passage of the eight-hour law for women which California regards as its most progressive piece of legislation.

Though born in California she is a member of an old Irish family most of whose members have seen service as officers in the British army and navy. Miss Beatty has one brother in the United States army and another in the British service in India. Lord David Beatty, the British Admiral in command of the Grand Fleet, is a relative.

William A. Wellman, formerly of the Lafayette Flying Corps, author of "Go Get 'Em!", who was the only Yankee flier fighting over General Pershing's boys of the Rainbow Division when they first went "over the top", has recently been commissioned First Lieutenant in the American Aviation Corps. He has been appointed Advisory Instructor at Rockwell Field, San Diego, California, where he is instructing experienced fliers in battle formations. His publishers announce a second printing of "Go Get 'Em!"

Professor Whitehead, author of "Dawson Black: Retail Merchant", was born in Birmingham, England. When he applied for his first commercial job, he was asked in connection with the route and territory, "At what hotel do you stop in such and such a city?" He thought fast and remembered that almost every English town boasts a King George Hotel, so he replied "At the King George, sir!" "Good", replied the employer, "all the leading salesmen stop at that hotel. You can have the job and start right away." His mistakes and struggles in the hardware business,

added to experience gained in later years which fitted him for his position as Professor of Business Administration at Boston University, furnish much of the material for his new book.

Mary Heaton Vorse, the author of "The Prestons", has just sailed to England on England on a confidential mission for one of our leading magazines.

Randall Parrish, author of "Wolves of the Sea", "The Devil's Own", and many other stories popular with the fiction-reading public, has had a varied and eventful career. His life has been spent for the most part in the South and in the far West, when that country was "wild and woolly" in fact. He is now a staid resident of Kewanee, Illinois, where aside from his literary pursuits he has many business and social interests. His early adventures are in a large measure responsible for the touch of realism which has been characteristic of all his stories.

Since the publication of Romain Rolland's "Au-dessus de la Mêlée" and the storm that centered about it, many rumors have been current regarding the author. Chief of these was to the effect that he was living in retirement in Switzerland and was utterly "crushed". But a recent letter from M. Rolland to Barrett H. Clark, whose translation of Rolland's "The People's Theater" is just off the press, dispels this illusion. He is living at Villeneuve, Switzerland.

"Crushed!" he writes, "Not in the least, my dear sir. I have never felt so alert and combative as at the present moment. I am merely gagged! It is quite impossible now for me to

make public my ideas, because they are too liberal. During the past two years of the war I have written an Aristophanic, satirico-poetic comedy on the events of the day, called 'L'Ane de Buridan'. I am writing two novels, likewise inspired by present-day events and dealing with characters of the epoch. One is a 'novel of meditation' entitled 'L'Un contre Tous'. Many Swiss papers have published extracts from it, though it is not yet complete. The other is a novel of young love. "Add to these a Rabelaisian novel, the hero of which, a native of Burgundy, like myself, gives his name to the book-Colas Brugnon'. This is finished, and was even printed in July, 1914; it awaits publication in the office of Ollendorff, my Paris publisher, until the end of the war, for I am loath to have its gaiety made public amid the sorrows of the present time. And, finally, I am writing numerous literary and philosophical articles, as well as essays on current events. These appear in the Swiss magazines-which do not reach America. Whatever the value of these various efforts, you will agree, when you read them, that the war has not in the least depressed me. On the contrary, my ideas differ from those current nowadays, but that does not bother me. I am only the freer to judge all things, and freedom of soul is dearer to me than happiness itself."

"I am no mountaineer", writes Roy Helton, author of "Outcasts in Beulah Land", "but I know the mountains from my father and I have heard all the old store of legend of that romantic past that few save him have lived through and remembered." Mr. Helton's book is a collection of

poetry, a part of which deals with mountain folk and stories, and is written in the ballad form still current among the mountaineers.

The publishers of the Modern Library who have given five different definitions of a "stagnuck", one of which is a person who thinks Balzac is the name of a mining stock, have asked the public for their definitions. They report that they have received about six hundred suggestions, the best of which, in their opinion, is that a "stagnuck" is a person who thinks that George Eliot was the father of ex-president Eliot of Harvard. A list of the hundred best suggestions will be printed in booklet form and distributed in the near future.

Certain passages of "The Education of Henry Adams" ought to serve as startling pin-pricks to the lethargic self-satisfaction of the confirmed Bostonian. When Henry Adams was appointed Assistant Professor of History at Harvard University, he hesitated before accepting the position, for he had no great love of Boston in which only a small part of his life had been spent. "Only Bostonians can understand Bostonians and the inconsequences of the Boston mind," says this man with a pure and far-reaching Boston pedigree!

Laurence LaTourette Driggs has written in "Heroes of Aviation" thrilling stories of the careers of the most famous Allied aviators. More absorbing than Jules Verne or any other imaginative writer could have produced are the vivid accounts of the battles in the air of such worldrenowned flyers as Captain Georges Guynemer, the most famous of all

aces, who achieved 53 victories; of Lieutenant Rene Fonck, the foremost living one of France, who brought down six enemy planes in one day; Captain Albert Ball, the twenty-yearold English boy who had accounted for 43 German flyers before he was killed; Major William A. Bishop, the Canadian in the Royal Flying Corps, who has destroyed 72 Hun planes and still lives; and Major Raoul Lufbery, the intrepid American ace whose official score was 18 when he was brought down.

Kate Bates, the heroine of Gene Stratton-Porter's new novel "A Daughter of the Land", whose theories on corn-growing resulted in the easy winning of the blue ribbon for the banner crop of corn at her county fair, has been taken as a model in agriculture by some of the members of the Woman's Land Army.

Among the dramatic events of history given delightful literary form and setting in Rafael Sabatini's "The Historical Nights' Entertainment", are the murders of Darnley and Rizzio, St. Bartholomew, Casanova's escape from the Piombi, the thrilling stories of Lady Alice Lisle, Antonio Perez and Philip II of Spain, Charles the Bold and Sapphira Danvelt, and others not less fit to prove that truth is indeed stranger than fiction and more heart-gripping in interest.

It is interesting that almost of a sudden Thorstein Veblen should attract rather wide attention. It is almost twenty years since the publication of his "The Theory of the Leisure Class". Besides being authoritative in economics it ranks high as satire.

of Louis Untermeyer, has written verse, which, though slight in volume, has evoked high praise. Mrs. Untermeyer resists the demand to write more freely and limits herself to those thoughts and impulses that cannot be gainsaid. The poems may be interpreted as a record of spiritual struggle and development; thus the volume comes honestly by its title, "Growing Pains".

When Uncle Sam declared war, Annie Fellows Johnston had just completed her manuscript, "Georgina's Service Stars". Thereupon she promptly enlisted and has given her time since then to matters which women could do in aid of the war. Among other things she wrote a series of children's stories to offset enemy propaganda already inculcated in the minds of youthful Americans through text books and certain juvenile publications.

In his latest book, "Making Life Worth While", Douglas Fairbanks threatens to write a novel in order to spur his imaginative powers. For full efficiency he believes that mental and physical pep must travel together.

Among the illustrations in George Leland Hunter's "Decorative Textiles" are many of modern American manufacture, such as damask, from an old Italian original; and beautiful examples of brocaded velvets, tapestries, laces, embroideries, painted linens and cottons, printed wallhangings, painted Chinese and French wall papers, and painted and illuminated leather from many countries and ages. The rug section includes many fine and unusual exam

dynasties, and remarkable rugs of Persian and Indian types.

"Tales of the War" by Lord Dunsany, the Irish playwright and soldier, is a volume of vivid stories of the war, written in his characteristic style.

The hope of literature through sound criticism is implicit in Francis Hackett's "Horizons" and the creation of leadership through literature is the theme of "Letters and Leadership" by Van Wyck Brooks.

"Clear the Decks" is a tale of the American Navy today, truth in the guise of fiction spiced with humor; "The Romance of Old Philadelphia" is by John T. Faris, who depicts the life of the American Colonist in all its romantic aspects; "Keineth" is Jane D. Abbott's breezy and cheerful story for girls; and the new Farm Manual, "Productive Sheep Husbandry", by Professor Walter C. Coffey of the University of Illinois, is a richly illustrated guide to this rapidly growing industry in America.

Booth Tarkington was asked recently to write a play for overseas use which could be acted by Y.M.C.A. secretaries "in uniform". It will be interesting to see what Mr. Tarkington's invention produces.

Among publications of this week is "Joseph Pennell's Liberty Loan Poster". The French war poster is a work of art. The American posters have been very effective in many ways, but Mr. Pennell believes that the knowledge of how to produce such work as the French produce is not general in America.

"How Germany Does Business", by Dr. P. P. Gourvitch, tells the story briefly and interestingly for the benefit not only of American exporters but for all those who study the psychology of the German.

Mayor Frederick W. Donnelly of Trenton, N. J., is an ardent admirer of "The Man Who Won", by Leon D. Hirsch. J. Murray Hurlbert, Dock Commissioner of New York City and a former Congressman, began the book at Mayor Donnelly's suggestion and "finished the reading at one sitting".

"With Old Glory In Berlin" is written by Josephine Therese, an American girl who went to the capital of Hunland to study music, and who was obliged to stay there for six months after America entered the war before she could escape.

Dr. Woods Hutchinson, author of "The Doctor in War", is now offering to the public a series of lectures on such opportune subjects as "Woman as a Warrior", "The Land of the Cheerful Wounded", and "The Happy Hooverite".

Peter B. Kyne, author of "The Valley of the Giants", has gone to France as the Captain of a California battery. Before he sailed he wrote his publishers, "I have a fine soldier book in mind already".

The author of "Keineth”, a new book for girls, is a Congressional leader of the New York State Woman Suffrage Party. She organized several troops of Girl Scouts, she is the author of several plays for children, and an editorial writer.