The Contributors' Column

A WRITER by profession, Wilson Follett made up his mind years ago not lo become a dweller in an ivory tower. Fleeing from Greenwich Village as from the plague, he went West and settled down in a small town in California where he could live as a next-door neighbor to Tom, Dick, and Harry. It was his genuine love of people and his fondness for consorting with ordinary folk which enabled him lo make articulate the common aspirations of millions of plain Americans in his article, ‘ The Forgotten Man to His President,’ published in the March Atlantic. And we dare believe that in ‘The Remembered Man to His President ’ he has succeeded equally well in interpreting the dramatic change that has come over the temper of the public in the stirring weeks since Mr. Roosevelt took office. It is characteristic of Mr. Follett’s method that he is, at this moment, off on a transcontinental tour of the country in a ramshackle Ford, keeping to the back roads, stopping overnight at isolated farmhouses, pausing at village stores to swap yarns and opinions over open cracker barrels, all in an effort to find out still more minutely what the country is thinking and feeling. George E. Sokolsky (‘My Mixed Marriage’) is an American Jew whose wife is a Chinese.

He lived fourteen years in the Orient as special correspondent of the New York Times, and has only recently returned to America, bringing his family with him. His book, The Tinder Box of Asia, published last August, is recognized as an authoritative work on the Manchurian crisis. P. K. Mok (‘The Case for the Heathen’) is a graduate of Lingnan University, a Christian college in China, and is at present pursuing his studies at Columbia University. He expects shortly to return to his native land to engage in teaching and editing. Δ Director of University Settlement in Philadelphia and Chairman of the Unemployment Division of the National Federation of Settlements, Helen Hall (‘Miners Must Eat’) made a trip to Wales and to the mining regions of West Virginia to gather first-hand information about the comparative workings of the English dole and American charity. She published an earlier article on this subject in the May Atlantic. Δ Author of a dozen distinguished novels, Virginia Woolf (‘ Mr. Browning in Wimpole Street’) is the daughter of the late Sir Leslie Stephen and the wife of Leonard Woolf. Among her more recent books are Mrs. Dalloway (1925), A Room of One’s Own (1929), and The Wares (1931). Δ A shingle swinging in the wind outside the jail at Winfield, West Virginia, proclaims that Louis Reed is an Attorney-at-Law and may be consulted within — he boards with the family of the local jailer. ‘The Banjo String’ is the ninth of his stories to appear in the Atlantic.

Henshaw Ward (‘Science Has Not Gone Mystical’) writes: ‘My lifelong interest has been in poetry — or in the stuff of which poetry could be made. But poetry has fallen a generation behind the realities that the most imaginative minds are now exploring. It is those explorations, the material of future poetry, that keep me stretching to understand them. When I quit teaching English in 1922, and was afraid of idleness, a friend challenged me to make a book that he had always needed and never found for his classes in a university. Evolution for John Doe was the result. Since then I have written four other books that describe man’s effort to penetrate the mystery in which he finds himself. My objection to the mystical is its improbability, its tendency to substitute shoddy fancy for the immensity of the truth that is beyond our reach.’ Δ Although he is a physician and Senator of the Irish Free State, Oliver Gogarty (‘Thrush in Ash’) is best known as a poet, He is a leading spirit in that illustrious Dublin group which includes W. B. Yeats, George Russell (Æ), and James Joyce. Δ Readers who have inquired curiously how it. was possible for Gertrude Stein to write the autobiography of Alice B. Toklas will find the riddle explained in the last paragraphs of ‘ Ernest Hemingway and the Post-War Decade.’ Miss Stein’s complete memoirs, from which these chapters have been taken, will be issued in book form early in September by Harcourt, Brace. Δ In ‘The First of the Beechers,’ Lyman Beecher Stowe paints the picture of his great-grandfather, who, with Jonathan Edwards’s theology for inspiration, sowed the seeds of prohibition in America. Sometime this fall Mr. Stowe will publish in book form a complete gallery of family portraits under the title. Saints, Sinners, and Beechers. Δ When D. H. Lawrence died in 1930, he left, an unfinished novel, The Virgin and the Gipsy, and a number of unpublished essays. ‘Christs in the Tirol is one of these, and it is an example of Lawrence’s style at its best. Δ Closely associated with the Atlantic Monthly through more than a quarter of a century, M. A. DeWolfe Howe (‘Victorian Poets: A Side Light ’) is the author of a score of volumes in both prose and verse. Elsie Shipmaster (‘Sweeney, I Bid Thee Depart!’) is a wellknown novelist. Apropos of the present story she writes: ‘The Pennsylvania Germans, like the New Englanders, brought with them across the ocean a conviction that misfortune and illness can be willed upon a man by his enemy, and there are still many exorcists who undertake to heal by pronouncing certain formulæ, most of which come from a little book called The Long Hidden Friend. The story is based upon my own observations.’ Francis C. Cook (‘ Inheritance’) is a young poet recently graduated from the University of Texas. Evelyn Harris and Caroline Henderson have summed up the pertinent facts about themselves in ‘Letters of Two Women Farmers.’ Robert M. Gay (‘On This Spot Occurred . . . ’) is Professor of English at Simmons College.

Our ‘machine for converting the heathen.’ Dear Atlantic, —

Thank you for sending me an advance proof of the article by Mr. P. K. Mok which you are to publish in your August issue. It raises vital questions and goes to the very heart of things.

To one who is a convinced Christian, as I think I am, it is distressing beyond words to learn at first hand of the way in which Christianity has been taught in the East. I cannot believe that it is a picture of any but the work of the most narrow, bigoted, and ignorant sectarians of America. We must remember that, since evangelism is the heart of the missionary call, there has been sent to the East every type of fanatical religionist from the Holy Rollers up. Mr. Mok’s definition of original sin, for example, satisfies me as a theologian. I cannot imagine myself troubling to teach very much about if to the Chinese. 1 have always felt, as Phillips Brooks felt, that humanity is essentially good, I do not see how I could have held fast my faith in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ unless I had believed that; I could not imagine Him wrapping Himself about with sinful, and wholly sinful, flesh.

Again. I cannot conceive of myself, as a missionary to the peoples of the East, attempting to do my work without sympathetic appreciation of their ancient religions. I think it is a fairly good point to make of these ancient world religions that they are, for their races, what the Hebrew religion was to the Jews — a schoolmaster leading them to Christ. I know that that must be the way that the better type of missionaries present Christianity now.

Altogether, I think you have picked up a nugget of gold in this article, even though there are spots where I find myself in disagreement.
CHARLES FISKE
Bishop of Central New York

[Next month the Atlantic will publish an article by Bishop Fiske, ‘Are Foreign Missions Done For?’ — THE EDITORS]

Truth in advertising.

Dear Atlantic, —
To confute Mr. Don knowlton’s interesting article, ‘Truth in advertising — Who Wants it ? ’ which appeared in your April issue, a local furniture store has recently emptied its basement week after week by insert ing. in the San Diego Shopping News such advertisements as the following: —

‘The only thing still intact in this rug is its size, 9 × 12 ft. Rug tatttered and worn, but still serviceable for beach shack or mountain cabin. 108 sq. ft. in one piece at a cent a sq. ft. . . . $1.08.’

‘Bedroom Rocker. Ivory enameled. Used rather peculiarly. Half of cane-seat still shows enamel, the other half perhaps sticking to the person who sal on it. Thursday yours for . . . $1.22.’

‘Velours-covered Sofa. Used. Let ’s describe it sofagraphically. From high ridge in centre cushion there’s a gradual slope to neatly dented cushion on left. A little steeper is descent from ridge to Cushion on right. Sort of Continental Divide in miniature. Strong and sturdy, though used. Slope in sofa gradual, drop in price sharp and abrupt. Thursday . . . $11.44. Terms if desired.’

Verily, there is truth in advertising in California — sometimes!

MARGUERITE KIRK PILE San Diego, California On understanding a Stein.

Dear Atlantic,

A certain limerick runs:

There ’s u notable family named Stein;

There ’s Gert, and there ’s Ep, and there ’s Ein: Gert ’s poems are punk, Ep’s statues are junk —

Can’t make head nor tail out of Ein.

These lines recurred to me as I read Gertrude Stein’s delightful autobiography. Years ago I puckered my brows over her poetry and racked my brain over Tender Buttons and The Making of Americans. Out now I understand. It isn’t Gertrude Stein who is out of step — it is I. The May Atlantic had not been out two days before every copy in our town had been bought up by members of a modern art society to which I belong. Even then there were not half enough to go round.

All of us think that ‘Alice B. Toklas’ is as refreshing a piece of writing as we have ever come across — free, unrestrained, original. Many be the chapters!
ANNA WORK SHAWKEY
Charleston. West Virginia

A. E. N., live forever!

Dear Atlantic, —
Mr. Newton’s repeated references to his being almost ‘coffin ripe’ are distressing. No man with his fresh and stimulating outlook, his sense of humor, and his zest for living — and book collecting— can ever be coffin ripe. Why, he will continue to defy the undertaker for another generation or two — at least such is the hope of many readers of the Atlantic who always enjoy his causeries.
M. G. HOLSTEIN
New York City

Addison on Sunday.

Dear Atlantic, —
I wish to add an emphatic ‘Amen’ — surely a justifiable Sabbath-day expression to Philip Curtiss’s excellent article, '‘Sunday.’ in the May Atlantic. In connection with it I recalled the words of Addison, in 112 of the Spectator papers, the issue of Monday, July 9, 1711: —

‘I am always well pleased with a country Sunday, and think, if keeping holy the seventh day were only a human institution, it would be the best method that could have been thought of for the polishing and civilization of mankind. It is certain the, country people would soon degenerate into a kind of savages and barbarians, were there not such frequent returns of a stated time, in which the whole village meet together with their best faces, and in their cleanliest habits, to converse with one another upon indifferent subjects, hear their duties explained to them, and join together in adoration of the Supreme Being. Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week, not only as it refreshes in their minds the notions of religion, but as it puts both the sexes upon appearing in their most agreeable forms, and exerting all such qualities as are apt to give them a figure in the eye of the village.’
MARY LYNCH JOHNSON
Raleigh, North Carolina

Stocks and rights.

Dear Atlantic, —
our attention has been called to a statement in an article entitled ‘From Insull to Injury,’ by N. R. Danielian, appearing in your April issue, as follows: —

‘ In October 1929, Corporation Securities Co. of Chicago purchased from Halsey, Stuart & Co. preferred stocks of Middle West at prices fourteen to twenty dollars higher than the market quotations on the same day. It then had them redeemed by the Middle West at the purchase price. The latter charged the excessive premiums paid to cost of common stock. In other words, an obvious. one might say an unjustified, profit to Halsey, Stuart & Co., an outside interest, was used lo inflate the value of investments, instead of charging off against surplus.’

The facts are not as stated. Halsey, Stuart & Co. sold to Corporation Securities Company of Chicago a block of Middle West Utilities Company stock and rights at a price which was substantially below market quotations and which represented no profit whatsoever to Halsey, Stuart & Co. The preferred stock purchased was not redeemed by Middle West at ‘ the excessive’ purchase price, but at the regular redemption price paid to all preferred stockholders.

An examination of the original book of account of this company and of the Corporation Securities Company of Chicago, which books have been at all times available, would have disclosed these facts and would have prevented a wholly unjustified reflection upon this house.

We have exhibited the above quoted statement from the Danielian article to the counsel for the receiver and trustee of Corporation Securities Company of Chicago, who agree that the statement is unsupported by the facts.
HALSEY. STUART & Co.
Chicago, Illinois