FEW authors have come to live so vigorously in the land of their imagination as does Leo Crane. In 1910 Mr. Crane was a successful writer of short stories; one year later he had been made a monarch of that very realm where so much of his fiction had been staged, the Indian Desert. Since the day of his appointment Mr. Crane has served variously as Indian Agent for the Hopi and Navajo Indians of Arizona, the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, the Lower Yanktonai Sioux, and the Mohave and Chemehuevi of the Colorado River area — in all a record of fourteen devoted years. J. Leslie Hotson is an instructor of English at Harvard and a detective who has unrolled one of the most deplorable mysteries in all literature. Expressing a dissatisfaction with all ‘possible titles ‘ for his essay, Mr. Hotson wrote:

If I had my way (which I have n’t) I should write an impossible title, running something like this: —

A TRUE DISCOUERY / of the Tragicall / SLAYING / of CHRISTOPHER MARLOW GENT: / by I. L. H. Philosophiœ Doctor Uniuersitatis Harvardianœ Massachusettsensis. / In which for the first time are vnfolded / THE FINDINGS OF THE QUEENES CORONER / vpon viewe of his vnhappie body / lying dead in Detford Strande. / 1 June 1593. / And store of other matters All as new / as Lamentable and true. / Kynde Kit Marloe / London Printed by R. Clark for F. M. 1925.

But literary taste has changed for the worse.

Imogen B. Oakley was an eyewitness of certain conditions which attended the Direct Primary in Philadelphia. Before judging her indignant photograph every citizen may well pause and consider his own province. ¶For Louis E. Reed, a school-teacher of West Virginia, the forces of home and education have been opposed in an elemental conflict.

Kirsopp Lake, Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Harvard University, has composed some pages of modern history which for their justice and discernment must commend themselves to observant readers. ¶With a poem of delicate suggestion Margaret Pond makes her début in the Atlantic.J. T. Boumphrey set Out to capture ‘ something of the color, the fierceness, and the true beauty of rowing,’ and in the heat of the moment he has carried us with him into a stirring race. ¶Challenged by Stephen F. Hamblin’s article, ‘Plants and Policies,’ which appeared in the March Atlantic,Charles L. Marlatt, Chairman of the Federal Horticultural Board, and Assistant Chief of the Bureau of Entomology, has prepared a vigorous and authoritative reply, ¶Eight years’ experience as a motorist and a bank president have convinced William Ashdown of the perpetual expense of the automobile. As a bank president Mr. Ashdown may be able to afford this extravagance, but how about the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker?

A philologist by trade, Ernest Weekley, head of the Modern Language Department at University College, Nottingham, has made a particular study of those curious counterfeit phrases which circulate as legal tender. ¶Formerly of the faculty of Johns Hopkins University, Lawrence H. Baker is now a member of the editorial staff of the Baltimore Sun.William Preston Beazell, the assistant managing editor of the New York World, describes an entertaining household recently of his neighborhood. Edward Carrington Venable has called upon the Comic Muse and found her at home, and a smiling and sophisticated matron. Anne Goodwin Winslow, a graceful poet occasionally in our midst, will be remembered for her ‘Masque of Loved Ladies’ which appeared in the Atlantic of May 1922. ¶A meeting with the ghosts of Dr. Johnson’s and A. Edward Newton’s famous friends may arouse in Atlantic voyagers an appetite for the Cheshire Cheese and well-fed rumination at Gough Square. Robert M. Gay, Professor of English at Simmons College, is an essayist whose felicitous pen has charmed many an audience. A new and whimsical volume by Professor Gay, entitled The 8:45, has recently been published by the Atlantic Monthly Press.

Long residence in France in years of peace and war has enabled Major T. H. Thomas to become skilled and understanding in the ways of European politics. During the war Mr. Thomas served as a major of the Intelligence Section in the G. H. Q., and afterward was assigned to an important post at the Peace Conference. ¶The fresh study of Germany by the Reverend Reinhold Niebuhr of Detroit brings us a profound perspective and a substantiating faith. Lyman Bryson served for several years on the international staff of the League of Red Cross Societies, and later became editor of the League’s monthly, The World’s Health, and its other printed material. His devotion to the cause of peace is manifest.

This philosopher would seem to have acquired the profound meditation of the East despite the ceaseless traffic of his post.

SOUTH BEND, INDIANA
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
In the April Atlantic ‘’22’ states some of the complex elements of a personal perplexity of religious faith for which she desires an answer. At forty-six I am only a crossing-watchman, with a serious problem of my own, but perhaps I can indicate to ‘’22’ a way to self-solution of her problem. In what I say is much profound ignorance. The cue to intelligence is to find the hidden wisdom.
‘’22’ seeks a faith in immortality which will satisfy her emotions and stand the test of intelligence. The first requisite is to keep faith in the virtue and sufficiency of intelligence to solve every human problem, for her difficulty is with intelligence, not with her emotions.
If ‘’22’ wishes immortal union with T., she must take advantage of her opportunity to cultivate the fullest spiritual union with him in the present; then, if conscious immortality of identity is a reality, the condition of this union at death of either is assured to her for all eternity. Intelligence is certain that no further development of the human aspects of the soul is possible after its spirit leaves the body. What T. is to ‘’22’ at his death will be hers for all eternity, with greater prospect of eternal happiness, if they never meet in the hereafter.
But there is another phase to the problem of immortality which is more vital to the welfare of humanity. Is immortality the natural destiny of nonentities — which it is if all are immortal — or is it to be acquired? If we are to achieve immortality, we must of necessity be born again and strive to become something, or accomplish something, worthy of immortality. This turns the problem of immortality from a personal matter into a human affair of great public importance. Here, again, immortality is dependent upon our employment of the mortal present. Science tells us that stars will remain visible in the heavens for thousands of years after becoming extinct as emanators of light. Intelligence and science tell us that our acts are recorded elsewhere than in ourselves with a permanence in proportion to the intensity of their commitment. We know that Joan of Arc has an immortality that will endure as long as creation, even though her own consciousness is lost in oblivion.
H. A. FARRAND

Of men who go down to the sea in ships.

TORONTO, CANADA
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
The primary reason for this new invasion of your mail and attention is found in the article by Judge Wells in the March issue of the Atlantic. I was not far away from the scene of that wreck. At sea in the same storm, we reached safety only by a miracle. The next evening I read the newspaper account of the wreck of the Shanghai and the following morning traveled with Mr. Wells and his party on the first stage of their train-journey home. As I watched them and talked with them emotions that were very deep were stirred. Nothing quite compares with them save those aroused by John Synge’s Riders to the Sea, and in particular by that great line, ‘The sea can do me no more harm.’ Mr. Wells was heard to murmur more than once in that reverie or half-dazed silence into which he lapsed repeatedly: ‘The Shanghai is gone!’ He took the loss of his dream ship with the most intense emotion. Rarely is it given one to share and witness an experience such as was mine that day. One thought of Mr. St. John Ervine’s remark, that an audience should leave a theatre, after seeing a great tragedy, proud that they too were men, of the same race and spirit.
H. M. P.

The prophet, the mouse, and the profit.

LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS
EDITOR the Atlantic Monthly
DEAR SIR: —
Having labored with the ‘Little Profiteer’ through three pages of the Atlantic, I was a bit disappointed when nothing more than a large mouse was brought forth. It seems, after all has been said, that the author of ‘ Milking the Public’ is only a good business-man earning a fair income, and not nearly so wicked as he would have us believe.
I have heard rumors, from time to time, that the distributor of farm products is able to accumulate more of this world’s goods than the producer, and the successful business-man more than the school-teacher or the editor — their supereducation (it may be) notwithstanding. So that these revelations come as no great shock. Farming and educating must, for the present at least, be their own rewards, and the Little Profiteer should have realized this before he started off to college.
However, it might ease his conscience to know that he is not filching any untoward amount from the farmer or from the public. If the farmers coöperated to pasteurize and distribute their own milk, instead of selling to him, they would have to hire a manager, and one who could produce the same financial results would command a salary of something like ten dollars a day. As the Little Profiteer was averaging only about thirteen and a half dollars for himself, only three dollars and a half profit would be left for the farmers. Doubtless at least fifteen farmers deliver milk to this 100-gallon plant, so that each one is being deprived of a possible profit of a little over twenty cents a day. Meanwhile, under private management, if anything goes wrong with the business it is the Little Profiteer who is holding the bag.
I should advise our friend to stifle his qualms of conscience, assume the rôle of prophet as well as profiteer, and straightway set about laying up against a rainy day.
PAUL H. MILLAR

There is no question of the validity of the Little Profiteer’s record. Of his prosperity in the lean years we cannot be so sure.

MASON CITY, IOWA
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
Some way or other ‘Milking the Public,’ by a Little Profiteer, in your April issue, does n’t ring exactly true to my ear; but let us admit for the moment that this is a conscientious recital by a man who is actually engaged as the Little Profiteer claims to be. I would label him a mighty poor business-man — one who is fast consuming his borrowed capital, one who will find himself in the bankruptcy court in less than four years if he does not begin before another four months to save all he can of that $12 to $15 a day he now so blithely calls profits. And I would offer the following items toward a bill of particulars to support this contention: —
1. Two drivers are not needed to deliver milk to 225 families a day.
2. Trucks are a costly method of retailing milk from house to house. Horses are more economical, and are used practically 100 per cent here in the Middle West.
3. Cheap motor-trucks in service seven days a week will depreciate practically 50 per cent the first year and an additional 40 per cent the second year. In that item alone — with two trucks — is an overhead cost that should be charged at the rate of at least $2 a day.
4. Milk-route drivers here in the Middle West draw $4 a day and up, seven days a week.
5. He charges no rental for his milk depot or place of business. He charges no insurance or tax.
6. The Little Profiteer charges no sinkingfund. And he is indeed a poor business-man who does not charge off and lay away a reasonable per cent of his gross income as a reserve from which to draw when business reverses come or temporary difficulties arise and it is inadvisable to increase selling-prices to meet the situation.
Even if his story is a recital of his own actual experience as he sees it, he is milking himself more than the public; his story is not representative of the milk business except in so far as it might be representative of the fallacious methods used by most of those who have failed in the business.
JAMES A. KING

The many letters that have come to us in appreciation of ‘O Theophilus’ may well be represented by this sincere expression.

NEW YORK CITY
EDITOR of the Atlantic, —
In ‘O Theophilus,’ in the April Atlantic, Caroline Atwater Mason touches a chord for which many have been waiting. Her disgust with the Gnostic tradition revived in ‘ intellectual Christianity’ is felt by many. Reasoning without insight, logic without vision, sense without faith, are poor guides in ethics, blind guides in religion.
‘That time is at hand.’ If I mistake not, the Christian of to-morrow will be a truer Christian than the world has known since the first century. We feel deeply the futility of ‘modernism’ and also, many of us, the irrelevancy of much that poses as ‘fundamentalism.’ The very early Christians were not so greatly concerned with the inerrancy of the written word or with the literal verity of each reported miracle. They were greatly concerned with the stupendous fact of Christ, His divinity, life, gospel, and resurrection. To them Christ proved the miracle. The miracles did not prove Christ. They were as planets to a sun, dependent for their existence or credibility upon its light. The sun was not and is not dependent upon them. The ‘ modernist’ sees the planets wobble and he wants to prop up or remake the sun for fear the light of the world may go out. The ‘fundamentalist lends strength to this fear and weakens the essential faith by struggling to support the planets, demanding belief in each of them as essential to belief in the snn itself.
If the Western world were pagan to-day, it would have its altar to the ‘unknown God’ to-morrow. On the third day it would return to Christianity, It would see more clearly if it could see anew the one light in all the ages, the light that burst on Greece and Rome, tumbled their philosophies and ‘modernized faiths’ into the dust, and re-created the world. In the blinding divinity of that light the new Christians, like the old, inspired by faith and putting sense where it belongs, will find it easy to accept the miracles. Whether they accept them, one or more or all, will be, as it always has been, irrelevant to the essentials of a Christian faith.
R. R. R.

The nomad and the shut-in.

WATERTOWN, CONNECTICUT
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
Mr. J. Norman Hall, in one of his travel adventures published in the Atlantic Monthly some months ago, introduced his article by mentioning the obligation of the nomad to the stay-athome.
In his recent story of ‘The Forgotten One,’ again, he has made the person surrounded by humanity and fettered by its ties be contented with his lot.
Having started ‘The Forgotten One’ at the breakfast table before the appearance of my ‘Only One,’ I could not put it aside when he broke into my solitude. The description of the orderly house, the well-selected library, and, most precious of all, the infinite leisure to read and ponder, was what my hungry soul most desired at that time. This was most appreciated, since I was the centre of attraction for my ‘Only One’ and I was being attacked from first one side and then the other. My feeling of annoyance for the ‘Only One’ gradually decreased and finally disappeared as the article drew to a conclusion. It makes me shudder to think of what might have happened to Mr. Hall had he taken a deep breath, after the deliberate and ghastly silencing of the harmless cock.
Mr. Hall forcibly impresses on the civilizationlocked populace the fact that to maintain a normal balance occasional contact with humanity is necessary. He shows that intermittent solitude is the only fruitful kind (his writings prove it) and in this he has again helped one of his stay-at-home readers.
EDITH M. PROUT

Three charter-members who have been with us since our first issue answered to our April honor-call. Their letters have brought us great pleasure, and none more so than this of Major Saxton.

WASHINGTON, D. C.
April 18, 1925
MY DEAR ATLANTIC MONTHLY, —
In reply to your query in the April number, I will state that I joined the family in November 1857, by purchasing the first number on Court Street, near Washington, in Boston, early in its issue. I soon subscribed, but have not always been on the list. The Civil War came on and I went into the Union Army. I was stationed in different places. But wherever I was located, the Atlantic Monthly came to me fresh from the press to the end of the war without missing a number. It has never ceased to be a regular visitor in my home in Washington. And furthermore I am quite proud to say that the entire set of the Atlantic Monthly is now in my family, standing in a good substantial binding, the last volume, No, 134, not having been returned from the binder. If there are any more interesting Atlantic tales to tell our 150,000 family, it will be a pleasure to hear them. I have even talked with many of the worthies of 1857, and heard most of them lecture.
With highest regards to our whole prosperous family.
S. WILLARD SAXTON (b. August 13, 1829)

The Atlantic in the fo’castle.

HOBOKEN, N. J.
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
I have been much struck by the popularity of the Atlantic on the Atlantic and other oceans among the dozen or so men in the ‘black gang’ of the tramp steamers. There is usually one at least who carries along the good old Atlantic.
MACKENZIE MARSHALL