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BRIEFER MENTION
Broome Street Straws, by Robert Cortes Holliday (12mo, 310 pages; Doran), is a collection of light essays chiefly concerned with characters found in lodging and boarding houses of lower Manhattan, with an intermixture of subjects as far apart as England and Indiana. In one article, The Pub, Mr. Holliday creditably meets Thomas Burke on his own ground. The book is patterned after Walking-Stick Papers, but while it has a pleasant, mellow flavour, it falls somewhat short of the earlier volume both in spirit and in substance.
Dust of New York, by Konrad Bercovici (illustrated, 12mo, 239 pages; Boni & Liveright), is a series of sketches of the Jewish, Spanish, Roumanian, Greek, Italian, and French quarters of the city. Though occasionally it is to be regretted that the introductions have been awkwardly performed, one must admit that Mr. Bercovici has caught and held the overtones in the dust of New York.
The Adventures of a Nature Guide, by Enos A. Mills (illustrated, 12mo, 271 pages; Doubleday, Page), dwells in the high places. Mr. Mills brings down his observations with a keen pair of eyes rather than a shot-gun, and presents his experiences in modest narrative, avoiding the pitfall of the nature writers whose verbal extravagance puts them in the position of patting nature on the back.
Sweden's Laureate: Selected Poems of Verner von Heidenstam, translated by Charles Wharton Stork (8vo, 159 pages; Yale University Press), is a commendable addition to Mr. Stork's enterprise of acquainting Americans with the Scandinavian poets. Among the earlier poems are narratives of oriental colour, chiefly epicurean in philosophy, and some puerilely gloomy subjective pieces. Through a middle period of ripening, the poet passes into warmer, more vigorous feeling and greater understanding. He has an ironic humour of a taking sort. Mr. Stork anticipates criticism of the collection as rendered by saying that Heidenstam allows "his verbal music" to be "overruled by his substance," and that his poetry is below the average of the best Swedish work in melodic beauty. The translations bear him out.
