things that are expected of him, and thereby relax sufficiently to achieve them. Published by Harper & Brothers.

THE TRAVELS OF BLACK ULYSSES

The latest recruit to the ranks of hard-boiled literature is "Rainbow Round My Shoulder," the story of a lying, swindling, wenching, murderous black ruffian, as told to and set down by Howard W. Odum. It has the kick of a twenty-mule team, and the authenticity of a sentence to jail. "Black Ulysses," who shuffles his lazy feet through the pages of this book, is an itinerant negro who works when he has to, eats when he can, steals anything that is portable, and knows how to make a dark lady sorry that she was ever born. So simply and unboastfully does he recite his

calendar of sins that he achieves a

kind of innocence all his own. And when he is sorry for himself, as he usually is, by some black magic Ulysses contrives to make the reader share in his boundless sympathy for Ulysses.

"Rainbow Round My Shoulder" is a chronicle of battles, bullies, dice games, feasts, enchantments worked with cat-bones, endless goings and comings, all pitched in superlatives and double-dipped in tar. Some of the songs and similes that come out of the mixture, all black and dripping, would be the despair of a professional writer. For example, a coffin is:

"Mary Mack all dressed in black, Silver buttons down her back."

And here is a typical refrain: "When you kill chicken save me the feet,

When you think I'm workin', I'm walkin' the street."

Nourishing food, this book, but for unsqueamish stomachs. Published by Bobbs-Merrill Company.

THE SPONTANEOUS GENERATION

The younger generation has been suffering from-whisper the awful word!-repressions. Philip Wylie's novel, "Heavy Laden," makes that surprising truth apparent by starting where the rest of the spontaneous generation have left off.

"I could tell you a thing or two, if only I weren't shackled by tyrannous conventions," the eighteen-to-twenty-five-year-old school of novelists have been whispering. Informing the aged customer that he wasn't young enough to stand the shock of learning the facts of life, they have begged the question by permitting their most startling crescendos to trail off into rows of unimpressive dots.

Wylie I almost said young Wylie, but he is twenty-six years old -seems to have made up his mind to supply everything that was promised lines. At any rate, that is what he in those arrays of silent dotted has accomplished; wherefore "Heavy Laden" stands out as the first mature novel by and about the younger generation that has yet come out of campus philosophers. the literary welter of flappers and

"Heavy Laden" is the story of a clergyman's daughter, of how she decided that virtue was a bore and a burden, and of how she rid herself of the burden, but not quite of the boredom. It is sure to be widely regarded as a sensational book and a shocking one. To the present reader, the really startling thing about it is

One of the most exciting manifestations of our times is the quest for genius. It is pursued, to the blowing of bugles and the baying of hounds, over the arid stretches of coterie reviews, in the learned pages of the newsprint magazines, in the offerings of daily columnists and the avalanches of dog-eared manuscript evoked by prize competitions. The McDowell colony offers its hospitality every summer, and the magnificent estate of Yaddo, run more smoothly than many a millionaire's home, is open annually to a few chosen ones. The Guggenheim Foundation sends young poets and playwrights to live on its bounty in Europe and it has picked some good ones. . . . Yet the plaint continues to rise, as loudly as ever, that the doors are closed to unfashionable and unheralded talent. And-who knows? It may be true.

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An equally interesting sight for the philosophic bystander is the staking out of claims on subjects for biographies. Henry Ward Beecher, Rabelais, Alexander the Great, Fouché, Talleyrand, a whole motley company of the long-neglected great, are being rediscovered, not merely by one writer each, but by whole groups of contestants. Sometimes there is a stirring race to see whose

typewriter can be the first to write the word "Finis" and get the script off to the printers.

Coming eastward from Chicago (on the Century, of course) the Reading Roomer swapped stories with Edwin Balmer, the novelist who recently turned editor. Mr. Balmer carried the day with this

one:

An ambitious lady invaded his editorial office, and demanded to be told how she could acquire a good literary style. Mr. Balmer advised her to read Galsworthy. "Why, I never heard of him," she replied. The names of Edith Wharton and Booth Tarkington produced the same reply.

"Would you mind telling me, madam, how you heard of me?" Mr. Balmer inquired mildly.

"Why, Mr. Balmer, I never did," came the soothing reply.

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This one was the Reading Roomer's contribution:

A lady sent a poem to a magazine editor, accompanied by a check for ten dollars, with a letter explaining that she wanted a personal criticism. Since the poem would take only ten minutes to read, she declared, that was rather high pay, and she awaited his comment with eagerness.

Puzzled, the editor turned over this document to an assistant, who drafted a reply that read:

"Dear Madam: The check was good, but not the poem."

But editors are cautious people; and only an austere printed slip went back with the poem-and the check.

I want to tell you that I have enjoyed the poems of Jacqueline Embry and Isabel McLennan McMeekin, and have been especially interested because they are both from Louisville. I, too, am from Louisville, born and bred, although I have been long away. I was the junior member of the famous little "Author's Club" of which Alice Hegan Rice and George Madden Martin were the stars. That will probably seem to you long-past history, but I am really not very ancient.

I do appreciate the March CENTURY. I like the quiet and humble courage of "Life-Death," and I join Catherine Parmenter with all my heart in her salute to England. But to my mind the pièce de résistance is "Extern." For dramatic quality and genuine "human interest" it surpasses anything I have read in a long time. If Mr. Robinson is as good a doctor as he is a writer, I don't wonder that his patients loved him. I can't grudge him to the sufferers of this world, but I do hope he will find time to use this other rarely fine gift of his for the delight of the rest of us. Doctors, perhaps, live closer to the human heart than the men of any other profession, yet which of them has ever told us about it in such moving word-pictures as this young extern?

San Diego, California.

My dear Editor,

Sincerely yours,
VENITA SEIBert White

When, as, and if we have "A Real Case Against the Jews," I may reply to Mr. Ravage, it is because our taste is offended by their "different" manners, and not for a historico-philosophical reason. From "The Outlook" of February 15 I read a similar theme "Anti-Semitism" by Mr.

Louis Golding-also a well-informed Hebrew. Then I re-read Mr. Ravage's article and strengthened my first opinion that in these interesting essays certain important views are ignored.

Jesus was a heretic among the Jews—as different from them as light from the darkness which comprehended it not. God, not his self-styled "Chosen People," gave Christ to the whole world. "Our national literature is your Holy Bible" almost sneers Mr. Ravage; but he fails to see that it has become our Scripture, only in the piercing light of one who came unto his own and whose own received him not. The Old Testament with its gloom and avarice, its majesty and its fear, without the love and joy of the New, would be as little known in Christian churches as the Talmud.

Once I lived in New York City. There I saw two distinct Jewish types. In the minority was the orthodox Hebrew-spiritual, often poor, and always inoffensive-giving no cause but for respect as one reads in his eyes the symphony of an integral religious life. But the other Jew is of the majority, against whom we have a real case-that vulgar Semite whose unorthodox license is everywhere so blatant. One suspects he is not a descendant of pastoral Israelites, but rather of those crude Canaanites whom the purer worshipers of Yahweh conquered, or of the peoples beyond the Jordanthe devotees of Baalim and the Asiatics at the East.

The sublime yet intimate ideal of Yahweh was the inspired contribution of Israel; but it was humanized, edited, published, advertised and put into every home by those who received with open hearts the pure and simple version which Jews have spurned for two millenniums. We are not provided with any extended example of an autochthonic Christianity, though I understand there does exist a small body of "Christian Jews" -oddities alike in church and synagogue. But the pupil may excel his master and though we are as Mr. Ravage says, but yesterday's pagans, newly rich in exotic ideals of charity and humility, we hold the new faith our sovereign by free election. Yours sincerely, JAMES A. CRAWFORD

Buffalo, N. Y.

nourishment for those who, hearing his knock, invited him to enter. But I am sure that he himself I would have been the last to claim that he has a monopoly on spiritual nourishment.

Despite my admiration for this attitude, I have no disposition to disparage the work of such eminent practitioners as Aimee Semple McPherson and the Rev. Billy Sunday. If they bring peace to stricken souls their mission is justified regardless of whether or not it be fruitful financially. But I do hope they will not practise on me. Yours cordially,

Los Angeles, California.

Reidsville, North Carolina.

My dear Editor,

W. E.

I hope there may be more articles akin to "A Modern in Search of Truth." Such vision and tolerance should be welcomed in religious discussions.

of

Long have I felt that religion both as a way life, and as an intellectual adjustment to the "why" of things, is an unique, personal experience; and therefore that the regimentation of religionists within creeds and formulas may cramp and distort the spirit much as bandages cramp and distort the feet of Chinese ladies. I wish I had the power that the author seems to possess to preserve a feeling of brotherhood for those zealous ones who feel such a tremendous duty to save our souls by converting us to the One True Faith.

It happens that Swedenborg gives me the most satisfactory map I have seen of spiritual geography. It would be sheer impertinence however for me to make a nuisance of myself insisting that others, on penalty of being lost, must share my faith and its satisfactions. I do not believe that the Divine resources have such limitations.

In the case of Swedenborg, he spent some twentyfive years writing in Latin his works relating to the spiritual world. He published them at his own expense and deposited them unobtrusively in the libraries of Europe. He founded no sect and made no effort to proselyte. He was content to stand at the door and knock. He has supplied strength and

GEORGE A. BRIGGS

I have read with much interest Ann de Leeuw's article in the March number of THE CENTURY MAGAZINE entitled "For-But Also By-The People." To me as one who knows what war means, coming of Revolutionary forefathers, myself serving in the Civil War, and for forty years thereafter connected with the schools of New York helping to educate the very youth that was sacrificed in the World War-often has presented itself the question, what is it that can assure us of Peace. This is a timely message to everybody, it seems to me, and I wish it could be read by all thinking people, for it presents a line of thought which if pursued would appear to lead to the solution of the knot that is indeed tying the hearts and lives of individuals and nations to-day. I congratulate the author on her able presentation of it, and thank you.

Very truly yours, T. A. HYNES