THE PHI- factors. And then he knows the highest and the LISTINE best; he has lived with the philosophers, poets

and seers of all ages and climes.

Reedy looks down the past and with vivid imagination resurrects those long dead and makes them, for us, live again. He has dived into science, delved in art, and taken his turn at philosophy, but he is at his best when sitting quietly, a spectator of life, making comments on the passing show.

He knows too much of all religions to believe implicitly in any, but I think I have detected the smell of ecclesiastical smoke upon his garments, and he seems at times a sort of second cousin to all those who wear shovel hats. Writing that is done for the sake of writing never rises above the compulsory sophomoric daily theme. The thing that contains enough Attic salt to save it springs right out of the heart. The idea takes possession of the man and he has to write to get rid of it-he expresses himself to find relief. Reedy writes for himself, and his peculiar flowing, musical quality comes thru the fact that he writes for his ear-an ear which some unkind ones say is large and furry. q Yes, Reedy has detractors, just as all men have who think thoughts and express them. Reedy gives blows, and receives them. But no

one ever yet accused him of striking at random. THE PHIq Clear writing comes from clear thinking. LISTINE The man who talks muddily, thinks muddily.

And the man who deals in the ellipse, who glides,
and uses no waste words, but exactly enough
words, and just the right words to carry you
with him, is a Literary Artist-and that is just
what William Marion Reedy is.

Great writers are not great all the time. Three-
fourths that Ruskin wrote is rubbish, and he
knew it, too, for he made a desperate effort to get
his "
complete works" out of the hand of Ba-
rabbas & Co., his self-appointed American pub-
lishers, making the plaintive cry that it was “a
wrong to both reader and writer to publish
things that were clearly ephemeral and unrep-
resentative." Shakespeare contains much rant
and fustian. Browning could be cut down one-
half with profit to his reputation.

And so William Marion Reedy has at intervals
pushed a tired pen, and written with sweat and
lamp smoke. Needless to say, the Reedy we
love and know and would remember, is Reedy
at his best.

If a man is great it is not on account of his lapses and babblings, but in spite of them. It is not for me to work the apotheosis of the Man from Saint Louis, it is only for me to say that

THE PHI- in Saint Louis lives a man who is occasionally

LISTINE

a Saint. Saints are only Saints when seen at the right angle. So in the Writings of the Saints, only their best should appear. And I suppose it will not be disputed that the Saints were just men and women, and that nothing human was alien to them.

Reedy is no seraph, nor yet an arch angel-he is a man, and as far as I know both of his pa

rents lived on earth.

Reedy is very close to us; and in his recurring
minor key he reveals a tenderness which he oc-
casionally tries to mask with a brusqueness
he does not feel.

The selection of the matter in THE LAW
OF LOVE was left to a Good Woman who
has insight, sympathy and literary taste.
"I like Reedy most because he has such a
beautiful indifference," once said a Discerning
Person to me-and then she added, “And I
like him because he seems to take such joy in
his work, forgetting everything as fast as he
says it, going right on to other themes, asking
for nothing, giving everything."

All martyrdoms seem deserved to the looker-on. It is only time that gives the right perspective.

HE King of Books! That is better THE PHIthan to be the Jack of Clubs, don't LISTINE you think so? Still, I suppose a man

might be both. His other name is

James Cinnamon Young of Minneapolis, Crank in Ordinary. To the Elect he is known as Jamsie the Belliaker, but history will write him down as plain Ex Libris Rex.

Because that is what he is.

When a man devotes ten years of his life, and a quarter of a million dollars to making a collection of books inscribed by the authors, he has cornered Clio and thrown the lariat over Father Time.

Two things seriously interfere with the average man's making a world's collection-he hasn't the time and he hasn't the money, this to say nothing of the inclination.

There is still a third reason why Mr. Young's performance is purely individual, unique, and can never be duplicated. Over twelve per cent of the authors who have inscribed books to Mr. Young are dead.

The only person who can supply Letters from Dead Authors is Andrew Lang, and his literary ropewalk has shut down.

Autographed books and inscribed books are different. The one contains merely the author's

THE PHI

signature, but the other is an inscription writLISTINE ten by the author to a certain person. Most of the inscriptions in Mr. Young's books refer to the book itself-many tell how the volume came to be written. For instance, it is quite interesting to read on a fly-leaf of one of Charles Dudley Warner's books, "This is quite the worst thing I ever penned. It was done in an interval of aberration, and the fact that the people read it is a serious comment on their mental quality."

When Thomas Hardy writes five hundred words in a "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" backing up his moral, and relating the motive which actuated him in writing the story, we have a comment that makes us pause and sigh as we think of the life of this pure woman. q Thomas Hardy may inscribe other books, but Charles Dudley Warner's hands are folded forever. So are the hands of Herbert Spencer, Robert Louis Stevenson, Harold Frederic, Ellery Channing, Lord Tennyson, Emile Zola, John Ruskin, Guy De Maupassant, Jules Verne, John Fiske, Stephen Crane, Robert Ingersoll, William E. Gladstone, and many others whose inscribed books are in this wonderful library.

In making this collection Mr. Young has used