WITH FULL DIRECTIONS
=i=
I have read the book called _Civilization in the United States_, a
collection of essays by various Americans, and count the time well spent
chiefly because, at the end of the chapter on "Sport," I came upon these
words by Ring W. Lardner:
"The best sporting fiction we know of, practically the only sporting
fiction an adult may read without fear of stomach trouble, is contained in
the collected works of the late Charles E. Van Loan."
This is expert testimony, if there is such a thing. The books Mr. Lardner
referred to are published in a five-volume memorial edition consisting
of:
FORE! GOLF STORIES
SCORE BY INNINGS: BASEBALL STORIES
OLD MAN CURRY: RACETRACK STORIES
TAKING THE COUNT: PRIZE RING STORIES
BUCK PARVIN: STORIES OF THE MOTION PICTURE GAME.
This collected edition was published by George H. Doran Company with the
arrangement that every cent above actual cost should go to Mrs. Van Loan
and her children.
William T. Tilden, 2nd, was winner of the world's tennis championship in
1920 and 1921. With W. M. Johnston he was winner of the Davis cup in the
same years. He also won the United States championship in those years. His
book, _The Art of Lawn Tennis_, published in 1921, was republished in
1922. The revised edition included chapters on the winning of the Davis
cup and on the world's and the United States championships, on Mrs.
Mallory's play in the women's world championship games in France and
England, and on Mlle. Lenglen's play in America. Mr. Tilden also added an
estimate of the promising youngsters playing tennis and indulged in one or
two surprising and radical prophecies.
_Twenty Years of Lawn Tennis_, by A. Wallis Myers, an English player of
distinction, has interesting chapters on play in other countries than
America, England and France. An anecdotal volume this, with moments on the
Riviera and matches played in South Africa.
After unpreventable delays we have, at last, _The Gist of Golf_ by Harry
Vardon. Using remarkable photographs, Vardon devotes a chapter to each
club and chapters to stance, grip, and swing. Although the chief value of
the book is to the player who wants to improve his game, there is text
interesting to everyone familiar with golf; for Vardon gives personal
reminiscences covering years of play and illustrative of his
instructions.
=ii=
I suppose the fifty-three photographs, mostly full page ones, are the
outstanding feature of _Wild Life in the Tree Tops_, by Captain C. W. R.
Knight. This English book, large and flat, shows with the aid of the
camera, the merlin pursuing her quarry, young tawny owls in a disused
magpie's nest, female noctules and their young, the male kestrel brooding,
and a male buzzard that has just brought a rabbit to the younglings in the
nest. Plenty of other pictures like these! The chapters deal with the
buzzards of the Doone country, the lady's hawk, woodpeckers, brown owls,
sparrow-hawks, herons and various other feathered people.
Did you ever read _Lad: A Dog_? Well, anyway, there is a man named Albert
Payson Terhune and he and his wife live at a place called "Sunny-bank," at
Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, where they raise prize winning collie dogs.
Photographs come from New Jersey showing Mr. and Mrs. Terhune taking
afternoon tea, entirely surrounded by magnificently coated collies. You
will also find, if you stray into a bookstore this autumn, a book with a
jacket drawn by Charles Livingston Bull--a jacket from which looms a
colossal collie. He carries in a firmly knotted shawl or blanket or sheet
or something (the knot clenched between his teeth) a new-born babe.
New-born or approximately so. The title of this book is _Further
Adventures of Lad_.
Mr. Terhune writes the best dog stories. Read a little bit from the first
chapter of _Further Adventures of Lad_:
"Even the crate which brought the new dog to the Place failed somehow to
destroy the illusion of size and fierceness. But the moment the crate door
was opened the delusion was wrecked by Lad himself.
"Out on to the porch he walked. The ramshackle crate behind him had a
ridiculous air of chrysalis from which some bright thing had departed. For
a shaft of sunlight was shimmering athwart the veranda floor. And into the
middle of the warm bar of radiance Laddie stepped--and stood.
"His fluffy puppy-coat of wavy mahogany-and-white caught a million
sunbeams, reflecting them back in tawny-orange glints and in a dazzle as
of snow. His forepaws were absurdly small even for a puppy's. Above them
the ridging of the stocky leg bones gave as clear promise of mighty size
and strength as did the amazingly deep little chest and square shoulders.
"Here one day would stand a giant among dogs, powerful as a timber-wolf,
lithe as a cat, as dangerous to foes as an angry tiger; a dog without fear
or treachery; a dog of uncanny brain and great lovingly loyal heart and,
withal, a dancing sense of fun. A dog with a soul.
"All this, any canine physiologist might have read from the compact frame,
the proud head carriage, the smoulder in the deep-set sorrowful dark eyes.
To the casual observer, he was but a beautiful and appealing and
wonderfully cuddleable bunch of puppyhood.
"Lad's dark eyes swept the porch, the soft swelling green of the lawn. The
flash of fire-blue lake among the trees below. Then he deigned to look at
the group of humans at one side of him. Gravely, impersonally, he surveyed
them; not at all cowed or strange in his new surroundings; courteously
inquisitive as to the twist of luck that had set him down here and as to
the people who, presumably, were to be his future companions.
"Perhaps the stout little heart quivered just a bit, if memory went back
to his home kennel and to the rowdy throng of brothers and sisters and,
most of all, to the soft furry mother against whose side he had nestled
every night since he was born. But if so, Lad was too valiant to show
homesickness by so much as a whimper. And, assuredly, this House of Peace
was infinitely better than the miserable crate wherein he had spent twenty
horrible and jouncing and smelly and noisy hours.
"From one to another of the group strayed the level sorrowful gaze. After
the swift inspection Laddie's eyes rest again on the Mistress. For an
instant, he stood, looking at her, in that mildly polite curiosity which
held no hint of personal interest.
"Then, all at once, his plumy tail began to wave. Into his sad eyes sprang
a flicker of warm friendliness. Unbidden--oblivious of everyone else--he
trotted across to where the Mistress sat. He put one tiny white paw in her
lap and stood thus, looking up lovingly into her face, tail awave, eyes
shining.
"'There's no question whose dog he's going to be,' laughed the Master.
'He's elected you--by acclamation.'"
=iii=
Not content with being the husband of Margaret Sangster, C. M. Sheridan
has written _The Stag Cook Book_. I would have it understood that this is
an honest-to-goodness cook-book, although I readily confess that there is
plenty of humour throughout its pages. Mr. Sheridan has acquired various
unusual and unreplaceable recipes--I believe he secured from Wladislaw
Benda, the illustrator, a rare and secret formula for the preparation of a
species of Hungarian or Polish pastry. Now, as every housewife knows, and
as no man except a Frenchman or somebody like that knows, the preparation
of pastry is an intricate art. Simply to make ordinary French pastry
requires innumerable rollings to incredible thinnesses; besides which the
pastry has to be chilled; but there is more than that to this recondite
substance which Mr. Benda, probably under the terms of the Treaty of
Brest-Litovsk, surrendered to Mr. Sheridan. The pastry in question has to
be executed with the aid of geometrical designs. Mr. Sheridan has supplied
the necessary front elevation and working plans. He shows you where you
fold along the line from A to B--in other words, along the dotted line.
Thus no man using this unique cook-book can go wrong any more than his
wife can go wrong when making a new dress according to Pictorial Review or
McCall's or Delineator patterns.
On the other hand, women remain still chiefly responsible for the food we
eat. Elizabeth A. Monaghan's _What to Eat and How to Prepare It_ is an
orthodox cook-book in contrast with Mr. Sheridan's daring adventure.
=iv=
Large numbers of people still play games. I do not mean cards or tennis or
golf or any of the famous outdoor and indoor sports, but just games, the
sort of things that are sometimes called stunts and that make the life of
the party--or, by their absence or failure, rob the evening gathering of
all its vitality. For the people who play games, Edna Geister is the one
best bet. Edna Geister knows all about stunts and games and parties and
she brims over with clever ideas for the hostess or recreation leader. You
will find them in her book _Ice-breakers and the Ice-breaker Herself_. The
second section of this book, _The Ice-breaker Herself_, has been bound
separately for the convenience of those already owning _Ice Breakers_.
Miss Geister's latest book, _It Is to Laugh_, was written primarily for
adults because there is so much material already available for the
recreation of children. Nevertheless almost every one of the games and
stunts described in _It Is to Laugh_ can be used for children. There are
games for large groups and small groups, games for the family, for dinner
parties, for community affairs and for almost any kind of social
gathering, with one chapter devoted to out-of-door and picnic programmes.
Playing the piano is not a game, at least not as Mark Hambourg, the
pianist and composer, plays it. Hambourg, though born in South Russia in
1879, the eldest son of the late Professor Michel Hambourg, has for years
been a naturalised Englishman. In fact, he married in 1907 the Honourable
Dorothea Mackenzie, daughter of Lord Muir Mackenzie. And the pair have
four daughters. Mark Hambourg was a pupil of Leschetitzky in Vienna, where
he obtained the Liszt scholarship in 1894. He has made concert appearances
all over the world, his third American tour falling in 1907, and his first
Canadian tour in 1910.
Mark Hambourg's book is called _How to Play the Piano_ and the text is
helped with practical illustrations and diagrams and a complete compendium
of five-finger exercises, scales, arpeggi, thirds and octaves as practised
by Hambourg.
=v=
Those who read The Bookman will not need to be told that the articles by
Robert Cortes Holliday on _Writing as a Business: A Practical Guide for
Authors_, will constitute an exceptional book. The great point about Mr.
Holliday's chapters, which have been written in collaboration with
Alexander Van Rensselaer, is that they are disinterested. There has been
an immense amount of printed matter, some of it in book form, telling of
the problems that confront the writer, especially the young beginner. As a
rule, the underlying motive was to induce people to write so that someone
else might make money out of their efforts, whether the writers did or
not. So-called correspondence schools in the art of writing, so-called
literary bureaus, interested individuals anxious to earn "commissions,"
and sometimes individuals who purported to be publishers have for many
years carried on a continuous campaign at the expense of persons who did
not know how to write but who fancied they could write and who, above
everything, craved to write--craved seeing themselves in print and hearing
themselves referred to as "authors" or "writers." It would take a
statistician versed in all manner of mysteries and calculations to tell
how many people have been deluded by this stuff, and how much money has
been nuzzled out of them. The time was certainly here for someone in a
position to tell the truth to speak up.
And of Mr. Holliday's qualifications there is no question. He has had to
do with books and authors and book publishing for years. He was, as his
readers know, for a number of years in the Scribner bookstore. He was with
Doubleday, Page & Company at Garden City; he was with George H. Doran
Company, serving not only as editor of The Bookman but acting in other
editorial capacities. He is now connected with Henry Holt & Company. As an
author he is amply established. Therefore, when he tells about writing and
book publishing and bookselling, and when he discusses such subjects as
"Publishing Your Own Book," his statements are most thoroughly documented.
The important thing, however, is that Mr. Holliday is disinterested, he
has no axe to grind in the advice he gives; although the impressive thing
about his book is the absence of advice and the continual presentation of
unvarnished facts. After all, confronted with the facts, the literary
aspirant of ordinary intelligence must and should reach his own
conclusions as regards what he wants to do and how best to essay it. This
is a sample of the kind of straightforwardness to which Mr. Holliday
adheres:
"An experienced writer 'on his own' may earn a couple of hundred dollars
or so in one week, and for several weeks afterward average something like
$14.84. The beginner-writer should not consider that he has 'arrived' when
he has sold one story, or even several; it may be a year before he places
another. And the future of a writer who may be having a very fair success
now is not any too secure. Public taste changes. New orders come in. The
kind of thing which took so well yesterday may be quite out of fashion
tomorrow.
"There is among people generally much misconception as to the profits
ordinarily derived by the author from the publication of a book. The price
of a novel today is about two dollars. Usually the author receives a
royalty of about fifteen cents a copy on the first two thousand copies
sold, and about twenty cents on each copy thereafter. A novel which sold
upward of 50,000 copies would bring the author something like $10,000.
Many men make as much as $10,000 by a year's work at some other business
or profession than authorship. But authors who make that amount in a year,
or anything near that amount, are exceedingly rare. A book is regarded by
the publisher as highly successful if it sells from five to ten thousand
copies. Far and away the greater number of books published do not sell as
many as 1,500 copies. Many far less. A recently published book, which
received a very cordial 'press,' has had an uncommon amount of publicity,
and the advertisements of which announce that it is in its 'fourth
printing,' has, after about half a year, earned for its author perhaps
$1,000. Its sale now in active measure is over. An author is fairly
fortunate who receives as much as $500 or $600 from the sale of his book.
I recall an excellent story published something over a year ago which was
much praised by many reviewers. It took the author probably the better
part of a year to write it. He was then six months or more getting it
accepted. He has not been able to place much of anything since. At the
end, then, of two years and a half he has received from his literary
labors about $110."
Mr. Van Rensselaer has greatly enhanced the usefulness of _Writing as a
Business_ by the addition of very complete bibliographies.
_Illumination and Its Development in the Present Day_, by Sidney
Farnsworth, has nothing to do with street or indoor lighting but has a
great deal to do with lettering and illuminating manuscripts. Mr.
Farnsworth traces the growth of illumination from its birth, showing, by
means of numerous diagrams and drawings, its gradual development through
the centuries from mere writing to the elaborate poster work and
commercial lettering of the present day. Although other books have already
been written on this fascinating subject, Mr. Farnsworth breaks new ground
in many directions; he treats the matter from the modern standpoint in a
manner which makes his work invaluable not only to students of the art,
but also to the rapidly-growing public interested in what has hitherto
been a somewhat exclusive craft. The book is well illustrated.