We have just finished reading Doctor Spaulding's two essays over for the third or fourth time, and we can readily understand how he can make philosophy interesting to Princeton sophomores taking a compulsory

course.

Can We

"The Walls of the Past" are, of course, the walls of heredity and environment; of the heritage we receive from our parents, of the effect of Control Our things about us. Can we climb Destiny? over these walls? Can we control in any measure our destiny? Determinism is the cry of the day. And advocates of this attitude say "No." Professor Spaulding's answer is different-and intelligently so.

"Why Men Disagree" is the title of his essay in the May number. Have you ever thought about why we disagree? The first explanation to come to mind usually is: "Because the other fellow is an idiot."

To those of logical minds, these essays will be a delight; those wishing a brief outline of the trend of philosophical thought from the time of the Greeks up to the present, will find them invaluable.

Them Was the Good Old Days

How well we remember the street parade of the "Uncle Tom's Cabin" company that came to our town. The bloodhounds, led by boys of the town dressed up in red coats, the band, and the actors. But, alas, when we requested permission to attend the performance we were informed brusquely that we could not go to see "that damyankee show." It was the only time we can remember when censorship was imposed upon us.

Most of us think of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" as a tank-town show now. Few of us realize that Mrs. Fiske and Mrs. Henry Miller have played Eva, and that the immortal Lotta Crabtree was once Topsy.

* J. Frank Davis in this number has dealt with an American institution. What town or hamlet in the country has been slighted by a "Tom Show"? Mr. Davis is by birth a New Englander and was for more than twenty years a newspaper man specializing in dramatic criticism. In 1910 he resigned as associate editor of the Boston Traveler to go to Texas and turn to fiction-writing. That those years have not been barren is shown by the fact that his published work includes some 150 short stories, sixteen serials, and two books.

We have two other prominent newspaper men in this number. One is none other than Doctor John Finley, one of the editors of the New York Times and author of "At Christendom's Cross," the frontispiece, and the other is N. P. Babcock, who for forty years

filled various editorial positions in Chicago and New York. Strangely enough, W. C. Brownell was Mr. Babcock's first city editor.

Augustus Vincent Tack, the artist whose picture suggested Dr. Finley's poem, is one of the most distinguished American mural and portrait painters. His work hangs in the Metropolitan Museum, New York; the Cleveland Art Museum, the Phillips Memorial Gallery, Washington, and he painted the mural decorations for the legislative chamber of the new Parliament Building, Manitoba, Canada.

Miss Ticknor's sketch of Sir William

Osler furnishes the background

for that part of the great phy- Sir William sician's life which was spent in Osler England, after his master work in America was finished.

The author is the granddaughter of William D. Ticknor, founder of the famous publishing house of Ticknor & Fields.

Readers might accuse us of giving them a cold reception with two Hales and a blizzard all in one number. But there's nothing cold about any Not a Frost of them. The author of "The Oriental Ancestry of the Telescope" has been barking up the family-tree of his favorite instrument, and his researches led back to King Tutankhamen himself. Doctor Hale is among those who did not robe themselves in white and await the end of the world at the time of eclipse.

Robert Beverly Hale, author of "Mary Ellen," is a member of the well-known Hale family. Manhattan billboards are at present plastered with advertisements of the filming of his grandfather's famous story, "The Man Without a Country." Some of the literary skill with which the name is associated appears to have been sublimated in this descendant into a delicate lyric gift.

Among our other poets, there are a number of interesting people. Helen Choate is a young poet whose versatility is shown by com- The Young parison of "The Tired Woman" Poets with lighter verse appearing in Vanity Fair and The Conning Tower. She is the daughter of Joseph H. Choate, Jr. Grace Noll Crowell is active in the affairs of the Poetry Society of Texas. She has appeared in SCRIBNER'S before. Edward Steese is another young poet. He graduated from Princeton in 1924 as first honor man, and delivered the Latin salutatory at Commencement. While an undergraduate he published a book of verse, and edited the Nassau Literary Magazine. He has since spent a term at the Princeton Graduate School studying architecture.

Matthew Arnold. His first book, "Critical Ventures in Modern French Literature," was published a short time ago. There seems to be something in this theory of inheritance.

The fiction in this number presents an interesting variety and three various people. Roger Burlingame is the author of "You Too," a novel whose underlying thesis is a satirical consideration of modern advertising. He has been held up for the delectation of the readers of a number of advertising journals as a "modern David attacking the Goliath of advertising.' "Bachelors on Horseback" shows this writer in a different vein.

Isa Urquhart Glenn, having written a number of stories of army life, of which she was a part for many years, has Fiction- now gone to South America to This Month visit a navy relative and look and Next life over in that branch of the service. She is recuperating from an attack of pneumonia contracted at the Princeton-Yale football game last fall. We contracted a deep fit of despondency

there ourselves.

Edwin C. Dickenson is a lawyer in Hartford, Conn., who writes a story occasionally for the fun of the thing.

The May number promises equal variety in fiction and people. McCready Huston adds "Wrath" to his list of stories appearing in SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE. He is a Pennsylvanian who works in Indiana, an editorial writer for the South Bend Tribune.

Mr. Low

Bow

per

Ruth Robinson Blodgett is another son who has been heard of before. During her vacations on the Maine coast, where she is "Cap'n Robinson's daughter" or "Anna's girl," she plays golf. "Mrs. Renwick Plays Her Game" is a good golf story, and a better story of relations between mother and son. "The Man Who Had Been Away" is Emerson Low's first published story. We should have linked him up with J. Frank Davis's article, for he Makes His told us the other day that he spent eight months on the stage, most of which was with a 10-20-30 stock company. The experience finally ended when the manager walked off with the remaining funds and left the company stranded in a small Maryland town. Mr. Low went to Harvard firmly resolved to become an actor ("like Merton of the Movies praying," he says), but, while there, he became interested in literature and forgot his histrionic ambition. Some of the events in Mr. Low's story are true. The scene was southern Germany three years ago. Paris newspapers carried accounts of it at the time. Mr. Low is now living in New York and working on a novel.

in the May number of SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE: "Some American Women and the Vote," by Katherine She Admits Fullerton Gerould, and "South- She ern Memories: Sidelights on Doesn't the Race Problem," by Albert Vote Guérard.

Mrs. Gerould does not want to vote, and she quite frankly says what she thinks of the argument that she must vote in order to offset the ballot of her cook.

Doctor Guérard's provocative article will be followed in June by "The Last Taboo," in which, as he says, he "mentions the unmentionable."

An Appeal

to Reason

These articles like others which we have touched upon, plead for a sane and unfrenzied point of view, and thought as unaffected by prejudice as possible.

Mr. Babcock went to Colorado to find

peace, Theodore Roosevelt went to Wisconsin to find fish. It was after vention in Cleveland that the La Follettethe Republican National Con- Fish in son of the man who led a third dom party in 1912 invaded the State, which was the only one destined to cast its electoral vote for a third party the following November.

An excellent follow-up on Charles S. Myers's "Humanizing Industry" in the March number is "They or We: A New Spirit in Industry," The Toilers by Olive A. Colton, describing the attitude toward labor in this country. Miss Colton is treasurer of the Ohio Council on Women in Industry, a trustee of the Consumers' League, and president of the Toledo League of Women Voters.

"The Organization Complex in Our Colleges" is Ruth Steele Brooks's contribution to a number of articles we are publishing regarding the col- Betangled leges in America to-day. Many Collegians of us have suffered from the organization complex. Many parents who are sending sons and daughters to college will be interested in this point of view.

Cornelis Botke, the Dutch artist whose remarkable drawings of the strange old trees at Point Lobos, Calif., will be remembered by SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE readers, contributes "The Last Stand of the Windmill in Holland" to the May number.