The Contributors' Column

Earnest Elmo Calkins has varied his distinguished career in the business of advertising by motor trips abroad, and has become a connoisseur of highways. As a footnote to his latest paper, we may quote from a letter regarding it: ‘The emptiness of our maps compared with the full detail of the French ones is striking. I’ve groused about it for years and finally decided to say something,’ He suggested to a national automobile association that better maps be issued, but ‘they made the absurd rejoinder that people would not pay for them. As if there could be anything the people would not pay for!’ ▵ Up-state New York has provided Walter D. Edmonds with an inexhaustible store of characters one would like to know. ‘Finis Wilson (God rest him) was an actual man,’ he writes, ‘and no greater than I have attempted to paint him.’ Mr. Edmonds’s new story appears alongside his first novel, Rome Haul, a tale which in our deliberate opinion will make a name for itself. Frank Jewett Mather, Jr., is director of the University Art Museum at Princeton. He has had a long career as editor, author, critic, scholar, and university professor. ▵ Member of a firm of Poston lawyers, Harvey H. Bundy describes a province in which neither law nor ethics has charted a recognized course.

The unpublished poems by Emily Dickinson which the Atlantic has been privileged to print have been drawn from Further Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by her niece, Madame Bianchi, soon to be issued by Little, Brown and Company. The whole collection is remarkable for the number of new poems which have come to light, but even more remarkable, it seems to us, in maintaining the standard which has placed Emily Dickinson’s name among the immortals. George Alexander Johnston, who writes us from Geneva, is a contributor to English reviews. Those who think that the modern biography, along with modern psychology, sprang full-grown from the heads of the modern Joves will be interested in Mr. Johnston’s suggestion that the three musketeers of the new biography have studied early French models to advantage. Ramsay Traquair, a professor of architecture in McGill University, speaks from honest masculine conviction. ‘The paper gave me considerable amusement to write,’ he tells us. ‘I really think that the conclusions are true and that man to-day in America is not having a fair chance to live and enjoy life. But I am going to be accused of being a reactionary womanhater!’

H. D. Hill is intellectually versatile. Her studies began with physics and history, but she later devoted herself to economics at Oxford and at the University of Chicago. She became interested in the workers’ education movement, and taught at the Bryn Mawr summer school for women in industry. She now lives in Geneva. Harold Jefferson Coolidge, a Boston lawyer, is a direct descendant of Thomas Jefferson. We can think of few girls as spirited or as keen in observation as Jefferson’s favorite granddaughter. Major A. W. Smith has had wide opportunity to observe the peculiarities and codes of his fellow creatures. He served six years as an officer in the British army, in France, Belgium, and in Russia, and is now associated with a trading corporation in Rangoon. William L. Sullivan, protesting against the ease with which new religions are summoned from the vasty deep by the academicians, reminds us of Hotspur’s rejoinder to Glendower. Howard Douglas Dozier has served as head of the School of Commerce at the University of Georgia and as professor of economics at Dartmouth. The brevity of his retort to his critics is not a measure of the significance of his new concept of insurance.

From his post at Cairo as representative of the United States on the Mixed Tribunals, which have jurisdiction in cases involving foreigners living in Egypt, Pierre Crabitès is well situated to observe the development of cotton growing in the Sudan. ▵ Cairo has been the headquarters of Captain Owen Tweedy both in military and in diplomatic capacities, but his experiences have carried him far afield. December of last year found him at the first stage of a journey which, as he writes, was ‘planned to take me through the Sudan, Uganda, and Kenya to Zanzibar; thence back to Equatorial Sudan. There a friend of mine — a great game hunter — is waiting for me with a lorry and we hope to be off westward about March the first through the Belgian and French Congos to Lake Chad, Northern Nigeria, and Timbuctoo, and thence northward, a six days’ run across the Sahara to Algeria. All being well, I hope to write a book on my return home in June. . . . The fun is that it is a practically unknown route.’ Paul C. Cabot is treasurer of the State Street Investment Corporation in Boston. Through the Management Corporation of this fund, he has been employed by the Shawmut Bank Investment Trust to advise them with regard to common stock purchases. He is a director of the Sterling Securities Corporation and the National Investors of New York, and of the Chain Stores Investment Corporation of Boston. Mr. Cabot describes the purposes and achievements of the State Street Investment Corporation, of which he was one of the founders, as follows: —

It is a straight common stock investment corporation, having no capitalization except common stock, which can be bought by everyone and anyone alike at its current liquidating value with no premium or commission added for sales. There are no warrants, options, calls, or anything of that kind, and the managers and directors have bought stock in the Corporation exactly like any other shareholder. The fund was started in the summer of 1924 with $100,000 entirely subscribed by the officers. As of December 31, 1928, this fund had grown to over $12,000,000, and the shares that were originally bought at $25 had a current market valuation of $194, which represented an appreciation of 676 per cent as against a similar increase of 200 per cent in the Dow Jones Index of Industrial Stocks. During this period, dividends amounting to $21 per share have been paid to stockholders representing an average annual yield on the initial price of 19 per cent.

The outstanding success of this fund has, in my opinion, been due to the intensive and careful research work carried on by the management, on top of sound policies and a conservative capitalization. Small amounts of money have been borrowed from time to time when opportunities appeared favorable, but at all times this borrowing has been extremely conservative.

The Right Reverend Charles Fiske, outspoken but devoted churchman, criticizes Robert Keable’s exegesis, but extends the hand of fellowship to a brave and seeking spirit. _

The trail of evidence behind the Lincoln letters has led us to Los Angeles, to Emporia, Kansas, to Springfield, Illinois, and other widely separated localities. The results of long and careful investigation will, we hope, be included in the April issue, or certainly in May.

Miss Mazo de la Roche, creator of the inimitable Whiteoaks, has just sailed from New York for a vacation in Europe. For the convenience of our readers, we print below a table of the four generations of the Whiteoak family, together with a résumé of the action of the story up to the present installment.

In 1848, Captain Philip Whiteoak was married in India to Adeline Court, and shortly afterward, having inherited some land in Canada, he emigrated to Ontario with his wife and infant daughter. Here they established the estate and house of Jalna, practised a lavish hospitality, and brought up their children: Augusta, Nicholas, Ernest, and Philip.

The action of the story takes place at the present time. Old Mrs. Whiteoak is still living, a dominating and violent centenarian; her husband and her youngest son have long since died. Her three remaining children, all over seventy, are once more at Jalna after lives spent mostly in England: Augusta, the widow of the ineffectual baronet; Nicholas, a lively figure in London society until his wife left him; and Ernest, a delicate and scholarly bachelor. The third son, Philip, had remained in Canada, married twice, and died leaving six children, who occupy the foreground of the story. Of these the eldest son Renny, aged forty, is the present owner of Jalna, and the head of the clan, proving himself strictly responsible for his younger half brothers. These are Eden, twenty-five, a brilliant and irresponsible poet; Piers, twenty-two, as vitally interested as Renny in the upkeep and management of the estate; Finch, a sensitive and musical schoolboy of eighteen; and Wakefield, eleven, a frail and precocious child.

Before the story opens, Eden had married Alayne Archer, a fastidiously brought up girl five years older than himself; but after a few months at Jalna she returned to New York, and Eden himself disappeared completely, as the result of his brief affair with Pheasant, the young wife of his brother Piers. Pheasant is the illegitimate daughter of a neighboring farmer, Maurice Vaughan, who has lately married the only daughter of the Whiteoak family, Renny’s elder sister Meg.

The story so far is concerned with the struggles of young Finch to pass his examinations for college, having recently failed once, and at the same time to follow his strong musical and artistic leanings, which are deeply distrusted by his more vigorous relatives.

Many letters in commendation of Mr. Anderson’s paper on the coal industry have reached us. We are glad to print one characteristic of all.

MERCHANTS AND MANUFACTURERS
ASSOCIATION, INC.
WASHINGTON, D. C.
The Editor,
Atlantic Monthly
DEAR SIR:-
At a meeting of the coal merchants of Washington yesterday, attention was called to an article entitled ‘How Much Coal Is Enough?’ which appeared in the December issue of the Atlantic Monthly. The Coal Division went on record as being heartily in favor of this article, and instructed me to convey to you the sincere appreciation of all coal merchants of the nation’s capital for the same.
Sincerely yours,
EDWARD D. SHAW,Secretary

The first of the Socratic dialogues by Mr. Irvin H. Myers which the Atlantic published — the dialogue regarding time — has led several readers to break the immemorial tradition which accords Socrates a position of absolute authority and leads his interlocutors to abase themselves humbly before his wisdom. Perhaps the figment which protected Socrates cannot be stretched to protect Mr. Myers; at any rate, our correspondents do not spare him.

WASHINGTON, D. C.
DEAR ATLANTIC,-
In ‘Socrates Up to Date’ Socrates gets somewhat mixed in his reasoning and gives poor Crito an erroneous conclusion, which poor Crito, already overwhelmed with words, can but receive with ‘ True enough as far as you go — ’ and perhaps inwardly hope that Socrates is wrong — which he is.
What, then, is this truth which Socrates, had he not gone astray, might have reached from his stated premise? Simply this: The earth traveler passing from west to east across the International Date Line, that imaginary and, to some, mysterious line where the day (date) begins, and ends, would find himself with an extra day on his hands. He would gain a day, which would compensate him for the short-length days through which he had lived, as he set his watch ahead an hour for every fifteen degrees of longitude traversed.
So the traveler flying from the Fiji Islands to Samoa on a Sunday afternoon would not find himself plunged suddenly into the next day, but on reaching Samoa be would set his watch ahead some forty minutes to allow for the change in longitude, and then he could say it was 3.40 P.M. on Saturday (not Monday), or he might call it 3.40 P.M. Sunday, in which case he would call the next day Sunday also.
I had a unique experience with this condition a number of years ago while traveling from Yokohama to Vancouver, for we crossed the International Date Line on April 15, and April 15 happens to be the anniversary of my birth. So I had two birthdays right together, both of which were duly celebrated. What matter if the ship, flying the British flag, called the extra day ‘Antipodes Day,’ and logged the dates thus: ‘April 15, Antipodes Day, April 16’?
Another time episode which might prove of interest to Socrates occurred some years ago when Commander R. E. Byrd flew his good ship, the Josephine Ford, from Kings Bay, Spitzbergen, to the North Pole and back, all of a bright spring day. May 9, 1926, was but a few minutes old when he got under way, and it was close to 9 A.M., May 9, when he reached the pole. Going a little beyond it, he made a wide sweep and completely encircled the pole, and for a little while on this circuit he was flying on May 8. But it was again May 9 as he straightened out on his homeward course, and still May 9 when he brought his victorious plane to rest on the snowy fields of Spitzbergen. While circling the pole, in a few brief minutes, he had flown from to-day, across a corner of yesterday, and back again into to-day.
What say you to that, Socrates?
HUGH C. MITCHELL

One reader at least sees the ancient verities still enthroned, and will not subscribe to the fashionable concept of time as relative.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA
DEAR ATLANTIC, -
In the Atlantic for January, Mr. Irvin H. Myers presents your readers with an interesting Dialogue Regarding Time with our honorable old friends Socrates and Crito as the principal speakers. I wonder if this is intended to be a serious answer to the difficult question, What is Time? It seems to me that Crito should have pointed out considerable confusion in the arguments advanced by Socrates, evidently resulting from our fantastic time schedules on the earth.
No time can possibly be gained or lost by circumnavigating the globe, going either east or west. Take the extreme case of a traveler who leaves Greenwich at twelve noon and circumnavigates the globe with exactly the apparent speed of the sun, and finally returns to Greenwich from either east or west; he will be exactly twenty-four hours older than when he started, in spite of the fact that if he goes west with the sun it will be noon to him throughout the entire journey, and apparently he will not be a second older. The supposed gain or loss of a day in the Pacific is a quibble employed to accommodate our traffic to our quite arbitrary arrangements of time.
The argument presented amounts in a nutshell to this: There are many possible different measurements of time; a year on Neptune is 165 of our years, a year on Mercury only 0.25 of our year; therefore really there is no time.
Now, O Socrates, I see no reason to doubt the fundamental entities of Nature: Space, Matter, Energy, and Time. If all the phenomena in the infinite universe occur at one moment, instantly, as they must if time be not an external objective entity of Nature, then nothing would have been left to occur since an eternity past.
CRITO

Church and State.

SEAMAN’S CHURCH INSTITUTE
SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. DEAR ATLANTIC,-
Mr. Horwill, in his article in the January Atlantic on the English Prayer Book situation, speaks of the incompatible Catholic and Protestant elements having been held together in the Church of England these three hundred years solely by the artificial tie of the State establishment. ‘Break that, and these discordant elements will fly apart.’
The writer no doubt knows a good deal about the Church of England, but I would like to ask if he has not overlooked the fact that the same Church, commonly called the Episcopal, has existed ever since 1789 and held together precisely the same elements without any state connection whatever.
Very sincerely yours,
F. K. HOWARD, Chaplain

Can it possibly mean that there are quarters in America where the knife is still used for the purpose of the fork — and treasured accordingly?

INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA DEAR ATLANTIC, - At Christmas time (1928) the Community Fund of my city distributed 1006 pieces of silverware found at the city’s garbage-disposal plant during recent months.
An itemized count of these mementos of culinary carelessness revealed 519 teaspoons, 192 dessert spoons, 90 tablespoons, 12 iced-tea spoons, 9 baby spoons, 8 bouillon spoons, 164 forks, and only 6 knives. Six knives out of 1006 pieces! A puzzling proportion!
My wife and I have asked many friends to guess at the solution, but none has given what we consider to be a satisfactory answer. Perhaps other Atlantic readers can offer the correct solution.
Sincerely,
M. H.

Alas! What boots it with uncessant care . . .

JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA DEAR ATLANTIC:- I have long admired your articles published in your book, the Atlantic Monthly. Wanting to know if you would publish my poems, and through all circumbstances it would be appreciated.
I will send you regualy evry month the poems through which I make. My age is 11. Please let me know how did the question determinate.
Your Sincerely
J-R-