FROM time to time inquiries reach this office concerning the ‘sale’ of the Atlantic. In any and every case we should like to state that such rumors are utterly without foundation. We ask our readers to deny upon our authority that there is a vestige of truth in any such report.

A SEA change has come over biography in our day. We are no longer content to praise famous men, in the manner of Plutarch, as an example to the younger generation. With the advent of Eminent Victorians and Queen Victoria, our heroes grow human — all too human. Is it ‘Satan among the Biographers’? Samuel McChord Crothers has been minister of the First Church (Unitarian) of Cambridge, Massachusetts, since 1894. Arthur Clutton-Brock is an English man of letters, lecturer, essayist, gardener, philosopher, and, incidentally, the art critic of the London Times.

The militant progress of the Roman Catholic Church, patent to all serious observers of the New Era, was recently signalized by the important conversion of Mr. Chesterton. Since it is evident that the aspirations of the Church to universal Christian dominion depend upon the success achieved in converting Anglo-Saxon peoples, it has seemed to the Atlantic an opportune moment to publish a discussion on this absorbingly interesting subject. It would be idle to seek a critic devoid of personal predilections, and the Atlantic has invited Hilaire Belloc to speak for his Church. Mr. Belloc is an historian of eminence, who has lived actively in the world and made his influence widely felt. In the next issue of the Atlantic, Dean Inge of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, will discuss the same issues from a widely different point of view.

Of the days when the Saturday Evening Post had a circulation of two thousand, and was sold to its new publisher, Cyrus H. K. Curtis, for $100 down and $900 to he paid in $100 installments, Edward W. Bok writes with a peculiar intimacy, born of his many years’ association with Mr. Curtis in publishing the Ladies’ Home Journal.John A. Johnson, whose first story appears in this month’s Atlantic writes us as follows: —

I have been a bank clerk, a business man and a school teacher, but all along I have had a secret ambition to be a writer. Last summer, I fitted up a one-room cabin in the woods, with a sleeping porch overhead, where I had the quail by day and the hootowl by night, and here my time was my own for three months. I read Russian novelists and wrote.

Hunter, naturalist, and philosopher, Hans Coudenhove sends us another paper from Nyasaland, Africa. Some time ago he remarked in a letter ‘ . . . since 1905 I have not left the tropics. I have been hunting, chiefly for the pot, and prospecting; but the most passionate pursuit of my life, and the chief interest of my existence, is the study of the animal kingdom, not from a biological, but from a psychological, point of view.’ Abbie Farwell Brown is a writer of stories for children, a successful novelist, and a poet not unfamiliar to our friends. Carl Sandburg, who among his other achievements has made poetry out of steel mills and the Chicago stockyards, is as authentic and autochthonous an American poet as any man living. He tells us, in this number of the Atlantic, among other things about poetry, that it ‘is the capture of a picture, a song, or a flair, in a deliberate prism of words.’

S. J. Whitmee, for fifteen years a missionary in Samoa, was obliged to leave on account of the ill health of his wife. In 1891 he returned to the islands. On his arrival his very first caller was Stevenson, and during his ministry the friendship between the two men was very close. Every week the author came to the missionary for a lesson in the Samoan language. Elizabeth Choate is a young Boston writer, whose first paper, ‘Pilgrimage,’ appeared in the Atlantic for March 1922. Robert M. Yerkes, formerly professor of psychology in the University of Minnesota, is a member of the National Research Council at Washington, and editor of the Journal of Comparative Psychology. He was in charge of the army mental tests during the war. L. Moresby is an English author, a modernminded and analytic writer of fiction, whose first story, ‘The Coming Queen’ appeared in the Atlantic for January 1922. George Villiers is an English poet, as yet quite unknown in America.

William Bennett Munro, professor of municipal government at Harvard University, is the author of several standard books on government. As correspondent of the London Times, R. O. G. Urch has his present headquarters in Riga. From 1915 to 1920 he lived in Moscow, and while there spent several months in prison, in company with a number of Russian priests. He has been on friendly terms with several members of the Provisional Government. The paper which Mr. Urch sends at our request is written largely from first-hand knowledge. To everyone who holds high the interests of Christianity, this article is of great and terrible significance. The name of Pierre Khorat has long been known to readers of the French press as that of an authority on the subject of the French empire. Ramsay Traquair is a professor in the department of agriculture at McGill University, Montreal. Adolph Lewisohn is head of the firm of that name in New York City, president of the Tennessee Copper and Chemical Corporation, and of several other mining enterprises. He is President of the National Committee on Prisons and Prison Labor.

Recalling our ‘Humor with a Gender’ (December Atlantic), a reader sends us an example of humor neither male nor female.
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
So provocative is Elizabeth Stanley Trotter’s differentiation of masculine and feminine humor that the tongue trips in its eagerness to query, discuss, confirm.
May I suggest that the sense of the ludicrous of each sex meets at one point? At the theatre, although the cleverest repartee may call forth a chortle only from the subtle few, both matrons at the matinee and men in the evening ripple or roar at the same place. Many an actor in many a play (as I have always believed was the case several years ago with Cyril Maude in ‘Grumpy’) owes much of his popularity to his intonation of a monosyllable. The confluence of the humor of the sexes is found in one word. The word is Damn.
A. H. D.

It is interesting to receive a personal letter about that ‘European Chaos’ we read of so much in newspapers and magazines. An Atlantic contributor writes us from Vienna: —

The one thing which one does not see in Europe is work. In Vienna, the chief end of man and of woman appears to be to spend as much time as possible in the cafés — with the crown worth one seventy-four-thousandth of a dollar! In the Rhone valley the only work visible is that of the women washing clothes in the river in the manner of the stone age — almost no cattle in the fields, almost no boats in the stream. In Italy one has the Fascisti — a hopeful band in one respect, for they have at least discovered that nothing can Ire accomplished by sitting around a mahogany table and talking. Everywhere the ‘laboring classes’ are making most of the money, but with their hearts full of hatred they seem even unhappier than the deposed bourgeoisie. There is a strike every day. For nearly two weeks now Vienna has been without a newspaper. The cost of living mounts continually, even when reckoned in dollars — though it is still cheap according to American standards. Turkey is even more agonisante than when Loti wrote his beautifully just defense of it, and the least said about the unspeakable Greek the better. Can anything be hoped for from England, with swaraj rampant in India? Or from the United States now that it has been discovered that propaganda, properly concentrated upon one state legislature after another, can change the National Constitution at will? No, I am afraid that George Moore is right when he has Mr. Husband say, ‘The world must continue its breakneck pace till it topples over into barbarism, emerging, much reduced, a smaller but more beautiful planet.’ Too bad that Mark Twain’s idea of giving extra votes to the intelligent could not be carried out — but I see no politician proposing such a measure. And who would pick out the intelligent?
HARVEY WICKHAM.

Here is encouragement with reference to the literary taste of the younger generation.
BRYN MAWR COLLEGE
DEAR ATLANTIC,—
In an article entitled ‘Literature in College,’published recently by you, Miss Elizabeth Drew confidently makes an assertion, concerning the literary taste of college undergraduates, which many of them are quick to refute. She says that over fifty per cent honestly prefer If Winter Comes to Far From the Madding Crowd. Certainly among those groups in several colleges with whom I have come in contact this is flagrantly untrue. And why does Miss Drew think that we who prefer Hardy are unable to give reasons? It is more often our elders who say, ‘I don’t know why I like it, but I do.’ Youth, particularly college youth, generally defends its position to a fault — as I should now, did space permit.
I might add that our critical elders see us for the most part only in our hours of recreation, when the joie-de-vivre, the cynicism, the delightful caprices and inconsistencies of youth jingle in their ears like the bells of Folly; while our critical professors as a rule see us only through the hurried artificiality of examination papers. Could they both but listen to a few post-midnight discussions in our studies they might succeed in analyzing us more accurately.
LOUISE M. SANFORD.

We hope all our readers cultivate their little gardens as intensively as does Dr. Blue.

DEAR ATLANTIC,—
One year ago to-day my daughter made me a birthday present of the Atlantic, for one year, and to-day she has done the same thing. Meanwhile she has taken a trip around the world. In India the guide faithfully placed au Atlantic in her room every night.
It is the only monthly magazine that comes to the house, which I read through every month. My wife reads it, then it goes to a pastor friend of mine, who gives it to a retired Major of the Regular Army, then to a retired minister, who returns it to me. The maid reads it, and then it goes to a family who take it to a church readingroom in Los Angeles.
You will probably think that I am doing more for the circulation than for the subscription department.
(DR.) Jonx G. BLUE.

One of the most useful and important letters that have followed in the wake of Earnest Elmo Calkins’s article on ‘The Technique of Being Deaf,’ is the following;—

DEAR ATLANTIC,—
As a friendly supplement to Mr. Calkins’s article on ‘The Technique of Being Deaf,’ in the January number of the Atlantic Monthly, may I add advice heretofore unpublished?
Years of contact with those who suffer from impaired hearing have taught me an easy, satisfying method of communication. It is as follows; Use an exaggerated lip movement when pronouncing your sentences. Let your facial expression magnify the thoughts you are trying to portray to your listeners. Remember they are doing you a favor in trying to listen to your conversation. Reward the effort by waiting until their eyes are upon you, thereby making it easier for them to understand. A deaf person knows more than you think he does. Ills expression is deceiving and he listens in a manner unknown to the normal head. Actions speak louder than words, so let your movements talk. Never shout to a deaf person. Outcries are injurious to the speaker and most humiliating for the listener. If a pocket device or hand invention is offered you to talk into, remember to hold it far enough away from your mouth so your auditor may watch your lips.
A wonderful teacher at the Speech Reading Guild on Commonwealth Avenue, in Boston, asked me if anyone in my household had impaired hearing. I asked, ‘Why?’ She replied I had an open face. For a moment I did n’t know whether I was unreserved, or maintained too expanded a mode of speech. Her second remark brought relief to my troubled mind. She said she could understand every word spoken!
‘WANO.’

We believe that we are doing notable historical service in collecting data on that wretchedly neglected figure in human history, Mrs. Noah. It seems that the patriarch Noah was her nephew as well as her husband.

DEAR ATLANTIC,—
Mrs. Noah’s nobility of character becomes all the more noteworthy in the light of Mr. Gay’s evidence that she was the daughter of the godly Enoch, thus making her Noah’s great-aunt and, at the very least, sixty-eight years his senior. There was probably more difference in their ages, for this figure is based on the assumption that she was her father’s youngest daughter, born just before his translation. After begetting the distinguished Methuselah, at the age of sixtyfive, Enoch lived three hundred years ‘and begat sons and daughters,’ so Mrs. Noah might have been anywhere from sixty-eight to three hundred and sixty-eight years older than her husband. In any case, a lady who married her great-nephew must often have found need for patience and forbearance. She probably had dandled him on her knee when he was a baby and even administered such corporal punishment as she saw fit. The building of the Ark and stocking it with all the animals must have seemed to her a childish prank.
MARJORIE PAUL.

We suggested in a recent Atlantic that, in view of the repeated mistakes of authors upon the times and motions of the moon, a Moon Censor be appointed to pass upon all manuscripts. But we find ourselves violently attacked in the name of freedom.
DEAR ATLANTIC,—
I object — as usual! No censors, moon or mundane. Give ’em rope, I say. I detected that false moon last June and it confirmed my suspicion that I was reading fiction and not plain fact. The moon is the acid test. No censors.
HENRY W. KEIGWIN.

DEAR ATLANTIC,—
I think the outraged teacher from Seattle who objected to ‘Oh, leave me lay’ must be related to a neighbor of mine.
An ignorant but — as he would say—‘airified’ negro boy asked me for some books to read. I said, ‘Well, Theophilus, what sort of books do you want?’ His reply was, ‘Oh Mis’ Cater, I reads everything from Jesse James to Plato.’
Upon my relating this story to my neighbor, she looked at me inquiringly and said, ‘Of course he meant William JAMES.’
A READER.

The Christian Church has something to say about ‘The Return of the Turk’ (January Atlantic).
DEAR ATLANTIC,—
The article by Mr. Masterman in your January number, entitled ‘The Return of the Turk,’ is enlightening and impressive, but he does not do justice to the action of the Christian Churches in America. The Episcopal Church, in its general convention and afterwards in its National Council, the Federal Council of Churches, the Roman Catholic Church through Archbishop Hayes, and the Methodist Church have used their ‘influence and organization’ to convince the Administration that it ought to intervene in Turkey and give police protection to American citizens there and their work in the schools, colleges, and hospitals. Protection to them and to their work would protect the native Christians also. Thus far the Administration has refused to do anything more than remonstrate. It has remonstrated vigorously, but the churches are not responsible for the failure of the Administration to do more.
EVERETT P. WHEELER.

Jazz shows no sign of abating, and the literature upon it grows. Here is an acute argument for the defense.

DEAR ATLANTIC,—
This evening I happened to pick up an ancient copy of the Atlantic. It was the June 1922 issue. I cannot resist the call to exhume one sentence that was found between the covers of that number and comment upon it.
G. Stanley Hall, in his ‘Flapper Americana Novissima,’ a rather flippant title for staid old Atlantic, refers to ‘jazz, with its shocks, discords, blariness, siren effects, animal and all other noises, and its heterogeneous tempos, in which every possible liberty is taken with rhythm.’ I protest. But it is to only half of this right ponderous sentence that I take exception. I agree with the assertion that jazz is not music — from an artistic point of view. The antonym for symphony is a horrible sounding word, but it is descriptive of jazz to a degree.
But difficult as it may be for the minuet mind of a schottische æsthete to grasp, there is a reason for the continued existence of jazz: and that reason is Tempo. In jazz anything, everything, if you like, is sacrificed to time except Time itself. Jazz exaggerates, emphasizes and accentuates tempo, but it holds time as inviolate of variation as Damrosch holds symphony of discord. Rhythm, ‘the regular succession . . .’ (Webster), the one, two, three, four of jazz holds its course as straight and true as the World in its present day trend toward the Dogs. The principal beats of the measure, one might observe, are spaced evenly with an accuracy that has been developed to an art.
And it is an art, I venture to say, that has come to stay at least until the time when we, in turn, are scandalized by the radical departures of the next succeeding ‘Younger Generation’ some few years hence.
ALFRED W. POND.