Monthly Reviewed by Prof. Neilson

The exceptional maturity of style and thought which marked much of the writing in the Monthly last session is notably absent from the present issue. Perhaps it is hardly fair to look for it in a first number, but it is clear that hard work as well as experience will be required before the new board can hope to reach the level maintained by Mr. Hagedorn and his associates. The material here presented is by no means bad, but it needs editing. The lay sermon on "College Dilettantism" which opens the number is admirable in tone and content, but could have been made more effective with fewer words; and the editorials are clumsily written. In "Up from the Depths" Mr. David shows that he possesses good material, and as the story stands it gives one a vivid and gruesome picture of a mining accident. But as writing it has many faults. The short jerky sentences which might have been effective if used only for the climax of excitement become wearisome when used in paragraph after paragraph; and the writer's vocabulary lacks variety. The incident is related in the first person, but the style hesitates in a disconcerting way between the colloquial and the literary. Mr. Sheldon's "Delilah" is badly named, for the pathetic female figure finds no prototype in the Philistine woman, and the hero is anything but a Samson. But the dialogue is well-managed, and the incident is only too true to life. Mr. Carlo's "Sin of the Angels" is a college story dealing, not undiscerningly, with the man who would be president of his class but who is absolutely out of the running. It reflects seriously both on the author and the editors that the third sentence should begin, "Being told, his face flushed." Contributors to the Monthly have usually been past this stage. Mr. A. W. Murdoch's dramatic sketch, "In a Park," seems to me a mistake in form. The theme would have lent itself better to treatment in a short story, where the author could, by more narrative and description, have helped the reader to visualize the scene with more ease.

Of the poetry, Mr. J. S. Reed's sonnet on "Tschaikowsky" is marred by confused imagery; Mr. Wheelock's "From one Exiled Inland" conveys with pathos, yet not without a touch of exaggeration, the feeling of homesickness for the sea; and Mr. E. E. Hunt's ballital shows surprising success in a very difficult form of verse. A fantasy like Mr. C. H. Dickerman's "The Haunted Palace" could only be regarded as successful through the excellence of its technique. But the writer allows himself too much license to claim any triumph of this kind. Whenever the thought presses against the limits of the verse, the verse gives way and changes its form. This is hardly playing the game.

On the whole, the number is not without promise, but honest effort will be necessary to maintain an honorable tradition