Sentimental Journey*

DREAMY RIVERS--Henry Baerlein-- Simon & Schuster ($2.50)./- Like Rev. Laurence Sterne, Traveler Henry Baerlein wore rosy spectacles when he went on a journey. But he supplies you with the same kind, so he makes a good companion. Traveler Baerlein speaks foreign languages like a native, and everywhere he went people would drop whatever they were doing to engage him in extended and animated chats. Such was the charm of his tongue or his appearance that a chambermaid in a hotel, a respectable woman with a son, left her job to go walking with him. Other occasional companions were a gypsy fiddler, a bishop, a mayor. Once a beautiful peasant woman fell in love with him for a night, begged him to help her revenge herself on her absent and unfaithful husband. Baerlein was a perfect gentleman. Philosophical, he took everything as it came, let it go the same way.

Some of Baerlein's stories are too good not to be true:

After the boundaries had quieted down a peasant found the frontier ran through his house, making his lavatory foreign ground. It would have taken him two weeks, every time, to get his passport visaed.

A farmer was complaining to a friend that his land was the poorest in Slovakia and would not even support a partridge. Up flew a partridge. Said the friend: "There's one partridge, anyhow." "And was it not flying away?'' said the farmer.

The Author. Henry Baerlein was born in Manchester, England, on April Fool's Day 55 years ago. A traveler by inclination, he knows especially well the Near East, Mexico, Spain, the republics of Central Europe. Credited with knowing more about Czechoslovakia than any other living Englishman, he has written several other books about it. Baerlein's travels have been largely "calm and peaceful," except in Mexico (where he collided with Yucatan authorities), Albania (where his linguistic excellence got him suspected as a Yugoslav spy, and where a man in Durazzo is still waiting to kill him). Other books: The House of the Fighting Cocks, Over the Hills of Ruthenia, The March of the 70,000, Mariposa, On the Forgotten Road.

Born to be Hanged

CRIME AND DESTINY--Johannes Lange --Paper Books (50-c-). Which is more important, heredity or environment? Johannes Lange is a German and therefore methodical. He is a criminologist and therefore curious about human behavior. Lange had heard many an argument about heredity v. environment, knew that Sir Francis Gallon in 1876 had tried to show heredity prevails, by examining the histories of twins. Skeptical of Galton's extremist conclusions, Herr Professor Lange decided to adopt Galton's method but without preconceived ideas. With painstaking cunning he set about gathering data on twins one or both of whom had a criminal record. When the dust of research settled, Herr Lange's results seemed to show that Galton was right, though Galton had gone too far. Says Introducer J. B. S. Haldane: "An analysis of the cases shows not the slightest evidence of freedom of the will in the ordinary sense of that word. . . . Taking the record of any criminal, we could predict the behavior of a monozygotic (identical: born from the same fertilized egg) twin placed in the same environment. Crime is destiny." Professor Lange respects his own conclusions, says that so far as the causes of crime are concerned, "inherited tendencies play a predominant part. . . . Heredity does play a role of paramount importance in making the criminal; certainly a far greater role than many are prepared to admit." But he thinks "environmental influences are of particular importance for a criminal because his very nature includes a far greater amount of suggestibility than the average man. In this way he often becomes a helpless victim of any environment in which he happens to find himself."

Gone Away!

As HOUNDS RAN : Four Centuries of Foxhunting--Edited by A. Henry Higginson& #151;Huntington Press ($25).-- Though it is usually better to give than to receive, even at Christmas, if you have the remotest interest in fox-hunting you can only be glad if some tycoonish friend bought and bestowed on you this book. Designed and printed by famed Typographer D. B. Updike, illustrated with old prints, engravings, modern drawings, with Forewords by Poet Laureate John Masefield, Edgar Astley Milne (the "sporting parson," co-Master of the Cattislock Hunt, Dorset, England), As Hounds Ran is as complete and readable an anthology of the sport as you could wish for.

Earliest selection is from The Booke of Hunting (1576) by George Turberville; latest, long excerpts from Masefield's Reynard the Fox. In between you will find many a roaring song, piece of horsey wisdom, oldport reminiscence, shrewd talk to mull over. The U. S. is represented as well as England, from George Washington to the late Major William Austin Wadsworth, Master of the Genesee Valley Hounds. One of the best bits is from Major Wadsworth's A Bible: "Although you may be convinced that it improves wheat to ride over it, the opinion is not diffused or popular, and the fact that some fool has gone ahead is no excuse whatever. . . . Don't gallop after the fox by yourself. If you caught him alone he might bite you. Don't 'give tongue on a woodchuck. It will cause you humiliation. There is a difference in the tails."

Laureate Masefield apologizes for not being an actual thruster, explains how a poet may open his casement on perilous seas: "I have taken a footman's modest part in countless hunts, and have also hunted on a bicycle. When one knows, as I did, every inch of the wide countryside, every path, stile, gate and gap, as well as the workings of a fox's mind, one can hunt, even on foot, with great success, on cold-hunting days. . . . After all, poetry is not a written record of what one does. Were it so, Shakespeare would have been hanged for murder and Sophocles for incest. Poetry is the spiritual enjoyment of what one understands. I wrote my tale of the Fox because I felt deeply the beauty and the life of hunting." Editor-Sportsman A. Henry Higginson, son of the late Tycoon Henry Lee Higginson (founder of Boston's famed Lee, Higginson & Co.) is a U. S. citizen and owns a large place in South Lincoln, Mass., but shares the Mastership of the Cattistock Hunt with Parson Milne. He is at present the only U. S. Master of an English hunt. A fox-hunting enthusiast, he has done much to further the sport in the U. S., where he says it is "certainly on the increase." He is president of the Master of Fox Hounds Association of America.

Ballanced Account

THE SALOON IN THE HOME--Ridgely Hunt & George S. Chappell--Coward-McCann ($2).* Compilers Hunt & Chappell put up a blatant front of impartiality on the Wet & Dry question. At the top of every page they reprint some moral tale or verse from some such temperance sourcebook as No Gin Today, Anecdotes from the Platform, Temperance Annual; then counter at the bottom with recipes for drinks. The scheme, more ingenious than its execution, is helped somewhat by pseudo-Victorian pseudo-engravings by Artist John Held Jr. Like all rummagings in the attic, this one recovers some rare antiques; the full version of that affecting ballad, "Father, Dear Father Come Home with Me Now"; the verisimilitudinous fable of the aleful mother who staggered home with her child in one arm, a bag of meal in the other, threw the baby in the meal chest, the bag of meal in the cradle, woke to find the child dead, signed the pledge. And this, from 10,000 Temperance Anecdotes, justly entitled "A Curious Performance": "I once heard of a man who went to a tavern one evening and at midnight was discovered in a pigsty, cuddling a teakettle and singing at the top of his voice: They said I was a beauty once, Why don't they say it now? And when attempts were made to raise him up, he persisted in crying out, 'Father, the Sepoys are coming! Let us repel them!"3 In the recipes for drinks Editors Hunt & Chappell stick strictly to business, except for one slip: Kummel Ye Faithful. Only venture into antiquity: the "authentic and secret recipe" for the Ramos Fizz.

Congressional Record

THE LIONS' DEN--Janet Fairbank-- Bobbs-Merritt ($2.50)./- When young Daniel Carson was elected Congressman from his Wisconsin district, he went to Washington full of ambition and high ideals. Poor, unmarried, a farmer, he had lived a progressive but black-&-white life, and as a Congressman expected to do the same on a grander scale. In Washington he was seen with the wrong people, got off to a bad start. His ambition found little outlet on the Committee on the Disposition of Useless Executive Papers. Then he met Senator Miller's wife, beautiful, socially powerful, a teaser. Congressman Carson had left a girl behind in Wisconsin: more worldly-wise than he, Irma Schmultz (for such was her plain name) insisted he keep their engagement secret for awhile. When weeks went by without a letter from him, Irma grew anxious, went to Washington. Daniel reassured her, but soon the truth came out: he was head-over-heels in love with beautiful Mrs. Miller. Irma was heartbroken but gallant. Just in time to save the situation and the Congressman's soul came a curious concatenation of circumstances : the stockmarket crashed and took his amateurish speculations with it; beautiful Mrs. Miller hooted with laughter at the suggestion that she divorce her husband and marry Dan; a heinous appropriation bill reared its ugly head and Daniel smacked it, though in vain. The last you see of him he is flying furiously westward to prevent Irma Schmultz from sailing to the Philippines. As you close the book you are sure that he will get her, sure that he will be almost unanimously reelected. The Author. Janet Fairbank's father (Benjamin Ayer) was a big man in Chicago's yesterday; her sister is Novelist Margaret Ayer Barnes (TIME, July 7). Herself a big and breezy woman, she has not been able to get much of her vitality into writing, has taken it out in other ways: she has campaigned for Presidents, for charity, for women's votes, has tamed many a lion.

/- Published Dec. 10.

* New books are news. Unless otherwise designated, all books reviewed in TIME were published within the fortnight. TIME readers may obtain any book of any U. S. publisher by sending check or money-order to cover regular retail price ($5 if price is unknown, change to be remitted) to Ben Boswell of TIME, 205 East 4?nd St., New York City.

*Published Dec. 5. Limited edition.

* Published Dec. 12.

/-Published Dec. 5.

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