Atlantic Shop-Talk

Rooseveltiana

HAVING announced already in these pages the biography of Theodore Roosevelt by Lord

Charnwood, which the Atlantic Monthly Press will publish in October — before Roosevelt’s birthday on the twenty-seventh of that month — the Talker of Shop would wait for the book to speak, with its own eloquence, for itself, but that Lord Charnwood’s narrative is supplemented by two pieces of editorial apparatus of which a word may well be said. These are, in effect, a preface and an appendix, though neither is so called. The first is a chronology — with a difference. Instead of presenting the bare bones of a list of dates and events in the life of Theodore Roosevelt, many of the entries are extended and illuminated by appropriate quotations from Roosevelt’s own words. What would normally be a few pages of dry and forbidding reading are thus converted into a large number of uncommonly readable pages. For this addition to the book the Press is indebted to Mr. Hermann Hagedorn, Director of the Roosevelt Memorial Association, with whom both the author and the publishers have been in frequent correspondence since the book was planned.

By way of appendix there is a facsimile reproduction of a long manuscript letter — a dealer would catalogue it A.L.S. —written to Lady Delamere in Ireland, by Theodore Roosevelt immediately upon his return from Africa. It is an autobiographic document, hitherto unpublished, of remarkable interest, and the strange story of its recovery from loss after the Sinn Fein destruction of an Irish country house, and its preservation by the Roosevelt Memorial Association, which has most kindly made it available for the present purpose, is told in the book.

Lord Charnwood’s dedication of the biography in a letter to Dr. Wallace Buttrick of the General Education Board contains a memorable tribute to their common friend, the late Walter II. Page. Xot only in the body of the book, therefore, but in alt the pages set in smaller type, the conscious and unconscious collectors of Rooseveltiana will find their possessions notably increased.

The New Hawes story and Its pictures

A month ago the Atlantic contained not only the sorrowful news of the death of Charles

Boardman Hawes, but an announcement of a prize for the best story of adventure maintaining the standard of fiction represented by his three remarkable books in the field he had made his own. In the offices of the Atlantic Monthly Press there is a strong conviction that this is a standard well worth maintaining. There is abundant evidence that we are by no means alone in this opinion. In fact the Honorable Maurice Francis Egan gave memorable support to it when, in his Confessions of a Book Lover, he was discussing ‘the kind of book that old age might read in order to renew its youth,’ and gave utterance to these expressions : —

I had taken to King Solomon’s Mines and Treasure island and that perfect gem of excitement and illusion, The Mutineers, by Charles Boardman Hawes. I read it and am young again. I trust that some enterprising bookseller will unblushingly compile a library for the old, and begin it with The Mutineers!

This was Mr. Hawes’s first book. Then came The Great Quest. Now his last and, we believe, his best story, The Dark Frigate, is making its posthumous appearance. The first and second of these books were illustrated by an acknowledged master of nautical design, George Varian, a veteran artist, who has died since the publication of The Great Quest. The editors of The Open Road, in which The Dark Frigate has been appearing serially, and the publishers of the book have accordingly turned to an artist whose promising career has just begun. This is Mr. A. L. Ripley, who, in his recent course at the Art School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, has won a traveling fellowship which is to give him two years in Europe for the study of painting. Meanwhile his illustrations in periodicals have been attracting the most favorable attention. The vigor and faithfulness with which he has illustrated Mr. Hawes ‘s new sea story match admirably with these qualities in the author’s work.

Progressive Education

The name of Eugene Randolph Smith, headmaster of the Beaver Country Day School,

Brookline, Massachusetts, is intimately associated with the movement known as ‘Progressive Education.’ Not only has he dealt with the new view of teaching and its methods in various magazine articles and on many a public rostrum, but he holds the official position of President of the National Progressive Education Associat ion.

Mr. Smith is, indeed, the leading American authority on the subject with which he has thus identified himself. It is therefore a matter of uncommon interest that he has written, for publication by the Atlantic Monthly Press, a book to be issued a few months hence under the title, Progressive Education: A Practical Outline of Modern Tendencies. More specific announcement of its contents will be made in due time. At this moment it is enough to say that President Charles W. Eliot who, in his ninetieth year is far more interested in the future than in the past, and has long stood for the same general ideas of education for which Mr. Smith has become the spokesman, is providing the book with a sympathetic and stimulating introduction.

Mr. Chapman and the Teachers

In a recent newspaper article on ‘The Modern Craze of Learning How to Write,’ Mr. John Jay

Chapman says that the new Atlantic Classic, Fact, Fancy, and Opinion, edited by Professor Robert M. Gay, contains in its introduction ‘the best hints about writing that have ever been thrown together. . . .The Introduction is worth the price of the book, and to him that needs it, it will be of more value than a copy of the Encyclopædia Hritannica.’ Mr. Chapman quotes certain of Mr. Gay’s paragraphs, and adds, ‘I advise any young reader to cut out these dicta and paste them on the wall of his bedroom, despite the damage of the wall-paper — which will, in any case, wear out, and had best be flanked by something that will not wear out.’

Instructors in journalism, by the way, are especially interested in the group of newspaper editorials which forms one section of Professor Gay’s book. One professor writes us, ‘It is practically the only book of selections which I, personally, have read with interest; and I think even the flunks would agree with that opinion.’ Mr. Chapman is not to be classified as a ‘flunk,’ but on this point he differs from the teacher just quoted, in that he greatly prefers Mr. Gay’s ‘Introduction’ to his selections. Disagreements between teachers and Mr. Chapman are, however, not unprecedented.

Atlantic Books

‘Atlantic Books are Pleasant Friends.’ Such, indeed, they have been found by a great variety of readers. It may also be said, ‘Atlantic Books make Pleasant Friends.’ This we know from the nature of the correspondence they call forth. Pleasant friends in large numbers the Atlantic Books are indeed making for their publishers. The office letter files for any single week or month establish the point beyond question. Out of the quarry they constitute we dig a single stone—in the form of a paragraph in a letter from a foreign-born reader calling for a book the acquaintance of which he had made through the Atlantic. Thus he wrote: —

I am enjoying immensely such articles like above. I wish I will be able to read more and more because the great spirit should be feed just as much as the stomach.

It is truly a pleasant friend who knows that he has a great spirit to feed, and permits you to share in the feeding of it. Up to the measure of their success in this direction the Atlantic Books deserve themselves to be called ‘Pleasant Friends.’