THE Puritan minister who led his brethren in worship on the Sabbath and skun them at horse-trading between times set an example that has brought prosperity to the descendants of his flock. A minister of quite another color, Reinhold Niebuhr, of a large Evangelical Church in Detroit, leads us on an illuminating inquiry into the causes of American success and the price Fate charges for it. ¶Irishman by instinct, novelist, and critic, Francis Hackett lives in France, perhaps because between the two countries there is, as he says, ‘an extraordinary, a pervasive, moral similarity.’ ¶With Pauline hardihood, the Reverend Harcourt Johnson undertook a mission as adventurous as it was necessary. ¶Long active in the suffrage movement in England, author of that widely discussed book, Sex and Common Sense, and assistant preacher at the City Temple, London, from 1917 to 1920, A. Maude Royden is reputed to be the most eloquent woman in England to-day. Oswald Couldrey is a veteran of the Indian Educational Service, where he was distinguished as the late Principal of Rajahmundry College. ¶After a tried and true service on the New York Times and other important papers, Silas Bent has risen to be a special writer at large. That people who live in glass houses should n’t throw stones at reporters is one of the morals of his paper.

It was to Amory Hare (who has since moved her home to Cynwyd) that John Masefield wrote the following lines: —

There was a young girl from Philadelphia
Who wrote little poems very well-phia.
If ever she should die,
I would lay me down and cry,
And gloomily toll a little bell-phia.

To his study of the Civil War, and especially to his biography of Robert E. Lee the Soldier,Major-General Sir Frederick Maurice has brought a wide experience in strategy and command. Mentioned in dispatches seven times, General Maurice in 1915 was brevetted and made Director of Military Operations, Imperial General Staff. ¶At the front, where he served as a war correspondent, and on his more peaceful excursions about the earth, Sir W, Beach Thomas has observed what fear means to the bravest of us — and to the most timid. ¶Typically enough, from Yarmouth, Maine, Isabel Hopestill Carter sends us her first contribution.

On many bookshelves Sara Teasdale has made a secure place for herself among the lyrical poets. She is the author of Rivers to the Sea,Flame and Shadow, and other volumes. ¶Provoked by Dr. Leuba’s explanation of ‘The Weaker Sex’ in the April Atlantic,Dr. Faith Fairfield, of Smith College, gives other and more temporary reasons for such inferiority as modern woman admits. George O. May, a recognized authority in his field, is president of the National Bureau of Economic Research, ¶With her Muse and her husband, Frances Lester Warner has left Pittsburgh for Paris, though not without first promising to send us a description of ‘The Terrestrial Globe, a Cosmic Survey, in 10 pp.’ ¶Any child and most parents will appreciate the charming gravity with which Annie Webster Noel follows and applauds the happiest of household dramas.

An English student of affairs, long resident in Italy, Robert Sencourt wrote us in advance of his manuscript: —

I came back a few weeks ago from a tour in Italy and Germany. In the spring, as you know, I was in Spain, and for the present I am in England. In all these countries, as it seems to me, and in France as well, the belief in democracy which was so strong in President Wilson’s heyday has been rejected in more or less dramatic circumstances, and other theories of government are taking the place it has had to give up.

The nature of these ‘dramatic circumstances’ was described by Mr. Sencourt in the May Atlantic.E. T. H. Shaffer’s opinions on the present farming situation are the result of twenty years’ service as a rural supply merchant, and, latterly, the complementary experience of a planter at Walterboro, S. C. Francis Bowes Sayre is Professor of Law at Harvard University, and has recently concluded his highly successful mission as Advisor to the late King of Siam. His paper was written shortly after his return and before the death of King llama VI.

In support of Annie Webster Noel’s sensitive delineation of ‘Child Drama’ in this present issue comes this genuine tragedy written by Marion Joy Morgan, aged nine years, after seeing a performance of Romeo and Juliet. ‘I’m afraid it’s a little bit like Romeo and Juliet,’ she told her mother, ‘though I changed it all I could.’

Act I Sien I.

On the Street of Arestele a small town in Rome. Enter Promithus and Odyssues.

Odyssues: ‘How now, brave Promithus, is it that thou art not gone unto Palos to tell him of your trobels?’

Promithus: Ah! Odyssues it is not my wish to consult with Palos. I would much rather wander all my life than tell my trobels even to wise Palos.

Odyssues: Thow art doing rong Thou Shouldst be in his presence now (they are rudly broken in on by Abdella Paloses Servant)

Haste ye! Haste ye! to the cell of Palos He Awaits thou.

Prom:‘I go. Farewell Odyssies.

‘Farewell Promithus said Odyssies.

Curtian

End of sien 1 act 1.

Act 1 Sien 2.

The Cell of Palos.

Palos sitting on a bench. Enter Promithus.

Palos ‘So Thou art come at Last.

Promithus — Merrily I am come but only for a short stay.

Palos Out with your trobels my boy. Promethius, ‘I am sorely in Love with Mistella and she with me, yet our famileys are not friends there has been war between them for many a year. Mistella craves to make it known openly that we love each other. Mistella’s father hath said she shouldst marry the Young Count Cestralla. He loves her she dost not love him. I will seek her tonight by the fontian. She dost alyways go for a drink.

Palos: yes bring your fair Mistella here at the hour of 9.

Promithus: I would that thou wouldst marry us.

Palos: That I will Fair Promithus

Curtian

End of Sien two Act one.

Act 2 Sien ONE.

The Public Square in Arestell

Promithus waiting by the fountian Enter Young Count Cestrella

Count: What! Ho! methinks it is Promithus

Promithus Does it chanst to be thou Cestrella

Thou Houty unfair Vagabond.

Promithus draws sowrd So does Cestrella

Prom. I will pierce thou to the heart thou unwanted rouge. Sowrd fight begins.

Enter a Slave of Promithus and the Count. They start fighting. Enter father of each and Ladies. They don’t fight the Ladies shriek and run to the background. Enter Every one else in the Play.

Enter Palos. up rising Hand. Halt! Dos’t Ye not remember what I have taught Thou. Men kneel put down sowrd and depart.

Curtian.

Act 2 Sien 2.

Clock strikes eight, enter Promithus and Mistella

Promithus — Haste Ye! Fair Mistella. We are awaited by Palos in his cell.

Mistella O Promithus I Would that We were Married.

Prom. That is our biseness, We are to be married at the Hour of Nine It is now Four and twenty minuets past eight.

(They walk in silence in quiet a while)

Prom. We are here at Paloses Mistella

Mistella — Thank God we arrived in a nick of time.

Palos — Welcom! Art thou ready yet Fair Mistella.

Mistella — Verrily I have alyways been wanting to marry.

Palos — I prononce you man and wife.

(They are huging all the time.)

Curtian.

Advice to a bent young professor.

EAST ORANGE, N. J.
DEAR ATLANTIC,emdash;
I wonder how many college professors feel as does Mr. George Boas, according to his article in your March issue. If the majority do, then God pity our students! And if there is justification for that feeling, God pity our professors! ‘ Us professors, ‘ I should say, since I have lately returned to the ‘professoriat’ after a ten years’ sojourn in business. Though these years were not unprofitable financially, I like to estimate their yield in terms of the spirit, and to feel that I am now in possession of experience which gives me some basis of comparison when I think about my job and my colleagues.
Mr. Boas, if I understand him, regards it as impossible for the man whom he calls ‘sophisticated ‘ — though he describes what I should prefer to call ‘the man of independent mind’ — to be happy in university teaching; impossible because of his enforced association with immature minds, since this association results in his being misunderstood, and in his yielding to the temptation to court popularity among the unintelligent and to become intellectually atrophied.
Now immature minds are not, I have discovered, confined solely within college walls; and those within are, on the average, brighter than those without; at least students’ minds are generally so. The ‘sophisticated’ man is pretty sure to be obliged to mingle with immature minds in company of any sort. Some of the men who run our big businesses he would find unbelievably childish, with trivial interests, petty jealousies, and foolish ambitions. Professional men would seem to him to be living a decidedly narrow life. Artists, aside from their work, would appear to be merely grown-up boys. As for politics’ bringing our sophisticated man in contact with persons of mature wisdom, he has merely to read of the doings of our Congressmen to be disillusioned. These men’s interests are different from, but not necessarily bigger than, ours; their outlook is not the same as ours, but it may be no loftier. If professors think business men ‘inherently swine,’ business men in turn have the utmost contempt for the academic mind; and professional men look upon teachers as those unable to succeed in the sciences or arts in which they give instruction.
No, it is not only in teaching that the ‘sophisticated’ man would find it hard to be happy; he would meet much the same problem in any occupation that brings one in contact with many other minds. And teaching has an advantage in that so many of these immature minds belong to young persons who have come to college with the purpose — in part, at least — of exposing themselves to association with the ‘sophisticated’ man. What an opportunity for him! Unless, indeed, he desires to escape the common misery of being misunderstood and the common temptation to ‘slump,’ in which case he will flee to a hermit’s cell. And even there, I fancy, he may at times be made unhappy by the suspicion that there is an immature mind around somewhere.
M. I. W.

Expressive of the many letters that have come to us in appreciation of Lucien Price’s ‘Olympians in Homespun’ is this vernal note from the West.

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO
DEAR ATLANTIC,—
‘A single green thing blooms in the desert.’ And this green thing is an offshoot of the paper, ‘Olympians in Homespun,’ the first article, in place and in significance, of your April number. I had been reading all day papers from my college classes, and, a little weary in spirit, I picked up the magazine, which at intervals I had been nibbling on of late. I read the first four pages with a queer delight — not that the material was in itself singularly novel; I had grown up myself in the days of buggies and kerosene lamps and heroic toil, if not entirely of things Olympic — and I reread sentences; my mind began to lift. I read the whole article through, and turned back to read it again. Then I reached for my red-ink pen (sure sign of more than pleasure in my reading) to bracket a few descriptions, to underline a few memorable phrases. Here was something to dream over, to think about — something of Licht, Liebe, Leben. My spirit winged out into the shining reality of those pages. I turned at last to the Contributors’ Column to find out what manner of man could write of life like that; and I found the editors’ note and the author’s letter. And now I merely want to say that a ‘green thing grows in the desert,’ that life is again suddenly illuminated. Thank Mr. Price for his splendid ‘Olympians in Homespun
EDNA DAVIS ROMIG

This modern Marco Polo, a reader of Atlantic publications (when they can overtake him), sends one of our editors a comic-opera account of his adventures.

DEAR ATLANTIC,—
Many, many times I wanted to write to you, but when roaming about as I have for the last year or more one does get little chance to sit down and answer letters. I greatly appreciate your kind letter congratulating me on our successful mission to Yunnan, but alas, my object, for which I have endured so much, I have not been able to achieve — viz., reaching the Amneh Ma chin. This was due to the war which broke out between the Moslems of Sining and the Tibetans south of the Kuku Nor, which even involved the Ngolok tribes who have their abode at the foot of the Amneh Ma chin. The Living Buddha of Labrang, who promised me a lama escort to Kadja gambo on the Yellow River, from which monastery it is four days to the Amneh Ma chin, had to flee for his life and is even now with the Ngura tribe south of the Amneh Ma chin in exile, out of which he can for the present not emerge if he does not want to be a dead Buddha instead of a Living one. I have made friends with General Machi of Sining and, since a living god cannot help me, General Ma, the devil, will. He is hard pressed, however, for the time being by the Christian General Feng’s lieutenants, who are after his scalp, so you see I am between the devil, the Buddha, and the Christian General, if one can be between three things, and the Amneh Ma chin is a long way off.
Time will tell and I have hopes the devil will win, for he, Machi of Sining, is the only one who will be able to help me get there. Once there the worry wall be how to get out.
The war lasted all summer last year and four thousand Tibetans were killed, General Ma offering a reward of three dollars for every Tibetan head. They were much in demand and were brought to Labrang by his satellites, his Moslem soldiers, who would ride into town with from fifteen to twenty heads tied to their saddles, the heads later gracing the walls of the military barrack like garlands of roses. Unfortunately they were not always the heads of warriors, but of innocent women and children, as no distinction was made. We explored in the Tebbu country south of the Minshan on the edge of nowhere; there we were attacked by a band of Tebbus. I may not say outlaws, since there is no law except that which they represent themselves. One of my men was shot in the arm. We managed to drive the Tebbu Knights off and I played doctor to mine injured assistant during a terrific electrical storm, with the lightning striking the limestone crags around me at the top of a fourteen-thousand-foot mountain. It reminded me of some act of the Götterdämmerung or L’amore dei tre re. It was dark, and the lightning flashed and the thunder rolled. We extricated ourselves as best we could.
Our next opera act was staged on the lake of the Kuku Nor on September 21. I took a delightful dip in the ‘azure lake’— elevation 10700, no waikiki, temperature 42° F. and the air much colder. After a gorgeous sunset my Moslem soldiers, who were sent to protect me, coldly told me there were robbers about, and added that they were afraid they would have to turn me over to Heaven for protection as they would not be at home when the robbers would deign to pay me a formal call. I spent a vigil with my boys, fearing that my noble escort would later introduce the robbers and divide the spoils. It was not a very pleasant night, especially as Heaven added to the anxiety by letting loose all the winds pent up somewhere on the Kuku Nor at 2 P.M., which kept us busy holding down our tents with all our might to prevent a sailing party on the lake. But you know the proverb, ‘Unkraut verdirbt nicht,’ and so we are all still alive and happy, ready to try again. This part of the world is now what Merry England must have been during the Norman conquest and the adventurous sojourn of Richard of Anjou, only that here there are no rules prescribed for the behavior of warriors in battle. Now I sit in a peaceful lamasery, the great lamasery of Choui, ruled over by a prince who nevertheless is subject to a Chinese magistrate some distance from here. In this sanctum I sit and await the spring to sally forth once more.
J. F. ROCK

By their challenge of our national concept of thrift, Mr. Foster and Mr. Catchings have roused business men and economists to a like investigation. One of many, this sensible letter adds fuel to the argument.

April 20, 1926
TO THE EDITOR OF THE ATLANTIC,—
‘The Dilemma of Thrift,’ discussed in your April number, is not new. Long ago it engaged the attention of Solomon and, wisely, he wrote: ‘There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.’ Which goes to emphasize the great law of compensation, and its counterpart: a price must be paid for everything.
No man can beat the game of life. There is no such tiling as something for nothing. We must give to get, sow to reap, seek to find. No investment — no dividends. No advertising — no trade. No buyers — no sellers, no sales, and no business. The miser is an enemy of the general welfare, and of his own likewise.
There is probably no better illustration of scattering and yet increasing than of money spent for advertising. At first blush it seems just like buying blue sky, and yet under modern scientific methods it is not an ‘expense’ but an investment and may be carried as such on a balance sheet. The most spectacular example the business world has ever known, probably, is the case of the Dodge car. Fifty millions for goodwill, created mainly by advertising in a few brief years.
So far as the individual is concerned the problem is not so much one of thrift or of spending as of common sense. What is needful is a well-arranged budget that maintains at a nice balance all the different phases of the disposition of one’s income. A judicious scattering or spending, and a withholding or saving what is ‘ meet.’
The circumstances and conditions of different persons are so various that no detailed rides can be made which will fit every case. Each one must be the judge and the arbiter of his own programme and the result will be according to his wisdom or lack of it.
WALTER N. CARROLL

New uniforms for new thoughts.

DEAR ATLANTIC,—
Concerning ‘Uniforms for Thoughts,’ by Margaret Lynn, in the March Atlantic, is n’t it a merciful thing that uniforms for thoughts have been furnished us? Aren’t we spared much distress thereby?
My friend has a colored butler. He is knock-kneed. ‘But dem knees won’t be so apparient when I gits my uniform on,’ he says. A uniform for him is a most beneficent friend.
Or, to take the case of the much-quoted Henry in Margaret Lynn’s article, his biographer regrets that all his means of expression are already laid out for him. No matter what his inner thought may be, he can only reply ‘ Whattee’ or ‘Wut’ or ‘Wha-at’ or ‘What-ty.’ Suppose, as his author suggests, that these clumsy opacities were swept away from him and he should speak in all the beauty and clarity that come to him as part of his inheritance — what would happen? Suppose his mother calls ‘Henry!’ and he desires in his reply to get away from banal platitudes and to embody his impatience of feminine control! Instead of the glossy ‘Wha-at?’ he would call back, ‘What the devil do you want now?’ But would not this natural expression, instead of freeing his spirit, be more apt to fill him with a rebellious though not very dim forecast of coming events?
When he is feeling masculine and independent he now retorts a businesslike ‘Wut?’ Would it make him freer in spirit were he to discard this carcass of an ancient fancy and give back something once rich in imagination and logic: ‘Oh, now, forget it, old lady — and chase yourself’?
Are n’t uniforms admirable things at times? ‘Let us say grace,’ utters Father at the Sunday dinner table. Silence descends upon us. It is Butler’s moment of alleged communication between God and man. Yet who can say what that moment of silent grace means to each one? As we lift our heads Father says crisply, ‘I hope that carving knife is sharp.’ Mother, thinking of the new cook, whispers to the waitress, ‘Tell the cook not to unbox the ice cream yet.’ Looking slyly down at my gown, I think, ‘Certainly that dry cleaner did a good job on this dress.’ Undoubtedly our inner feeling is one of thanksgiving to God that He is going to give us a good dinner. And the kindly uniform of that thought is spread over our features. Yes — thank God again for uniforms.
Do we not constantly employ different uniforms for the same thoughts? Richard Grant White, father of Stanford White, cited a maiden lady at whose house he took table board when in college. This lady used to say at the table, ‘ Will you kindly assist me to the butter?’ And White, looking down the table, would mutter to his chum, ‘Say, there. Shy the grease.’ Are we so limited that we must always see each other through the same veil created by the same words?
A teacher was trying to pound the spelling book into a small boy. She failed until she hit upon an idea. ‘Come,’ she cried joyously, ‘let us disarrange the alphabet.’ The trick was turned. Spelling became a delightful game to the boy. Why accuse us of being so hidebound in expression that we cannot wriggle free?
Give us uniforms for our thoughts. But let us renew them often. New uniforms for these new days.
AUGUSTA PRESCOTT

The Sahara of Utopia.

BOSTON, MASS.
DEAR ATLANTIC,—
The value of Mr. Johnson’s thoughtful and honest discussion of the problems of Prohibition in the February Atlantic would have been much increased if he had explained how, if ‘it is a safe prediction that the illicit liquor-traffic will be finally overcome only when and where education in temperate living strongly reënforces the arm of the law,’ Prohibition can be justified until the process of education is completed.
No adequate presentation of conditions, certain and probable, which would result from rigidly enforced Prohibition has ever been made. This must be done before a thorough understanding of the problem is possible, since it is generally assumed for the sake of argument that all the effects of alcohol are evil, which they are not. I do not mean an oration such as every temperance orator can and does make without a moment’s thought, but a scientific inquiry along biologic, psychologic, and sociologic lines. Mr. Johnson’s previous success would suggest him as a proper selection for the purpose, but if he feels that he has already suffered sufficient abuse for his efforts to present a candid statement of facts, I would whisper in the editorial ear that such an article, in competent hands, would be very readable and might prove a valuable contribution to a much debated question.
MEDICUS