The San Francisco Examiner from San Francisco, California • 15

book reviews satiny- fflmfi) of CtjentjS page of tfje isan ffvantisto examiner DECEMBER 15, 1931 CURRENT TOPICS Only man clogs his happiness with cares, destroying what is, with thoughts of what may he dryden VAGAB0ND1A READING WRITING A Thought for Today By TILL CLTPY Worry, Worry, All the Time! -By FRANK cttftivav THE PEANUT Us Influence on Landscape of Southern France IT IS getting more and more dif- would regard with suspicion any-f icult to keep track of the va- body who told us it was the short rious royalties and former royal- est route. Either Otto has no ties of Europe, and matters have sense of direction or he has been Inside Dope on the Movie Situation Abroad By BRUTSO LESSING LONDON. A leMer from James F. Morris, New York. "Some day when you have nothing to write about why not write about the movi heroes and heroines of Paris or London or any other city which you visit in your restless rambling over Europe? I've often wondered, for instance, who is the favorite actor in Paris, The Hague or Hong Kong.

been made any simpler by not ently hurled WHEN my friends scold me for never travelling I comfort myself with the thought that Socrates never left Athens. Socrates only smiled when people told him that Athens was all right to visit but they wouldn't live there if you gave them the place. Dr. Samuel Johnson, who also stayed put, except for a few brief trips in his later days, remarked, "When a man is tired of London he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford." I don't live in London, but I feel the same way about the place where I do live. I haven't decided yet whether this feeling is caused by lack of imagination, pathological fear of losing my suitcase or just plain dumbness.

the bombshell rec By ALDOUS HUXLEY LONDON. A priori and on general principles there seems to be no necessary reason why peanuts should have any effect on the landscape of southern France. But, in actual fact, the influence exists. Peanuts are changing the face of all the country bordering the Mediterranean changing it, unhappily, for the worse. Nearly 50 per cent of every peanut is edible oil.

The peanut is, therefore, into the situation by Queen Mary. machiavellian. Maybe he knows what he is doing, or maybe he is taking tips from some more experienced pre Queen Mary has been the one serene and stable institution in a world that is in a state of turmoil, and she has always given us a needed and comforting reassur tenders, of which Europe has a ance. If she can be shaken by compiete set. The pretender to the existing unrest to the extent the thf0ne Francei for instance, of adding a pompon to that hat has been pbtending so long now which lovers of the established ALLOW ME TO SAY that he likes it, and prefers it to order had every reason to believe V' anything else.

he were sud- pomponned regardless of world denly called upon to cease pre- upheavals, then we have an un- tending and become the actual easy feeling that things are King of France he would un- breaking up, like river ice in Feb- doubtedly become very irritated ruary. at having his peace of mind thus upset, and woujd take the firt PEOPLE expect to be startled train t0 a country where he could occasionally by some queens g0 on pretending in peace and and rather like it. A pompon on quiet. He might come to the Queen Marie of Rumania would have occasioned little or no comment and we could have taken it in our stride, but a pompon on Queen Mary's hat gives us a sense of foreboding. We feel that any- MYSTERIES Definitions and Differences and the Best By G.

K. CHESTERTON ONDON. I have remarked more than once on the request to produce the six best stories: mystery stories or murder storiei, or what not. I have commonly concluded that it is pretty nearly impossible to select the best six; though there might be some rough chance of selecting the best sixty. A very good collection, more or less on that scale, has recently been made by Miss Dorothy L.

Sayers, the well-known writer of detective stories. But Miss Sayers is a lady of many accomplishments and could, I think, write more serious stories, as she can certainly choose and arrange more serious stories. For the collection in question is not confined to ordinary tales of crime. jt IT MAY BE SAID generally, to start with, that there are two types of mystery tale; there are even two meanings of the word mystery. One way of putting the difference is to say that the more serious tale is a tale of mystery; while the police tale is only a tale of mystification.

Another way of putting it is to say Sn the sleuth story the mystery comes at the beginning; while in the truly mysterious story, the mystery comes at the end. In the best sort of mystic or psychic the question comes at the end rather than at the beginning. We are left confronting something too large to be completely comprehended. This includes all that is good in the way of ghost stories; for I do not include what I will venture to call turnip-ghost stories. I do not include the tale of something which appears to be preternatural, and then turns out to be prosaic and natural.

There is, indeed, a type of imagina. tive story, in which what appears to be natural almost rises to being preternatural; by the strong poetic feeling that it is not prosaic. There is a sort of prose'poem which is not about turnip-ghosts, but which does make us feel that turnips are quite as mystical as ghosts. For, indeed, ghosts exhibit only the mystery of death, and turnips the greater mystery of life. sc s(( ON THE WHOLE, however, the difference is that in the common mystery story, a mystical explanation can only appear as a mistake.

The Speckled Band has a sort of nightmare moment when Dr. Watson may imagine nameless horrors; but the story ends cheerfully, with Sherlock Holmes chatting in his dressing gown, the snake dead, the doctor dead, and everything bright and cozy. There is an excellent novel by Mr. S. S.

Van Dine, in which the murderer really seems to be a dragon, but turns out to be but the code of honor of reviewers of crime fiction seals my lips. But if we would compare what begins with mystery with what ends with mystery I would compare the dragon of Mr. Van Dine with the Wendigo of Mr. Algernon Blackwood. If anyone wishes for a masterpiece of mere stark imagination, tall and striding like tropical I recommend the Wendigo as a household pet.

He is a sort of Red Indian monster; he is a sort of smell and noise and terror that no; in the very last words of that amazing story you still do not know what he is. United States and pretend to be the President, as many of our Presidents have. HOWEVER, Otto may have a definite plan to slip up to Sweden, across the top of Russia and then down into Austria by way of the service entrance in the rear. Once inside, he could squat on the throne and seize the arms with a firm grasp. The Austrians, unable to pry him loose, might ac cept the inevitable and crown him.

ihat accomplished, he could go out and come back in the right wav. with an '2 the rival ot tne onve a rivai equipped by nature with so many economic advantages that one can only be astonished that the olive should have held out as long as it has. Peanuts are the seeds of a tropical and sub-tropical annual, immensely prolific and requiring very little attention. Olives are the fruit of a slow-growing tree, requiring constant pruning, spraying and manuring. Peanuts can be shoveled out of the ground.

Olives have to be hand-picked by people on ladders. Even in the country of its production olive oil costs more than twice as much as peanut oil. The vast majority of our contemporaries have probably never even seen the oil which Jehovah gave to man "to make him a cheerful countenance." FROM the temotest Greek and Roman antiquity Provence has been celebrated for its olives. The old trees, with their strangely twisted trunks, their twin-hued leaves, now darkening, now brightening to silver under the wind, are the very soul of the Provencal countryside. Or, rather, they were the very soul.

For, already, they have begun to disappear. The old aristocrats of the classical and Biblical traditions the trees, whose leaves were the emblems of peace and the oil of whose fruits was used to anoint the chosen of God are in full retreat before the attack of the upstarts from the tropics. Year after year, thousands of olive trees are cut down. They have ceased to pay and must go. Gradually, the whole face of southern France is being changed.

The airy glitter and the mysterious green-black darkness of the olive groves are giving place to the alternate verdure and brown barrenness of vineyards and vegetable gardens. Another 30 years and the triumph of the peanut will be complete. Provence will have become a different country. THE peanut is not the only enemy of southern French landscape. The organic chemist has also done his bit to change the face of the land.

In the past, most scents were made of flowers, which were grown in astonishing profusion on the sunny hills round Grasse. Today they are made out of coal tar. The typical scent factory is no longer a pretty white building embowered in the roses and jasmines of the Riviera; no, it stands among the slag heaps near the shaft of a coal mine, with the coking ovens on one side of it and the benzol, tar and ammonia plants on the other. The flowers, once so typical of eastern Provence, are being rooted up and their place taken by peas and lettuce. SHUT up as we are in the narrow cell of domestic and professional relations we are apt to think of ourselves as isolated and self-sufficient beings.

But, in reality, nothing that we do is indifferent to the rest of humanity. We are, as it were, perpetually pulling levers connected, all unknown to ourselves, with mechanisms at the other side of the world. Whether we like it or not we are continually influencing the lives and fortunes of people we have never heard of. By changing our tastes, or else by unchangingly buying in the cheapest market, we alter the face of countries we have never visited; we bestow benefits and inflict punishments on unknown individuals; we cause popu Have they heard Bing Crosby? Have you? Do you like him? Do they? Hoping to see a column about the above, I am, sincerely yours. S.

Doesn't beer make you morbid? Why does it make me so sad? Can you recommend a brew that it stimulating?" DEAR JIM: First of all let me extend a fond band-clasp across the sea to you. Yours was the only letter that came in today's maiL You see, I just got here and the mail from Rome and Paris hasn't caught up with me yet. I'm expecting a letter with some money in it. I'm expecting many letters from friends to whom I have written, giving them my London address. I'm expecting a letter from the income-tax collector of Rome bawling me out for leaving without consulting him.

I'm expecting a deposit that I paid for my telephone and gas and electricity in Rome. I'm expecting a letter from a ham dealer in Venice telling me why he didn't send hams that I ordered for some friends. I'm expecting lots of letters. But only yours came. Only yours, Jim, and it came on a day when I have nothing to write about.

Because it's raining. Because I'm weary of living in hotels. And because I have a grouch. Therefore, many thanks. ALAS! I know as.

little about the movies as I do aboutffootball or golf. I'm hopelessly behind. When I lived in New York I had a projection machine and I used to run off pictures that the United Artists, Fox, Paramount, Universal, Metro-Goldwyn and other were kind enough to lend me. But unfortunately, while my friends were looking at the pictures I was busy doing my work. I love to work at night.

I hardly ever go to the movies. My knowledge of them is derived from newspaper headlines and Louella Par-sons' column. I've never seen Greta Garbo either in propria persona ot on the screen. The only actor with whose work I'm a bit familiar is Chaplin. I've always had a weakness for laughter.

IT never occurred to me, Jim, that movie actors and actresses were heroes or heroines. I know they make a lot of money. Many people get a thrill out of them, but I don't. I happen to know lots of them personally and like them as pals and good companions. But the movie hero-worship is a complex that I lack.

The only tinge of the heroic that I can think of is on the part of a producer who risks every cent he has to produce a picture that may turn out a flop. But that's merely the heroism of the gambler. In consequence, I have never paid the slightest attention to local movie talent in any city abroad. By a process of unconscious absorption I have gleaned the idjea that the favorite "movie idols" of U. S.

A. are more popular everywhere than local "idols." On the walls of Hong Kong, Shanghai, Bombay, Port Said, Naples and Rome I noticed the names of Greta Garbo, Marion Davies, Marlene Dietrich, Wallace Beery, Clark Gable, etc. If there was any local Idjy Kootchy or Alicia Adrenaline, the name didnt register with me. NO, I never heard Bing Crosby. So I cannot tell you if I or anyone else likes him.

He must be popular or you wouldn't have mentioned his I understand he's a crooner or Uncm ployed Should Be Given Jury Preference By CHARLES HANSON TOWNE THE other day a man who is particularly busy and he thanks his stars that he is busy in these times received one of those little slips summoning him downtown for jury duty. Being a good citizen he went and stood in line with hundreds of others, and was finally received by the lawyers on both sides as a just and honorable man. He served the State, the city-yes, and his country but at great inconvenience to himself. The case he was on drifted along for days, and during short intervals he jumped uptown to his office to attend to necessary duties there. Sometimes he arrived back in court breathless and tired; but he had a duty conscience and would not ask to be excused.

lC SS 6 HE was interested to discover that the other eleven men empaneled with him were all happily, employed in one capacity or another. Some were in business for themselves, a few ere clerks on salary, but they loyally gave time and attention to the proceedings and tried to render just verdicts. The man found himself thinking: Here we are, a dozen men with much work of our own to do. We can hardly be said to need the fees that will be paid us; but there are literally hundreds of thousands of others whohave no employment whatsoever, who would appreciate checks, who would be glad to perform jury duty day after day, and be rewarded at the end of a session; Why cannot the Commissioner of Juries make it his serious business to seek out these idle men and give them places in the box? Here is a chance to help the great army of the unemployed; yet the same names are drawn time and again, no discrimination, is used, and valuable hours are wasted by citizens who could be doing something of far more value to the community at large. For intelligent men.

as well as unintelligent ones are out of work. Men in all walks of life. Men who would rejoice to serve the courts. Men who would like the job of listening to evidence, if only because it would keep them from considering their own desperate condition. S(C 51s WHY could there not be some central bureau established where the unemployed could register for jury duty? From such a list fine juries could be drawn.

There might even be a means found to utilize the services of the same men over and over again. Why drag from offices and shops citizens who fortunately have positions when there is so large a group who cannot now pay their rent or buy coal for the approaching Winter? Is it not possible that any citizen drawn, at present employed, could suggest a friend to take his place one really in want of funds, who would conscientiously perform his duty? There would be no doubt that the boxes would be filled swiftly and cases tried with speed, ail ul which would be advantageous to the taxpayers, who are sometimes dismayed by the law's delays. Here is a civic task that could easily be done. The more swiftly it is put in operation the better it will be for the employed and the unemployed alike. A warm courtroom is net a poor place to be when the Winter winds are blowing.

Men would be happier there than pacing the streets, looking anxiously for work. escort of troops, a fanfare of trumpets and cathedral bells chiming. Otto may be correct in thinking there is a future in pretending, but it may be King Prajadhipok of Siam who really has the right slant on the thing. The last we heard of Prajadhipok he wanted to get off his throne and stay off, and we have been concerned about him, because the newspapers have not revealed whether he succeeded in getting off or not. So, between the King of Siam and Queen Mary's new hat and Otto, we haven't even had time to worry about what is happening to ex-King Alfonso and his family, or the King of Sweden's tennis game, or whether King Carol is still keeping company with Mag-da Lupescu.

thing can happen now, and that we might even see the day in the not too distant future when Her Majesty will appear at a hospital dedication without an umbrella. After that the deluge. A ND where is the Archduke -TTL Otto, pretender to the throne of Austria? We have been worried about him, too. The last we heard of Otto he was very busy pretending, and we read that in an effort to bring the pretending to a head he had gone to Sweden. He was in Belgium at the time.

Sweden is north of Belgium and Austria is south as the pretender flees. If we were in Belgium and were a pretender to the throne of Austria we wouldn't go to Sweden to get to Austria and Popular "Mary Poppins" Art of Walking By WILLIAM SOSKIN OVER in England, I hear tell, grownup ladies and gentlemen have been dressing in rompers recently, and have walked along London'! streets munching gingerbread, and have, been gazing starry-eyed and with a touch of whimsy at one another. This is due not to the fact that Mr. A. A.

Milne has issued another bit of Winnie's Poohing. Mr. Milne is busy writing anti-war tracts and he apparently has no time for whimsy. No, the Britishers greet each other these days, if reports are not exaggerated, by referring to a Miss Mary Poppins instead of to Winnie the Pooh. "Pip, pip an Oxford man attired inpink rompers will say to a Cambridge-man in blue.

"Mary Poppins 1" the Cambridge man will reply, and they will look at each other understanding. All this is due to the publication of a book, originally intended for children, but now adopted by all those, quaint grown-ups who liked to think of themselves as mere children at heart. It is called Mary Poppins, which is the name of the children's Nanny in the story; an acidulous Nanny, but one who can talk animal language and can take children to visit the stars or around the world faster than you can say Christopher Robin. She has a touch of the lepra-chaun in her, and a bit of behind-the-looking-glass atmosphere, and that leads its American publishers to suggest that Mary Poppins belongs in the company of Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland. There is something wrong with this picture, however.

Peter Pan sometimes made me want to wave white handkerchiefs coyly, and Alice sometimes bored me not often; but neither made me want to kick old ladies and knock cripples' crutches out from under them and pinch Salvation Army lassies. And that is how Mary Pop-pin affects me. A Irish colleen of the mystic-real- ism school wrote this story. Her name is P. L.

Travers, and May Lam-berton Becker, writing in Books, reports a conversation with the Irish poet, A. in which he cites a girl named Travers "as one of the two young writers who will take the place of Yeats and his generation. Well, Mary Poppins slides up banisters instead of down, and knows a Mrs. Corey who bakes gingerbread according to a recipe she got from Alfred the Great, and can take seven nightgowns, an album and a folding cot-bed out of an empty carpet bag, and so she is legitimately an Irish proletarian fairy; and she is sharp-tongued and common-sensible enough to be an Irish heroine, too; and not of tb macushla school. For all that magic, however, Mary Poppins antics are a little too acrobatic to be whimsical.

More whamsical, I think, than whimsical; but modern children are decidedly extroverted, and a wham means more than a whim to them. Mary Poppins, by P. L. Travers, Reynal and Hitchcock. $1.50.) 9fa 3fr 3 IN our part of the Connecticut countryside I fear I am regarded as something of an eccentric because I occasionally take a walk.

Real country natives never walk anywhere far as I can observe. The smallest errand demands their use of the automobile and the sections of the country which have not converted almost every desirable wooded dirt road into a concrete pathway for motors hang their heads in civic disgrace. Two things bring on this ambulatory mood. The first is an amusing volume of essays on walking edited by Edwin Valentine Mitchell and called The Art of Walking. The other is the fact that one of my favorite roads nair Kent Cliffs, New York, has been converted into a highway.

Seeing its nakedness the other day I thought of Stephen Spender's poem: Now over these small hills they have built the concrete That trails black wire: Pylons, those pillars Bare like nude, giant girls that have no secret. The valley with its gilt and evening look And the green chestnut Of customary root Are mocked dry like the parched bed of a brook. Hut far above and far as sight endures, Like whips of anger With lightning's danger, There runs the quick perspective of the future. The book on walking includes essays by Dickens, Hazlitt, Trevelyan and Gissing; pieces bv such persistent walkers as John Finley; such enthusiastic walkers as Brooks Atkinson and such non-walkers as Max Beerbohm. (The Art of Walking, edited by Ed.

win Valentine Mitchell. Loring and Mussey. Sr.7S Monday: A VIGOROUS defense of the over. weight man, by H. L.

Mencken, who knows whereof he writes. Robert Benchley undertakes a little experiment in thorax pressing. Try it on yout own thorax some time. James M. Cain wishes he were a dancer.

Bruno Lessing sees the telescope that Sir Isaac Newton made. William Soskin reviews "The Mighty Barnum" and "Years of Indiscretion," Next week's guest illustrator is Otto Soglow, no stranger to this Walking Through History Thought Transference By CAROLYN TELLS I DO not believe in thought transference. And the reason for my (f AS one plods over these narrow lanes in Jerusalem, the confusion of centuries presses on the mind. There is an overpowering solemnity in the memory of all the Jeru-salems that lie underfoot. The Jerusalem of the Gospels was itself rooted in old bones.

And the Jerusalems that have grown up and have vanished since the time of Christ the Roman city of Hadrian, the early Christian city of Constantine, the Jerusalem of Omar, the Jerusalem of the Crusades, the Jerusalem of Saladin, the Jerusalem of Sulieman and the many Turkish lation to migrate ana condemn emuc pnmmnnitipc trt death. FtOTTI time tO time it is well to reflect on the distant consequences of our most trivial acts, The acts may be trivial; but the consequences may be very serious indeed, Jerusalems these, lying one upon another and thrusting their relics through the soil, almost strike terror into the from a pitcher of water with which I provided myself. I poured slowly, and thought steadily and very lovingly of her, for she was a dear thing, and I aimed to please her. Besides, I wanted it to succeed myself. Nothing happened I mean I was conscious of no thought transference from her.

When I next met her she told me gleefully that she saw me plainly, I was playing the piano and eating chocolate fudge. Rather than disappoint her I told her she was practically right, only it was vanilla fudge. She is dead now, and though she promised to haunt me she never has, but I don't believe it is her fault. BUT here is a thing I don't understand. We have all thought of a friend of whom we hadn't thought in a long time, and immediately we received a letter from that friend.

But I seem to carry that thing to the limit. Supposing I order something from a department store or a specialty shop. For several days I don't think of it. and then suddenly it flashes unbelief is because it never proves itself to my satisfaction. I am not one who can be satisfied with a vague proof or a bit of hearsay evidence.

I am continually told by my friends of remarkable experiences, but when I inquire closely I learn they are not personal experiences, but some queer things that have happened to other people and have been told to my friends. One of these friends, however, was a dear and beautiful old lady, who thoroughly believed thoughts could be transmitted from one human being to another, and the tales she told to prove her case fairly rang with that conviction of truth which is only achieved by many repetitions of the account. Finally she offered to convince me with some self-experiences which I could not deny. I willingly agreed, for I was ready, even anxious to be convinced. mind.

To walk through Jerusalem is to walk throueh history." From "In And the Men Bulk Big the Steps of the Master," by H. Morton. (Dodd; Mead Company.) i 1 ,1 Mm a singer or something like that. I never listen to singers, even over the radio, unless they're in the Caruso or Gigli or Pons class. Even then I prefer symphonies to any kind of singing.

Something with an intellectual punch in it. You see. Jim, I get more of a kick out of books and men's thoughts and out of mingling with the flux of humanity in various countries than I do out of movies or sports. It's just a personal kink. The fact that I'm in the minority doesn't worry me a bit.

I've never seen The Merchant of Venice played and I wouldn't go around the corner to see it. Yet I know the story by heart. Gosh, Jim, I could write a book for you. NO. beer never makes me morbid.

I love a good bitter beer, like real Pilsner, but I drink very little of it. If beer makes you sad it's because you drink a sugary brand or because you drink too much or between meals or because you're inclined to biliousness. Try one glass of Pilsner with your dinner and. if you feel sad, cut out all beer. And fall back on wine with water.

For a New Deal I'VE been with the IIE-Men Way out in the West, Six-foot-two-or-three Men Thick of thews and chest; It was fun to roam where Men are bluff and blunt, But I'm glad I'm home, where I'M not such a runtl Though I found the HE-Men Splendid guys to meet. Gallant, bold and free men, Still, felt effete; And I used to fidget (Though I'm five feet ten) Like a Singer Midget Mixed among the Men. I got sick of shoulders Higher than my head. Hands as big as boulders, So I turned and fled Back where life's less hearty. Handclasps are more limp, But where this here party Isn't such a shrimp! Berton Braley SHE told mc, then, that on the next Sunday morning at eleven o'clock precisely I must be alone and must think concentratcdly of her.

I must be doing some simple thing, such as taking a book from a shelf or moving a vase of flowers. And, most especially, I must think deeply of her. I willingly agreed to all this, and carried out her directions to tfce very letter. I had chosen to be watering a potted plant that she had sent me, and promptly at eleven I began pouring upon me that that parcel is on its way upstairs to my apartment. Almost simultaneously with that conviction the telephone sounds and I am told there is a parcel on its way upstairs to me.

(That is our house routine.) In a moment the doorbell rings and there is a boy with the parcel. If this thing happened less often, or if I were anxiously looking for the parcel or if the bell rang before my thought came, I would give it all no consideration. But as it is occurring constantly I do think it over, and I admit that there may be some sort of physical message, relayed from the bearer of the parcel to me, not mentally, but more as a sort of unconscious and inaudible wireless transmission which, somehow, apprises me of the nearness of the thing. If so, what is it? I mean, to what class does it belong? Telepathy, thought transference, second sight, or some sort of radio principle? Any of these explanations I would subscribe to, but not to anything supernatural. A sound, rational, mechanical reason would satisfy me, but not the sort the The Personal Puzzle THE habitual look of the face on the street T.

an1 diornifipft SCOWL Precision ffnTOST of us are quite certain that more than anything else in life The sombre expression one's likely to meet On the motionless map of an owl. I don't like the chcerers who constantly bleat: "Smile, d.iri you, smile! Darn you. (TT is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs." Aristotle. From "Philosophers Speak for Themselves," Edited by T. V.

Smith. (University we want to know ourselves, to solve th personal puzzle. Actually, it is doubtful if this is so. What we desire is to live without friction, to avoid discomfiture and unhappiness. We are sorrowed by loneliness and oppressed by people we dislike, by work that bores us, by situations that make us cynical and rebellious." From "What Makes Us Seem Queer," by smile! But couldn't one mask in the hurrying Look happy just once in while? 'Do you know that my maid stole six oi my Pullman towels?" of Chicago Press.) spiritists offer.

David Seabury. (Whiitlesey-tiouse.) CoDtenli ot tbii past copyriihlcd by American Kew.yapcri, Inc, 1931. i.