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Lowell without the French Imagistes? So let of amuse ourselves in discovering traces William Blake and Swinburne and Keats and Marlow in Noyes and especially William Morris. He admired William Morris and contributed to the English "Men of Letters" series an excellent sympathetic life of him, but he does not, as far as I remember, follow Morris in making trees rhyme with vine-buncheese. He has developed mannerisms of his own perhaps, but his ear is too delicate for such monstrosities of Victorian rhyme.

In 1904 came his "Poems," in 1905, “Wild Thyme," which, like "The Flowers of Old Japan," were fairy stories-these for "children under ninety." Three books of his blank verse epic, "Drake," came out in 1906, the remaining eight in 1908; "The Enchanted Island" in 1909, "Sherwood," based on the old English story of Robin Hood, and varied with admirable songs, in 1911. The tales of "The Mermaid Tavern," which, like Longfellow's "Wayside Inn," hark back to Chaucer, came in 1912.

By this time his attention was attracted to the great cause of peace, and he developed the noble ambition to be its Laureate. His powerful "Wine-Press" came in 1913, and "Rada," a one-act play, both suggested by the terrible war in the Balkans, the following year.

In all these out-flowings of a simply portentous fountain of song, he tried many different forms of verse. A good example is offered in his Spring-song, entitled "The Barrel-Organ," which has a haunting melody, though his affectation of repeating lines or phrases is frequently displayed. This is shown also in his best ballad, where he says:

"Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
Her musket shattered the moonlight,
Shattered her breast in her moonlight."

It is a rather dangerous trick of verse and becomes easily wearisome.

In 1907 he married Miss Garnett Daniels, the youngest daughter of Colonel E. G. Daniels, of the United States Army, and thus became more than half American. His tour of this country was really a triumph. He was asked. to take the non-resident professorship of English literature at Princeton University, and he has performed a notable service in compiling an anthology of Princeton verse. He also delivered a course of lectures on "The Sea in Literature" before the Lowell Institute in Boston in 1913.

of verse, some have claimed to detect in it a falling-off in quality. It may be that he writes too easily. That is a real danger. Self-criticism is a necessity for a poet as well as for any other producer, and Mr. Noyes has in his collected works evinced his ability in that direction; but he is rather prone to use the well-worn paraphernalia of the past. This is not a venal sin, though the latter-day scribblers look on them with scorn. If each succession of nightingales and larks avail themselves of the trills of their predecessors, why should not the melodists in words? They are legitimate enough and they are certainly preferable to the cult of ugliness and vulgarity which now prevails too widely.

Of all Noyes' poems, the elaborate ballad of "The Forty Singing Seamen" seems to me by far the best and most original, and destined to live longest. It is too long to cite, but let us recommend any reader to begin with that, and then keep on to satiety!

"DOWN EAST"

BY NORA ARCHIBALD SMITH

A low-roofed cottage in a world of snow-drift,
A Christmas sky of Bethlehem's own blue,
An open door, a softly-lighted window
And someone waiting there for you!

A hill-top church and children's voices singing,
Loved faces in the pulpit and the pew,

A welcome to the heart and to the hearthstone, And someone waiting there for you!

A COUNTY RECREATION SURVEY

BY HENRY S. CURTIS

In order that the opportunities of the county for recreation may be utilized for swimming and games and excursions and picnics, it is exceedingly desirable, both for the sake of the teachers and the children, that there should be a survey of its recreational facilities. Logically the county superintendents should take an interest in securing such a sur

vey.

But it is not alone the superintendent who is interested. A pleasure resort is as much a financial asset to a county as is a new factory to the city, and if there is any kind of a business organization which could take the initiative in securing these recreational developments, it will be good business to do so. No locality can afford to have its citizens spend its money away from home if this money might be retained locally by the development of the facilities which the locality possesses.

At the present time, with increasingly good roads and automobiles, it is nearly as feasible for a county to have an adequate system of parks as it is for the city, and such parks may be nearly as accessible to the people of the county as the city park is to the people of the city.

Dr. Henry Suzzallo, president of the State University of Washington, as chairman of the State Council of Defence, is leading a very strenuous life. To him in no small degree was due the masterful campaign which eliminated the serious features of the I. W. W. nightmare at harvest time, and to him in large measure is due the solution of problems involved in the refusal of the commanding officer of Camp Lewis to allow any soldiers to enter the city limits of Seattle, because of immoral conditions reported there. Dr. Suzzallo's personality was never in greater evidence than in this noble patriotic service. Alert-mindedness, rugged patriotism, indomitable energy, and rare physical endurance have been an important national asset in this hour of need.

Mrs. Frances Elliott Clark, Camden, New Jersey, widely known in educational and music circles, has a brilliant popular and scientific lecture-recital on music, literature, and art in rural communities illustrated by stereopticon and victrola. There are thirty records with bits of masterpieces old and

new; fifty records of captivating music, and seventy-one art views by the stereopticon. All are classified into the four seasons and "The Spirit of America."

While no one of these is complete unless it is brief, there is enough of each to give the thrill of appreciation and the inspiration of science, art and scholarship. Mrs. Clark is equipped to prepare such a lecture as is no one else in America and she presents it with compelling skill. We can conceive of no other platform attraction that can present as many attractions for everyone as does this.

Miss Kate Logan, who made Cherokee county, lowa, as famous as Benson made Wright county and Jessie Field. Page county, and efficient extension worker with E. C. Bishop of Iowa State College at Ames, succeeds Jessie Field (Shambaugh) as the head of the county work of the Young Women's Christian Association work of the United States, with office at 600 Lexington Avenue, New York.

-Mayor Hylan, of New York.

EARNEST PROTEST

Connersville, Ind., November 9, 1917.

Army-Navy Field Comfort Committee.

Gentlemen: I have your letter of November 5 asking me to send you the names of our principals of schools and to get their co-operation in having their pupils raise money to be forwarded to you to provide comfort boxes for soldiers, sailors and Red Cross nurses. Such comfort boxes are described as containing the following: 20 Chesterfield cigarettes, 20 Piedmont cigarettes, W. D. C. French briar pipe, bag of Duke's Mixture, Gilbert's royal pipe cleaners, package cigarette papers, etc.

Now I respectfully but earnestly protest against such a call. For years the teachers of our country have advised their boys against the use of tobacco. Thousands of these boys are now going to the front as men without the tobacco habit and now you invite us to ask eleven and twelve-year-old boys and girls to raise money to buy what? Chesterfield cigarettes and Duke's Mixture for the soldiers, sailors and "every Red Cross nurse," for evidently you do not discriminate against the women and you propose no alternative gift.

And only last week we urged all our pupils to help in the conservation campaign, to save-for what? That we might send Chesterfield cigarettes and Duke's Mixture to those at the front!

You say "the generosity of American manufacturers" is helping to make this plan possible. I suggest that the manufacturers of the Chesterfields, of Duke's Mixture, etc., could afford to pay the whole bill for their goods and charge it up to advertising, and I believe that they know it. Why call upon the children?

Now, we make no protest against the man that is accustomed to having his tobacco continuing to have it. But every such a one can presumably get it and it is not nec

essary to place it as a gift before all the men and all the women. And should the government find that the tobacco users already in the army have the steadier nerve and make the best gunners, then presently the government will doubtless gladly provide the whole supply.

Gentlemen, your letter is an affront to the teachers of America and to the spirit of patriotism whose name you invoke. You are hastening the day when neither you nor anyone else will send out a plea for money in the name of patriotism without the official sanction of the country you say you serve. Very respectfully,

[Signed] Edwin L. Rickert, Superintendent of Schools.

HELPING VOCATIONAL TEACHERS

During the next two years many school superintendents will organize new vocational departments or will reorganize their present activities in accordance with the provisions of the Smith-Hughes bill.

The Department of Public Instruction of Rochester, N. Y., is now putting into form for distribution some vocational data and material, (e. g. courses of study, building plans, shop layouts, list of articles made, etc.) that ought to prove suggestive and helpful to such superintendents. The vocational activities now carried on in Rochester include: Automobile repair work, cabinet making, drafting, electrical work, gas engine work, industrial science, machine work, painting and decorating, pattern making, printing, sheet metal work, dressmaking, home cookery, lunchroom cookery, millinery, power machine operating, salesmanship.

The vocational work is directed by Alfred P. Fletcher, assistant superintendent, to whom requests for material should be addressed.

NEW GEOGRAPHY-BOOK ONE. By Alexis Everett Frye, first superintendent of schools in Cuba. Boston, New York, Chicago: Ginn & Co. Cloth. 8 by 12 inches. Price, 88 cents.

The New Geography is certainly here. The last bit of evidence needed is the publication by Ginn & Co. of a "New Geography" by Alexis Everett Frye. It has been a long time in proving its royal claim.

A Geography is the test of devotion to a principle. It is by far the most expensive book to make. It requires a fortune to produce a wholly new geography. Only four present publishing houses have made any serious attempt to enter this field. A publisher and author who have a book that is largely in use become competitors against themselves when they put a new fortune into a new book. The question that has been in the mind of every educator has been "Will Frye and the Ginns join the campaign of the New Geography?" It is now answered that they have done it.

The triumph of the "New Geography" is complete both in size and in content. It has taken a quarter of a century to break the tradition as to the size of the book, and it has taken ten years to break the tradition as to the supplanting of the science of physical and political geography with the human touch.

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When one realizes how vast the interest involved in the traditional size and pedagogical character of Geography, the wonder is that even now the last barrier is broken down. What Behavioristic Psychology is to the philosophical, the Humanitarian Geography is to the scientific.

No one expects traditional teachers and their boards of education to make a stampede for the Humanitarian Geography. The automobile did not eliminate the driving team for twenty years, and the Bull Tractor will not eliminate the farm team in another twenty years. Those who have been educated to worship at the shrine geographical science will rebel at the reign of progress which humanizes geography.

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Of course the thrill of the beautiful is still dominant in the "New Geography." There are six full-page color plates in which the artists have reached the limit of their art, but every one of these has the human touch dominant.

There are 470 illustrations, maps and charts that have the human touch. There are twenty-six colored maps of the traditional political flavor, except that few cities are in any of them. There is one two-page political map of the United States and one two-page physical map of the United States. There are fifteen other physical maps, mostly small. These figures speak volumes.

The little there is of the physical science of geography is introduced most incidentally in connection with the human touch.

The "New Geography" has now completely triumphed. Art and pedagogy have crowned the human touch geography as complete victor in a long struggle.

To be sure this is only "Book One," or a "First Book," but it is the book that will be studied by all children who use the series and by many more children than will ever reach scientific geography. It is the triumph of democracy as well as of the human touch in geography.

The human way in which Mr. Frye has introduced the human touch is one of the rare charms of the book. In a natural, graceful, fascinating way he leads children into each country of whose significant life he would have them know, and of which they here learn most vividly.

CITIZENSHIP-AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL ETHICS. By Milton Bennion, dean of the School of Education, University of Utah. With an introduction by David Snedden, professor of Educational Sociology in Teachers College, Columbia University, and formerly State Commissioner of Education, Massachusetts. Yonkers-on-Hudson, New York, and Prairie Avenue. Chicago: World Book Company. xviii+181 DD. Price, $1.

Dean Bennion is peculiarly equipped for such a departure in book-making as this presents, for he is a close student of civic conditions and progressive departures in governmental affairs and he is withal independent in his thought without being cranky or individualistic. His book is not intended to take the place of books on goyernment, but rather to serve as an introduction to them. He offers in compact form a treatise on the meaning of civilization, and of its benefits to us and our obligations to the social institutions around which civilization is

founded. The responsibilities of citizenship are especially emphasized and discussed in a way to be easily understood by high school students and to cultivate in students of this receptive age the realization of the part they will play themselves in society.

The book will prove valuable in training young Americans to do their bit in our important social life and to do it right.

The book is made particularly useful to teachers by the insertion of questions and exercises.

GOLDEN NUMBERS. Poems for Children and Young People. Chosen and arranged by Kate Douglas Wiggin and Nora Archibald Smith. Boston, New York, Chicago: Houghton Mifflin Company. Cloth. 685 pp. Price, 80 cents.

There are no two women whose judgment as to the best verse for children is better than that of these two sisters. In these almost 700 pages are almost 400 bits cf choice verse gathered from many lands and many times. The selections are classified as "A Chanted Calendar," "The World Beautiful," "Green Things Growing." "On the Wing," "The Inglenook," "Fairy Songs and Songs of Fancy," "Sports and Pastimes," "A Garden of Girls." "The World of Waters," "The Home and the Country," "New World and Old Glory," "In Merry Mood," "Romance and Reality," "When Banners Are Waving," "Tales of Ye Olden Time," "Life Lessons" and "The Evangel."

AMERICAN PATRIOTIC PROSE AND VERSE. Selected and edited by Ruth Davis Stevens and David Harrison Stevens, Ph.D., instructor in English, University of Chicago. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co. Price, $1.25.

This is a little book of one hundred and seventy-one pages. It contains the American patriotic poems which have found a warm place in the hearts of the American people for generations. The selections show good judgment and cultivated taste. And what has been said of the poems can be said also of the prose. It is a choice book for a holiday present as well as for use in the schools.

THE BOOK OF HOLIDAYS. By J. Walker McSpadden. New York: T. Y. Crowell & Co. Price, $1.25, net. "The Book of Holidays" is composed of a series of short chatty stories for young folks, telling many interesting facts. All the old holidays with their rich historic meaning are written of, and the book tells us also of the new special days, just how they have arisen and what they commemorate. Appropriate poems are quoted for each holiday and there are numerous illustrations. written in simple, story-telling form, the book will appeal While to older as well as younger readers.