Mr. Huneker’s opinions are authoritative because he is primarily a musician. From the time he first stirred his readers as a raconteur, his enthusiastic followers have kept step with him on his progress through the whole seven arts.
His last book “Steeple Jack” has attracted attention.
BOOKS AND LITERATURE
“What You Want to Know About Books You Want to Know About”
Once a week, in The World, a page under the editorship of E. W. Osborn is devoted to “Views and the News in the World of Books.” Here the latest offerings of the publishers, in books of history, of essays, of poetry, of general facts and of fiction, are treated in the simplest fashion as matters of the current news. The department has no interests to serve save those of its readers, to whom it aims to furnish exact information, with a measure of entertainment as generous as the books may afford and the editorial intent may achieve. The Book Page under its present policy has been a feature of The World practically for the last twenty years. Within that period it is believed to have established something of credit for timeliness and for fairness of judgment. While recognizing the diverse tastes and desires of a great body of readers—as a newspaper book department must do—this page has no helping word for a volume deemed in any way unworthy of any reader’s attention.
Robert C. Benchley’s column, “Books and Other Things” is concerned more with books than with other things. But he writes so entertainingly about a book that, if you do not read the book, you surely will read Benchley again.
SOCIETY
The World publishes the latest news about the women and men who are prominent in New York and in all social centres. It tells not only of the entertainments the fashionable and wealthy give for their own amusement, but of those they hold to aid the charities they maintain. Weddings, the first appearance of debutantes, theatre parties, all the diversions of those who are worthy of mention, are described precisely and picturesquely in the columns of this newspaper. So are receptions to official personages—in a word, all the functions where culture and good taste are displayed.
WOMEN IN NATIONAL REFORMS
The World, since the inception of the woman’s movement, has chronicled the advance of women in organization from the small individual club working for development along conventional lines to the great federated bodies who throw the influence of educated and enlightened womanhood on the side of national reforms. The germ of practically all philanthropic endeavor has either sprung from or been promoted by organized women, and the columns of The World bear ample testimony to the detailed care with which these ambitions have been aided by publicity.