Chinese Junk*

Mrs. Miln Plays Yankee Doodle on a Lute of Jade

The Story. Tom Drew was the son of rich but honest parents who told him about the stork and sent him to Harvard to complete his education. Later he served the U. S. in France. But at the age of 28, when the story opens, he manages to combine the cultured urbanity of Little Rollo with the moral steadfastness of Pollyanna. When a Chinese dowager was about to present him to one of her husband's con- cubines, "his soul blushed--good sterling thing of New York that it was--to think what his mother would feel could she know of it." But this is getting ahead of Mrs. Miln.

Drew senior does not want his son to marry Nettie, daughter of William Walker, his enemy. So, lighting a long black cigar, he says to Tom: "Go to China and look it over. Draw on me." That was just a clever stratagem, but Tom goes. On the boat he thinks about Yo Ki, a Chinese boy whom he befriended at Harvard. He hopes he will not meet Yo--it would be embarrassing to be seen on the street with a 'Chink--but feels that the chances are slight. The reader, aware that the arm of coincidence could thrice encircle China's Wall, is not so sure.

In Shantung, Tom meets various members of the American colony who entertain him when he is not indulging in butterfly-hunting, his hobby. One day he chases a cherry-winged insect who leads him into an old walled garden. There is a Chinese girl in the garden who calls him by name. Who can she be? She is Yo Ling, sister of Yo Ki, and she has recognized him from his photograph, for Tom has been a household hero to the Yos since his kindness to the boy, who has since died. He is introduced to the whole family --grandma, mother, young sister, father and concubine. It is here that the soul-blushing takes place. The Yos pay Tom homage and vow eternal friendship.

Then a gold mine is injected into the story. Father Yo controls it, but he is being outwitted for its possession by Osuro, wily Jap. Osuro has taken up with Yo Ling's little sister. He is going to say to Mr. Yo: "Your gold mine, or--your daughter," and then cheat him out of both. Meanwhile Tom is getting fond of Yo Ling, but no one can claim it comes as a surprise. One day they pay a visit to the tomb of Confucius and Tom hears a bomb ticking underneath it. He digs it out and, holding it in his bosom, races several miles looking for a place to put it down. This clever race is perhaps the climax of the book. Tom follows it up by helping to undo the machinations of the villain Jap. He is now thoroughly in love with Yo Ling, but knowing that a Chinese lullaby would breed family discord, he bids her a sad but manly farewell, and is last seen on a home-going liner. Thus, as the story ends, we are at sea.

Significance. It must not be supposed from the above account that anything happens in this book. The plot is merely a preposterous papier-mache skeleton in the black cupboard of China's mystery. Mrs. Miln uses it as an excuse to let some light into the cupboard. She describes at great length the flora, fauna, customs and history of the Yellow Continent, and if these things fail to impress, it is not because she does not know about them. The only really objectionable thing in the book is Mrs. Miln's lofty American patriotism. In every chapter, almost on every page, the Eagle emits a scream. The volume is replete with the blatant and fortunately rare sort of National feeling that has made so many Americans ludicrous abroad. Yet behind all this, one senses the thing that is responsible for the book, though not for its absurdities--the glamour and the mystery of China, that strange Empire, whose people go about the grave business of life with a ceremonial as delicate as that of a fashionable tea, and about the trivial business of death with a proud and rigorous grandeur befitting heroes. In so much, Mrs. Miln is successful.

The Author. Mrs. George Crichton Miln (Louise Jordan Miln) has been a life-long admirer of China. Writing about it is her favorite amusement. Among her books are Mr. Wu, The Feast of the Lanterns, The Green Goddess.

New Books

The following estimates of books much in the public eye were made after careful consideration of the trend of critical opinion:

THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT-- Edgar Rice Burroughs--A. C. Mc-Clurg ($2.00). The author of the famed Tarzan tales of jungledom creates himself a new jungle in a "forgotten" island of the South Seas. The interest of his new book is that its jungle is a few million years backward in evolution. It contains a magnificent collection of carnivorous reptiles, saber-toothed tigers and examples of man in all stages of evolution-- enough to make a museum curator green with envy if he did not already see red because of the liberties taken with science. On top of all it is a thriller, and salted with love by the introduction of several demure jungle maidens, chosen from the highest type of evolution on the island.

THE ISLE OF THORNS--Sheila Kaye-Smith--Dutton ($2.00). Disappointment always follows the revival of a well-known author's early works. Such is the case here, for only in snatches do we glimpse the vivid characterization, the excellent narrative ability so clearly shown in Joanna Godden and The End of the House of Alard. It is a bitter struggle for Raphael, widow- er, father, country clerk, when he finds himself in the throes, of an utterly unreasonable love for an utterly unreasonable young lady, turned gypsy, from London. It is likewise a struggle for the reader.

THE RICHEST MAN--Edward Shanks --Knopf ($2.00). Off on a holiday to Italy, suffering from shell-shock, a professor meets a soldier of fortune. Together, they discover a super-man-- "the richest man in the world." "He is not one of the millionaires you read about in the newspapers: he is the man behind them--the biggest of them all. He has forests in Canada, ruby mines in the Urals, radium deposits in Brazil, hotels in Japan. There are trust and holding companies and secret agreements. It is a wonderful affair!" This fantastic creature is the storm-centre of startling events, in which the two adventurers become involved: They prevent Germany from reestablishing a Monarchy and starting another "Great War"; they all three fall in love with Carlotta, a beguiling Italian girl. Strange characters, mysterious world-shaking politics, amusing compli- cations,-carry an original idea through to climactic--and successful--finish.

Palmer Cox

The Birds Have Come for Him

All wild and mysterious creatures perish when progress overtakes them. First the Indians went. Then the buffalos. Now the Brownies are almost gone. Who remembers them? They lived and flourished less than 20 years ago, their habitat neither forest nor prairies, but the pages of St. Nicholas Magazine and their own special books. They are almost gone because they are almost forgotten; children read about Abe Kabibble, Powerful Katinka and the Hall-Room boys. The other day Palmer Cox, artist and author, died at his home in Granby, Quebec. Everybody suddenly remembered the Brownies.

Palmer Cox began to draw in 1863, in California, when he was 23 years old. He had some success, came to New York for more. First he drew animals and published his drawings, chiefly in magazines for children. He was asked to illustrate a poem by Arthur Gillman, The Revolt of the Alphabet, to be published in St. Nicholas. It was in the margins around this poem that the first Brownies capered and grimaced; after that the magazine rarely appeared without them. Remarkable creatures they were, about an inch high; their bodies were uncouth but agile -- spindle-shanked, with rotund small bellies; they had pendulous cheeks, tiny eyes and huge mouths, capable of infinite expression. They could wear any clothes with an odd look, but their noirmal garb was doublet and hose, worn with a tasseled cap peculiar to their order.

They were not the sort of knavish sprites that frighten housewives, pinch old men sleeping, and mislead night-wanderers. No, they were kindly imps. "Every one of the Brownies does good," once said Palmer Cox, "without any thought of reward. Every one of my Brownie books is packed with morals, but I don't think that the children who read them have the least idea that they're there." If the children had, the Brownie books might not have become as they did, standbys in every household.

The Brownies were always up to something. They went to school, they visited the zoo, they disported themselves in gymnasiums, they travelled. The only rule of their clan was that nothing could ever be repeated. Once they became stranded on an island far from shore. They could not get off by building a boat because they had done that before, and the rule was not to be broken. How were they to escape ? Innumerable American children sorrowed; nurses worried; mothers wrote, letters to Mr. Cox. At last he thought of a way to save them; birds flew over from the mainland and the Brownies rode back to safety through the air. Now they are stranded again, and there is no one to get them off. The birds have come for Palmer Cox.

Said John Farrar, Bookman editor: "The man who created the famous Brownies was one of the gentlest and quaintest people I have ever met. His whole life seemed to be tied up in the absurd and entertaining little creatures he had invented. Before you had known him very long, he would present you with a card on which he had painted a Brownie in glowing colors, and had printed a verse supposed to be peculiarly fitted to your own temperament. I think that Mr. Cox came to believe that there was something mystical about a Brownie. Perhaps there was. I can remember spending hours as a child curled in a huge red armchair with bound volumes of St. Nicholas, reveling in the pranks of the Brownies, the Indian, the policeman, the sailor, Uncle Sam. What a strange contrast, to be sure, were these tiny beings, to the massive Mr. Cox, who was six feet two, broad-shouldered, lumbering, powerful. When I saw him two years ago, he still gave the impression of a man of great strength."

*IN A SHANTUNG GARDEN--Louise Jordan Miln--Stokes ($2.00).