Progress to Jem Brown and progress to Mr. Slade looked as different as contrasted black and white, until Mr. Slade had his eyes opened.

Leighton Parks, in "The Illumination of Mr. Slade," creates a character from the old world, M. de Brisac, who assails the American's notion that progress in the United States has accomplished great good. "It depends on what you mean by progress,' states de Brisac. The strides in science and in mechanics have increased the speed of American life, perhaps, but not without definite loss. Doctor Parks, whose arraignment of progress takes a rather unusual narrative shape, writes from the rector's office of St. Bartholomew's Church that he doesn't quite know how he came to cast his article in its controversial form. "Indeed, I should be glad if the reader could let me know," he says.

As to that other American, Jem Brown, he never had any illusions about progress. At each important crisis of his life it came to interfere with and disturb his peace of mind and his happiness, and he hated it to the end. Harriet Welles, who tells about him in one of her typically Western stories, "Progress," says that he was a real person, shy, wise, and with a confusing way of mixing up fact and whimsicality in his conversation. He used to average two dollars a day in earnings from loose pockets of ore, and he lived along on a satisfactory philosophy of life, with fair contentment.

WILL JAMES AT YALE

We have been attempting to discover something about Will James's career at Yale and our chief source of information has been the cowboy-artist himself.

"I only went to Yale about ten days;

I

about three hours each day. The reason didn't stay there was that it was a little too slow for me."

It's too bad he didn't meet William Lyon Phelps. Whether James attempted to lasso the sacred bulldog or stage a rodeo in the Bowl is not recorded in the annals of the university.

One of the cowboy's chief objections seems to have been the prevalence of "Eastern English," which got on his nerves and was contrary to the form of expression with which he was familiar. The picturesque language that James uses must have been somewhat of a revelation to Yale.

Characterizing herself as "that unpleasant type of wife who always tags along" no matter how distant the mine or how new the trail, Mary Lee Davis can well state that she knows her Alaska up and down, as few do who have been there longer than she has. For eight years she and her husband, John Allen Davis, have wintered and summered and criss-crossed all the trails they could find in the course of investigations at the Mining Experiment Station at Fairbanks, of which Mr. Davis is superintendent.

Mrs. Davis feels that at the time of President Harding's Alaskan trip last year the stories and impressions concocted by professional write-up men, who were not able in so short a time to see Alaska as she is, gave a wrong impression. This American colony has long suffered from the reports of the casual observer, or, as Mrs. Davis puts it, "We have one thorn in the flesh here that the sure-enough bottled-in-bond Pilgrims did not have to contend with, and that is the Two-Week Tourist of the genus Cook, who comes aimlessly, goes listlessly, expects (if he expects anything) to see a finished article, and is most unimaginatively disappointed to find only beginnings." These people, coming in the summer and returning at once to their safe and comfortable cities, write books labelled "All About Alaska" or "Alaska as I Have Known It." Curious readers of this sort of book will find it interesting to compare their misinformation with Mrs. Davis's authentic record.

As to the human side-personal accounts of the people of Alaska ought to make good reading, but Mrs. Davis says that they would require the soft pedal. The subject is a delicate one, being colorfully complicated by political petty grabsters, squawmen, and dance-hall ladies who have reached respectability by the church route future article, rather than the present one. or the bridge club. Their place is in some

In "Mr. Manton at Sea," Edward C. Venable has taken an idea from an incident in life and placed it in an entirely different set of circumstances. A boy who cheated in school because he believed the examination system was wrong is changed in the story to a man who broke a jeweller's plate-glass window. Both did quixotic things because of an obscure desire-to-believe hidden deep down beneath their outward shells of appearances. The actions were quixotic, in the eyes of the world, that is, because, as Mr. Manton says when he attempts to explain, "any man looks funny when he starts monkeying with his soul."

In describing the rebellious boy's attitude and its relation to the character in his story, Mr. Venable says:

"All the while, deep in him, beneath the cynicism was a sort of hope that the system wasn't a sham, and to realize that hope he was willing to suffer anything. Mr. Manton had the same suspicion and the same hope. Poor devil, he never proved either. Perhaps nobody ever does."

The author achieved his result by following out his theory of the short story.

"I have decided that nobody really knows very much about short stories and that is why they are such a fascinatingly interesting form to experiment with. One thing I am certain of—I never saw a novel hurt by being compressed into a short story and I have read scores of stories ruined by being expanded into novels. But just what that proves I am not certain. The only man whose opinion I'd take here is Turgénieff

because he used both forms with the same facility."

When William Lyon Phelps comes to write his autobiography, he'll probably have to entitle it "From Reviewer to Reviewer," for it appears that he was already well launched in that occupation at the age of twelve. The learned colyumnist states that being a critic of contemporary literature in those early days of his career was good for him but "extremely bad for the paper," which was The Christian Secretary, a weekly now extinct, edited in Hartford, Conn., by his father, formerly pastor of a Baptist church. He took charge of it in 1876, and let his son set type by hand and otherwise amuse himself at journalistic occupations in his hours out of school. The important fact, however, was that he had

that time had been largely theological and now took on new color and cosmopolitanism due to enormous weekly accessions of books on all subjects, sent in for review. The future professor became a regular contributor to the paper at fourteen, and can thus boast of nearly fifty years at journalism.

NOYES AS AN ADVISER

Because the readers of SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE are people of substance, most of them take more than a merely academic interest in business and finance. For this reason, when "The Financial Situation" was established, a man was sought who, in addition to theoretical knowledge of the subject, should have practical experience and understanding of business conditions. Alexander Dana Noyes is the result of that search. While he does not advise about specific investments, one reading his department will find it an invaluable aid in selecting proper investment channels.

the

If a psychologist were to use the names of painters to test reactions, the following dialogue would undoubtedly be the result in a large percentage of cases:

Psychologist: "Degas."

One Casually Interested in Art: "Ballet Girls." For Degas is usually thought of first as a painter of ballet girls, so famous have these figures become. All too little is known of the real quality behind the work of this artist. Some classicists dismiss him as "one of those 'modern' fellows"; some modernists feel that art has advanced far beyond him. He is in reality a transition figure, as Royal Cortissoz points out in “The Field of Art" this month. Of course, all artists in a sense stand between the past and the future, but few can profit so much from tradition and contribute so much to the advance of painting as did Degas.

Born at a time when the romantic revolt against the classicism of David and his school was reaching its zenith, he came to maturity at a crucial point in the history of painting, a time when equilibrium had been somewhat restored and the question of ascendancy not yet definitely settled. The comprehensive consideration which Mr. Cortissoz gives to this painter who preserved a balance between tradition and the new elements-who progressed without losing touch with the past-is a valuable chapter in modern criticism.