"LINES ON THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY"-A Story E. C. Venable THE SAN BLAS INDIANS OF PANAMA—THEIR RIGHTS Illustrations from photographs by S. C. Russell and the THE WRITING OF FICTION-CONSTRUCTING A NOVEL APPLES OF GOLD OR PICTURES OF SILVER- Illustrations by Robert W. Amick. THE BRIDEGROOM—A Story Illustrations by Clarence Rowe. RECENT STRIDES OF FEDERAL AUTHORITY Frontispiece 563 582 587 593 Alfred F. Loomis 601 Edith Wharton 611 Lawrence S. Morris 619 . Clarke Knowlton 629 William Cabell Bruce 639 THE FINANCIAL SITUATION-Changes in the Home and Foreign Position-Money Market Declines BEHIND THE SCENES WITH SCRIBNERS AUTHORS Paul Hamilton Hayne 649 A College President 651 Arthur Hobson Quinn 653 Arthur Guiterman 656 657 664 CHARLES SCRIBNER, President ARTHUR H. SCRIBNER CHARLES SCRIBNER, JR. Vice-Presidents GEORGE R. D. SCHIEFFELIN, Treasurer 597-599 FIFTH AVE NEW YORK 7 BEAK STREET, LONDON, W. 1. Publishers of SCRIBNERS and ARCHITECTVRE MAGAZINE Copyrighted in 1925 in United States, Canada, and Great Britain by Charles Scribner's Sons. Printed in New York. All rights reserved. A.R WE "Thundering in the Index Is No Favor to Anybody" WE are indebted to Alexander Woollcott for this formulation of a sentiment we have always held. The rôle of the Thunderer has never appealed to us. We merely serve as a sort of index finger. Captain John W. Thomason, Jr., is responsible for our device, for it was in a letter from Mr. Woollcott to the editor anent "Fix Bayonets!" the leading article of this number, that it occurred. The dramatic critic, sometime enlisted man and member of the editorial council of The Stars and Stripes, discovered The Moved Captain Thomason through a letter the officer wrote regarding Writes.... "What Price Glory?" Woollcott read galley proofs of "Fix Bayonets!" and had this to say about it: Critic I think the story is magnificent and with the exception of "What Price Glory," I have run into nothing descriptive of the American soldier in the field which seemed to me so completely to recapture the smell and the flavor of the A. E. F. I think this man writes magnificently and if, in the Sign Post piece I shall write for the June Vanity Fair, I express that feeling mildly, it will be in the conviction that he will be best served by some one merely pointing to his article, rather than by some one who shrieks his praises in advance. Thundering in the Index is no favor to anybody. Perhaps there are those who will say that we are thundering by proxy. But let them read the article. Our little remarks will then be entirely forgotten-which is as it should be. Robert W. Winston has viewed the law at the bar and from the bench. Agitation for and against free speech is probably A Judge more violent now than at any on Judges time since the war, and the finger of the law pointing at editors is even longer than Miss Harvey has graphically suggested above. Judge Winston's "How Free Is Free Speech?" is a distinct contribution to the subject. The judge is the author of "North Carolina, a Militant Mediocracy," described as the sole optimistic note in the second volume of that interesting compilation "These United States." He is at present an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina. Albert Guérard, safe in the fold of the faculty of the University of California, Southern Branch, can with impunity put forward the result of eleven years of observation while living in the South, and in so doing "mention the unmentionable." That Jack-in-the-box won't be kept down. Doctor Guérard is French by birth and American by choice. He has become distinguished as one of the foremost liberal minds in the country. That unique race, the San Blas Indians of Panama, has been achieving the front page frequently. First, they appear as the tribe from which the "white Indian" springs, and then they revolt against Panamanian rule. Alfred F. Loomis recalls a most pleasant and interesting sojourn among them, and makes a few pointed comments regarding the part the United States may play in the dispute. of Reading in an editorial on April 19, said: She sets forth her arguments so lucidly and so persuasively that we can see a perfect host of young writers profiting from her pages. And, say we, "we can see a perfect host of young readers doing likewise." For there is an art in reading as well as in writing. The fact that Clarke Knowlton is descended from Colonel Thomas Knowlton of Revolutionary fame has not deterred him from writing a thoroughly modern story in "The Bridegroom." We employ the index finger and say with assurance: "Here is a young man to watch." There is always an interesting psychological element in the work of Edward C. Venable. "Lines on the Portrait of a Lady" has a Jamesian quality. Mr. Venable still tarries in Brittany, and, since he doesn't herald his movements widely, the date of his expected return to Baltimore is unknown. A Word Fitly Spoken In "Apples of Gold or Pictures of Silver" Lawrence Morris has dramatized a situation well-nigh universal. Dreams which we thought safely tucked away have a way of coming to the fore when the smell of spring is in the air. South. The euphonious Tuscaloosa, Alabama, is his birthplace. He was once assistant city attorney of Birmingham, but then he migrated to New Jersey and became a schoolmaster. Since 1923 he has been devoting himself exclusively to writing and lecturing. NEXT BILL Heredity-The Master Riddle of Science by EDWARD M. EAST by GEORGE A. COE author of "What Ails Our Youth?" Youth and Peace by OLIVER LA FARGE, Harvard '24 The Dead Vote of the South by GERALD W. JOHNSON by STANISLAW A. GUTOWSKI Chasing Antelope on the Great Mongolian Plateau by WILLIAM DOUGLAS BURDEN by EDWIN DIAL TORGERSON The Professor and the by FREDERICK WHITE College reunions are looming large just now. Arthur Hobson Quinn's "The Last Appeal" presents in the form of fiction an idea suggested by his own thirtieth reunion, last year. Dean Quinn is University of Pennsylvania, '94. We are pleased to be able to present a rediscovered poem of Paul Hamilton Hayne. The note by his son relates the circumstances surrounding the publication of one of the last works of a favorite poet of the South. Arthur Guiterman is one of the town's best-known poets. He is a frequent contributor of ballad and lyric verse to this and other periodicals. His rhymed reviews in Life are among the brightest lights of that highly illuminated magazine. A valued subscriber writes: Through your magazine I have "discovered" Royal Cortissoz and what a very delightful person he is. I can't begin to say how much I enjoy his books and articles. It's a new world. At the moment, William Lyon Phelps, his tanned countenance wearing the Phelpsian smile and his stalwart frame adorned by a very comme il faut spring sport suit, is occupying the editor's big chair. En route to New Haven, he stopped in to look over the proofs of the July "As I Like It." Personal: To All Readers Who A-Vacationing Go Wherever in these United States you go for your summer va Here Uacle Tom's A.H All Readers, Attention! Here's a Chance to Go Down in History When and where did "Uncle Tom's Cabin" last appear, or where is it now appearing? Mark Sullivan, who is preparing a history of the United States from 1900 to 1925, is interested in the fate of Uncle Tom. Mr. Sullivan's history will deal not only with the conventional themes of "wars, of Presidents, of Congresses, of embassies, of treaties, of political leaders, and of parties" but with many other things that interested the American people during these years, the stage, baseball, popular songs, moving-pictures, the radio, popular fiction, and the like. Having read J. Frank Davis's "Tom Shows" in the April SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE, Mr. Sullivan is moved to inquire of our readers whether there are still troupes of "Tommers," and when and where they last appeared. Any information sent to this department will be forwarded to Mr. Sullivan and will be appreciated by him. As a matter of fact, Mr. Davis seems not to have laid the ghost. Reports of extant "Tom Shows" have come to our eyes. The following letter appeared in the Cincinnati Times-Star shortly after the publication of the April number: UNCLE TOM STILL LIVES TO THE EDITOR OF THE "TIMES-STAR": When a writer for high-brow publications gets out of his own territory he surely has some strange brain squalls. Take the statement of J. Frank Davis in the April SCRIBNER'S, which you reprint. "The play (Uncle Tom's Cabin) lasted more than five decades for no reason save that to the simple folk of its day it was just a familiar, shrieking melodrama, slipshod, raw and often most terribly manhandled." What rot! If those qualifications made for long life to plays, there are plenty of others that would still be in operation. However what I started to say was that J. Frank Davis is ignorant of his subject when he says "the last Tom show died." I can tell him of a dozen now in operation. Just recently one company played Louisville for a week. Columbus, Ohio. B. H. NYE. And from the managing-editor of the Buffalo Evening News came this: We thought that perhaps you, (and surely, Mr. Davis,) would be interested in the enclosed clipping from our paper. After you look it over will you please send it to Mr. Davis? I enjoyed his article greatly. I was, however, skeptical about the death of Uncle Tom. Skepticism sometimes pays; at any rate we got what I think is a most readable story. MARC A. ROSE. Here are a few excerpts from the story which is indeed " most readable": TOMMY AITON IS " STANDIN' 'EM UP" Thomas Aiton, Manager of Mason Brothers' Uncle Tom's Cabin company, paused during Holy Week in Lockport. He had just finished a week's engagement there, and has been brushing up his company preparatory to starting out for the summer season. 'Tis Spring, and those birds of passage, the troupers must soon be on the wing. Tommy Aiton sits in his room in the Raleigh Hotel in Lockport, gazing abstractedly out of the window, his long legs stretched under a table on which is a portable typewriter. To his left is the trunk piled with copies of The Billboard and other theatrical papers, railroad guidebooks, scrapbooks, and papers advertising the show. He passes a lean hand over the lower part of his face, reflectively. "Yes, sir, yes, sir," he drawls, "the old show's going good. We been standin' 'em up wherever we go. Open up galleries that ain't been opened for years. Big cities and medium towns, we make 'em all-" An interesting article by J. Frank Davis on Tom Shows appears in the current number of SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE, closing with the statement that "a unique American institution passed out when the last Tom Show died." Buffalonians, who had read the article, wondered if it really could be so, if the last Tom Show had been tenderly laid away. A copy of The Billboard in the Evening News office disclosed several advertisements for troupers including this one inserted by Mr. Aiton for: "A PIANO PLAYER, double band; violin, double band; two strong cornets, saxophones, real stage manager who can put on Tom and Ten Nights. Marks, Harris, Legree, Topsy, who can sing and dance. All men double band. People all lines write. State lowest salary. Year-round season here." The only other Tom show which Mr. Aiton knows of that is playing theaters is the Stetson show which is in the west. There are half a dozen or more tent shows. One of these is owned by a man named Tom Finn. It wintered in Hoosick Falls, N. Y. ., and will begin the season May 1. "Made a lotta money out of it, Tom Finn has," Aiton observed. "He hits the one-store towns, but he packs 'em in.” Mr. Aiton is one of the oldest in the game. He's been with Tom Shows for 29 years, starting as a boy posting bills. A few times he has left it for a season to go out with a circus or a tent show, but always has returned to his first love. Movies haven't hurt the business, he avers. They've practically killed off the spoken drama in the smaller towns, but the longing to see real play acting is still so strong within the people that they flock to see "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in spite of its quaint melodrama. "Yes, sir, they're crazy about it," said Mr. Aiton. "You can make dollars with Tom, where you cannot make pennies with Ten Nights." So we have a start on compiling the present status of the "Tom Show." Mr. Aiton's disparaging statement of the financial possibilities of Ten Nights in a Bar Room, may arouse some of our temperance friends. We will keep tally as to which has been seen most, and most recently. We remember witnessing a tent performance of Ten Nights about twelve years ago, and a parade for a Tom Show about two years later. When did you see or hear of them last? THE POETIC ROBBER A valued reader sends us additional evidence of the philosophic poetry of Black Bart, the stage-robber whom John Hays Hammond treats in "Strong Men of the Wild West" in the March number. DEAR EDITOR: May I supplement Mr. John Hays Hammond's reference to Black Bart in his most interesting article in this month's Magazine, by giving what I have always understood to be the poetical chef d'oeuvre of that amiable bandit? Here I sit upon this log, The trees around me sobbing, Waiting for a damned old stage That won't be worth the robbing. As for his downfall through wearing detachable cuffs, the moral seems inescapable. CAMILLA KENYON. 1428 Greenwood Terrace Berkeley, California. A CONTRIB CORRECTED On the stationery of Ginn and Company, comes this correction to a letter in the March number. DEAR EDITOR: E. F. of the Wednesday Literary Club of Cumberland, Md., who writes in your department this month is mistaken in his reference to the Skibereen Eagle. It was not Gladstone but the Czar of Russia that the Skibereen Eagle declared it would keep its eye on. DENIS A. MCCARTHY. LANSON ON FRENCH EDUCATION The writer of the following letter apropos of Paul van Dyke's recent article "The Provincial Universities of France," is a celebrated professor of the Sorbonne who has extended his fame outside academic circles by a "History of French Literature" marked by a "singular power of synthesis and a force of thought in describing the historical rôle of writers which no one has equalled." He is now director of the Ecôle Normale Superieure—an office in which Pasteur was one of his predecessors. MY DEAR FRIEND: I thank you for sending me your article. I have read it with lively pleasure. It would not be possible to speak of our universities in a way more exact or more friendly, nor to mark more judiciously the differences which distinguish them from American universities. You are quite right in calling attention to the social benefits which your country gains from the fact that young men who intend to enter business are in the habit of attending your universities and colleges. We have something, if not equivalent, at least analogous in our Faculties of Law, where it has been, since the time of Napoleon I, the habit of our high and middle bourgeoisie to send their children on leaving the Lycée and where generally they carry on their studies until they take the Licence (First University Degree). It must not be forgotten that our universities were for a time in a condition of lethargy and that they were not reconstituted until between 1885 and 1897. When the reestablishment of the universities restored life to our Faculties of Letters little by little some young men who did not intend to devote themselves either to teaching or to original research began to form the habit of entering the universities to seek additional general culture. They go as far as the Licence. They are chiefly students of the Law School of whom the larger part intend to enter legal professions; but there are among them also those who intend to follow industrial or commercial pursuits. There must also be counted as an element in our national life the fairly large number of those whom you would call university men who, for one reason or another, enter active careers and bring to them the mentality of scholars, of learned men or of professors. A certain number of our agregés (men who have passed the stiff competitive examinations opening the door to higher teaching positions) and of our licentiates are in business, industry, banking or state administration, and occupy there important positions. That has been so for a long time, and since the war it is more frequent. Simply by counting up those whom I personally know I arrive at a number which is not negligible. A point to which I wish to call your attention and one essential to making a full comparison between our universities and yours is this: for historical reasons the content of our universities is much more restricted than that of your universities. Many special subjects of study and many students are not included in them. Except at Strassbourg all the Faculties of theology, both Protestant and Catholic, are outside of the universities of the State. At Paris many institutions of higher learning are not included in the University. Many of these attract young men who are the future heads and directors of all sorts of economic enterprises. In the provinces also there are a certain number of institutions which in America would be included in a university, like the School of Mines of St. Etienne or the School of Fine Arts of Toulouse. All this does not detract anything from the justice of your description. I only want to say that in order to form a complete idea of the training received by the elite of our youth, destined to direct national activity in all its multiple fields of effort, it is useful to take into consideration a whole crowd of institutions which are neither state universities nor parts of state universities. GUSTAVE LANSON. SOUTH AMERICA HEARD FROM DEAR MR. EDITOR: Why is it that an uneducated, not as holy as thou" out-of-the-pale latin-american should find what we call "gazapos" in Edward Bok's writings, and not the same thing be done by any of your learned readers? Here are the point and its sequels: to dear Mr. Emerson, Mr. Bok ascribed the opening citation to his article "The President" in the SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE of January last, and it happens that the lines appear to be of Lowell's "The Present Crisis."-I come to you seeking assistance to help me understand the irony underlaying Mr. Bok's transposition of the poet by the philosopher. I hope you will find enclosed $5 in U.S. currency to pay for a year's subscription to your really delightful periodical, and do me the favor of sending same and my address printed below thru the proper channels. ENRIQUE URIBE W. I am, sir, your obedient servant, The señor's question was answered almost as soon as he asked it. Trust our readers for that. Such interest from a Colombian reader helps us to forget spring colds and such. PROFANITY DEAR EDITOR: I feel moved to write to you, first to tell you how much I enjoy SCRIBNER'S. I have been a subscriber to, and a close reader of, the Magazine for several years, and I could scarcely think of getting along without it. Dr. Phelps's department "As I Like It" is, I think, worth the price of the subscription, to say nothing of many other features that are most excellent. But I want to tell you wherein I differ from you in regard to profanity in books, magazine articles, etc. L. R. who writes you from Long Island in the January number disapproves of such profanity, and in your little reply to her, you say that you think it is not harming our young people. While it may not harm them, it certainly does them no good, and to my mind it is not a question of harm to anyone, but because we are forbidden by God to take his name in vain. I think that should be enough. To me there is nothing elevating in the reading of such language, rather, when I begin to read a book or an article and I find a number of "swear words" I lose all interest in the book or article, and I know many persons who feel that such language detracts from the interest of a story or article, to say nothing of the sin of profanity. |