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J4 WILMETTE LIFE t February 21, 1930 I COMMENT on BOOKS and .AUTHORS TWO MEDALS FOR ONE BOOK The first award of , its Schaffer M. emorial Medal for any book has been Made by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society to Susan Delano McKelvey for her monograph, "The Lilac," published by Macmillan. The medal is awarded only at such times as the Society feels that a suffic~ently meritorius work in the inter"!st of horitculture has been d.one to m~rit it. It was established as a memorial to \Villiam L. Schaffer, president of the Society from 1868 to 1884, and has previously been awarded to but five others persons. This is the second medal to be awarded Mrs. McKelvey in recognition of her contribution to horticulture in "The Lilac." The Emily Renwick Achievement Medal of the Garden Club of America for "the most distinguished achievement" of 1928 also came to her. .............................. IOv'NWN .ll.VARt · IYANnON ~. Wilmette l700 BOOKS MOST PEOPLE ARE READING Pure Gold 0. E. Rolvaag Harptr's ............... $2.50 Hidden City Philip Gibbs Doubltday, Doran . :. : . . $2.50 Crystal Icicle Katherine Keith Harcourt, Brace~ Co ..... $2.50 Passion Flower Kathleen Norris Doubleday, Doran ........ $2.50 By Tho~ne Smith. New York : Cosmopolitan Book Corporation. When Francois Rabela,·is set out to write the epic of guzzlers he had that "lachryma Christi," that excellent Moscatello wine, to set before Gargantua and Pantagruel. Mr. Thorne Smith in "The Stray Lamb" in attempting the Rabelaisian creation of a guzzler in t.-resent day America has only synthetic gin for his hero. The not unexpected. result is the difference between the wine of Moscatello and the gin of New York. Mr. Smith, in attempting to write a lusty, joyous book of the assuaging of unhappiness among suburbanites by alcohol, has gone not much farther along the route of lusty humor than the smirking bawdiness of . the vaudeville actor. His thesis of freedomthat "there is plenty of room in the world for a decent spirited drunkard" -is offered halT apologetically and only after a series of minor explosions resu1ting from the changing of ·Mr. T. Lawrence Lamb, the hero, into a horse, a seagull, a kangaroo, a goldfish, a cur dog, a cat, a lion, and finally an unknown and. outlandish combination of beast and bird. The characterization is complet~ly conventional, and the story, apart from the magic adventures of Mr. Lamb, is trite. An unhappy husband, who is slightly corpulent but a splendid felbw unappreciated hy his t>Seud.o -artistic wife, is brought by his ridiculous misadventures to the divorce court and afterwards into the honorable estate of matrim. ony with a beautiful underw~ar u-:odel. Thus all ends well and the ast-,iring suburbanite comes safe at last to the suburbanite ideal of freedom. THE STRAY LAMB. BULLS AND BEARS A HISTORY OF FINANCIAL SPECULATION. By R. H. M ottram. Boston : Little, Brown & Co. This ambitious project undertakes no less a task than to narrate and e·xamine the development of the speculative trait from the time of the Suffolk flint mines, possibly in the Palt'olithic era, down to the day before the November stock exchange dkbacle. It is a trait that is found to have been universal and immemorial, and to it Mr. Mottram justly assigns credit for much of the material progress of the race. Nowadays the tendency is ·.owards the participation of unprecedented. :lUmbers of non-professional speculators in the formal procedures of the established security and commodity exchanges, and a work trat ,·;ould convey to these newcomers S0'11e :;ense of the historical setting of their activities would clearly be useful, both to them and to society. I take it that ~his consideration has inspired "A History of Financial Speculation." To the preparation of his treatise ~Ir. Mottram has brought the combined qualifications of a novelist and. a banker -for he is both. That is to say, he brings the novelist's preoccupation- with character in action, and the banker's peculiarly pragmatic and commonsense ttmperament. And along with the se goes a manner so gracious and enga~ ing that one reads the book sympathet- · ically and wishes that he had brought certain other qualifications as \\'ellchiefly, a firmer grasp of the historical and economic material involved, tiH' interest and enterprise to make signficant and interesting such matters, for instance, as the tedious recurrences 0f the nineteenth century's mysterious "credit cycles," and a more lucid expo ~ itory style. BIOGRAPHY The Life of Thomas E. Watson. By William W. Brewton. Atlanta: Brewton. Writings Ascribed to Richard Rolle, Hermit of Hampole. ·By Hope Emily Allen: Heath. Messalina. By Maurice Magre. Carrier. The Private Life of Lady Hamilton. By Albert Flament. Carrier. The Life and Times of Laurence' Sterne. By Wilbur L. Cross. New Edition. Yale University Press. The Memoirs of Casanova. Edited by Madeleine Boyd. Modern Library. My People. By Arthur Gleason and "A. G." Morrow. A Sketch of Chester Harding, Artist. Edited by Margaret E. \Vhite. Houghton ~Iiffiin. Young Man of Manhattan Katharine Br~sb Farrar and Rinehart ...... $2.50 While the Patient Slept M. G. Eberhart Crimt Club ·............ S2.oo · k 'f For Those Who Like The Latest Pure Gold 0. E. Rolvaag $2.$0 THE LETTERS OF THOMAS SERGEANT PERRY. Selected b,· Edwin Arlington Robinson, auth.or of "Tristram," "Cavender's House." ~tc. With an Introduction by Mr. Robinson. These selections from the letters of Thomas Sergeant Perry will re\'C~al from many angles the many-sided nature of one who may be called, in the best sense of the word, a gentleman of the old. school. He represented in his later years almost the last of Old Boston, of which hardly a vestige is left, except in monuments and memories. Although ?. man of unusual culture and learning, and an inordinate reader of books, there was nothing "dusty" about him, as these letters will prove. He was young in spirit to the last; and. though severe in his criticisms, which need not always be taken seriouslv he was one of the most gracious and 'engaging of men. John Addington Symonds wrote to Edmund Gosse : "When you go to B·1Ston, you will see Perry, one of the most bright-souled students of literature the higgest hduo librorum in Ame'rica. Salute him for me." Lincoln Emil' Ludwig Littlt, Brown and Co ..... $5.00 The Rise of American Civilization Cha1. A. Beard and Mary R. Beard Macmilbn ·.··..·....... S3.oo Coronet Manuel Komrofl $3 Down in the \'allev ·H . W. Freeman $2..50 The Testament of Beauty Robtrt Bridge~ The Crystal Icicle Katherine Keith $2 Not on the Screen H enr;y B. Fuller $2 ..50 Oxford Univtrsity Prtss .... $3.50 The Altar of Honour Ethel M. Dell $2 George Washington 1777-1781 Tbt Savior of tbt Statts Rupert H ughe~ Morrow ·.·····.··..... Ss.oo Passion Flower Kathleen Norris $2 Ella Elisabeth W. Tho~J~as $2 ..50 NOTED PARK FOR SALE "Interesting literary associations are recalled by the announcement that Beech Hill Park, on the edge of Epping Forest, is for sale," says John o'London's \;\/eekly. "It was there after the d.Lath of his father in 1837, that Alfred 'l ennyson went to live with his family and there that the chimes of Waltham Abbey inspired him to write 'Ring out wild bells!' In the same surrounding~ he wrote 'The Talking Oak' and Locksley J:lall,' and he once told a friend that he ltked the house 'for itself and its nearness to ~ondon.' But three years l~ter the fam1ly removed to 'the mere mousetrap of a house' at Tunbridge Wells, and after only a year there to Boxley, near Maidstone." ' Creative Power H ugbfl M tarm Doubleday, Doran ........ $3.50 1567 Sherman Ave. Lord'1-Fint Floor · LS Wilmette 724 Greenleaf 7200 EVANSTON