The Contributors' Column
FOR upwards of two years Walter Lippmann (p. 257) has been engaged upon the series beginning in this issue of the Atlantic. As his argument enrolls from month to month, his discussion of Fascism, Collectivism, and Liberalism will in many thoughtful minds bring an involuntary comparison with the great papers of the Federalist.
Alfred North Whitehead (p. 260), the most eminent of living philosophers, pays his respects to Harvard College on the occasion of its threehundredth birthday. The objective he sets for American education must appeal to every teacher.
Two years ago Mrs. Winthrop Chanler (p. 271) delighted Atlantic readers with the account of her coming of age in the picturesque society of Rome. We are sorry it is too late to correct an error concerning Dr. Bigelow’s grave, which is on the shore of Lake Biwa, many miles from Nara.
Armand de Caulaincourt (p. 2.9), a marquis in his own right, was born to the profession of arms. He served Napoleon as Master of Horse, Ambassador to Russia, and twice as Minister of Foreign Affairs. His reminiscences, long suppressed by his family, at last came to light, were skillfully translated by George Libaire, and now offer unimpeachable testimony about Europe’s greatest dictator.
In her short stories and poems Josephine W. Johnson (p. 288) makes good the promise seen in her first novel, Now in November, the Pulitzer Prize winner for 1934.
Lovers of fiction will not soon forget MacKinlay Kantor (p. 289). His appealing short story, ‘The Voice of Bugle Ann’ (Atlantic for August 1935), and Long Remember, his novel of the Civil War, have made many friends.
Russian born, Gregory Zilboorg, M. D. (p. 298) is a graduate of both the Psychoneurological Institute of Petrograd and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. Secretary to the Ministry of Labor in the Kerensky Government, he came to this country after the Soviet Revolution; he translated that successful play, He Who Gets Slapped, and then proceeded to establish himself as one of the ablest psychiatrists in New York City. He has contributed a number of papers to various medical journals.
American correspondent of a powerful French paper, Raoul de Rousy de Sales (p. 308) had at Cleveland and at Philadelphia his first glimpses of the American parties in convention assembled.
Morrow .Mayo (p. 313), a citizen of California, describes a hobby which will tempt every struggling couple. The only trouble is that so few of us have gold in the back yard. Should any Atlantic readers follow Mr. Mayo’s example to the extent of ‘cooking’ the amalgamated gold and quicksilver in a pan, let them be cautioned to raise the windows and stay out of the kitchen while the amalgam is on the stove, because, says Mr. Mayo, ‘fumes of mercury, if inhaled, are dangerous.’
The present plight and prospects of the French Republic are clearly seen by An American Observer (p. 316), who has lived in that country for close to thirty years.
Sumner H. Slichter (p. 321) is a professor of Business Economics at the Harvard School of Business Administration. It can be easily demonstrated, he believes, that about, half of the present number of unemployed cannot be absorbed into industry unless we build them new plants to work in and new machines to run — and yet the Administration persists in operating on the assumption that we have a capital surplus instead of a shortage!
In our columns and in his weekly feature in the New York Herald Tribune,George E. Sokolsky (p. 331) continually demonstrates his knowledge of the working conditions in this country.
Winifred Kirkland (p. 341), who has had one of our latchkeys for a long time, now sends us ‘a live portrait against a live background.’
A young poet devoted to New England, John Holmes (p. 348) graduated from Tufts and did graduate work at Harvard before becoming Poetry Editor of the Boston Evening Transcript.
Within the past five years, Ellery Sedgwick (p. 350) has enjoyed two friendly visits in Japan.
Malcolm B. Ronald (p. 359), who can tell the Dakota Twins apart, is Managing Editor of the Daily Republic, with headquarters in Mitchell, South Dakota. We think he knows better than most the kind of general opinion which the Dakotas represent, what they want from life and government, and what they can contribute to the Union.
The youngest contributor in this issue, Timothy Fuller (p, 366), a descendant of Margaret the Great, has devised a good crisp story of what might happen if someone murdered a Harvard professor to-day.
Whether New York City is iniquitous or greathearted has been discussed by our readers ever since Mr. Pennyfeather raised the question in our April issue.
Dear Atlantic, —
Last October a frail little old lady took a trip to New York. The train left, near midnight. It was a quest for a ‘wandering boy.’ She felt unequal to the journey, and afraid of the big city. She had known New York in joyful young days when she could dance safely up and down the avenue — but now ? She was afraid!
After ten days she came home with the cockles of her heart warmed through. She had found in New York a friendly neighborhood, kindness as genuine as in the Old Dominion. The Save-a-Life League, Sam Shoemaker’s church, the Calvary Men’s Mission, and church people in Brooklyn, all ready to help her.
So I arise to declare New York’s goodness. The lines on New York quoted in the ‘Column’ omit entirely the New York I found.
I appreciate New England. My ancestors came from there. And one of them, William Pynchon, founded Springfield. The beloved organist of our church here was a graduate of ‘Harvard Medical,’ and a friend of Phillips Brooks, and in himself an example of the best New England culture. All this I revere. Yet going to New York as I did, frail and old and timid, and learning its great charity and friendliness, makes me love New York.
GRACE W. HARRISON
Staunton,Virginia
There is no more exacting contributor to theAtlanticthan Albert Jay Nock, but here is one reader who feels entitled to correct the corrector.
Dear Atlantic, —
Mr. Albert Jay Nock, interpreting ‘Isaiah’s Job’ in the June number, in ins treatment of ‘the masses’ and ‘the Remnant’ falls into an undiscriminating use of language, against which he has given us valuable warnings elsewhere under the head of ‘impostor-terms.’
It used to be a commonplace that prophecy foretells the future as part of its qualification to ‘forthtell’ the Permanent. Lincoln’s dictum, that all of the people cannot be fooled all of the time, implies that collective mankind has permanent interests to which the race as a whole cannot be universally and irrecoverably blinded; that there is no ultimate alternative to popular self-rule, because common welfare is the unescapable responsibility of the Many. Now prophecy has repeatedly directed challenge to this collective responsibility for justice, fellowship, and race preservation. In responding, the people almost invariably cut a poor figure, earning the cheap decision of the ultra-censorious, the ultra-fastidious, and the ultra-masterful. But these coteries of self-elected morally or culturally élite, whatever their merits, are all but hopelessly deaf to the prophetic challenge. As a ‘ Remnant,’ or as prophets, they are worse than a travesty. No sacrificial Remnant could rally to Plato, Marcus Aurelius, or Goethe. Contempt and dislike for the common or garden human being are sure marks of prophetic sterility.
The greatest critics of popular folly, from Moses and Socrates to the author of the De Civitate Dei, were not demophobes. Great democrats such as Pericles and Lincoln were not mob flatterers. All such, including Isaiah, retained gifts of sweetness and esteem for the genus Homo, to the last. And these are the sustaining gifts of any Remnant with which prophecy has any concern whatever.
W. T. M. GAMBLE
Washington, D. C.
Charles D. Stewart’s memorable account of Old Abe has brought this pleasing corroboration from another eyewitness.
Dear Atlantic, —
Mr. Stewart’s fascinating article upon the American Eagle in the July Atlantic recalls a long-forgotten experience in which ‘Old Abe’ was the star performer. This so aptly supplements the description of the Eagle at the Centennial Exposition in 1876 that I am tempted to relate it.
My grandfather took a number of his family, including me, a boy of eleven, to Philadelphia to see the great Exposition; and one day, while threading our way through the crowds, we. Came to a place where this famous bird was on display, perched well above the heads of the throng, motionless as a statue.
We heard people talking about ‘Old Abe,’ and the significance of his history gradually dawned upon me. He stood so still I thought he was stuffed, but altera while he slowly turned his head, blinked his eyes, and turned back again.
I do not remember seeing any souvenir feattiers sold, but my grandfather did buy for me one of ‘Old Abe’s Autographs.’ This was obtained for us by the attendant, who picked up an envelope, reached way up to the bird’s head, and gently tapped his bill with it. At this the eagle suddenly snapped at the out held paper, puncturing it with his sharp beak, and then resumed his dignified, motionless attitude.
My remembrance is that these autographs at first sold for a dollar, but that the price was later reduced to twenty-five cents.
WILLIAM DODGE HORNE
Beech Creek, Pennsylvania
A hard knot for the genealogist.
Dear Atlantic, —
I am impelled to comment upon the suggestion in Glanville Smith’s delightful ’Young Mortality’ that the antiquarian of the future will enable the historian to learn, from gravestones, what immigrants settled in this or that American town. And that by means of the following: —
When, in the nineties, we lived in a city in southwestern Michigan, there arrived, from the Netherlands, a family named Vroegindewey, which name, literally translated, means ‘Early in the pasture.’ Mr. Vroegindewey was told that his name was of course ’impossible,’and was induced to adopt a sort of Americanized version of its sound: Fruentheway.
About a year later, his brother also came, but, in response to similar arguments, took as his American name the first word of his Dutch one: Early. With the result that Jennie Fruentheway and Kate Early were first cousins on their fathers’ side.
What either the antiquarian or the historian of the future would glean from those names on gravestones I leave Mr. Smith to guess.
CORNEIL RIDDERHOF
San Diego, California
Paging Mr. Jingle.
Dear Atlantic, —
Having read with great interest, the article on Mr. Pickwick in the Aprii Atlantic, I am writing to you because I have recently come across what may well be the literary prototype of Alfred Jingle, Esq. If, as is not impossible, this discovery of mine is not new, then please accept my apologies in advance for having needlessly bothered you.
In The Road to Ruin (1792), by Thomas Holcroft, is a character, Goldfinch by name, whose speech is of the curiously broken .sort, favored by Mr. Jingle. Of this, however, you can judge better by the following extracts.
ACT II. SCENE IHarry: A fine woman?
Gold: Prodigious — sister to the Irish giant — six feel in her stockings! That’s your sort — sleek coat. flowing mane, broad chest, all bone — dashing figure in a phaeton — sky-blue habit, scarlet sash, green hat, yellow ribands, white leathers, gold band and tassel — that’s your sort.
Harry: I Ha, ha, ha! Heigho! Why, you are a high fellow, Charles.
Gold: To be sure — know the odds — hold four in hand — turn a corner in style— reins in form — elbows square — wrist pliant Havait! Drive the Coventry stage twice a week all summer — pay for an inside place — mount the box — tip the coachy a crown — beat the mail — come in full speed — rattle down the gate-way — take care of your heads! — never killed but one woman and a child in all my life — that’s your sort!
ACT III, SCENE I
Jenny: Where did it happen?
Gold: Bye-road — back of Islington — had them tight, in hand too — came to a short turn and a narrow lane — up flew a damned dancing-master’s umbrella — bounce! — off they went — road repairing — wheelbarrow in the way — crash! — out flew I — whiz — fire flashed — lay stunned — got up — looked foolish — shafts broke—Snarler and Blackguard both down — Black-and-all-Black paying away — pannels smashed, traces cut, Snarler lamed.
These short quotations illustrate the matter sufficienlly well. Incidentally, the situation at the end of the latter extract, where Goldfinch is about to start out to procure a license; for his marriage to a rich widow, is not unlike the scene between the luckless Miss Wardle and Mr. Jingle as the lattter is about to start forth on a similar errand.
The DNB reports that this play was Holcroft’s ’best and most successful’ and that it ‘became a stock piece.’ It seems to me that one is hardly stretching conjecture! too far to assume that Dickens was familiar with it. At any rate, the parallel is interesting,
MALCOLM B. JONES
Salem, Massachusetts
That feeling of elevation.
Dear Atlantic, —
‘Et ego in Arcadia fui.’
I also flew .
It was about, seventeen years ago — when I was a girl of nine. I had long since relegated the experience to the lost limbo of the imagination, since none of my friends had had it. Even now I hesitate to speak of it, but H. S. C. gives me. courage.
My flying was strictly localized, and not under complete control. I could n’t always fly when I made the effort; sometimes something stronger than I took hold of me, and I found myself in the; air. It was an indescribable experience—exhilarating, yet bringing with it profound peace.
I made ‘a special little movement with my feet’ (something after the order of a fluttier-kick) and I was off. To stay in the air I had to keep up this special motion. If I was at ease, I was successful; if I was tense, I failed.
The only place I could fly was in my next-door neighbor’s house;, down the long flight of stairs from the second floor to the; first. I ran down the few steps around the curve, then made that special motion, and I was off in space;. The first time it happened I did n’t believe it; alter it had happened several times, and I had gained some degree of control of the motion, I experimented, impressed with the possibilities it offered.
I tried my own front stairs, but nothing happened. I tried the back and the attic stairs of my friend’s house. I tried if on level ground, and on slopes and on hills. It would n’t work. I talked about it, cautiously, to my friend and to other children. They could n’t do if.
When I was eleven my friend moved away, and then I moved. I tried in other towns, but nowhere else could I fly. After puzzling over it at intervals for several years, common sense; told me I had imagined it. But I knew I had n’t; I really did fly.
Now, on the evidence presented in the Atlantic, I can throw common sense to the winds. But I’m still bothered: why could I fly only in that one spot ?
Please excuse my anonymity. I’m married now, and generously credited with sobriety, practicality, and common sense. I don’t want to forfeit my reputation but I flew.
D. C. S.
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Hear this, Dunsany.
Dear Atlantic.
Here is a high-powered adjective from the legislative field. This is Section 12 of Chapter 17 of the laws passed by the Idaho Legislature in its extraordinary session of 1935: ‘This Act shall be known as The Cooperative Emergency Revenue Fund Treasury Anticipation Note Act of 1935.’
IVY KELLERMAN REED
Washington, D. C.
Dear Atlantic, —
The polysyllabic verse by Francis A. Wood suggests one paragraph which was well-known at the beginning of the century: —
‘In promulgating your esoteric cogitations and articulating your superficial sentimentalities and psychological Observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your conversational communication possess a clarified conciseness, a concatenated cogency, a coalescent Consistency. Eschew jejune babblement, asinine affectation and flatulent garrulity. Sedulously avoid polysyllabic profundity and vainglorious rhodomontade. That is. don’t use big words.’
WILLIAM B. CAMPBELL
Ithaca, New York
A pat on the back for the youngest contrihUTOR.
Dear Atlantic, —
I must congratulate you on acquiring Timothy Fuller, whose novel begins in your August issue. It’s a pleasure to read the work of a young man who does not write with one hand while he sniffles into his handkerchief in the other. Mr. Fuller has a delightful air of youth and he is as fresh as green paint and he is going far if he can keep up this stride. I imagine that one of his next productions will be a successful play. He has it in him. You were lucky to get him.
JOHN R. M. TAYLOR
Washington, D. C.
When the best hotel was red.
Dear Atlantic, —
In Mary Doyle’s bright, reminiscent paper. ‘ The Best Hotel,’ in the June issue, please note that she has forgotten that in her day the Plaza was a huge, uncompromising oblong of the reddest brick facing Fifth Avenue, and not a gray, green-roofed emulation of a French chateau as it now stands. The present hotel is the second Plaza.
J. J. LEE
Baltimore, Maryland
When truth is funnier than fiction.
Dear Atlantic, —
If a person can be awakened at midnight from a good sound sleep and laugh at a newspaper column — why, it must be pretty funny. That is just what happened to me.
My husband had attended a meeting in the city and bought a paper on his way home, and when he came to the enclosed lawsuit had to wake me up so I could chuckle with him — and as I really enjoyed it under those conditions I thought Alantic readers perhaps would like a laugh also.
RUTH LIBBEY
MONTEBELLO, California
LAWSUIT IS A COMPLETE OUTFIT!
Case No. 11.263-C, involving illegal liquor transactions, was called by Federal Judge George Cosgrave yesterday.
‘Your name?‘ inquired the court of the first defendant.
‘Coates, sir — Marvin Coates.’ replied the defendant.
‘Coates,’ commented the court. And to the second defendant: ‘ Your name? ’
‘ Panz, sir Tony Panz,’was the reply.
‘Coates and Panz — well, well,’ commented the court. And to the third defendant, who had suddenly begun to squirm and loosen his collar: —
‘Your name, by no chance, could be — ah — Collar or Cuff, for instance?’
‘ No. sir: no, sir — it’s — it’s
‘Out with it’ ordered the court.
‘It’s Shurtz, Judge, honest — Harold Shurtz,’ gulped the defendant.
The court took a swallow of water, and in a low, tense voice inquired : —
‘ Are you gentlemen — Coates, Panz, and Shurtz
represented by counsel?‘
The defendants cast agonized glances at each other, but stood mute.
‘Their attorney is Mr. Vest, your honor — Charles Vest, but he is not present.’ hastily interposed Assistant United States Attorney Jack Powell.
After quiet had been restored, the case against Coates, Panz. and Shurtz was continued fora week, in order that Vest might appear with them.
Good sportsmanship.
Dear Atlantic, —
A week or so ago I submitted a manuscript to the Atlantic Monthly which I received back forthwith accompanied with a rejection slip winch moves me to write this letter. As an old collector of rejection slips I am pleased to be able to inform you that yours is the pleasantest it has ever been my lot to receive.
The composition of a pleasant rejection slip is no mean task, since such slips are by their very nature not adapted to the creation of pleasant reactions in the minds of those receiving them. Yours, however, is an exception to the general run of such material and I feel that you should he applauded for the adroitness which has enabled you to convey even unpalatable news tactfully. Thank you.
VIRGINIA CREED
New York City