E Is Commercial Aviation Here? (Continued from page 339) hangar and all that goes with it, so its upkeep cost is not low; yet when operated in a businesslike manner this form of plane is efficient, safe, and gives reliable service. Such a plane is, roughly, 75 feet wide, 50 feet long, 13 feet high. It has a cruising speed of 100 miles per hour, a high speed of 120 miles per hour, a radius of action of 500 miles or five hours' travel. It will carry ten passengers or their equivalent in freight if it does not exceed 300 cubic feet, the capacity of the cabin. These modern air-liners have, in addition to the full complement of chairs, a writing-desk, sleeping-berths, a smoking-room, fully equipped toilet-room, baggage compartment, and a full all-around-visioned, completely instrumented double-pilots' compartment with map desk, controls, and every navigational device for flying in darkness or in fog as well as by day. Lights in the wings, special searchlights for landing, are also part of the modern air-liner fitments. The weight of such an aircraft is about 5,750 pounds-yet it will fly with some 3,550 pounds of passenger or freight load more than 100 miles per hour. Recently, while in Detroit, I visited. the Ford Airport and saw the new Ford tri-motored transport-no, not the new Ford car, but the airplane. It is of allmetal construction; the wings and fuselage-in fact, nearly all the parts of the plane are of duralumin, a copperaluminum alloy as strong as structural steel but only one-third as heavy. It is powered with three Wright Whirlwind air-cooled engines, any two of which will ly the plane. In general form a monoplane, this craft presents many new and unusual features, important ones being he manner in which all outside wires and trusses and other parasitic resistinces have been eliminated. The gasoine tanks are mounted in the wings, which, by the way, are constructed with nternal trusses in such a way that all trains are absorbed inside the wing tructure, no exterior wiring being eeded. The body is made with transerse bulkheads, with the corrugated luralumin metal skin formed over it. One steps directly into a roomy inerior, upholstered and comfortably aranged, with a sizable aisle between the cats, ample head room, plenty of light -altogether, such an interior as one is ccustomed to in a modern motor car of be more luxurious type. I learned that everal of these ships were in daily use, hat business men and corporations were Name... Street.. Town.. State.. Bag : $7.95 For over 54 years this House has maintained a reputation for safety of principal and satisfactory, dependable income for investments it offers. Smith First Mortgage Bonds Yield 62% Net and carry attractive Tax refund features. Denominations $1000. $500. $100. They are protected by Safeguards that have been developed through our experience of over a half century in Investment Banking. The History of this House and complete information about the Bonds it offers may be had without obligation Just ask for Booklet "6-51" The F. H.SMITH CO. buying them and using them with little more hesitation, after the first flush of ownership wore off, than their favorite coach or landaulet. One group of vicepresidents had had breakfast in Chicago and dinner in Denver, flown 1,036 miles in a day, and felt none the worse for it. In fact, one got 31⁄2 hours' sleep on the way, and said he had never slept better in his life. It is an interesting fact that flying is a most restful form of transportation. One can hear little noise inside the plane; its walls are soundproofed, and the little there is soon lulls one to sleep-that is, if one is a passenger. The pilot, by the way, is too busy looking in three directions and at his instruments between times to indulge. Besides, as one of our minister'sson-aviators says, "What doth it profit a man if his wife be a widow?" Having a curiosity to know how much profit might be expected from the operation of such a plane, I asked one of the Ford officials, William B. Stout, who, under Mr. Ford's direction, is responsible for the development of this new division of the Ford Motor Company. He said: "What it costs to operate depends very largely on the management and to a considerable extent on the route to be flown. It is fundamental that the greater number of hours that the plane can be kept in the air, the greater the dividends and the lower the operating cost. "But little profit can be expected from anything less than four hours per day in the air. On the possibility of six hours per day in the air, the cost should be, with proper management, around 75 cents per mile, or a 100-mile trip can be made at a cost of $75, including all possible overhead, insurance, etc. With ten passengers over this short route at $15 each, the earnings per trip would be $150 and the profit $75, and a six-dayper-week basis would approximate $450. "As the mileage per day goes down, the cost per mile goes up, this, of course, depending on the management. We have a great deal of data based on thousands of miles of flying on several different routes under all kinds of weather conditions, which we are using, and will pass on to others interested in operating our planes. This knowledge may mean all the difference between a big success and colossal failure." And so the answer is: Commercial aviation is here. But it is still only a lusty infant needing constant care, a regular schedule of feeding, plenty of air, frequent changing, and a good spanking now and then. But it will grow. Time will attend to that. The Thousandfold Thrill of Life horny-handed and sin-seared skipper, a every port, a cattle keeper on shipboard, an engineer amidst his oily engines, are put before us in Kipling's stories and poemssays the editor of The Warner Library-so that we recognize them as lovable fellow creatures responsive to the thousandfold thrill of life. An electric cable, a steam-engine, a banjo, or a mess-room toast offer occasion for song: and lo! they are converted by the alchemy of the imagination until they become a type and an illumination of the red-blooded life of man kind. The ability to achieve this is a crown ing characteristic and merit of Rudyard Kipling's work. Had Kipling stopped with his rollicking ballads of the barrack-room he would have won his place in the hall of famous poets but he went further and higher as the un crowned laureate of the English-speaking people. Kipling Authorized Edition Sweeping Reduction in Price The publication of this authorized edition of Kipling's works in a new form and at a new low price within the reach of every book lover and student, is a notable event in the history of book-making. A Wonderful Offer A rich nine-volume set of Kipling's master pieces is now available for you. Because of the extreme popularity of his works it is possible to publish these splendid books in large editions at a saving, of which you obtai the benefit if you act now. These books are a superb addition to any home library. The are uniformly bound in green fabrikoid, and beautifully printed on good paper and have a very clear type page. Send No Money Now Just send the coupon by early mail and re ceive your set without a penny of cost to you and without obligation of any kind Spend five days under Kipling's magic spell Then make your own decision. Act now lest you forget and so miss this really grea opportunity. Concerning an American Industry NCE a year, in the foreword to his collection of American short stories, Mr. Edward J. O'Brien marks: "My selection of these does imply that they are great stories. A ar which produced one great story uld be an exceptional one." The words have a wistful sound. And y not? It is possible to disagree with : O'Brien's choice of "bests" and still nowledge that he is badly paid for fearful labor. What a task to set 's self! It is not flippant to put the ting of short stories among the leadAmerican industries. The proof is any news-stand. so many bright magazines and almost er a great story; seldom one that is ving and memorable. Why? A few years ago Sherwood Anderson te a story called "I'm a Fool." A ' meets a girl at an Ohio race-track. an exalted, show-off mood he tells her t he is the son of a country banker › has a horse entered in one of the ting events. Later in the day he ws that he loves her, and that his è is returned. Simultaneously he ws that they have been parted irrevbly at the moment of meeting. She he sweetest girl he has ever known. : sweetest he ever will know. No > for him, though. The lie has ted them. Such a stupid lie cannot explained without chilling fatally the n of their tenderly passionate atiment. What! True lovers parted forever? nust not be. It need not be. There way around such dilemmas. Let girl turn out to be the banker's ghter. Let her laugh the lie away. a thousand lies be laughed away be: romance is blighted. The typical American short-story ter, in a word, works with a bag of ks. Be respectable, be humorous, be By PARKHURST WHITNEY "glad." Get action. Never mind character portrayal; the illustrations will take care of that. Begin with a punch and end with a crack of the whip. Make the story long enough to break over into the advertising section. Practice these rules diligently, and you need not envy rich men. You will be one yourself. Now, if a certain theme lends itself to a brisk telling, then that is the way it should be told; and if the whip can crack inevitably at the end, then let us hear it. But it has happened that the average writer has come to stand in relation to his theme as Procrustes to his guests. The bed is the rigid form in which the short story has become fixed. The form is frequently perfect, but the content is as frequently piffle, a bauble from Woolworth's in a Tiffany setting. Anderson, brooding over his situation, saw that life had made a fool of the boy. The lesser artist makes a fool of life. Anderson's story rests on a lonely eminence, true, poignant, and purging. But since he wrote other men and women have written to show that any way is a good way to tell a story if truth shines out of it. Ring Lardner has written "Golden Wedding" and "Some Like them Cold;" Ruth Suckow has published "Four published "Four Generations;" and more recently Ernest Hemingway's "The Killers" seems likely to make 1927 memorable for Mr. O'Brien. It should. "Golden Wedding" is a monologue told on a train. But a whole life is unfolded in the telling; yes, a whole stratum of American life. "Some Like Them Cold" is in the form of letters. But what a solid, human girl emerges! "Four Generations" is a variant of the melting-pot theme; as trite as that. A commonplace German-American family has a reunion and talks of commonplace things. Nothing happens. But there is a piercing gleam of light at the end when the doddering German greatgrandfather and his little American great-granddaughter try to comprehend each other across the space of years. Ernest Hemingway's powerful tale sounds the inexorable note that is heard in "I'm a Fool." The artist may use fantasy as his medium, but his art takes its validity from a realistic observation of the affairs of men. And the affairs of men will not invariably fit into a pretty package just so wide and just so long. There are situations that end in hope, in irony, or in resignation; events that come to no stirring climax, but break off as life breaks off. These are stories, too, and they want telling. Whether we lay them down with a sigh or a smile we are wiser and fuller for having read them. They add to the sum of our experience and illuminate the dark and troubled places of our own hearts. The tendency of the modern writers, the younger men, is to utilize these fragments, the same fragments that de Maupassant used, and Tchekov, and Stephen Crane. Hemingway's collection of short stories, "Men Without Women," deals largely with themes the popular writer would not touch; if he did, he would mar them. The popular writer protests that he must meet the specifications of the editor. The editor says that he is merely the servant of his readers. The readers -but who can know the preferences of five hundred thousand, a million, or three million subscribers? For such editors as have that godlike gift there is something significant in the immense success of the so-called confession magazines. Bad as they are, they represent an attempt to get away from the stale (Continued on page 350) T Who Cares? Speaking of Books O and fro, between the marshaled forces of book reviews and publishers' blurbs in battle array, with the petty tumult of nursery warfare, goes the quarrel about the authenticity of Trader Horn. Is he real or did Mrs. Ethelreda Lewis make him up? His picture appeared in the Sunday paper, but any old man with a beard might have been induced to sit for that for a bit of the royalties. Galsworthy called on him in South Africa; but Galsworthy is a novelist, and knows what really matters. Who cares? Who cares whether an old English sailor become a peddler of trivets and teakettles did wander up to the back door of a house and fill the eager ears of a lady who has done some writing before now with a story out of the golden book of romance, or whether the lady, who has made up people out of her head before, made up this particular one, and made him the sort of person that Americans like to read about? Probably Trader Horn is real and Mrs. Lewis is gifted. At any rate, they have, between them, produced a book which is deservedly popular. In the tranquil blue eyes of old men whose lives have been spent in lonely and majestic places—the sea, the windy plains, the mountains-there is a look which is the envy and despair of city dwellers. Americans are city people, wherever they live. The spirit of their adventur- ing forefathers is spent; all of it exhausted in one great and gallant effort. Adventure lingers in their dreams, their wistful heritage. Is it surprising that they turn to books like "Trader Horn" for the escape by daylight which comes to them at night, and which they long for whose dreams are childlike and whose days are lonely? For "Trader Horn" holds all the courage in the face of all the danger that they could ask. It is rich with the color of the sea, and of the forest, of naked savages and bedizened roughs. It is bright with terrible and relentless life. It holds all glamourous romance in the span of one life. And there is truth in it; children's truth; truth which the grown man who lives in cities has for A New Literary Department Edited by FRANCES LAMONT ROBBINS gotten, which he will scorn when he lays down the book and turns back to work. But it is truth that he remembers in his dreams. What They Are Reading LIST OF BEST-SELLING BOOKS is compiled from lists sent us by telegram on Saturday by the following bookshops: Brentanos, New York; Old Corner Book Store, Boston; Scrantoms Inc., Rochester; Korner & Wood, Cleveland; Scruggs, Vandevoort & Barney, St. Louis; Kendrick Bellamy Company, Denver; Teolin Pillot Company, Houston; Paul Elder & Co., San Francisco. We asked these stores to co-operate with us each week because we believe that they are representative of the taste of the more intelligent readers in their communities. The books which are most in demand in these shops are usually those which are most discussed. We believe that they are the books which Outlook readers will want to know more about. THE FOLLOWING emotions of a section of present-d adolescence bound together by a f poetic talent, you will like this. A you will want to read it if you are int ested in young writers very gifted a worth watching. ED SKY AT MORNING. By Marga Those who read and rejoiced in "T Constant Nymph" will want to read t new novel by the same author. T settings and characters are somewh similar, but Margaret Kennedy und stands them, and again makes th vivid and enthralling. As in the f book, the children in "Red Sky" particularly delightful. Though effect of these very similarities is make this book seem less of an achie ment than the other, it is decided worth reading. If you like a machine-made story, animated by living people and touched by plenty of "wholesome" sentiment, you will enjoy this typical Deeping story M of post-war England. OTHER INDIA. By Katherine Ma In view of the wide circulation America of this admirable piece of p tisan reporting, it is a pity that the co ments upon it by Mukerji, Gandhi, a some English reviewers cannot be a read. It is this reviewer's opinion th not more than one in ten of the pec who read this book are interested knowing anything about India; and seems likely that it will undo much the work that has been done towa creating sympathy between this count and that.. THE The Inevitable Leeway The Runner's Thoreau HE HEART OF THOREAU'S JOURNALS. Edited by Odell Shepard. Houghton Mifflin Company. To read Thoreau has seemed to many not precious even, but pedantic. He has figured in many minds as a naturalist whose writings could interest only such individuals as might be expected to pursue birds in the spring with operaglasses or to go out botanizing. Or he has been accepted as the preacher of a loose and lazy back-to-nature doctrine, ridiculous in conscientious 1850, and much more so in constructive 1927. By. coming across a chance quotation only did the general reader discover him to be a man thinking, whose thoughts were comprehensible and decidedly shareable. And so appreciation of this man whose contribution to American letters is of the greatest, whose interest for Americans is general, and whose gifts lie easily within the range of ordinary readers' tastes, has been left almost wholly to the scholarly. It is a pity, because to read "Walden," the best-known and the most readily available of Thoreau's books, is a delightful and enriching experience for any one. Thoreau's sentiments and thoughts are those which, as he says, "visit all men more or less generally." He "recalled them from oblivion and fixed" them, not only for himself, but for any one who has felt their light footsteps in his mind and tried vainly to catch them. He set them down in a form which since Poor Richard's time has been agreeable to Americans. "Walden" and "The Week" are collections of apothegms, bright stones of thought, not particularly improved by having been set into a pattern. Most of the material in "Walden" and "The Week" was taken by Thoreau from his journals. He was primarily an observer and a journalist, and he set down in his journals his daily impressions during twenty-four years. The journals are not convenient of access to the average reader. For NOTHING Leaves Chicago Like a sojourn in a fine hotelappointments and cuisine link luxury and high scenic diversion to make your 63-hour journey a pleasant means to the end-California! the year round playground out of doors. LosAngeles Limited* has barber, bath, valet, maid, manicure. Seven other fine fast trains to California, including the 63-hour San Francisco Overland Limited*; Gold Coast Limited (Open-top observation car in Southern California starting Dec. 1st); Continental Limited; Pacific Limited; Pacific Coast Limited. *Extra fare trains. See magnificent, mysterious Death For booklets describing California, Address C. J. COLLINS UNION PACIFIC THE OVERLAND ROUTE |