GEROULD, KATHARINE (FULLERTON) (MRS GORDON HALL GEROULD). Modes and morals. *$1.75 (2½c) Scribner 814
20–3866
Instead of the above title the author has been tempted to call her collection of essays “Democracy, plumbing, and the war” because democracy, always having a materialistic connotation, and plumbing, symbolizing physical comforts, as well as war, “make the problem of our immediate future a rather special one.” In the first essay, The new simplicity, the cultural élite are exhorted to practice a severe simplicity of living in order to hold their own against overpaid labor whose tastes run to luxuries. In The extirpation of culture four causes are named for this gradual extirpation among us: The increased hold of the democratic fallacy on the public mind; The influx of a racially and socially inferior population; Materialism in all classes; and The idolatry of science. The other essays are: Dress and the woman; Caviare on principle; Fashions in men; The newest woman; Tabu and temperament; The boundaries of truth; Miss Alcott’s New England; The sensual ear; British novelists, ltd.; The remarkable rightness of Rudyard Kipling.
“Stimulating and provocative essays.”
+ Booklist 16:233 Ap ’20
“Sparkling little essays full of originality and common sense.”
+ Cleveland p52 My ’20 60w
“Mrs Gerould is infinitely more agreeable as an essayist than as a short story writer and her discussions of current problems, social, spiritual and literary, are not only clever but stimulating.”
+ Ind 103:440 D 25 ’20 90w