perhaps the most vigorous impression of the evening. The result of this ancestral scrutiny of Tyltyl's First Loves is that they are all rejected, or at least put on probation.

"And so they all troop along to the Abode of the Children. It is a spacious and dazzling region of azure and gold, a pictorial creation of imaginative, splendid effect-the highwater mark, in fact, of a production which, in every detail of scene, lighting, and costume, is of the very first order. But it is difficult to escape an impression that the writing of the scene is not up to its investiture.

"Coming after the richly human transactions of the Ancestors, it seems diaphanous to the point of evanishment. Compared to it the scene in 'The Bluebird' of the Land of Children Not Yet Born is a masterpiece of fantasy all compounded of impulsive human nature and lambent humor. Those pale wraiths of varying stature who float about so aimlessly are all too feeble to sway the motions of any heart, to say nothing of the quick impulses of adolescence.

"It is, however, Tyltyl's six, children, all in their prenatal nighties, who choose his last and true love for him. The wanderings of the bevy of First Loves has been accompanied by a veiled figure who mutely pleads for recognition. The Ancestors have sensed in her an interesting possibility. But it remains for her six children to pounce upon her with instant recognition of their mother.

But in the morn

"Tyltyl is still at a loss to place the maiden. ing, after he has awakened from his dream, a neighbor and her daughter come in for Christmas breakfast. The daughter is the mute follower of his dreams-the little girl Joy, grown up, to whom, in the previous play, Tyltyl gave the bluebird. Their love scene, played by Sylvia Field in a flood of exquisite, virignal passion, is a fitting climax for a play which, with many inequalities and much baffling symbolism, is an undoubted work of originality and genius."

To Mr. Broun "the lad seems no very free person, with all his ancestors and descendants crowding in upon his choice," a thing which makes the critic puzzle why Destiny should shrink So. Mr. Towse, in the New York Evening Post, posits this treatment of Destiny as "entirely in accordance with the Maeterlinckian spirit," but he, too, finds it "not easy to reconcile this joyous contempt for predestination with the notion of a prenatal and postnatal influence." Mr. Broun finally ships his doubts and agrees to find "The Betrothal" if "not a work of profound philosophy," at least "a play of extraordinary beauty and charm," saying also:

"At this moment we can recall no stage pictures as beautiful, and all the effects are gained from comparatively simple combinations of curtains, even tho these are marvelous fabrics. Herbert Paus is the artist. The performance has an admirable orchestral accompaniment by Eric Delamater. And, best of all, the play has many moments of fine dramatic intensity. Perhaps the best of these was in the Abode of the Ancestors, where the various candidates for the hand of Tyltyl passed before the assembled council. Part of the credit for the thrilling and enthralling nature of this scene should go to Augustin Duncan as the Great Ancestor. Not many performances we have seen this year have so completely dominated a scene. Reginald Sheffield does well as Tyltyl, and there are vivid performances by June Walker, as Roselle, the innkeeper's daughter; Boots Wooster, as Milette, the woodcutter's daughter; Cecil Yapp, as a miser; Edith Wynne Matthison, as Light, and Sylvia Field, as the Veiled Figure.

"All the girls in the little group of Tyltyl's sweethearts play pleasantly, and they also dance attractively in some numbers put on by the Isadora Duncan dancers. All in all, 'The Betrothal' is one of the most successful combinations of many art forms which the theater has seen.

"Of course, it is a play which should please all ancestors, since it flatters them so. Few parents probably have the hardihood to think that anybody has deliberately chosen them as fathers and mothers. Sometimes the theory seems little short of incredible, but perhaps there are not quite enough first-class parents to go round."

Mr. Towse, again, finds here cause for much thanks in the relief furnished from contemporary theatrical fare:

"It contains every promise of being a great popular success, as it is, most assuredly, an exceedingly notable artistic achievement. In providing such an entertainment, so rich in various charm, beauty, and fancy, Mr. Winthrop Ames has

FRANCE TO COMMEMORATE OUR AID-France is never behindhand in acts of graceful courtesy. As we have an imposing reminder of this in the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, so France has already taken steps to commemorate American aid in the Great War. A press dispatch from Paris gives the preliminary steps:

"The Councils of the Gironde and Bordeaux have given the initial subscription of 300,000 francs ($60,000) toward the monument which will be erected at the entrance to the Gironde River to commemorate American aid to France and of which President Wilson has been invited to lay the corner-stone.

"The committee in charge of the erection of the monument is composed of many of the most eminent men in France. Former President Loubet is chairman of the committee, and among the other members are Premier Clemenceau, former Premiers Briand, Viviani, Ribot, Bourgeois, Barthou, and Painlevé, President Dubost, of the Senate; President Deschanel, of the Chamber of Deputies; Foreign Minister Pichon, Minister of Marine Leygues, and Minister of Instruction Laferre.

"Others on the committee are Jules Cambon, Senator Monis, Henri Bergson, Ernest Lavisse, Pierre Loti, Emile Boutroux, and Gabriel Hanotaux, of the French Academy; Senator Dupuy, Senator Doumer, Senator d'Estournelles de Constant, and the Marquis de Chambrun, descendant of Lafayette."

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LORE OF THE CHANTEYS

HANTEYS SEEM EVEN MORE POPULAR in England than with us. Some time ago we recorded the impression that they had come back in our ship-building plants as a means of speeding up labor, and the best-known exponent of these traditional songs of the sea was secured to teach his store of songs to others. [See LITERARY DIGEST, July 6, page 38.] Now a man pops up in the London Times who has the most indisputable claim to authority, since his "ancestors have followed the sea as far back

as can be traced." To understand his further claims, we shall have to notice that he calls his songs "Shanties," and a little later makes an elaborate defense of the form. Before that, however, he tells us he has "grown up' with sailor shanties," that his "contact and familiar intimacy with all the recognized shanties go back as far as he can remember," that he has "in later years compared, coordinated, and collected his boyish memories of the shanties with those of his very numerous sailor relatives and their respective circles of sailor acquaintances." All these credentials are enforced by the interesting information that he-Mr. R. R. Terry-has lived for some years in the West Indies-"probably the only spot where the shanty is still alive"; and that he has "lost no opportunity of collecting shanties from old sailors who worked in sailing - ships before the days of screw-steamers." By way of preliminary to his warnings, then, Mr. Terry, writing in the London Times, apprises us of this fact:

and bogus tunes, picked up from any stray sailor-often quite uneducated, and not seldom afflicted with the bemused memory of the octogenarian. The last factor is not, I think, sufficiently recognized. Most of the sailormen now surviving from the old windjammers are necessarily in their seventies or eighties. I have lately taken down shanties from a number of them, and in the matter of accuracy I noticed a great difference between their versions of well-known shanties and the versions of the same shanties sung to me when I was a youth, and when these old men's recollections were thirty years fresher. Indeed, one old fellow's memory played him such tricks that when he sang his version of 'A hundred years ago' I immediately recognized

"The shanty is dead on the sea. If it is to be revived on shore (as seems probable) it is imperative that, when the old melodies find their way into print, the sailor atmosphere and sailor traditions shall be faithfully reproduced. With the exception of Capt. R. H. Whall's 'Sea-Songs, Ships, and Shanties' (the only authoritative collection in print), there is no indication of this. Other collections than that of Captain Whall (unfortunately for us it deals only incidentally with shanties) are the compilation either of a sailor who is no musician or of a musician who is no sailor. The ideal combination of sailor and musician has yet to come."

First, then, Mr. Terry settles the "shanty" versus "chanty" business, and passes on to a secondly, thirdly, and lastly:

"May I utter a protest against the pedantry whichbecause of a fancied derivation from (un) chanté-would spell it 'chanty' or 'chantey'? The result of such spelling is that out of every thousand landsmen 999.9 pronounce it 'tchahnty,' riming with auntie,' instead of 'shanty,' riming with 'scanty,' as every sailor always pronounced it. The arguments in favor of 'chanty' are plausible, but conjectural. Were it worth while, I could prove by arguments more plausible, less conjectural, and equally unconvincing that the word is derived from a negro shanty, or hut. According to the Oxford Dictionary (which, by the way, spells it shanty) the word did not find its way into literature until 1869. That being so, surely it is more scholarly to spell it as the sailor always pronounced it. . .

"Secondly, I scent a public danger in the multiplication of editions by mere 'collectors.' Lacking nautical knowledge and experience, the 'collector' is too ready to accept bogus titles

it as a pasticcio of three separate shanties, all well known to me. Even in the case of a sailor relative (seventy years old, but intellectually a young man) I notice differences between his present-day versions and those I noted down from his singing thirty years ago. The mere collector-'knowing naught of these things'-first catches his sailorman; takes down his comic mispronunciations and muddled melodies, and straightway puts them into print. Once in print an uncritical public accepts them as authentic and authoritative. And so one feels no surprize at eventually finding your correspondent alluding to 'shanadar' and 'whip jamboree' as if they were classics, tho the real fact is that the first is an ignorant mispronunciation of the worldfamous 'Shenandoah' (surely too well beloved to deserve so grotesque a disguise), and the other a garbled mixture of 'Santy Anna,' and Heaven only knows how many more tunes, with a title unknown to any sailor I ever met.

"Thirdly, I am constrained to warn a trustful public against the habit of a certain type of folk-song hunter of attributing nearly every old tune to some 'mode' or other. There are no end of shanties which (melodically) fulfil certain 'modal' conditions, but are, nevertheless, in a key. 'Homeward bound,' some of the 'Stormalong' shanties, and many others are unequivocally in a major key, but because they end on the modern dominant (which is the final of the eighth mode) the folk-songer labels them eighth (I beg pardon, I mean hypomixolydian) mode.

"Lastly, as one whose chief business in life is concerned with the old modes, let me beg of future 'collectors' to drop these Mesopotamian terms, no matter what peace and comfort they bring to the soul. I grant that they sound dreadfully learned as compared with mere numerals; but the latter have the advantage of being accurate designations, which the pseudoGreek labels are not."

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taken more than one wife recently and kept the marriages secret.

"He had been married six times and is survived by five wives, forty-three children, and ninety-one grandchildren.

66

After the rioting at Carthage his mother fled with her little son and the other Mormons to Nauvoo, Ill., where she remained until Joseph was eight years old, when they were driven forth again, and the young boy drove an ox-team across the plains to Utah, where he became a herdboy, and then a missionary in 1852, when the late Brigham Young established his headquarters at Salt Lake City. Joseph Fielding Smith was only fifteen years old when he was sent to Hawaii as a missionary for the Mormon Church. Later he entered the army raised by President Young to intercept United States troops which were about to invade Utah and did active service as a scout until the so-called 'Mormon war' was ended.

the past has come into conflict with legal authorities on account of some fundamental tenets of its creed. The late head of the church was an early advocate of polygamy, and after 1890 preferred to suffer prosecution rather, as he said, than abandon his children and their mothers. The group here shown gives an idea of how large were the responsibilities he had taken on himself. He is spoken of by The Transcript as "the last of the men in power in the Mormon Church who outdated the Exodus to Utah." Nephew of the original Joseph Smith, revered by the Mormons as a prophet, "he drove an ox-team on the long trek from the banks of the Mississippi to the Salt Lake Valley in 1846-47." He was brought up on the principles and beliefs of the Saints, and was, like his uncle, reverenced as "of the blood of the Prophet"; but, says The Transcript, "like every other Mormon, he had to make good his claim to advancement in the church or the community by humble and patient service through a long process of slow promotion." A sketch of his life printed in the New York Times gives details of a not uneventful career:

"Joseph Fielding Smith was born in 1838 in Carthage, Ill., where his father, Hyrum Smith, and his uncle, the original Prophet Joseph, were shot to death by a mob which stormed the jail where the two were confined shortly after they began to preach plurality of wives. Altho he was an avowed polygamist for many years, the late president of the Mormon Church changed his views latterly, and left a sick bed last October to attend the semiannual conference held in the Temple at Salt Lake City and denounced the members of the church who had

"In 1890, when the Supreme Court of the United States had upheld the Edmunds-Tucker act making polygamy unlawful he upheld the decision in public, but said that in his own case, altho contrary to law, he preferred the consequences rather than abandon his children and their mothers.

"Like many other Mormons, he was subjected to prosecutions and fines. In July, 1915, the Federal officials at Denver, Col., were warned that there was a plot concocted by bandits to seize the head of the Latter Day Saints Church and hold him in Wyoming for a ransom of $100,000.

"Under his leadership the Mormon Church made many converts in Europe through its missionaries, and in May, 1911, the English people protested to Home Secretary Churchill against the Mormon propaganda being preached throughout Great Britain.

"As head of the church President Smith was trustee in trust of all the Mormon Church property, and, according to the creed of the church, was prophet, seer, and relator. He directed many big business enterprises and had a large private fortune.

"He was president of Brigham Young University at Provo, Utah, and of other educational institutions. He was a director of the Union Pacific Railroad and head of three other big industrial corporations. Before he was elected president of the Mormon Church in 1901 in succession to President Snow he made a tour through Europe to inspect the work being done there by the missionaries of his church. He served as a member of the Utah State legislature and of the City Council of Salt Lake City."

Compared with Brigham Young, The Transcript finds that he had "none of the massive ability of that really great lawgiver and statesman," nor any of the "spiritual audacity" of his uncle, the founder of the church, but

"He was a prudent and sagacious religious leader and a good business man, and his people firmly believe that he possest the key to eternal mysteries, as the authorized recipient of that 'continuing revelation' which is a part of every true Mormon's faith. It is needless to say that he was a polygamist and a patriarch."

The Deseret Evening News (Salt Lake), organ of the Mormon Church, dwells upon a "unique advantage" that he possest: "He did not have to 'come out of the world' and unlearn any of its traditions and errors; from the hour of his birth he was privileged to bask in the rays of the revealed and restored gospel, of which during the ensuing fourscore years he was to be so valiant a champion, so excellent an expounder. And the results have justified in every way the hopes that were cherished and the predictions that were made concerning his presidency. The Church has prospered amazingly, both in spiritual and temporal things. Missionary work abroad has gone forward with great vigor, and Zion at home has been strengthened. Evil has not been looked upon with the least degree of allowance, yet charity for the repentant erring has not been withheld. The spirit of union and harmony has been promoted and the body of the Church has been made a compact, potent force for righteousness and strong to resist the onslaughts of the adversary."

The successor to the dead prophet is Heber J. Grant, mentioned by The Transcript as the first head of the Mormon Church who was born in Salt Lake City after the exodus:

"He represents the modern thought in Mormonism, which is to conform to the requirements of the law but to stand up in 'the meeting' for all the original tenets of the church, and at the same time to keep the whole Mormon community abreast of modern social and material progress. Mr. Grant illustrates in his own person the clever political 'split' that the Mormons always manage. The new president of the Mormon Church is a

extension than it has ever been before. But it is hard to see how it now offers that menace to the safety of American institutions of which it was at one time undoubtedly guilty."

WILHELM'S SACRILEGE AVENGED

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HE KAISER'S TENDENCY to decorate churches with likenesses of himself has laid him or his effigies open to some rude treatment of late. When the British freed Jerusalem from the Turks one of the things brought to light was the fresco in the German church showing the Kaiser and his consort seated upon thrones with their laps the supporting bases of a church. In Metz, William sought a place in the sunlight of sacred history and, robed in the mantle of the Prophet Daniel, stood guard in a niche in the west front of the cathedral. An impression seems to possess some of our correspondents that William had the prophet beheaded in order to substitute his own tête on the stone trunk, not omitting or adapting to Biblical fashions the upturned mustaches. If so the sacrilege has been avenged as Mr. Thomas M. Johnson's correspondence to the New York Evening Sun shows: