November Monthly Reviewed

The material in the current number of the Monthly divides itself pretty sharply into two classes, one normal, the other artificial. In the first class the two editorials dealing with the late Professor Norton and the resignation of President Eliot merit decided praise. They express in clear and judicious English the appreciation and gratitude that Harvard has for these two men--one the wise and brilliant guide to the beauty of the past, the other the national leader in the advance towards intellectual freedom. In the "normal" class also belongs Mr. Grandgent's story, "The 'Medomac'." This is a thoroughly healthy tale of ghosts that turn out to be pirates, and mysterious uncles that reappear in order to die melodramatic deaths. Two pieces of verse may also be classed among the contributions which are "normal": Mr. Britten's translation of one of Paul Verlaine's lyrics, charming except for the clumsy third stanza; and Mr. Douglas's "Fourteen to One." This, which sounds rather like Kipling in a great hurry, expands with moderate vigor the statement that "the number of deaths in the late Cuban War caused by disease and wounds bore the ratio of fourteen to one."

Turning to the group of "artificial" material, we come first to Mr. Carb's "Miss Alice Comes Out." It is unfortunate that here the writer has allowed cleverness to take the place of common sense; the lovers discuss idealism with an ingenuity that is hopelessly literary. Mr. Britten discusses the charm of the sea, his point apparently being that such discussion is entirely profitless to anyone. Mr. Sheehan, in a sort of religious monodrama of three pages, sets forth cleverly the shortcomings of the monastic life. The rest of the verse is of the usual undergraduate variety; for the most part it consists in the rather ingenious phrasing of things which might nearly as well be left unsaid. The leading article, on "Student Guiding at Harvard," finally extracts a good point from a somewhat tedious mass of semi-jocose narrative. The article on "Stevenson at Cockermouth" is distinctly below the literary standard of the Monthly, as it is not clearly about anything, and uses words in a highly erratic fashion. Whether the writer or the editor is responsible for "flys," on page 63, it is certainly not a form to be commended.

It is to be regretted that the writers of undergraduate verse and prose feel called upon to go for subjects so far outside their own experiences. We need more work of the quality of "The Medomac" and the editorials of this number of the Monthly. It will be a great day for Harvard journalism when the literary undergraduate stops sighing after the unseen