The Contributors' Column

WHEN Robert Keable died on the island of Tahiti less than a year ago, he had just finished a book about Jesus which all his life long he had wished to write. We are printing this month the opening chapters of this volume, which will appear as an Atlantic Monthly Press Publication early in 1929.Ralph Linton, of the Field Museum in Chicago, describes a recent expedition through wildest Madagascar. Δ The world of Joseph Wood Krutch has become a sadder place now that the sprightly tradition of tragedy has followed its cheerful counterpart, romantic love, into the limbo of dead values. Δ Certain Alabaman defenders of the States’ Rights principle have been calling Eleanor Risley a modern ‘Arkansas Traveler’ on the strength of her ‘Alabama, Here We Rest’ story that we printed last July. If our indignant Southern friends had only followed Vermont precedent and kept cool until ‘Mountaineers and Mill Folks’ appeared, they would have discovered that the lady was playing no State favorites. Dorothy Margaret Stuart is an Englishwoman and an associate of A. P. Herbert on the staff of Punch. Her flair for poetry is easily accounted for, since a sense of humor and a sense of proportion are generally acknowledged to be one and the same thing. Δ Although Herbert Parrish prefers not to have the title ‘Reverend’ tacked on in front of his name, he confesses that he is now entitled to write D. D. after it. Major A. W. Smith, who is connected with a trading company in Rangoon, has this to say about his hunting experiences on two continents: —

I have been interested in the subject of game and game preservation for a good many years, and my own observation has always received confirmation from the writings of those who know very much more about it than I. There is no mystery about the preservation of wild life of any kind, and given reasonable treatment it will thrive in most extraordinary conditions. The Downs of the Somme behind the British lines during the height of the battle in 1916 probably carried a bigger head of the common partridge than they have done for many years. In peace time they are harried unmercifully, but during the war they were only disturbed by the passage of men and transports, by an occasional longdistance shelling, or by the bombing of aircraft. They appeared to have realized that these inconveniences were not directed at them, and to have ordered their lives accordingly.

In France, too, anyone in a quiet part of the line must have been struck with the richness of all kinds of wild life, in marked contrast to the deserted fields and woods farther from the war.

My six years’ service as an officer in the British Army sent me traveling widely. I served in France and Belgium, and later as a Major on the British General Staff with Denikin’s army in South Russia. Then India and Burma for the past nine years, during which time I have had the chance to hunt and study game birds and animals from Kashmir to the Nilgiris, and from Bombay to Burma and the Chinese border. During that time all I have seen has shown me that in these days of cheap high-powered rifles areas can far more easily be denuded of wild life than they can be repopulated, but give it a chance and it will thrive.

Although he has also distinguished himself as a poet, novelist, and translator, Edwin Muir is too good a Scotsman not to share with Hume and Kant the national propensity for philosophizing. His piece on the novel states a thesis and proves it. Frederick Cheever Shattuck, physician to two generations of Bostonians, is a member of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Δ As Dean of the Theological School at Harvard, Willard L. Sperry may appear to be identified with an institution renowned for religious tolerance — not to say indifference. But, to lapse into Scripture, ‘by their fruits ye shall know them.’ The fact that compulsory chapel has gone the way of freshman hazing in Cambridge does not mean that the subject is closed there. Δ Both Indian and English blood How in the veins of Nancy Byrd Turner— a descendant of Pocahontas and of the Virginia Randolphs. Her homesickness for England, however, indicates the dominance of the Anglo-Saxon strain. Δ Among the many replies that Moore Bennett’s article on ‘Christianity in China’ called forth none seemed to us more sweetly reasonable than that of Louise Strong Hammond. She confesses that ‘we missionaries are a determined and verbose lot,’ and describes herself as a Vassar graduate who has written extensively for the newspapers and translated Chinese poems into the vulgate. Walter D. Edmonds’s powerful melodrama of the race track belongs to that grand tradition in American humor that Mark Twain followed in ‘The Jumping Frog.’ Δ Originating in Ohio, Dr. Gustav Eckstein has found a spiritual home for himself in Japan.

As professor of Public Utilities in the Harvard Business School, Philip Cabot is in a position to deal impartially with a number of the points raised in Maurice Scharff’s recent criticism of the industry. Bernard K. Sandwell is a British-born Canadian with an American wife. He has divided his energies between journalism and the teaching of economics at McGill, and is now contributing editor to the Montreal Financial Times. William Trufant Foster and Waddill Catchings are connected with the Pollak Foundation for Economic Research.

Friend Hoover is conscientious.

August 28, 1928
FRIEND ATLANTIC, —
Apropos of Friend John W. Gummere’s fears of Quaker pacificism of Herbert Hoover.
It is quite true that many Friends have suffered rather than give any countenance to the views of the world’s people about war. It is also true that others have obeyed a higher voice than that of Friends’ discipline. Notably in the Civil War, young Quakers shouldered their guns and marched to battle at Lincoln’s call. They merely left word, ‘We are sorry that the call of the Spirit goes against the discipline of our Meeting.’
The essential element of the Friendly faith is the belief that the individual conscience is the supreme guide of man. The Friends hold it superior to church or creed or book. While Herbert Hoover’s Quakerism may indicate what he is likely to do, the real menace will lie in the conscience that determines what he actually will do. If one happens to disagree with him, Mr.
Hoover will appear to be a very dangerous man. If one chances to be on the same side, Friend Herbert will appear a very safe one.
EUNICE STEBBINS

But on the other hand —

September 15, 1928
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
That my letter should have been viewed as an attack on Quakerism is a cause of chagrin, for nothing was further from my intent.
Roman Catholicism and Quakerism have both produced lives of the sweetest sanctity. Both have given the world a definite ethical teaching, and from its origin the latter has protested against bearing arms, judicial oaths, and formalism. If it has not done this, it has done nothing. If quoting from an authoritative Quaker source a positive teaching on bearing arms constitutes an attack on Quakerism, then I am guilty.
Aside from its plea for fair play, my letter should rather be interpreted as an attack on Mr. Hoover’s mode of thought, which makes Quakerism to appear as that zenith of formalism which teaches definitely and acts differently, and which is thus portrayed not as the abode of the mystics but of the misty.
JOHN W. GUMMERE

The following stanzas sent us by Reverend W. A. Williams, ‘Publisher of Prohibition Songs,’ can be sung to the tune of ‘Beulah Land’ with intoxicating effect: —

‘I NEVER YET HAVE VOTED WET’

‘ I never yet have voted wet.’ — Placard on stores in the South

‘ I do not choose to vote for booze.’ — Convention slogan

Mrs. Risley and the folks of Posey Holler would be pretty sure to disagree with this gentleman from Oklahoma, who offers a very matter-of-fact explanation of snakes and snake nights.

PONCA CITY, OKLAHOMA
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
As to ‘Snake Night up Posey Holler,’ there are very few persons who will believe the story true, but a few who are well acquainted with the habits of rattlesnakes will believe it.
I was raised in the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia where rattlers and copperheads were very numerous. The copperhead, though not so deadly, was far more apt to strike. But how could the preacher handle the rattler with impunity?
It was not because the preacher had been endowed with supernatural power, but because the snake had been deprived of his natural power. If you pull the fangs of a rattlesnake there is no more tractable snake; he seems to like to be handled by man until another set of fangs become hard, when he immediately becomes as dangerous as ever.
All rattlesnakes and copperheads have three pairs of fangs. Some have more. But only one pair are hard; the other two are soft. But when one pair is pulled the next two begin to harden and in a short time are as dangerous as the first two. But in the meantime the serpent may be handled as was the one in Posey Holler.
My brother once caught a very large rattler early in the summer and kept him until fall. His appearance showed he had just had a heavy meal, maybe two or three squirrels or rabbits. He never ate anything more. A month or so later a toad was put in the cage with him. The toad was greatly excited and tried to get away, but in a few days he learned that there was no danger, and in the fall, when the nights were cool, the snake would be coiled up and the toad sitting on top of him.
My brother in the fall gave the snake to his cousin and told him to pull the snake fangs and tell people in the town where he lived that he was a snake charmer.
This he did. But my brother had not thought to tell him to look out for the other two pairs of fangs.
His cousin played with the snake for a while and astonished his neighbors by his power to charm the great rattler and handle him. But one day he put his hand into the cage. The second pair of fangs had hardened. The snake struck the boy on the hand and almost killed him.
Rattlesnakes and copperheads hibernate together in the same den. I hope this may save someone from great suffering and maybe death.
Respectfully,
M. A. DUNLAP

And now for the love letters, many of which were written in a much more serious vein than these below. Here, for instance, is disturbing evidence that the value whose death Joseph Wood Krutch has been celebrating still thrives dangerously in our great, cities, not even sparing Atlantic readers.

‘The public,’ writes one of our fair New York correspondents, ‘is being deluged of late with articles on love, marriage, divorce, and sex. Most of these are simply the voicing of fears that all is not as it should be in the love life of the present generation.’ After praising Dr. Krutch for his courage and skill, she goes on, however, to point out that the words ‘affection’ and ‘friendship’ are conspicuously absent from his essay, and that deep affections between men and women have existed and can exist — ‘irrespective of whether or not a sexual relationship exists.’ But it was her closing paragraph that really held us spellbound: —

I drove last night with an intelligent young playwright. It was the third time I had met him. After a short ride he matter-of-factly stopped the car and proceeded to become amorous. I protested that I did not relish being petted by someone for whom I had no affection. Whereupon he remarked, ‘Oh, petting has no significance; it’s simply pleasant.’ This is doubtless typical of our new attitude toward sex — of the gradual freeing of ourselves from romantic values. Perhaps romanticism is dying, but surely it is a little early to announce the obsequies of Love!
FLORA M. RHIND
447 EAST 65TH STREET
NEW YORK, N. Y.

Professor Warren S. Gordis, Head of the English Department, Stetson University, De Land, Florida, sends this reply to Dr. Krutch: —

Last Monday evening an audience that packed the opera house was profoundly moved. Kreisler, as few can, interpreted on a rare old violin some of Chopin’s most exquisite music, and when at the close of the performance two prominent and beautiful young women presented the artist with baskets of lilies and roses respectively, such an ovation followed as has seldom been seen in our city.

The following evening, however, at a session of the Modern Truth Association, now meeting in this city, the celebrated Dr. Bunk presented considerations which among thinking people have created a decided stir.

The learned man called attention to the fact that the sounds which had so moved the audience arose simply from the vibrations of catgut, that the cat is a relatively inconsequential animal, that a dead cat is even less significant than a living one, and finally that the gut of the cat is the most unromantic portion of the feline anatomy; even the nocturnal vibrations of the vocal cords of the living cat have not usually awakened rapturous emotions on the part of the listeners. In view of these undoubted truths, the emotional reaction of the audience Monday evening was shown to be highly irrational.

Nor was this all. Investigations showed that the lilies and roses, the offering of which occasioned the climax of enthusiasm, had come from a florist who had produced them from the unmentionable by-product of his neighbor’s cow stable; they were, therefore, merely sublimated — supply whatever disgusting word you find appropriate. Here we have the pitiable and humiliating spectacle of a presumably intelligent and cultivated audience going into raptures over sublimated catgut and sublimated — fertilizer. What the lecturer said about the charm of the young ladies who presented the flowers we have not space to report.

True, there were some who modestly took issue with Dr. Bunk. They did not deny that the catgut was an element, and perhaps a necessary element, in Kreisler’s performance, but they urged the presence of other and more significant elements — elements of an entirely different nature. They spoke of the artistic inspiration of Chopin, of the succession of skillful artisans that had made the violin possible, and finally of the musical genius of Kreisler, which they thought was something more than sublimated beefsteak. They considered the lilies and roses in a somewhat similar light, saying something about their essential beauty as a mysterious gift of nature, not yet exhaustively explained, and about the human patience and skill devoted to the improvement of varieties and the production of the given specimens. Some even ventured to suggest that Dr. Bunk’s analysis was sublimated nonsense.

Discerning ones, however, had a definite suspicion that these protestants were Victorians, perhaps even Mid-Victorians in spirit — a suspicion that became almost a certainty when on several occasions the words ‘spiritual’ and ‘divine’ inadvertently were allowed to escape. They evidently were suffering from those strange ‘taboos’ and ‘inhibitions’ which are known to infest Mid-Victorians, and to which they sometimes give the absurd and high-sounding names of æsthetic, moral, and religious principles. Of course there were anticipations of Victorianism before the reign of the ‘smug’ and ‘stuffy’ queen from whose name and age the movement is labeled; Socrates, Plato, Kant, and even Jesus belonged essentially to the tribe — a tribe that, as everyone now realizes, is rapidly on the way to extinction, thanks to the victorious principle of Modern Disillusionment.

As Dr. Bunk’s analysis of the situation has been telegraphed throughout the country, and even throughout the civilized world, musicians and florists, and the lovers of music and flowers, have been filled with consternation and distress. Disillusionment has shown them that they were really devotees to catgut and stable manure. Many suicides have already been announced; but it is to be hoped that the survivors will, in general, try to reconcile themselves to the gloomy days stretching out before them, realizing that nothing is quite so precious as truth and stark reality.

Some there are, to be sure, who may admit the intellectual effectiveness of Dr. Krutch’s attack on the emotion that made the movies what they are to-day, but who feel that love still fills a by no means negligible function in the Great Scheme of Things. Witness, for example, the effect of love’s fulfillment on one of our readers.

DEAR ATLANTIC, —
Partly, perhaps, because my wife has just presented me with a son. I must refuse to be upset by Mr. Krutch’s recent article. May I, nevertheless, present this.

With Compliments to Joseph Wood Krutch

Yours most humidly,

GEORGE BRANDON SAUL

Robert Lynd explained in our September number why literature declines. His reflections have led at least one sympathetic reader to offer us these grounds for hope.

MADISON, WISCONSIN
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
Mr. Lynd’s article, ‘Why Literature Declines,’ in your September number, touched a vibrant chord. It is sad but true that in this world of stark realism and materialism — the world which has discarded Heaven, Hell, Purity, Sanctity, Ideals, even clothes — there remain, despite its efforts at the extinction of such, some few old fogies who still cling lovingly, in memory at least, to the literature of bygone days; and who still cherish a secret hope that some day men will again write of the things which stir their souls instead of searching for methods of suppressing them or explaining them away in terms of complexes and phobias.
But this age is the avowed enemy alike of him who would read or him who would write any but the literature of its kind. We used to find keen joy in taking flights out of the material world with Dante and Goethe and Shakespeare; but who can crowd one of those flights in, now, between the directors’ meeting and the foursome? We used to delight in standing ‘’mid the eternal ways’ with Burroughs; but now those ways are overrun by the jostling mobs who know that Heaven is right here on earth and that each must hurry if he wishes to seize a piece for himself We used to pluck a flower from the ‘crannied wall’ and thrill, with Tennyson, to hold it in hand, ’root, stem and all’; but now the signs read, ‘Do not touch flowers or shrubs.’
And who cares to write what will not be read?
There is but one hope! Cæsar did not write his will the day Mark Antony read it to the populace. Our hope must rest in the closets!

Perhaps somewhere, even now, there are some few fine spirits — rarely has an age produced them in numbers — who understand that some day this era of sophistication and arrogant rationalism will have passed, that there will come a time when the flight of a spirit into the world of imagery will no longer be cause for an anxious visit to the family psychoanalyst, and who even now are writing truly great literature against that hour.
Would it not be a happy moment in Heaven (though, of course, that is merely a puerile concept) if one might look down (how absolutely absurd!) and hear a critic say, upon bringing to light a beautiful work for the sake of which some genius ‘suffered the slings and arrows’ of this generation, ‘I found it in his closet’? But, of course, apartments and family hotels do not have closets. He will probably merely announce, ‘It was in his safe-deposit box.’
Very truly,
E. MARGARET PARKER

Turning back to the eighteenth century, here is the kind of letter a long-lost husband of that period used to send to his wife. The author, a native of Charlestown, Massachusetts, never reached home, as his ship was wrecked. Molly lived to be ninety.

LONDON, June 23, 1766
DEAR MOLLY, —
This will inform you that I am still in the world. I have been so long counted among the Dead that I suppose all the remembrance of me is this — viz., that I was a bad husband because I left no Money. I suppose my Character has been canvassed as customary. Some have imputed my Poverty to Extravagance, others to Unskillfulness, and others to Carelessness in business — very few to the True Cause, the Will of God. You (who knew me best) I hope have done me justice in your Thoughts, in the midst of all your difficulties. I think I was not an Unkind Husband or Father, nor disagreeable Friend and Acquaintance. I do assure you when I expected momentarily to perish I had that consolation that I had endeavored to make you and my children happy. I remembered that I had some oddities in my Behaviour which might not have been always agreeable to you but which I hoped your Goodnature would forgive. I believe I may say the greatest Trouble I had at that Time (for I trusted God would forgive my sins) was the circumstances I should leave you and my children in — but notwithstanding those things and that I have been so long imagined dead that your Grief for the loss of my Person may possibly be at an End, yet I hope that my Resurrection to you and Life again if it Please God may not be disagreeable to you. I think you loved me and cannot have forgot me so soon.

As you may want to know what has befallen me (for you formerly had curiosity to know things) I will acquaint you. On the 10th of January last in a hard gale of wind a very bad sea struck my vessel and occasioned her to leak very much. We kept continually pumping Night and Day till the 13th, and then the Water had increased so much that the Vessel was just upon sinking when we hoysted our boat out and got into it hardly in expectation of saving our lives but in the Hopes of living a little longer to repent of our Sins and ask Forgiveness, but it pleased God, after we had been 8 days in the boat in very stormy weather, and suffering a great deal for want of Victuals and Drink, to carry us to the Island of Flores inhabited by Portugese and who were exceedingly kind, especially to me. I having by being constantly wet, got the Gout in both Legs and Feet and left Hand so that I was unable to help myself, wars taken from the Boat by two of them and carried about a mile, where I had an House and Bed provided for me and where I lay 17 days in great misery. After continuing in that Island (where I was obliged to sell my Hat, Buckles, and Buttons to subsist me) four months, I was carried to Dover in England and thence I came by land to this city, where I cant find that kindness that I have exercised upon many — I mean to let me have a passage without paying for it. I hope under these Frowns of providence that we shall behave suitably with a Religious Resignation, and not one murmuring thought arise. If it be best for us we shall yet meet with prosperity, but let us endeavor to act our part well upon this stage of the World, having this to comfort us — that when the Curtain is drawn, he that acts well the part of a beggar will have as much applause as he that acts the part of a King — or as Christians let us run with Patience the Race set before us — not despising the Chastisement of the Lord, but by patient continuance in well doing, let us seek Glory, Honor, and Immortality and in the end we shall undoubtedly obtain Everlasting Life. Then we shall look back upon what we called Troubles and Adversities in this world and wonder we gave them so hard a name. We shall then know that they were only the kind Chastisements of a Beneficent Father, for our Good, to wean us from a Fondness for this World and its Vanities. We shall then glory in the Tribulations we met with seeing they were necessary for us in the Road to Happiness.

I hope you and my children have health. I long most heartily to see you. If God continues my health I shall come home in Captain Howard who sails in about a week.

I do not know what to say more. Pray give my duty to your Mother; tell her I am sorry I am the cause of so much uneasiness to her as I must necessarily have been. My love to your brother Nathaniel. I wish him happiness. To my Father and Mother give my dutiful regards; my love to all you think will be glad to hear I am alive. Give my blessing to my Children and accept the Love and Esteem of one whose greatest satisfaction is that he was beloved by you, and who is in Life or Death

My Dearest,
Your Constant Affectionate Husband,
E—K—

Here’s a pedagogue who up and revolted and even thinks it’s great. We only hope the example will not spread too widely, for the time may come when others of us will find ourselves as bored with our labors as our preceptors seem to be with theirs. And when that happens who will run our trains, mine our coal, wash our dishes, and write our Contributors’ Columns for us?

August 29, 1928
DEAR PEDAGOGUE IN REVOLT, —
Yes, resign! Better yet, retire. Retire along with me, the best is yet to be. This is not an invitation — simply a misquotation.
I have just read your article in the September Atlantic and my thoughts flew back to more than thirty years ago when, with all the glories of undiscovered Paris beckoning to me, I forced myself to toil in ill-ventilated libraries. When instead of joyously following adventure into unknown paths I doggedly pursued the fate of Latin o in the poems of Gonzalo de Berceo. I could not enjoy the quaint charm of his verse lest I miss one of those pesky little letters. No one could tell what disguise they might have assumed since first they wandered from the Roman moorings, and it was up to me to track them to their Spanish lairs. Six long months I was a Romance sleuth, and when I finally rounded up all my captives my only reward was an enigmatical combination of letters to be suffixed to my name. And in my soul was born a distrust of the value of a certain kind of scholarship. I had sinned against that sweet old poet beyond forgiveness, and my punishment was that I never could read him again.
So your article struck an answering chord in my own experience. I stuck to my job of interpreting (?) literature for over thirty years, but finally gave it up a year ago. I am free! Free to say what I think and do what I want. It’s great.
Sympathetically yours,
E. W.