Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 61, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 March 1910 — Book News and Reviews. [ARTICLE]

Book News and Reviews.

Mr. Kipling’s popular "Jungle Books” have been through the press forty-five times. Theodore Roosevelt’s African articles are being published regularly in Australia, England, France and Italy, and translations are to appear in Sweden and in Brazil. Dr. Henry van Dyke has been elected an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of the United Kingdom. The distinguished men other than Englishmen who received the honor last year were Ahatole France, Bjornson, Nansen, Harnack and Paul Heyse. Only one other American enjoys the honor with Dr. van Dyke—Joseph Choate, former ambassador to Great Britain. The power of love to prolong life forms an interesting feature of Arthur H. Adams’ “Gallahad Jones.” Gallahad Jones is a bank clerk, 49 years of age, with a hidden spring of romance in his nature. He finds a letter from a lady in distress addressed “To You.” This letter leads him into a gallant adventure, from which he emerges at the end of the story with an entirely new conception of life. Clement Shorter describes the difference between the new journalism, “with its fine flow, of adjectives, its wild Inaccuracies, Its recklessness, its split Infinitives,” and the old in that wtolle the new journalism never achieves anything that is not forgotten in a fortnight, the old journalism achieved many things that will have a permanent place in history'and in literature. “The Diary of James K. Polk,” which is in the possession of the Chicago Historical Society, is to be published. It reflects a stern integrity and strength of character which posterity seems unwilling to acknowledge that Polk possessed. It was written with the ultimate idea of vindicating the author's political motives, but his death took place before he could revise it and it now stands its own expositor.

Those authors who are nervously afraid of interruption when at ‘Work will read with envy Mr. Skene’s account of Sir Walter Scott’s equanimity under such stress. Skene says in his Just published “Memories”: “When I had occasion to go to his study during his usual hours of writing, it was a matter of surprise to me to observe the readiness with which he broke off his employment, however much he seemed to be engrossed in it. He laid aside his pen with seeming indifference, although in the middle of a sentence, or closed the book he was reading without even marking the page, tyid entering immediately with perfect cheerfulness and attention upon the subject proposed. And upon returning, perhaps some hours later, to his study, he would instantly resume his subject as it it had suffered no lnterruptioiCiontinuing to write with perfect ease and readiness, as if he had been writing to dictation.” There will probably never be any monuments unveiled in memory of the man who.lnvented the r alann clock.