How many of you have read the life story of Alexander Irvine—"From the
Bottom Up"?*
It is one of the most vivid, interesting, readable of books. It talks, it laughs, it lives,—and it reveals. It is not a "confession;" not the overflow of a self-conscious soul like Marie Barklirtseff's outpourings; it is a story; an account of what happened to the man, and how he grew.
A hungry, ragged, barefoot, ignorant little Irish boy; handicapped in all ways but three; unusually fortunate in these. He had a good body, a good mind, a good heart. Up and up and up he pushes; helped now by the body, now by the soul, now by the intellect, till we find him, still in strong middle life, educated, experienced, traveled, enobled by loving and serving, awake to our larger social needs, and working with all his splendid power to help humanity.
Never was there a man more alive; learning Greek roots while delivering milk; converting miners, practicing a score of trades, and boxing like a professional.
The book has a double value; in the hope and courage which must rise from contact with such a personality and its rich experience, and in the strong light it throws upon "how the other half live." As Rose Pastor Stokes so quaintly put it, "Half the world does not know how. The other half lives."
In this book one-half may learn much of the unnecessary misery of "the submerged;" and the other half may begin to learn how to live.
* From The Bottom Up. The life story of Alexander Irvine. Doubleday Page & Co. New York, 1910.
*
The English Suffrage papers are an inspiration—and a reproach.
"Votes for Women"—the London organ of the militant suffragist, is so solid and assured; so richly upheld; so evidently the strong voice of a strong party.