“The United States is in form a Republic, but ... an aristocracy of industrial power. New Zealand is in form an Imperial Province, but in fact it is substantially a Republic. The will of the great body of the common people is in actual control of the Government.
“In America, farmers organize for agricultural needs, and the working-men organize for labor purposes, but they do not join forces to take control of the Government in their common interest, as is the case in New Zealand. Not only have our farmers and workers failed to get together, but neither group has learned to use the ballot for its interest in any systematic way. The farmers divide at the polls and organized labor divides at the polls. In New Zealand the small farmers are practically solid at the ballot box, and organized labor is solid at the ballot, and the two solids are welded together into one irresistible solid.”
C. Q. D.
BACK HOME. By Eugene Wood. S. S. McClure Co., New York.
It isn’t often that an author writes a real review of his own book. Well, maybe he does, too, but it seldom happens that he writes it as a preface to the book itself, very seldom that it is an interesting one, very, very seldom that it tells you what to expect to find in the book, and very, very, very seldom that he isn’t too much wrapped up in his own private idea of his story to write a fair one from our point of view. However, Eugene Wood, being unconventional and other pleasing things, has done all this in the preface to his “Back Home.” When you have read the preface, you are glad you did, instead of feeling sorry you wasted time on it and fearful lest a book by the same author of that preface will be something of a bore. After Mr. Wood’s preface you know Mr. Wood and about what to expect in Mr. Wood’s book. You like one, and you know you are going to like the other.
It would be the easiest thing in the world for the reviewer to sit down and write reams of “copy” on “Back Home” and the good things therein, but it is much more to the point for him who reads to listen to Mr. Wood himself. If you are human instead of petrified, you will enjoy both the preface and the book. Both reach for the heart-strings, and the terms—the term is good.
Here is the larger part of the preface:
“Gentle Reader:—Let me make you acquainted with my book, ‘Back Home.’ (Your right hand, Book, your right hand, Pity’s sake: How many times have I got to tell you that? Chest up and forward, shoulders back and down, and turn your toes out more.)
“Here’s a book. It is long? No. Is it exciting? No. Any lost diamonds in it? Nup. Mysterious murders? No. Whopping big fortune, now teetering this way, and now teetering that, tipping over on the Hero at the last and smothering him in an avalanche of fifty-dollar bills? No. Does She get Him? Isn’t even that. No ‘heart interest’ at all. What’s the use of putting out good money to make such a book; to have a cover-design for it; to get a man like A. B. Frost to draw illustrations for it, when he costs so like the mischief, when there’s nothing in the book to make a man sit up till ‘way past bedtime’? Why print it at all?
“You may search me. I suppose it’s all right, but if it was my money, I’ll bet I could make a better investment of it. If worst came to worst, I could do like the fellow in the story who went to the gambling-house and found it closed up, so he shoved the money under the door and went away. He’d done his part.