The Nub of the Matter

ENJOY THE BEST . . . READ THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

THE times that try men’s souls are with us. Property is worth half as much as it was yesterday, but character is worth twice as much again. That isn’t a bad sign. After all, it’s the rapids which lend life and beauty to the long slow reaches of the river. But to enjoy the tremendous experience of life in these times, you must understand it. You must live in the full current of ideas; and where that runs deep and strong, there you will find the Atlantic. Whom do you know who has looked full in the face of life and death and has found them both good, as the lady in the October Atlantic who, condemned by the doctors, realized she had been given An Early Holiday? Who whispers A Word to Women so engagingly as Albert J. Nock in the November issue, or discusses My Country Right or Wrong with braver good sense than Earnest Elmo Calkins in December?

Again, what story writer has appeared over the horizon this year fresh and amusing as Louis Reed, author of a series soon to be thrice familiar?

As I look through the list of titles just ahead, the gay mixed with the grave, I feel an onrush of confidence. The world seems to me a good place to live in, and I am glad the Atlantic has so ample a share in it.

“THOSE of us who are no longer young know well that in this life we need desperately a mind stored with some remembered reading which will support us when we ‘are going down the third time.’ . . . You shall have the sequel to my sending the Atlantic to my son. Such an alive, sparkling letter came a few days later, with this comment, ‘Atlantic swell.'" Mrs. A. N. P. Glen Cove, L. I.