School R. 14: 283. Mr. ’06. 20w.
Irwin, Wallace Admah. Chinatown ballads. $1.25. Duffield.
Seven “rhymed memories” of Chinatown. While there is here and there reflected a human strain. “He’s a Chinaman still in ’is yeller heart.”
“Humor is still the predominant quality, but there are touches of grim tragedy, that, coupled with Mr. Irwin’s metrical fluency, telling phrase and dramatizing gift, make the book one that cannot only be read, but reread.”
+ Nation. 83: 440. N. 22, ’06. 60w. + N. Y. Times. 11: 692. O. 20, ’06. 320w.
“Here we have the hoodlum’s view of the Chinaman, rather cleverly rendered in rhyme and with a good deal of fun.”
+ Outlook. 84: 285. S. 29, ’06. 60w. World To-Day. 11: 1220. N. ’06. 50w.
Irwin, Will. [City that was]: a requiem of old San Francisco. *50c. Huebsch.
The author, who has “mingled the wine of her bounding life with the wine of his youth,” has given to his obituary of old San Francisco the Arabian nights flavor which makes the reader mourn with him the death of that gay, light-hearted city of romance. He has re-created for him her life that was, he has drawn the colored panorama of hill and water front, Chinatown and “Barbary Coast,” of restaurants and clubs, or grey mists and orange colored dawn, and he has peopled it with the beautiful women and hospitable men who lived the “life careless” in this alluring out-of-doors.