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Of the verse, there is little to be said except that none of it is sonorous, most of it is abstract, all of it is moralistic. Here is an old-time bard trying manfully to "whang 'is bloomin' lyre" to the rhythms of his youth. Truth, Love, Power, Glory, Toil, Faith, Hope and kindred "waiting seraphs" are invoked on the bare strength of their names. Of the lurching lot of lines, the best are those called We and They, a merry jingle by a child.
The stories, of course, are as good as ever. None surpasses the Sage of Burwash at yarning in dialects of all sorts. There are Tales of '15 and of '16—Tommies in France, jack-tars in the North and Irish Seas and on shore leave. One tale is laid in Spain: a favorite bull saved from the arena. Another arises' from Mr. Kipling's having ventured to cross the English "midlands" (London to Manchester), where his car broke and he was joined by an Omaha realtor. He has a lot of fun telling about it. Particularly welcome are some additions to Stalky & Co. (schoolboys), with the ingenious Beetle "swottin" (studying hard), and the imperious Stalky directing, their precious educational pursuits.
For Gluttons
MR. AND MRS. HADDOCK IN PARIS, FRANCE—Donald Ogden Stewart—Harper ($2).
It is hard to describe intentionally funny books. You either laugh, in this one, or you don't, when Will Haddock cannot get into the lavatory on the Cherbourg-Paris train; when "bastard" and "vomit" and "cockeyed liar" trip lightly from little Mildred's tongue; when Mrs. Haddock removes eggstain from her spouse's trousers and is told that the town they are passing through is Cabinets Gratuits. Most people, somehow, do laugh uproariously. Funnyman Stewart, a great josher, gets them so thoroughly off guard a few times that his weaker cracks keep them wobbling. Not the steadiest moment comes when Mr. Haddock engages Lecocq, the light-ning-change French detective, to shadow the evidently wicked Mrs. Haddock in her daily round of cathedrals and cemeteries just after little Mildred's attack of indigestion. Considerable latitude is taken by Funnyman Stewart these days in the matter of sudden and inexplicable appearances. It is all rather like Alice in Wonderland— a book that has been thought funny for years. Gluttons for amusement will do well to investigate this latest Haddock excursion out of Author Stewart's native Legion, Ohio.
John Lord
The Story* is of that creature so exceedingly difficult to bring convincingly to paper, a genius. John Lord's mother and father were singers of note. His sister Edith never evinced anything above a talent for housekeeping, but in him, from his English schooldays, through his briefly brilliant writing days, to his premature and exceptional death, the intensities of his parents were fused to a new, definitely superior and self-sufficient original whose peer the U. S. had seldom seen. If you want to take John Lord realistically, think of a composite of Richard Harding Davis, Frank Norris, Stephen Crane.