BRIEFER MENTION
203
My Thirty Years in Baseball, by John J. McGraw (12mo, 265 pages; Boni & Liveright: $2). "You can beat these fellows," I told them. "I don't think there is a question about it. We have a big advantage in that they are the favorites." In this way, McGraw is supposed to have shot the drive into the Giants that won the World Series. But it is certain that his men would have laughed at such stilted language. They'll laugh or yawn when they read this book. And so will the bleachers. For by the omission of quantities of aints, hells, and hurrahs, it is inferior to the prose of ballparks. Nor does the slangy, technical, dominant, athletic, racy personality of McGraw enter into its grammatically correct and subdued pages.
Casual Wanderings in Ecuador, by Blair Niles (illus., 8vo, 250 pages; Century: $2.50) is a charming travel narrative by one who realizes that it is more blessed to receive than to retain; her book brims with impressions and doesn't bother about the statistics. As Thoreau said, "It's not worth while going round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar"; grace and intelligence score higher than the honest minutiae of consular trade reports. Here is that rare thing in narratives of travel: an absence of the spirit of the self-anointed globe trotter.
Yesterday and To-day, by Ralph Nevill (8vo, 285 pages; Dutton: $5) is one of those impostures which make it seem desirable that writers and publishers form a union and work on the closed shop basis. The author's hobby is evidently collecting lists; he gives us lists of London clubs, of the food and wine served there, of hotel decorations, of women's apparel, of landmarks; prices are affixed wherever possible. The type is large, the paragraphs short, the words one-syllable. Perhaps it is long-stored knowledge he imparts: it has not mellowed into material for a book, but accumulated into matter for an almanac.
The Book of My Youth, by Hermann Sudermann (8vo, 394 pages; Harper: $2.25) follows Cournos, Björkman, and numerous others in the field of autobiography handled in the mood of fiction, and easily outdistances them all in brilliancy and artistry. Here life is looked at with sufficient detachment to make it valuable and with sufficient wit to give it relish. Sudermann is gifted with a selective wisdom which makes every incident a dramatic contribution; he sees the forces which shaped his early years in their exact significance, and in consequence his narrative has a unity and an emotional and intellectual solidarity which are as rare as they are captivating.
Things Remembered, by Arthur Sherburne Hardy (illus., 8vo, 311 pages; Houghton Mifflin: $5) is a most tranquil book—the detached record of a career which seems never to have filled out its possible boundaries. The author says the expected things about the value of West Point training and speaks pallidly of the compensations of old age, but few of his contacts with life seem to have struck fire. As a diplomat, he served as United States minister to Persia, Greece, Roumania, Serbia, Switzerland, and Spain; his reminiscences are those of the typical American literary legate.
