120

a continuous wail over politics back through our present orators and writers to Richard Watson Gilder, George William Curtis, Henry Raymond, William H. Seward, Alexander H. Stephens, John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin. Parallel with the great fear is a repeated confidence that the public school is the shining hope. The first generation visioned it in that long list of pamphlets reviewed by Oscar Hansen. In the next era, DeWitt Clinton promulgated it. Then Horace Mann shouted it; Webster glorified it; Henry Barnard kept it alive. Every president from Lincoln down has repeated it. legislatures declare that the Constitution shall be taught in schools. "We, the people of Illinois, in assembly enact that American patriotism, the principles of the Declaration and Constitution, shall be taught in all the public schools." That's politics.

The

What hinders the schoolmaster from the spirit of the mandate? Politics: greed, love of personal power and prominence, selfishness, personal welfare in place of general welfare, servants cheating their masters, rake-offs on school supplies and school buildings, putting sons, daughters, and relatives in places

be paid by public funds, all bound

round with a string called politics, whose manipulator is that old deluder. It is such a commonplace that you are ridiculed for repeating it.

You could make a spot-map of the United States and show cities where the main obstacle to education is school boards. You could put many white marks on towns where politics in the school board is so clean that it will not hire a resident as teacher because it

wants no other condition of employment than efficiency. Your map will change

from time to time like the skin of a guinea pig in the experimental room of a medical college. St. Louis, San Antonio, Terre Haute, Newark, Indianapolis, show white, one year, and yellow, the next. The Outlook once discovered

school principalships in Philadelphia selling at a standard rate. Chicago promotions of teachers for three and a half years have been made on the statistical basis of the record of the candidate's classes in reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic, and standard fundamentals as measured by some one other than himself. A rule of the Chicago Board required that every nomination for appointment or advance be accompanied by a list of all the persons who urged it and what they said. A school board and a mayor declared that the city hall

would keep its hands off the schools. Paradise!

Schools, Politics, and Editors

'HEN comes the election. A new city

TH

government, a new board of education. The country is informed that the city hall will take the schools. The remarkable circumstance is that newspapers, all of which expect the police, the waterworks, the civil service commission, to be officered by the incoming party, protest against any such change being made in the management of the schools. "If the Board of Education is going to convert the school system into an appendage of a political machine," says the "Post" editorial, "it had better turn the picture of Washington to the wall." "A school board," says the "Daily News" editor, "is under a moral obligation to keep politics out of school affairs." "It is," says the "Journal" editor, "reason for our city's chagrin that Dr. Suzzallo's denunciation of politics seeking to run the schools of Chicago, brought such vigorous applause from the National Education Association." "Time" records that "for three years the administration of Chicago schools has been unpolitical and extremely able. But political assassination of it is impending." The "Tribune's" editor expresses the belief that "the Chicago schools send out better prepared citizens than they did in years gone by, but that greed and ignorance is tossing the schools into the political jackpot." The New York "World" considers Chicago "a shocking example of what politics can do to the schools." The "Herald Tribune" says Chicago politics "is wrecking the schools." The Brooklyn "Eagle" sees "a combination of malice and falsehood resenting efficiency, intelligence, and decency in the conduct of Chicago schools and insisting that they should be run on a political basis for the benefit of politicians and their friends."

The Illinois Law ordains that the work of the schools shall be "a thorough and efficient common school education including American patriotism and the principles of its Government." A school board is a body politic charged with so spending the people's money as to secure the results indicated by law. When the "Daily News" asks the Chicago School Board why it doesn't decide on maintaining or replacing the present school management by ascertaining whether the children are worse or better taught than before, it plays the joker in the school game. Baltimore, Denver, Los Angeles, and New York had super

(Continued on page 128)

G

REAT fixity of purpose, abso

lute absorption in the task in hand, and a complete obsession concerning the duty to be accomplished have been the fundamental laws governing my career and life," writes Emma Eames, one of the greatest of American prima donnas, in beginning her "Memories and Reflections." In short, hers was a New England mind. She belongs to Bath, Maine, by ancestry and upbringing, though born in a bungalow on Bubbling Well Road, Shanghai, "that leads to the Rain God's Temple," August 13, 1865. China proved unhealthy for the mother, who, with Emma and a brother 18 months older, left Shanghai in 1870, designing a residence in France. The outbreak of the war with Prussia spoiled that plan and a shift in the family fortunes sent the little girl to the care of her grandparents in Bath. Here she was in sternly Puritanical surroundings. Her grandmother even objected to her voice, wishing that it was "nice and lady-like like Jennie's (a playmate) instead of a great big one."

Incidentally grandmother "was a woman of great force of character, with a sense of humor, but a warped emotional nature," who "would have made an excellent wife for a warm-hearted understanding man with a strong hand," but who "married an icicle and a problem in Euclid." This hapless gentleman was of "the black, dour Scotch type," whose chief interests were "astronomy, mathematics in any form, and all things appertaining to politics."

In such surroundings the child was surely out of place. Nevertheless, she was far from being crushed. At fifteen she was singing in the choir of the Bath Swedenborgian Church where the cousin of an uncle by marriage, who lived in Paris, heard her render "Oh, for the Wings of a Dove" in such a fashion as to lead him to urge a musical career. He was a frequenter of the opera and knew a fine voice when he heard it. The uncle by marriage was General Thomas Hyde, head of the Bath Iron Works, who took up the idea and had influence enough with the grandparents to secure permission for the experiment.

This

consisted at first in a weekly trip to Portland, where her mother lived, and where she took her first lessons. All this while she was a High School student in Bath who worked prodigiously as only a Maine girl can, in the study of physical geography, political economy, chemistry, astronomy, natural history, English literature, and higher mathematics.

The brother had become a cadet at Annapolis, whence he graduated in 1882. Emma and her mother attended the ceremonies, and later, when the fleet visited Portsmouth, saw him on duty with Captain "Bob" Evans, who told her mother that Emma "looked like peaches and cream."

She now launched on her musical journey, going to Boston for instruction by Miss Munger, eking out her scanty means as a choir singer. She lost her place in a Baptist choir by bursting into. unseemly laughter "at the sight of half a dozen bedraggled women in black water-proofs being dipped into a tank under the pulpit."

Professor Paine of Harvard became interested in her. She sang to illustrate his lectures on music, and was taught Delsartean poses by Annie Payson Call, to whom she acknowledges a great indebtedness. William Gericke, then leader of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, recognized her promise and taught her Schubert's songs. He also advised her to go to Paris and study under Marchesi. The mother borrowed enough money to make the venture. Reaching Paris she went into the presence of "Mathilde Grauman, of Frankfort, otherwise Madame Marchesi, of Paris." It will soon be perceived by the reader of the book that Emma did not love Madame who was not then ready to receive her, but advised a summer of repose. This advice was adopted, and the ordeal began in the fall. Then she found Madame to be "the ideal Prussian drill master, a woman of much character, and one to gain great ascendency over her pupils," who was "herself at her piano by nine in the morning every week-day, always perfectly and richly dressed, with never a hair out of place."

It appears that Madame played a favorite, who is often mentioned but never named by the author. It is easy

to guess that this rival was Nellie Mitchell, better known to fame as Madame Melba. "She"-the unmentioned one "remained with Marchesi only a year. Then she made her debut in Brussels, in the autumn of 1887. It would be impossible to imagine anything lovelier than she was both in appearance and voice. She did not attempt to act, for she had no gift, but her naivété and simplicity had their own charms in such rôles as Lakmé, Lucia, and Gilda."

With these kind words as a prelude Emma accuses the beautiful unknown of blocking her own debut in Brussels, and causing that important event to be delayed until it finally took place in Paris as a resounding triumph. Before this she had a contract at the Opera Comique at five hundred francs. a month, but never sang. This embargoed her for two years, when she tore it up and sang Juliette for Gounod, with the result noted.

The morning after her success she called upon Marchesi:

"How did you come down here?" asked Madame.

"By tramway."

"What!" she exclaimed, "Mademoiselle Eames de l'Opera in a tramway! Do you mean to say you haven't a private carriage?"

"But I can't afford a private carriage. My friends all know what I make and I can't bear the thought of running into debt."

"Her answer," records her pupil, "which was most characteristic of her, was: 'Well! When one is as beautiful as you are one should be able to have everything.'" Emma's grandmother, be it noted, did not share this view of beauty. "My grandmother," she writes, "once told me that I had eyes like a pig, a nose like the prow of a ship, and a receding chin, and that no one would ever love me for my looks, and, as a result, I was never afterward able to disabuse myself entirely of this impression."

Soon after she was honored by a call in her dressing room by Albert Edward, then Prince of Wales. When the knock came on her door and his name was announced, she was intensely concentrated upon the business in hand and replied: "He must wait."

To this she heard him echo: "Of course I'll wait.”

This did not prevent their becoming friends on a basis of mutual respect.

A

122

Wide World

Prince and King he helped her much in England.

From that time on the prima donna's path was one of glory. It need not be retraced here. Her marriage to Julian Story was an elopement, in so far as she disregarded her mother's wishes, and she and her mother were parted for nine months. The willful young lady had her way from this time on, in all things. The painter should have been a model husband for the singer. He helped her

History

A HISTORY OF ENGLAND. By Hilaire Belloc. Volume II. Catholic England: The Early Middle Ages A.D. 1066 to 1348. G. P. Put$3.75. nam's Sons, New York.

Mr. Belloc is perhaps the most readable and interesting writer now at work upon this subject. His intense preoccupation with ecclesiastical history is a possible defect, or at least a peculiarity, of his work. His own view-point of a Roman Catholic should be noted, but it can be discounted. He is eminently fair-minded. He does not fear to make history human. Some of his men suddenly stand out in his pages. Here is William the Conqueror: "A man short, rather bald, round-headed, clean-shaven,

y vigorous, perpetually in the saddle; of

The Outlook for

humor and fancy are in part of a kind

more comprehensible to grown readers than to their juniors, who cannot be expected to follow its fanciful allusiveness. Children will doubtless enjoy the tale because its contains magic, romance, and a nice little girl; but it is related with one eye cocked for the smile of the adult listener.

In the matter of pretty Rose Martha's pawned conscience, too, while the assurance is general that consciences should never be pawned at any time, as they shrink and shrivel when separated from their owners, still, there is a certain tawdriness in the visit to a costume ball with the wrong man, which scarcely seems chosen in quite the best of taste for children, as the occasion for Rose Martha to pawn hers-not even though "Mr. Kit" with the dying conscience in a bird-cage in one hand and the sword of the reckless Kit Marlowe in the other, pursues her, defeats (and spanks) his supplanter, and restores it.

THE REGICIDE'S CHILDREN. By Aline Havard. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $1.

A well-told tale, one that should please both boys and girls, for Hal and Kitty, children of Colonel Vane the regicide, are equally brave and likable. The author has taken the justifiable liberty of adding a fourth regicide to the three who hid in Judges' Cave on West Rock at New Haven and for whom three diverging roads-Goffe, Whalley, and Dixwell-were named. Moreover, she makes Colonel Vane a cousin of that Sir Harry Vane of whom Cromwell exclaimed, "Oh, Sir Harry Vane, Sir Harry Vane; the Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane." It all fits in, and the glimpses of Hartford Puritan life under James II are quaintly enjoyable. Even in the time of that disagreeable monarch a regicide was in serious danger in New England. How his children and the all but rebellious colonists strove to save him, helped by Indians, makes a lively narrative.

A TREASURY OF TALES FOR LITTLE FOLKS. Selected by Marjory Bunce. The Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York. $3. Thirty-five stories, many of them familiar, most of them famous, all of them good, which any normal youngster will love and if he has loved some of them already, will love all over again because of the pretty color plates and many spirited line drawings by Honor C. Appleton and Nora Fry. The volume opens with our ancient friend Henny Penny and includes representative tales of different countries, including England, France, Germany, Denmark, Russia, Italy, Japan, Arabia, and India.

Games and Amusements

IS THAT SO! By Oliver D. Keep and Associates. Boni & Liveright, New York. $2.

WHO AND WHAT. A Book of Clues for the Clever. Edited by Samuel Hopkins Adams. in association with many prominent people. Boni & Liveright, New York. $1.50. The first of these is one more questionnaire book, with the difference that the answers are arranged more conveniently than in the earlier ones, and that some bit of information relating (sometimes distantly) to the question is given with each answer. This is just thrown in, without extra charge, to pamper the appetite for information which is now rampant.

The second, "Who and What," is something very different, and after the many question books, quite a refresher. It is said to be like a game called, in olden days, "Shedding Light," and has been known in recent days as "Blind Biographies." It consists of descriptions of persons or objects in language so disguised as to make it more or less difficult to guess what is meant. Here is one, by Will Irwin.

more

September 28, 1927

which Mr. Adams says has baffled almost all on whom it has been tried. (This seems strange to us. We guessed it, half-way through, and our I. Q. is by no means high.)

I was the richest man of my time and nation, but few remember it. I was a mighty athlete but no records testify to my prowess. My fellow countrymen see my picture daily, yet nobody knows what I really looked like. The most voluminous writer, the most influential spirit of my time and country, I attained print with very few of my compositions and glory with none. Though liberal rather than parsimonious, I could make a dollar go farther than any contemporary.

Here is another, by Maurice Hanline. It is of a different kind:

I came into the world only to be jeered at and sneered at by all the doctors in the case. They advised my mother that I could scarcely live two weeks, and here I am at an age which none of my contemporaries have ever attained. This is attributable, no doubt, to my peculiarly mixed parentage, as I stem from two of the most sturdy and prolific races of the world. Despite the fact that night life in New York is considered unfavorable to longevity, I have attained my unprecedented age at its very heart and have sent forth sturdy offspring to all parts of the country.

The game has set us to making up one of our own-and here it is. It is derived from another book of which a note was being written to-day:

For ten years the mighty and famous ruler of a great country, I spent only six months in that country. A warrior and athlete, perpetually in war and undergoing hardships, I was almost a life-long invalid, and had once to be carried into battle lying on cushions. I was the most picturesque and romantic figure in a great and romantic age, and innumerable legends cluster about my name. Like Haroun-al-Rashid I sometimes went in disguise, and was captured by my enemy, while disguised as a servant. I was killed in a trifling fight which arose over a golden ornament, but lived long enough to forgive and set free the man who slew me. After my death, my sister took this man and had him flayed alive.

Humor

EPIGRAMS. Wit and Wisdom in Brief. Edited by Walter Jerrold. The Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York. $1.75.

A large collection of rhymed epigrams on various subjects. Nearly all English in origin. The author is not mentioned-is he not known?-of this, on Sir Walter Scott's poem about Waterloo:

On Waterloo's ensanguined plain, Full many a gallant man lies slain; But none, by bullet or by shot, Fell half so flat as Walter Scott. The anonymous epigram on the Enclosure Acts is too good to perish. The version which we have heard is, we venture to think, superior to that given by Mr. Jerrold, and we quote it here:

They put in jail the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the com-
mon.

But turn the greater rascal loose
Who steals the common from the goose.

Notes on New Books

LANES O' LADLAND. By John J. Eberhardt. The Goldsmith-Woolard Publishing Company, Wichita, Kansas. $1.

Poems in what is supposed to be boy language. The author proves that the

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effect of Riley's ballads cannot be attained by writing lines like "Cause you're jes e'zactly." Mr. Wood's illustrations are good.

HEIDI. By Johanna Spyri. Illustrated by Constance Whittemore. The Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York. $2.50.

A handsome holiday edition of this always popular book for children. Miss Whittemore's illustrations in color are simple and beautiful.

DOG CORNER PAPERS. By William Whitman, 3rd. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. $1.50.

Very brief essays from Houghton Mifflin's monthly bulletin, "The Piper." STUFF AND NONSENSE. By Don Rose.

Donald F. Rose, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania. Gift Edition, $2; Popular Edition, $1. Humor in brief bits of prose and verse. The essay on the mouse trap is a pleasing example of the light essay.

THE LITTLEST ONE: HIS BOOK. By Marion
St. John Webb. Illustrated by A. H. Watson.
The Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York.
$2.
Another book of poetry about children,

• New York

123

124

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I

Temples of the Truth

N connection with the controversy about religion and Mr. Bush's comments thereon, as it appears to me, the whole trouble grows out of the fact that religion, whether Jewish, Christian, or Mohammedan, consists of both truth and error, yet neither side perceives this, and then exercises the proper and necessary discriminations.

Take either of the current religious concepts and then question: Is it all true? or all false? or partly true and partly false?

The answer must be, indubitably, the last. And, therefore, logically and rationally, what the error, for elimination? and, what the truth, for preservation?

The simple but indubitable fact is that the universe is necessarily an eternal thing; and therefore, and as a matter of course, it was never created. And hence, therefore also, and as a like matter of course, all of that in the current religious concept which, whether directly or indirectly, is based upon the creation-Creator hypothesis, is necessarily error. While, on the other hand, all of that in the concept which consists of what is known as to right and wrong in human conduct-the right to be found out and done; the wrong to be found out and avoided (the undisputed moral precepts, and which "have been known for thousands of years")— constitutes the truth of religion.

My concept is that through elimination of the error of religion, all of the religious structures shall be converted into temples of the truth, pure and simple, instead of being continued and maintained as temples of error, which all of them are now, and ever have been, in part. W. R. STOKES. St. Paul, Minnesota.

T

Facts and Christianity

HE writer has always been a hero worshiper, and possibly the reaction of maturer years is what has led to the devoting of an envelope to clippings of weak things said by the great.

Now, to the names of Roosevelt, H. G. Wells, etc., can be added the name of Irving T. Bush, for his article in The Outlook of August 31: "A Business Man's View of Religion."

How a man of his great ability and fine character should permit his views to be given on so great a subject is hard to comprehend.

Why not express himself on geology or botany, that is assuming that he has the average man's knowledge of these things.

He refers to his boys being taught in "the old school" from "Jonah" to "The Immaculate Conception." "The Immaculate Conception" is not a part of Bible teaching, but the recent theory of one large Church as to Mary, the Mother of Christ.

His article ignores the great facts on which the Christian religion is founded. He ignores the fact of sin, and the need of a Saviour. He decries many of the practices of Christianity, but sin in the hearts of many so-called Christians does not destroy the truth of Christianity. He decries dogma; so does the writer when it is spun out and made the cause of divisions in the Church, but he has dogma as to his own belief, and there is no belief without dogma.

The writer, a layman, has had for 40 years a special interest in the Bible and in religious subjects, and after all of this time, it practically all comes down to a simple proposition of belief in God, the Creator, and in Christ, the Saviour. That

The Outlook for

is God manifest in the flesh revealing the Father and His love to mankind. These facts fit all time.

If Mr. Bush really knows the Bible, he must see that Christ is the fulfillment of very many prophecies and if Christ be studied, he must see Him as a supernatural being. We cannot just explain it any more than explain countless things around us, but it works, and has satisfied the hearts and minds of great numbers of the world's brainiest men. What works? Why, an unprejudiced consideration of the claims of Christianity and the exercise of just such faith as is used every day as to things material.

Many men have accepted Christianity through a study of the evidences as to the Resurrection of Christ. So a sympathetic study of the Bible convinces one of its being a supernatural book whose beauty and richness cannot be exhausted in a lifetime. These things are facts.

Another great fact is the experience of the Christian. Romans viii. 16, "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God." For a true miracle, witness the conversion of drunkards and dope fiends. The writer has heard many testify that they had lost all will power, but when Christ came into their hearts, a supernatural power was given them.

In the language of Romans viii. 2: "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death."

Christ in the heart saves from the penalty of sin and also from the power of sin now. The distinct originality of Christianity lies in the fact that it enables man to do what others fail to do.

Ah! the trouble lies in the will and we are not willing to pay the price of a surrendered life.

One thing all honest men must admit and that is that the unselfishness of true Christianity, if general, will save this old world from the fate of Greece and Rome and stop the disintegrating forces that many see to be at work.

Baltimore, Maryland.

I

CHARLES W. COGGINS.

Circulating Pictures

WAS much interested in your "discovery," as explained in The Outlook for August 10, that it is more profitable for artists to rent their pictures than let them accumulate in dust-covered piles in hope of a sale.

The Philadelphia Art Alliance has something of the same plan in successful operation. The Art Alliance is an association of artists and art lovers whose aim is to stimulate the love of beauty in Philadelphia and incidentally to sell the artists' work. We have continuous exhibitions of paintings, sculpture, or handicrafts which are open to the public free of charge. For our members we have much music and frequent talks on literary and artistic subjects. We have been co-discoverers with yourself of the idea that artists should not wait for the public to come and buy their pictures, and the outcome of this discovery is our "Circulating Picture Club." Any person in Philadelphia, whether or not a member of the Art Alliance, may belong to the Club on the payment of ten dollars annual dues. He will have the privilege of inspecting a large number of pictures which have all been passed by a competent jury, of selecting any one he likes, taking it home, and keeping it for a month, with the privilege of renewal or purchase. The