARIAN TO A SAGE

One of the finest tributes, however, comes from the typewriter of Edward D. Kendall, of Elizabeth, N. J., who is in his ninety-fourth year and has read SCRIBNER'S "since and including the first number." Mr. Kendall apologizes for writing on the typewriter, but says the condition of his eyes prevents his using a pen. Then he lapses into verse concerning the sage of "As I Like It," in this manner:

As we like it, truth flows from his pen,
Critical studies of matters and men,
Of many live topics, of such variety
Those who read it can ne'er feel satiety.
I wish prohibition had left me good wine
To drink to the sage who is now fifty-nine.
May he still be the Master of Letters and lore
And remain the wise teacher for many years

more.

Then we come forward about seventy years and three generations to a letter from a former Yale student who didn't get a chance at any of Doctor Phelps's courses before he became an ex-member of the Class of 1925. He writes:

I regret that I did not have the pleasure of taking any of your courses while I was at Yale, but unfortunately I had to devote myself to that imponderable and unfathomable subject, namely, Physics, without apparent material success. However, I feel that by a close perusal of SCRIBNER'S I can make up to a small extent what I have missed during my two and a half years' sojourn in New Haven.

A TRADE IN CLUBS

Prospero, the conductor of a column, "Prospero's Musings," in the Baltimore Sun, promises to qualify for membership in Professor Phelps's Asolo Club this month when he goes abroad.

In the meantime he also proposes a club: “a San Gimignano Club, the qualification for membership being a visit to that 'little laurelled town of towers,' as Swinburne calls it in 'A Song of Italy.'

"By all means if we are to have clubs started by literary columnists like Professor Phelps and myself," he continues, "and if these clubs are to be in honor of Italian towns, let us have a San Gimignano Club as well as an Asolo Club. I am sure that Doctor Phelps will agree with

me, and I'll belong to his if he'll belong to
mine."

No doubt Doctor Phelps will see the fairness
of this exchange. What's more, we'll apply for
membership in Prospero's club ourselves, al-
though we are as yet ineligible to join the
Asolans. It was at San Gimignano that we
saw the direct descendant of the original of a
portrait which Benozzo Gozzoli included in
one of his frescoes in the Church of St. Augus-
tine there. He still lived in his ancestral pal-
ace. His concession to progress was in com-
muting to Siena (if one can use that phrase in
connection with those delightful hill towns
without its conjuring up scenes of crowded
trains and hurrying passengers) to teach
fencing.

WAR RECORDS AND BOYD CRITICISM

Mountain Grove, Mo.

Dear Editor: I confess that I cannot get the
slant of Mr. Young in his rather drastic criticism
of "Rintintin" and "Through the Wheat."

I admit that my attitude toward critics in gen-
eral is contemptuous. I still sympathize with an
old professor who when a sophomore said that he
could write sayings as good as many in Prov-
erbs replied: "Let me see some of them." My
ancestors' war record is a perfect counterpart of
Mr. Young's. My own will compare well with
his. I served ten months as an enlisted man in
the Spanish War and twenty-two as a medical
officer in the World War, ten of it in France.
However, that is all beside the point.

Both experience and observation lead me to
conclude that "Through the Wheat" and "Rin-
tintin" both ring true.

And it was said of truth, not criticism, "the
truth shall make ye free."

EDWARD C. WITTWER,
Capt. M. O. R. C.

NOTES AND COMMENT

Notes from the Publicity Department of
the National Council of the Episcopal Church
contain this reference to "God's Pocket," in
the June number:

Don't miss the article on Alaska in SCRIBNER'S
for June. You will like it if you are already inter-
ested in that land, and if you are not, it is time you
were, both as a citizen and as a churchman, and
this delightful article will help you to become so.

Royal Cortissoz divides people into two
classes, those who like drawings and those who
do not. With the latter class he sympathizes
heartily.

Incidentally, Mr. Cortissoz lets us in on a
delightful hobby of his and opens up appealing
possibilities for those of us who have a love of

Just as we go to press there comes to our
attention an editorial entitled "A Rare Poem"
in the Laramie (Wyo.) Republican-Boomerang.
The poem referred to is "Threnody in Major
and Minor," by Struthers Burt, and the edi-
torial is an example of that personal journalism
which is one of the virtues of the non-metropoli-
tan press. The editorial is so good that we
cannot forbear quoting the final paragraphs:

To us it has a depth such as we only find when
we get alone in the solitudes and silences of the
hills. We felt it one night as we sat on the shore
of Jackson Lake and saw the shadows of Mount
Moran thrust themselves down into its inky
waters. The moon had not yet risen, and there
was, as we sat there and felt Moran's vast form
reaching toward us, a surge of emotions that only
rarely sweeps one from his feet. A feeling both
of wonder and awe, and yet of ineffable sadness.
It is something akin to that which we find in Mr.
Burt's poem, that indescribable longing and lone-
someness that goes with all the beauty of this part
of the world.

Then the beauty of the lines themselves, their
natural and unstudied simplicity which reaches
home at once. And last of all how different the
treatment of this theme from that which the or-
dinary versifier is wont to use. Mr. Burt's form
to us is not only the very essence of poetry, but
the way in which he has used it makes this
"Threnody" different from anything else in our
American literature.

It is our humble opinion that Mr. Burt has
given us a poem that, by any analysis, is truly
great.

This editor should not remain anonymous.
He is F. S. Burrage.

1 like is the harm tess joke of sitting on

Oliver Cromwell, whom you see pictured above and to the left, comes fairly by his title of Patron Saint of Movie Censors. His wonderfully developed sense of humor is one of many factors described by Mr. de Mille, which keep our "Bigoted and Bettered Pictures" at their present level. And at the right Alice Harvey portrays a question many of us feel moved to ask, which is answered by Doctor Browne, as only a Congressman could answer it.

THE OLD MASTER AND HIS
OVERGROWN CHILD

William C. de Mille! How the moviegoing public pricks up its ears at the mention of the name. And how the censor's ears should burn at what he says!

Mr. deMille's forsaking of his first artistic love the stage-was due to a very human sort of desire. He wanted to be an "old master." He realized that Molière and Shakespeare probably would not turn over in their graves with envy at any of his works for the legitimate stage, and he saw a tremendous opportunity to be an artistic pioneer in this new art of the moving picture. The mention of art in the same breath with the motion picture will be received with a supercilious sniff by some. Mr. deMille himself has no illusions on that score, for he says: "It is my belief that 95 per cent of the pictures made are distinctly bad, and a large percentage of the remainder only fair."

The cause of the lack of art in the movie is shown by this prominent director in his article, "Bigoted and Bettered Pictures," this month. He attributes it, to a certain extent, to the youth of the industry and to its popularity, which caused it to expand to giant proportions physically before its brain had a chance to mature. But when the possibility of mental growth was cut short by the censor, Mr. deMille comes to the scene ready to do battle. Naturally the disappointment of one of the pioneer directors, who had hoped to see his child grow, is keen, and his protest at being involuntarily ap

with this bird!

pointed chaperon to all the children in the land is spirited. He feels that he should not be placed in loco parentis.

His article is an interesting commentary on current ideas of freedom in some quarters of these United States.

EVOLUTION OF A BOOK-COLLECTOR The evolution of Harry B. Smith as a book-collector has been attributed to the environment of the Saints and Sinners Club, an informal organization of bibliophiles who made their headquarters, rent free, in the Chicago bookshop of A. C. McClurg & Company. The name of the club, an invention of Eugene Field's, was derived from the fact that about half of the members were clergymen, and the rest newspaper men and actors.

As a matter of fact, however, the bibliomania of this playwright is, as he says, "hereditary and incurable." All the while that his plays and operettas and musical shows brightened Broadway-he is the author of some fifty productions, among them "Robin Hood," the "Follies" of three years, "The Spring Maid," "Watch Your Step," etc.-he had an atavistic interest in books, for he belongs to the fourth generation of a family of book-collectors. The mania first attacked him in the library of his grandfather, and many of the eighteenth-century books in his collection are heirlooms.

It was in the Saints and Sinners Corner, though, that he discovered a partiality for the books which, for lack of a better name, have come to be known as "association copies," meaning volumes interesting because of presentation inscriptions or autograph notes by the authors. A few days ago, in the library of another collector, we were shown a copy of Mr. Smith's wonderful catalogue of his collection, called "A Sentimental Library," full of facsimiles of manuscripts having intrinsic interest, and volumes with special histories, all described and enriched with notes and comment by the collector.

Mere rarity makes no appeal to him. He says that he would rather own a book filled with Robert Browning's autograph notes than a roomful of volumes of the kind of which it is proudly asserted that there is "only one copy known." "The only pleasure to be derived from possessing a book that is merely rare," according to him, "is that which its owner finds in boasting that he has it, and that the copy in the British Museum is a sixteenth of an inch shorter. Give me the 'Lamia' that Keats presented to Fanny Brawne, or the 'Childe Harold' given by Byron to his Teresa; then collectors who have different ideas may show me volumes of a vast and oppressive rarity, and I shall not break the tenth commandment." "Byron, His Books and Autographs," is Mr. Smith's third SCRIBNER article.

THE DOCTOR LOOKS AT CONGRESS

Congressman Charles Browne is one of those rare birds, a politician who doesn't take politics too seriously. This fact is apparent in the extent to which he blames politics for the ailments which are afflicting his patient. He diagnoses these in "What's the Matter with Congress?" We use the words "patient" and "diagnose" advisedly for Congressman Browne is also Doctor Browne. In fact, he was the latter before he was the former. It was through medicine that he got into politics. To use his own phrase, he "drifted into politics unintentionally" through taking an appointment, in 1912, as Overseer of the Poor of Princeton, N. J., at the magnificent salary of fifty dollars a year, because no one else was willing to give the necessary time and work. He looked after the destitute so well that the good people of that academic community demanded his ministering hand for the affairs of the whole town, and four times elected him mayor, once with the endorsement of both parties.

He then accomplished the extraordinary feat of being elected to Congress on the Democratic ticket in a rock-ribbed Republican district-the fourth New Jersey.

In his campaign and since, he has become known especially for his plain speaking and his fearlessness. He doesn't believe in steam-rollers, binding party caucuses, or blocs. He bucked his party caucus and voted for the Mellon schedule in the recently passed tax bill-the only Democrat who did.

Members of Congress should take themselves less seriously and their jobs more so, says he. He thinks that campaigning is bad for the ego, and that a law prohibiting candidates from making public appearance until after election would be beneficial all around. This is about the only prohibitive law that we can discover which Doctor Browne favors, however.

This energetic Congressman has travelled in almost every State in the Union, and almost everywhere else. After receiving his degree at Princeton, in 1896, he studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, receiving an M. D. in 1900. Not content with that, he also holds an A. M. from Princeton, and has studied at the University of Berlin and in France. He was a captain in the Medical Corps during the war. A pretty cosmopolitan outlook, we call that.

BEHIND THE RAGGED CURTAIN

The one-night stands, before the days of the picture palaces, formed a mysterious world. Something was wrong with the small-town boy who was not stage-struck. Who would not be an usher, when it meant free admission? If you were old enough, you might actually become the stage crew's errand boy, gathering props in wintry dusks for ragged players.

If the motion pictures and rigid building codes have closed all the old opera-houses which didn't burn down (most of them did, some time or other), there are to-day plenty of men who can write of them from behind the scenes-though in another generation this will not be true. Somebody ought to do for the American travelling companies what Leonard Merrick has done for the English, before it's too late. McCready Huston's story, "One Night Only," makes a good beginning. Every once in a while he sees flashed on the screen the name of an actor whom he remembers peering anxiously through a frayed curtain, counting the house and wondering when he would eat. rarely in the cast of a Broadway play a name leaps out of the programme page and brings back memories of drafty up-stairs theatres on cold nights, with a huddle of his neighbors listening to Porter J. White in "The Fool's Revenge." "Such nights," he remarks, "were not always devoted to serious plays. I remember sitting on a trunk and listening to Harry Beresford talk about (Continued on page 5)

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