The San Francisco Examiner from San Francisco, California • 11

NOTED WRITERS CURRENT TOPICS Wednesday- jKarrfj of CM $age of tlje an jfrawcfeco Cxmntner -Aprils, We ought never to scoff at the wretched, for who can be sure of continued Fontaine. Too Many Books Words and Music On the Contrary A Number of Things 1 By Aldous Huxley 1 -By Lewis Browne- By Charles Hanson Towne -By Deems Taylor- The Last Sleep, Some shining April I shall be asleep, And over me the ancient joy shall pass; I shall not see young Spring dance down the world With ribbons of green grass. But I shall dream of all that I have lost-Breath of the wind, immortal loveliness, Wild beauty of the sunlight on the hills, Now mine no less Because I slumber. Nay, but more than mine, Since I a part of them shall strangely be. Only I ask, when the pink hawthorn breaks, That one shall think of me.

i-nEAR MR. TAYLOR (the letter begins): Has it not often occurred to you that your public might be extended very pleas- antly if articles bearing your signature should appear in leading magazines and newspapers? This can be accomplished by an arrangement acceptable to editors and not particularly difficult. Together, we choose a suitable topic. You talk, giving me your best ideas. I write, shaping thera up to meet magazine and newspaper require- ments.

You read, to make sure the finished; article is your own If the possibilities seem to you interesting, I shall be happy to talk with you. Very truly vours, Rollin Lynde Hartt. i KEEP hearing people say the business decline is a blessing in disguise. Our heads had become swollen with vanity and now they are being deflated we were all drunk with wealth and now we are becoming sober. The world, I am solemnly told, will be a better place after this dire drubbing has been administered.

All of which impresses me as sheer nonsense. In the first place, I don't believe most of us ever got a chance to get swollen with vanity or drunk with wealth. I am not speaking now of the proletariat, the factory hands and miners and agricultural workers. The only swellings those poor people ever experienced came from rheumatism; their only intoxication was induced by corn likker. No, I'm speaking now of the bulk of the middle class the shop-keepers and skilled mechanics and farm-owners.

In the halcyon days of 1928 they indeed were able to make ends more than meet; but there was not much overlapping. The average citizen, at least in California, did have a car in his garage, and perhaps the dream of another in his head. But that does not mean he was exactly revelling in luxury. Those that say it is good for him that he has to get back on his feet, are not using their heads. It is as sensible as saying it would be good for him to have to go back to using a quill instead of a fountain pen, or sand instead of blotting paper.

rH p. EAR MR. HARTT: How did you ever LJ guess? Of course, I want to extend my public, particularly if I can extend it pleas LONDON. "Of making many books there is no nd." And yet in the Preacher's day, two thousand and some years ago, humanity was only at the very beginning of its book making. If Koheleth could return to the earth what would he say of the cataracts and avalanches of books which incessantly pour down upon us today He would say of tKem, no doubt, what he said of everything else: "Vanity of vanities." And the remark would be as true of books as it was and is of everything else in the world as true and as profoundly irrelevant.

As one who contributes in a small way to swell the volume of the literary torrent, I feel a certain rather guilty concern about the almost frenzied book making of modern times. For surely there can be no doubt about the matter; there are too many books. Not too many, of course, to say all that might be said about this queer and astonishing universe; the world being infinite, it would require an infinity of books to do that. When I say that there are too many books, I mean that there are too many for any given individual. In order to qualify as a well-informed, up-to-date citizen of the contemporary world, a man must have read so many booRs that it is almost impossible that he should have read any of them well.

We are in danger of sacrificing quality of reading to quantity, in danger of reading too much and too quickly to be in a position to pass judgment on what we read. antly. It is such a bore to have one's public extended unpleasantly don't you think so Look at Nero, and Benedict Arnold, and the Kaiser, and Napoleon, and Clemenceau and Al Capone. They extended their public unpleasantly, and what did it get UPTON SINCLAIR says that for many years requests have teen coming to him mainly from abroad to write an autobiography. And so he has done it, though he is far from an "old man," and he calls it an easy and light occupation.

It is as frank as his novels have always been, and it reads as though the authe-r of "The Jungle" had enjoyed putting pen to paper. In many passages there is great beauty, as when he tells, after his first flaming youth had left him, how he felt something within him that must have been akin to genius some force of power beyond himself seeking expression. A hundred times in his life Sinclair has felt this mysterious force moving him; yet he has not counted upon it alone to help him produce his books. He has worked. And often under terrific handicaps.

His health was not robust at one time, and he tells how he went in for all sorts of dieting and fasting; how Bernarr Macfadden helped him to regain his strength. He has never touched liquor in all his life, as anyone who read "The Wet Parade" must have guessed. His abstemiousness came from the fact that his father was a heavy drinker and so his son grew up loathing alcohol with a bitter hatred. He condemns in no uncertain terms those poets and novelists who have been his friends in time past who ruined their careers through strong drink. One by one he has seen them disappear; but a few, it seems to me, have left important work behind them Jack London, for instance, and George Sterling.

Your way is much better, I think. And, of course, I'm simply dying to hava articles bearing my signature appear in the leading magazines and newspapers. Do you really suppose that if you and I got together, and you wrote a piece, and I signed it (of course, as you suggest, after having read it) do you really suppose that if we did that, and sent something, say, to one of the Hearst newspapers, the editor would actually print my name at the top, just as he prints the names of O. O. Mclntyre, and Gilbert Gabriel, and Harry Acton, and Charlia Towne over the stuff that other people write for them? Wouldn't that be just great? I could cut the articles out and paste them in my scrap book, and mail copies to my friends gosh, do you suppose they might let ma join the Authors' League? After all, it would be almost as if I had written the articles myself, wouldn't it? One thing worries me that part about giving you my best ideas.

There you hava put your finger on what has been wrong with me for a long time. You see, Mr. Hartt, I may as well confess that articles bearing my signature have appeared in. magazines and newspapers, but they haven't been extending my public as they should. I think the trouble is twofold I haven't had the right people writing them, and I haven't been giving those people my best ideas.

once rented this costume for a party, and I never returned it." accurate taste in poetry, A as in all other arts, is an acquired talent, which can only be produced by severe thought and a long continued intercourse with the best models of composition." Such was Wordsworth's opinion. If he is right and for my own part I am quite sure Vagabondia By Bruno Lessing Passing By -By Idwal Jones- T'S funnv how a silly conversation sometimes 1 diverts your thoughts into such queer and THERE came a time in his career when, having portrayed the American worker, he determined to give a picture of the rich and how they lived. It was easy enough to get behind the scenes. He knew such people as "Robbie" Collier, Mrs. "Clarrie" Mackay and Mrs.

"Ollie" Belmont; and so he set to work on "The Metropolis," and signed a contract with the American Magazine to run it serially; but they got "cold feet" and asked for a release, which he generously gave them. Sinclair is honest and swicere. When his great success came to him at one time ho found himself in possession of thirty thousand dollars, in hand or on the way, and it tortuous channels that when they the thoughts come back to you for review you wonder if you weren't a hit coo-coo at the time. Was beguiled into another State of the Union the other day to attend a beer dinner. (It didn't take much beguiling either.) The conversation turned upon dreams and hopes and aspiratiors of earthly bliss, and when my turn came, I said: Besides, those seers of the silver lining seem to forget the dark fact that this depression is doing more than put the average citizen back on his feet.

It is leaving him on his uppers. ft OF course, there were some persons who did become insufferable in the era that is now no more. My delicatessen-dealer he's quite a philosopher in his own way-calls them "b'nennes." Like the fruit, he explains, such persons are usually green when they come to town; yellow when they -prosper; and then they "jest toin plain rutten!" 'i suppose their present experiences will prove very salutary for that class. But how many are there of those "b'nennes?" If they seem numerous, it is solely because they have been so obtrusive. What with the way their wives used to break out with diamonds, and their children used to break down with gin, they did succeed in attracting a great deal of attention.

Tht.r daughters married suckling princes, their sons were sued by chorus girls, their wives eloped with riding masters and all that kept them continually in the limelight. But actually there were very few of them even in this country, let alone the whole world. And even had they been many, the salvation of their sordid souls would hardly be adequate recompense for the starvation of so many millions of other men's bodies. NO, this deflation does not seem to me a disguised blessing to us as individuals, nor to the world as a whole. Many plutocrats are now becoming paupers.

Good. But what does that mean save that after a while other paupers will become plutocrats? The wealth that is now being lost by the few is not spreading to the many; it is merely changing hands. One set of rich vulgarians is passing away only to make room for another set. Where's the percentage in that? Of course, some good might be made to come out of the present evil if we had the will, and even more the brains, to bring it out. The present day might then be a prelude rather than merely an interlude.

It would be the prelude to a new and a happier play than any the human race has yet enacted on this earth. But to accomplish that miracle we would have to have directors with intelligence and where in this Hollywood of a world are they to be found that he is the outlook for contemporary culture is not very reassuring. For habits of indiscriminate and excessive reading, such as are at present almost general among the educated, are seldom compatible with severe thought or long intercourse with the best models. Wordsworth's contemporaries were, in one way, better off than ourselves. The accumulations of knowledge were much smaller then.

(There is a great deal to be said for ignorance.) The twentieth-century world is burdened by an enormous load of scientific, historical, literary and psychological knowledge, already far too large to be taken in by any single man, and expanding day by day with delirious rapidity. The multiplication of the numbers and classes of books upon which we must now pass judgment makes discrimination much more dificult for us than for our fathers. We ought to think more severely and live longer with the best models. THE "foire aux croutes" idea in New York died a-borning. Many hands knocked it fatally on the head, and that will be the end of it until perhaps next Spring.

A score of artists pulled for it on the theory that people who wouldn't dream of going into a gallery to buy (or even look at) a picture, would instantly buy two if the wares were brandished at them on the sidewalk. How sad it is to reflect that the only picturesque al fresco commerce in this country is about Lotta's Fountain In San Francisco. So why not bring into the sad enough city parks of other cities some of the uproarious and slightly profitable shows that brighten the Boulevard Raspail and the Luxembourg Gardens this time of the year? IN other words, shove art from the attic into the street. The idea got extravagant praise in New York at first. Then, by some queer process of logic, there was a volte face.

Art, everybody felt, would lose prestige if sold, like cabbages or suspenders, in the open air. Paintings would lose their optical impact out in the sunlight. They might, it is true, look bad enough inside, but outdoors they would look perfectly terrible. No illusion and all that. I am not sure about this.

But I do know of an artist who daubed oversized canvases amid some pleasing scenery in California. Tourists thronged about him, pressing heavily on his neck and poking their fingers on the paint to see if it was really wet. "If I had the first thing I'd do, after contributing to the poor which shows what a kind heart I've got would be to get two seagoing yachts so that I could cruise pleasantly around the world. One yacht the big onewould be for me and my bunch of friends. The other would be stocked with books." "Couldn't you take your books on the big yacht?" one asked.

"Oh, my, no! We'd need all the space available for comfort and fun. Radios, phonographs, movies, swimming pools, race tracks, billiards and pools on swinging platforms, gymnasiums, breakfast rooms, luncheon rooms, private dining rooms the boat would really have to be about 900 feet long. "And I'd want about 50.000 books. Not to read, but to consult when I wanted to know something about something. I wouldn't know from one minute to the next what I would want to look up.

If a flying fish popped up alongside and sang a few bars from Tannhauser, I'd want to look up flying fishes that sang, if I got into an argument with one of my guests as to whether Asia Minor can vot. I'd want to look it up. Not knowing what might happen, a few hundred books wouldn't satisfy me. The one book that I'd want would be sure to be missing, and I'd want to turn back and get it." Well, they kidded me a lot about it, but, hav ing $200,000,000 left, after my generosity, they treated me with respect. was burning holes in all his pockets.

Ho had never heard of such a thing as investing money and would have considered it an immoral thing to contemplate. He wanted to spend his money for the uplifting of mankind; and it was characteristic of him that even in the matter of getting a home he tried to combine it with the solving of a social problem and setting an example to his followers. Thus "Helicon Hall" came to life a cooperative home where people could live in comfort, with a common kitchen and dining-room. It stood on the heights in back of the Palisades overlooking Englewood, N. J.

From November, 1906, to March, 1907. the young dreamer of Utopia lived according to his dreams. But he had his problems, and of these he tells with no little humor. The place burned and another phase in his life passed. But while "Helicon Hall" lasted it was a success.

There came to tend the furnaces and do odd jobs two run-away students from Yale, by name Sinclair Lewis and Allan Updegraff. "We educated them a lot better than Yale would have done, you may be sure," says Sinclair. HE tells of the hoax he played in publishing the diary of Arthur Stirling. It worked for a time; but a few solemn persons, like Brander Matthews and Sinclair's old employer, the N. Y.

Evening Post, held it a high crime against literature. Richard Le Gallienne wrote a sympathetic review of the book, and now receives Sinclair's belated thanks for it, though at DO you remember, for instance, back in 1916, when you were selling stuff to the old A'ctc York Tribune Sunday Magazine, and I was supposed to be one of the editors? We both know, of course, that Horace Greeley was doing the stuff that appeared under my signature. And then later, when I was supposed to be music critic of the Neu; York World I had two people working for me during those four years. On week days Ring Lardner used to shape my ideas to meet newspaper requirements, while Robert W. Chambers did my Sunday stuff.

I haven't had any regular collaborator for this column of mine. In general, the boys and girls around the office have taken turns extending my public. Rebecca West has written a few, Damon Runyon did one, Arthur Brisbane has helped me out several times, and Charles Hanson Towne has been simply an old peach about contributing. For occasional columns I have gone to people outside the staff George Bernard Shaw, Edna Ferber, Gertrude Atherton and Ernest Hemingway, for instance. Edna Millay promised to write me one, but you know how she is about copy.

OF COURSE, these people didn't actually do anything so crvufe as to make up articles for me to sign. We met and chose suitable topics and I talked. Then they wrote, shaping my ideas to meet newspaper requirements and I read the stuff to make sure that it was my own. Then would send the copy down to the editor and he would read it and sometimes the proofreader would read it. I think the trouble was with my ideas.

They weren't my best ones. It would have been better. I sometimes think, if I had told those people jiiFt to go ahead and use their own ideas. However, it's too late to worry about that now. If we should do business together, 1 promise that, if I don't give you my very, very best ideas.

I won't give you any at all. When shall we meet? I have some swell topics. How about The Ghost-Writing Oniv.r. and Who Fulls For It. as a starter? Then wc could follow that with Hout Shakrsprare Talked to Bacon, and What Came of It, and continue with Who Shaped Joseph Conntd'x fir' rrns- to Meet Af and Xrirspttper Rrijuirrmrntsf It would make a lovely series, don't you think? I can hardly wait to see that public of mine getting itself extended.

When do we start? Your old admirer, Deems Taylor, Frontiers of Science -By Gobind Behari Lai- But in actual fact this same multiplication of books causes us to spend less time with the best models and to think less severely. That which makes discrimination more difficult makes the means of acquiring discrimination almost impossible. IF we had time to think of anything but the economic crisis we should realize that we are in the throes of an intellectual and aesthetic crisis. How are we (or our children) going to reconcile a well-informed, modern up-to-dateness with taste, discrimination and a sense of spiritual values? This is a question which for one, find it very hard to answer. Culture is in danger of being buried under the avalanche of books.

The mind is freer and more active than ever in the past; but by a strange paradox the freedom suffocates, the activity is paralyzing. the time he did not think it ngnt to De grateful to a critic "tending to make personal something which was purely a matter of art." In his youth, in ryder to eke out a living, Sinclair wrote jokes; and, jealous of a school friend who had placed a piece of fiction, he set out to do the same, and sold his first manuscript to Matthew White, then editor of the Argosy. The cWck was for the enormous sum of twenty-five dollars. After Sinclair went in for serious work he could never drift back to hack-writing, though on more than one occasion he needed ready money. The whole book Is stimulating, invigorating and much more modest than one might have believed it would be.

And, by the way, its title is "American Outpost," and the publishers are Farrar Rir.eharL WHAT'S funny about it is that I can't get the darned idea out of my head. Strolling through a park the other day with a friend, he pointed out a queer, grayish bug on a stone and said it was a Sirorirhus hnobiana, or some such name. I had an idea he was hiph hatting me, and when I got to my hotel I looked among my books. But I didn't have the right book. So he got away with it.

The annoying part of it is that I never have the right book. When there's just one stubborn fart that I've got to unearth, I always have to go to a library. Sometimes it rains and I don't want to go to a library. Many times I travel and I can't even carry all my own books with me. Here I am.

living in one hotrl after another, with about five books. Left all my library in Europe. I wanted to know who wrote: "Oh, what a tangled web we weave "When first we prnctice to deceive." Put on the overcoat, took a taxi and wrnt to the library. Found it was Sir Walter Scott. Great! Came bark and started writing.

Then I thought I'd pay tribute to Scott you know how it is, one writer to another- and I tried to remember other of his brilliant sayings. But I couldn't get them straight. And I'd be horn-swogglod if I'd go back to that library. Economy YET the sacred flame of art left them un-scorched. They did not buy.

So he turned over his paintings to a dealer whose clients had rather fantastic bank accounts, if not much else. This dealer seated his victim in a darkened room, with a spotlight on a somber velvet curtain. The elegance of the chamber and the gradual banging of a huge Thibetan gong made him feel he was in the grip of a powerful religion. In slow waves the gong diffused tumult, with the rhythms of a battering ram. It magnified his heart and boomed into a feeling of immemorial antiquity, of beauty undying and the perdurable things.

It orated of time and death, and the brevity of man's life, which to the gods is no longer than the moment of a blow fly. Nothing mattered but art. At the psychological moment the Mahatma of the cash register pulled back the curtain. And there was the picture. As soon as he had recovered from the swoon the client reached feebly for his check book and signed.

It is probable that this dealer was a far greater artist in his way than was our painter. THAT we shall ever have a daub fair in the Parisian style is to be doubted. The more unfortunate amongst French artists go in for the "foire aux croutes" as a desperate last resort. Their wares are often monstrous, for arbitrary as the jury of the independents may be, it is not exactly color blind. Again some Parisian critics are notoriously venal, bring paid nothing by the newspapers, and demand two dollars a line before they can work up any real enthusiasm over an art show.

But the humble Parisian working folk like daub fairs. They like the color and feeling of awe at perceiving what they don't understand. The only croute artist I ever knew in Paris wasn't one exactly. I knew him to be an honest concierge next house to mine. But in a velvet tarn o' shanter and red scarf around his middle, to hold up his corduroys and manifest his radical sentiments, he looked very impressive sitting in his stall.

His stock was lunatic daubs got on commission, kewpie dolls, pokered leather pillows, tree fungus with neat little marines painted on them, and a good side line of picture frames with gilt corks. Trash, you might say. But no worse than the stuff displayed elsewhere in the row. This made him rather snooty. VITAMIN was first isolated by Ottar Rygh of the University of Oslo, Nor-' way, from ripe oranges this year.

This scientist also succeeded in preparing Vitamin artificially from an alkaloid substance known as narcotine, usually found in opium. Thus the isolation of Vitamin from lemons reported recently by Dr. C. C. King of the University of Pittsburgh, chronologt-cally follows the similar accomplishment of Dr.

Rygh. Dr. Walter A. Eddy, professor of physiological chemistry at Teachers' College, Columbia, and director of the EureRU of Food Sanitation and Health of Good Housekeeping Magazine, himself an outstanding experimenter in vitamins, says: "In the early part of this year Ottar Rygh succeeded in extracting from ripe oranges a substance in pure form that prevented and cured the disease of scurvy. This scurvy preventative property is attributed to Vitamin C.

"Next, he extracted a substance from reen oranges. Chemically it was the same ibstance as that derived previously from oranges. But its physiological action different. It failed to prevent or cure rvy. Thus, Rygh thought that the substance the green oranges, which proved to be cotine, an alkaloid found in opium, and owed with toxic effects, is somehow nged into Vitamin C.

When exposed to ultra-violet rays, the V-cotine partially changed into active urvy preventing substances. (Vitamin C). ygh obtained better results by treating with hydrochloric acid." Economy spreads far and wide And fills the very air. It covers all the countryside, But does not linger there. The wave is felt' in factories, In cottages and flats; It even leaps across the seas To smite the diplomats.

Ambassadors who labor there Must shun extravagance, So Andy Mellon has to wear Abbreviated pants. George E. Phair. anacea Make Believe Too Late! Lapse If I could feel your nnd tonigU About my trembling finger tips, if I could know instead of write How warmly tender are your lips. But you have gone so far away That all my skies are dark and gray.

Until you come again I'll write My lonpmg for your clinging lips, I'll call this pen your hand. tonight. Against my eijer finger tips. It does so good grieve. Until you mif 1 make believ.

Lahi MxtehcU Thoitton, When life grows too monotonous and overrun with gloom I wander 'round the city buying gadgets for my room. A fragile alabaster vase, a fuzzy poodle dog, An etching rare, a shiny tray hewn from a redwood log; A length of yellowed lace that once bedecked a queenly gown. A dainty China doll, perhaps a Persian shawl of brown. This is my panacea, for it gives my life new bloom To rove the city's by-ways hunting gadgets for my room. Dorothy Snouden.

3mtnti t( this Beside him. dead, I knelt and vainly wept! To him, alive, a smile I had denied. To bring him needed comfort ne'er I'd tried The cheer I might have shared. I selfish kept. And this shall be my sorrow, o'er the years: Oh, helpless rucing.

that doth peace destroy! If. in his life. I'd sent him of my joy. In death he not evoked my useless tears! H. FcrnbacK.

Some people drink just to forget, And to my way of thinking. The only thing that they forget Is when to stop their drinking! R. C. O'Brirn. cor r''M Htni Ne fi'Mtri.

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