Atlantic Shop-Talk
IT is not often that new books by a brother and sister appear on the same publishing list at almost the same moment. This is occurring in the case of Shackled Youth, by Edward Yeomans, of Chicago, and The Little Garden, by his sister, Mrs. Francis King, of Alma, Michigan. Mrs. King is already well known as an authority on gardening. For some time she has been an official of the Garden Club of America, and is now president of the Woman’s National Farm and Garden Association. She is, besides, the author of two important books on gardens and gardening, one of them published several years ago, the other within two months. But her new book, scheduled at this writing for June publication by the Atlantic Monthly Press, — in these days of upheaval among printers and bookbinders one says ’scheduled’ instead of ‘ to be published,’— is quite different in that it is far more compact, more deliberately practical, and less expensive than either of her previous books. The spirit of it is clearly revealed in two paragraphs from her Preface: —
‘The little garden will save the children. In it the children are the first to feel at home; for where is the baby who does not love a flower? And where is the four-year-old who will not plant and watch a seed? If our children grow to manhood and womanhood without the love of beauty, we are a nation lost. I quote the words of a friend, a fine woman farmer: “There never was a time when so much was being done to foster the commercial spirit on the farm in the children. Look at the pig clubs, the baby-beef clubs, the poultry clubs, the canning clubs, which the government is promoting. Beauty, too, should be cultivated in the young. If the children do not grow up with flowers, they never will fully enjoy them.”
‘ When, throughout this country, the flowergarden on the farm — when the small place, well planned and planted — shall have become the rule, not the exception, we shall possess a pervading loveliness in a land where to-day such loveliness is sadly lacking. In the successful treatment of ground small in dimension, in the beautiful quality of the little garden, lies the true future beauty of America.’
With suggestive pictures, plans, and tables Mrs. King tells, out of her own experience, how the little garden on which so much depends can be made in almost any surroundings. After all, the brother and sister are working in precisely the same direction — one for the unshackling of youth in the schoolroom, the other for the liberation of the human spirit through a loving intimacy with flowers.
Speaking of shackled youth — an inmate of a state prison in the Middle West has recently shown his interest in the publications of the Atlantic Monthly Press by asking whether he might not secure even an imperfect copy of The Letters of William James in exchange for specimens of the artistic handiwork of his fellow prisoners. It was fortunately possible to place a copy of the book in the hands of this correspondent. It is always a pleasant exercise of the imagination to follow a book from the place of its production to that of its reading, and to observe in fancy the impression it produces. The Letters of William James have carried delight and liberation to many persons, but there is no copy of the book the reading of which would have been more interesting to watch and to discuss than the copy sent forth in response to our correspondent’s inquiry.
The name of Miss Edith M. Patch seems clearly destined to become widely known and highly valued in connection with her books of nature stories for children. About a year ago the Atlantic Monthly Press published the first volume, Hexapod Stories, in her Little Gateways to Science series. (We live in perpetual terror that Gateways will be misprinted Getaways!) In May the second volume, Bird Stories, made its appearance, and it is meeting with a reception which justifies our confident belief that the work of a real naturalist who knows how to write, supplemented by the illustrations of another real naturalist who knows how to draw, is sure to win the recognition it deserves. What Mr. Robert J. Sim has done for her two books by means of his illustrations should carry his name, like Miss Patch’s, far outside the scientific circles in which their reputations were first established.
It seems a far cry from Bird Stories to ‘potato mosaic.’ The first term requires no explanation; the second suggests to the uninitiated an amazing blend of Ireland and Byzantium. But it is from Bird Stories to ‘potato mosaic’ that Miss Patch, in her professional capacity of Entomologist of the University of Maine, has turned for the summer. At Aroostook Farm, Presque Isle, Maine, she is now devoting herself, at the request of the Bureau of Plant Industry at Washington and the Department of Plant Pathology at the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station, to a study of the possible connection between rose and other aphids and the plant disease bearing the IrishByzantine name. The rescue of the potato-seed industry of Maine is the extremely important object of the work for which she has temporarily abandoned the pleasures of authorship. But her own Gateways to Science are evidently swinging wider and wider open.
One of the last industries of Mr. A. Edward Newton before he sailed for Europe late in May was to inscribe two hundred and sixty-five bookish sentiments and his own autograph on pages to be bound with the limited edition of his new book, A Magnificent Farce, and Other Diversions of the Book-Collector, which the Atlantic Monthly Press will publish early in the autumn. Collectors have already got wind of this volume, and the advance orders for the two hundred and fifty copies to be offered for sale are accumulating at a rate that seems sure to place the book among those securities of the ‘when, as, and if issued’ class which rapidly go above par. Mr. Newton has distinguished between quotations from the writings of others and of himself by the use of quotation-marks in the first instance and not in the second; but in the quotations from others he has rarely indicated the source from which he has drawn. This amounts to the invention of a pretty game for nearly every possessor of the book—to trace the sentiment with which it is inscribed to its lair. From Bacon and Dr. Johnson down to Mr. Newton’s own contemporaries, the lovers of books sound their praises in memorable terms. The only pity is that one volume can hold but a single quotation of Mr. Newton’s choice, and not the entire collection.
The Summer Schools of the country will soon be in full swing, and just what this means is but dimly realized by many Americans. There are multitudes who do realize it, for it is in terms of multitudes that the enrollments in those departments of our colleges and universities are numbered. They have indeed become a definite and important element in the national scheme of education. What separates them most sharply from most institutions of learning is that nearly all the students are themselves teachers. The flocking of these busy men and women to Summer Schools, merely for the sake of becoming better teachers, through the study either of educational methods or of their own special subjects, is a phenomenon full of promise for the teaching profession.
Among the bits of knowledge which they may pick up to the greatest advantage we cannot help hoping that the learning teachers will learn something this summer about the newer sort of books published for educational purposes — and, in particular, the textbooks that proceed from the Atlantic Monthly Press. It has been our special desire that these books should embody the new spirit in education, the spirit that relates learning directly to life. It is not to the pundit or the blue-stocking that they are addressed, but to the person whose mind is open to the realization that literature, history, science, and art are not remote creations, to be studied by Peter Bells, but vivid portions of life itself, the life which all are capable of leading. Mr. Edward Yeomans has said all this, and a great deal besides, in his Shackled Youth; we believe that our school and college texts put the general theory into practice. But what is this? Is our Shop-Talk merging imperceptibly into a Summer-School lecture? Perish the thought!
The gradual entrance of phrases into common speech is one of the interesting phenomena of language. It was recently illustrated at the Booksellers’ Convention at Atlantic City, when an accomplished bookseller of Chicago, Mr. A. A. Kroch, addressed his fellow-workers on the practice of their calling. ’From my early youth,’ he said, ‘I felt the amenities of book-collecting, and this incomparable joy taught me the psychology of the book-buyers.’ When, later on, he spoke casually of ‘another Newton,’it was easy to see where the ‘amenities’ phrase came from.
It was in a few sentences about the principles that control his own selling of books that Mr. Kroch answered many questions that have been raised about the decline of bookshops. Why, he asked, could he sell books to strangers, who became his friends, and returned for more books? ‘ Because I offered them something I knew, something I loved, and because I transmitted to them my honest enthusiasm. All this was unobtrusive, genuine, and not forced. And here you have the first three points of the successful bookseller: know your books; become enthusiastic over them; transmit this enthusiasm to your clients.’
This ’slogan for booksellers is not so concise as that motto for purchasers, ' Buy a Book a Week,’ which Mr. Newton himself launched in the Atlantic. But if Mr. Kroch’s ‘points’ could become even more widely operative than they are on one side of the book-counters, and Mr. Newton’s principle on the other, how happily all the troubles of publishers, booksellers, and the reading public might be resolved!