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When Winter Comes to Main Street, a non-fiction book by Grant Martin Overton |
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Chapter 14. With Full Directions |
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_ CHAPTER XIV. WITH FULL DIRECTIONS =i= I have read the book called Civilization in the United States, a collection of essays by various Americans, and count the time well spent chiefly because, at the end of the chapter on "Sport," I came upon these words by Ring W. Lardner: "The best sporting fiction we know of, practically the only sporting fiction an adult may read without fear of stomach trouble, is contained in the collected works of the late Charles E. Van Loan." This is expert testimony, if there is such a thing. The books Mr. Lardner referred to are published in a five-volume memorial edition consisting of: This collected edition was published by George H. Doran Company with the arrangement that every cent above actual cost should go to Mrs. Van Loan and her children. William T. Tilden, 2nd, was winner of the world's tennis championship in 1920 and 1921. With W. M. Johnston he was winner of the Davis cup in the same years. He also won the United States championship in those years. His book, The Art of Lawn Tennis, published in 1921, was republished in 1922. The revised edition included chapters on the winning of the Davis cup and on the world's and the United States championships, on Mrs. Mallory's play in the women's world championship games in France and England, and on Mlle. Lenglen's play in America. Mr. Tilden also added an estimate of the promising youngsters playing tennis and indulged in one or two surprising and radical prophecies. Twenty Years of Lawn Tennis, by A. Wallis Myers, an English player of distinction, has interesting chapters on play in other countries than America, England and France. An anecdotal volume this, with moments on the Riviera and matches played in South Africa. After unpreventable delays we have, at last, The Gist of Golf by Harry Vardon. Using remarkable photographs, Vardon devotes a chapter to each club and chapters to stance, grip, and swing. Although the chief value of the book is to the player who wants to improve his game, there is text interesting to everyone familiar with golf; for Vardon gives personal reminiscences covering years of play and illustrative of his instructions. =ii= I suppose the fifty-three photographs, mostly full page ones, are the outstanding feature of Wild Life in the Tree Tops, by Captain C. W. R. Knight. This English book, large and flat, shows with the aid of the camera, the merlin pursuing her quarry, young tawny owls in a disused magpie's nest, female noctules and their young, the male kestrel brooding, and a male buzzard that has just brought a rabbit to the younglings in the nest. Plenty of other pictures like these! The chapters deal with the buzzards of the Doone country, the lady's hawk, woodpeckers, brown owls, sparrow-hawks, herons and various other feathered people. Did you ever read Lad: A Dog? Well, anyway, there is a man named Albert Payson Terhune and he and his wife live at a place called "Sunny-bank," at Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, where they raise prize winning collie dogs. Photographs come from New Jersey showing Mr. and Mrs. Terhune taking afternoon tea, entirely surrounded by magnificently coated collies. You will also find, if you stray into a bookstore this autumn, a book with a jacket drawn by Charles Livingston Bull--a jacket from which looms a colossal collie. He carries in a firmly knotted shawl or blanket or sheet or something (the knot clenched between his teeth) a new-born babe. New-born or approximately so. The title of this book is Further Adventures of Lad. Mr. Terhune writes the best dog stories. Read a little bit from the first chapter of Further Adventures of Lad: "Even the crate which brought the new dog to the Place failed somehow to destroy the illusion of size and fierceness. But the moment the crate door was opened the delusion was wrecked by Lad himself. "Out on to the porch he walked. The ramshackle crate behind him had a ridiculous air of chrysalis from which some bright thing had departed. For a shaft of sunlight was shimmering athwart the veranda floor. And into the middle of the warm bar of radiance Laddie stepped--and stood. "His fluffy puppy-coat of wavy mahogany-and-white caught a million sunbeams, reflecting them back in tawny-orange glints and in a dazzle as of snow. His forepaws were absurdly small even for a puppy's. Above them the ridging of the stocky leg bones gave as clear promise of mighty size and strength as did the amazingly deep little chest and square shoulders. "Here one day would stand a giant among dogs, powerful as a timber-wolf, lithe as a cat, as dangerous to foes as an angry tiger; a dog without fear or treachery; a dog of uncanny brain and great lovingly loyal heart and, withal, a dancing sense of fun. A dog with a soul. "All this, any canine physiologist might have read from the compact frame, the proud head carriage, the smoulder in the deep-set sorrowful dark eyes. To the casual observer, he was but a beautiful and appealing and wonderfully cuddleable bunch of puppyhood. "Lad's dark eyes swept the porch, the soft swelling green of the lawn. The flash of fire-blue lake among the trees below. Then he deigned to look at the group of humans at one side of him. Gravely, impersonally, he surveyed them; not at all cowed or strange in his new surroundings; courteously inquisitive as to the twist of luck that had set him down here and as to the people who, presumably, were to be his future companions. "Perhaps the stout little heart quivered just a bit, if memory went back to his home kennel and to the rowdy throng of brothers and sisters and, most of all, to the soft furry mother against whose side he had nestled every night since he was born. But if so, Lad was too valiant to show homesickness by so much as a whimper. And, assuredly, this House of Peace was infinitely better than the miserable crate wherein he had spent twenty horrible and jouncing and smelly and noisy hours. "From one to another of the group strayed the level sorrowful gaze. After the swift inspection Laddie's eyes rest again on the Mistress. For an instant, he stood, looking at her, in that mildly polite curiosity which held no hint of personal interest. "Then, all at once, his plumy tail began to wave. Into his sad eyes sprang a flicker of warm friendliness. Unbidden--oblivious of everyone else--he trotted across to where the Mistress sat. He put one tiny white paw in her lap and stood thus, looking up lovingly into her face, tail awave, eyes shining. "'There's no question whose dog he's going to be,' laughed the Master. 'He's elected you--by acclamation.'" =iii= Not content with being the husband of Margaret Sangster, C. M. Sheridan has written The Stag Cook Book. I would have it understood that this is an honest-to-goodness cook-book, although I readily confess that there is plenty of humour throughout its pages. Mr. Sheridan has acquired various unusual and unreplaceable recipes--I believe he secured from Wladislaw Benda, the illustrator, a rare and secret formula for the preparation of a species of Hungarian or Polish pastry. Now, as every housewife knows, and as no man except a Frenchman or somebody like that knows, the preparation of pastry is an intricate art. Simply to make ordinary French pastry requires innumerable rollings to incredible thinnesses; besides which the pastry has to be chilled; but there is more than that to this recondite substance which Mr. Benda, probably under the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, surrendered to Mr. Sheridan. The pastry in question has to be executed with the aid of geometrical designs. Mr. Sheridan has supplied the necessary front elevation and working plans. He shows you where you fold along the line from A to B--in other words, along the dotted line. Thus no man using this unique cook-book can go wrong any more than his wife can go wrong when making a new dress according to Pictorial Review or McCall's or Delineator patterns. On the other hand, women remain still chiefly responsible for the food we eat. Elizabeth A. Monaghan's What to Eat and How to Prepare It is an orthodox cook-book in contrast with Mr. Sheridan's daring adventure. =iv= Large numbers of people still play games. I do not mean cards or tennis or golf or any of the famous outdoor and indoor sports, but just games, the sort of things that are sometimes called stunts and that make the life of the party--or, by their absence or failure, rob the evening gathering of all its vitality. For the people who play games, Edna Geister is the one best bet. Edna Geister knows all about stunts and games and parties and she brims over with clever ideas for the hostess or recreation leader. You will find them in her book Ice-breakers and the Ice-breaker Herself. The second section of this book, The Ice-breaker Herself, has been bound separately for the convenience of those already owning Ice Breakers. Miss Geister's latest book, It Is to Laugh, was written primarily for adults because there is so much material already available for the recreation of children. Nevertheless almost every one of the games and stunts described in It Is to Laugh can be used for children. There are games for large groups and small groups, games for the family, for dinner parties, for community affairs and for almost any kind of social gathering, with one chapter devoted to out-of-door and picnic programmes. Playing the piano is not a game, at least not as Mark Hambourg, the pianist and composer, plays it. Hambourg, though born in South Russia in 1879, the eldest son of the late Professor Michel Hambourg, has for years been a naturalised Englishman. In fact, he married in 1907 the Honourable Dorothea Mackenzie, daughter of Lord Muir Mackenzie. And the pair have four daughters. Mark Hambourg was a pupil of Leschetitzky in Vienna, where he obtained the Liszt scholarship in 1894. He has made concert appearances all over the world, his third American tour falling in 1907, and his first Canadian tour in 1910. Mark Hambourg's book is called How to Play the Piano and the text is helped with practical illustrations and diagrams and a complete compendium of five-finger exercises, scales, arpeggi, thirds and octaves as practised by Hambourg. =v= Those who read The Bookman will not need to be told that the articles by Robert Cortes Holliday on Writing as a Business: A Practical Guide for Authors, will constitute an exceptional book. The great point about Mr. Holliday's chapters, which have been written in collaboration with Alexander Van Rensselaer, is that they are disinterested. There has been an immense amount of printed matter, some of it in book form, telling of the problems that confront the writer, especially the young beginner. As a rule, the underlying motive was to induce people to write so that someone else might make money out of their efforts, whether the writers did or not. So-called correspondence schools in the art of writing, so-called literary bureaus, interested individuals anxious to earn "commissions," and sometimes individuals who purported to be publishers have for many years carried on a continuous campaign at the expense of persons who did not know how to write but who fancied they could write and who, above everything, craved to write--craved seeing themselves in print and hearing themselves referred to as "authors" or "writers." It would take a statistician versed in all manner of mysteries and calculations to tell how many people have been deluded by this stuff, and how much money has been nuzzled out of them. The time was certainly here for someone in a position to tell the truth to speak up. And of Mr. Holliday's qualifications there is no question. He has had to do with books and authors and book publishing for years. He was, as his readers know, for a number of years in the Scribner bookstore. He was with Doubleday, Page & Company at Garden City; he was with George H. Doran Company, serving not only as editor of The Bookman but acting in other editorial capacities. He is now connected with Henry Holt & Company. As an author he is amply established. Therefore, when he tells about writing and book publishing and bookselling, and when he discusses such subjects as "Publishing Your Own Book," his statements are most thoroughly documented. The important thing, however, is that Mr. Holliday is disinterested, he has no axe to grind in the advice he gives; although the impressive thing about his book is the absence of advice and the continual presentation of unvarnished facts. After all, confronted with the facts, the literary aspirant of ordinary intelligence must and should reach his own conclusions as regards what he wants to do and how best to essay it. This is a sample of the kind of straightforwardness to which Mr. Holliday adheres: "An experienced writer 'on his own' may earn a couple of hundred dollars or so in one week, and for several weeks afterward average something like $14.84. The beginner-writer should not consider that he has 'arrived' when he has sold one story, or even several; it may be a year before he places another. And the future of a writer who may be having a very fair success now is not any too secure. Public taste changes. New orders come in. The kind of thing which took so well yesterday may be quite out of fashion tomorrow. "There is among people generally much misconception as to the profits ordinarily derived by the author from the publication of a book. The price of a novel today is about two dollars. Usually the author receives a royalty of about fifteen cents a copy on the first two thousand copies sold, and about twenty cents on each copy thereafter. A novel which sold upward of 50,000 copies would bring the author something like $10,000. Many men make as much as $10,000 by a year's work at some other business or profession than authorship. But authors who make that amount in a year, or anything near that amount, are exceedingly rare. A book is regarded by the publisher as highly successful if it sells from five to ten thousand copies. Far and away the greater number of books published do not sell as many as 1,500 copies. Many far less. A recently published book, which received a very cordial 'press,' has had an uncommon amount of publicity, and the advertisements of which announce that it is in its 'fourth printing,' has, after about half a year, earned for its author perhaps $1,000. Its sale now in active measure is over. An author is fairly fortunate who receives as much as $500 or $600 from the sale of his book. I recall an excellent story published something over a year ago which was much praised by many reviewers. It took the author probably the better part of a year to write it. He was then six months or more getting it accepted. He has not been able to place much of anything since. At the end, then, of two years and a half he has received from his literary labors about $110." Mr. Van Rensselaer has greatly enhanced the usefulness of Writing as a Business by the addition of very complete bibliographies. Illumination and Its Development in the Present Day, by Sidney Farnsworth, has nothing to do with street or indoor lighting but has a great deal to do with lettering and illuminating manuscripts. Mr. Farnsworth traces the growth of illumination from its birth, showing, by means of numerous diagrams and drawings, its gradual development through the centuries from mere writing to the elaborate poster work and commercial lettering of the present day. Although other books have already been written on this fascinating subject, Mr. Farnsworth breaks new ground in many directions; he treats the matter from the modern standpoint in a manner which makes his work invaluable not only to students of the art, but also to the rapidly-growing public interested in what has hitherto been a somewhat exclusive craft. The book is well illustrated. _ |
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