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WINNETKA TALK August 20, 1927 NEWEST BOOKS AND BOOK REVIEWS BOOK SHOP FOUNTAIN SQUARE EVANSTON New! The Crisis in China Lt.-Col. P. T. Etherton Late British Consul-General for Chinese Turkestan and Additional Assistant Judge of the British Supreme Court in China. Little, Brown ¥ Company. .$2.50 An American Saga Carl Christian Jensen Little, Brown 8 Company. .$2.50 Gemixte Pickles By K. M. §8., author of Die Schoenste Lengvitch Pascal Covich ov vviv vin von .$2.00 The Queen's Gate Mystery Herbert Adams Lippincott ........ v... $2.00 The Venetian Key A New "Tarleton" Detective Story Allen Upward Lippincott ......v...., $2.00 Sinners Go Secretly Anthony Wynne Lippincott ..... .vvvi++ $2.00 Idle Island Ethel Hueston Bobbs-Merrill $2.00 The Inn of the Hawk and the Raven A Tale of Old Graustark George Barr McCutcheon. . . $2.00 Meanwhile H. G. Wells Doran. ...iv ev rns nmsinee 32.50 A Good Woman Louis Bromfield Stokes. .$2.50 LORD'S BOOK SHOP Just Inside the West Davis Street Door DID YOU KNOW THAT-- The story "Daphne's in Love," which first appeared as a serial in the Chicago Daily News, will be published August 19 by the Cen- tury company? "Gemixte Pickles" is the latest book of Kurt Stein, the author of the ribald "Die Schoenste Lenge- vitch?"' McNaught's Monthly is follow- ing the steps of its predecessors; a process described by Keith Preston as "dying to make verse free?" Mr. Kroch expects to be settled in his new store at 206 N. Michi- gan avenue, by the first of Decem- ber? . Radio arrangements of O. Henry's stories are being broadcast on Wednesday evenings by Station WJZ and several allied stations? Irving Bacheller Explains The interesting story is told of Irving Bacheller that is eminently characteristic of the whimsical charm of the man. Mr. Bacheller has a home at Winter Park, Florida, is greatly be- loved there, and has several times been called upon to fill the breach and pre- vent disaster on a public occasion. One morning a distinguished man was to deliver a lecture at Winter Park. At the last moment it was dis- covered that no one had been provided to introduce him. The audience had assembled, and he sat before it, still incognito. A messenger was dispatched in great haste for Mr. Bacheller. He was walking in a remote part of his grounds, wearing a brown velvet morn- ing coat. Nevertheless he was whirled off to the auditorium and hurried, just as he was, on the stage. He then cast a dolorous look at his morning coat. He was in the breach as usual, but he felt obliged to account for that coat. He did so by introducing it with great felicity to the audience. - "It is its first public appearance," he said. "It is my new introduction coat, to be worn only when I am introducing a very modest and distinguished per- son. At such a time one needs to be careful in selecting his coat. If the one to be introduced were only dis- tinguished it wouldn't matter. But when he is also modest it is best to wear a coat that will hold the eye of the audience and save your guest from embarressments." Needless to say, the audience was in a favorable mood to hear the dis- tinguished speaker after such an intro- duction. Mr. Bacheller is at his best in his striking new novel, "Dawn: A Lost Romance of the Time of Christ," which is to be published on March 15th by Macmillan, ¥ there is any one piece of literature that defies improving, it is Solomon's "Song of Songs." But like the tradi- tional cow in the china shop, Hubert Osborne has tried to add something of the atmosphere of Joyce and the eroticism of Rimski-Korsakov, and has succeeded only in making himself dis- gusting in his play "The Song of Solomon." He has painted the lily with muck. Leon Feuchtwanger, author of "Power," has just scored another suc- cess in Germany with a book called "The Ugly Duchess." It will be pub- 'ished in this country next year, Just a Real Good Book Is This One "THE TRIUMPH OF YOUTH" By Jacob Wassermann, It is sometimes a question whether one would rather read a good book by a mediocre author or a mediocre book by a good author. Both of these are possible. One gives you the glimpse of peaks sticking up through the clouds the other lets you down distressingly into ® valleys that you didn't know. were there. "The Triumph of Youth" is in the first class. It is undeniably by a good author, Jacob Wassermann who wrote "The World's Illusion," can rise to heights and stay there. The fact that he didn't stay there in this latest book makes it a mediocre one though we do sometimes pause at a glimpse of the peaks coming through. The scene of the story is laid in the Dark Ages, those ages of suffer- ing when the common people were oppressed by cruel priests and heart- less overlords. This picture of the common people's life Mr. Wassermann has done well, but when he comes to the spirit of youth, that irrepressible welling up of faith and joy in living which conquers in the end, he has not been able to portray it so vividly. Ernest, the fascinating story-teller who gives the young people a vision of beauty and therefore the heart to rebel was a difficult personality to make real and the author has not quite made him so. --EsraER GouLp. Music History Is Well Done and Pleasant "THE STORY OF MUSIC" By Paul Bekker. The most interesting and least tech- nical consideration for the layman in music is how it grew, from what im- pulses and to express what emotions in the life of the people it was formed. It is from this point of view ex- actly that Paul Bekker has written his "Story of Music--an Historical Sketch of the Changes in Musical Form." He did not attempt to col- lect dates and facts only, but, in his own words, to show us "the great life process of mankind which we may understand not by regarding it as a kind of historical costume parade, but by trying to recognize the forces which control it." Beginning with the ancient Greeks, Mr. Bekker has dealt with the various races and their contributions to music. He is careful to say that as to the actual sound of ancient music we know little, since we have not even knowledge of the instruments which were played and we must, therefore, not speak of it patronizingly or slight- ly. Music, the most transitory of the arts is the hardest to recall when the sound has died away. He has gone on to deal with "the music of Italy, the Netherlands, Ger- many, down to modern times when he has dealt with the work of individual composers. That he has done it all with a clear and sympathetic vision can be seen by his summing up of his task in the closing words of his pre- face, "Thus the history of music is to be seen as a moulding of human life in material ever so delicate, perish- able, and elusive, the ringing, vibrat- ing air which- we call tone." 'he is called on the street. Pot Shots at Pot Boilers MOST amusing irrelevancy has been reported to us from the pur- loins of Columbus Circle. It seems that it had come to pass that a man who loves his brethren had set up in the market place a house of haven, where all voices are soft, and a man thirsteth not, neither does he eat. And the man, being wise, ordered that who- soever would partake of his living waters must bring to the place of soft voices a book; and so that he may thereafter be recognized as worthy, in- scribe therein some quotation from the works of men and the name by which And there came a man crying, "I have need of thee, for Lo! I have wandered in the | desert for many days and nights, and hearing men speak of thy beneficence, I have brought with me gifts--a book, and in it I have inscribed fittingly." And the man of the market place looked upon the book and saw that its name was "Bouquet," by one G. B. Stern and in it was inscribed, "Who can have compassion on the ignorant; for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity." And when he saw this book and understood the meaning of the words, he wrote in the book of him who sought libations from the house of soft voices; and returned it to him, saying, "Get thee hence!" and put him forth into the market place with vigor and anger. And the words he wrote after the quotation were, "For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent." LJ T= most subtle thing about "The «4d ,Son of the Grand Eunuch," by Charles Pettit, is the title. The author is unable to escape the meaning of the word "eunuch," and his self-conscious- ness of its significance is the most lucid comment that can be made on the man, both as an artist and as an individual. HE prolific H. G. Wells in his newest publication, "Meanwhile," pleads for leisure to evaluate the progress toward human perfectability made by this civilization of ours. He is apparently as weary of his own prophesies as of anything else, for he parades them before his somewhat anemic irony as futilities. In confront- ing his theories with reality he is pa- thetic in that he seems unaware of the many people who in the past have used the same confrontation. "Meanwhile" is a typical Wells' book; something more than a novel and something less than a workable philosophy. ""T"HE Bacchante," by Robert Hich- 4. ens, ran as a serial in the Cosmo- politan, and a more dreary exposition of "a pagan body and Chesterfield mind" we have never encountered. We are sorry that such a potentially great filibuster should be lost in a mediocre author. [J] HE saddest story, "The Good Sol- 4 ,dier." by Ford Madox Ford, is the first volume of the Avignon edition of the works of this author, published bv Boni. If vou missed this book when it was first published in 1915, we sug- gest that you procure it now, as it is superior to any book published in the last month or more, both in its read- ibility and content. This superlatively poignant story has nothing to do with the war; the fitle is a slightly ironic comment on the struggles of humanity in general and one man in partici a