The Contributors' Column

The first of the four volumes of the great pheasant monograph of William Beebe, Honorary Curator of Ornithology at the New York Zoölogical Park, has recently come from the press of Witherby & Company in London. This sumptuous volume was made possible by the generosity of Colonel Anthony R. Kuser and is illustrated by studies of unexampled merit, engraved in full color by the best European and American artists. William T. Hornaday, the well-known scientist, speaks of it in the Zoölogical Society Bulletin thus: —

First of all, it is something new under the sun. It pulses with life and interest and with the charming personal touch of the author. . . . The science of ornithology is made fascinating to the general reader of Mr. Beebe’s abundant text, demonstrating that when science is written by a superior hand it can be both interesting and delightful.

The monograph, which seems to us quite comparable with Audubon, is sold at $250 the set. The enterprise is not a commercial one; the great and varied expense of fieldinvestigation, travel, and manufacture cannot be met by the sale of these books. But the set is incomparably worth having.

Sisley Huddleston is an English journalist of high professional standing. He represented the Westminster Gazette at the Peace Conference and his despatches attracted widespread attention. Mr. Arnold Bennett, quite as shrewd a judge of politics at large as in the appraisal of character in his Five Towns, writes that he considers Mr. Huddleston’s reports the most useful which came from Paris during the whole period of the Conference. A number of our readers may care to draw from their libraries Mr. Huddleston’s Peace-Making in Paris, which is well worth reading. Reverend John Sheridan Zelie, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Troy, New York, in succession to another friend of the Atlantic, Reverend Joseph H. Odell, served for a year as a chaplain in the A.E.F. His article will be found especially interesting by anyone who is speculatively concerned

with the effect of war on character. We need hardly add that his story is an accurate report of his attractive inquiry. Mr. Grundy, quite as discerning, and, perhaps, shrewder than his consort, desires, in this instance, to remain personally unidentified.

Owen Wister very rarely, nowadays, breaks his silence, but we are glad to say that he is at work upon a book of very special interest at this time. Marianne Gauss sends this, her first contribution, from Greeley, Colorado. The third American Portrait in Gamaliel Bradford’s new series will be James McNeill Whistler, a subject worthy of the subtlety of the appraiser. Edwin Bonta is an architect of Syracuse who was engaged in relief work in Russia during the war. He traveled extensively through Russia, and had, moreover, the advantage of knowing the Russian language.

It was not to be expected that the ‘ Story of Opal ’ would be received without incredulity, and the general enjoyment of it has amply outweighed both the off-hand skepticism of people who are sure that at six or seven they could not have written nearly so well, and the careful and intelligent criticism of constitutional unbelievers. We do feel, however, that many of the arguments brought forward are quite beside the point. Nobody denies that it is natural for a child to imagine fanciful stories of its parentage. But those who maintain that Opal is the daughter of Mr. Whiteley, and speak of chance ‘ geographies ’ and ‘ primers ’ as the sources of her inspiration, are building a considerable superstructure on a very slender foundation. Opal’s familiarity with names and dates in French and English history may be parrot knowledge, but it is none the less extensive, and her own explanation has at least the merit of adequacy. The occasional fragments of the ritual of the Roman Catholic church, entirely foreign to the camp where Opal lived, have also to be accounted for. Most of all, — and this is the real point of the discussion, — how did a child of such parents, so brought up, come by her style of composition, distinctive by its amusing tags and quirks, but far more by its singular appropriateness and unspoiled charm? As a Californian correspondent truthfully and beautifully remarks: ‘Who Opal’s parents were, I don’t pretend to know, but this I do know — that grapes are not gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles.'

In the Atlantic not half of the narrative can appear, but in the autumn we shall publish the diary complete, and then critics can bring the book to court, and lovers can take it home.

Nathaniel Horton Batchelder graduated from Harvard in 1901, and since its foundation has been head-master of Loomis Institute at Windsor, Connecticut.

Unlike many advocates of new ideas in education [he writes], I succeeded under the old régime at Hackley, and as department head at Hotchkiss; and Loomis practices what I preach, both as to content and course of study (we do not prepare for trades, however), and ‘self-help.'

Olive Tilford Dargan returns to the verse which founded her reputation, from the pleasant stories of mountain-folk which the Atlantic has been printing with general commendation. ‘My Bow Saves Egypt’ is the last chapter which we are printing of Robert Haven Schauffler’s interesting and amusing adventures. With the other Atlantic chapters it will form part of a volume soon to be presented by our neighbors, Houghton Mifflin Company, under the happy title ‘Fiddlers’ Luck.'

Howard S. Bliss, D.D., is head of the Protestant Syrian College in Beirut. To his energy, patience, and wisdom is due the remarkable record of the Protestant College, which was not molested by the Turks during the war, in spite of the fanatical religious prejudice by which it was constantly assailed. Joseph Seronde, Professor of French at the University of Pennsylvania, was commissioned lieutenant, senior grade, in the Naval Reserve and was ordered to Lisbon in May, 1918. Later he became Naval Attaché, Acting, and thus enjoyed exceptional opportunities during his stay for an intimate acquaintance with men and events. Many of the details he relates of the murder of the President and the attempt at the restoration of ex-King Manuel to the throne, etc., are quite unknown outside of Portugal. The Atlantic welcomes the opportunity to publish this agreeable paper from an observer whose systematic habits led him to jot down comments on people, scenes, and government under the freshness of first impressions. This material was intended for letters and not for publication, but it has since been put into form well adapted for a book. Paul Rohrbach is a German publicist and lecturer, and a member of the militant-Socialist party.

In 1915-1916 [he writes], I caused a comprehensive collection to be made of enemy propaganda, in which strong Pan-German ideas were used to demonstrate that the programme of Germany was a menace to the rest of the world. These emanated from England, France, Italy, America and from other countries. I appealed to Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg to make a vigorous official announcement drawing a clear line between government sentiment in Germany and the programme of the Pan-German Nationalists. This he refused to do because he feared it would impair the sentiment of unity of the people.

Guglielmo Ferrero, the most distinguished of contemporary Italian historians, has contributed many illuminating papers to the Atlantic. He sends this contribution at our request, from Belgium, whither he went to take part in an important congress relating to European rehabilitation.

The mute inglorious lexicographers who, as long experience assures us, form a not inconsiderable portion of the Atlantic’s audience, have taken the magazine to court on a nice question of orthography. The matter is put in a nutshell by Mr. H. K. Raymenton of Worcester, who kindly writes us: — DEAR ATLANTIC, —

In Mr. Root’s article, ‘The Virtue of Intolerance ’ in the March Atlantic, I find the expression, ‘worth a tinker’s damn.’ Owing to a misconception as to its origin, the expression is used here, as elsewhere generally, incorrectly. It refers not to the supposedly traditional profanity of tinkers but to a technical operation of the trade. The oldtime peripatetic tinker in mending a hole in a kettle or pan was accustomed to take a bit of the housewife’s bread and mould of it about the hole a doughnut-shaped form, called a dam. Into this the molten solder was poured, the dam preventing its spread. The heat of the solidifying solder naturally reduced the bread to powder, which, after the finish of the operation, was blown away as being of no further use. Hence the appositeness of the expression, ‘not worth a tinker’s dam,’ referring to a thing that has completely outworn its usefulness.

It is a well-ordered attack, and we bring up our reserves at once. We quote the Oxford New English Dictionary as the ultimate authority. Under TINKER — ‘ not to care or be worth a tinker’s curse or damn, with reference to the reputed addiction of tinkers to profane swearing.’

And then our most learned authority, referring to the derivation suggested by our critic, styles it ‘an ingenious but baseless conjecture suggesting another origin.’

The invitation implied by R. S. V. P. to discuss the insistent question of boys has prompted a number of excellent comments. Where we should like to use a dozen, we select one, coming from a scientist who touches nothing which he does not illumine, Edward S. Morse of Salem, Massachusetts.

I have read with the keenest interest the article entitled ‘Boys’ in the March number of the Atlantic. The writer’s observations and explanations of the boy’s attitude toward the various problems that confront him, and the reactions that arise in meeting these problems, are admirable. Every thinking man recalls his own boyhood and realizes the truth of the various indictments as to his feelings and behaviors in his relation to family, friends, and the world at large.

The author politely invites responses, and so I venture to dissent from his statement that ‘boys are not young savages.’ The boy in his impulses and behaviors is rigidly sustaining the recapitulation theory of von Baer, so eloquently defended by Agassiz, namely, that the young of higher forms of life resemble the mature condition of lower forms of life in their respective groups. The embryo bird, with its wing fingers widely apart and in some terminating in claws, recalls certain reptilia lower down. The early stages of toads and frogs, with swimming tail and gills on the sides recalling the dominant character of fishes, may be mentioned as well-known illustrations. Of course everyone is familiar with the monkey characters of an infant; arms and legs of proportionally the same length, divergence of the big toe, soles of feet facing each other, absence of a frontal sinus, wide diverging wings of the nose, nostrils opening forward, powerful grasp of fingers, and later with his monkey stages of climbing, destructive instincts, mischievousness, biting for offense, all sustaining the recapitulation theory. By no chance is he ever called a rhinoceros, giraffe, or any other mammal, but always, ‘You little monkey!’

If one connotes the dominant characteristics of a boy, he cannot fail to recognize the marks of a savage. The boy is lazy, cruel, superstitious; he loves a banging noise and makes it; he loves bright colors; he is indifferent to bodily cleanliness and has no regard for the property rights of others, raiding with other boys his own father’s grapevines. His instincts are tribal. In the cities these tribes, or gangs, are led by boys who are the most valiant fighters, chiefs, in fact. These tribes have names usually derived from the streets or regions of the city; and in Portland, Maine, for example, when I was a boy, one was known as a Clay Cover, Brackett Streeter, Hog Ender, etc. At times it was dangerous for a boy to venture outside his stamping-ground. Fierce fights took place between these gangs, with missiles of snowballs, sticks, and stones. Hundreds of windows were broken, and the police often found difficulty in suppressing these fights.

The boy takes naturally to savage weapons, the stone, sling, lance, club, and especially to the bow and arrow; and curiously enough, in the use of the bow he invariably uses the lowest savage release of the arrow by using the thumb and finger and not the modern method of three fingers on the string. The neolithic people, whose remains are dug up in the peat bogs of Denmark, I discovered, used a knobbed arrow proving the practice of the lowest savage release. The contemptuous treatment by the boy of the female of his kind points to a savage trait. His drawings of a man by single lines for body, arms, and legs, are absolutely identical with the drawings of Indians to-day, and to the petrographs and prehistoric rock-inscriptions of the man-child of ancient times. If he draws a face in profile, the eye is represented as seen in full face, again shown in the drawings of ancient Egyptians. He is a victim of subjective phenomena, and when he deliberately tells his mother that he saw a big bear in the garden, paining her by the first lie, her grief would be greatly assuaged if she realized that it was an ethnologic lie and perfectly innocent of any commandment-breaking.

It will be understood that to these generalizations there are profound exceptions. There are savage tribes in Africa and in New Guinea who are rigidly honest and truth-telling, as there are boys who are not cruel and do not lie. The Boy Scout movement, ‘ Our Dumb Animals,’ and journals for boys, have accomplished much in modifying the savage traits of boyhood, but the principle remains the same.

The ‘monstrous regiment of women’ (as John Knox used to style the royal advanceguard of the present democratic army) which seeks to pull Mrs. Keyes off the fence seems to be nicely balanced by the serried cohorts who strive to hold her on.

From a lady in Providence: —

I regret to see you wasting your talents upon such an article. I should be ashamed to sit upon any fence, and am thankful that your husband voted right in spite of you. Thank God I was brought up on the right principles — Temperance, Anti-Slavery, and Equal Suffrage. It is a pity that you have not kept more abreast with the times.

From the newly appointed State Chairman of the Woman’s Democratic Committee in New Hampshire: —

I feel just the way we do when we say, ‘The child is born and is a boy.’ The article is a corker. You may well be proud of yourself, and the Atlantic of itself.

From a lady in San Francisco: —

The only good argument I have ever heard against suffrage is that so many nice women are against it; but if many nice women are as illogical as you are, Heaven help us!

From an Iowan reader, whose whole letter OUR readers would find very interesting, had we only space for it: —

The trouble seems to be that women do not sufficiently honor and respect themselves and their high opportunities. They look with contempt upon their so-called ‘ monotonous drudgery’ and imagine that men’s work is more interesting; though what could better deserve the term ‘ monotonous drudgery’ than the occupation of the average man, it is hard to conceive. As law and custom now permit women to join men in every field except that of politics, it is the forbidden which is most attractive; a mysterious delightful region from which men exclude women for purely selfish reasons.

From a teacher — a man — in the high school at Santa Barbara, California: —

I was an anti-suffragist for years, and voted against suffrage in this state; but after women were given the ballot, I became president of a study club whose object it was to help women adapt themselves to their new duties. . . .

I can’t help writing you that your article is the most sensible one on the subject that I have ever read, and will, I believe, do immense good in the districts where suffrage is to be tried for the first time.

From a Massachusetts lady who devotes sixteen pages to the subject: —

It makes my blood boil with rage to read such an article. What kind of a man made the remark about women getting the bloom rubbed off ? , .

You are utterly unfair when you talk about paregoric, and successful men do not neglect their children. I am surprised at such an opinion.

Poetically, from Rhode Island: —

Our poets are still our soothsayers, and we are proud to put forward Mr. Frank Parker Stockbridge as one who sees the Atlantic’s world steadily and whole. He writes: —

TEMPORA MUTANTUR

(On the cover of the March, 1920, Atlantic, appears the startling legend, ' Present Edition 125,000 copies.’)

The Atlantic was issued in 1857 at 25 cents a copy. In 1864 the price was increased to 35 cents. With regret, and after a year’s serious consideration, we feel obliged to make a further increase to 40 cents — the annual subscription for the present, at any rate, remaining at $4.00.