Books: Soap Man

ELBERT HUBBARD: GENIUS OF ROYCROFT —David Arnold Balch—Stokes ($2.50).

U. S. literary histories pass over the career of Elbert Hubbard, Sage of East Aurora. Yet his writings crossed the path of a whole U. S. generation. Between 1895 and his death on the Lusitania, millions read his little magazine, The Philistine, his Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great. He wrote the most famous of all inspirational bromides, A Message to Garcia (total estimated printing to date: 40,000,000 copies, including those issued as regulation equipment to both Russian and Japanese soldiers in the Russo-Japanese War).

Few U. S. mission-oak library tables were...