BRIEFER MENTION
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Memories of a Musical Career, by Clara Kathleen Rogers (illustrated; 8vo, 503 pages; Little, Brown; Boston), is a deliberate and detailed chronicle, its reminiscences spanning approximately fifty chapters and two continents. Out of her girlhood, her musical education, her wide acquaintance and varied experiences as opera and concert singer, Mrs. Rogers weaves an unemotional, and rather quaint, autobiography; but its appeal is for musical and retrospective readers.
Between You and Me, by Sir Harry Lauder (12mo, 324 pages; McCann; New York), retains both the dialect and the informal flavour which have been so successful beyond the footlights. Sir Harry tosses neither knighthood nor discretion to the wind, but his narrative touches reality at those responsive points where the homely virtues lie close to the surface. To a life story founded on fact, he brings a literary art founded on folk.
Irish Impressions, by G. K. Chesterton (12mo, 222 pages; Lane), has had other reviewers who have noted the justice of Mr. Chesterton's contention that, to understand Ireland, one: should view it as an hitherto undiscovered country. No Englishman has done this, and with all his good will, Mr. Chesterton is an Englishman. With expected tact he gives a just impression of Irish religion and speech, but for the rest the book is a series of turgid formulae strung together on the exasperating principle that if to say a thing in a certain way is clever, to say it twice is twice as clever.
The Moral Basis of Democracy, by Arthur Twining Hadley (12mo, 206 pages; Yale University Press), consists of nineteen sermons, delivered to Yale Students over a generous space of years, in an atmosphere at once strenuous and sabbatical. Platitudes are generously reinforced by illustrations from the Civil War, which are scattered through the pages with the stolid meaninglessness of the post-bellum monuments one finds in New England towns. "Gentlemen of the Graduating Class" are the frequent targets for President Hadley's exhortations. Need Gentlemen of the Graduated Classes be reminded that for them attendance at Chapel is optional?
