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remember was spent in a small town near the summit of the Sierras. The summer visitors were rather shallow and frivolous and no preparations had been made to make the birthday of our nation any different from any other day. There was an old man in the village whose fading eyes were already fixed on things invisible to the rest of us. He was a Civil War veteran and, fragile as he was, he had arranged a carriage block as a platform, put a table on it with a Bible, decorated his impromptu rostrum with a large flag, the bunting quite frayed and stained, and there, in a trembling voice, with that faraway look in his eyes and with one veined brown hand resting on the Bible, he read the Declaration of Independence to that vapid, rather scoffing crowd. That was all. Some of us never forgot our shamed feeling that we had not helped him is his little ceremony of remembrance.

Our quiet Fourth this year began by the head of the family reading aloud after breakfast the Declaration. Then from Lodge's Story of the Revolution was read a description of Jefferson's writing of the document, bits about some of the battles, of the sad winter at Valley Forge, of Washington's indomitable courage and military genius, of the unfit Congress, of the squabbles and jealousies among the states, of 'Mad Anthony' Wayne's dash and Benedict Arnold's treason, of the rebuke to Lee at Monmouth, and the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown—a pitiful matter of 9000 men, but it ended the war.

We saluted the Revolutionary musket with its powder horn which hangs above our library door and we looked with a new interest at the old splint chair, made by hand in 1750, for that very chair must have been in somebody's kitchen or common room and if it had had ears could have heard at first hand the news of these skirmishes and battles. That spinning wheel beside the fireplace must have stopped in its whirring for a few minutes as the bulletins passed from mouth to mouth. As we go upstairs we look again at the old mahogany clock on the landing. This one has a very plain case, an unexciting face, and soft, pewter hands. And as all the brass was needed for cannon, this brave old veteran has only wooden insides!

A very quiet Fourth! Yes, God be thanked. MABEL CRAFT DEERING

***

Freshmen look in the glass.

STANFORD UNIVERSITY, CALIFORNIA

DEAR ATLANTIC,

In these days when so much is being said about college education and college students, it may be interesting to you to hear what college students think of some criticisms of themselves. Dr.

Rubinow's article, "The Revolt of a MiddleAged Father,' in your May number was so interesting that I recommended it to my freshman classes in Citizenship here at Stanford. Their reading cards for the week gave such novel comments that I thought you and Dr. Rubinow might be interested in some of their reactions. I quote herewith a few.

"Unfortunately this article is quite true. The author shows pretty clearly the tremendous waste of money and energy in college.'

'He has, in my opinion, a narrow view of college life.'

'An article which most college students would read rapidly and then try to forget.'

'A discussion of our present "four years of advanced loafing."

'I think that he puts his college expenses too high and that he pays too little attention to the fact that many earn their way through.'

'I agree with him. I know in my own case I could work in the daytime and get as much out of night school as I am getting out of college.'

'Whether you are getting as much out of college as you should is an individual matter. The knowledge is offered you, but it is not always accepted.'

'You're right. I did n't like this article. The worst of it was he seemed to be right in his accusations. After reading this I felt like quitting college and going to work.'

"Evident that Eastern colleges are more expensive than Western.'

'Makes me feel ashamed to go to college. However, I can make all my expenses at college and do it on $900 per year. Much truth in his article.'

'Anyway, what is the B.A. degree worth besides permitting one to study for the A.M.— and the A.M. for the Ph.D.?'

(Signed) ELMER L. SHIRRELL

Our advertising department specializes in human nature as well as in publicity. Perhaps it is right in considering the following appeal more editorial than commercial. We publish it without cost.

PETALUMA, CAL DEAR ATLANTIC,- Kindly insert the following in your next issue and mail me your charge for this. I wish only a small space.

I would like to make the acquaintance of some one who dislikes automobiles, newspapers, radios, commercialism - and who has a taste for the music of Mozart, the philosophy of Spengler, the poetry of Hardy.-R. H. WHELDON

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Home Thoughts from Abroad

A Criminal in Every Family. The Universal Menace.
Why America Buys England's Books

The Cost of Illness. Our Secret Anxiety.
The Tomb. A Story.

Words. A Poem

The Right to Be Happy. A Conversation
The Linhay on the Downs.

Two Sciences

Courtesy. A Poem

Chaos or Cosmos in American Education.
The National Problem

Tawny Marsh. A Story

Makurasaki

THE NEW WORLD

Contributors' Club: Honeymoon Books - Old Nicey- The Ancient Virtue of Gratitude
alna: The Atlantic Prize Novel.
Contributors' Column

Atlantic Bookshelf: Jalna-The Grandmothers- Recent Revelations of European Diplomacy -Sir Francis Drake-The 'Canary' Murder Case-Meanwhile: The Picture of a LadyRecommended Books ..

The Financial Counselor: Edgar Lawrence Smith.

Ocents a copy

[graphic]

X-Ray view of a Timken-equipped Railroad Journal. Timken tapere construction, Timken POSITIVELY ALIGNED ROLLS, and Timkermade electric steel assure complete pro tection against all the thrust, shock speed and weight which are set up by the motion of flanged steel wheel against steel rails and curves.

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY. Publication Office, 10 FERRY STREET, CONCORD, N. H. Editorial and Gra Offices, 8 Arlington Street, Boston 17, Mass. 40c a copy, $4.00 a year; foreign postage $1.00 (Great Britain excepted). Ba at Post Offices at Concord, N. H., and Ottawa, Canada, as second-class matter, Copyright 1927, by The Atlantic M Company, Boston, Mass.

OCTOBER, 1927

HOME THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD

BY JAMES TRUSLOW ADAMS

AFTER some months at 'home' in America and a couple spent in rambling over Italy and France, I returned once more to London several weeks ago. The first thing that struck me, happily, was that its perennial and inexhaustible charm was as fresh and unchanged as ever. It is true that changes in detail, mainly architectural, are to be observed as plentiful enough by one who has long known it and who has now been an annual visitor for some years. Devonshire House, never a thing of beauty, but nevertheless of a certain antique dignity, has given place to a glaringly white palace of smart flats and shops. The yet newer but equally glaring hotel in Park Lane is regarded with many shakings of heads as a possible portent for what may be in store for the entire length of that aristocratic street. Dorchester House, most beautiful of all the great houses in town, has been sold in spite of efforts to save it from the auctioneer's hammer and probable destruction. Burlington Arcade, beloved of all shopping tourists, has also changed hands and its fate is unknown. The Adelphi, with its dignified houses above and its gloomy and mysterious 'arches' below, is about to be disposed of. The dark passageways, lit at midday by

VOL. 140-NO. 4

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flaring gas lamps, and housing, besides memories of David Copperfield, the largest and perhaps choicest collections of wines in the world, are probably doomed. I hesitate to say too much about it for American readers, but there are estimated to be between three and four hundred thousand dozen of priceless vintages stored in the vaults which will soon have to be moved. At least, although the fate of the buildings still hangs in the balance, Bernard Shaw, who has lived there for thirty years, has taken, with Celtic impatience, a flat elsewhere, and Sir James Barrie, another tenant, is, with more British calm, 'waiting,' as he says, 'to see.' As for the complete transformation of lower Regent Street, in progress for several years, the alterations are now practically completed and the new buildings will require many months of damp and soot to mellow into harmonious tone with their surroundings.

Yes, in some external features London is undoubtedly changing, and changing rapidly. But then, it always has been changing since it was founded by the Romans nearly two thousand years ago. Here and there we may lament some particular manifestation of the law of life and growth, but as a

whole one finds the life of the town singularly unaltered, and London still seems to me in most ways the most civilized, as it is unquestionably the greatest, of the cities of men.

Coming from the Continent, a 'citizen of the world' feels at once that he has come from the backwaters into a great centre of human interest. London is not only in sheer extent and population the largest city in the world, so that Paris and even New York, in the restricted limits of its only interesting portions, seem quickly exhaustible in comparison, but it is the centre as yet of the greatest and most widely scattered empire the world has ever seen. The dweller in it feels that he is at the crossroads of all the world's chief highways. One can survey the world from here as from no other one centre. France, it is true, has a scattered empire also, but the average Frenchman has, for the most part, as little interest in the world at large as has the American of the Middle West. Italy's empire and interests are almost wholly confined to the shores of the Mediterranean, to say nothing of the iron censorship of speech and press. Except for international sport and the spectacular, the average city in America is as unconscious of what is being said and done in other countries as is a man of the radio waves carried on the ether. By 'listening in' he may at once pick up a whole world of sound and thought of which he is otherwise unconscious. In the same way a man at home may 'listen in' to the international world by using special apparatus in the way of foreign journals or by personal relations, but these opportunities are limited to comparatively small groups.

Here, on the other hand, that world is, so to say, in the air and not the ether, and one does not have to make a special effort or acquire exceptional apparatus to share in it. There are

certain types of the stay-at-home smaller business Englishman who are as hopelessly narrow and provincial as Babbitt. But, even if one is not a Joshua to fell the walls of high society or the higher political circles, one is more apt here to meet all the time people who have just come from China or the Cape, or almost any part of the world, than one is at home to meet strayers from Dayton or Houston or Los Angeles. Moreover, if one picks up a dozen English magazines on the news stand and contrasts them with a dozen American ones, the wider range of interests at once becomes apparent. Of course, there are reasons for this. The main business of England, both in merchandising and banking, is international. The larger business man has a direct interest in almost all quarters of the globe. Again, speaking broadly, there is scarcely a family of the bettermagazine-reading classes which has not a member of it living in some remote corner of the Empire or of the world outside. Cape Town, Calcutta, and Peking are not merely far-off foreign cities which creep into the news occasionally as centres of political disturbance, but places where 'Tom' or 'Dick' or 'Harry' is stationed.

But another and perhaps one of the chief charms of London is that, if it is the greatest of all great cities, it is also the most homelike and, one might almost say, rural. The low sky line, and the fact that the architectural unit for most of the town yet remains the small house as contrasted with the vast apartment houses' and skyscrapers of American cities, account for part of this 'homey' atmosphere for a generation which still feels that a home means a house and not a slice of some costly communal barracks. Then there are the parks everywhere, affording not only the welcome relief of lawns and trees, but opportunities for cricket and

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