Members of the Family. By Owen Wister. (The MacMillan Company.)
When the cauldron of contemporary American literature has boiled down and the dross been skimmed off by the years, there will be a special and enduring mold set aside for the works of Owen Wister. In his writings and in the pictures of Frederick Remington a richly romantic period of our national life will be long preserved. The Virginia, Lin McLean, and Scipio Le Moyne, even as the nightingale, were not born for death. As Scipio himself remarked, “I ain’t going to die for years and years.”
The eight short stories included in Members of the Family are typical of Mr. Wister’s most delightful and vivid manner. Those who enjoyed The Virginian or Red Men and White will wax happy over such tales as The Gift Horse and Where It Was. Owen Wister’s characters are unusual to us, but like that most fanciful of characters, Long John Silver, they live. For humor, strength of plot, characterization, and general worth this collection takes rank with the very highest.
F. D. A.
A Book of British and American Verse. Edited by Henry Van Dyke. (Doubleday, Page & Co.)
As a general rule anthologies are of a distinct sameness. The most noticeable thing, therefore, in regard to this collection of verse by Henry Van Dyke is his novel method of arrangement. Instead of fitting the poems in chronologically he segregates them according to their poetical form. The volume is divided into six sections, devoted respectively to: ballads; idylls or stories in verse; lyrics; odes; sonnets and epigrams; and elegies and epitaphs.
As to the selection, it is as judicious as one would expect coming from Mr. Van Dyke. An attractive feature is the inclusion of a considerable number of modern poems. In quantity the collection lies between the Oxford Book of English Verse and Burton Stevenson’s Home Book of Verse, being nearer to the former. It is especially adapted for use in class-room work and is a valuable addition to a small library, from a utilitarian as well as an aesthetic viewpoint.
F. D. A.
The Goose Step. By Upton Sinclair. (Paine Book Co.)
Thorough discussion of this latest book by Upton Sinclair is a task that would require many pages. A brief dissertation upon his remarks about Yale, however, will suffice to shed considerable light upon the book as a whole.