ollywood, signed A Harry Leon Wilson Adirer. The letter made the same charge. Mr. Wilson penned a comment on the missive to he effect that he could detect no plagiarism; at he had also once written a story about a rofessor and a medicine show, referring to For Sale: Med Show," by Kyle S. Crichton, 1 the March number. We received an appreative comment from Charles W. Collier, of Goston, regarding this story and Gamaliel Bradford's "Portrait of Edwin Booth."

WHY THEY DID NOT CHEER

III Broadway, New York City. DEAR EDITOR: Stella Beehler Ruddock's artile "Taggin' Ship" in the February SCRIBNER'S vas very human and most interesting.

Mrs. Ruddock refers to the lack of cheering when the men of the fleet marched down from Grant's Tomb after the war. She speaks of this bsence of cheering as a "freak" of crowd sychology and naturally she felt hurt.

It was not in fact a "freak" of crowd psyhology, it was crowd psychology—that is, New York crowd psychology. I myself have known. cores of military parades in New York, either as , participant or as a spectator, and without exeption the crowds have been "silent staring"

nes.

Practically the only thing that will bring a heer or applause is a particularly straight line vhen marching in column of companies or pla

oons.

Mrs. Ruddock is not alone in having felt hurt out she may be assured that the crowd really is ympathetic and grateful, only perhaps too much noved to applaud.

STANLEY D. MCGRAW.

PRAISE FROM THE NAVY

Concerning "Taggin' Ship," Captain Elliot Snow, from the Office in Charge of Special nstruction, Students of Construction Corps, J. S. N., at Massachusetts Institute of Techology, writes:

I am planning to bring the publication of this rticle to the attention of the Information Secion of the Office of Naval Intelligence as being me of interest to the service at large.

Mrs. Ruddock has written a story, "Landocked," which will appear in an early number. EXCOMMUNICATION FROM THE ARMY With the praise of the navy ringing in our ars we receive this jolt from the army:

War Department, United States Engineer Office, Florence, Alabama.

DEAR EDITOR: The reading of Mr. Thomas oyd's latest contribution to your publication

proved to be very unpleasant to the writer, and I can not imagine anybody but a damfule Pacifist receiving any pleasure or instruction from such an article.

Yet, I could excuse him for writing it and you for publishing it, because such things could have happened in our, or any other army recruited as ours was during the war, but I cannot subscribe to any such comment as the one enclosed which I have clipped from your February issue and I therefore feel compelled to cancel my subscription. EDWIN P. KETCHUM, Ist Lt., C. of E., U. S. A.

The clipping which the lieutenant enclosed follows:

With all this propaganda for preparedness going on about us, with admirals and navy secretaries and generals howling about the enemies without our gates, Thomas Boyd's stories have an added significance. It is refreshing to see that President Coolidge, according to newspaper reports, has put the quietus on the jingos. About a year and a half ago the New York Times on its editorial page, while finding Thomas Boyd's book, "Through the Wheat," praiseworthy, deplored the fact that Mr. Boyd "gives hardly a hint of realizing that the war had an object of sufficient importance to make the heavy price worth paying." We wonder what the author of the editorial thinks about it now.

It is from "Behind the Scenes With Scribner's Authors." The conductor of that department appends the following note:

the poem meant, I was compelled to learn it and "recite in public," so many of its splendid sentences are indelibly impressed on my brain.

Although a very recent resident of New Haven I am glad I live in the same city with the author of the interesting, refreshing and illuminating pages of "As I Like It."

With gratitude for your magazine,

MRS. GEORGE W. BOSTWICK.

Lowell's poem must have been a favorite school piece in New England, for a number of people have called our attention to the slip.

CALIFORNIA TUNES IN

California, impatient at the slowness of response in New England, entered its voice.

1216 Oxford Street Berkeley, California. Well, for the love of Mike! (surely a Californian may use that classic phrase if our eminent critic B. M. may say "Not on your life") for the love of Mike, then, are you all going to let Mr. Edward Bok get away with it? I searched the February SCRIBNER'S for a protest from Boston but apparently that city has forgotten that the Lowell family produced a poet many years before Amy Lowell began to write free verse.

Wasn't there anybody in New York to tell the gentleman from the Netherlands (I know better than to say "Holland") that it was not Emerson but James Russell Lowell who wrote "The Present Crisis," in which these words occur?

Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes,
They were men (not "souls") that stood alone.

Is it true that Mr. Mencken is trying to get a bill before the N. Y. legislature to forbid the reading within the limits of Manhattan of any American poet earlier than Carl Sandburg?patrols to be stationed on the ferries to confiscate forbidden works?

Why, out here on the coast there are still untrammeled souls who can, but, thank goodness, seldom do, quote from "The Psalm of Life," and who know that "Thanatopsis" is not the name of a toothpaste.

But please tell Mr. Bok to read Lowell some day.

MARION PRYNE.

No, there was no intention on the part of our readers to let Mr. Bok get away with it. Among those who upheld the individuality of the nineteenth century poets were: Carl Shrode, assistant principal of the Benjamin Bosse High School, Evansville, Ind.; Cora L. Cox, 1626 Arch Street, Philadelphia; A. F. Waldo, the University Club of Chicago; Lucy Lockwood Hazard, Mills College, California; Doctor J. C. Hubbard, Holyoke, Mass.; Eva M. Turner, North Evans, N. Y.; Mrs. Francis J. Moors,

liam Hooper Adams, Roswell, N. M.; Mary H. Humphrey, Simsbury, Conn.; J. N. Rutledge, Minneapolis.

Manhattan Island is provincial. We admit that. But does our correspondent think that it is to be reached only by ferry?

THE POLICE GAZETTE AGAIN

We seem to be drumming up trade for the Police Gazette.

315 College Street Jackson, Tenn.

DEAR EDITOR: I wish to tell you how much I enjoy the magazine that prints the articles of William Lyon Phelps and Royal Cortissoz, and the absorbing "White Monkey." I read it from cover to cover, advertisements included, each month, and always with the same great enjoyment.

I liked "Smile and Lie" and "Pete Retires" immensely, and I hope more stories by the same author will appear in my favourite magazine. It appears that several of your readers do not share my opinion of Mr. George S. Brooks' stories. One lady asks in the October number if SCRIBNER'S classes itself with the Police Gazette. I have never read the vulgar periodical with which this lady is apparently familiar, but if it prints stories as refreshing and original as these two I shall certainly commence reading it.

LOUISE IRVINE MCDOWELL.

AT LAST

A difference with Doctor Phelps is rare. We take an almost evil joy in printing this one, because we believe that every one ought to be disagreed with occasionally.

Stoneleigh Court, 46th and Walnut Streets, Philadelphia, Pa.

DEAR EDITOR: Will you be the medium through whom I may voice a remonstrance to the gifted writer of your department "As I Like It"? I hold no brief for Mr. Joseph Hergesheimer; many of his books I dislike. But "Balisand," which Mr. Phelps calls "dead," seemed to me such an atonement for "Cytherea" that I am fain to weep for Mr. Phelps's condemnation of it; and fain to wonder if our critic resisted the critic's frequent temptation to review without reading through. (I have been a reviewer in my time.) For "the attractive heroine" who "fell down-stairs and broke her neck" is by no means "disposed of." Had she not so fallen, there would have been but a commonplace story. As it is, she is throughout the book the vital, animating force, the flash of light that darkened the sun. Rivalries between live men over a live woman are of the fabric of everyday life; but here, shot through with the gold thread of dream and romance, is a rivalry

between a dead woman and a living. Clouding the rich outline of the vibrant personality of Lucia, to Richard Bale's senses, rises the incense of the perfume of the yellow rose Lavinia wore. Can it be that in a hasty or partial reading Mr. Phelps missed the point?

The dreamlike river with the mournful song of the negroes; the lifelike children quarreling over the birthday feast of "gooseberry fool"; the giant figure of Washington, "moving ghostlike to his doom," the magnet of Bale's loyalty-these things have atmosphere as well as style. These things are alive not dead, even as was Lavinia alive; for they are vivid in memory after an intervening four months filled with current and usually negligible fiction. Will Mr. Phelps reconsider?

MABEL DODGE HOLMES.

A CURTAIN CALL FOR IRENE

Rockledge, Florida.

DEAR EDITOR: May I take exception to the remarks of your anonymous correspondent who rejoices that Galsworthy has finished "The White Monkey" and hopes he can write something not connected with the "Forsyte English Bunch.' I am hoping to hear more about the Forsytes, perhaps even the adventures of Irene and Jon from California to North Carolina.

I also wish to express my appreciation of Gaylord S. White's "Reflections of a Settlement Worker." Having been a resident of the New York Settlement where Mr. White was the headworker, I can vouch for the truth of his conclusions and the deep interest found in that form of social work.

J. WHITNEY.

THE FRENCH ON VAN DYKE

An exceedingly interesting symposium reveals the reaction of French educators to Doctor Paul van Dyke's "The Provincial Universities of France," in the January number.

Professor Collinet of the Faculty of Law at Paris writes: "Professor van Dyke has given a marvellously accurate impression of the soul and spirit of the provinces of France as shown in their Universities."

A Rector writes: "Professor van Dyke has judged us with sympathetic justice. We are glad that he has thrown into relief the place held in the intellectual life of our country by the provincial universities and the eminent services, which, in spite of a deadly centralization, we are able to render to her."

The Rector of Grenoble writes: "I have read with great pleasure these pages of Mr. van Dyke in which he gives so just an idea not only of the more external characteristics of our universities, but also of their method of work."

The Rector of Toulouse says: "I find the article of Professor van Dyke at once extremely interesting and judicious."

The Rector of Strasburg adds: "Nobody is better qualified to write about the universities of France than Mr. van Dyke who has visited them all and knows them so well. I have read his article with great pleasure."

Mr. Firmin-Roz of the Office National des Universités Françaises writes: "I have read the article of Dr. Paul van Dyke with the greatest pleasure and the liveliest interest and I intend to print a summary of it in the pages of the Figaro."

A PERSONAL IMPRESSION

We reprint below a few paragraphs from an article by Alexander Inglis, of the editorial department of the Pasadena Star-News, as an interesting personal impression of Conrad, the writing of which was based upon Mr. Galsworthy's article in the January number.

John Galsworthy tells in this month's SCRIBNER'S of his acquaintance with Joseph Conrad. When two authors meet they can exchange congenial yarns and the English novelist of the land has much to say of the novelist of the seas, who was master mariner of his art.

But in all he says of his now dead friend, Mr. Galsworthy leaves the strange impression that the Polish master of English saw life through sad and lonely eyes. It tallies with impressions of my own formed on a voyage to this country. On the occasion Joseph Conrad was a passenger on the Tuscania, making his first trip to America, despite his many years at sea.

I used to see him on the upper decks gazing with melancholy eyes out over the grey Atlantic. He looked far into the horizons, like one whose vision saw not the circle-boundary of the sea, but whose imagination was taking him along uncharted channels of introspection. His eyes, half-closed, saw none who was near; only across the wide waters did he look with a strange thoughtfulness marking his face..

I used to wonder what his fancies were. Perhaps he was peopling the expansive waste with characters of his imagination, those lovable creatures who never get on paper but who haunt the mind of writers with insistence. Perhaps he was pondering on his own early days when the lure of the sea first called him and the stress of the storm first began to mould his great character. . .

But he always made a striking picture as he looked out over the seas, the man who had found so much in the sea to color his life and establish

his name. Something of its elemental ruggedness seems to characterize the literary figure. It was generally in the direction of the receding tracks he looked, watching the foam roused by the liner fading away into the blackening waters; there, and beyond, he looked, never seeing his immediate environment, always viewing with thoughtful vision the dream fancies of his imagination.