Here Walk the Ancient Ghosts of the Vagrant Past HAWKERS AND WALKERS IN EARLY By RICHARDSON WRIGHT Author of "The Practical Book of Outdoor Flowers," Editor of "House and Garden" In picturesque vagabondage the enterprising New England "chapman," the strolling cobbler and his ilk, the wandering preacher, the trained animals and freaks and all the odd characters of the past trudge up through the weaving tides of the road. A volume rich in quaint recollections and colorful bits of economic history, colonial commerce and antiquities, and unique personalities-Bronson Alcott, John Fitch, Johnnie Appleseed. In beautiful make-up with special lining papers after an early American chintz and 68 illustrations from elusive old sources. Handsome octavo. $4.50 FOUR THOUSAND YEARS The Curious Lore of Drugs and Medicines Thru the Ages By CHARLES H. LAWALL Dean of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy What could be more fascinating than the search for the elixir of life that should cure THE LAST VICTORIANS By ARTHUR A. BAUMANN Formerly Editor of the London "Saturday Review." The ideas and prejudices, the idiosyncrasies and the genius of more than a generation of statesmen and men of letters. Mr. Baumann has a caustic pen, but he is al intimate in his method of approach to his subjects, all of whom, with two exceptions, he has seen and heard. A volume of unusual biographical portraits a survey of a whole period of history. 8 Illustrations. (Ready in April.) THE BRIDGE TO FRANCE By EDWARD N. HURLEY Wartime Chairman, U. S. Shipping Board and $5.00 The long awaited inside story of the greatest accomplishment of the War - of how the U. S. Shipping Board and Emergency Fleet thrilled the world by transporting without loss over two million men, guns, supplies, etc. Told by the person who knew more of the workings than anyone else. Interspersed with human interest stories of prominent celebrities. Illustrated with numerous photographs, war posters, facsimile letters and documents of much historical significance. (Ready in April.) THE SPANISH HOUSE By REXFORD NEWCOMB At All Good Bookstores WINDJAMMERS AND SHELLBACKS $5.00 Strange True Stories of the Sea By E. KEBLE CHATTERTON 34 Illustrations. J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON $4.50 Green Forest, by Nathalie Sedgwick Colby. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co. 1927. 12mo. vi+306 pp. $2.00. Green Forest - Mrs. Colby's first, but it is to be hoped not her last, novel — is equally interesting as a portrait gallery and as a tale. The few but diverse characters have extraordinary reality, as they promenade the decks of the Aquitania, lie, watchful of one another, under their rugs, and suffer Mrs. Piggott's powerful singing of 'Goodbye, Summer' at the ship's concert; and the compact and vivid story, presented mainly through the consciousness of one woman, has fancy and humor and emotional power. - Green Forest is a lively drama through which hums the tension of a steadily growing suspense. It is an inward, not an outward, drama; its centre is the cabin occupied by Shirley Challoner and her daughter Suzette. The mother is an altogether charming figure: a beauty-loving, whimsical, rebellious creature, disciplined by life and most gracefully self-subjugated. Her sailing for Cherbourg with her daughter is the proof of this self-command. For death has removed the literal-minded and disagreeable husband whom for many years she has found it impossible to love; and she is free to marry the man whom for almost as many years she has loved entirely, the man with whom she has found the Green Forest - 'down deep . that green forest,' under the 'superimposed world.' But inopportunely Suzette, a hard, shallow, and vindictive child, has announced that her heart is broken and that she intends to follow her recreant ex-fiancé across the sea and bring him abject to her feet. Mrs. Challoner's devotion to her daughter is perfectly illusionless, but none the less compelling; her own happiness, therefore, must wait. She allows herself to be hustled aboard the liner by the resolute and ruthless little huntress; and with the secret pain in her heart driven deeper by every throb of the outward-bound screws, and by every day that passes without the arrival of David's radio, she watches with whimsical and understanding eyes the life of the ship. Deeply bored by the commonplace, and repelled by the second-rate, she finds with the touchstone of her own sensitiveness an answering sensitiveness here and there: in the ship's doctor, with his look of scarring experience; in Mr. Piggott, the corset manufacturer; in Miss Joy, the young mother of the irresistible but unlawful baby in the next cabin. The power of her sympathy reminds one of Robert Frost's of Consciousness method, and in Mrs. Challoner's trick of thinking in analogies, the novel seems to follow the work of Virginia Woolf; but it is less subtle, less original, less instinct with feeling for the beauty of the earth. The chief difference, however, is in the spirit. For Green Forest, for all its savagely ironical turn of events, has at its core not irony but sentiment. ETHEL WALLACE HAWKINS German After-War Problems, by Kuno Francke. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1927. 12mo. x+126 pp. $1.50. France, by Sisley Huddleston. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1927. 8vo. xi+604 pp. $5.00. PROBABLY no person in America is better qualified than Professor Francke to describe and interpret to the people of his adopted country the after-war aspects of the Germany where he was born. Within the field that appeals primarily to his interest that of thought and morals - he has done this in a volume that can be read without fatigue in a single sitting, but that justifies more than one perusal. He writes in a mood mellowed by age and scholarship, and in what might be called a spirit of detached self-analysis: detached because American, yet self-analysis because consciousness of kinship with the nation whose fortunes form his theme never fades from his pages. Three of the four essays in the book have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. It represents the garnerings of visits to Germany, in 1920, when she still bore numerous evidences of her unhealed wounds; in 1923, when the inflation crisis seemed to be dragging her into the abyss; and in 1926, when she was restored to the fellowship of Europe at Geneva. Yet one must not expect to find here much about the physical and material features of German life, or even about politics and social movements. These must be conjectured from manifestations of the German mind, which is Professor Francke's specific theme. Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster, the valiant Catholic teacher, whose voice was lifted courageously for peace in the very midst of his country's war madness; Rudolph Steiner, who tried to wed mysticism to modern science in the anthroposophist cult; Hermann Keyserling, the globe-circling philosopher who needs no introduction to Americans; and Oswald Spengler, who has left a new and probably permanent imprint upon our conception of history, are noted as beacons marking great currents in the nation's thought. These men and their doctrines, and lesser but still brilliant lights in her intellectual and literary firmament, serve as points of relation for illuminating observations that in their total give the reader a not inadequate picture of contemporary Germany. Sisley Huddleston's book is of an entirely different character. Written as a member of a series designed to describe the modern world, by an Englishman who knows France better than almost any other foreign writer, it conforms to a general model, and is presumed to embrace all the outstanding topics that the idea of the modern world evokes. Therefore it is mildly encyclopædic, though by no means to the point of dullness. The author dips back into history, but mainly to trace to their sources, in the earlier life and experience of France, traditions, institutions, and national traits conspicuous to-day in the country and its people. This theme, which occupies about one half of the volume, is interestingly treated, but it is likely to engage the average reader's attention less than the following chapters, which focus, from both before and after, on the World War. We should hasten to say, however, that this is not a war book. The author does not range beyond his topic, which is France -and France primarily as a subject of to-day. Here, however, he enriches his narrative with a wealth of information such as only one of the best-informed and most scholarly journalists in Paris could possess, and his pages abound in keen and critical but not unkind passages, where insight gained from long and intimate acquaintance with the French, and above all with the working of their government, comes to the support of the kind of factual knowledge that might be gathered from books and from a more superficial familiarity with the country. Mr. Huddleston is at his best in dealing with France's public men and public affairs of to-day and the recent past. Not only does he write with first-hand authority upon these topics, which come closest to his personal experience and interests, but he has a knack for sorting out the tangled skeins of Parisian political intrigue and winding them on neat little bobbins where they can be inspected with a comprehending eye. Although he has had to subordinate somewhat such displays of skill in the present volume, they are not absent, and they add much to the lucidity and interest of his later chapters. What is the impression of France that the book leaves on the reader? Perhaps one not radically different from that which has insensibly formed itself in the minds of most of us, but clarified and defined by ampler specifications than we have hitherto possessed. We see a nation handicapped by a misfit government, where 'democracy as we understand it may have to find new channels of expression'; characterized intellectually by ‘a surprisingly widespread love of "general ideas," which differentiates the French from the AngloSaxons, and accounts for very much in their national life'; producing 'the best soldiers in the world when they feel that they are fighting for a cause'; possessed of 'a curious capacity for rejoicing,' so that paradoxically 'with the nimblest brains in the world goes an irrepressible need of enthusiastic manifestations'; thrifty and industrious, but lacking a certain gift for efficiency, so that 'everywhere there is misemployment,' and even the great emporiums of trade in Paris, masterpieces of commercial inspiration though they are, 'indulge in an excess of unproductive labor. Nevertheless we carry away a vision of a grand and admirable nation, still vigorous despite her cruel bloodletting, and promising continued greatness in the future. VICTOR S. CLARK The books selected for review in the Atlantic are chosen from lists furnished through the courteous coöperation of such trained judges as the following: American Library Association Booklist, Wisconsin Free Library Commission, and the public-library staffs of Boston, Springfield (Massachusetts), Newark, Cleveland, Kansas City, St. Louis, and the Pratt Institute Free Library of Brooklyn. The following books have received definite commendation from members of the Board: Early Life and Letters of John Morley, by F. W. Hirst The early career of an intellectual statesman as reviewed by a close friend and disciple Read 'Em and Weep, by Sigmund Spaeth MACMILLAN Co. 2 vols. $10.50 The songs of yesteryear, ludicrous and touching River Thames from Source to Mouth, by F. V. Morley. Illus. by Laurence Irving HARPER & BROS. $6.00 The Rhineland Occupation, by Major-General Henry T. Allen BOBBS-MERRILL CO. $5.00 LITERATURE! Not Just Books VERYTHING bound between two covers is not literature. There are thousands of books published each It is the aim of the Guild to choose only books To understand exactly what we mean, imagine ild in existence then. In that day you would ve gone into a bookstore and as the result of much Ik bought a book by Mary Jane Holmes. You Ould have had something printed on paper, someing of little real worth, something of no permant power. But if the Guild had been in existence, u would have received instead a copy of "The arlet Letter," which your descendants would have en reading today. That is what the Guild is trying to do. For the tors of the Guild, passing fads do not exist. Its oks will be permanently important, either in ntent or in literary value. Look over the list of tors of the Guild. They are sufficient promise of at you will get. They are sufficient promise that oks you might have missed will reach you. SEVEN PRIVILEGES TO MEMBERS 1. Discrimination Your books are chosen for you by a distinguished 2. Width of Choice The books are chosen-not from books already 3. Special Guild Edition The Literary Guild makes for its members a special store. 4. Convenience Once a month the postman will hand you a book 5. Promptness You do not receive your copy three or four months 6. The Low Price Instead of twelve sales a year the Guild makes only The Literary Guild makes only one sale to you... 7. The Present Low Price Experimental. If subscriptions come in fast Meantime for you THE LITERARY GUILD OF AMERICA, Inc. 55 Fifth Avenue, New York pay I apply for enrollment in The Literary Guild of America for one year. Enclosed is $1.00 initial fee. I will you $3.00 a month for 6 months only. During the last six months of the year I pay nothing. 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