Tramping With a Poet in the Rockies

by Stephen Graham. With thirty-eight emblems, by Vernon Hill. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1922. x+279 pp. $2.00.

PERHAPS the title of this book will repel more persons than it will attract. It is likely to suggest to many a reader outpourings of ecstatic rhapsody, conversation as rarefied as the mountain air that the wayfarers breathe — altogether a work more ‘precious’ than valuable. If such is the impression, the reviewer’s immediate duty is to undermine it. The book is not one that the virile, redblooded reader to whom publishers so earnestly address their wares is bound in self-respect to shun. Indeed he, no less than the old-fashioned gentle reader, should enjoy it. He should admire the adventurous spirit and the light-hearted courage of the two heroes in plunging into the wilderness of the Rockies, following no trail, not knowing where or when they would come out, provided with food for but a few days and with neither rod nor gun wherewith to replenish their supply — or does that admission disqualify them from all claim to a red-blooded American’s interest and sympathy? Well, anyway, the old-fashioned gentle reader, who believes that poets are the best company in the world, will like this book; and it will strengthen him in his belief.

The poet who accompanied Mr. Graham is Mr. Vachel Lindsay — Vachel pronounced to rhyme with Rachel, not with satchel. We get from Mr. Graham some picturesque description — not too much — of scenery, and a most delightful portrait — still incomplete — of Mr. Lindsay. After reading the book one wishes to have the complement to it — a book by Mr. Lindsay passing lightly over the scenery and the adventures and presenting a full-length portrait of Mr. Graham.

‘My companion has two voices,’ writes Mr. Graham, with the candor that tramping through the wilderness with one other man ultimately compels. ‘One is that of a politician, harsh and strident; the other is that of an Homeric harper and ballad-chanter of the days of old.’ And he cannot refrain from quoting— not too literally:

Two voices:

And this after Mr. Graham in his preface has asserted that Mr. Lindsay is almost inarticulate!

Come, Mr. Lindsay, fall to and lay on; let us have your book on Mr. Graham; it will be as interesting as his, though it can hardly be more amusing. And let us hope that when it does appear it will not be disfigured, like his, by innumerable misprints. When we read of Johnny Appleseed ‘going ahead of the pioneers of Ohio and Indiana and painting apple orchards,’ we marvel yet again at the inspired compositor.

ARTHUR STANWOOD PIER.

These reviews will be reprinted separately in pamphlet form. Copies may be had by any librarian, without charge, on application to the Atlantic Monthly, 8 Arlington St., Boston.