Industrial Ham

DR. STIGGINS--Arthur Machen--Knopf ($2.00). "I find I disliked many things in 1906," says Arthur Machen. Among them were: utilitarian literature, big business, the novels of George Eliot and Airs. Humphry Ward, Puritanism and its offspring, Protestantism; the inky rivers of the city of Manchester, drains, dogmas and all the iron altars erected to that latter day simulacrum of the Golden Bull of Tyre--the Industrial Ham. As Dickens' behavior toward Dissent was once described as that of a man who takes up a noisome fungus, smells it, makes an inarticulate noise of disgust and throws it away, so Arthur Machen treated the toadstools which, in 1906, he did not love. "Everything I hated in 1906 I hate now; if possible, with greater heartiness," says Arthur Machen and, in tribute to the refreshing gallantry which has kept him loyal through the years to the memory of his first hates, this book of astringent homilies has been republished. His noises of disgust are not inarticulate.